"That's not supposed to happen," Brill commented.

"Funny, that's almost exactly what the captain said too."

"You had quite an adventure up there, didn't you? Speaking of which...when did you get the spec two in systems, and why didn't you tell me, you rat?"

"Oh, well, we were kinda busy and I wasn't sure Mr. von Ickles meant it when he said I'd pa.s.sed a test and that he'd update my jacket if we lived."

"If we lived? Wasn't that before we found out about the scrubbers?"

"Yeah, but it was also before we got the ship's vector changed enough so we wouldn't slam into Betrus."

"Slam into Betrus? What are you talking about?" she asked but I could see she put the pieces together by the way her eyes flashed. "Ballistic trajectory...we had no steerage," she said softly.

"Yeah, it seemed that way."

"But the captain said we were in no immediate danger. She repeated it!" Brill said.

"True, maybe she just didn't want to start a panic."

"What the h.e.l.l was going on up there?"

"I suppose quite a bit, but all I was doing was getting the ShipNet code to run on my portable. Once it came up they adjusted course so everything turned out just fine. Between that, and replacing a bunch of fried circuit boards, I guess it was enough to qualify for a non-written exam."

"And you didn't think to mention that we nearly slammed into a planet when you came back? Or that you were responsible for saving us?"

I snorted. "I hardly think I saved the ship. There were a lot of people working to keep our behinds behind us. I didn't even find out about the new rating until after my debriefing interview."

"Your what?" she asked with that tell-me-more-tone she had.

"Yeah, I guess it was the day after? Mr. von Ickles took me back to the office and the captain and Mr. Maxwell recorded the interview for the insurance people. As I was leaving he mentioned *we lived' so I checked my jacket and saw the spec two systems and the captain, Mr. Maxwell, and Mr. Kelley all endorsed it."

She pulled out her tablet and looked up my record. "Interesting...I wonder what they're up to."

"Dunno, but they put on a good performance offering me this post, so I'm just trying to play my role."

"You any good at improv?"

"I hope so, because n.o.body's giving me any lines."

"Well, I guess you're in no immediate danger."

We both laughed so loud that Sandy and d.i.c.k looked over to see what was so funny.

As we were bussing our dishes I asked, "So, are we going out tonight? Is there a group?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, but I'm played out. Baby sitting golden boy was exhausting. He'll be okay, but after the week we've had, I just want to sleep. I don't know who else is around."

"Not many. I saw Bev go out earlier and she hasn't come back. Where's the favored watering hole here?"

"Got me. I didn't go out when we were here before." We pointedly did not mention her last night in Dunsany or the dreamy looking expression she wore for the whole next day.

We separated at the pa.s.sage and I headed for deck berthing. Pip wasn't in his bunk, but Art was just changing into his civvies.

"So, where's the place to be on Betrus?" I asked him.

"Hey! Ish. Down on the oh-two, turn to port off the lift. Look for a lazy eight. That's it."

"Lazy eight? A cowboy bar?"

"Cowboy bar?" he looked at me strangely. "What's a lazy eight got to do with cowboys?"

I sighed and started again. "It's a joke, nothing. You mean an eight lying down horizontally?"

"You got it. I don't know why they have that as the sign. It's not the name of the bar."

"Lemme guess...it's called Infinity?"

"How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess."

"Good guessing. I'm going out to get something for dinner. Maybe I'll see you there later," he said.

I was flabbergasted that he didn't know the symbol then I remembered Fong saying, "Art probably won't know," but I didn't really think the comment was supposed to be that literal. The odd thought crossed my mind that Lois was taking care of another one. And probably me too.

Go out or stay in. After twelve mind numbing hours on brow watch I only had to think about it for about three heartbeats before I headed for my locker and started strapping on my civvies. Before I left, I made one pa.s.s through the head, cleaned my teeth and swiped some Depil across my face. I trimmed the hairs in my nose and clipped my nails for luck. I remembered Dunsany and began to wonder if I wanted to go out after all. When I slipped into my jacket, I could still smell Alvarez on it. I almost took it off and went back to my bunk.

"You're being stupid," I said to the face in the mirror. He agreed with me.

I stood there for a tick, then pulled the dolphin from my shipsuit and stuck it in one pocket and put my tablet in the other. The dolphin clicked against something and I found Henri Roubaille's data chip where I'd left it. I wondered if my next ship would be headed back to Dunsany and I'd be able to buy a couple more shirts. I put the chip carefully in my locker and slammed it shut.

In two ticks I was off the ship and heading across the docks. I had a feeling that Rhon was watching me walk away in the camera pickup so I casually slipped the jacket off for a moment so she could get a good look. It gave me a giggle to think of her watching. As soon as I got out of pickup range, I put the jacket back on and laughed at myself.

What I was about to do, I didn't really consider until the lift doors opened on to the raucous and humid oh-two level. One thing about living with a single woman all your life, you get sensitized to context and the lift opened on to a potentially hazardous environment. I kicked myself for not realizing it sooner. Two levels down from the docks was into the industrial section of the orbital and the rough side of town as it were. While everything above the docks-levels one and up-was the nicer sections. If Betrus...o...b..tal was anything like Dunsany, I was definitely about to step into naughty country.

It was early yet, according to station time, so it wasn't as crowded as it might have been. I wasn't terribly worried that something would happen on the way to the bar, but I remembered the sense of security in walking with Bev. She could walk through the densest crowds and they would part for her like silk on a razor. Of course, she had that black-leather, she-b.i.t.c.h thing working for her. I was not going to be able to do similarly in my corduroy pea green coat and blue jeans. I tried to remember the cat-like way she walked and just thought, panther as I stepped off the lift. I turned to port and headed down the corridor.

I didn't have to go far before I realized that panther might work for Bev, but it was not going to work for me. It only took being b.u.mped twice to push me off my stride. I recovered and figured I'd try dolphin instead and concentrated on swimming through the sea of people, between the shoals of s.p.a.cers, and around the various obstacles. I was amused to find that it worked and the sea of humanity parted around me much the same way they parted around Bev.

I laughed out loud at my own idiot mind as I remembered that panther was the wrong word for Bev anyway. Bev was a wolf. I remembered that growl she'd given Rhon on the mess deck and almost ran into a bulkhead. Chuckling at my own lunacy, I swam on and found myself outside a door with a big elongated eight horizontally across the top of the door. Welcome to Infinity I thought, and slipped between two shoals of s.p.a.cers and darted into the bar.

Inside was so much like Jump! on Dunsany that I had a moment of deja vu. The decor was a bit more beat up. Drink straws and the odd toothpick littered the floor, but the little area out of the sound path was there as well as the ranks of tables around a tiny dance floor. Even the bar looked almost the same. The lights shining on the bottles behind it were different colors, but I wondered if perhaps the layout was part of some Confederated Planets Joint Committee on s.p.a.cer Bars specification. I looked to where I thought Al would be if she were there, but I knew the Hedley was not in port. Last I heard, they were headed for Ablemarle. And the Marcel Duchamp with the delightful Second Mate Alicia Alvarez was probably docked at Bink. Standing there, thinking of them, made me hope that they were having a good time. They were good people and deserved whatever happiness they could find. In the meantime, I ordered a gin and tonic from a waitress in a cut down shipsuit-hers was pink and black where the waitresses at Jump! wore a solid white. Then I proceeded to get a feel for the room.

In the booth a DJ was just setting up to start making a lot of noise and I gathered from the instruments on the adjacent stage that a live band would entertain later in the evening. A group of about fifteen a.s.sorted s.p.a.cers draped themselves around three tables in one corner and appeared to be well lubricated, but not yet at the screaming-laugh stage. Several smaller groups camped out around the periphery and a small shoal of men and women stood at or near the bar in full contact c.o.c.ktail party mode. They were not yet drunk, still maneuvering and posing. One dark-haired woman with olive skin and flashing eyes jolted me into thinking she was Alvarez for a half a heartbeat, but I blinked and chuckled at myself.

I walked further into the bar looking for a fascinating woman. I knew she was there. That was another lesson I had learned from my mother. I couldn't count the number of times she had come home complaining about the pigs at the pub who only looked at the big b.r.e.a.s.t.s and short skirts when the place was filled with really interesting people. Usually those were the nights she came home alone. Being a teenage boy and listening to your mother cry herself to sleep like that makes a certain impression.

As I made the turn around the back side of the bar, I found her. To be perfectly honest, I did not believe I would-at least not so early in the evening. The DJ was still setting up and while drinking was an all-hours event on the station, there was something about the clock that drove us all in that 22:00 to 02:00 time slot and we weren't even close to it yet. But there she was.

In the reduced lighting it was difficult to get a read, but she looked a bit older than the average s.p.a.cer and she was dressed-not just dressed up, but dressed. She had on an impeccably tailored blouse in what might have been white or pale blue. The lights made it difficult to tell, but it was a very light color. She wore a dark-gray, wool jacket over it. I couldn't really tell because of the way she sat, but I thought she was wearing matching slacks. In the one word description category, she defined cla.s.s.

I found it very interesting given the locale. If she were with a group, it would have made more sense, but she sat alone at a table where she had the only chair.

I faded into the woodwork for a time and watched. She sat alone but apparently relaxed, which was unusual even for a woman alone in a restaurant, let alone a s.p.a.cer bar.

I crossed to where she sat, deliberately moving into her line of sight before coming toward her. "I hate to drink alone. May I join you?"

Her eyes flicked to my face then went back to looking at nothing out in the distance. "That line was old even when I was your age, kid," she said but had a bit of a smile. I took note that she didn't say no.

"All the good ones have been old for much longer than that, I suspect." I smiled back. "I still don't like to drink alone."

"Sorry, kid. Only one chair and I'm not getting up," she said, not even looking this time.

"Chairs are not the problem. If you tell me to leave, I'll be gone."

She looked at me then, in a quick up and down motion, before staring back at nothing. "I'm old enough to be your mother. Do you have some kind of Oedipal complex?"

"Actually, and not to be rude, but I think you're old enough to be my grandmother. That's a comment on my age, not yours. Besides which, I have no desire to kill my father and you don't seem to be the Jocasta type."

She looked at me directly for the first time. "Jocasta?"

"Oedipus's mother. Her name was Jocasta. You don't seem much like her."

"Did you know her well?" she asked with an amused smile.

"No, but you don't seem the type to hang yourself," I told her.

"Don't be too sure."

I smiled at her then and stuck out a hand. "Call me Ishmael," I said.

"Is that some kind of comment about me being a whale?" she blurted.

I shook my head. "No, Ahab was obsessed with whales. Ishmael was just swept up in his wake, as it were. And I'm not that Ishmael." I kept my hand out. "Are we going to play stump the chump in the literature category all night or are you going to introduce yourself?"

She looked me in the eye for the first time. She had beautiful eyes but they were so sad. They were also calculating. Finally her lips curled up on one side in a charmingly crooked grin, and she slipped a cool, smooth hand into mine. "Ca.s.sandra."

"You're kidding, right?" I asked.

She was still looking me in the eyes and she hadn't let go of my hand. "What do you think, Ishmael?"

"I think I need to find a chair," I told her but made no move to reclaim my hand.

She nodded one tiny nod, slipped her hand from mine, and used one of those well manicured fingers to indicate which chair she thought I should fetch. I knew right then that I was in for an interesting evening. I pulled up the chair and settled across from her where I could watch her face. She drank without speaking. Delicate sips, looking into the gla.s.s each time as if to verify the location of the loose pieces of ice. I nursed my gin and tonic. It was my first and I suspected it would be my last of the evening. I was not much of a drinker, although I appreciated the social lubrication that such rituals provided. We didn't speak again for quite a while.

Finally she asked, "Are you always like this?"

I considered the question with a great show of pondering. "No, sometimes I'm much worse." There was something familiar about her. I could not place it. It wasn't the perfectly coifed, cropped, gray hair. It wasn't her face. She did not look like anybody I recognized. Despite my earlier comments, she looked Roman or Greek with a strong nose, direct eyes, firm chin, and lips I needed to stop thinking about before things got out of hand.

"Okay, Ishmael," she said. "What's the game?"

"No game. I walked in, got a drink, and sought the most interesting looking woman I could find. That would be you, and so far you're living up to my expectations."

"I'm an interesting looking woman?" she asked with a disbelieving chuckle. "What does a buck like you find interesting in a woman old enough to be his grandmother?"

"Well first, I never knew my grandmothers, so I don't have any preconceived notions on that front. Second, you're sitting alone in a s.p.a.cer bar. That's interesting. My sense is that people come here to drink and to socialize. You're doing the drinking, although not very much and not very fast. I'm curious as to why you're alone. Last, you're wearing one of the most exquisite suits I've ever seen and I'd bet it was tailored for you. s.p.a.cers don't come here in suits like that. So, you're an enigma." I smiled and took a drink without taking my eyes off her. "And I like a woman with a little mystery."

By then we both finished our drinks and the waitress came over. "Whatever the lady is having and I'll take a ginger ale," I told her.

Ca.s.sandra snickered as the waitress was leaving. "Ginger ale?"

"Why not?"

"Don't you want to get drunk first?" There was a shadow of bitterness in that question.

"First?" I asked.

"Before you make a pa.s.s at me?"

"Oh, I already did that."

"What? You're drunk?"

I shook my head, "Made the pa.s.s. I'm just waiting to see how it gets received."

"You're serious," she said with a strange smile.

"What are you doing here, Ca.s.sandra? You're not where you need to be."

"Oh? And you know where I need to be?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't know you well enough to know that, but here doesn't seem like a good place for you. If I had to guess, I'd say you know that too. But here you are anyway."

"Why not? Can't a woman go out on her own?" she asked, challenge in her tone.

"That's not what I'm saying, but something's wrong here and I can't put my finger on it." I shook my head. "This is a meat market, but you didn't come here to get laid. I don't think you know why you came here."

"You don't know anything, kid," she said, sliding her empty gla.s.s away from her with a flip of her fingers.

The waitress brought our drinks. I paid and gave her a nice tip. When I looked back, Ca.s.sandra was closed off again. That eerily familiar feeling was beginning to bother me.

"Why did you come here, Ca.s.sandra?" I asked.

"I can go where ever I like," she snapped.

The DJ finished his setup and started making a lot of noise at that precise moment. Ca.s.sandra seemed almost startled by it in spite of the fact that she'd been sitting there not ten meters from him for the last half stan. We were way too close to the speakers.

I stood up, downed my drink like it mattered, and skittered the empty across the table. I held my hand out to her and nodded toward the door. She looked at her drink, looked at my hand, and back at the drink. The music went into a particularly painful riff and she stood, leaving the drink but taking my hand. I led her out of there and we made our way to the lift.