The Precipice

SPACE STATION GALILEO

Leaving her five fellow astronauts gaping dumbfounded at the airlock in the maintenance module, Pancho sailed weightlessly to the metal arm of the robotic cargo-handling crane jutting out from the space station. It was idle at the moment; with no mass of payload to steady it, the long, slim arm flexed noticeably as Pancho grasped it in both hands and swung like an acrobat up to the handgrips that studded the module’s outer skin.

Wondering if the others had caught on to her sting, Pancho hand-walked along the module’s hull, clambering from one runglike grip to the next. To someone watching from beyond the space station it would have looked as if she were scampering along upside down, but to Pancho it seemed as if the space station was over her head and she was swinging like a kid in a zero-gee jungle gym. She laughed inside her helmet as she reached the end of the maintenance module and pushed easily across the connector section that linked to the habitation module.

“Hey Pancho, what the hell are you doing out there?”

They had finally gotten to a radio, she realized. But as long as they were puzzled, she was okay.

“I’m taking a walk,” she said, a little breathless from all the exertion.

“What about our bet?” one of the men asked.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she lied. “Just hang tight.”

“What are you up to, Pancho?” asked Amanda, her voice tinged with suspicion.

Pancho fell back on her childhood answer. “Nothin’.”

The radio went silent. Pancho reached the airlock at the end of the lab module and tapped out the standard code. The outer hatch slid open. She ducked inside, sealed the hatch and didn’t bother to wait for the lock to fill with air. She simply pushed open the inner hatch and quickly sealed it again. A safety alarm shrilled automatically, but cut off when the module’s air pressure equilibrated again. Yanking off the space-suit’s cumbersome gloves, Pancho slid her visor up as she went to the wallphone by the airlock hatch.

Blessed with perfect pitch and a steel-trap memory, Pancho punched out the numbers for each of the five astronauts’ banks in turn, followed by their personal identification codes. Mother always said I should have been a musician, Pancho mused as she transferred almost the total amount of each account into her own bank account. She left exactly one international dollar for each of them, so the bank’s computers would not start the complex process of closing down their accounts.

As she finished, the hatch at the other end of the habitation module swung open and her five fellow astronauts began to push through, one at a time. “What’s going on?” demanded the first guy through.

“Nothin’,” Pancho said again. Then she dived through the hatch at her end of the long narrow module.

Into the Japanese lab module she swam, flicking her fingers along the equipment racks lining both sides of its central aisle, startling the technicians working there. Laughing to herself, she wondered how long it would take them to figure out that she had looted their bank accounts.

It didn’t take very long. By the time Pancho had reached the galley once again, they were roaring after her, the men bellowing with outrage. “When I get my hands on you, I’m gonna break every bone in your scrawny body!” was one of their gentler threats.

Even Amanda was so furious she lapsed back to her native working-class accent:

“We’ll ’ang you up by your bloody thumbs, we will!”

As long as I can stay ahead of them, I’m okay, Pancho told herself as she skimmed through the European lab module and into the observatory section, ducking under and around the bulky telescopes and electronics consoles. They were still yelling behind her, but she wondered if all five of them were still chasing. By now there’d been plenty of time for one or more of them to pop into a suit and cut across the top of the tee-shaped station to cut her off.

Sure enough, when she barged into the Russian lab module, two of the guys were standing at the far end in spacesuits, visors up, waiting for her like a pair of armored cops.

Pancho glided to a halt. One of the privacy unit screens slid back and a stubbled, bleary, puffy male face peered out, then quickly popped back in again and slid the screen shut with a muttered string of what sounded like Slavic cursing. The other three — Amanda and two of the men — came through the hatch behind her. Pancho was well and truly trapped.

“What the fuck are you trying to pull off, Pancho?”

“You cleaned out our bank accounts!”

“We oughtta string you up, damn you!”

She smiled and spread her hands placatingly. “Now fellas, you can’t hang a person in microgee. You know that.”

“This isn’t funny,” Amanda snapped, back to her faux-Oxford enunciation.

“I’ll make restitution, okay?” Pancho offered.

“You damned well better!”

“And you lost the bet, too, so we each get a month’s pay from you.”

“No,” Pancho said as reasonably as she could. “We never went through on the vacuum breathing, so the bet’s off.”

“Then we want our money back from your goddamned escrow account!”

“Sure. Fine.”

Amanda pointed to the wallphone by the hatch. “You mentioned restitution,” she said.

Meekly, Pancho floated to the phone and tapped out her number. “You’ll have to give me your account numbers,” she said. “So I can put the money back in for you.”

“We’ll punch in the account numbers ourselves,” Amanda said firmly.

“You don’t trust me?” Pancho managed to keep a straight face, but just barely.

They all growled at her.

“But it was only a joke,” she protested. “I had no intention of keeping your money.”

“Not much you didn’t,” one of the guys snapped. “Good thing Mandy figured out what you were up to.”

Pancho nodded in Amanda’s direction. “You’re the brightest one around, Mandy,” she said, as if she believed it.

“Never mind that,” Amanda replied tartly. To the men she said, “Now we’ll all have to change our ID codes, since she’s obviously figured them out.”

“I’m going to change my account number,” said one of the guys.

“I’m gonna change my bank,” another said fervently.

Pancho sighed and tried her best to look glum, chastised. Inwardly, she was quivering with silent laughter. What a hoot! And none of these bozos realizes that the half hour or so they’ve spent chasing me means half an hour’s worth of interest from each of their accounts into mine. It’s not all that much, but every little bit helps.

She just hoped they wouldn’t figure it out while they were all cooped up in the transfer buggy on the way to the Moon.

Well, she thought, if they try to get physical I’ll just have to introduce them to Elly.