Wormbender's Circus

Zoe woke up at the touch of Chen Hua’s hand on her shoulder. She took the bowl of tea that he offered her, and also registered the concerned expression on his face.

“What’s up?”

“Maybe nothing to worry about,” he began, consciously trying to remove the furrows from his forehead. “Then again…”

Zoe seized his arm. “The Semiramis? Something’s happened to it?”

Chen Hua forced a reassuring smile. “No, nothing’s happened to it. It’s just that I got a report of a convict breakout on Penal Colony Delta. Six tough guys got off in a supply ship.”

“And?”

“And it was last seen in the sector your friends will be heading through.”

“No!”

“It was a supply ship, though. Unarmed. Shouldn’t be any danger. In any case, the cops will be here in half a day. You can get all the details from them. I…I told them you were here. They want to talk to you.”

“Half a day,” Zoe moaned. “Anything could happen in that time.”

Silence reigned on the James D. Fitzgerald as the two men aboard waited to die. Each was lost in his own private thoughts, which for both of them represented a kind of personal hell as they contemplated their recent behaviour.

“I guess it was pretty stupid, acting the way I did,” Sebastian murmured, his head cradled in his arms.

“Huh?” Casey started out of his own reverie.

“I was pretty stupid.”

Casey looked at him for a moment. “Ah, look, man. It happens to all of us. You’re in space, you’re out of circulation for a while, then a good looking woman happens along. What happens? You drop your bundle. Especially if, as in this case, she takes a fancy to you.”

“She was just grateful to us for pulling her out of a hole. Except…”

“Except this gratitude was all directed at you. Thanks.”

Sebastian looked at Casey. Casey gave him a wry smile.

“Crap!” said Sebastian with vehemence.

“You’re feeling bad, aren’t you,” Casey went on, “Because I got no legs so I don’t see any action with the women. You’re wrong, actually. I get quite enough action to keep me happy.”

“But…”

“Yes, I was pretty hot for Zoe, like you, and yes, I resented the way she fell for you and didn’t even give me a second glance. Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you ever get fitted with bionic legs?”

“The saucer was a cheaper option, and I didn’t have a heap of cash I could call my own. Jailbird, remember?”

“Yeah, but when you got out of jail?”

“I’d gotten used to this thing by that time,” Casey explained. “Wasn’t interested in trading it in on some legs. I can go a lot faster in this than on legs.”

“This sounds like some sort of rationalisation.”

“No. Really. I know it sounds unbelievably old-fashioned, but I figure bionic legs would be a fraud. If a woman doesn’t fancy my stumps, well, too bad.”

“You think Zoe didn’t fancy your stumps?”

Casey shook his head vigorously. “Nope. I think with Zoe there was too much competition. She wasn’t going to waste her time with a grizzled old crosspatch like me when there was a good looking dude like yourself around.”

Sebastian grinned. He paused. “Suppose these guys hadn’t shown up? Were you going to leave Zoe sitting on that rock?”

His partner sighed. “I really don’t know. I had serious doubts about whether we needed her along. The way she was taking your mind off the job in hand. I was getting seriously worried about you. In any case, how long do you think she would have wanted to stick around with a couple of no-hopers like us? Even a filthy rich no-hoper like you?”

Sebastian laughed. “Who’re you calling a no-hoper?”

“You and me both.”

“Well, to answer your question, she said she wanted to stay around as long as we would have her.”

Casey laughed in turn. “You lying scoundrel. She never said any such thing.”

Sebastian grinned impishly. “Her eyes told me.”

“Huh!”

There was a kind of desperate levity to the conversation. Both men were conscious of the need to resolve their differences as amicably as possible, so that they could die on good terms. But they could only keep the conversation up for so long, then the deathly silence re-imposed itself, and they found themselves once again confronting their most basic fears. Death had faced them when they had struggled to lift the Semiramis from the rising tide, but they had been able to do something to save themselves, and action had occupied their minds to the extent that the awareness of imminent death had been forced to take a back seat. Now they were trapped, with no possibility of action that could save them, no way they could either plug the air leak or call for help: Rat and his friends had even smashed the distress signal transmitter once it had served its purpose. They could do nothing but wait, feeling the air grow staler and thinner, and ultimately curl up and die.