It made no sense, even when Zhett tried to look at it from the warped Eddy point of view. She still could not see what had driven the EDF prisoners to concoct such a ridiculous escape plan, to take such unwarranted chances. What were they thinking?
“They must have a brown dwarf for their Guiding Star,” she muttered.
After the debacle with the ore processor crashing into the admin dome, her father had been enraged to discover the missing prospector scout ship. At first he’d feared that one of his Roamer prospectors had not returned from a scouting run. For days, the EDF prisoners had been intensely tight-lipped, and Zhett herself finally backtracked the location of the missing ship, discovered that Fitzpatrick and a soldier named Bill Stanna had been working nearby . . . that Fitzpatrick had triggered a suspicious fire alarm, though no evidence of combustion had been found in the supply room.
She’d reported it to her father. “I think one of the prisoners . . . escaped.”
“Escaped with an in-system ship? That’s ridiculous!” He had paced back and forth in the admin dome, scratching his salt-and-pepper beard and shaking his shaggy head. “By damn, what crackpot scheme did they have in mind? Where was he going to go? That ship has a limited range and not much fuel.”
Finally, many days after Bill Stanna would have succeeded—or gotten himself into deep trouble and in need of rescue—Fitzpatrick quietly told Zhett what the soldier had in mind.
She hauled him onto the carpet in the repaired administration dome. “You mean he just blindly headed off for the comet zone? Do you know how big the Kuiper Belt is? You can’t simply fly up and expect to find our facilities, even if we hadn’t taken pains to hide them. How was Stanna ever going to just stumble into the right spot?”
Fitzpatrick shrugged. “He wanted to try.”
Zhett shook her head, her long dark hair flying. “That’s just plain stupid.”
Clan Kellum had done everything to make life tolerable, productive, and—yes, dammit—pleasant for the soldiers in the Osquivel shipyards. Wasn’t it perfectly clear why the refugees couldn’t be returned to the Big Goose, especially after the Roamers had cut off all trade with Earth, and after the EDF had just destroyed Hurricane Depot? Now, more than ever, Roamer facilities had to remain hidden.
Fitzpatrick faced her, standing rigid. He had been alone with Zhett before, but this time he seemed intimidated, even ashamed at all the trouble Bill Stanna had caused by blundering off into interplanetary space.
She finally turned to him, frustrated. “I don’t get it. Is it really so bad here with us, Fitzie?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You have to ask that? We’re unlawful prisoners of war. What do you expect? We’re supposed to try and escape.”
“You can bet we’ve given you more freedom than the Eddies are allowing the Roamer prisoners they kidnapped from Hurricane Depot. Nobody even knows what’s happened to them.”
“Don’t go getting all indignant, Zhett—nobody knows what’s happened to us, either.”
* * *
Hundreds of Roamer searchers were dispatched to comb the area for any sign of the lost prospector scout, but the volume of empty space in the Osquivel system was immense.
Knowing at least the broad outlines of the escapee’s ill-conceived plan, the Roamers focused their search, crisscrossing space, trying to pick up any sign of the vessel. The cometary-extraction fields performed a complete vessel inventory and confirmed that none of their ships were missing. Stanna had not gotten away.
Finally Kellum reported that they had found the prospector scout ship. The remaining thirty-one EDF prisoners gathered in a large cargo-landing grotto as Roamer vessels slowly towed in the small stolen craft.
The craft came through to the loading dock, and atmosphere-containment fields were dropped after repressurization. Zhett noticed the ship’s cold engines, the darkened portholes. Beside her, Fitzpatrick pressed his lips into a firm line, his face unreadable.
Her father stepped out of the lead tow-ship, hands on his hips, his expression angry and disappointed. He turned to watch as other Roamers came forward to open the hatches of the silent spacecraft. Zhett had never seen her father look so frustrated.
Kellum raised his voice, yelling at the prisoners. “Your comrade stole this ship from us. Worse, he flew off into empty space without a course, without supplies, without even a fully charged life-support system. Out in space, stupidity and poor planning are equivalent to death.”
He struggled to keep his temper in check. “It didn’t take him long to get lost, and he ran out of air before he starved. He did trigger the SOS beacon when he realized he was in deep trouble, but by then it was way too late. He was far from our cometary-extraction facilities, and it took seven hours for his signal to reach any listener, another ten to respond.”
The Roamers had opened the craft now, and they marched in a somber procession to retrieve Bill Stanna’s stiff, pale body. When they carried the soldier out, the EDF captives groaned, and a buzz of heated conversation filled the chamber.
“There was no reason for this, by damn,” Kellum said. His voice sounded plaintive. “There was no possibility he would get away, and yet still he flew off on this suicidal mission. Some of you—all of you—must have known he was going to do this. How could you let him? Where is your common sense?”
“You want us all dead anyway,” muttered Shelia Andez, her voice dripping acid.
Kellum flushed red and put his hands on his hips. “Would I keep yelling at you to be careful if I wanted you all dead?”
Standing close to Fitzpatrick, Zhett wanted to comfort him, felt anger and resentment flowing in waves from all the prisoners. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but even he turned away.