The Abyss of Time

Chapter Eighteen

     "I'm not having him aboard my ship!" said James Barney firmly. "Find some other fool to take him."

     Around them, hanger bay two was a clamour of noise and activity. One of the Bounty class landers had a panel removed from its side and a team of engineers were removing a large apparatus from the bowels of the ship. Some kind of scientific equipment, Miller assumed. Being removed to make the ship lighter so they could get more people and supplies aboard. Other pieces of equipment had already been removed and were sitting in an untidy pile a short distance to one side, all gleaming new, never having been used. Miller hoped they wouldn't be needing any of it later.

     Some of the crew members were already dressed in their surface suits and were queueing up to go aboard their assigned landers, where they would have nothing to do but sit and twiddle their thumbs for two days. There was no choice, though. The air throughout the ship was already beginning to smell musty and people were beginning to report headaches and a difficulty in concentrating on things. Every one of the landers had its doors open to allow the fresh air inside to mingle with the stale air outside, but with only limited success. The Lucina had pumps and vents to spread the air around the giant starship and the landers had their own ways of circulating air inside them, but there was no effective way to mingle the air inside the landers with the air outside. All they could do was leave the doors open and hope the air would mingle of its own accord.

     On top of that, the hanger's floor was the outer hull of the ship and exposed to the full extremes of temperature now that the life support systems were no longer working. If this side of the ship had been facing the sun the heat would long since have been unbearable, so the ship had been turned to place it in the shade, with large heaters positioned to keep the air warm. It was still cold in the huge chamber and Miller had put on a large coat, but the air still felt like a cold, winter's day on his face and hands. Tomorrow, the ship would be turned to place hanger bay one in the shade and the occupants of the landers in bay two would be trapped inside them as the air outside became as hot as an oven.

     "The seating arrangements have already been made," said Miller. "Simon Rogers goes down to the planet on your lander."

     "If you put him aboard my ship, I'll throw him out the airlock the moment we launch," Barney replied, looking him straight in the eye. "I don't know why he's still alive. I would have let the mob have him."

     "Law and order reigns aboard this ship so long as I'm the Skipper," Miller shot back, meeting his angry gaze without flinching. "Every civilised country outlawed the death penalty hundreds of years ago and that law still applies. He goes down to the planet. He'll never see daylight again, but he lives for as long as we're able to keep him alive, because that's the kind of people we are."

     "You speak for yourself," said Barney, though. "I have a wife and two sons. You know what would have happened to them. Hell, you've got children yourself. How can you defend him?"

     "We can protect our children best by making sure they have a civilised society to grow up in," Miller replied. "A society in which people can rely on the rule of law to protect them. If we allow mob justice, who knows who the mob will choose next. One of your sons, maybe."

     "My sons are good people. Everyone knows that."

     Miller assessed the man standing in front of him. His face had the puffiness and the reddish tinge that spoke of a lifetime of hard drinking. He thought it likely that his sons were heading in the same direction. "They've never been in any kind of trouble?" he asked. "Drunken fist fights? A small argument that got out of hand because everyone had a glass or two too many?"