Dragons and Stars, Chapters 18-End of Book

CHAPTER 18: The Chase

Hanna and Grummel left the catchwire and came moonwalking back to where Neal and the two policemen were standing. They each carried large stun guns and their kevlar-titanium suits glistened in the flashing neon lights of the street.

“What’s going on?” the taller one, a woman, asked on the all-wave public radio band.

Neal stopped. Nothing really had happened yet.

“Er, these two men in the bar,” he said. “They were threatening us.”

“Turn your helmet tinting off,” said the shorter officer.

Neal and Hanna turned their tinting off.

“Did they have a weapon?” asked the taller woman officer.

“Um, maybe,” said Neal. “They were chasing us out. I thought one might have a gun or something.”

Hanna cut in. “They were talking about something and grew angry when they saw us listening in.”

The officers relaxed a little.

“That was a little rude of you,” the tall woman officer said.

Just then a side door of the bar flew open and the two bearded men came bounding around the corner, the scar-faced man holding a long knife.

The police officers immediately raised their stun guns and aimed at the two men in black suits.

The two men froze, bouncing to a stop, and raised their hands.

“Drop your knife,” said the shorter policeman.

“Those three are in trouble with us,” said the man with spectacles.

“Drop your knife immediately or we stun you!” the tall policewoman said.

The scar-faced man laid his long knife down on the asteroid dust of the street with a dark look. “Those three are in our custody,” said the man beside him with spectacles.
“These kids?” the policewoman asked.

“Yes,” said the man with the spectacles. “We demand you turn them over to us.”

“To you two?” said the taller woman in shock at their bravado.

The bearded man with the spectacles said to the short policeman, “Please contact your supervisor Gregory Hymes and verify that we have authority in this situation. Or it will go very badly for you both.”

The two police officers looked at each other. Than the short policeman switched to a private channel and they could see him talking in his helmet. After listening for a minute, the taller policewoman turned to look at the three teenagers.

Her eyes were wide with shock and anger. With her body blocking her hands from the others, she held up the number four. Neal looked at Hanna and Grummel, and they all quietly changed their radio frequency to four.

“Something dirty’s up,” the tall woman said quietly and angrily over the channel. “Our supervisor seems afraid of these two. He’s giving them permission to take you. We won’t help them, but we have to stand by. Confound it! I suggest you three make a break and run for it. It’s all the help I can give you right now. I’m sorry.” She adjusted her face to appear impassive and turned back to the others.

“Holy comets,” said Neal weakly.

“Oy gevalt!,” said Hanna angrily. “Those cursed goyim. Get ready on three again. For the catchwire.”

Neal looked quickly back. The scar-faced bearded man was leaning down to pick up his knife again.

“One…” said Hanna quietly.

The shorter policeman was turning to look at them, his face impassive.

“Two….” said Hanna.

“I’m afraid you must….” began the shorter policeman.

“THREE!” shouted Hanna. The three of them began running for the catchwire. As they reached it they each jumped for it, snapping off their magboot switches in mid-air. Neal safely caught hold, and he saw Grummel catch hold, but Hanna missed her handle by a hair and flew past the catchwire, tumbling slowly towards a hotel on the other side of the street.

The two dark men jumped just past them and floated past the wire. Both turned and bounced after Hanna.

As Neal and Grummel clung to the speeding catchwire, the whole street quickly disappeared around a corner behind them.

“I’m going back!” shouted Neal.

He let go at high speed, going headfirst toward a tall building in front of him. Doing a slow backflip in the air, he hit the building feet first and pushed upward, tapping the face of the building with his feet as he ran up it with the redirected speed of the catchwire.

As he approached the top of the 200-hundred foot tall building, he slowed himself and grabbed an outcropping steel beam. Looking down he saw behind him and far below the neon-lit street and the tiny figures of Hanna coming to a fighting crouch to face the two men. Neal braced his feet, bounced away and back two times and with a sudden kick aimed himself straight towards the men and slightly above them.

The mighty push sent him soaring off the building at a slight downward tilt. Other tall buildings went by on either side of him as he swooped down above the open bar street. The slight gravity of Ceres pulled him down slowly as he flew towards the men at perhaps thirty miles per hour, twice as fast as a human can sprint. The two men were stepping towards Hanna, one waving his knife threateningly.

Neal touched a temporary air release valve on the front of his suit, spinning his body onto his back, feet first. In a split second the men’s backs loomed in front of him and he scissored out his legs and bent his knees. As he impacted them, he kicked out with his legs, connecting one foot to each of their backs, slamming them violently forward in a somersault against the wall of the hotel.

The exchange of energy brought Neal to a slow stop. He drifted down onto his back on the street. Hanna pushed off the hotel wall and grabbed his arms to steady him. “One has a stunner,” she said.

He glanced over and saw the man with the scar lying groggily, but the other scrambling to stand up. Hanna lunged and jumped towards an alley beside the hotel, bouncing against the far wall of the alley and disappearing around the corner. Neal jumped towards the alley after her. As he flew through the air he looked back and saw the spectacled man pulling a stun gun from a holster in his suit. A glowing blue ball ripped past Neal and ricocheted off the wall ahead of him. He bounced off the wall as well, jumping into the alley and to the other wall again. He jumped back and forth like a tennis ball, propelling himself down the alley. Reaching another cross alley he darted into it, grabbing onto a steel girder to stop himself and breathe.

“Hanna!” he hissed. He heard her breathing.

“I’m here,” she said.

Neal looked twenty feet down and saw trash piled in the alley, old metal crates and a dilapidated old crawler. A hand reached out of a crate and waved at him. He quickly pushed down to the ground and pulled himself into the crate with her.

“Shouldn’t we run?” he said over the mic. Then he noticed her. Her eyes were wide, and she was pale. Her breathing was laboring in short little gasps. She’s panicking, Neal thought in amazement. He’d never seen Hanna panic before.

“C’mon,” he said. “If we stay here we’re sitting ducks.”

He took her by the arm and crouched behind the crates, peering out into the dark night shadows of the alley. Above them the stars burned like ten thousand tiny suns. Which they were, in a way, Neal thought. He shook his head to focus. The bearded man with spectacles and the stun gun ran past their side alley just then, jogging in his magboots.

“Okay,” Neal said when he was out of sight. He pulled Hanna and they pushed off the wall and further down the alley. Out of the corner of his eye, Neal saw a movement behind them. The man with the scar on his face stood at the alley entrance a hundred feet behind them, holding a knife. He saw them and began running down the alley after them. Neal grasped Hanna’s arm and they began pushing off beams and ledges, lunging down the alley. They reached the end of the alley where it met another narrow alley. Hanna was gasping and beginning to sob.

“Hang in there,” Neal said. He looked around wildly in the new alley. Suddenly a grate swung open on the concrete floor of the alley and a man popped out. He waved them down into the grate.

Neal hesitated only a moment before pulling Hanna and himself left down the alley to the man. The man had a black beard and beady black eyes like a squirrel. He looked familiar. Neal and Hanna darted down into the hole in the alley and the man followed them, pulling the grate over them. As it banged shut over them, the man slid a metal bolt into a steel ring soldered underneath the grate. They stood panting and gasping and staring up at it.

A few moments later a hand grasped the metal grate from above and tried to pull it up. A helmeted face with a scar leaned over and peered through it, a knife glinting in the starlight beside his face. He stared down into the shadows with a look of pure hatred. Hanna suddenly sprung up at the grate in a fury, shouting in Yiddish and hitting at it. The knife flashed through the grate downwards, and Neal and the man grabbed Hanna and yanked her away. They held her a safe distance back, flailing and kicking and cursing in Yiddish.

Then their friend with the beady black eyes like a squirrel let go of her. He turned and walked down a tight underground tunnel. He left them behind at the grate.

　

CHAPTER 19: Tunnel Rats

Neal and Hanna hurried after him.

“Where are you going?” asked Neal on his suit speaker. The man looked back at them but said nothing and continued.

All along the walls of the passage large pipes and tubes and wires stretched ahead into total darkness. The man switched on a battered flashlight to light the way. Neal glanced back a last time at the grate in the tunnel ceiling as they floated and bounced gently forward.

The three of them floated forward a long while, past thick insulated tubes and under an occasional grate. Neal was relieved to see they all appeared to be shut and bolted.

“I wonder what this place is,” said Neal over the radio link to Hanna. She said nothing. Neal glimpsed her face in the reflections of the flashlight ahead and saw she was still pale and haggard.

“What happened after we left you?” he asked.

Hanna was silent a moment. “They threatened me,” she said.

“They threatened to stab you with that knife?” Neal asked.

She waved her arm dismissively. Neal grasped a beam and bent his legs onto it like a vertical surfboard, again pushing himself forward twenty feet before he drifted downward and had to repeat his floating lunge again. Hanna grabbed a beam beside him and held him still.

“They threatened to do other things to me,” she said, angry.

“Like…” he left the question unasked.

“Yes,” she said. “Like that.”

Neal felt a hot surge of blood in veins. He felt like opening one of the grates they’d passed and going back up. He’d find them, and this time he wouldn’t let them get off with just a kick in the back. He fantasized for a few moments about the ways he would make them suffer. In his mind they twisted in agony and pleaded for mercy.

Like that would happen, he thought. I’m a smallish 17-year old against two killers. But still the image had a bittersweetness that felt addictive.

Hanna pushed off ahead of him, and he shoved off to follow her.

Up ahead the flashlight stopped.

“Where are we going?” asked Hanna.

Neal flipped his radio to public direct-line broadcast.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man turned and shone the flashlight up on himself. In the eerie light Neal saw a dirty and almost ragged suit, a scratched and battered helmet, and a gaunt face like a skull, covered with a tight curly black beard. Hanna pushed herself off a beam, to drift slowly back to where Neal was settling to the floor of the tunnel.

It came to Neal.
“You’re the homeless guy we saw begging today,” he said.

The man took a few steps toward them and Neal was certain–the same dirty helmet, the same bright beady eyes like a squirrel’s.

“That’s me,” he said. “One and the same. Billy-O is my name.”

He turned back around and nodded his head. “Come on,” he said.

Neal remained standing.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To see the others,” said Billy-O. He opened a grate in the floor of the tunnel and motioned down it. Neal and Hanna sidled a little closer, uncertain. Neal tried to think how far back the last grate up to the surface was. He thought he probably could unbolt it himself. If no one was holding him back.

Billy-O shone his light on their faces. Hanna’s looked panicked, and Neal’s was tense, uncertain.

Billy-O uttered a bad word and said, “You’re afraid! I’m sorry.”

He clicked a button on his suit and said, “Hey, Mary Mary, would you come up here? We have two frightened young visitors.”

Neal waited a long minute, and then another helmeted face peeped up out of the hatch at Billy-O’s feet. It was a young black woman with long silky hair and a beautiful, kind face. She squeezed her ample form out of the hatch and pushed over to them. “Oh, oh oh, my my.” She turned immediately to Hanna. “Honey, you do look troubled,” she said. She wrapped Hanna in a big hug and looked back at Billy-O. “What happened Billy?”

He stared at her with his bright beady eyes in the dim lit tunnel. “They got jumped by some janjas. Even the police couldn’t save them. They made a run for it, but the janjas got this girl here and were waving their knives at her and threatenin’ her. This boy came back. He had one amazing jump from the top of the building on 22nd Street, knocked both these dudes down and they got away. But one of those crimed-up baggers would of got them if I hadn’t let ’em in that hatch up in James Alley.”

“Watch your language,” she scolded him. She turned to Neal. “My, honey,” she said. “You are one brave boy.”

The thought was a new one to Neal. He knew that usually he was afraid to say what he was really thinking and feeling. But a certain warmth spread through him. I guess I was a little brave, he admitted to himself. Fighting two armed men. But should I think that about myself? Isn’t that proud?

“It was nothing,” he said, trying to dismiss it.

“Oh no!” she said. “Jumping from a tall building to fight two crazy janjas with knives to save your friend!? Honey, that ain’t no sissy action. You’d best be proud of what you done!” she said. “I can see you want be humble and all. But humble don’t mean you gotta deny you did something good or you have some gift. Humble just mean you’re equally happy about others gifts too, you’re not all thinking about yo’self.”

She pulled Hanna along to the hatch. “Now, come on, you both, and rest a spell in a safe place.”

Neal looked at Mary Mary, and at Billy-O. He felt suddenly exhausted.

“Okay,” he said. Mary Mary squeezed down the hatch first, then reached up to help Hanna drift down. Neal went after Hanna, still keeping the corner of his eye on Billy-O. Billy-O shone the flashlight down the hatch to help him see where he was going, then came down after him, closing and bolting the grate up into the underground tunnel from underneath. Neal saw only darkness below him in the shaft. They drifted down it with help from Billy-O’s flashlight, its beam bouncing this way and that on the walls of the vertical shaft. In the occasional flash of light Neal could tell the tunnel went down very far hundreds of feet into darkness and continued out of the light. After they had gone down perhaps two hundred feet, Mary Mary stopped. Billy-O shone his light on a hatch in the side of the tunnel wall, and Mary Mary tapped on it lightly with a certain rhythm as though she playing the drum for a song. After a moment the door unlocked and a suited man peered out from a darkened room. Mary Mary helped a trembling Hanna inside, and Billy-O shone the light for Neal to pull his way in. It was an airlock. Billy-O pulled himself in and shut the door, turning a wheel on the inside and then pushing a button. A burst of air pressurized the chamber, and Mary Mary opened the inside door.

“This is where we Tunnel Rats live,” she said. A warm ray of light burst into the small chamber as the inner door opened. Mary Mary stepped out and pulled off her helmet, shaking her long silky hair down her back. Neal stepped out into a warmly lighted room. He checked his compad. The air was safe.

Neal shakily unsealed his helmet and pulled it off with a hiss of exhalation. The air in the room smelled musty. He rubbed his face and looked around at the large room. Near the door several old chairs and crates were scattered with ten or fifteen people sitting on them under warm floodlights. Farther back a hallway wound its way into darkness. Hanging tarps partitioned off smaller rooms from this hallway.

“What is this place?” asked Neal.

“This is our home!” said Mary Mary. “We’re all homeless except for this place, honey. C’mon over and sit down, both of you.”

Suddenly a thought flashed into Neal’s mind.

“Grummel!” he said loudly.

Everyone jumped, and Billy-O said, “What?”

“Our friend Grummel,” said Neal. “We had a friend, a really big guy who was with us. I left him to go back for Hanna. I don’t know where he is. He….” he thought hard about what Grummel would have done. “He probably would try to come back for us but he would have taken longer to make it back to that bar street.”

“We’ll send some people up to look for him right away,” said Billy-O. He motioned to several people in the corner and they stood and pulled on scratched helmets of their own. They filed into the airlock and the door closed.

“Well,” said Mary Mary. “You two just come and sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Rearview, you get out of that chair and give these two a place to sit.”

A man with thick glasses stood up from one of the plush chairs and sat down on a crate. Hanna and Neal settled down in the chairs and Mary Mary sat on a crate nearby.

Neal yawned suddenly, his mind spinning wearily from the excitement. Hanna’s eyes were already sinking shut.
“Oh, my!” said Mary Mary. “You two don’t need chairs, you need beds. Come wi’ me, then.” She helped Hanna up and Neal followed her out of the sitting room and into the curtained hallway. Mary Mary stopped at the first door. “This is Billy-O’s,” she said. “He’ll want you to use his bed for nap. Honey,” she said to Hanna, “You come on back to my room.” Neal stumbled into the room, suddenly exhausted. It was a small eight by eight room with curtain walls. A pile of old freighter blankets were piled on the floor into a sort of bed. Neal didn’t take off his suit, just lay on the blankets, tucking another blanket under his head. His head hurt. He closed his eyes, images flashing through his mind, and fell asleep.

[have neal rest his helmet beside the bed?]

　

CHAPTER 20: Tales in the Tunnel

Neal heard a rustle and opened his eyes. He’d been sleeping. The curtain to the little room lifted open and Billy-O peered in. His hair stuck up in little cowlicks, and his black beard framed his face and his bright beady eyes. He stared at Neal a moment, then came in.

“You and the girl gave me the ten-credits,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’d thought it was you.”

“Yes,” said Neal. Neal studied his scratched helmet and the small room for a minute.

“You’re not looking for work on a freighter, are you?” asked Neal.

“No,” said Billy-O.

“And you didn’t need the ten-credits for your air-generator, did you?” Neal asked.

“No,” said Billy-O.

“What did you do with the money?”

Billy-O pointed to a tiny table by the pile of blankets.

“That bottle of wine. That nutri-pack of food. I gave three credits to Mary Mary for her food.”

Neal looked at the items. “Is Mary Mary your girlfriend?”

Billy-O smiled. “Just a friend,” he said. “She’s too religious for me, says I’m a dirty old wino.”

Neal found himself smiling.

Then he remembered Grummel.

“Did you find my friend Grummel?” he asked, swinging his legs over the pile of blankets to sit up.

“Yes,” said Billy-O. “Rearview went up and watched bar street. He saw a huge loaf of a guy with a tinted helmet come hurrying out of the bar you all went in earlier. Rearview went up and asked him if his name was Grummel. He said yes and wanted to know where you guys were. We got him down here in the tunnels. And off the streets.”

“He’s here?” asked Neal, standing up.

Billy-O motioned and Neal followed him out through the curtained hallways and into the sitting area.

Grummel was standing in front of the airlock, holding his helmet under his arm and ducking his head slightly under the low ceiling. Several miners were gathering around him, looking up at him.

“I ain’t never seen a boy thet tall!” said one of the soot-covered men.

“Well, there’s Old Timers,” said a lady who was missing several teeth.

“Yeah, but they ain’t so big and meaty!” said the first man back.

Grummel saw Neal and ran toward him, banging his head on a light before he made it to Neal and took him in a crushing hug.

“I wus worre’d sick about you two!” he said, his eyes turning red but no tears falling. “Wher’s Hanna?”

“She’s back there taking a nap,” said Neal, nodding behind him.

Grummel’s large shoulders sagged in relief and he did sob for a moment. Mary Mary came up then and handed him a rag. Grummel blew his nose into it like a trumpet and then looked around for a place to put it. Mary Mary took it back. “Why don’t you jes’ sit down on one of these here crates?” she said kindly. “Hush, now, no need for cryin’, a big boy like you!”

Grummel made his way to an empty steel crate and sat down on it. Neal and Mary Mary came and sat nearby.

Grummel wiped another tear away and did his best to sit up manfully. “Ma’am, why er’ ya livin’ here?” he asked Mary Mary.

Mary Mary clasped her long slender fingers together and looked down for a minute.

“Well, honey,” she said. “When I was eleven years old, janjaweed fighters came and attacked the little asteroid where my momma and daddy worked as miners.”

“Who are janjaweed?” asked Neal.

“Oh, honey, they’s some bad-boned guys, let me tell you. They are a tribe of muslim nomads. They wander from place to place, more often than not piratin’ and killing to get what they want. Like they did on my asteroid. I saw them do away with my daddy, and my momma died trying to protect me. She was like a she-bear, she was. She like to have tore those men apart with her bare hands before they got her.”

She wiped her eye and tightened her jaw as she remembered it.

“Well, they took me back to their ship. I was so afraid of them. They wore these black helmet masks, you see, with these laaarge glass mirrors over their eyes and this black circle filter over their mouths. And they was dressed all in white with white hoods on their suits. They looked mighty bad, let me tell you. But when they took off the masks, they was just ordinary men with mean faces and smelly beards. I was given to one of their leaders to be his wife.”

“His wife!” exclaimed Neal. “When you were eleven?”

“Yes, honey,” she said. “Sh sh, now. Look here. Lots of bad things happen in this world but that won’t never have to stop us from being good and lovin’ others. Now listen. This man’s name was Abdul-Raheem. That means “Servant of the Most Compassionate” in the Arabic language. She turned and spit on the ground in anger. “From him I never once saw compassion. So he can say his god was compassionate all day long and I won’t believe a word. Uh hm, not until I see some compassion in action, you hear what I’m saying?”

Neal nodded, wide eyed. Mary Mary’s beautiful face and high cheek bones shone in the floodlights like an ancient warrior princess.

“Well,” she said, “This Abdul-Raheem beat me every day, though that wasn’t the worst of what he did. After several years I almost got used to that treatment. But then one day he told me he was taking a second wife. He said I hadn’t given him any children yet, and I deserved to die. He started to say terrible things about my momma and daddy, and something inside me snapped away.

“I just picked up his big curved knife and I cut his face, from his eye right down the side of his cheek. Then I ran out and into the streets. God is compassionate, Neal, because I got away from that man. I got away from him. I hid in crates and boxes and only came out at night. I worked my way across the city until I got to the tunnel up to the station. But I didn’t have no money. That’s when I met these folks and became a Tunnel Rat. I’ve been here nigh unto three years now.”

Grummel said, “Thet man what was your husband…” he hesitated at the fierce look at Mary Mary’s face. “One o’ the men what chased us had a scar from ‘is eye down his cheek,” he said. “And he carried a long curved carver.”

Mary Mary’s eyes flashed. “That was him,” she said. “Why was he chasing you all?”

Neal told her about seeing Mirk go into the bar, and how they snuck in to see what he was up to. About how the two men had come into the bar and Mirk wrote something down for them, and how they gave him thirteen thousand credits. Billy-O whistled at that number. “That’s a lot of mischief if it’s thirteen thousand credits worth of mischief,” he said. Mary Mary nodded. “That’s no good, no good at all. Mm mm. Those janjas are planning something. I’d guess your ship to be waylaid again. Or your asteroid to be attacked.”

“Eros, attacked?” said Neal.

“You from Eros?” Billy-O said.

“It could be an attack,” said Mary Mary. “There’ve been three small asteroids attacked in just the past two years by pirates. The last two times there were no survivors that have come forward. There was only one survivor from the first attack. That’s Billy-O.”

Grummel and Neal looked at Billy-O.

“I hid in a cave,” he said. “In a cryo-unit where they couldn’t trace my body heat. I shouldn’t have. I should have fought them.”

“You did fight them,” Mary Mary said. “You said you did.”

“Not enough,” he said.

“Why don’t ya tell the police?” asked Grummel.

Billy-O’s happy little eyes turned sad. “I did,” he said. “They promised to look into it. That’s all that happened.”

“Mm mm,” said Mary Mary. “Something dirty is going down, and that’s for sure.”

Neal stood up. “Can you help us get back to my uncle?” he said. “He’s probably very worried by now.”

Billy-O sat and considered. “You all got a ship at the station?” he asked.

“Yea,” said Grummel. “H’et’s the S.S. Samson.”

“I think you’d best bee-line for your ship,” said Billy-O. “Get back on it and then radio your Uncle from the ship to let him know.”

He turned to Rearview. “You think you can get them back to the tunnel to the station?” he asked.

Rearview took off his thick glasses and cleaned them slowly. “Believe I can,” he said.

Billy-O thought a moment more. “I’ll go ahead of you and scout it out to make sure it’s safe,” he said.

Neal and Grummel stood up.

“I’ll go wake Hanna,” said Mary Mary, standing and hurrying back into the curtained hallway.

Two minutes later, Hanna was out, clinging to Grummel with a big hug while he looked sheepish. The three of them stood by the airlock, putting their helmets on. Billy-O looked at Neal. “After I check the station I’ll go over to your aunt’s house,” he said. “I know she won’t let me in her building, but I’ll tell her on the compad that you’re safe and sound.”

“Thank you,” Neal said. He didn’t know what to say to these people. He didn’t know how to repay them. He couldn’t. “Can I leave some money?” he asked, reaching for his pocket. The faces around him instantly became stern. Mary Mary pulled his hand away. “Don’t you dare think of it, Neal,” she said. “You think we’re doing this for yo’ money?”

Neal squirmed inside. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

He looked around at them. “Thank you,” he said. It was all he could find to say.

They escorted them to the airlock and waved as the inner door started to slide closed.

“Ya’ll take care now,” said Mary Mary. The other miners with her yelled goodbye as the airlock door slammed shut and they were suddenly in silence and blackness again.

　

CHAPTER 21: Journey Home

They had bounced along tunnels for perhaps an hour, with Rearview leading the way. Billy-O and the others had gone on slightly ahead to scout for them before they arrived. Rearview turned down many forks and turned right or left at many tunnel intersections.

I could never find my way out of here, thought Neal. I’d have to open a grate and try my luck on the surface.

After her nap and the warmth of the Tunnel Rats, Hanna seemed to be regaining some of her old spunk, or “chutzpah” as she called it. She was bouncing just behind Rearview, effortlessly keeping up with him, and peppering him with questions.

“So, why are you called Rearview?” she asked.

“Can’t you tell?” he said. “Look at my glasses.”

He shone his flashlight for a moment up on his glasses. Neal, behind Hanna, saw a small circular rearview mirror attached to the left side of his thick glasses.

“This way I can always see what’s behind me,” he said. “I can’t imagine not having them. It’s like having a third eye to look behind you.”

[how would that work on his helmet? helmets are a solid glass bulb]

Neal had to agree it sounded pretty useful.

“How long have you lived here?” Hanna asked.

“All my life on Ceres,” Rearview said. “Thankfully I had some weight training when I was younger. I worked as a high school politics teacher for a while. Then my wife died and I started drinking too much.”

“You were a high school teacher?” asked Hanna, surprised.

“Yep, don’t look like it now, do I?” he said. He shone the flashlight on his bedraggled suit and grimy helmet, and on the stubble on his chin under his thick glasses.

“You taught politics?” asked Neal.

“Yep. Not anymore now. Politics is just a way for the stronger to take advantage of the weak. One of these days the central governments on earth are going to implant us all with chips and control our lives every second. You just watch. I know I might sound a little strange, but it’s true. And this synthesized food we eat? I heard it’s going to give us all a strange disease. Only the government will have the cure for it, and then we’ll be stuck.”

Neal privately thought that Rearview had lived too long alone or something.

Grummel floated past Neal just then like a meaty rowboat. “Is et true?” he whispered. “Is our food poi’soned?”

Neal shook his head no in the dim flashes of light and he saw Grummel look relieved.

* * *

At last Rearview stopped underneath a grate.

“Switch off your lights,” he said.

They turned off any lights they were carrying and stood in total darkness. Neal looked up at the grate. A pale brightness was shining through it. It’s morning! Neal thought. The nine hour Cerian night was already over. The night seemed so long, he thought. But looking back it passed like a flash.

Rearview cleared his throat on the radio. “Rat One calling to the other Rats. Over.”

Billy-O’s voice came over the radio. “Rat One, we are in positions and the coast is clear. Scurry away. Over.”

Rearview reached up to the grate. It was already unbolted, and he pushed it up slowly and peeked his head out. Then he signaled them to follow him quickly and pulled himself out of the tunnel and above ground.

After Hanna and Grummel went out, Neal pulled himself out and stood up. They were standing in an alley behind the transit building. Rising up from the center of the building, the hundred foot diameter texaglass tube ran straight up into the sky, fifteen miles up to the orbiting station that still seemed impossibly close and large. The sun was shining low along the horizon between various tall buildings, sending shafts of bright light across the city. There were none of the blues and oranges and reds he’d seen in pictures of earth sunrises, but to Neal it still felt beautiful to see the brightness return.

“This way,” said Rearview after closing the grate. The three teenagers followed the ragged suited man down the alley. At the end of it he looked both ways.

“It looks clear,” he said.

“That’s what we told you!” complained Billy-O.

“Just making double sure,” said Rearview. “You know me.”

“And that’s what drove me to drinkin’,” shot Billy-O back.

Rearview snorted, then pointed them towards the main entrance to the transit building. Neal felt hesitant, and he could tell Hanna felt the same.

“Well, at least we’re in a wide open public place,” he said comfortingly to Hanna. She nodded and stuck out her jaw. “Let’s go,” she said.

They marched out of the alley and down the street to the wide stairs leading up to the transit building. Seated at the foot of the stairs was one of the Tunnel Rats, holding a sign that said, “Will Work for Food. Please help.” He winked at them as they walked past. They went up the stairs and into the main hall of the building. In the main hall they saw two other Tunnel Rats loitering around, one quietly asking for money from passerbys. The three teens paid their return fee and walked to the platform. Billy-O was leaning against the wall there, pretending to read a newspaper he’d probably found on the floor. He looked over it at them with his bright beady eyes.

“Take care,” he said.

“You guys are ainjells,” said Hanna.

“Not quite,” he said. There was a pause.

“I’ll visit you the next time I come to Ceres,” said Neal suddenly.

Billy-O looked up then with a strange expression on his face, as though he were homesick or had just heard a lovely song. He looked about to say something, but instead he just nodded his head to them as they climbed into the glass pod.

* * *

It felt like a whole week had passed since yesterday when they’d last zipped through the tube. Neal looked down past his feet at the sprawling city rapidly growing smaller. He could see the different districts of it and tried to find his aunt’s house, and the bar street, but couldn’t find them before they were too small, and the pod shifted and flipped for the approach to the station.

They stepped off the pod onto the station platform and squeezed their way down a white hallway with a crowd of others from Ceres. Neal felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped. He turned to see it was only Grummel. “Look ‘er,” said Grummel, pointing to a screen. The screen listed the ships in dock at the moment. Dock E-23 was the S.S. Samson. “There,” said Hanna, pointing to a sign which read “E Docks: Enter Here.” They filed into that hallway which transferred to another and went up a level and down another long hallway. A pulley rope turned in the middle of the huge hallway, and they each grabbed onto the rope going away from the station. “Number 13, 14, 15…” read Hanna. “There,” said Grummel after a minute. They let go and drifted to the exit tunnel for E-23. There was the long bright tunnel stretching around a corner and out of sight. Neal, Hanna and Grummel pushed into the tunnel. Neal felt tense, ready to fight, his stomach tight. They turned a corner and saw the back end of the S.S. Samson sealed inside the end of the tunnel. The loading ramp was pulled up and sealed shut.

They floated silently toward it. Neal went to the compad beside the ramp door and pushed it.

“This Neal, Hanna, and Grummel to the ship,” he said. There was no answer. He pushed it again. “This is Neal to the S.S. Samson,” he said.

A voice crackled back. “Neal?” It was Mrs. Silver’s voice.

“It’s me,” he said. The back ramp clicked and whirred slowly down. The three of them hurried inside and Neal pushed the inner control to lock it back up. They pushed hurriedly through the empty hold until they reached the crew door at the far end. As they stepped out of the airlock into the crew lounge area with its forward-facing sofas, Mrs. Silver was standing there waiting for them. She pushed quickly at them spreading her arms wide and trying to hug all three at once.

“Oh, thank God, thank God,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “I’ve been praying for you three so much.”

“Where is everyone?” asked Neal.

“They are down in Ceres City searching for you three,” Mrs. Silver said. “I just radioed them that you’d arrived here.”

“Is Mirk back?” said Hanna.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Silver. “He’s asleep in his bunk, resting. He said…” She paused and looked at them.
“I’m not sure if I believe him, but he said….” she trailed off.

“What did he say?” asked Hanna, putting her hands on her hips.

“He said you three went into a bar, and he followed you, and that you three got in a fight with some men. He said he looked for you but he couldn’t find you.”

“Ooooh!” said Hanna. Neal frowned angrily.

“I don’t need to hear all the details,” Mrs. Silver said. “I just want to know if you’re all right.”

She stared into each of their eyes.

“Yes,” said Neal. Hanna and Grummel nodded. Mrs. Silver looked deep into their eyes and then looked relieved.

“You are all right,” she said. “Your hearts are honest.”

[how to cook it with no gravity?]

Mrs. Silver shushed them then, made them sit on the sofas and brought them out hot chocolate and quickly cooked up some synthesized egg and cheese protein omeletts. She brought the omelettes to them sizzling and stuck to a spike-plate that held food on it. Neal took his fork and stabbed a piece of omellete off and stuffed it into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. Like a starving animal he ripped off the remaining pieces of omellete and swallowed them down. Hanna and Grummel likewise finished off their omelettes in seconds and looked around. “Oh my lands,” said Mrs. Silver. “But you all are hungry.”

“Some homeless people helped us,” said Neal. “But we didn’t eat much.” Mary Mary had offered them part of her protein bar, but Neal had only accepted one bite of it, knowing it was all she had.

“Well, we’ll just have to fix this,” said Mrs. Silver. She hurried back over to the kitchenette and soon began orchestrating sandwiches, soups, and other delicious smelling cuisine.

Soon empty spike-plates, cuptubes and other items were floating all around the three.

A whirr buzzed somewhere in the cargo hold, and a minute later the airlock hissed and then opened into the lounge. Uncle John and a crowd of the ship’s crew pushed into the room. The miners, pilots, and even Dr. Brut floated behind Uncle John as he pushed forward. The crowd of them including Uncle John looked exhausted with deep bags under their tired eyes. Uncle John pulled himself to the sofa in front of the three of them and looked at them for a minute.

　

　

CHAPTER 22: Getting Into Trouble of Another Kind

　

“Well?” Uncle John said, grimly.

Neal didn’t know how to answer that question. He felt like a deer caught in the headlights of his uncle’s angry stare.

“Well, what?” he asked.

Oh man, he thought. That was a dumb response.

Uncle John controlled himself and spoke tersely. “Did you or did you not go into a bar last night?” he asked.

“Yes, but…” said Neal.

“And did you, or did you not get in a fight with two men?” he asked.

“We were defending ourselves!” said Hanna.

“So,” said Uncle John, as the other miners floated silent, watching. “Let me get this straight. You three went into a bar, which I have told you not to do. You got involved in a fight with two men. And you did not come back until this morning!”

“But Uncle John,” said Neal.

“Did I, or did I not tell you to stay out of the bars?” asked Uncle John, his voice rising.

‘But we…” said Neal.

“Did I or did I not?” shouted Uncle John.

“You did,” said Neal, angry now himself.

“You have cost this entire crew no end of worry and exhaustion!” said Uncle John. “Go to your bunk, Neal, and have a serious apology prepared before you come out again!”

Neal saw red and felt a blind rage boil up in his blood. He clenched his jaw tightly, jerked away his seat belt and pushed past the the staring crew towards his bunk room door. After all they’d been through, this is what they got!?

“Uncle John,” began Hanna.

“I don’t want to hear it!” shouted Uncle John. “Hanna, you go to your room also!”

“I WILL NOT!” shouted Hanna right back at him. Neal turned around at his bunk room door.

Hanna unfasted her seat belt and stood up on her seat to face Uncle John. They floated, staring at each other a moment, breathing hard.

“You are a wise and patient Captain,” Hanna said, trembling at the effort to speak calmly. “We all appreciate your leadership. And your sacrifices. So I trust you will listen to the full story of what really happened to us.”

Uncle John shifted slightly and considered her.

“We are sorry for going into a bar,” Hanna said. “But the only reason we went into the bar was because Neal saw Mirk go in and we wanted to….we wanted to see what he was up to. Maybe we shouldn’t have.”

“You three followed Mirk in?” asked Uncle John, looking to Neal, and to Grummel.

They nodded.

Uncle John shoved off the sofa towards a bunkroom door and pulled it open. “Mirk, come out here now,” he said.

A moment later a tousled and sullen Mirk pulled himself out the door and closed it behind him.

“These three say they followed you into a bar,” said Uncle John to Mirk. “Is that true?”

Mirk squirmed slightly and looked angry and uncomfortable.

“They were following me, bothering me,” said Mirk lamely.

“What were you doing in the bar?” Uncle John asked. When Mirk didn’t answer, he turned to Neal. “Neal?”

“We followed Mirk in and just sat at a table,” said Neal. “Two guys came in and sat down with him. I think they gave him money.”

“Money?” said Uncle John, raising a bushy eyebrow.

“Thirteen thousand credits,” said Neal.

Mirk shot him in a venemous glance.

“Three thousand credits,” said Mirk. “I saw an advertisement to buy a Book. I sold them my Book.” He shifted his eyes and looked down.

“You sold your book!?” asked Dr. Brut. “Why did you sell your book?”

“I figured I could buy a cheaper one later and keep the change,” he said.

“And what will you use to read your textbooks until then?” demanded Dr. Brut.

“There’s an old extra Book in the library,” said Mirk.

“Just a minute,” said Uncle John. “Hanna, Grummel, did you hear thirteen thousand?”

Grummel shook his head. Hanna said, “We tuned into their radio frequency after Neal did.”

“Those men said thirteen thousand,” said Neal.

Uncle John was silent a minute.

“These men chased you?” he asked.

“Yea,” Grummel said. “I sneezed over the rad’o, ‘en those two men got all suspicious like and ‘gan walkin’ the place lookin’ fer us. So we three took off and made it outside.”

“And?” Uncle John prompted.

“And two policer’s stopped us,” said Grummel.

Uncle John covered his eyes. “Go on,” he said.

“They asked us whet we were about. Jes’ then the two men came a running out o’ another door. One o’ them had a knife.”

“A knife!” said Mrs. Silver.

“Yea,” said Grummel. “The policer’s made ’em put it down. But then the lady policer gave us a word quiet-like thet’ we should make a run for it.”

“Yes,” added Hanna. “She said those two men had a connection in the police department or something and they had to turn us over to them.”

“We ran for it,” Neal said, “But Hanna didn’t make the catchwire.”

“Neal came back for me,” said Hanna. “The two meshuganuh’s had me cornered! The one with the knife said some very bad things to me.” Her eyes flashed.

“What things?” Uncle John asked.

Hanna remained silent, her face red. “Neal came flying back and knocked them both over,” she said after a moment.

A look of pride flashed across Uncle John’s face, and Neal felt his anger cooling some.

“One of them fired a stunner at us, but we jumped down some alleys to get away from them,” Neal said. “A man in the alley came out of a manhole and let us hide there.”

“You followed a stranger down a manhole in an alley?” asked Uncle John, incredulous.

“The guy behind us had a knife,” said Neal.

“The guy in the manhole took us to….” began Hanna.

“A safe place in the tunnel,” cut in Neal, with an eye on Mirk. “Later he took us back to the transit tunnel up to the station. He was a homeless guy but very helpful.”

Uncle John breathed deeply and turned to push himself down in the sofa and strap himself in.

“It sounds like you three have an endless capacity to get into trouble,” he said, sighing, bewildered. “I am glad you are back safely.” He looked at Hanna, then Neal. “I am sorry I snapped at you before listening to you,” he said a little gruffly.

“Okay,” said Neal. “It’s all right,” said Hanna.

Everyone there seemed to heave a deep breath. Some of the miners took off their helmets and sat down, others went to their bunks in the side rooms. The two pilots looked at Uncle John. He wearily waved his hand.

“Let’s prepare for liftoff,” he said. “We need to get underway since the journey will be longer.” He looked at Neal, Hanna and Grummel. “The security police here recommended we go a longer three-day route on more major trafficked paths back to Eros.”

Neal wanted to ask more and say more, but he felt the tiredness soaking into his bones. All he could think of now was sliding off his suit, climbing into his bunk, and rolling over into a deep sleep. Which is what he did.

[more about Mirk?]

　

CHAPTER 23: Grummel Has to Dance

[their first day?]

Groggily Neal woke up. It was the morning of their second day of travel back to Eros. He swung his feet out of his bunk and push-floated himself down to the floor. Uncle John was sleeping in his bunk, his arm thrown over his face which had a scraggly shadow on it. Neal felt the slight fuzz on his upper lip, then padded out into the main room in his socks.

Technically, the under-armor jumpsuit everyone wore wasn’t considered indecent like underwear. But it wasn’t exactly day wear either. To be seen out and about in one’s undersuit was like being seen in pajamas. On the ship, however, the crew felt more relaxed, especially on the trip back from an ore delivery. And especially when it was going to be a three day scenic-route.

The miners and in fact everyone had taken to lounging about in their undersuits, sleeping late, and watching old films on the monitors up front. The pilots on duty however, had to be on sharp alert to make sure they didn’t fly too close to other freighters on the busy star paths. They often passed ships every five or ten minutes, some small private craft going to Ceres for supplies, others freighters carrying a constant stream of ore to Ceres’ Station. Uncle John sometimes asked Neal to sit co-pilot now, and Neal was thrilled to be able to put some of his years of sim practice finally into use. He and the other pilots kept a sharp eye out for any suspicious ships that might be pirates. But the most exciting thing they met was a Starcruiser, a giant mile-long naval starship that flew past them on their port side. Neal focused a camera on it and interrupted a classic film called Star Wars to show the lounge folks a view of the fearsome vessel. It made the S.S. Samson look like a goldfish next to a whale as it coasted by, headed for Ceres.

Neal had been sitting watch with Uncle John that first day when they saw it. He made sure the bridge door was shut and the intercom off.

“Uncle John,” he said, as he watched the giant cruiser grow smaller on the video cam. “The homeless people who protected us said that…”

“Yes?” said Uncle John, peering down at a green-lit radar screen.

“They said in the past few years three asteroids have been completely wiped out by these kiff’eem pirates.”

Uncle John raised his head and looked at Neal for a moment, then back down again.

“Yes?” he said.

“They thought the guys Mirk was dealing with were janjas. One of the homeless ladies in the tunnels said the man with the knife had been her husband. She left him when he was going to marry a second wife.”

Uncle John’s eyebrow lifted.

“So she knows he’s a janja,” continued Neal. “She said janjas came to her asteroid when she was eleven and killed everyone. Except her. They made her marry that guy when she was only eleven.”

Uncle John’s face furrowed and grimaced.

“Anyway,” said Neal, “She thought maybe if Mirk was dealing with them our ship or even our asteroid might be in danger from janjas.”

Uncle John rubbed his face. “Or, Mirk could have just have chosen the wrong people to trade with,” he said.

“They counted thirteen thousand,” said Neal.

Uncle John looked into Neal’s eyes. “I believe you,” he said after a moment. “But that doesn’t tell us that janjas are going to come attack our asteroid. He could have been stealing some gold and selling to to them, or who knows what. We’ll have to keep an eye on him. But for now, we just have to be cautious.”

“What if janjas come to Eros?” demanded Neal.

“We’ll watch the long-range radars,” said Uncle John thoughtfully. “And there’s a space security outpost only three hours from us. If we see anything suspicious we’ll radio them immediately.”

[elaborate on piece missing? what sort of piece is missing?]

Neal had thought more about it, turning the whole thing over in his mind. There was some missing piece here. Something didn’t add up. He had slept on it, but now late in the morning of the second day, he was no closer to figuring it out. He hopped out into the main room in his sock feet, quietly closing the door behind him, and did a graceful somersault through the air and over Grummel, who was reading comics on his Book. Neal snatched Grummel’s book and tossed it towards Hanna, who was heating something at the kitchenette. She caught it. Grummel jumped out of his seat and flew towards her like a giant cow of revenge. Hanna pitched it towards one of the miners, who caught it grinning and sliced it floating end over end back to Neal, who began reading aloud.

“And then Spiderman says, “Hope you enjoy the special web I made for you, Hammerhead!” []

“Gimme that!” bellowed Grummel, pushing off the wall towards Neal like an angry bull. Neal held the book out like a red cape and whisked it out of Grummel’s reach as he went whizzing by.

Mrs. Silver was just stepping out of the bathroom door on the left side as Grummel barrelled into her, knocking them both back into the bathroom.

The crew lounging around the main room craned their necks but all they could see was one of Grummel’s giant legs sticking out of the door. Unshaven miner’s faces leaned back in loud peals of laughter and Neal and Hanna joined in. A minute later with a red face and many heartfelt apologies Grummel helped Mrs. Silver back into the main room.

“Well!” she said. “That was exciting.” She turned twinkling eyes at Neal and Hanna.

“I think we are getting a little restless,” she said. “How about each of you three write a poem? We can let the crew judge their favorite and the two losers have to do a dance for the crew.”

“Yes!” shouted the three or four crew from their corner. One of the pilots poked his head out the bridge door. “Sounds good to me,” he said.

“A poem!” Neal protested,

“You have thirty minutes,” said Mrs. Silver. “Why not write about something you love? But better get on it!”

Hanna ran to grab her Book, and Grummel retrieved his and sat down with a furrowed brow. Neal reluctantly went to get his Book.

Thirty minutes later, Mrs. Silver said, “All right! Who’s first?”

Grummel pushed himself up.

The miners looked up from their Books and applauded.

Grummel looked a bit awkward but stared hard at his Book and read the poem he’d written.

“Ah’ called et, ‘Baby Dragon’,” he said. He cleared his throat nervously.

“Chomp, chomp, Lil’ Cree-a-ture

Chomp your yummy protein paste

I really hopes ye’ likes the taste

‘Cause it’ll mak’ ye more mature

On’ day ye’ll be so big en’ scary!

Ye’ll have claws so nice and long–

En’ legs so powe’ful ‘en strong

So’s I can ride ye’ like a flea!”

“Whhoooo!” said the miners, clapping, and Neal and Hanna joined in. Grummel smiled and looked proud.

“Very good,” said Mrs. Silver. “You wrote about something you know well and love. Hanna?”

Hanna stepped up, pushing her thick curly hair back into a ponytail then looked at her Book and read.

“Solar Fire.

Oh Adonai, how long will the wicked go on living?

You lit Moses’ burning bush with holy fire

You’ve given us the sun which burned

Since the time of Moses until our time today

The wicked wander about like rocks and dust

In the emptiness of space

But I turn my ship and give to you my trust

Even though we do not see your Face.”

　

　

Neal

Flying

　

Stars

Rust on the ramming rods

Dust on the rocks

The asteroids are all God’s

Wandering in flocks.

Light on the glowing stars

In bright galaxies

They all are God’s stars

His own fantasy.

　

The clapping subsided and Neal smiled at everyone.

“All right,” said Mrs. Silver, “Let’s vote and see who wins the poetry contest. Who votes for Grummel’s poem?” Three hands went up, one of them a proud-looking MacHardy. “And who votes for Hanna’s?” One hand went up, and Mrs. Silver raised her hand, too. “And who votes for Neal’s?” she asked. The remaining two miners raised their hands. “Looks like it’s Grummel!” she said. Just then the door to the bridge swung open and the pilot shouted out, “Both of us vote for Neal’s poem!”

“My!” said Mrs. Silver. “Hey, no fair,” protested Hanna. “They just voted for it because they’re pilots too!”

“Fair is fair,” said Mrs. Silver. “Hanna and Grummel, let’s see you dance!”

MacHardy reached over and switched on some disco dance music.

“Dance!” he bawled in delight.

Hanna and Grummel made their way grumpily to the front of the room as the music thumped. Hanna raised her arms and began swinging them right and left, raising them up to clap in a Jewish dance. Grummel was awkwardly bobbing and swaying his large form as everyone hooted and laughed. When the song ended Hanna stuck out her tongue at Neal and Grummel glared at his father, who was chortling with delight at the scene.

“Whet was thet’ I saw you writing, dad?” he asked. A look of horror appeared on MacHardy’s face. “Was you writin’ e’ poem?” Grummel asked craftily.

“Er, mebbe I was jus’ writing down some things what needed to be remembered,” said MacHardy, looking around bashfully.

“A grocery list?” asked one of the miners. Andrews poked his head out of the bridge room. “Well, MacHardy,” he said. “If it need to be remembered, you can read it to us and we’ll help you remember it!”

MacHardy flexed and squirmed his large muscled body and turned red.

“Oh hoooo!” shouted the group as a whole. “We’ve hit a nerve,” said Andrews.

“Read it! Read it!” they began to chant.

Reluctantly MacHardy pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and tried not to look at anyone. He rubbed his hand nervously over his thick red beard.

“Ahem, er. It’s jus’ e’ little poem,” he said.

“Read it!” they chorused.

“Eh, er. Wahl,” he said. “Et’s called, ‘Sometin’ Beeyootiful.'”

He blushed and began reading.

“There es’ sometin’ more beauteeful than stars out ‘en space

Werth’ more than te’ gold that’s been secret fer’ years

There’s sometin’ more lively than drills spinning w’ grace

And speeds my heart faster then’ my wors’ pirate fears

That beauteeful treasure will charm’ me forever

It’s no one else than the lovely…. er…no one else than… a flowing river,” he finished lamely.

“Or maybe ‘no one else than Hannah Silver’?” put in Andrews from the bridge.

MacHardy blushed horribly and coughed to everyone’s great amusment.

“Oh, leave him be!” said Hanna, a little fiercely. Mrs. Silver had a slight blush in her cheeks and a good-natured smile creeping across her wrinkled face.

MacHardy blustered another moment and then stumped to the bathroom where he squeezed inside and slammed the door.

* * *

That night Neal was tossing and turning on his bed. At last he gave up and crawled quietly out into the main room. The lights were dimmed there and the room empty. Neal saw that the bathroom was occupied. He sat in a corner and waited for his turn. As he sat down, he felt something shoved under the cushion. Neal stood and pulled the cushion up. It was a Book. Frowning, Neal pulled the Book out and opened it. It was Mirk’s Book. Neal looked at the front writing page. It looked like a journal was written there. Well, Neal thought, since this book isn’t supposed to exist I guess I can read it. He stared closer.

“One day I will be acepted and respected by everyone around me. One day my dad will stand up. He will say to me, ‘Mirk, you are a smart boy. Even an inteligent boy. I am so proud you are my son.’ And Hanna will like me very much. She will say what a great man i am. she will want to be my girlfriend. and Neal will pay attention to me. he will repect me and listen to what i——-”

[mirk must be smarter than this. sounds like grummel]

“Hey!” said Mirk fiercely, behind Neal. He reached over and grabbed the book out of Neal’s hand.

Neal stood silent.

“So, you didn’t sell the book,” said Neal after a minute. Mirk looked angry and worried. “Mirk, just tell everyone. Tell them what you were really doing.” Mirk stared at Neal. “Just tell them and they will respect you,” said Neal.

“No one respects me,” said Mirk. He lunged across the room to the kitchenette. Opening the trash incinerator he threw the book in and shut the door, pressing the button. Neal stared silently at Mirk and at the trash incinerator which blinked “Burn Complete.” Mirk glared at Neal. “Never poke your nose in my stuff again!” he said. Mirk went inside his bunkroom door and slammed it behind him. Neal sat down on a sofa. Dear God, he said. Dear God, are you there? What should I have done?

　

　

CHAPTER 24: Back to Work

The day after they arrived back on the asteroid, Neal was in the dragon stables. Grummel was in one of the stalls, wearing large bite-proof gloves past his elbows as he wrestled to strap a large monitor lizard into its suit.

“C’mon, Snowflake,” said Grummel entreatingly. “Jes’ step in this little suit. It’ll keep ye’ so warm and cozy whilst ye’ runs aboot on the ast’riod.” Apparently, thought Neal, Snowflake does not want to be warm and cozy. At least not to judge by the way he’s biting Grummel’s arm. ‘Course, he thought, I would probably bite someone’s arm if my name was Snowflake.

Grummel had already helped Neal saddle up Izzy and seal her helmet over head. Neal always felt much safer once she had her helmet on. Not that he got on badly with Izzy, but occasionally she got into a mood and would try to snap at him.

Grummel and Neal had finished their math homework just after lunch and were now going to join a work crew out at Post 3. MacHardy was confident he’d found a lode of iron and wanted extra workers to help drill the tunnel.

Neal led Izzy out, adjusting her gravity to two pounds and double checking to make sure his magboots were off. Grummel at last came to some sort of agreement with Snowflake and led her out as well.

“Ssssssss,” hissed Neal to Izzy, and she started clambering along the floor and out of the stable along several tunnels, and up to the main exit airlock. Outside the base, Neal took a deep breath in his helmet and looked up at the stars, at Mars low on the horizon like a large pea, and at Jupiter looming high in the sky above him. The stars spattered across the whole black canvas of sky above the valley, shining like bright old friends. The stars always comforted Neal. They reminded him how small he was in the vast dance of God’s cosmos. And light itself seemed to be a positive, especially in the darkness of space.

Neal and Grummel made good time around the asteroid to Post 3, arriving in less than an hour at the mine entrance and clambering down the shaft into the main control cavern at the bottom. There under floodlights, a team was preparing a large drilling robot to dig a new tunnel. MacHardy stood by a large display monitor, checking the projected path for the robot drill.

Mrs. Silver was looking at the drillbot. Neal clipped his komodo to an iron bar in the wall and bounced slowly over to her.

“What is this?” asked Mrs. Silver, rubbing her hand down the left casing of the strange machine. It was mounted on spiky tank tracks and had several spidery metal arms poking out in front of it, frozen in place. Each held little drills. In the middle of the whole assembly was a huge drill facing forward at the wall.

“It’s a drilling robot,” said Neal over the radio. “It digs the tunnels for us down anyway we need it to.”

“Gonna start!” called MacHardy. “Stend back then!”

Neal pulled Mrs. Silver back from the burrowing machine towards a wall of the cavern. The drillbot jerked and then began to trundle forward to a section of the cave’s wall. The large drill on its front began to spin until it was motionless blur. It touched the wall and seemed to slide into the rock like butter, dirt and gravel spilling out behind the machine into a pile. Tilting down, it slowly worked its way at in incline down into the wall, its arms waving smaller drills and touching points around the hole with delicate precision. After only a few minutes the machine had worked its way out of sight.

“That is an amazing machine,” said Mrs. Silver. At the controls MacHardy seemed to straighten a little, but kept his eyes on the display monitor.

“After it digs a pretty long tunnel,” said Neal, “we will go in and examine the walls for gold, iron, and other metals. We dig some of it out by hand, and some of it we use the drillbot to dig for a little more. Later we get our collection bot to pack it into crates for smelting and processing.”

[where does all the dirt go?]

Mrs. Silver leaned forward and looked down the tunnel in fascination.

“All right,” said MacHardy. “Here she comes again, watch out!” The drillbot slowly backed out of the tunnel and back into the room. “Neal, could you go check the composition?” MacHardy said. Neal nodded and ducked down, darting into the tunnel. He turned on his flashlight. The walls were ragged and jagged from the drill, but the hole overall was round and even. At the end of the tunnel Neal checked his compad. The wall composition was better than they had expected–rich deposits of gold clumped around streaks of iron. Early scientists had once estimated that Eros had more gold and other metals packed in its small body than in all of earth’s crust. And they had not been far wrong.

“NEAL!” MacHardy crackled over the radio. “Neal, thet drilling machine has jest started on it’s own! I’m tryin’ me best to shut ‘er down but there ‘s some malf-unction! Take care down ‘er!”

Neal felt a sudden clench on his stomach and shone his flashlight behind him. In the glare of the flashilight he saw the machine crawling towards him through the tunnel. The drills were not on, but it moved relentlessly at a steady grind towards him. Neal looked around wildly in the tunnel. There was no other side passage yet dug in the rock. He turned and stared in shock at the machine as it pressed forward. “I’m tryin’ Neal, I’m a’ tryin!” came MacHardy’s frantic and sobbing voice. “Oh, God!” groaned Hanna over the radio and lapsed into Yiddish prayer. The drill bot’s huge bit almost filled the tunnel as it trundled downwards to Neal and up to him. Neal attempted to squeeze himself to the side of it but as it rumbled by it caught him and pressed him to rock wall, dragging him along. Neal felt his legs twisting, his ribs snapping as a crushing force flashed white into his vision.

* * *

Neal came awake not knowing where he was. He was lying on rock and dust, alone. A flashlight shone a lone beam against a rock wall above him. Cracks laced the front of his helmet and a steady hiss told him his air was escaping. He tried to lift himself to his feet but found he couldn’t move anything except his neck. He turned his neck slowly to the left and looked up a sloping tunnel. Suddenly he saw another flashlight bobbing towards him and figures behind it. I wonder who they are, thought Neal. I wonder what’s happening. A sudden feeling of panic surged through him and then died down. Seconds later Hanna’s face appeared above him in the flashlight reflection, tears coursing down her cheeks behind her helmet.

“Oh meshugenah, meshugenah!” she cried. “You silly klopper, you stupid…oh Adonai!”

MacHardy pushed his way past her in the cramped tunnel.

“Neal,” he said in a shaky voice. “Neal, can you hear me?”

Neal nodded his head slowly.

MacHardy shone his light across Neal’s body and swore a blue streak. “Post 3 callin’ Providence!” he radioed, “Code 1!”

“Post 3 this is Providence, please report.”

“Providence, Neal’s hurt awful in a drill accident. Send e’ medivac ship at once.”

“Post 3, notifying medivac now.” There was a pause. “Medivac underway. ETA 10 minutes. Please describe Neal’s condition.”

“Oh criminy!” moaned MacHardy. He shone his light up and down Neal’s body. Neal felt a little distant from it all. He couldn’t feel anything. I wonder what I look like, he thought absently.

“His suit resisted ‘eny tearing,” MacHardy reported, “But ‘is ‘elmets leaking air slowly. Oh dear goodness, et’ appears e’s been serious crushed upon these rocks. ‘Pears his legs are all broken and his ribs crush’ed, major inter’nal dam’ge ‘en bleedin’ sure likely. I don’ think e’s gonna make it ten minutes, Providence. Oh dear Father, I don’t think e’s gonna make it.”

MacHardy started to break down, sobbing and touching Neal’s helmet. Neal felt an odd floating and lifting sensation as MacHardy began to speak from a greater distance.

“MacHardy,” said the gentle voice of Mrs. Silver over Neal’s radio. “MacHardy, let me look at him.”

MacHardy blubbered and shoved himself backward in the cramped tunnel. A moment later Mrs. Silver’s face appeared in the flashlight glare above Neal. She looked down at him, deep sadness etched in her cheerful face. Neal felt a great comfort at seeing her though he couldn’t say why. She laid her hands on Neal and he felt where she laid her hands, with a warmth burning him through his suit. “Dear Father,” she prayed calmly, with assurance. “You know the plans you have for Neal. In Jesus name I ask for his complete healing.” She began to mutter strange melodic syllables, closing her eyes as a tear slipped down her face. A calmness settled onto her face and Neal felt a warmth suffusing through her hands into body, traveling down his legs, and spreading through his chest. Tears came to his eyes though he couldn’t say why. He slipped into a half-doze as the warmth continued to heat and dance through his bones.

* * *

“Please evacuate ze’ tunnel to let us through,” a voice said over the radio. Neal opened his eyes to see the faces of Mrs. Silver, Hanna, and MacHardy pull back and turn away. A minute later the concerned face of Anna, Dirk’s girlfriend, appeared over him.

[who’s anna and dirk]

“Come on down, Andrews,” she said. “I vill’ need help getting him out.” She let go of a medical bag which floated slowly down and leaned over him with a compad ultra-sound. Slowly she waved the compad from his head down to his feet.

“MacHardy,” she said. “You said there vas’ massive crushing of the legs and ribs?”

“Yea!” said MacHardy’s hoarsely. “E’ looked like a rag doll whut were smashed en’ a lock’ door.”

Anna scanned the device across Neal again. “Neal,” she said. “Con’ you moof’ your arm for me?”

Neal tried it and found he could. He lifted it into the air and moved it around stiffly.

“Und’ your legs. Con’ you moof’ your legs?”

Neal felt a painful tingling in his legs, as though they were waking up after falling asleep. He breathed slowly and moved first his right leg, then his left.

“Can you try to sit up?” she said, uncertainly.

Neal took a deep breath in his hissing helmet and expanded his chest with air. It felt comfortable, normal. He slowly pushed himself up with his left elbow into a sitting position and leaned against the wall.

“Can you stand up?” she said, almost breathless.

Neal kicked his tingling legs a few times and slowly shifted himself to a crouch, then stood up slowly under the low tunnel roof. He was breathing a little heavily, but otherwise he felt fine.

“Can you valk out of ze’ tunnel?” asked Anna. She held his right arm as he walked slowly up the tunnel. Ahead he saw the bright circle of light of the tunnel entrance. He walked slowly out of it, squinting in the brightly floodlit cavern. Hanna, Mrs. Silver, MacHardy and a few others were standing there, staring at him with wide eyes. MacHardy walked slowly forward to Neal. He reached out gingerly and touched Neal’s chest, then knelt down and felt his legs. Tears sprang into his rugged face and he gave Neal a hug which nearly did him in.

“Oh God, I’ll never doubt ye’ again,” he breathed. Hanna stared wide-eyed at him and said nothing. Mrs. Silver glowed and raised her hands upwards.

　

　

　

CHAPTER 25: The Lull Before the Storm

Weeks passed. News of Neal’s brush with death had immediately circulated through the whole community. Everyone had their own take on it.

“Perhaps MacHardy exaggerated how bad it was,” Uncle John was heard admitting. “Whatever happened I thank the Lord that Neal is all right.”

Dr. Brut admitted, “There are things we cannot yet explain in this universe. But that’s no reason to go around saying there’s a God. It’s invalid to claim a connection.”

The miners for their part passed around rumors for a while that Mrs. Silver might be an ainjell. It took a while for that to die down, until finally stomped out one morning when the coffee machine broke and Mrs. Silver complained of a headache and snapped at three different people.

For her part Mrs. Silver treated the whole thing rather matter-of-factly. “It’s not the first time God has healed a broken body,” she said. “And it won’t be the last. He’s a God of resurrection. Praise the Lord!”

Hanna had nothing to say. She seemed almost in shock whenever the issue was brought up. And thoughtful.

And MacHardy…. He would simply turn red-eyed and blubber like a baby whenever someone mentioned the incident. “Thenk God,” was all he could get out.

He largely blamed himself for the incident, though after taking the whole drillbot apart and putting it back together it was found that a circuit board had short-circuited. The miners jotted it down as a new safety regulation: don’t enter a tunnel if the drill-bot is still turned on. Some things seem obvious looking back.

A sense of destiny did begin to rise into Neal’s heart. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps God does love me. Perhaps He does care about me in some way. Even perhaps, I have some important role to play with my life. Neal didn’t say much about what happened, but when asked he did try to give as honest a description of the event as he could.

“I felt myself crushed against the rock wall by the drillbot,” he would say. “I believe I felt ribs breaking and pain in my legs. Then I passed out, and when I woke up I couldn’t move anything. Mrs. Silver prayed for me and laid her hands on me. Then I felt a warmth going through me and I fell asleep. Later I was able to get up and walk again and felt normal, no pain.”

The days passed into weeks, and the weeks passed into a month. There were no seasons on Eros, no visible signs of the passing of time aside from its five hours of sunlight and five hours of darkness. But Uncle John was one for traditions. They celebrated Thanksgiving by eating far too much food, especially too much of Mr. Lin’s Kung-Pao Chicken.

[are they americans?]

Every December 5 was Dragon Racing day, in which everyone who wanted to would race to Post 4 on the other side of Eros and back again. The winner was allowed exemption from cleaning the Komodo stalls for the next year and had their turn to possess the golden statue of a Komodo Dragon. Twelve people went in for it, though as expected Hanna won it for the second year in a row. Surprisingly Andrews came in a close second. Neal came in third. Uncle John had raced and come in eighth, but he was a good sport about it and said he just did it to feel young again anyway.

Now it was December 10 on the earth calendar, and Christmas was approaching. On this evening everyone gathered in the Dining and Recreation level of the living cylinder to decorate for Christmas. Long strings of colored LED lights were strung, fifty or so Christmas stockings were fastened all along one wall, and old Christmas songs were played on the intercom system.

This year marked a new decoration, as well. Uncle John had at last allowed a synthetic fir tree to be put up by one wall of the sitting area and decorated.

For years he had not allowed a Christmas tree to be part of the celebration. “It’s a leftover from the pagan Germanic holidays when they worshiped trees,” he would say. Now after years of begging from the children, he at last relented.

This year everyone was allowed to put one ornament on the tree. So now it sagged under many strange items. Grummel had hung a komodo’s claw from his first pet dragon, Fluffy, who had passed away two years ago. Neal hung a picture of his mom and dad. Mrs. Silver hung a beautiful red bow. Uncle John hung a cross, perhaps to cross out any evil the tree brought, or at least remind them of the true meaning of Christmas. Granddaddy Gazer even allowed Hanna to hang something on the goyim tree: [ ].

Granddaddy Gazer had also humbly requested Uncle John if he could put up a Jewish Mennorah candle to celebrate Hannukhah in the common dining room. Uncle John had considered it and said yes (mentioning to Neal privately that since it was ordained by God in the Old Testament it was an acceptable religious symbol.) Dr. Brut had once griped slightly about the creche along one wall with Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, and the baby Jesus, but since Uncle John was the owner of the Providence mining operation, it remained. Not, however, that Uncle John had wanted it himself: he felt that depictions of Jesus in any form bordered on idolatry and personally didn’t care for the display. But it was a hand-carved creche MacHardy had made himself, and Uncle John decided to bend his convictions for the sake of others. Though he averted his own eyes from it.

Later in the evening, after everyone had drunk some eggnog and sang a few songs together, Neal and Hanna and Grummel sat on some couches in the sitting area of the room, admiring the lights. The normal overhead lights were dimmed, and the colored LED lights shone out like festive stars in strands. The three of them sat, soaking in the lazy warmth of the moment.

“What are you going to get me this year?” Neal asked Hanna.

“A few rocks and some ashes,” she shot back.

“Grummel, what are you getting me?” she asked him.

“Can’t say,” said Grummel. Neal and Hanna every year enjoyed trying to squeeze hints out of Grummel, who could sometimes be tricked into giving himself away. So far this year he had held firm.

“Is it something alive?” asked Hanna.

“Nope,” said Grummel.

“It’s made from metal, isn’t it?” said Neal slyly.

“It’s….” Grummel paused and crossed his meaty arms. “Can’t say.”

Neal grinned.

“Hey,” whispered Hanna suddenly, “Is that Mrs. Silver?”

Neal and Grummel turned to look. In another corner of the dim room sat Mrs. Silver under a strand of colored lights. It looked like her head was in her hands, and she was shaking. Is she laughing, wondered Neal. But after a few seconds he doubted it.

The three of them stood and walked quietly in the cylinder’s half-gravity over to her. Neal and Grummel stood awkwardly by as Hanna sat next to Mrs. Silver on the sofa. Mrs. Silver looked up in the dark room, the colored lights reflecting off tears in her eyes. Neal had never seen Mrs. Silver like this.

“What’s wrong?” asked Hanna.

Mrs. Silver sniffed and wiped her eyes.

“I….Christmas is a hard time for me,” she said. “My husband left me for another woman years ago. And my son and daughter really don’t keep in touch with me anymore. They are busy with their own lives.” She sniffed and wiped her nose.

They sat silent for a minute.

“Ye’ have us, Miz Silver,” put in Grummel.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re right, I am so very blessed to have you three.”

She stood up and they gathered around to give her a hug.

“Would you mind sitting with me awhile?” she asked.

“No,” they said.

“I’ll bring some hot chocolate,” said Hanna.

* * *

That night Neal couldn’t get to sleep for hours. At last he found himself floating and pushing himself along tunnels in the upper levels of the base. He came to the surface hatch and stepped out of the airlock onto the surface of Eros.

Then he caught his breath. The stars above him seemed winking out one by one, and the sky darkening. Neal squinted to see what was causing it. It looked like little birds, or rocks maybe, drifting silently towards him. He stood up and stared. The shadows drifted nearer to the asteroid surface, blocking most of the stars above him, and his heart jumped in his throat. They were people. Still, silent forms, with white unhelmeted faces and drifting fingers were floating in a soundless flock towards the asteroid.

Suddenly behind him he heard a sound. He whipped around and saw walking out from behind a rock a strange figure with a plastic face and black circular eyes, covered by a hood. It moaned at him and reached out towards him. Suddenly he felt something brushing his back and looked behind him to find another just behind him. Struggling away from the hands, Neal pushed strongly off the surface of the asteroid and out into space. He floated rapdily towards the still bodies. One of them floated by him, its white hands dangling motionless as it turned slow circles by him.

It was an old woman, her white face frozen in shock and fear, her hair spreading out from her face in gray waves. Another floated by on his left, a young boy curled in a ball of fear, but white and still. Thump! He felt himself slam into one, and hurried to push it around and behind him toward his pursuers. One of the fingers caught in his suit pocket and Neal plucked it away as quickly as he could, then caught sight of the face. It was Grummel’s face, but bloated and white as though left in a freezer.

Neal felt a silent scream rise to his lips. He looked behind Grummel’s drifting form to the ghostly cloaked figures without eyes, moving through the forest of bodies towards him. He flailed in place, kicking and crying out, feeling the bodies around him gently bump against him.

“Neal!” Uncle John’s voice broke through his mind. Neal was drenched in sweat, kicking at his sheets and trembling. Uncle John was standing over his bed, pushing Neal gently on his arm. He sat down by Neal.

“It’s been many years since you had a dream that bad,” he said, as calmly as he could.

Neal sat up, hugging his thin hairy legs and trembling in the dark living room. He looked at the clock: 04:23 AM, DEC 11.

He took a deep breath and sob and was too shaken to even feel embarrassed as Uncle John awkwardly patted his back.

He looked up at the clear space above him. The stars were there as always, winking down at him in the Eros’ night rotation. He sat down on a rock in the shadowed valley and stared at them dully.

“I think I’d like to go see Mrs. Silver,” said Neal. Uncle John looked slightly hurt, and lifted an eyebrow.

“At this time of the morning?” he asked.

“She’ll understand,” said Neal.

Uncle John stood up and watched as Neal grabbed a suit out of the closet and pulled it on. He climbed the ladder up to the hatch of their room and went out, shutting it behind him.

Floating eighty feet down the cylinder to her hatch, Neal paused a moment and hesitated. Was it too crazy to wake her up? He almost knocked, then paused and pushed away. He wouldn’t bother her. No, wait a second. She really wouldn’t mind, he was sure of that. Pushing back to the door he knocked on it before he could change his mind. The door intercom lit up.

[go ahead and avoid her, then later change mind]

“Yes?” croaked out Mrs. Silver’s groggy voice.

Neal grimaced. “Er, hi, Mrs. Silver, it’s me, Neal.”

“Neal?” she said sleepily. “Come on in, Neal.”

The hatch unlocked and Neal opened it and climbed down the ladder into her room. She was still staying in guest quarters, but she’d put up colorful paintings on her walls and draped other decorations everywhere. She was sitting up in her bed with the bedlamp on, rubbing her wrinkled eyes.

“What’s happening, Neal?” she asked, yawning.

Neal sat down in a chair by her head. “I just had a nightmare,” he said hugging his arms to himself.

She looked thoughtful. “I was just having some bad dreams myself,” she said. “I dreamed my son and daughter had become very bad people.” She shivered. “Why don’t you tell me about your dream?” She pulled her knees up and leaned her head on them looking at him with her bright green eyes.

“Well,” he said. “I went out the main hatch onto the surface. Then I saw the stars were being blocked out by…by dead bodies. Just then two people with empty circles for eyes came chasing me so I jumped up and into the bodies. One of them was Grummel.”

He stared at her a moment.

“That was the dream?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you think it’s going to happen?”

She pondered a moment. “Neal,” she said, “God does sometimes send us dreams. But usually they are to warn us to stop doing something wrong or to avoid some danger.” She considered.

“It’s possible this is a warning dream, but I think it may be from the evil one. Perhaps something frightening or troublesome is about to happen. But tell me, did this dream make you more ready to face a danger or less ready?”

“I feel more frightened,” said Neal slowly.

“God doesn’t give us a spirit of fear,” she said gently. “He gives us power, love, and light. I think this may be a dream from some evil spirits, some deem who wants to frighten and discourage you.”

Neal wasn’t much for believing in evil spirits, at least in daily life, but at the moment it made sense.

“But every trouble is a chance for us to crawl up closer to God,” she said. “No matter if some evil thing sent this dream, we can let it drive us to God. That’s the best way to frustrate deems,” she smiled.

“Do you think Grummel is going to die?” asked Neal.

“Yes, I do,” said Mrs. Silver. “Just like the rest of us. We all must die one day and go to be with God. I don’t think this dream necessarily means he’s about to die now though. It’s just using someone you care about to frighten you.”

Neal felt a great relief settling onto him, like a warm light brightening in his heart.

“Neal,” said Mrs. Silver. “I do believe you will be tested very soon. But don’t be afraid. Be strong and very courageous because God is with you.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “The same God who saved your life and healed you is always with you,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Neal.

After a short prayer together Neal went back to bed and slept a little more quietly.

　

CHAPTER 26: Like a Thief in the Night

It was three days later when Neal wandered down the living shaft after supper towards his room. “Neal,” said Uncle John, poking his head out of the small control room. “Can you give me a hand?” In such small unknown moments our lives are directed.

Neal ducked into the hatch and down the ladder into the cramped room. Monitors and displays glowed all around him from the desk and walls of the room. Uncle John crawled under one bank of computers in the corner.

“I’m doing my annual inspection of the radar,” said Uncle John’s muffled voice. “Hand me the .05 screwdriver, would you?” Neal found it in a box of tools and put it into Uncle John’s stuck out hand. Metal clanked and Uncle John grunted while Neal waited. “Now the .01 screwdriver,” said Uncle John, sticking his hand out from underneath with the first screwdriver. Neal took it and replaced it with the smaller. He stared idly at a list sheet on the wall as Uncle John clanked away. The list was a schedule of chores and checks to be performed on the base’s systems. “DEC 10 10:00 AM: Air Filtration Service. DEC 14 7:00 PM: Radar Check and Service. DEC 17, 7:00 PM: Gravity Spin Check and Oiling….”

“How are your studies?” asked Uncle John. “All right,” said Neal absently. “Mrs. Silver says I have good potential in literature.” “Hmpf,” said Uncle John. He was an engineer to the core and saw limited use for fiction or the arts in general. “Hand me the electrolyzer, will you?” he asked. Neal fished around in the toolbox and put it in Uncle John’s increasingly greasy hand that poked out from under the assembly.

Neal saw something move above him. He looked up to see Mirk peeking through the hatch, wide-eyed. He looked awful, as though he hadn’t slept for days. His face was drawn tight in a worried stare. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped and just looked at them, conflicted.

“Get lost, Mirk,” said Neal. “You’re not allowed in here.” Mirk’s face hardened slightly. He looked at Neal. A slow anger burned in his eyes, and a sadness. “Soon I will be,” he said, and disappeared.

 

Neal frowned. “What did you say?” asked Uncle John’s muffled voice. “Nothing,” said Neal. What was wrong with Mirk? He stared at the blank radar screens as though searching for answers. A thought rose slowly in his mind.

“Uncle John,” he said. “How long have the radars been turned off?”

“Oh, probably an hour now,” said Uncle John. “It’ll be another thirty minutes before I can bring them back online after the inspection.”

“What if the pirates came while our radar was down?” asked Neal.

“How would they know when our radar was down?” said Uncle Neal. “They wouldn’t.”

Neal paused, putting his words together. “What if Mirk told them?”

Uncle John stopped moving and a silence settled over the room. “How would he know?” asked Uncle John.

“It’s written on the schedule here,” said Neal. “Maybe that’s what he wrote down for them on that piece of paper they gave him thirteen thousand credits for.”

Uncle John wiggled out from under the assembly and lay there, looking up piercingly at Neal. “You’re gonna accuse Mirk of doing that?” he asked.

“He was just here, watching and acting suspicious,” said Neal. “Back on Ceres he wrote something for those men and they paid him thirteen thousand and told him not to double-cross them.” It occured to him. “That means maybe he’s crossing someone else. You have to cross someone before you can double-cross someone else.”

“Now, Neal,” said Uncle John, pondering. “You may be jumping to conclusions. We don’t even know if maybe he did sell his Book to those men and you heard the price wrong.”

“He didn’t sell his Book,” said Neal. “I saw him with it on the trip back. He grabbed it back from me and shoved it in the incinerator so there’d be no evidence.”

Uncle John pulled himself to his feet and put his hands on Neal’s shoulders.

“Neal,” he said. “I believe you are a trustworthy boy. You’re becoming a man. I want you to answer me as soberly and honestly as you can. He really put his Book in the incinerator?”

“Yes,” said Neal.

Uncle John froze for a moment, thinking, then turned and hurriedly hit the radio call button. “MacHardy,” he said. “Is everyone back in the base?” “Should be,” MacHardy’s voice crackled back. “Whet’s up?”

“There’s a possibility of a pirate attack,” said Uncle John quietly to the mic. “Just being cautious but we need to get everyone inside the base and the exterior hatches locked and secured. Pronto.”

“Yes sir,” said MacHardy shortly and clicked off.

Uncle John clambered back under the assembly quickly. “The .05 screwdriver,” he said. Neal handed it to him immediately.

“Attention ever’one,” echoed MacHardy’s voice over the base loudspeaker. “Ever’one please stay en’side te’ base. Andrews, please check and lock on up the main hangar hetch’. Grummel, er’ you in the lizerd’ stables?”

“Yea sir,” came Grummel’s voice after a moment.

“Go on out en’ close en’ lock te’ main exit hetch’ from te’ inside,” said MacHardy. “Ret’ now.”

“Yea sir,” said Grummel hurriedly.

Uncle John clanked and banged under the assembly.
“Neal, press the restart button under the radar display,” he said.

Reaching over, Neal held down the restart button under the monitor. It flashed white, then blinked a few times. INPUT ERROR it said.

“It says, ‘Input Error’,” reported Neal.

“Hand me that electrolyzer again,” said Uncle John.

A few minutes later he said, “Press it again.”

Neal pressed the reset button and this time the screen booted up. A three-dimensional green sphere glowed into brightness on the screen. In the middle Neal saw the elongated shape of Eros.

And nearby swooping towards it were seven or eight small dots. “Is it working?” asked Uncle John.

“It’s working,” said Neal. Uncle John paused when he heard the tone in Neal’s voice, then scrambled to stand up and look at it. A yellow light began flashing in the room and a computer voice said, “Incoming vessels detected. Incoming vessels detected.”

Quickly Uncle John turned to the long-distance radio set and punched in the code for space security.

“Bzzzzzzzzz Ah Bzzzzzzzzzz,” went the radio.

“They’re jamming us,” said Uncle John. “They’re too close for us to radio out.”

He bowed his head for a moment and his lips moved in silent words. Neal felt a little dizzy, almost as he had watching the drillbot charging him.

Uncle John sat down, rubbing his eyes for a moment, thinking. “Providence Base,” he said, punching the intercom button. “This is John Washer. It looks like seven or eight vessels are approaching the asteroid. They will probably land in five to seven minutes. Our radio is jammed. We must assume they’re space pirates, probably Kiff’eem.”

He paused. Neal imagined the looks on the face of everyone in the base.

“Everyone meet me in the lobby above the living cylinder in NO MORE THAN THREE MINUTES. I repeat: proceed immediately to the lobby above the living cylinder. Helmets on!”

　

　

CHAPTER 27: Like a Rat in a Cage

Neal floated up out of the living cylinder into a lobby crowded with miners. Several more miners floated out of the shaft behind him. Some women and children crowded together. He saw Dirk and Anna holding each other. MacHardy stumped in from a side tunnel. He was carrying several stun guns and a few regular bullet-guns. He started to hand them out.

“Hold on!” said Uncle John. “We don’t need those just yet. You hold on to them, MacHardy, and pray to God we don’t need to hand them out.”

MacHardy took back the gun or two he’d handed out and a silence fell over the crowd.

Uncle John waved his hands to everyone and held up his two hands: five, two. Everyone changed their radios to channel fifty-two.

“We’re going to a safe place, God willing,” said Uncle John. “But even on this channel I can’t tell you where at the moment. They may be listening in to our radio. And there may be a traitor in our midst.”

A murmur followed that.

“Where’s Mirk?” said Dr. Brut, looking around.

“We believe he may have given the pirates information about when our radar would be down,” said Uncle John.

“No!” said Dr. Brut, angrily.

Uncle John only looked at him.

“C’mon!” said MacHardy. “We don’t got time to be arguin’. Mirk heard te’ news same as ever’one and he’s makin’ his own choices.”

“This way,” said Uncle John, pushing down the lamp-lit tunnel towards the hangar.

“Everyone’s helmets sealed?” asked Uncle John, looking around. Then he punched a code on the door to the hangar, opening both doors together to save time. Air began rushing out of the hallways and escaping into the hangar as the crowd of fifty or so miners hurried through the double airlock doors. Once on the other side Uncle Neal shut them again with the lock code.

Neal looked to the right wall of the massive hangar cavern. The large exit doors were sealed shut. Any minute those pirates will arrive to cut or blow them open, he thought, as the little crowd of people hurried through the quarter-mile long hangar.

“Uncle John,” Neal said, catching up with him. “We need to send for help.”

“I just need to get everyone to a safe hiding place,” said Uncle John.

“These aren’t regular pirates,” argued Neal. “They’re not just going to steal everything and leave. They want to kill us all and leave an empty asteroid!”

Several people in the group stopped and turned to stare at Neal, and a woman started to sob.

“Nonsense!” said Uncle John. “They just want our stuff and when they can’t find us they’ll leave. They’ll be afraid space security will come.”

“They’ve probably paid some local space security guy off,” said Neal. “I think they want to kill everyone on the asteroid, Uncle John.”

Uncle John made a warning face at Neal and pointed at the others in the group, motioning him to stop.

“I won’t stop!” said Neal. “It’s true. You have to send someone for help or they’ll just hunt us down and kidnap or kill us all!”

“And what?” shouted Uncle John. “What are you going to do, Neal? Are you going to take one of these ships in the hangar and fly for help? Is that it? As soon as you fly out these hangar doors there will be three or four Kiff’eem hunter ships on your tail. You’d never make it! We just have to do what we can!”

Neal fell into silence. Uncle John motioned the group which had stopped to stare at them. “Come on,” he said. “Unless you want to wait here to shake hands with the pirates.”

The group turned and hurried after Uncle John. Neal stood for a minute as they hurried past him, staring at the hangar door.

Just then a shout went up.

The airlock they’d just come through began to open.

MacHardy let go of his armful of guns to let them float slowly to the ground. He turned and knelt, aiming a rifle at the door a hundred feet away.

The door clanged open and out of the dark airlock stepped Granddaddy Gazer. He waved frantically to them. “Have you seen Hanna?” he asked on the public channel.

Everyone began looking around the group. Hanna was not there.

Granddaddy Gazer hobbled closer, tears on his cheeks. “I’ve looked everywhere,” he said. “I can’t find her. Oh Adonai,” he said raising his old face to the ceiling high over head. “Keep her!” He lapsed into Yiddish and rocked back and forth, leaning against the airlock door for support.

Uncle John looked at the group. “Anyone know where she might be?” he asked. “She might’ be out racing ‘er dragon,” said Grummel. “She said some’ut to me this morning about wanting to take er’ lizard out today.”

A look of pain crossed Uncle John’s face. “Hanna,” he murmured. “I’m going back to look for her,” he said to the crowd. “But we don’t where we’re going!” said one of the miners. “Ask the Old Timers,” said Uncle John.

Suddenly, the intercom beeped. “Hey!” crackled Hanna’s cheerful voice. “Hey, why is this main hatch locked? Let me in, okay? I promise to shower!”

Everyone froze. Suddenly Neal found himself lunging back across the hangar toward Granddaddy Gazer and the airlock.

“Neal! No!” shouted Uncle John. Out of the corner of his eye Neal saw Mrs. Silver reach out and grab Uncle John’s arm as he tried to jump after Neal.

“No, John,” she said. “It must be Neal. God has chosen him.”

Neal reached the airlock. Granddaddy Gazer was turning to go back inside. As gently as he could, Neal picked up Granddaddy Gazer and pushed him through air away from the lock. Granddaddy Gazer floated backwards through the air, kicking his arms and legs as he slowly floated back to the earth. Neal stepped inside airlock and pushed the close button.

“Neal!” said MacHardy’s voice over his headset. “Ketch’ this!” Neal looked up to see a stun gun hurtling through air towards the airlock from the distant MacHady. He caught it two seconds before the door finished sliding shut. “En’ don’t forget ‘te cargo scooter which is…” The door slammed shut and the short-wave radio contact blinked out. Neal hit the button to open the inner door, pulling down the emergecy switch which skipped the air pressurisation cycle.

As he bounded out and into the empty lamp-lit tunnel, he felt he was in a dream again. His hands seemed distant from his head and every action seemed almost in slow-motion, deliberate. He turned left down a short hallway and simply jumped up a ladder into the a tunnel above, taking a short-cut to the main hatch. Reaching it, he typed the code with fumbling fingers, getting it wrong once before the inner door clicked and hissed open. He stepped into the empty exit airlock and paused.

“Dear God,” he prayed. Those were all the words that would come. Then he pushed the outer hatch door button, his hand on the stop switch. The door hissed loudly and slowly started to slide open, revealing the gray and brownish dusty valley floor outside. Several figures with dirty white robes over their space suits were advancing toward the door. They had strange black helmets with large white glass circles over their eyes and hoods pulled up. As the door slid further open he saw Hanna laying on her back, shaking convulsively. She’s been stunned, thought Neal. Quick as a thought he found himself grabbing her arm and hauling her into the airlock. He hit the reverse button and the door slowly slid back toward close, blocking the rushing figures from sight. One suddenly appeared in the narrow space of the closing door, trying to reach a knife in. Neal planted his foot and kicked out at the figure, sending it tumbling back out of sight. The door touched shut with a hiss, and Neal heard buzzes and pings on the outside of it as bullets and stun gun charges ricocheted off the heavy titanium-steel door. He turned and typed the lock-code then bent down.

“Are you all right? Hanna!” he said. She was lying unconscious and didn’t respond. Neal checked to make sure her magboots were switched off. He lifted her and tugged her floating body hurriedly out of the airlock, closing the inner door behind him. Neal rushed back down the hallway with Hanna’s floating body, pulling it down the ladder to the lower level and sprinting out into the lamplit tunnel that led to the hangar. He approached the door into the hangar and typed the code. The inner door slid open and he pulled Hanna into the airlock, pressing the button for the outer door. As it growled open, Neal saw that the miners were gone. The door ground to a stop fully open and Neal started to step out when a blur whizzed silently past him and pinged off the wall. He peeked around the corner and saw a crowd of the shabby white hooded figures standing two hundred feet away inside the destroyed hangar’s huge exit doors, several guns aimed his direction. Another bullet zipped by him, grazing his texaglass helmet with a plink sound.

Neal jerked back inside the airlock, temporarily shielded from the bullets. He considered, then hit the CLOSE button on the outer airlock door. It slid slowly shut as bullets and stun pellets blurred silently by. Neal stared at the closed door. Even on the slim chance he could have made it past their rifle fire, he didn’t want to lead the pirates to the rest of the miners. He hit the lock code on the panel and pondered. It would probably take them two to three minutes to blast or cut their way into this door. And pirates were probably already working on the surface exit hatch he’d just rescued Hanna from. Any minute they’d break through there. There were no other exits. He was trapped between the two. I’ve gotta find some place to hide, he thought. Focus! Focus! Dear Lord, where should I hide? Where to go?

　

CHAPTER 28: The Face of a Betrayer

As he stood rooted to the ground, a thought surfaced. The komodo dragons… They were the only escape vehicles left. He remembered a small locked janitor closet that opened into the stable area. He could hide there. Turning to Hanna’s floating form, Neal grabbed her around the waist and sprinted back down the lamp-lit tunnel, locking the inner airlock door closed as he went. A minute later he ran into the main lobby above the living cylinder and across it, and down the tunnel leading most directly to the komodo’s stable.

As he ran down the dim tunnel, he turned a corner and suddenly tripped over something soft, a human body. He went tumbling forward, and Hanna’s body continued sailing onward up the tunnel. Neal jerked his boots around and let them pull him to the ground. Pulling MacHardy’s stun pistol from a pocket in his suit, Neal crouched down and peered back the way he’d just come.

“Don’t shoot!” said a frantic, nasally voice over the radio link. In the dim red light Neal crept forward to see a figure slumped against the wall. It was Mirk, looking up at him, his arms curled up, trembling.

“What are you doing?” shouted Neal.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know, I don’t know,” howled Mirk. Neal leaned closer and saw that Mirk’s eyes were red, his face wet from blubbering.

“You did this!” shouted Neal, pushing the stun pistol closer to Mirk’s helmeted face. Mirk tried to scramble backwards against the wall, putting his hands up.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he sobbed. He put his head down and gasped.

Neal held the pistol towards him. He should stun him so he couldn’t tell the pirates he and Hanna were still here in the base. But Mirk lifted his teary face again at Neal and somehow Neal couldn’t do it. He eased his finger off the trigger and turned and ran back up the tunnel to find Hanna’s body.

[up / down tunnels]

There she was, resting sprawling on the floor of the tunnel near the top of the incline. Neal picked her up again around the waist and quickly turned down another tunnel, then opened a door along the wall and peered into the stable’s cave. It was dimly lighted and still. Neal looked up and down the hallway and darted in, shutting the door. Dimly he heard a dull explosion and felt the floor shake. Along the sides of the cave were the heavy metal doors opening into the komodo cages. Neal sprinted over to the janitor’s closet and put his fingers on the lockpad. He hesitated, trying to remember the code. Dimly he heard rough shouts and clattering approaching in the hallways. Neal looked wildly around. Think! Lord, help! He ran to a larger cage that housed Jack, a large male komodo, and usually a female as well. He punched the OPEN button on the cage and pushed Hanna inside, before jumping inside himself and pulling the heavy metal door shut. On either side of the door heavy wire mesh looked out on the main area of the cave. Neal listened for a moment. Bangs and steps echoed up and down the hallways outside the stable cave. Something hissed behind Neal and he turned to see Ol’ Jack, a large nine foot long dragon standing right behind him, slowly stalking toward him. Neal uttered a word and grabbed a thick armglove from a hook on the wall, pulling it on his left arm. He held this out toward Jack who continued hissing and suddenly bit the titanium-meshed glove, hard. Neal winced a little even in the glove, but reached out with his free right hand to the feed box. He clicked it open and shoveled out a small portion of mucky biofeed. Neal checked behind him through the mesh into the main area, then floated a small chunk of the biofeed toward Jack. The lizard let go of Neal’s glove, and considered the floating chunk, then suddenly lunged and gulped it, chewing with its mouth. Neal grabbed Hanna and pulled her to the back of the cage, where a hole was carved into the cave wall. Neal extended his gloved hand into the hole and a lizard’s mouth shot out and chomped down. Neal dragged the reluctant lizard out. It was Izzy, his own mount. “Izzy,” he whispered in his helmet. “You know me better than that!” As she came out she smelled the biofeed and paddled over to Jack to investigate. Neal grabbed Hanna’s arm and crawled through the hole into the cave. It was dark inside. Neal pulled Hanna in through the hole and behind him to lie against the wall. Bumping his helmet on the low rock ceiling, Neal crept back and looked out through the hole. In the cage area, Jack and Izzy were licking their tongues out, searching around for more food. Outside the cage in the main cave area, it was silent, lit only by a few flickering yellow lights.

Suddenly the door on the left wall of the cave clicked and slammed open, two black masked figures crouching with guns aimed into the room. One of them stood up and swaggered in, his long dirty white cloak whisking in the silence. The large mirror circle eyes in his black air mask turned left and right, peering into the cages. He said something in Arabic to the other man and they turned and went out again, leaving the door open.

[clarify that men looked in the stable room but didn’t go into the cages. which door they opened]

Neal stared out the hole at the open door. Through the cage’s wire mesh, he saw the white cloaked figures rushing up and down the hallway. After a few minutes he didn’t see anymore. He began to ease through the hole out into the dimness of the cage. Suddenly a cloaked figure came to the door of the cave and walked in, dragging a small gray-suited Mirk. Another shorter figure in a deep red cloak stepped in after them and shut the door behind him. He motioned to the tall figure. The tall one in the dirty white cloak reached down and picked Mirk up like a rag doll. He pinned him against one of the metal cage doors on the other side of the cave. Then he reached up and unsealed Mirk’s helmet, yanking it off with a hiss. Mirk jerked his head around in panic, but after a moment realized there was still breathable air in the room. His parted hair was mussed up, his face red and wet.

“Well, what have we here,” buzzed the tall figure in an echoing voice. The tall figure reached up and pressed a few switches along its plasticized face mask. The white circular eyes and mouth filter pulled off like a mask. Under the hood was a bearded face with a long scar down from his left eye.

The short figure in red stepped up.

“Mirkus, Mirkus,” he said in a small filtered voice, shaking his head. “You haf let us down. You told your friends that we were coming. Now they haf all run away and we don’t know where dey’ are. But you know, don’t you? And you want to tell us, don’t you?”

Mirk stared wide-eyed at him, then back at the large man holding him pinned against the metal door. He was trembling.

“But why did you betray us, Mirkus?” he crooned. “Were you not happy wiss’ de sirteen-sousand credits?”

“I…I didn’t betray you,” croaked Mirk. “I didn’t.”

“Sure, f’we know that,” crooned the short rubber-masked man. “But f’where are ze’ others?”

Mirk stared silently at him, his eyes darting back and forth.

“Abdul,” said the short figure, nodding slightly toward the tall scar-faced man. Abdul pulled a pair of handcuffs from a suit pocket. He smoothly snapped one onto Mirk’s left wrist, then pulled it up above Mirk’s head and through a metal ring above the metal door. Pulling it through, he yanked Mirk’s right arm up and snapped the other cuff around his right wrist. Mirk hung down from his wrists, his feet tugging toward the floor. Abdul knelt down and gently adjusted the settings of Mirk’s boots. Mirk stretched downward with a yell as his boots increased their magnetic pull to a much higher level. Suddenly they turned backwards against the metal door behind him, snapping against it. Mirk’s body was stretched taut, and he began to sob. Neal closed his eyes. Oh God, please, he thought, in agony himself. A small voice inside him said, he deserves it. Neal struggled with that for a moment. Yes but what do I deserve, he said back to himself. The Bible says all have sinned. And the wages of sin is death. I deserve this. That could be me there.

“F’where are ze’ others!?” asked the short hooded figure. Mirk only stared dully at him.

The tall scar-faced man grabbed Mirk’s tousled face and twisted it to look up at him. Slowly he took a stun-gun from his suit pocket. As Mirk watched, eyes growing wider, the man moved it slowly to his torso. “Where are the others?” he asked quietly in a deep voice. Mirk heaved little gasps like a fish out of water as he stared transfixed at the stun gun pressed against his torso.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said the man. “It’s only enough to hurt.”

Suddenly he pulled the trigger and Mirk jerked as a buzzing sound filled the air.

“Ow!! Oh, ow!” said Mirk, twisting his head in agony.

“How was that?” asked the tall man. He did it again, causing Mirk to convulse.

The man withdrew the stun gun and whispered again, “Now, where are they?”

“I don’t know,” wailed Mirk. He looks more like a young boy than a tough teenage thug, thought Neal. He ground his jaw and looked away as the man pressed the stun gun again into Mirk and a buzzing sound sizzled through the air. Mirk’s wails and screams grew louder as the gun continued pausing and then buzzing again. In tears Neal pulled back into the cave, crawling over to Hanna. He pulled his helmet off and plugged his ears, pressing his face into Hanna’s shoulder.

　

CHAPTER 28: Some Plan

Hanna moved against him and Neal opened his eyes in the dimness of the little cave. She moaned lowly, and Neal hurried to unseal her helmet and pull it gently off. She lay dazed, blinking up in the darkness at the cave ceiling.

“Un Mmmm,” she said, groggily.

“Sh,” whispered Neal into her ear. “Just lie still and stay quiet, Hanna. We’re surrounded by pirates.”

Her face grimaced as she shifted and turned to look at Neal’s silhouette in the dimness.

“Where are we?” she whispered hoarsely.

“In a komodo cage,” he whispered back. She rolled her eyes, trying to look around the cave cautiously.

A voice shouted in Arabic outside. Neal rolled over and peered out the cave hole. Under the yellow lights, he saw Mirk unconscious, his head hanging back, eyes closed. The tall man pulled a small flask out of his pocket and dashed the watery contents across Mirk’s face. Mirk gasped and jerked his head up, eyes wide.

“Wh.. wha…” he said.

The tall man asked, very gently, “Where are the others?”

Mirk squeezed his eyes shut and wept.

“Listen,” said the man quietly to him. “Look.”

Mirk stopped sobbing but kept his eyes closed.

“Look!” shouted the man, grabbing Mirk by the chin. Mirk’s eyes opened. The man stepped away from Mirk and pocketed his stun gun. He bowed to the short figure in the red cloak, who handed him a bullet rifle. The man turned to Mirk. “You are about to die, young man, because you have nothing useful to tell us.”

Neal stared bug-eyed twenty feet across the cave at Mirk, who was staring at the gun.

“Where could the others be?” said the man, gently, caressing the rifle barrel under Mirk’s chin. Mirk struggled to breathe, trying to pull away. Neal reached in his pocket and fingered the stun gun he held there.

“Are they down in the locked living cylinder?” asked the man.

Mirk was silent.

Suddenly the man turned the rifle into the cage and fired loudly, deafeningly, three times. A lizard in the cage squealed and cried out. Neal caught a glimpse of Snowflake scrabbling frantically, clawing at the air and gurgling.

Suddenly Neal was glad Grummel wasn’t with him.

Abdul swung the rifle back towards Mirk.

“Are they in the living cylinder!?” he shouted.

“No,” Mirk said, weakly.

“Where did they go!?” demanded Abdul.

“They….they went to the hangar,” Mirk said, gazing down the barrel of the rifle. “I don’t know where they went after that.”

Abdul stroked his full beard, gazing shrewdly at Mirk. Then he lowered the gun. He keyed his left-wrist compad and spoke in Arabic for a minute.

“Should I shoot him now?” he asked the short figure, grinning.

The short figure in the red cloak shook its wide circle-eyed face slightly and said something in Arabic. Abdul frowned and they both turned and high-stepped out of the room.

* * *

“Hanna,” Neal said in a low voice.

“Yes?” she asked, behind his ear. She was peering over his shoulder in the cave, taking in everything.

“We have to get out there and suit thse lizards,” he said. “We have to make a run for it.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the cargo scooter,” whispered Neal. “It’s nearby at Post 1.”

“But that little thing can’t get us anywhere!” she said fiercely.

“Sh!” he whispered in her ear. “It can get us to Vesta 7.”

“But that asteroid’s run by muslims!” she shot back in his ear. “They’ll turn us right back over to these schmucks.”

“I don’t think so,” he whispered back. “Uncle John said they were muslims but they were honest people. I met them one time. Anyway, it’s our only shot. The cargo runner can’t make it anywhere else in the next two months. Vesta 7 is only one day away even on that tiny spud peeler.”

Hanna shifted in the cave and looked out, thinking.

“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s add some chutzpah and get outta here.” She paused. “I guess you have some plan to break us out of here.”

“Some plan,” said Neal.

Hanna rolled her eyes and pulled herself stiffly out of the cave hole into the cage area. Neal hurried close behind, ready with this padded left armglove.

Jack was clinging to the wire bar wall of the cage. Izzy was crammed in a corner, licking her tongue at them cautiously. Neal walked slowly to the feed box. Attached underneath it was another box with two smaller holes. Next to each hole was a lever. Neal reached up and turned a knob on the feedbox, pushing biofeed down into the lower box with two holes. The two komodo dragons perked their heads up and stared, licking their tongues. Then they walked with quick steps to the box as Neal jumped back. Jack, and then Izzy both stuck their heads in the two holes to get at the biofeed. Hanna and Neal jumped forward and gently pulled the two levers down, closing the holes enough that the two lizards couldn’t pull out to bite them. Then Hanna reached up and pulled two suits out of a box fastened higher up on the cage wall. She and Neal quickly laid them over the backs of the two busy komodos and tucked them under the dragons bellies and around their legs. Magnets in the suit edges sealed them together. Neal had a struggle with Izzy’s back right leg, which she stuck straight out to avoid the suit leg. Neal wrestled her leg and almost got caught by her claws. Now I wish Grummel was here, Neal thought, glancing up at the thought from his concentration. Snowflake lie quietly in her cage on her back, one leg twitching slightly. Mirk still hung from his wrists. His head hung down and it looked like he might be unconscious.

Neal hurried to catch Izzy’s leg again and snapped the suit leg quickly around it, where it sealed itself the rest of the way.

“Okay,” he whispered to Hanna, and she nodded back. They both reached up and grabbed the small texaglass helmets off their hooks and then unlevered the dragon’s heads. Jack and Izzy backed out of the feed trough, licking their lips. Izzy hissed at Neal.

“Oh, hush,” whispered Neal. He grabbed a handle on the back of Izzy’s suit and swung onto her back, pulling the helmet down over her head where it attached and sealed in place. Hanna had done the same. Neal hurried to the cave hole and grabbed their helmets, tossing Hanna hers and keeping his own in his hand. Then he pulled the stun gun out of his pocket. Hanna looked at it and held out her hand for it. Neal hesitated a moment, weighing options, as Uncle John would say. Hanna was a better shot. And less likely to hesitant. A little reluctantly he handed the stun gun to her and pointed to its side meter: 10. The gun only had 10 stun balls. It could be activated to not fire a ball and merely stun on contact, but at a distance it had only 10 shots. Hanna nodded, understanding.

Neal reached through the bars and pushed the OPEN button on the outside of the metal door, which clicked and opened, creaking far too loudly for Neal’s taste. Hanna pushed it open with her hand and nosed Jack through it, stun gun ready. Neal climbed on Izzy and followed. Mirk groaned as they approached, his head flopping from side to side in pain.

Neal paused a moment.

“What?” said Hanna.

“I’ve got to help him,” whispered Neal.

“So he can keep betraying us?” said Hanna. She aimed her stun gun generally towards Mirk. Mirk opened his eyes and stared at her with a glazed but disturbed expression.

“Mirk didn’t betray you and me,” Neal said. “He knew we were still here in the base, probably in this room, and he didn’t say anything.”

Hanna let the stun gun sink down and turned to watch the door.

Neal hurried to Mirk.

“Mirk,” he whispered. “Mirk!”

Mirk shifted his eyes slowly to look at Neal. He looked dazed.

“Neal,” he murmured. “Neal, I told them. I told them.”

“No, it’s all right,” said Neal. “They won’t find them. You only told them about the hangar.”

Neal knelt down and turned off Mirk’s boots, releasing Mirk to float up and find some relief for his bleeding wrists. Neal considered the handcuffs briefly.

“I can’t undo the handcuffs,” said Neal. Mirk slowly looked up at them. A tear drained out of one eye.

“They’ll be angry with you if they know we helped you,” said Neal. “Let me do this.” He knelt to Mirk’s boot again and began powering it up. Mirk squealed a little and tried to kick, frightened.

“No,” said Neal. “Trust me.” Mirk quieted and Neal held Mirk’s boots against the metal door again, but this time a few inches higher up. The boots powered up and snapped to the door.

“There,” Neal said. “It looks about like they left you, but you should be able to push a little higher up on that foothold.”

Mirk numbly pushed himself up and found he could take the pressure off his wrists a little more. He nodded at Neal.

Neal stared at him for a moment. Then to his surprise he gave Mirk’s legs a firm hug.

“Hang in there, Mirk,” he said. “God willing, we will come back for you before too long.”

Mirk began to look panicked and Neal held a finger pleadingly to his mouth to motion for quiet. Then he swung on his helmet and looked at Hanna. She nodded to him, and he nodded back. “Jesus,” he said. “Be with us.” “Adonai,” said Hanna, “Be with us.”

Jesus, you are Adonai, thought Neal, but kept his peace.

Hanna raised the stun gun, and charged out into the tunnel. Neal hissed to Izzy and charged after.

　

　

CHAPTER 30: The Great Escape

To his surprise, there were no goons standing guard or walking in the halls. Apparently they’re all searching for the miners down below, he thought as he and Hanna whisked through the tunnels. They turned right at the next hallway, then left up another hallway, sprinting as only lizards can do. As they turned the corner, Hanna saw a guard leaning against the main airlock door. Hanna shot him without hesitation, leaving him twitching and unconscious on the floor as they approached. Neal pushed the button for the inner door and it slid open. They stepped into the spacious airlock and the door closed behind them. In the main outside door of the airlock a large hole had been melted and cut out of the metal door. It was now patched with a magnet curtain. Hanna cautiously raised a corner of the curtain, letting a whistle of air escape through it. “There are guys out there,” she said.

“How far are they?” asked Neal. “They’re about fifty feet to the right,” said Hanna. “I think if we dart out and head for the boulders on the left we can run that direction and maybe get away. That’s the direction of Post 1 anyway, right?”

“Right,” said Neal. He paused. “Ready?” he asked.

[saying goodbyes – wait, said hanna, and breathed deeply. hanna, said neal. what, said hanna. you’re my best friend, said neal. oh, shut up with the sentimental said hanna.. oy gevalt. she touched his arm and then tore]

“As I’ll ever be,” said Hanna. “Oy gevalt.” She tore the curtain off the wall and her lizard leaped forward. She disappeared and the next instant Neal was after her, hissing and clucking his lizard with emergency speed. As he leaped out of the gaping hole in the hatch door, Neal saw a group of the dirty-white cloaked figures sitting around under a Kiff’eem spacecraft parked on the valley floor. They were in the middle of standing up as Neal caught sight of them, some reaching for guns or knives. Neal leaned forward against Izzy and hissed her wildly. She obliged, perhaps thinking she was in the races he’d trained her for. She paddled wildly, skittering along the ground, flying past rocks and boulders. Neal glanced back and saw a crowd of the ghoulish figures running and chasing them, but lagging farther and farther behind. A glowing blue stun ball flew past Neal on his right. He saw small puffs go up on the brownish-gray asteroid dust to his left. Bullets, he thought. Ahead of him Hanna had swerved behind a large boulder and kept running up a gradual slope. As he sped towards it, Neal also swerved past it and behind. For the moment he was safe. As he sped further up the gradual incline and out of that side of the valley, Neal saw another puff or two rise up off to his right. “Ah!!” shouted Hanna. Neal snapped his head up and saw Hanna twisting on her mount. “Go! Go!” he shouted. He looked back to see the running figures very small behind them, some kneeling to take aim with rifles. A few moments later Hanna and Neal swerved over the lip of the valley and out of the line of fire. Neal urged Izzy up beside Hanna.

[resting place for the moment

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I think I was hit,” she replied.

“Where?”

“In the back of my left leg. Oy gevalt!” she ground out in pain.

Neal glanced at her leg as their mounts paddled wildly forward. There was a ragged seam where a hole had gone through the back of her left leg and the suit had sealed itself again.

He leaned forward and they were flying over gravel and down inclines and simply jumping across small craters.

“There might be janjas at Post 1,” he shouted. “Want me to take the stunner?”

“No, I really want it now,” Hanna said between gritted teeth. “Pity the meshugenah janja I meet!”

In spite of everything Neal felt himself smiling. They dodged around a large rock and then suddenly down into a crater where a large metal tower was standing silent.

“I don’t see any ships,” said Hanna.

“Let’s be careful,” said Neal.

“Careful is my middle name,” Hanna shot back sarcastically, and then caught her breath as her leg shifted.

Neal scanned the crater as they approached a large hatch built into the crater wall.

“They must have just scanned the asteroid for life and realized it was probably all at Providence,” said Neal, thinking aloud. “Or else they figured the only way off this rock was in the base hangar. So as long as they jam our signals no one can leave.”

“Either way, they’re gonna fly a ship after us any minute,” gritted Hanna. “So hope you still have some plan left.”

Neal raced up to the hatch door and pressed the code. The huge hatch door began to open and Hanna raced her lizard into the giant airlock, followed by Neal. He opened the inner airlock also, locking both doors to open. They scrambled into a large cavern. A small two-seater cargo scooter sat in one corner of the giant room. It had tiny directional thrusters, but also a larger thruster in back. It was probably 30 feet long and ten feet wide, and at the moment empty of the crates usually fastened to it for transport back to Providence Base and the much larger freighter starship there.

“We need to leave the lizards here,” Neal said. “It will look like a life sign for their scanners.”

Hanna climbed off her lizard with a pat and pushed off with her good leg for the cargo scooter. Neal patted Izzy also and jumped for the cargo scooter. “Dear God,” he breathed. “This won’t work without you. Please remember us and save us from these worthless men.” The scooter had no cockpit or cabin, it was simply open like a convertible car on earth.

[like an open platform that flies]

“All right, radio silence,” he said to Hanna. She nodded to him and they both switched off all their radio functions.

Neal typed the communal code on the scooter compad and the thrusters trembled into life. The two lizards scampered away from the dust thrown up by the cargo scooter. Neal quickly flew it out through the large open doors, keying the command to close them behind him. He threw the back thruster on and they were snapped back in their seats as they flew across the crater floor.

He saw Hanna’s confusion and outraged questioning look at him.

Neal didn’t have time to gesture back to explain his plan.

The little cargo scooter zipped toward the far wall of the crater. At the last moment Neal pulled it up and over the crater edge, and down into a valley on the other side. I have to get out of visual site of any ships that come looking for us on those lizards, Neal thought. He cut the engines suddenly and settled down into small crater barely the size of the little craft. Neal and Hanna sat silently. Hanna gave him a warning look, but Neal held up his hand…Trust me, trust me. They waited for about thirty seconds, and then two Kiff’eem scout ships suddenly roared up over the horizon of the asteroid. Apparently they saw the dust cloud drifting up from Post 1 crater. As they flew closer they saw the metal tower in the crater and the large hatch door. The two ships descended and landed out of site within the crater.

I hope they don’t shoot Izzy or Jack, thought Neal. That closed hatch door should keep them busy for awhile. He nodded to Hanna and started up the little craft again.

Hopefully the skies are clear for the moment, he thought. Neal guided the ship low along the terrain of the asteroid through valleys and into craters until he felt they were far enough on the other side of the planetoid.

Dear God, our lives are yours, he prayed. Here goes, he thought, looking right at Hanna, then pulling back on the controls as the open little craft turned up and shot away from Eros.

Neal searched quickly for some of the nearby meteorites that floated in a very loose orbit around Eros. He spotted one ahead to the right and gave a short thrust towards it. The meteorite was a slab of rock and metal about 30 by 40 feet, with one side mostly flat like a skipping stone. They drew slowly closer to it as Neal looked back at Eros.

It was still large behind them, but Providence Base and the valley for Post 1 were both out of sight around the other side of the asteroid. Hanna waved her hand in front of his face, and Neal snapped his eyes back around to see a smaller boulder hurtling toward the scooter. He touched the controls and the boulder shot under them. As they flew closer to the meteorite they aimed for, Neal turned the craft over and briefly fired the rear thruster.

They slowed, and coasted by the meteorite. Neal finangled the controls for a few moments, settling down onto the flat side of the meteorite. He engaged the anchoring pins, which shot down into the meteorite and spread microscopic steely barbs out to cling to the meteorite fiercely. Then Neal shut down all systems and remembered to breathe. And to pray. “Thank you, God,” he whispered inside his helmet. “I don’t think that part would of worked if you weren’t helping us.” He glanced to his right at Hanna who sat panting in pain. She grinned bravely at him and looked back at Eros. The large asteroid was turning slowly beneath them. Suddenly a tiny speck glinted in sunlight.

It’s one of the scout ships, Neal thought, forgetting to breathe again. The ship buzzed far below them, scouring craters and valleys. I hope they don’t turn their scanners up here for life signs, Neal thought. A minute of watching went by. Well, he thought, that was a nice break. Now for part two.

Neal closed his eyes a moment. God, I want you here with me, no matter what happens. Even if they catch us. Even if they kill us or worse. I will trust in you. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell with the wicked….Especially those wicked.

Neal focused back on the compad in front of him. Hanna looked over at him, quizzical again. He tried to motion with his hands to explain, but she didn’t get it. Neal turned the engines back on.

Hanna reached to retract the anchors, but Neal grabbed her suited arm and shook his head. She looked at him a moment through her helmet as though he were crazy, but let go to watch him. Neal turned one small side thruster on, slowly, very slowly turning not only the cargo scooter but the meteorite it was attached to also.

Neal hit another thruster and the meteorite slowly rotated, gradually blocking their view of Eros–and Eros’ view of them. When he was satisfied, Neal touched other thrusters to stop their spin. Then, with the cargo scooter turned mostly away from Eros, Neal turned up the main back thruster. It trembled and shook them as it strained against the mass of the meteorite, but slowly the scooter and attached meteorite gained speed.

[pulling it with them, and why]

Neal checked their speed relative to Eros. When he felt they were going fast enough he turned off all thrusters and let them hurtle through space away from Eros.

Hanna turned to him, shaking her head in amazement. Neal smiled and closed his eyes, lifting his hands up like Mrs. Silver would if she were here.

* * *

Hours passed in silence. The little meteorite continued speeding away from Eros, which was now only a pea-sized rock behind them. Neal looked at the stars carefully. They gave him a general direction toward Vesta 7. That asteroid itself continued in a slow orbit around the sun which had brought it closer to Eros over the past several years. By a swift space craft, someone from Eros could reach Vesta 7 in a couple hours. In this small runabout, it would take at least a day.

Neal checked the fuel gauge. Half-empty. But that at least should get them to Vesta 7. But not back again if things didn’t work oiut. Not at any real speed at least.

Hanna touched his arm and he looked up. She searched around under her seat and pulled out a notepad and magnetic pencil. She scrawled on it for a minute and handed it to him.

“We’re headed to Vesta 7?” she’d written. He took the pencil.

“Yes, if I can find it. How is your leg?”

She reached down and moved her leg, her lips giving a soundless shout in the vacuum around them. After a moment she reached out with a trembling hand and took the pencil again.

“Not good. Feels like a knife stuck in my leg. Think my suit has constricted my leg to slow blood loss.”

Neal stared at her in the seat, her thick curly black hair a little matted, a fighting spark still in her eyes.

“Hang in there,” he wrote.

She took the notepad back. “I hope the others are all right,” she wrote. He looked at it and nodded.

“Wonder where they hid,” she wrote.

He took the pad. “U. John said sth about the Old Timers,” he scrawled.

Hanna wrote, “Won’t pirates just scan for life and find them?”

Neal didn’t say anything. The only way to avoid life scans was either to go very deep underground or to hide in a special container like a cryo-vac unit. He didn’t think there was a way to do either at the base.

“Hope they can make a blockade and fight to keep pirates out,” he wrote.

Just then a rock whizzed by them just over their heads. Neal realized they were flying exposed to any small rocks or gravel that would fly their way. Flying in an open craft like this was dangerous at best. Neal touched a thruster on the cargo scooter and the meteorite under them yawed upward until he stopped it. Now the rock was slightly in front of them, blocking them from any objects directly in their path.

I hope we don’t hit any larger rocks, Neal thought. He didn’t write that down.

Around them was a vastness of blackness, a great emptiness with no large objects nearby. Stars glowed like pinpricks in space in a swarm all around them. Neal could pick out the small objects that would be Jupiter, and Mars. And a larger star he was pretty sure was earth. There was a freedom in such vast emptiness. Neal had read about sailors long ago on earth’s oceans, for weeks out of sight of any land. But the pictures he saw of it looked much more interesting than this: large waves of water splashing up and down, creatures swimming below the ships, a fiery blue or orange sky glowing with clouds above the ship. One day, thought Neal. One day I want to visit earth.

Neal took the pad. “Why don’t you try to sleep a few hours and then I’ll wake you,” he wrote. Hanna read it and nodded. She let her arms hang loose and float freely as her eyes closed.

　

　

CHAPTER A Knock at the Door

Hanna shook Neal awake from his turn at napping. They’d been travelling for about thirty hours. Neal very stiffly stretched his legs and arms and checked the rudimentary radar on the small cargo scooter. It showed a large asteroid, almost as large as Eros, coming up ahead and far to their left. Neal reached down and pushed a button. The anchors retracted their feathery spikes and withdrew into the underside of the scooter. Neal touched the controls and pushed off the meteroite, which continued its hurtling course away from Eros deeper into the asteroid belt. Neal turned the scooter at a vector far in front of Vesta 7, engaging the main thruster. The scooter tugged and whipped suddenly away from the meteorite which receded quickly to a small rock and disappeared. Neal continued thrusting and adjusting the scooter towards the distant Vesta 7.

It loomed closer and soon enough, their scooter approached the circular craggy asteroid. It was probably half the size of Eros, but still a good nine miles in diameter and more bulbously spherical. Neal nodded to Hanna and they switched on their helmet mics at last. Neal thumbed the scooter’s radio switch.

“Vesta 7, this is an emergency. Vesta 7, this is an emergency. Please give aid and shelter.”

There was a pause, then an accented voice replied. “Small brother, where do you speak from? We cannot see you.”

“I and my friend are in a small craft from Eros,” Neal replied. “Where can we land to find aid and shelter?”

“What do you need aid and shelter from?” the voice asked. “Has some calamity befallen you?”

“Please, we ask you to be our gracious host,” Hanna put in.

The voice sighed and paused. Then it crackled back. “We will accept you as strangers in the will of Allah.”

Neal saw a light flash on the surface of the asteroid, a searchlight beam aimed at them. He guided the cargo scooter down towards the surface of the asteroid. It loomed up before them as they swooped in towards the beam of light shining up at them. Neal slowed the cargo scooter as it flew nose first into a crater, as they slowed, a large hangar door in the side of the crater wall eased open, and Neal flew the ship into it and settled inside the door. It ground close behind them as hangar lights glowed on around them.

Neal and Hanna found them and their little craft landed inside a luxuriously decorated hangar. The ceiling was geometrically shaped up to the top, where a glowing colored design shone a light down on all. The walls of the hangar were made of marble, as was the floor, and ornate designs were patterned along the floor in diamonds and swirls. Every twenty feet along the wall a warm yellow lantern hung, cast a glowing ambience into the hangar. Towards them across the vast marble floor came a short round man followed by two tall figures. The two figures were dressed in white robes and wore the rubber masks and round white eye circles of the Kiff’eem pirates.

Neal stood in his dusty suit, feeling unable to fight any longer. Hanna painfully pulled herself down from the scooter and stood beside him. She raised her stun gun at the two taller figures. They immediately stepped in front of the shorter man to shield him. He pushed them aside and walked forward.

“Please,” he said, holding out his hands. “Do not fire.” There was something about his eyes that made Hanna hesitate.

“You have Kiff’eem with you,” croaked Hanna in a dry voice.

The short man had a long full beard in his helmet, and gold necklaces hanging down the front of his purple space suit. He considered her for a moment, then looked at his two guards. He motioned for them to leave. They spoke rapidly in Arabic, but he motioned them again and they bowed and backed away reluctantly.

“I am Ihtsham Hussain,” he said, bowing politely to Neal. “The “Strong and Handsome” as my name means” he grinned, waving to his chubby self. “As you can see, I am well-named.” He turned and pointed at the retreating figures. “These soldiers wear the good uniform of a muslim fighter, and they are bound by loyalty and obedience to me. They will do nothing I forbid them.”

“Come,” he said, walking closer to them, up to Hanna who still held the stunner at an angle. He held out a gloved hand to them each. “Come, allow me the privilege to be your host,” he said. Neal thought about it. He didn’t have much choice, actually. And the man at least wasn’t overtly threatening them. “Let’s go with him, Hanna,” he said.

A few minutes later Neal found himself in a large marble room with steaming water. “Please get in,” an old wrinkled servant said, helping Neal step down into it. Neal felt embarrassed to be without clothes and have someone else present. Not as embarrassed though, as he felt a minute later when Ihtsham Hussain himself came in. Neal huddled under the hot water, looking up at the robed and bearded man who stared down at him with twinkling eyes. Ihtsham began to sit down, and the aged servant hurried a soft pillow beneath him.

“What has happened to you and your friend?” Ihtsham asked. “Is all with your family on Eros? And are you, perhaps running away from your parents for the sake of love?” He winked at Neal.

Neal was shocked. “No!” he blurted. “Hanna and I are only good friends.” “Mhmm,” said the man, stroking his beard. Neal hurried on.

“One boy in our community sold information about when our radar was down to two men,” he said. Ihtsham raised his eyebrows and nodded. “These men were janjas. One had a scar from his eye down,” said Neal, motioning. “The other was short with spectacles.”

The smile faded from Ihtsham’s eyes. “I know these men,” he said. “Your friend is lucky to still be alive after dealing with them.”

“I don’t know if he is,” Neal said. “These men brought seven or eight Kiff’eem ships to Eros while the radar was down. They jammed our radio and attacked. The community fled to some place even I do not know.”

“And you?” asked Ihtsham. “Why are you not with them?”

“Hanna was trapped outside of the base,” Neal said.

“Aha!” shouted Ihtsham. “It is love!” He stood, waving his arms. “You valiantly rode to face a host of pirates to save the one beauty dearest to you!” Ihtsham stepped down into the steaming pool in his fine robes and grabbed Neal’s face in his hands. “You are indeed a brave warrior, my child.”

Neal turned rather red and struggled slightly out of Ihtsham’s grasp. He struggled to find the right words. “My father,” he said, “If you will really help us, I ask you to give us a ship to fly to the Security Starbase at Minerva and ask the officers there to help free my asteroid.”

Ihtsham stepped back, his robes swirling in the water, and considered Neal, muttering to himself. “I do not interfere in these infidel matters,” he murmured thoughtfully. “And these Kiff’eem certainly are my brothers in the faith.” His face darkened. “But they are also dogs, and worthless men, who steal and kill only for gain and not for true faith in the blessed Allah.”

Neal made a note to himself that Ihtsham did not discount stealing and killing if it was for sake of the true faith.

“Please,” said Neal. “We are in your hands.”

Ihtsham considered a moment more. “Then, it is clearly my duty as your host to give you all the help I may,” he said. “In this way I will win honor before others and in the sight of Allah himself, perhaps.”

“But first,” he said, shaking his finger at Neal, “You must finish your bath and eat a large dinner with me. Only then will it be civilized to rush out to infidels for help.”

* * *

Dinner was over. Neal had eaten more food than he thought he had ever eaten before, except perhaps at Thanksgiving. He was anxious to get underway, knowing that the Providence community might be holding off pirate attacks as he sat eating kebabs and lamb and slurping fat noodles.

Hanna had been treated skillfully by a doctor, and her leg was bound tightly.

Ihtsham’s large wife had a scarf pulled over her head. She sat next to Hanna, spooning soup into her mouth.

Ihtsham stood. “Well,” he said. “Let us go.”

“She may not go with you!” his wife flashed at him and spattered some upset Arabic phrases at him.

“Even so, even so, she shall not go,” Ihtsham relented. Now Hanna’s eyes flashed and she struggled to stand.

“I will most certainly go!” she said to Ihtsham. “I must!” Ihtsham raised his hands upwards. “Allah allows us women to teach us patience,” he said. “Allah sends women to bring common sense to men,” snapped his wife. “If Hanna will go then I will go also.”

Ihtsham covered his face and then waved them all on. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he said.

A red cloaked Kiff’eem soldier came into the room, bowed to Ihtsham and spoke in Arabic. “The ship is ready,” said Ihtsham.

* * *

Neal leaned farther back into the soft cushions on the S.S. Persia. The ship was Ihtsham’s personal transport ship, and had a luxurious lounge area with several reclining sofas and a service area with antique silver coffee makers. Curtains hung down over portals along two walls looking out into space. The floor was situated toward the rear of the ship, so that during the long periods of acceleration and deceleration, their feet were pressed to the floor with real gravity.

Neal was lost in his thoughts. He was wondering how Mrs. Silver was doing. Wondering if Grummel knew yet that Snowflake had died. He smiled as he imagined MacHardy protecting Mrs. Silver and probably hovering around her like a fierce angel. Had the pirates found them yet? Were they even now fighting? Were they alive?

Ihtsham sat near him, watching them all as he sipped coffee from a delicate china tea cup. A quiet buzzer sounded and a red light came on. A voice murmured something in Arabic over the intercom. Ihtsham handed his tea cup to a servant and looked at Neal.

“It appears your friends the Kiff’eem are seeking you,” he said. “Two of their hunter craft have intersected our course and asked for information about you.”

Neal sat silent.

“Of course I know nothing,” said Ihtsham.

“Are you in danger from the Kiff’eem?” asked Neal.

“We are both followers of Mohammed the prophet,” said Ihtsham. “They will not harm us. Unless, perhaps, they find you.”

He clapped and two servants came to help Neal and Hanna up.

“Please stay very quiet,” Ihtsham said to them.

The servants opened a trap door in the carpeted floor and Neal and Hanna followed them down a ladder into the under/rear area of the ship. The two servants handed them their helmets as they went through a tight airlock and into the engine area, an area rumbling with smooth power. One servant walked to one of the engine fuel tanks and pushed a hidden button. The fuel tank opened suddenly, revealing a padded acceleration couch with seat belts. One servant bowed and motioned them in. Neal bowed back slightly, to the servant’s amusement. They shut the door after Hanna and all was silent. Neal looked at Hanna in the dim glow of their wrist compads. Will Ihtsham betray us? Neal wondered. Minutes passed, then an hour, then two.

Suddenly the wall lifted again, and as it did Neal saw the expensive boots and suit of Ihtsham himself, with a servant.

Ihtsham motioned them to follow, and when they seated once more in the cushy lounge area drinking coffee, he motioned dismissively.

“They asked about you,” he said. “And why we were headed towards the Space Security station. I said we were going to complain about their infidel patrols flying too close to my asteroid. They didn’t dare to ask to search my ship, but I’m sure they scanned and counted life signs. I’m gratified that my personal chamber’s shielding seems to work. I will have to reward Ali for his excellent work,” he said meditatively.

Then his face grew darker. “Those dogs!” he growled. “In some ways they are as bad as unbelieving infidels.” Then he looked at Neal and Hanna apologetically. “And in some ways, much worse,” he said politely.

“We are not unbelieving,” said Hanna.

“And what do you believe?” asked Ihtsham.

“We believe in the God of Abraham,” said Hanna.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Abraham the father of Ismael.”

“And the father of Isaac,” said Hanna.

Ihtsham stared more closely at her. “You are a Jew?” he asked darkly.

Hanna nodded.

“By the prophet!” murmured Ihtsham. “I have been hiding Jews!” He sighed and motioned a servant to refill her cup of coffee.

“And are you a Jew also?” he asked Neal, eyeing his brown hair and blue eyes.

“No,” said Neal. “I’m a follower of Jesus. I believe muslims call him ‘Isa.”

“Well,” said Ihtsham, breaking into a small smile as he stroked his bushy beard. “You do believe a little. ‘Isa was a very great prophet indeed.”

“Didn’t Muhammed urge his followers to read the teachings of Jesus?” asked Neal.

“I have heard this,” said Ihtsham.

“Well, I read Isa’s teachings and I believe his words,” said Neal, surprised at his boldness.

“Well,” said Ihtsham. “Perhaps we do have a believer here.”

“And you would be blessed if you read his words also,” said Neal.

Ihtsham laughed. “Well, my son,” he said, pleased at Neal’s courage. “Perhaps I will.”

A servant came and whispered into Ihtsham’s ear.

“We are about to turn and begin decelerating,” said Ihtsham. “Please take hold.”

The ship’s accelerating eased up, giving them all a floating sensation. Neal looked around. All the coffee cups had already been neatly put away. The curtains by the portals began to drift up and into the room. Neal stared out the window and saw the stars suddenly begin to spin as the ship turned 180 degrees. After several moments the stars slowed. Neal saw his helmet floating up by his hand and he grabbed it. Then the rear thrusters fired again in gentle deceleration, and Neal was again pressed down to his seat at a normal weight of perhaps a half-gravity.

“It takes more fuel to keep the gravity at the proper level the whole journey,” Ihtsham said. “But I find it worth it. Also, we are in a hurry.”

“Are you in danger if the pirates find out you helped us?” asked Hanna.

“Certainly. Especially if some of them are killed by Space Security. They will never forgive me, if they know,” he said.

“What if they attack you for helping us?” Neal asked.

Ihtsham raised his hands and shrugged. “This is the will of Allah,” he said.

　

* * *

Four hours later the ship tugged to a stop at the Space Security Station for the region. A long arm of the station reached out into space to touch a giant Starcruiser, armored and at a mile long, bigger than the station itself. The S.S. Persia was nestled much closer in at one of the domestic docks.

“Thank you, for your help,” said Neal. “We are deeply obliged.” Ihtsham waved his hand dismissively. “Only what I must do. I will wait here to make sure you are listened to. If you have any further problems, please return here and I will assist you further.”

Neal was overwhelmed by the generosity of Ihtsham Hussain. Ihtsham held out his arms, and Neal found himself in a giant bear hug with a wet patriarch’s kiss on his forehead. “GO, and be brave as a lion,” Ihtsham said. He looked at Hanna and winked at Neal, then shooed them out into the hallway.

Neal and Hanna were escorted by the servants up the exit tunnel to the station itself, where they left them with deep bows.

Inside, Neal and Hanna looked at a sign full of names and offices on the station. Neal at last went to a desk where a woman in security uniform sat scanning something.

“How can I help you?” she asked politely.

Neal cleared his throat. “Our asteroid is currently under attack by seven or eight Kiff’eem pirate ships,” he said quietly.

The woman stopped her work and looked up at him.

“Pirate ships?” she asked, doubtfully looking him over.

“Look!” shouted Hanna suddenly. She turned so the woman could see her bandaged leg. “One of those goyim shot me as we fled. The whole mining community is hiding from the pirates. Perhaps they are already dead while you sit there scanning!”

The woman’s eyes widened. Then she became more gentle and official. “Which asteroid are you from?” she asked.

“Eros,” said Neal. The woman typed it in and pushed a button.

“Captain,” she said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your meeting. We have two teens here who report a Kiff’eem attack in progress on their asteroid of Eros.”

“Send them to my office at once,” he said.

* * *

After telling Captain Yu everything they could remember about the attack, they watched him as he sat back in his chair. He was a pleasant-faced man of Chinese stock, with larger shoulders and hair combed back. “Let me verify one thing,” he said. “Connie,” he said to the intercom. “Is it true that Ihtsham Hussain is docked at our station right now?” After a moment she replied back, “Yes, sir. He wishes to lodge a complaint that our ships travel too close to his asteroid.”

Captain Yu chuckled. “We don’t go anywhere near his asteroid,” he confided to Neal and Hanna. He pushed another button. “Attention: Crew of the Starcruiser Confident. We are departing dock in twenty minutes for emergency departure. Proceed to your stations!”

“Let us go,” he said to Neal and Hanna, putting a fatherly hand on their shoulders to guide them out the door.

Neal found Hanna and himself whisking down a conveyor tube at high speed behind Captain Yu and several other officers, heading along the dock arm out to the Starcruiser. The ship loomed larger and larger in front of them, its long bristling body covered with reflector plates, antennae and weaponry.

Soon Neal and Hanna found themselves tucked in a corner of the bridge. Large screens lit the walls around the large circular room, and Captain Yu joined a group of officers in their seats at the middle of the room. “Course to Eros, maximum speed,” he said to a group of navigators.

“Confident, this is Captain Yu,” he announced over the massive ship’s intercom. “Prepare for top acceleration.”

With a deep groan the ship detached from the station and began surging forward. After a few moments it began a massive roar and trembling sound, and Neal found himself pressed harder than he ever had been before against the back of his accelaration seat. His head was pressed against the back so hard he couldn’t make a facial expression. On monitors he saw numbers rising rapidly, and an image of the station growing quickly smaller behind the ship.

“Goodbye, Ihtsham,” murmured Neal.

An hour and a half later the gigantic ship swung around and began decelerating. Captain Yu from his chair held quick conferences with various systems and squad leaders by radio.

“Dispatching patrol ships,” reported a woman’s voice at thirty minutes from arrival. The ship shook slightly as twenty smaller attack craft kicked loose from the mother ship and spread out in a huge open cup formation, this tails towards their targets as they joined the Confident in decelarating. “Powering up long-distance scanners,” said a tech. On several screens 3-D wire frames of Eros scanned into sight. A cluster of yellow dots appeared around the valley of Providence Base, with two other yellow dots moving over other parts of the asteroid. Tiny red dots clustered underground in Providence Base, moving around. Neal didn’t see any crowd of red dots large enough to describe the fifty or so miners and their families who should be gathered hiding or blockaded off somewhere.

Suddenly on the map the two dots turned and increased speed back to Providence Base.

“They may have seen on us their distance radars,” said the tech.

“Charge stun net,” said Captain Yu.

“Ten minutes to arrival,” said a navigator.

“Fire stun net at nine minutes,” said Captain Yu.

Some moments later a blinding light glowed on the screen showing the rear camera. A sparkling sheen of stun EMP balls twinkled out in a massive blanket from the twenty attack fights arrayed behind the Confident, flying backwards towards Eros. Eros was now a small rock in visible range. The thousands of tiny glowing stun balls twinkled out, spreading farther and farther. Neal saw the red dots all moving and clumping toward the exits of Providence Base, streaming toward the yellow dots of their ships. One or two ships lifted off already and began fleeing the scene. The huge blanket of glowing EMP stun balls reached Eros. Neal realized the wall of stun balls must be thirty miles in diameter as they streamed into Eros like small meteorites and pounded across its surface. Several ships had started to lift off the asteroid. Neal saw bright blue explosions as each EMP ball would explode in a burst of energy-disabling EMP pulses, shutting down or destroying any electrical systems nearby. Most of the ships flickered and went dead, drifting aimlessly and helplessly away from Eros. The smaller attack craft swooped after them. Two of the craft had escaped the EMP pulses and began firing wildly at the oncoming space craft. They fired several seeker missiles at the Kiff’eem ships, and Neal saw two explosions where the ships used to be.

“Deploy landing force,” Captain Yu said. Two large troop landing ships lurched out of the Confident and down to the valley by Providence Base. One landed in the valley and another just above it, firing heavy laser bursts at the crowd of pirate soldiers still left behind by the departing ships. Neal saw images from onsite videos flash up on various monitors. He could see the dirty-white figures ducking behind boulders and firing towards the landing craft. Red beams cut through the air, leaving piles of white figures behind. Security troops began disembarking behind texaglass shields, stun guns and lasers cocked and aimed as they disappeared into the ragged hole in the main base hatch.

After five minutes a voice reported back, “The base is clear, level Yellow, sir. No sighting of miners or other civilians. Except one boy. In bad condition.”

* * *

Neal exited the landing craft with Hanna and several additional police. He felt strange stepping back through the ragged hole in the base hatch. He and Hanna stepped down several hallways they had recently streaked up on komodos. As they entered the stable, they saw Mirk still hanging from blood-streaked wrists from the steel ring above the door. A medic was holding up a liquid carton for him to drink, and two techs were working to cut the handcuffs off. Mirk raised a weary bruised face as Neal and Hanna came in. Neal came up and put his hand on Mirk’s leg.

“You came back,” gargled Mirk in a dry voice. “You came back.”

“We came back,” Neal said. “We’re gonna go look for the others, okay, Mirk?”

“They saw us,” Mirk murmured. “The faces saw us. I didn’t tell them, I didn’t say. The faces.”

“He’s in shock,” said the medic. Neal nodded, and he and Hanna hurried on through the base. Parts of the base were damaged or trashed. The hatch down to the living shaft had been burned open. Neal darted down into the shaft and lifted aside the hatch to the dining area which had been smashed off its hinges. Neal peeked inside, shining a flashlight around. It was a wreck, tables overturned, food scraps on the floor, Christmas tree in pieces. It seemed months ago when they’d sat here in the warmth of the colored lights. It was only days. Neal felt a giant hand on his shoulder. Turning slowly he saw MacHardy.

“MacHardy!!” shouted Neal, turning and grabbing the huge man in a hug.

“Where are the others?” asked Neal.

“There es’ a deep old minin’ shaft under the Old Timer’s homeplace. We all hid down ‘en there. Jes’ now I was scouting out en’ about en’ met te’ space security sold’ers. Ye all er’ a sight for sore eyes.”

* * *

A few days later Neal was sitting in the Dining Area of the Living Cylinder. Beside him on the sofa were Hanna, Grummel, and Mrs. Silver. MacHardy came in looking nervous.

“Er, Mrs. Silver,” he said. “I ‘eard ye were plannin’ to leave.”

“Yes,” she said gently.

“I jes’ wanted ye to know thet…I lov ye,” he said, stammering.

Her face brightened into a smile bright as the sun. She stood and put something in his hand. “I’m leaving for some months,” she said. “But I’ll be back.”

MacHardy turned to Neal. “Is thet’ good?” he asked.

“Yes,” Neal said. “I think it is.”