Little George and I were about to call it a night when somebody dumped the girl out the airlock.

 

I'd been checking him out on emergency EVA when it happened. Nobody gets on my crew without my personal inspection. He'd been doing fine, no vertigo at all.

 

I remember noticing she had fabulous legs. I'd like to think that didn't influence me, that I'd have tried to rescue anyone in that situation, but I'm honestly not sure. It did seem a terrible waste.

 

Either way there'd have been no rescue possible had she not gotten caught up in my safety line on the way past. Quicker than thought, I snapped the reel off my belt and tossed it after her so her momentum wouldn't unravel it. I told George to hold tension, loosely grabbed the line near the tethered end, and pushed off hard.

 

Don't ever do this. You hear about miraculous rescues all the time, but the important thing to remember about them is that they're miraculous. The vast majority of people who go for a spacewalk without a well-secured safety line are never seen again. Space is just too damn big.

 

But, as I said, it happened faster than thinking. Before I knew it, I was flying out into the black with nothing more than my paper-thin e-suit.

 

It seemed an eternity before I caught up with her, but it was really more like fifteen seconds. Her eyes were frosted shut, and her chest convulsed as she tried vainly to breathe vacuum. Then she went still. I gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze on the way by, and I felt her squeeze back. Weakly.

 

I snagged the spool and secured a turn of the back-line around both our waists. Then I set it to rewind. The jolt as we hit the end of the slack nearly knocked her free anyway. I felt her belch gassily and then go limp.

 

I looked back at George. He had a firm grip on the line and was hauling us in. He's called Little George as a nod to Robin Hood's boon companion. He actually resembles a Kodiak bear that some damn fool had managed to shave. At that moment I found his strength extremely reassuring.

 

The maintenance airlock we were using was built for two, but the designers had never met George. I brought the girl in first and strapped her into the emergency autodoc. It kick-started her breathing, but that wasn't the big worry. Once your lungs empty, stored gases in your bloodstream can start to boil out. Clots form at points in your anatomy not designed for that sort of thing.

 

I watched the machine long enough to make sure she wouldn't die of a sudden aneurysm, then checked on George. He was just coming out of the airlock.

 

"Convenient," he said.

 

"How's that?"

 

"The universe threw you a pretty girl, free of charge. Lucky man."

 

George's delivery was absolutely deadpan, which, given the look of his pan, was quite unsettling.

 

"Lucky is right," I said, looking around. "Nobody around."

 

"Especially not the fellows who tossed her out," George replied, nodding. Sharper than he looks, our George.

 

"She's out, but she's stabilized. Let's get her back to the ship before anyone notices us."

 

Elevator Station was supposed to be a commercial hub for Mars cargo haulers, a way to milk spacer crews of their hard-earned by offering traditional dockside luxuries like solid food and sexbot rentals. Never really worked out, though, and the disused food court was empty as ever as we carried our lithe burden past and over to where I'd docked the Buccaneer.

 

We'd been waiting for a replacement drive module, and Doc Windom had gone planetside with the rest of the crew for some overdue shore leave. Fortunately, our ship's autodoc is excellent, far superior to those emergency units that the lowest bidder provides at starbase airlocks. We had our guest plugged in and gently snoring in minutes, and we retired to the lounge to talk things over.

 

"So, what do we know?" I asked, fetching us a pair of rum punches.

 

He ticked off points on sausage-like fingers. "We're the only ship in port. There's a skeleton crew of six running the station, and she isn't one of them. No elevator capsule has offloaded passengers in two days, and I was the only guest at the auto-hostel before you docked."

 

"So she's not here legally." I handed him his drink.

 

"Thanks. Mmmm — perfect. Add to this, someone wants her dead. Two someones."

 

"How do you figure?"

 

"She didn't just float gently outta that airlock. At least one to throw her while another worked the override so both hatches were open. Two people, maybe three."

 

"And?"

 

"They didn't notice us, or they'd have jammed the hatch. Easily done, and she'd have stayed dead."

 

"Bottom line it for me."

 

Little George finished his drink, then got up for a refill. "Something criminal, worth killing over. Long term, lots of money. Operation like that, they don't take risks, so assume the station crew's been bribed. We report this, we'll become targets."

 

"Anything else?"

 

"They came from somewhere. No profit in sitting still, and this is a cargo station. That suggests smuggling, only she's no smuggler. Dancer's legs, good muscle. She's from down a gravity well."

 

"Innocent bystander, saw something she shouldn't?"

 

He shook his massive skull. "Wouldn't explain why she's here. Either planetside or on a ship, there's easier ways to dump a body. No, business brought her here, and got her killed."

 

Precisely my own reasoning, but I didn't tell him that. "When she comes to, we'll ask her," I said, sipping.

 

He raised an eyebrow in mute inquiry.

 

"You said it yourself, mate. Lots of money."

 

But we didn't get the chance. When I checked the autodoc ten minutes later, she was gone. She'd feigned unconsciousness until we were out of sight.

 

Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.

 

* * *

 

Inspired by the writing of John D. Macdonald