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aside money or other valuables to pay for it. Neither Sasha nor I had been quite so provident, but our work aboard the Red Trader, plus the four thousand appropriated from the poppers,
had given us a modest stash. I checked to make sure there was enough and got in line. There were pauses when the people in front of me offered trade goods rather than money, but the
line jerked forward with reasonable regularity, and I found myself eyeball to eyeball with Quint. He squinted. What the hell happened to your head?
I shrugged. What the hell happened to your nose?
He grinned. I stuck it into somebody else s business. I do that from time to time. How many bods you planning to move?
I gave thanks that Joy was hidden in my pocket, and said, Two, but the second one is ill, and needs some help.
Quint nodded agreeably. No problem, long as you can pay the five-hundred-dollar surcharge.
Five hundred seemed like a lot of extra money. I looked for signs of weakness. There weren t any. I could pay the freight or work in the mines. The choice was mine. I peeled the
bills off my quickly dwindling roll and handed them over. Quint nodded, and his cigar bobbed up and down when he spoke. Where s your friend?
I pointed towards the spot where Sasha lay. Over there.
Quint murmured into his throat mike, and a pair of space-suited figures came on the double. They d been out of sight until now, and wore riot guns slung across their chests. A
ready reserve in case of trouble. They were identical twins, or had been until one of them ran face first into a piece of mining equipment and forever settled the question of which one
was which.
Scarface was very gentle, as if she knew what pain was all about and treated Sasha like fragile china. The kid s dressings were due for a change, and smelled horrible, but the
twins gave no sign of it. They loaded Sasha into her stretcher and did their best to make her comfortable. That s the funny thing about goodness: it can bubble up when you least expect
it, and disappear just as quickly.
The kid was only half conscious and regarded me through bleary eyes. I patted her hand, promised everything would be all right, and hoped it was true.
Everything went fairly smoothly after that. The twins carried Sasha aboard the shuttle, and I followed. The gravity created by the barge extended to Quint s ship. Like most of the
craft used out among the roids, it was heavily armored, highly maneuverable, and equipped for everything under the sun. The stretcher slid into one of four recesses provided for that
purpose and was clamped in place. I took a nearby seat. My duffel went underneath. Others plopped down all around me. It was then that I remembered our pressure suits and realized
that I d left them behind. I spent five seconds wondering if I should go back and decided to let it slide. It would take forever to get Sasha into a suit, so to hell with it.
The lock closed, the children were strapped in place, and the shuttle broke contact with the barge. The transition to weightlessness was almost instantaneous. I checked to
make sure that Sasha was secure, saw that she was, and tightened my harness. The pilot increased power and we were on our way.
The ensuing trip lasted about eight hours, which was at least seven more than I was psychologically prepared for, and eight more than was good for the kid. Doc fought to keep
her temperature down, but she continued to run a fever and her wound smelled worse than ever. Every minute was like torture, knowing her condition was deteriorating, and unable to do
anything about it.
Joy escaped from my pocket and, much to the children s delight, put on a demonstration of zero-gee gymnastics. But when Quint threatened to charge me five hundred bucks
for bringing an unauthorized passenger aboard, I ordered the little robot into my pocket. She complained but did as she was told.
After what seemed like an eternity, Quint announced that we were closing with asteroid DXA-1411, better known as Deep Port. There were no windows, but I imagined a
rocky planetoid, covered with impact craters, tumbling along the path it had followed for millions of years.
Most of the living quarters would be deep underground, as on Earth s moon, so there wouldn t be much to see except for docking facilities, zero-gee cargo storage, antenna
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