Kill Station Read Free Page A

condition. And the domes—some clear, some opaque— were the old, unstable ribbed variety rather than die reinforced Fuller design that had supplanted the first kind almost as soon as people had begun settling out this way.
    Willans Station was old, from the looks of it—and no one had made any great attempt at modernization.
    Possibly understandable: materials were expensive out here, labor hard to find, or to keep—at least, good labor. But in this environment, your life depended on the integrity of your dome.
    "They never mined here," Evan said, glancing over at Joss.
    "No," Joss said, "there was no point. According to the ephemeris, this asteroid's nothing but conglomerate and stone—worthless. There's a fair amount of nickel iron 12 SPACE COPS
    found around here, though. Enough for it to work pretty well as a trading base and credit center."
    "Independently owned and operated, I take it," Evan said, looking at the central dome as the station data system spoke to their ship's and brought it around and over toward the docking area. The dome was patched, and not very well. In places, laminate patches overlapped composite plastic patches in a way that caused Evan concern about the level of maintenance of things here.
    "It started out as a franchise operation from ConBelt," Joss said, peering through the augments again.
    There was an abstracted sound to his voice that Evan had heard before: it meant Joss was getting nervous about something. "It earned out about twenty years later, and the family who were titleholders at that point started running it on their own."
    "They broke even, did they?" Evan said, very hopefully, as the attitude thrusters fired again. Well off to one side of the central dome, attached to a smaller dome-opaque, but similarly patched—was a round set of bulkhead doors divided down the middle, the generic opening to a docking bay. There was only one problem: it wasn't open. And Evan watched them starting to get very close to that docking bay, very fast.
    Joss looked annoyed and reached out to a toggle.'' Willans control, Willans control," he said, "this is Solar Patrol vessel CDZ 8064 incoming, please check your autoapproach computer, over."
    Nothing but the hiss of empty air. Evan looked at him.
    "Willans control, Willans control—" Joss looked bemused, did something to the console, said again:
    "Willans control, this is Solar Patrol vessel CDZ 8064, reply please."
    Nothing.
    Joss said something under his breath that Evan didn't catch, yanked the yoke and control array around in front of him, and started hammering on the controls that would do things to the attitude jets, very quickly indeed. Evan
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    clenched his teeth, then loosened up, remembering that clenching was exactly the wrong thing to do. He would have closed his eyes, but there seemed no point in dying if you didn't know how it had happened.
    So he" watched the ugly round slitted bulk of the docking doors swim closer and closer outside the plex, slowing only slightly—
    "Oh, come on, dammit," Joss said, "come on, you idiots!" He was practically hammering on the console now. Evan sweated, wondering whether Joss was hollering at the people on the asteroid, or the ship's equipment. In any case, there was nothing he could do to help; flying the ship was Joss's speciality. Those doors were closer, and closer. The soft hiss of firing rockets, all that could be heard of the attitudinals from inside the ship, went on and on—
    "If you people make me crash my new ship," Joss was muttering, "you're all meat, that's all. Just hamburger, and I'll feed you to the first dog I see." He locked all the attitude thrusters into one configuration and sat there, gripping the console. There was nothing else he could do, from the looks of him.
    " 'Your' ship?" Evan said, watching the docking bay doors draw near, and wondering why his life wasn't flashing before his eyes.
    "Good God," Joss said then. "It's working."
    "It is?" Evan said, but at