Three hours before the relief carrier was due, the visitor crossed out every instance of the word will in the docking agreement.
Ada watched the pencil work its way down the page. There were six deletions. When the visitor had finished, the contract said almost nothing.
“You can't dock here without a departure guarantee,” Ada said.
The visitor was named Kel. Their hands had too many joints for the narrow customs counter, so they rested them carefully on the floor. Through the glass behind them, Rill Station's one free docking arm hung above a planet whose mountain ranges disappeared into a long blue haze.
“We request six hours,” Kel said through the translator.
“You can request them. You also need to say you'll leave when they're over.”
Kel marked out the seventh will, the one Ada had just written in the margin.
Their ship had arrived with a damaged drive and nine passengers. One passenger had been breathing through a borrowed regulator since the previous morning. A sealed medical carrier was approaching Rill with temperature-sensitive supplies, and it had the same docking arm booked for six o'clock. The other arm was closed for a structural inspection. Moving either vessel would require the station's small tug, which had not been tested since spring.
Ada had space to help nine people tonight. She did not necessarily have space for the carrier tomorrow. That was why the guarantee existed.
“Does the translation keep changing what I say?” she asked.
Kel checked the small display pinned to their coat. “No. Your sentence is understandable. It describes a decision that has not yet been made.”
“It's a promise.”
“Yes,” Kel said, as though that made the problem clearer.
Port agreements from a dozen worlds came through Ada's desk. Some required deposits. Some required witnesses. One species signed only after both parties had eaten something bitter. She had never encountered a civilization that crossed out the future.
She called the language desk. The night interpreter answered from her bunk, hair flattened on one side. She confirmed that Kel's people used future dates freely in weather reports and flight plans. Their objection was narrower: they did not speak of an unmade choice as a possession they could hand to somebody else.
“They can agree to an action now,” the interpreter said. “They won't certify an outcome they don't control. Try asking what they place in your hands.”
Ada returned to the counter. “All right. What can you give us?”
Kel produced a manifest and pointed to a line showing the ship's emergency-tow fittings. Then they placed two metal keys beside the papers.
“The station receives authority to move our ship if its assigned time ends. Our crew begins drive repair on docking. Your medical workers receive access to the passenger needing air.”
Those were practical offers. They were not enough. If the tow fittings failed, Rill might have to choose between a sick passenger and a delayed shipment for hundreds of others.
“The keys don't prove the fittings work,” Ada said.
“Correct.”
“You aren't helping your case.”
Kel looked at the keys. “Would it help if I told you they worked when I did not know?”
Ada almost laughed. Instead she checked the station's repair roster. Jin was still on duty, having stayed late to inspect a cracked pressure seal. He had a daughter at home who would be waiting for him. The tug required a crew of two.
She called Jin. He listened without interrupting and asked the first sensible question of the night: how many minutes would it take to test the tow collar before accepting the damaged ship?
“Forty, if the couplers match,” Ada said.
“And if they don't?”
“We keep the visitors in approach orbit and send over air by shuttle.”
“That shuttle can carry two tanks, not nine passengers.”
“I know.”
Jin made a sound that might have been resignation or arithmetic. “I'll meet you at the tug.”
They lost seventeen minutes searching for an adapter in the maintenance cage. The first coupling leaked pressure. Kel came outside the customs bay and showed them a locking sequence that used the visitor ship's emergency rail instead of its damaged engines. Jin tried it twice under low tension. Both times it held.
Ada opened an emergency berth authorization. The standard form demanded a departure guarantee. She left the box empty and wrote the test results in the incident log instead.
She added an inspection at four, a mandatory tow decision at five, and a call to the medical carrier's pilot so they would know the berth was shared on uncertain terms. The pilot was irritated. Ada recorded the objection rather than smoothing it away.
Kel watched her work. “Now we have a plan?”
“We have one that includes what happens when the first part goes wrong.”
The visitor ship docked just after midnight. The sick passenger came through the airlock on a stretcher, annoyed with everyone for making a fuss. By two, their breathing was steadier. Jin and Kel spent the remaining hours with open engine panels, comparing tools that had no business fitting one another.
At four, the drive still would not start. At five, the tug drew the damaged ship away from the docking arm and into a temporary holding cradle. The procedure consumed more fuel than the weekly allowance. Ada signed for that too.
At six the carrier arrived. Its crew unloaded cold containers onto the medical rail while Jin sat on a packing crate, exhausted, and Kel worked a brush through sealant caught in their joints.
“Your people are afraid to make promises,” Ada said, handing Kel a cup of water.
“Sometimes. Yours are afraid to leave a box blank.”
She looked at the completed incident report. There would be questions about overtime and fuel, and perhaps about why she had broken a rule written after some previous emergency she knew nothing about. The rule had served a purpose. So had the exception.
Before Kel returned to their ship, Ada printed a revised copy of the agreement. The crossed-out promises were gone. In their place were names, times, permissions, and a clear point at which somebody would have to decide again.
Kel signed. Ada signed beneath the station's seal. Above them, the docking arm began its inspection cycle, ready for the next vessel that might arrive with a plan already coming apart.