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She spun like a ballerina in a music box, suspended from the vise of the captain’s hands.
9
Hainey hoisted Maria with a jerk and a backwards stumble that drew her up out of the hole left by the former glass ball turret; and although the sucking vortex left by the circular absence roared with broken, swirling wind, they were safely away from its reach. For a few seconds, Maria lay panting on the metal floor—and then she sat up, letting the wild, intruding air flay her hair to pieces.
She said, “Oh no. My underthings. ”
“Your what?”
“My…never mind. ” She leaned forward just enough to see over the edge just a little bit, and she spied the undergarments floating happily down to Missouri. “Are we safe? Did we get them all?”
The captain stood up, swung his head slowly back and forth, and backed away—urging her to do likewise. He said, “You got the last of them. Goddamn, woman. You almost got yourself killed. ”
“Well, I didn’t. And…well, I think it’s only clear and honest to point out, I owe that to you. ” She rubbed at her wrists, where the red marks of his grasp were flushing into a pattern of hands. “Why did you do that? You could’ve let me fall. Maybe you should have. It might’ve been more convenient for you to do so. ”
He stared down into the hole and told her, “Just reflex, I guess. It’s not every day I see a half-dressed woman falling out of a ball turret. ” He turned to climb the three or four steps up into the bridge, and she rose to follow behind him. Over his shoulder he added, “And anyway, you took down the cruiser. ”
Once they were away from the whistling void, Maria didn’t have to shout when she said, “I didn’t have much choice. I thought we’d worked that out. ”
Again, without looking at her, he said, “Maybe. But I don’t know too many men who’d have reached for that last shot. ”
On the bridge, he pointed at her previous seat and said, “Buckle yourself in. ”
Lamar had been closest to the cargo hold, so he was the one who asked, “Sir, what happened back there? What’s that noise?”
“We lost the left ball turret,” he answered, but didn’t tell him more. “I don’t know what kind of disturbance it’ll make in the steering, but if you find this bird pulling or bucking, it’s a big hole and we don’t have any good way to cover it right this moment, so we’re going to live with it. ”
“It’s tugging back and down a little, but not too bad. We can live with it, sure. Maybe when we stop we can shove a crate over it or something,” Simeon proposed, trying very hard not to watch Maria with one eye.
“If we can find one big enough,” Hainey said. “But for now, we’ve got to…” he rubbed wearily at his forehead. “God Almighty. ”
Simeon asked, ?
?Captain?”
And Lamar gazed up expectantly.
“We’ve got to…” he tried again. “Christ knows how far ahead of us they are. We’ve given them a devil of a head start, but at least we know where they’re headed. So here’s what I want to do—I want to head north a bit, out over godforsaken noplace; we’ll check through the cargo and see if there’s anything we want; and if there’s anything we don’t want, we’re going to pitch it. We need to lighten this thing, because we can maybe catch up to them before they reach Louisville. ”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. ” Maria was out of her seat again.
Without any malice or even impatience, Hainey said, “You wait a minute, woman. Simeon, take us north a few miles and maybe even lean us west since they think we’ve been going east; get us outside Kansas City’s airspace, and if you can find a low cloud to hide us in, so much the better. ”
“The sky’s clear as a bell; I wouldn’t give us good odds on that one. ”
“Then keep your eyes open for anything big enough to cover this thing for half an hour. We won’t have any longer than that to get ourselves together before we have to make a run for it. And of course, we’ve got a lady passenger to debark. You can walk a couple of miles back to town, can’t you?”
“Captain,” Maria was standing beside him, and when he turn-ed, she was right under his nose. Then she asked with some doubt, “This ship was going to Louisville before you commandeered it. Wasn’t it?”
His forehead wrinkled. “This ship? I don’t know where it was going. But within an hour it’s going to be headed to Louisville as fast as its hydrogen can carry it. Why did you think the Valkyrie was Kentucky-bound?”
She didn’t answer his question, but she asked him another one. “Why are you Kentucky-bound? Why the eastward course? You know as well as I do that south and east is not the safest dir-ection you could choose. So tell me, please. Why are you chasing the Clementine? What’s on board that you want so badly?”
“Not a goddamned thing,” he told her. “I don’t want anything that ship’s carrying. I want the ship itself, because it’s mine. ”
“Yours?”
The motion of the Valkyrie’s new course made the floor under their feet swing slightly, and they both swayed as they spoke. “Yes,” he said. “It’s mine. I stole it fair and square, years ago, and I want it back. ”
