The second reason was maintenance and repair. The ’bots were old enough so’s something was always breaking down on them and they needed somebody to fix it. They carried little turtle-sized repair robots, of course, but those suckers broke down too, just like everything else. So I was more or less a glorified repairman on JRK49N. And almost glad of it, in a way. If the ship’s systems worked perfectly I would’ve gone bonzo with nothing to do for months on end.

And there was a bloody war going on in the Belt, to boot. The history discs call it the Asteroid Wars, but it mostly boiled down to a fight between Humphries Space Systems and Astro Corporation for control of all the resources in the Belt. Both corporations hired mercenary troops, and there were plenty of freebooters out in the Belt, too. People got killed. Some of my best friends got killed, and I came as close to death as I ever want to be.

The mercenaries usually left waterbots alone. There was a kind of unwritten agreement between the corporations that water was too important to mess around with. But some of the freebooters jumped waterbots, killed the poor dumbjohns riding on them, and sold the water at a cut-rate price wherever they could.

So, grumbling and grousing, I pushed myself out of the bunk. Still in my sweaty, wrinkled skivvies, I ducked through the hatch that connected my sleeping compartment with the bridge. My compartment, the bridge, the closet-sized galley, the even smaller lavatory, life support equipment, and food stores were all jammed into a pod no bigger than it had to be, and the pod itself was attached to Forty-niner’s main body by a set of struts. Nothing fancy or even comfortable. The corporation paid for water, not creature comforts.

Calling it a bridge was being charitable. It was nothing more than a curving panel of screens that displayed the ship’s systems and controls, with a wraparound glassteel window above it and a high-backed reclinable command chair shoehorned into the middle of it all. The command chair was more comfortable than my bunk, actually. Crank it back and you could drift off to sleep in no time.

I slipped into the chair, the skin of my bare legs sticking slightly to its fake leather padding, which was cold enough to make me break out in goose bumps.

The main water tank was still venting, but the safety alarms were as quiet as monks on a vow of silence.

“Niner, what’s going on?” I demanded.

Forty-niner’s computer generated voice answered, “A test, sir. I am venting some of our cargo.” The voice was male, sort of: bland, soft, and sexless. The corporate psychotechnicians claimed it was soothing, but after a few weeks alone with nobody else it could drive you batty.

“Stop it. Right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The spurt of steam stopped immediately. The logistics graph told me we’d only lost a few hundred kilos of water, although we were damned near the redline on reaction mass for the attitude jets.

Frowning at the displays, I asked, “Why’d you start pumping out our cargo?”

For a heartbeat or two Forty-niner didn’t reply. That’s a long time for a computer. Just when I started wondering what was going on, it said, “A test, sir. The water jet’s actual thrust matched the amount of thrust calculated to within a tenth of a percent.”

“Why’d you need to test the amount of thrust you can get out of a water jet?”

“Emergency maneuver, sir.”

“Emergency? What emergency?” I was starting to get annoyed. Forty-niner’s voice was just a computer synthesis, but it sure felt like he was being evasive.

“In case we are attacked, sir. Additional thrust can make it more difficult for an attacker to target us.”

I could feel my blood pressure rising. “Attacked? Nobody’s gonna attack us.”

“Sir, according to Tactical Manual 7703, it is necessary to be prepared for the worst that an enemy can do.”

Tactical Manual 7703. For God’s sake. I had pumped that and a dozen other texts into the computer just before we started this run through the Belt. I had intended to read them, study them, improve my mind—and my job rating—while coasting through the big, dark loneliness out there. Somehow I’d never gotten around to reading any of them. But Forty-niner had, apparently.

Like I said, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands cruising through the Belt. So I had brought in a library of reference texts. And then ignored them. I also brought in a full-body virtual reality simulations suit and enough erotic VR programs to while away the lonely hours. Stimulation for mind and body, I thought.

But Forty-niner kept me so busy with repairs I hardly had time even for the sex sims. Donahoo was right, the old bucket was breaking down around my ears. I spent most of my waking hours patching up Forty-niner’s failing systems. The maintenance robots weren’t much help: they needed as much fixing work as all the other systems combined.

And all the time I was working—and sleeping, too, I guess—Forty-niner was going through my library, absorbing every word and taking them all seriously.

“I don’t care what the tactical manual says,” I groused, “nobody’s going to attack a waterbot.”

“Four waterbots have been attacked so far this year, sir. The information is available in the archives of the news media transmissions.”

“Nobody’s going to attack us!”

“If you say so, sir.” I swear he—I mean, it—sounded resentful, almost sullen.

“I say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You wasted several hundred kilos of water,” I grumbled.

Immediately that damned soft voice replied, “Easily replaced, sir. We are on course for asteroid 78-13. Once there we can fill our tanks and start for home.”

“Okay,” I said. “And lay off that tactical manual.”

“Yes, sir.”

I felt pretty damned annoyed. “What else have you been reading?” I demanded.

“The astronomy text, sir. It’s quite interesting. The ship’s astrogation program contains the rudiments of positional astronomy, but the text is much deeper. Did you realize that our solar system is only one of several million that have been—”

“Enough!” I commanded. “Quiet down. Tend to maintenance and astrogation.”

“Yes, sir.”

I took a deep breath and started to think things over. Forty-niner’s a computer, for God’s sake, not my partner.

It’s supposed to be keeping watch over the ship’s systems, not poking into military tactics or astronomy texts.

I had brought a chess program with me, but after a couple of weeks I’d given it up. Forty-niner beat me every time. It never made a bad move and never forgot anything. Great for my self-esteem. I wound up playing solitaire a lot, and even then I had the feeling that the nosy busybody was just itching to tell me which card to play next.

If the damned computer weren’t buried deep in the vessel’s guts, wedged in there with the fusion reactor and the big water tanks, I’d be tempted to grab a screwdriver and give Forty-niner a lobotomy.

At least the vessel was running smoothly enough, for the time being. No red lights on the board, and the only amber one was because the attitude jets’ reaction mass was low. Well, we could suck some nitrogen out of 78-13 when we got there. The maintenance log showed that it was time to replace the meteor bumpers around the fusion drive. Plenty of time for that, I told myself. Do it tomorrow.

“Forty-niner,” I called, “show me the spectrographic analysis of asteroid 78-13.”

The graph came up instantly on the control board’s main screen. Yes, there was plenty of nitrogen mixed in with the water. Good.

“We can replenish the attitude jets’ reaction mass,” Forty-niner said.

“Who asked you?”

“I merely suggested—”

“You’re suggesting too much,” I snapped, starting to feel annoyed again. “I want you to delete that astronomy text from your memory core.”

Silence. The delay was long enough for me to hear my heart beating inside my ribs.