Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [60]
Pramod's hand touched his throat, as if he already felt the rasp of Rodeo's toxic atmosphere. "I think I'd rather be shot," he muttered.
"Or," Leo raised his voice, "you can take your lives into your own hands. Come with me and put all your risks up front. The big gamble for the big payoff. Let me tell you"—he gulped for courage, mustered megalomania—for surely only a maniac could drive this through to success—"let me tell you about the Promised Land. . . ."
Chapter 9
Leo stretched for a look out the viewport of the cargo pusher at the rapidly-enlarging transfer station. Damn. The weekly passenger ship from Orient IV was already docked at the hub of the wheel. Newly arrived, it was doubtless still in the off-loading phase, but nothing seemed more likely to Leo than for a pilot—or ex-pilot—like Ti to invite himself aboard early, to kibitz.
The jumpship was blocked from view as they spiraled around the station to their own assigned shuttle hatch. The quaddie piloting the pusher, a dark-haired, copper-skinned girl named Zara in the purple T-shirt and shorts of the pusher crews, brought her ship smartly into alignment and clicked it delicately into the clamps on the landing spoke. Leo was encouraged toward belief in her top rating among the pusher pilots after all, despite his qualms about her age, barely fifteen.
The mild acceleration vector of the Station's spin at this radius tugged at Leo, and his padded chair swung in its gimbals to the newly-defined "upright" position. Zara grinned over her shoulder at Leo, clearly exhilarated by the sensation. Silver, in the quaddie-formfit acceleration couch beside Zara, looked more dubious.
Zara completed the formal litany of cross-checks with transfer station traffic control and shut down her systems. Leo sighed illogical relief that traffic control hadn't questioned the vaguely-worded purpose of their filed flight plan—"Pick up material for the Cay Habitat." There was no reason they should have. Leo wasn't even close to exceeding his powers of authorization. Yet.
"Watch, Silver," said Zara, and let a light-pen fall from her fingers. It fell slowly to the padded strip on the wall-now-floor and bounced in a graceful arc. Zara's lower hand scooped it back out of the air.
Leo waited resignedly while Silver tried it once too, then said, "Come on. We've got to catch Ti."
"Right." Silver pulled herself up by her upper hands on her headrest, swung her lowers free, and hesitated. Leo shook out his pair of gray sweat pants he'd brought for the purpose, and gingerly helped her pull them over her lower arms and up to her waist. She waved her hands and the ends of the pant legs flopped and flapped over them. She grimaced at the unaccustomed constraint of the bundled cloth upon her dexterity.
"All right, Silver," said Leo, "now the shoes you borrowed from that girl running Hydroponics."
"I gave them to Zara to stow."
"Oh," said Zara. One of her upper hands flew to her lips.
"What?"
"I left them in the docking bay."
"Zara!"
"Sorry . . ."
Silver blew out her breath against Leo's neck. "Maybe your shoes, Leo," she suggested.
"I don't know . . ." Leo kicked out of his shoes, and Zara helped Silver slip her lower hands into them.
"How do they look?" said Silver anxiously.
Zara wrinkled her nose. "They look kinda big."
Leo sidled around to catch their reflection in the darkened port. They looked absurd. Leo regarded his feet as though he'd never seen them before. Did they look that absurd on him? His socks seemed suddenly like enormous white worms. Feet were insane appendages. "Forget the shoes. Give 'em back. Just let the pant legs cover your hands."
"What if someone asks what happened to my feet?" Silver worried aloud.
"Amputated," suggested Leo, "due to a terrible case of frostbite suffered on your vacation to the Antarctic Continent."
"Isn't that on Earth? What if they start asking questions about Earth?"
"Then I'll—I'll quash them