She moved off quickly; Kitamuki and Proboda parted to let Sparta through, then closed in tight formation behind her.
Sparta followed Antreen easily enough through the weightless passage—she’d had three days without acceleration in the middle of her trip and she hadn’t lost the body-memory of what it was like to have space legs— passing from the station’s motionless hub through the gray metal bulkheads of the security sector. They passed the station’s huge sliding collar, and Sparta paused a moment to adjust to the spin. They moved on, through blackand yellow-striped emergency hatches into wider corridors, until they reached one of the main halls in the turning section of the station, far enough outside the hub to create fractional gees which established a “floor,” that being the inner cylindrical surface of the hall itself. Once in the hall, Antreen turned planetward, toward the Space Board headquarters in the station’s central sphere.
Sparta paused. Kitamuki and Proboda almost tumbled into her. “Something wrong, Inspector?” Antreen asked.
“It’s very good of you,” Sparta said, smiling. “But time is too short, I’ll have to check out my quarters later.”
“If you say so. I’m sure we can get you settled at HQ, anyway.”
“I’ll be going to traffic control first. Star Queen is due within the hour.”
“We haven’t arranged authorization,” Antreen said.
“No problem,” Sparta replied.
Antreen nodded. “You’re right, of course. Your badge is enough. Do you know the way?”
“If any of you want to come with me . . .” Sparta said.
“Inspector Proboda will accompany you. He’ll take care of anything you need,” Antreen said.
“Okay, thanks. Let’s go.” Sparta was already moving starward, heading for the transparent traffic control dome that capped the huge space station. Although she had never been beyond Earth’s moon, she knew the layout of Port Hesperus in such detail she would have astonished its oldest residents, even its designers and builders.
It took her only moments to thread through the passages and corridors, past busy workers and clerks. By the time she arrived at the center’s double glass doors, Proboda had closed in behind her. He was her equal in rank, but older; handling that was going to be the first challenge of her assignment.
The local station patroller glanced at Sparta’s badge and then at the hard-breathing Proboda, whom he recognized.
The guard waved them both through the glass lock, into the glittering darkness of Hesperus Traffic Control.
Through the arching glass dome Sparta could see the hard points of thousands of fixed stars. Below the dome, row upon circular row of softly glowing terminals were arranged like benches in a Roman amphitheater. In front of each console floated a weightless controller in loose harness. The doors through which Sparta and Proboda had entered were in the center of the ring, and they came in like a pair of gladiators onto the sand, although no one noticed their arrival. High above their heads, higher than the highest row of consoles, the chief controller’s platform was suspended on three fine struts at the dishshaped room’s parabolic focus.
Sparta launched herself upward.
She turned as she touched down lightly on the platform edge. The chief controller and his deputy seemed only mildly interested in her arrival.
“I’m Inspector Ellen Troy of Central Investigative Services, Mr. Tanaka. . . .”—she’d stored the names of all the key personnel in the station—”And this is Inspector Proboda,”
she added as the blond hulk arrived behind her, scowling. “I’m instructed to direct the investigation of Star Queen.”
“Hi, Vik,” the controller said cheerily, grinning at the flustered cop. He nodded to Sparta. “Okay, Inspector.
We’ve had Star Queen on auto for the past thirty-six hours. We should have her onboard in about seventy-two minutes.”
“Where are you parking the ship, sir?”
“We’re not. You’re right, normally we wouldn’t dock a ship of this mass, we’d stand her in the roads. But Captain Antreen of your office here suggested we bring Star Queen on into the security sector to facilitate the removal of the . . . survivor. That will be dock Q3, Inspector.”
Sparta was mildly surprised at Antreen’s order—the crewman on Star Queen had survived a week on his own, and the extra half hour it would take to bring him in from a parking orbit on a utility shuttle would hardly make a difference.
“I’d like to stay to observe the docking procedure, if you don’t mind,” she said. “And I’ll want to be first in line when the lock is opened, if you’d be good enough to inform your personnel of that.” She turned her head, sensing that Proboda was about to object. “Of course you’ll be with me at the airlock, Inspector,” she said.
“That’s fine with us,” Tanaka said. He could care less.
“Our job’s over when the ship’s in and secured. Now if you’ll excuse me. . . .” The muscular little man ran a thick hand lightly over his black crewcut. Not until he moved forward out of the harness in which he’d been floating did Sparta notice he had no legs.
An hour passed in Traffic Control; the hot sun rose somewhere below. From her perch on the chief controller’s platform Sparta could see up to the stars and across to the intense ascending sun; she could see down to the first ring of multi-ringed Port Hesperus, which turned ceaselessly about its stationary hub like a heavenly carousel. She could not see the disk of Venus, which was immediately under the station, but the glare of the planet’s sulfuricacid clouds reflected onto the station’s painted metalwork was almost as bright from below as the direct rays of the sun were from above.
Sparta’s attention was not on the station but on the hundred-meter white ship, standing straight up against the stars, which lowered itself by inches with spurts of its maneuvering thrusters, toward the gaping bay in the hub below the traffic control dome.
The sight triggered an odd memory, of a backyard barbecue in Maryland—who had been there? Her father? Her mother? No. A man, a woman with gray hair, other older couples whom she could not now quite picture or place— but that was not the memory, the memory was of a bird feeder suspended from the branch of an elm in the backyard by a long, thin wire, the sort of wire used as baling wire, and at the end of this wire was the bird feeder full of seeds, hanging from the wire a good two meters below the branch and a meter above the ground, to protect the seeds from squirrels. But one squirrel was not to be thwarted; this squirrel had learned to grip the wire with all four paws and slide—slowly, and with obvious trepi- dation—headfirst down the wire, from the branch above to the feeder below. The people who were giving the barbecue were so impressed by the squirrel’s daring they had not even bothered yet with any new scheme to frustrate it. They were so proud they wanted Sparta to see the animal perform its trick.
And here was a huge white space freighter, sliding headfirst down an invisible wire, into the maw of the docking bay. . . .
Something else that memory was trying to tell her . . .
but she couldn’t dredge it up. She forced her attention back to the moment. Star Queen was almost docked.
Outside the security sector the passage to the lock was jammed with media people. Sparta, with Proboda dogging her, arrived at the back of the crowd.
“I wonder what he’s feeling like now?” a cameraman was saying, fussing with his videochip photogram.
“I can tell you,” replied a sleek brushcut type, a standup reporter. “He’s so pleased to be alive . . .”
Sparta sensed that Proboda, beside her, was about to pull his rank and clear the mediahounds out of the passage.
She gently preempted him. “I want to hear this,” she murmured, touching his arm.
“. . . that he doesn’t give a damn about anything else,”
the reporter concluded.
“I’m not so sure I’d want to leave a mate in space so I could get home.”
“Who would? But you heard the transmission—they talked it over and the loser went out the lock. It was the only sensible way.”
“Sensible? If you say so—but it’s pretty horrible to let somebody sacrifice himself so you can live . . .”
“Don’t act the bloody sentimentalist. If that happened to us you’d shove me out before I’d had a chance to say my prayers.”
“Unless you did it to me first . . .”
Sparta had heard enough. She pushed close to the reporter and said quietly, “Space Control. Move aside, please,” and kept repeating it, “Space Control, move aside please . . .”—effortlessly opening a path before her. Proboda followed.
They left the pack behind at the security sector lock.
Beyond the sealed collar of the core they reached the Q3 lock, which was almost as crowded with technicians and medical personnel. Through the big plate glass port the bulbous head of Star Queen was nosing into place a few meters away, patiently tugged and shoved by mechanical tractors. Sparta had a few words with the medics and the others as the tube fastened itself over the ship’s main airlock.