DOUG AND OBERON
2416 CE
Doug‘s hand jetted away from his wrist, the severed vessels spewing blood crystallizing into sparkles in the vacuum, his suit pressure alarm shrieking. Shit, another one gone. And the ring Jan gave me. He tourniquetted the suit sleeve; the alarm dropped to a mutter. The grind would dock him another two jolts of Met when he got back aboard the Can, just for taking the time in the regen hole. And no Met meant no sleep, the missing hand flaming his arm all the Uranian night.
Four hundred meters might as well have been point-blank for Nye‘s laser. Nye, damn his pus-running ears, just couldn’t keep his fingers off the trigger.
It was nothing personal. Doug grabbed the plasma welder with his left hand, aimed its nozzle at his wrist-stump, and triggered the low beam. Ions cauterized him; the Met he had taken as he’d come on shift kicked in and stilled the pain into an itch.
For certain the stickheads would stretch him, rack his time out here into an extra year, for losing a hand a second time, and making the moon jockeys chase it down. Again. It always took the lazy bastards most of an O-cycle to do the job. There was always lethal junk zipping around — metal flakes, tools, ice balls — but adding one’s body parts to the junk wasn’t allowed. It might deflect, change orbits and hit a tourist.
Tourists. Why would anyone want to go into thousands of years of cryosleep, and wake up with the Solar System gone forever? Actually, stuck out here with the Sun just a spark, banished from Earth for about ten Earth years beyond his life expectancy here, he wasn’t so different. He’d just never wake up near a nice new planet.
At least he had Geordie. They’d not take Geordie from him, they’d promised him that. Even when he’d tank on too much Zephyr and be stuck alone for a forty-hour shift doing solitary, Geordie would be waiting when he got out, and they’d do the one gentle thing with each other, back in Geordie‘s crib. Even Wenrock, their grind, as chill as he was, wouldn’t break up a wed pair of penmen.
If he ever did, the pens would plasmelt the whole hive with Wenrock inside, and he knew it. Doug smiled at the thought and tongued the sender. “Lost a hand again. Millie‘s got the coordinates. Millie?”
A soft, sexy, synthetic, feminine voice cut in. “Orbital elements as follows,” and continued with six bursts of numbers in Share phonetic.
The sweet voice finished the sequence; a growl broke in over the automatic signoff. “MacNee, I’m notching you three for that. Get your stump into the Hole in ten minutes, or I’ll make it four.”
Shit! Wenrock was in a bad mood. Three shifts without Met, while the Hole made him a new hand, was worse than he’d ever had it. Ah, no matter, it was another chance to smile at Wenrock just when he thought Doug would cry, and see Wenrock‘s face get red. That was worth even four.
