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Back|Next Contents Through the Breach To Allyn Vogel Most of my friends are smart, competent, and unfailingly helpful to me when I need it. Allyn is all those things. She is also a gentle and genuinely good person, which puts her in a much smaller category. BETAPORT, VENUS 7 Days Before Sailing "Mister Jeremy Moore," announced the alien slave as he ushered me into the private chamber of the Blue Rose Tavern. The public bar served as a waiting room and hiring hall for the Venus Asteroid Expedition, while General Commander Piet Ricimer used the back room as an office. I'd heard that the aide now with Ricimer, Stephen Gregg, was a conscienceless killer. My first glimpse of the man was both a relief and a disappointment. Gregg was big, true; but he looked empty, no more dangerous than a suit of ceramic armor waiting for someone to put it on. Blond and pale, Gregg could have been handsome if his features were more animated. Whereas General Commander Ricimer wasn't . . . pretty,say, the way women enough have found me, but the fire in the man's soul gleamed through every atom of his physical person. Ricimer's glance and quick smile were genuinely friendly, while Gregg's more lingering appraisal was . . . Maybe Stephen Gregg wasn't as empty as I'd first thought. "Thank you, Guillermo," said Ricimer. "Has Captain Macquerie arrived?" "Not yet," the slave replied. "I'll alert you when he does." Guillermo's diction was excellent, though his tongueless mouth clipped the sibilant. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the bustle of the public bar. Guillermo was a chitinous biped with a triangular face and a pink sash-of-office worn bandolier fashion over one shoulder. I'd never been so close to a Molt slave before. There weren't many in the Solar System and fewer still on Venus. Their planet of origin was unknown, but their present province was the entire region of space mankind had colonized before the Collapse. Molts remained and prospered on worlds from which men had vanished. Now, with man's return to the stars, the aliens' racial memory made them additionally valuable: Molts could operate the pre-Collapse Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html machinery which survived on some outworlds. "Well, Mister Moore," Ricimer said. "What are your qualifications for the Asteroid Expedition?" "Well, I've not myself been involved in off-planet trade, sir," I said, trying to look earnest and superior, "but I'm a gentleman, you see, and thus an asset to any proposal. My father—may he continue well—is Moore of Rhadicund. Ah—" The two spacemen watched me: Ricimer with amusement, Gregg with no amusement at all. I didn't understand their coolness. I'd thought this was the way to build rapport, since Gregg was a gentleman also, member of a factorial family, and Ricimer at least claimed the status. "Ah . . ." I repeated. Carefully, because the subject could easily become a can of worms, I went on, "I've been a member of the household of Councilor Duneen—chief advisor to the Governor of the Free State of Venus." "We know who Councilor Duneen is, Mister Moore," Ricimer said dryly. "We'd probably know of him even if he weren't a major backer of the expedition." The walls of the room were covered to shoulder height in tilework. The color blurred upward from near black at floor level to smoky gray shot with wisps of silver. The ceiling and upper walls were coated with beige sealant that might well date from the tavern's construction. The table behind which Ricimer and Gregg sat—they hadn't offered me a chair—was probably part of the tavern furnishings. The communications console in a back corner was brand-new. The ceramic chassis marked the console as of Venerian manufacture, since an off-planet unit would have been made of metal or organic resin instead, but its electronics were built from chips stockpiled on distant worlds where automated factories continued to produce even after the human colonies perished. Very probably, Piet Ricimer himself had brought those chips to Venus on an earlier voyage. Earth, with a population of twenty millions after the Collapse, had returned to space earlier than tiny Venus. Now that all planets outside the Solar System were claimed by the largest pair of ramshackle Terran states, the North American Federation and the Southern Cross, other men traded beyond Pluto only with one hand on their guns. Piet Ricimer and his cohorts had kept both hands on their guns, and they traded very well indeed. Whatever the cover story—Venus and the Federation weren't technically at war—the present expedition wasn't headed for the Asteroid Belt to bring back metals that Venus had learned to do without during the Collapse. I changed tack. I'd prepared for this interview by trading my floridly expensive best suit for clothing of more sober cut and material, though I'd have stayed with the former's purple silk plush and gold lace if the garments had fit my spare frame just a little better. The suit had been a gift from a friend whose husband was much more portly, and there's a limit to what alterations can accomplish. "I believe it's the duty of every man on Venus," I said loudly, "to expand our planet's trade beyond the orbit of Pluto. We owe this to Venus and to God. The duty is particularly upon those like the three of us who are members of factorial families." I struck the defiant pose of a man ashamed of the strength of his principles. I'd polished the expression over years of explaining—to women—why honor forbade me to accept money from my father, the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html factor. In truth, the little factory of Rhadicund in Beta Regio had been abandoned three generations before, and the family certainly hadn't prospered in the governor's court the way my grandfather had hoped. Piet Ricimer's face stilled. It took me a moment to realize how serious a mistake I'd made in falsely claiming an opinion which Ricimer felt as strongly as he hoped for salvation. Stephen Gregg stretched his arm out on the table before Ricimer, interposing himself between his friend and a problem that the friend needn't deal with. Gregg wasn't angry. Perhaps Gregg no longer had the capacity for anger or any other human emotion. "About the manner of your leaving Councilor Duneen's service,Moore ," Gregg said. He spoke quietly, his voice cat-playful. "A problem with the accounts, was there?" I met the bigger man's eyes. What I saw there shocked me out of all my poses, my calculations. "My worst enemies have never denied that their purse would be safe in my keeping," I said flatly. "There was a misunderstanding about a woman of the household. As a gentleman—" My normal attitudes were reasserting themselves. I couldn't help it. "—I can say no more." The Molt's three-fingered hand tapped on the door."Captain Macquerie has arrived, sir." "You have no business here, Mister Jeremy Moore," Gregg said. He rose to his feet. Gregg moved with a slight stiffness which suggested that more than his soul had been scarred beyond Pluto; but surely his soul as well. "There'll be no women where we're going. While there may be opportunities for wealth, it won't be what one would call easy money." "Good luck in your further occupations, Mister Moore," Ricimer said. "Guillermo, please show in Captain Macquerie." Ricimer and his aide were no more than my own age, 27 Earth years. In this moment they seemed to be from a different generation. "Good day, gentlemen," I said. I bowed and stepped quickly from the room as a squat fellow wearing coveralls and a striped neckerchief entered. Macquerie moved with the gimballed grace of a spacer who expects the deck to shift beneath him at any moment. I knew that arguing with Ricimer and Gregg wouldn't have gained me anything. I knew also that Mister Stephen Gregg wouldliterally just as soon kill me as look at me. * * * There were more than thirty men in the tavern's public room—and one woman, a spacer's wife engaged in a low-voiced but obviously acrimonious attempt to drag her husband away. The noise of the crowd blurred whenever the outer door opened ontoDock Street and its heavy traffic. I pushed my way to one corner of the bar, my progress aided somewhat by the fact I was a gentleman—but only somewhat. Betaport was more egalitarian thanIshtarCity , the capital; and spacers are a rough lot anywhere. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html The tapster drew beer and took payment with an efficiency that seemed more fluid than mechanical. His eyes were sleepy, but the fashion in which he chalked a tab or held out his free hand in a silent demand for scrip before he offered the glass showed he was fully aware of his surroundings. I opened my purse and took out the 10-Mapleleaf coin. That left me only twenty Venerian consols to live on for the next week, but I'd find a way. Eloise, I supposed. I hadn't planned to see her again after the problem with her maid, but she'd come around. "Barman," I said crisply. "I want the unrestricted use of your phone, immediately and for the whole of the afternoon." I rang the coin on the rippling blue translucence of the bar's ceramic surface. The barman's expression sharpened into focus. He took the edges of the coin between the thumb and index fingers of his right hand, turning it to view both sides. "Where'dyou get Fed money?" he demanded. "Gambling with an in-system trader on the New Troy run," I said truthfully. "Now, if you don't want the coin . . ." That was a bluff—I needed this particular phone for what I intended to do. The tapster shrugged. He had neither cause nor intention to refuse, merely a general distaste for strangers; and perhaps for gentlemen as well. He nipped up the gate in the bar so that I could slip through to the one-piece phone against the wall. "It's local net only," the tapster warned. "I'm not connected to the planetary grid." "Local's what I want," I said. Very local indeed. The tool kit on my belt looked like a merchant's papersafe. I took from it a device of my own design and construction. The poker game three weeks before had been with a merchant/captain and three of his officers, in a sailors' tavern inIshtarCity . The four spacers were using a marked deck. If I'd complained or even tried to leave the game, they would have beaten me within an inch of my life. The would-be sharpers had thought I was wealthy and a fool; and were wrong on both counts. They let me win for the first two hours. The money I'd lived on since the game came from that pump priming. Much of it was in Federation coin. The captain and his henchmen ran the betting up and cold-decked me, their pigeon. I weepingly threw down a huge roll of Venerian scrip and staggered out of the tavern. I'd leftIshtarCity for Betaport before the spacers realized that I'd paid them in counterfeit—and except for the top bill, very poor counterfeit. I attached to the phone module's speaker a contact transducer which fed a separate keypad and an earpiece. The tapster looked at me and said, "Hey! What d'ye think you're doing?" "What I paid you for the right to do," I said. I pivoted deliberately so that my body blocked the tapster's view of what I was typing on the keypad—not that it would have meant anything to the fellow. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html On my third attempt at the combination, the plug in my ear said in Piet Ricimer's voice, ". . . not just as a Venerian patriot, Captain Macquerie. Allmankind needs you." The communications console in the private room was patched into the tavern's existing phone line. The commands I sent through the line converted Ricimer's own electronics into a listening device. I could have accessed the console from anywhere in Betaport, but not as quickly as I needed to hear the interview with Macquerie. "Look, Captain Ricimer," said an unfamiliar voice that must by elimination be Macquerie, "I'm flattered that you'd call for me the way you have, but I gave up voyaging to the Reaches when I married the daughter of my supplier on Os Sertoes. Long runs are no life for a married man. From here on out, I'm shuttling myBahia between Betaport andBuenos Aires ." "We mean no harm to the Southern Cross," said Stephen Gregg. "Your wife's family won't be affected." With Macquerie, there was obviously no pretense that the expedition had anything to do with asteroids. Os Sertoes was little more than a name to me. I vaguely thought that it was one of the most distant Southern colonies, uninteresting and without exports of any particular value. "Look," said Macquerie, "you gentlemen've been to the Reaches yourself. You don't need me to pilot you—except to Os Sertoes, and who'd want to go there? It's stuffed right in the neck of the Breach, so the transit gradients won't let you go anywhere but back." "Captain," said Ricimer, "I wouldn't ask you if I didn't believe I needed you. Venusmust take her place in the greater universe. If most of the wealth of the outworlds continues to funnel into the Federation, President Pleyal will use it to impose his will on all men. Whether Pleyal succeeds or fails, the attempt will lead to a second Collapse—one from which there'll be no returning. The Lord can't want that, nor can any man who fears Him." A chair scraped. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," Macquerie said. His voice was subdued, but firm. Ricimer's enthusiasm had touched but not won the man. "If you really need a pilot for the Reaches, well—you can pick one up on Punta Verde or Decades. But not me." The door opened at the corner of my eye. The Molt standing there stepped aside as noise from the public bar boomed through the pickup on my earpiece. Captain Macquerie strode past, his face forming into a scowl of concern as he left the Blue Rose. "No one just yet, Guillermo," called Piet Ricimer, his words slightly out of synchrony as they reached my ears through different media. The door closed. "I could bring him along, you know," Gregg said calmly in the relative silence. "No," said Ricimer. "We won't use force against our own citizens, Stephen." "Then you'll have to feel your way into the Breach without help," Gregg said. "You know we won't find a pilot for Os Sertoes at any of the probable stopovers. There's not that much trade to the place." "Captain Macquerie may change his mind, Stephen," Ricimer replied. "There's still a week before we lift." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "He won't," snapped Gregg. "He feels guilty, sure; but he's not going to give up all he has on a mad risk. And if he doesn't—what? The Lord will provide?" "Yes, Stephen," said Piet Ricimer. "I rather think He will. Though perhaps not for us as individuals, I'll admit." In a brighter, apparently careless voice, Ricimer went on, "Now, Guillermo has the three bidders for dried rations waiting outside. Shall we—" I quickly disconnected my listening device and slipped from behind the bar, keeping low. If Ricimer—or worse, Gregg—saw me through the open door, they might wonder why I'd stayed in the tavern after they dismissed me. "Hey!" called the barman to my back. "What is it you think you're doing, anyway?" I only wished I knew the answer myself. Back|Next Contents Framed Back|Next Contents BETAPORT, VENUS 6 Days Before Sailing The brimstone smell of Venus's atmosphere clung to the starships' ceramic hulls. Betaport's storage dock held over a hundred vessels, ranging in size from featherboats of under 20 tonnes to a bulk freighter of nearly 150. The latter vessel was as large as Betaport's domed transfer docks on the surface could accommodate for landings and launches. Many of the ships were laid up, awaiting parts or consignment to the breakers' yard, but four vessels at one end of the cavernous dock bustled with the imminence of departure. The cylindrical hulls of two were already on roller-equipped cradles so that tractors could drag them to the transfer docks. I eyed the vessels morosely, knowing there was nothing in the sight to help me make up my mind. I'd familiarized myself with the vessels' statistics, but I wasn't a spacer whose technical expertise could judge the risks of an expedition by viewing the ships detailed for it. I supposed as much as anything I was forcing myself to think about what I intended to do. I rubbed my palms together with the fingers splayed and out of contact. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html A lowboy rumbled slowly past. It was carrying cannon to the expedition's flagship, the 100-tonne Porcelain. The hull of Ricimer's vessel gleamed white, unstained by the sulphur compounds which would bake on at first exposure to the Venerian atmosphere. She was brand-new, purpose-built for distant exploration. Her frames and hull plating were of unusual thickness for her burden. The four 15-cm plasma cannon on the lowboy were heavy guns for a 100-tonne vessel, and the Long Tom which pivoted to fire through any of five ports in the bow was a still-larger 17-cm weapon. The Porcelain 's hull could take the shock of the cannons' powerful thermonuclear explosions, but the guns' bulk filled much of the ship's internal volume. The most casual observer could see that thePorcelain wasn't fitting out for a normal trading voyage. I ambled along the quay. Pillars of living rock supported the ceiling of the storage dock, but the huge volume wasn't subdivided by bulkheads. The sounds of men, machinery, and the working of the planetary mantle merged as a low-frequency hum that buffered me from my surroundings. TheAbsalom 231 was a cargo hulk: a ceramic box with a carrying capacity as great as that of the flagship. She was already in a transport cradle. Food and drink for the expedition filled the vessel's single cavernous hold. Lightly and cheaply built, theAbsalom 231 could be stripped and abandoned when the supplies aboard her were exhausted. The expedition's personnel complement was set at a hundred and eighty men. I wondered how many of them, like the hulk, would be used up on the voyage. A bowser circled on the quay, heading back to the water point. Its huge tank had filled thePorcelain with reaction mass. I moved closer to the vessels to avoid the big ground vehicle. I walked on. TheKinsolving was a sharp-looking vessel of 80 tonnes. A combination of sailors and ground crew were loading sections of three knocked-down featherboats into her central bay. Though equipped with star drive, a 15-tonne featherboat's cramped quarters made it a hellish prison on a long voyage. The little vessels were ideal for short-range exploration from a central base, and they were far handier in an atmosphere than ships of greater size. What would it be like to stand on a world other than Venus? The open volume of the Betaport storage dock made me uncomfortable. What would it be like to walk under an open sky? Why inGod's name was I thinking of doing this? The last of the expedition's four vessels was the 80-tonneMizpah, also in a transport cradle. She was much older than thePorcelain and theKinsolving. Clearly—even to a layman like me—theMizpah wasn't in peak condition. TheMizpah 's main lock and boarding ramp amidships couldn't be used because of the transport cradle, but her personnel hatch forward stood open. On the hatch's inner surface, safe from reentry friction and corrosive atmospheres, were the painted blazons of her co-owners: the pearl roundel of Governor Halys, and the bright orange banderol—the oriflamme—of Councilor Frederic Duneen. TheMizpah wasn't an impressive ship in many ways, but she brought with her the overt support of the two most important investors on the planet. If nothing else, theMizpah 's participation meant the survivors wouldn't be hanged as pirates when they returned to Venus. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html If anyone survived. When I eavesdropped on the private discussion between Ricimer and Gregg, I'd heard enough to frighten off anyone sane. Thomas Hawtry—Factor Hawtry of Hawtry—stepped from theMizpah 's personnel hatch. Two generations before, Hawtry had been a name to reckon with. Thomas, active and ambitious to a fault, had mortgaged what remained of the estate in an attempt to recoup his family's influence by attaching himself to the great of the present day. He was a man I wanted to meet as little as I did any human being on Venus. Hawtry was large and floridly handsome, dressed now in a tunic of electric blue with silver lame trousers and calf-high boots to match the tunic. On his collar was a tiny oriflamme to indicate his membership in Councilor Duneen's household. Hawtry's belt and holster were plated. The pistol was for show, but I didn't doubt that it was functional nonetheless. "Moore!" Hawtry cried, framed by the hatch coaming two paces away. Hawtry's face was blank for an instant as the brain worked behind it. The Factor of Hawtry was a thorough politician; though not, in my opinion, subtle enough to be a very effective one. "Jeremy!" Hawtry decided aloud, reforming his visage in a smile. "Say, I haven't had an opportunity to thank you for the way you covered me in the little awkwardness with Lady Melinda." He stepped close and punched me playfully on the shoulder, a pair of ladies' men sharing a risque memory. "Could have beenve -ry difficult for me. Say, I told my steward to pass you a little something to take the sting out. Did he . . . ?" Lady Melinda was an attractive widow of 29 who lived with her brother—Councilor Duneen. Hawtry'd thought to use me as his go-between in the lady's seduction. I, on the other hand— I would never have claimed I was perfect, but I liked women too much to lure one into the clutches of Thomas Hawtry. And as it turned out, I liked the Lady Melinda a great deal more than was sensible for a destitute member of the lesser gentry. "Regrettably, Ididn't hear from your steward, Thom," I said. No point in missing a target of opportunity. "And you know, I'm feeling a bit of a pinch right now. If—" Not much of a target. "Aren't we all, Jeremy, aren't we all!" Hawtry boomed. "After I bring my expedition back, though,all my friends will live like kings! Say, you know about the so-called 'asteroids expedition,' don't you?" He waved an arm toward the docked ships. A hydraulic pump began to squeal as it shifted theAbsalom 231 in its cradle. "Captain Ricimer's . . ." I said, hiding my puzzlement. "Andmine," said Hawtry, tapping himself on the breast significantly. "I'm co-leader, though we're keeping it quiet for the time being. A very political matter, someone of my stature in charge of a voyage like this." Hawtry linked his arm familiarly with mine and began pacing back along the line of expedition vessels. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html His friendliness wasn't sincere. In the ten months I knew Hawtry intimately in the Duneen household, the man had never been sincere about anything except his ambition and his self-love. But neither did Hawtry seem to be dissembling the hatred I'd expected. Irritated at his go-between's lack of progress and very drunk, Hawtry had forced the Lady Melinda's door on a night when her brother was out of the house. The racket brought the servants to the scene in numbers. I, the gentleman whowas sharing the lady's bed that night, escaped in the confusion—but my presence hadn't gone unremarked. The greater scandal saved Hawtry from the consequences of his brutal folly, but I scarcely expected the fellow to feel grateful. Apparently Hawtry's embarrassment was so great that he'd recast the incident completely in his own mind. "I'm going to take the war to the Federation," Hawtry said, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise in the storage dock. He accompanied the words with broad gestures of his free hand. "And itis a war, you know. Nothing less than that!" A dozen common sailors examined thePorcelain 's hull and thruster nozzles, shouting comments to one another. The men weren't on duty; several of them carried liquor bottles in pockets of their loose garments. They might simply be spectators. Ricimer's flagship was an unusual vessel, and the expedition had been the only subject of conversation in Betaport for a standard month. "Asteroids!" Hawtry snorted. "The Feds bring their microchips and pre-Collapse artifacts into the system in powerful convoys, Jeremy . . . butI'm going to hit them where they aren't prepared for it. They don't defend the ports on the other side of the Mirror where the wealth is gathered. I'll go through the Breach and take them unawares!" Hawtry wasn't drunk, and he didn't have a hidden reason to blurt this secret plan. Because I was a gentleman of sorts and an acquaintance, I was someone for Hawtry to brag to; it was as simple as that. Of course, the proposal was so unlikely that I would have discounted it completely if I hadn't heard Ricimer and Gregg discussing the same thing. "I didn't think it was practical to transit the Breach," I said truthfully. "Landolph got through with only one ship of seven, and nobody has succeeded again in the past eighty years. It's simpler to voyage the long way, even though that's a year and a half either way." Interstellar travel involved slipping from the sidereal universe into other bubbles of sponge space where the constants for matter and energy differed. Because a vessel which crossed a dimensional membrane retained its relative motion, acceleration under varied constants translated into great changes in speed and distance when the vessel returned to the human universe. No other bubble universe was habitable or even contained matter as humans understood the term. The sidereal universe itself had partially mitosed during the process of creation, however, and it was along that boundary—the Mirror—that the most valuable pre-Collapse remains were to be found. Populations across the Mirror had still been small when the Revolt smashed the delicate fabric of civilization. Often a colony's death throes weren't massive enough to complete the destruction of the automated factories, as had happened on the larger outworlds and in the Solar System itself. For the most part the Mirror was permeable only to objects of less than about a hundred kilograms. Three generations before, Landolph had found a point at which it was possible to transit the Mirror Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html through sponge space. Landolph's Breach wasn't of practical value, since energy gradients between the bubble universes were higher than ships could easily withstand. Perhaps it had been different for navigators of the civilization before the Collapse. "Oh, the Breach," Hawtry said dismissively. "Say, that's a matter for sailors. Our Venus lads can do things that cowards from Earth never dreamed of. If they were real men, they wouldn't kiss the feet of a tyrant like Pleyal!" "I see," I said in a neutral voice. I supposed there was truth in what Hawtry said. The ships of today were more rugged than Landolph's, and if half of Captain Ricimer's reputation was founded on fact, he was a sailor like no one born to woman before him. But the notion that a snap of the fingers would send a squadron through the Breach was— Well, Hawtry's reality testing had always been notable for its absence. His notion of using the Lady Melinda as a shortcut to power, for example . . . ThePorcelain 's crew was shifting the first of the plasma cannon from the lowboy. A crane lifted the gun tube onto a trolley in the hold, but from there on the weapon would be manhandled into position. ThePorcelain 's ceramic hull was pierced with more than a score of shuttered gunports, but like most vessels she carried only one gun for every four or more ports. The crew would shift the weapons according to need. "They'll get their use soon!" Hawtry said, eyeing the guns with smirking enthusiasm. "And when I come back, well—it'll be Councilor Hawtry, see if it isn't, Moore. Say, there'll be nothing too good for the leader of the Breach Expedition!" I felt the way I had the night I let the spacers inveigle me into the crooked card game, where there was a great deal to gain and my life to lose. I said, "I can see that you and Captain Ricimer—" "Ricimer!" Hawtry snorted. "That man, that artisan's son? Surely you don't think that a project of this magnitude wouldn't have a gentleman as its real head!" "There's Mister Stephen Gregg, of course," I said judiciously. "The younger son of a smallholder in the Atalanta Plains!" Hawtry said. "Good God, man! As well have you commander of the expedition as that yokel!" "I take your point," I said. "Well, I have to get back now, Thom. Need to dress for dinner, you see." "Yes, say, look me up when I return, Moore," Hawtry said. "I'll be expanding my household, and I shouldn't wonder that I'd have a place for a clever bugger like you." Hawtry turned and stared at the ships which he claimed to command. He stood arms akimbo and with his feet spread wide, a bold and possessive posture. I walked on quickly, more to escape Hawtry than for any need of haste. Dinner was part of Eloise's Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html agenda, though dressing was not. Quite the contrary. In an odd way, the conversation had helped settle my mind. I wasn't a spacer: I couldn't judge the risks of this expedition. But I could judge men. Hawtry was a fool if he thought he could brush aside Piet Ricimer. And if Hawtry thought he could ride roughshod over Stephen Gregg, he was a dead man. Back|Next Contents Framed Back|Next Contents BETAPORT, VENUS The Night Before Sailing Three sailors guarded the city side of Dock 22. Two of the men carried powered cutting bars. The third had stuck forty centimeters of high-pressure tubing under his belt, and a double-barreled shotgun leaned against the wall behind him. On the other side of the airlock, a tubular personnel bridge stretched to thePorcelain 's hatch. Though Dock 22 was closed and the interior had been purged, too much of the hellish Venerian atmosphere leaked past the domed clamshell doors for the dock to be open onto the city proper. Traffic on Dock Street was sparse at this hour. The airlock guards watched me with mild interest. That turned to sharp concern when they realized that I was guiding directly toward them the drunk I supported. The sailor with the length of tubing closed the pocket Bible he'd been reading and threw his shoulders back twice to loosen the muscles. "My name doesn't matter," I said. "But I've an important message for Mister Gregg. I need to see him in person." "Piss off," said one of the sailors. He touched the trigger of his cutting bar. The ceramic teeth whined a bitter sneer. "This theBahia ?" mumbled the drunk. I held a flask to the lips of the man draped against me. "Here you go, my friend," I said reassuringly. "We'll be aboard shortly." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "Gotta lift ship . . ." the drunk said. He began to cough rackingly. "I wouldn't mind a sip of that," said one of the guards. "Shut up, Pinter," said the man with the tubing. "You know better than that." He turned his attention to me and my charge. "No one boards thePorcelain now, sir," he said. "Why don't you and your friend go about your business?" "This is our business," I said. "Call Mister Gregg. Tell him there's a man here with information necessary to the success of the expedition." Pinter frowned, leaned forward, and sniffed at the neck of the open flask. "Hey,buddy," he said. "What d'ye have in that bottle, anyhow?" "You wouldn't like the vintage," I said. "Call Mister Gregg now. We need to get this gentleman in a bunk as soon as possible." The sailor who'd initially ordered me away looked uncertain. "What's going on, Lightbody?" he asked the man with the tubing. "He's a gentleman, isn't he?" "All right, Pinter," Lightbody said in sudden decision. He gestured to the wired communicator which was built into the personnel bridge. "Call him." He smiled with a grim sort of humor. "Nobody asks for Mister Gregg because they want to waste his time." * * * Gregg arrived less than two minutes after the summons. His blue trousers and blue-gray tunic were old and worn. Both garments were of heavy cloth and fitted with many pockets. Gregg didn't wear a protective suit, though the air that puffed out when he opened the lock was hot and stank of hellfire. He didn't carry a weapon, either; but Stephen Gregg was a weapon. Sulphurous gases leaking into the personnel bridge had brought tears to Gregg's eyes. He blinked to control them. "Mister Jeremy Moore," he said softly. The catch in his voice might also have been a result of the corrosive atmosphere. I lifted the face of the man I supported so that the light fell fully on it. "I'm bringing Captain Macquerie aboard," I said. "We're together. I, ah, thought it would be wise not to trouble the general commander." "Where's 'aBahia ?" Macquerie mumbled. "Gotta lift tonight . . ." "Ah," said Gregg. I couldn't see any change in his expression; the three common sailors, who knew Gregg better, visibly relaxed. "Yes, that was good of you. Piet's resting now. The two of us can get our pilot aboard quietly, I think." He lifted the shanghaied captain out of my grip. "Piet's too good a man for this existence, I sometimes think. But he's got friends." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Gregg cycled the airlock open. The inner chamber was large enough to hold six men in hard suits. He paused. "Lightbody? Pinter and Davies, all of you. You did well here, but don't report the—arrival—until after we've lifted in the morning. Do you understand?" "Whatever you say, Mister Gregg," Lightbody replied; the other two sailors nodded agreement. The men treated Gregg with respect due to affection, but they were also quite clearly afraid of him. As the airlock's outer door closed behind us, Gregg looked over the head of the slumping Macquerie and said, "You say you want to come with us, Moore. I'd rather pay you. I've got more money than I know what to do with, now." The inner door undogged and began to open even as the outer panel latched. The atmosphere of the personnel bridge struck me like the heart of a furnace. The bridge was a 3-meter tube of flexible material, stiffened by a helix of glass fiber which also acted as a light guide. The reinforcement was a green spiral spinning dizzily outward until the arc of the sagging bridge began to rise again. A meter-wide floor provided a flat walkway. I sneezed violently. My nose began to run. I rubbed it angrily with the back of my hand. "I'll come, thank you," I said. My voice was already hoarse from the harshness of the air. "I'll find my own wealth in the Reaches, where you found yours." "Oh, you're a smart one, aren't you?" Gregg said harshly. "You think you know where we're really going . . . and perhaps you do, Mister Moore, perhaps you do. But you don't know what it is that the Reaches cost. Take the money. I'll give you three hundred Mapleleaf dollars for this night's work." The big man paced himself to walk along the bridge beside me. The walkway was barely wide enough for two, but Gregg held Macquerie out to the side where the tube's bulge provided room. "I'm not afraid," I said. I was terribly afraid. The personnel bridge quivered sickeningly underfoot, and the air that filled it was a foretaste of Hell. "I'm a gentleman of Venus. I'll willing to take risks to liberate the outworlds from President Pleyal's tyranny!" The effect of my words was like triggering a detonator. Stephen Gregg turnedfast and gripped me by the throat with his free left hand. He lifted me and slammed me against the side of the bridge. "I wasn't much for social graces even before I shipped out to the Reaches for the first time," Gregg said softly. "And I never liked worms taking me for a fool." The wall of the bridge seared my back through the clothing. The spiral of reinforcing fiber felt like a white slash against the general scarlet pain. Macquerie, somnolent from the drugged liquor, dangled limply from Gregg's right arm. "Now," Gregg said in the same quiet, terrible voice. "This expedition is important to my friend Piet, do you understand? Perhaps to Venus, perhaps to mankind, perhaps to God—but certainly to my friend." I nodded. I wasn't sure I could speak. Gregg wasn't deliberately choking me, but the grip required to keep my feet above the walkway also cut off most of my air. "I don't especially want to kill you right now," Gregg continued. "But I certainly feel no need to let you Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html live. Why do you insist on coming with us, Mister Moore?" "You can let me down now," I croaked. The words were an inaudible rasp. Gregg either read my lips or took the meaning from my expression. He lowered me to the walkway and released me. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't reach up to rub my throat. I am a gentleman! "I—" I said. I paused, not because I was afraid to go on, but because I'd never articulated the reason driving me. Not even to myself, in the dead of night. "I have a talent for electronics," I continued. I fought the need to blink, lest Gregg think I was afraid to meet his gaze. "I couldn't work at that, of course. Only artisans work with their hands. And there was no money; the Moores have never really had money." "Go on," Gregg said. He wiped the palm of his left hand on the breast of his tunic. "So I've had to find ways to live," I continued, "and I've done so. Mostly women. And the problem with that is that when I found a woman I really cared about—there was no place the relationship could go except the way they've all gone, to bed and then nowhere. Because there's no me! Doesn't that make you want to laugh, Mister Gregg?" "I'm not judging you, Moore," Gregg said. He shifted Macquerie, not for his own comfort but for that of the snoring captain. Gregg's effortless strength would have been the most striking thing about him, were it not for his eyes. "I'm twenty-seven," I said. My bitterness surprised me. "I want to put myself in a place where Ihave to play the man. I pretended it was the money that was pulling me, but that was a lie. A lie for myself." "Let's walk on," Gregg said, suiting his action to his words. "The air in this tube isn't the worst I've breathed, but that's not a reason to hang around out here either." I managed a half smile as I fell into step beside the bigger man. Now I massaged the bruises on my throat. "You don't have to play the man when you're out beyond Pluto, Moore," Gregg said reflectively. "You can become a beast—or die. Plenty do. But if you're determined to come, I won't stop you." He looked over his shoulder at me. His expression could be called a smile. "Besides, you might be useful." ThePorcelain 's airlock was directly ahead of us. I dropped back a step to let Gregg open the hatch. I thought about the cold emptiness of Stephen Gregg's eyes. I had an idea now what Gregg meant when he spoke of what the Reaches cost. Back|Next Contents Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Framed Back|Next Contents VENUS ORBIT Day 1 I'd never been weightless before. My stomach was already queasy from the shaking thePorcelain took from the 500 kph winds of the upper Venerian atmosphere. I hadn't eaten since early the night before, but I wasn't sure that would keep me from spewing yellow bile across the men working nonchalantly around me. I clung to the tubular railing around the attitude-control console. The starship's three navigational consoles were in the extreme bow; the heavy plasma cannon was shipped in traveling position between the consoles and the attitude controls. Guillermo was at the right-hand console. Ricimer, Hawtry, and the vessel's navigator, Salomon, stood behind the Molt, discussing the course. "We need to blood the force,blood it," Hawtry said. He was the only member of the group speaking loudly enough for me to hear. Hawtry wore a rubidium-plated revolver and the silver brassard which identified him as an officer in the Governor's Squadron. He had at least enough naval experience to keep his place without clutching desperately at a support the way I did. A sailor carrying a tool kit slid along the axis of the ship, dabbing effortlessly at stanchions for control. "Careful, sir!" he warned in a bored voice before he batted my legs—which had drifted upward—out of his way. Because the sailor balanced his motion by swinging the heavy tools, his course didn't change. My feet hit the shell locker and rebounded in a wild arc. Stephen Gregg stood in the center of the three-faced attitude-control console. He reached out a long arm over Lightbody, reading placidly in one of the bays, caught my ankle, and tugged. I released my own grip and thumped to the deck beside Gregg. Gregg's right boot was thrust under one of three 20-cm staples in the deck. I hooked my toes through both of the others. My hands hurt from the force with which I'd been holding on since liftoff. "Want to go home now, Moore?" Gregg asked dryly. "Would it matter if I did?" I said. The spacer who'd pushed past me was working on the Long Tom's traversing mechanism. A hydraulic fitting spit tiny iridescent drops which would shortly settle and spread over thePorcelain 'sinner bulkheads. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "Not in the least," said Gregg. His voice was calm, but his head turned as he spoke and his gaze rippled across everything,everything in his field of view. "Then I'm happy where I am," I said. I glanced, then stared, at the controls around me. "These are fully automated units," I said in surprise. "Is that normal?" "It will be," Gregg said, "if Piet has his way—and if we start bringing back enough chips from the outworlds to make the price more attractive than paying sailors to do the work." "What weshould be doing," I said bitterly, "is setting up large-scale microchip production ourselves." Gregg looked at me. "Perhaps," he said. "But that's a long-term proposition. For now it's cheaper to use the stockpiles—and the operating factories, there are some—on the outworlds. And it's important that men return to the stars, too, Piet thinks." In a normal starship installation, there was a three-man console for each band of attitude jets—up to six bands in a particularly large vessel. The crewmen fired the jets on command to change the ship's heading and attitude, while the main thrusters, plasma motors, supplied power for propulsion. On thePorcelain, a separate artificial intelligence controlled the jets. The AI's direction was both faster and more subtle than that of even the best-trained crew—but spacers are conservative men, those who survive, and they tend to confuse purpose-built attitude AIs with attitude control through the main navigational unit. The latter could be rough because the equipment wasn't configured for the purpose. Even so, I believed machine control was better nine times out of ten than anything humans could manage. "You do know something about electronics, then," Gregg said, though he wasn't looking at me when he spoke. "Do people often lie to you?" I snapped. "Not often, no," the bigger man agreed, unperturbed. "Usually there's an officer to command each control bank," Gregg continued mildly. "Here, I'm just to keep the crew from being bothered by—gentlemen who feel a need to give orders. Lightbody, Jeude, Dole." The sailors looked up as Gregg called their names. "Dole's our bosun," Gregg said. "These three have been with Piet since before I met him, when he had a little intrasystem trader. He put them on the controls because they can be trusted not to get in the way of the electronics." Jeude, a baby-faced man (and he certainly wasn't very old to begin with), wore a blue-and-white striped stocking cap. He doffed it in an ironic salute. "Boys, meet Mister Jeremy Moore," Gregg went on. "I think you'll find him a resourceful gentleman." "A friend of yours, Mister Gregg?" Jeude asked. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Gregg snorted. Instead of answering the question, he said, "Do you have any friends, Moore?" "A few women, I suppose," I said. "Not like he means, no." My guts no longer roiled, but they'd knotted themselves tightly in my lower abdomen. I focused my eyes on the viewscreen above the navigational console. Half the field was bright with stars, two of which were circled with blue overlays. A three-quarter view of Venus, opalescent with the dense, bubbling atmosphere, filled the rest of the screen. "That's a very high resolution unit," I said aloud. "I'm amazed at the clarity." "Piet doesn't skimp on the tools he needs," Gregg said. "It's a perfect view of the hell that wraps the world that bore us, that's certainly true." He paused, staring at the lustrous, lethal surface of gas. "Does your family have records from the Collapse, Moore?" he asked. "No," I said, "no. My grandfather sold the factory ninety years ago and moved to Ishtar City. If there were any records, they were lost then." "My family does," Gregg said. "The histories say it was the atmosphere that protected Venus during the Revolt, you know. Outworld raiders knew that our defenses wouldn't stop them, but they couldn't escape our winds. The Hadley Cells take control from any unfamiliar pilot and fling his ship as apt as not into the ground. The raiders learned to hit softer targets that onlymen protected." "Isn't it true, then?" I said, responding to the bitterness in Gregg's voice. "That's how I'd already heard it." "Oh, the atmosphere saved us from the rebels, that much was true," Gregg said. "But when the histories go on, 'Many died because off-planet trade was disrupted . . .'That's not the same as reading your own ancestors' chronicle of those days. Venus produced twenty percent of its own food before the Collapse. Afterwards, well, the food supply couldn't expand that fast, so the population dropped. Since the distribution system was disrupted also, the drop was closer to nine in ten than eight in ten." "We're past that now," I said. "That was a thousand years ago. A thousandEarth years." A third spark in a blue highlight snapped into place on the star chart. "TheKinsolving, " said Dole, ostensibly to the sailors to either side of him at the console. "And about fucking time." Lightbody sniffed. Piet Ricimer raised a handset and began speaking into it, his eyes fixed on a separate navigational tank beneath the viewscreen. "Bet they just now got around to turning on their locator beacon," Jeude said. "Though they'll claim it was equipment failure." "Right," said Gregg, his eyes so fixedly on the pearly orb of Venus that they drew my gaze with them. "At Eryx, that's the family seat, there was a pilot hydroponics farm. They figured what the yield would support and drew lots for those who could enter the section of the factory where the farm was." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Gregg's face lost all expression. "The others . . ." he continued. "Some of the others tried to break into the farm and get their share of the food. My ancestor's younger brother led a team of volunteers that held off the mob as long as they could. When they were out of ammunition, they checked the door seals and then blew the roof of their own tunnel open to the surface. That's what the atmosphere of Venus means to me." "It was worse on Earth," I said. "When the centralized production plants were disrupted, only one person in a thousand survived. There were billions of people on Earth before the Revolt, but they almost all died." Gregg rubbed his face hard with both hands, as if he were massaging life back into his features. He looked at me and smiled. "As you say, a thousand years," he said. "But in all that time, the Greggs of Eryx have always named the second son Stephen. In memory of the brother who didn't leave descendants." "That was the past," I said. "There's enough in the future to worry about." "You'll get along well with Piet," Gregg said. His voice was half-mocking, but only half. "You're right, of course. I shouldn't think about the past the way I do." It occurred to me that Gregg wasn't only referring to the early history of Eryx Hold. The bisected viewscreen above Ricimer shivered into three parts, each the face of a ship's captain: Blakey of theMizpah; Winter of theKinsolving; and Moschelitz, the bovine man who oversawAbsalom 231 's six crewmen and automated systems. Blakey's features had a glassy, simplified sheen which I diagnosed as a result of theMizpah 's transmission being static-laden to the point of unintelligibility. The AI controlling thePorcelain 's first-rate electronics processed both the audio and visual portions of the signal into a false clarity. The image of Blakey's black-mustached face was in effect the icon of a virtual reality. Ricimer raised the handset again. Guillermo switched a setting on the control console. The Molt's wrists couldn't rotate, but each limb had two more offset joints than a human's, permitting the alien the same range of movement. "Gentlemen," Ricimer said. "Fellow venturers. You're all brave men, or you wouldn't have joined me, and all God-fearing and patriots or I wouldn't have chosen you." The general commander's words boomed through the tannoy in the ceiling above the attitude-control console; muted echoes rustled through the open hatchways to compartments farther aft. No doubt the transmission was being piped through the other vessels as well, though I wondered whether anybody aboard theMizpah would be able to understand the words over the static. "I regret," Ricimer continued, "that I could not tell you all our real destination before we lifted off, though I don't suppose many of you—or many of President Pleyal's spies—will have thought we were setting out for the asteroids. The first stop on our mission to free Venus and mankind from Federation tyranny will be Decades." "We'll make men out of you there!" Hawtry said in guttural glee. The pickup on Ricimer's handset was either highly directional or keyed to his voice alone. Not a whisper of Hawtry's words was broadcast. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "A Fed watering station six days out," Jeude said, speaking to me. As an obvious landsman, I was a perfect recipient for the sort of information that every specialist loves to retail. "They wouldn't need a landfall so close if their ships were better found," Dole put in. "Fed ships leak like sieves." On the screen, Captain Winter's lips formed an angry protest which I thought contained the word " . . . piracy?" This was Ricimer's moment; the equipment Guillermo controlled brooked no interruption. Blakey tugged at his mustache worriedly—he looked to be a man who would worry about the color of his socks in the morning—while Moschelitz couldn't have been more stolid in his sleep. "Our endeavors, with the help of the Lord," Ricimer continued, "will decide the fate of Venus and of mankind." He seemed to grow as he spoke, or—it was as if Piet Ricimer were the only spot of color in existence. His enthusiasm, hisbelief, turned everything around him gray. "We must be resolute," he said. His eyes swept those of us watching him in the flagship's bow compartment, but the faces on the viewscreen also stiffened. Though his back was toward the images, Ricimer was looking straight into the camera feeding his transmission. "I expect the company of every vessel in the expedition to serve God once a day with its prayers," Ricimer said. "Love one another: we are few against the might of tyranny. Preserve your supplies, and make all efforts to keep the squadron together throughout the voyage." The general commander stared out at his dream for a future in which mankind populated all the universe under God. Even Thomas Hawtry looked muted by the blazing personality of the man beside whom he stood. "In the name of God, sirs, do your duty!" Back|Next Contents Framed Back|Next Contents ABOVE DECADES Day 7 ThePorcelain made nineteen individual transits in the final approach series; that is, she slipped nineteen times in rapid succession from the sidereal universe to another bubble of sponge space and back. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html At each transit, as during every transit of the past seven days, my stomach knotted and flapped inside out. I clung to the staple in the attitude-control station, holding a sponge across my open mouth and wishing I were dead. Or perhaps Iwas dead, and this was the Hell to which so many people over the years had consigned me . . . "Oh, God," I moaned into the sponge. My eyes were shut. "Oh, God, please save me." I hadn't prayed in real earnest since the night I found myself trapped in Melinda's room. The transit series ended. Only the vibration of the vessel's plasma motors maintaining a normal 1-g acceleration indicated that I wasn't standing on solid ground. I opened my eyes. A planet, gray beneath a cloud-streaked atmosphere, filled the forward viewscreen. "Most times the Feds've got women on the staff," Jeude was saying as he and his fellows at the console eyed Decades for the first time. "And they aren't all of themthat hostile." I released the staple I was holding and rose to my feet. I smiled ruefully at Gregg and said, "I'll get used to it, I suppose." Gregg's mouth quirked. "For your sake I hope so," he said. "But I haven't, and I've been doing this for some years now." Besides the ship's officers, the forward compartment was crowded by Hawtry and the nine gentlemen-adventurers who, like him, stood fully equipped with firearms and body armor. The ceramic chestplates added considerably to the men's bulk and awkwardness. Many of them had personal blazons painted on their armor. Hawtry's own chestplate bore a gryphon, the marking of his house, and on the upper right clamp the oriflamme of the Duneens. "Now that's navigation!" said Captain—former captain—Macquerie with enthusiasm. "We can orbit without needing to transit again." It had taken Macquerie a few days to come to terms with his situation, but since then he'd been an asset to the project. Macquerie was too good a sailor not to be pleased with a ship as fine as thePorcelain and a commander as famous as Piet Ricimer. "TheKinsolving 's nowhere to be seen," said Salomon as he leaned toward the three-dimensional navigation tank. "As usual. TheMizpah can keep station, thecargo hulk can keep station, more or less. Winter couldn't find his ass with both hands." "There they are," Ricimer said mildly. He pointed to something in the tank that I couldn't see from where I stood. It probably wouldn't have meant anything to me anyway. "One, maybe two transits out. It's my fault for not making sure theKinsolving 's equipment was calibrated to the same standards as the rest of ours." "If theAbsalom can keep station," Salomon muttered, "so could theKinsolving —if she had a navigator aboard." "Enough of this nonsense," said Thomas Hawtry. Several of the gentlemen about him looked as green as I felt, but Hawtry was clearly unaffected by the multiple eversions of transit. "We don't need a third vessel anyway. Lay us alongside theMizpah, Ricimer, so that I can go aboard and take charge." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Guillermo looked up from his console. "The cutter should be launched in the next three minutes," he said to Ricimer in his mechanically perfect speech. "Otherwise we'll need to brake now rather than proceeding directly into planetary orbit." "You'd best get aft to Hold Two, Mister Hawtry," Ricimer said. If he'd reacted to the gentleman's peremptory tone, there was no sign of it in his voice. "The cutter is standing by with two men to ferry you." Hawtry grunted. "Come along, men," he ordered as he led his fellows shuffling sternward. Watching the sicker-looking of the gentlemen helped to settle my stomach. "Sure you don't want to go with them?" Gregg said archly. "When they transfer to theMizpah, there won't be any proper gentlemen aboard. Just spacers." "I'm a proper gentleman," I snapped. "I just have little interest in weapons and no training whatever with them. If you please, I'll stay close to you and Mister Ricimer and do what you direct me." "Mister Hawtry?" Ricimer called as the last of Hawtry's contingent were ducking through the hatchway to the central compartment. "Please remember: there'll be no fighting if things go as they should. We'll simply march on the base from opposite directions and summon them to surrender." Hawtry's response was a muted grunt. Salomon and Macquerie lowered their heads over the navigation tank and murmured to one another. The Molt Guillermo touched a control. His viewscreen split again: the right half retaining the orb of Decades, three-quarters in sunlight, while the left jumped by logarithmic magnifications down onto the planetary surface. A fenced rectangle enclosed a mixture of green foliage and soil baked to brick by the exhaust of starships landing. In close-up, the natural vegetation beyond the perimeter had the iridescence of oil on water. There were two ships with bright metal hulls in the landing area, and a scatter of buildings against the opposite fence. The morning sun slanted across the Federation base. Obvious gun towers threw stark, black shadows from the corners and from the center of both long sides. I licked my lips. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. ThePorcelain shuddered like a dog drying itself. Lights on the attitude-control panels pulsed in near unison, balancing the shock. The three sailors looked alert but not concerned. "That's the cutter with Hawtry aboard casting off," Gregg said. He glanced at the bosun. "How long before we begin atmospheric braking, Dole?" he asked. Dole, a stocky, dark man with a beard trimmed to three centimeters, pursed his lips as he considered the images on the viewscreen. "About two hours, sir," he said. Jeude, beside him, nodded agreement. "We could go into orbit quicker," he said, "but it'll take them that long to transfer the fine gentlemen to theMizpah —good riddance to them." "Watch your tongue, Aaron Jeude," the bosun said. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Jeude's smile flashed toward Gregg, taking in me beside the bigger man as well. "What do we do, Gregg?" I asked. My voice was colorless because of my effort to conceal my fear of the unfamiliar. "We wait," Gregg said. "Ten minutes before landing, we'll put our equipment on. And then we'll march a klick through what Macquerie says is swamp, even on the relative highlands where the Feds built their base." "I don't have any equipment," I said. "If you mean weapons." "We'll find you something," Gregg said. "Never fear." He spoke quietly, but there was a disconcerting lilt to his tone. Six sailors under Stampfer, thePorcelain 's master gunner, bustled around the Long Tom, opening hydraulic valves and locking down the seats attached to the carriage. They were readying the big weapon for action. "Will there be fighting, then, Gregg?" I asked, sounding even to myself as cool as the sweat trickling down the middle of my back. "At Decades, I don't know," Gregg said. "Not if they have any sense. But before this voyage is over—yes, Mister Moore. There will be war." * * * ThePorcelain 's two cargo holds were on the underside of the vessel, bracketed between the pairs of plasma motors fore and aft, and the quartet of similar thrusters amidships. Number Two, the after hold, had been half-emptied when the cutter launched. Now it was filled by a party of twenty men waiting for action, and it stank. "You bloody toad, Easton!" a sailor said to the man beside him. "That warn't no fart. You've shit yourself!" My nose agreed. Several of the men had vomited from tension and atmospheric buffeting as the ship descended, and we were all of us pretty ripe after a week on shipboard. I clutched the cutting bar Gregg had handed me from the arms locker and hoped that I wouldn't be the next to spew my guts up. ThePorcelain 's descent slowed to a near-hover. The rapid pulsing of her motors doubled into a roar. "Surface effect!" Gregg said. "Thrust reflected from the ground. We'll be touching down—" The big gentleman wore back-and-breast armor—the torso of a hard suit that doubled as protection from vacuum and lethal atmospheres—with the helmet locked in place, though his visor was raised for the moment. In his arms was a flashgun, a cassegrain laser which would pulse the entire wattage of the battery in its stock out through a stubby ceramic barrel. Gregg was shouting, but I needed cues from his mouth to make out the words. The last word was probably "soon," but it was lost in still greater cacophony. The starship touched its port outrigger, hesitated, and settled fully to the ground with a crash of parts reaching equilibrium with gravity instead of thrust. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html I relaxed. "Now what?" I asked. "We wait a few minutes for the ground to cool," Gregg explained. "There was standing water, so the heat ought to dissipate pretty quickly. Sufficient heat." It seemed like ten minutes but was probably two before a sailor spun the undogging controls at a nod from Gregg. The hatch, a section of hull the full length of Hold Two, cammed downward to form a ramp. Through the opening rushed wan sunshine and a gush of steam evaporated from the soil by the plasma motors. It was the first time I'd been on a planet besides Venus. "Let's go!" boomed Stephen Gregg in the sudden dampening of the hold's echoes. He strode down the ramp, a massive figure in his armor. "Keep close, but form a cordon at the edge of the cleared area." I tried to stay near Gregg, but a dozen sailors elbowed me aside to exit from the center of the ramp. I realized why when I followed them. Though the hatchway was a full ten meters wide, the starship's plasma motors had raised the ground beneath to oven heat. The center of the ramp, farthest from where the exhaust of stripped ions struck, was the least uncomfortable place to depart the recently-landed vessel. I stumbled on the lip at the end of the ramp. The surroundings steamed like a suburb of Sheol, and the seared native vegetation gave off a bitter reek. The foliage beyond the exhaust-burned area was tissue-thin and stiffened with vesicles of gas rather than cellulose. The veins were of saturated color, with reds, blues, and purples predominating. Those hues merged with the general pale yellow of leaf surfaces to create the appearance of gray when viewed from a distance. I wore a neck scarf. I put it to my mouth and breathed through it. It probably didn't filter any of the sharp poisons from the air, but at least it gave me the illusion that I was doing something useful. Sailors clumped together at the margin of the ravaged zone instead of spreading out. The forward ramp was lowered also, but men were filtering slowly down it because Hold One was still packed with supplies and equipment. "Stephen," called the man stepping from the forward ramp. "I'll take the lead, if you'll make sure that no one straggles from the rear of the line." The speaker wore brilliant, gilded body armor over a tunic with puffed magenta sleeves. The receiver of his repeating rifle was also gold-washed. Because the garb was unfamiliar and the man's face was in shadow, it was by his voice that I identified him as Piet Ricimer. Gregg broke off in the middle of an order to a pair of grizzled sailors. "Piet, you're not to do this!" he said. "We talked—" "You talked, Stephen," Ricimer interrupted with the crisp tone of the man whowas general commander of the expedition. "I said I'd decide when the time came. Shall we proceed?" Forty-odd men of thePorcelain 's complement of eighty now milled in the burned-off area. About Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html seventy-five percent of us had firearms. Most of the rest carried cutting bars like mine, but there were two flashguns besides Gregg's own. Flashguns were heavy, unpleasant to shoot because they scattered actinics, and were certain to attract enemy fire. I found it instructive that Stephen Gregg would carry such a weapon. The sky over the Federation base to the south suddenly rippled with spaced rainbow flashes. Four seconds later, the rumble of plasma cannon discharging shook the swamp about thePorcelain. A ship that must have been theMizpah dropped out of the sky. The sun-hot blaze of her thrusters was veiled by the ionized glow of their exhaust. Plasma drifted up and back from the vessel like the train of a lady in court dress. "The stupidwhoreson !" said Stephen Gregg. "They were to land together with us, not five minutes later!" Ricimer jumped quickly to the ground and trotted toward Gregg. "Stephen," he said, "you'd best join me in the lead. I think it's more important that we reach the base as quickly as possible than that the whole body arrives together. I'm very much afraid that Blakey is trying to land directly on the objective." As theMizpah lurched downward at a rate much faster than that of thePorcelain before her, a throbbing pulse of yellow light from the ground licked her lower hull. From where I jogged along a step behind Ricimer and Gregg, the starship was barely in sight above the low vegetation, but she must have been fifty or more meters above the ground. The plume of exhaust dissipated in a shock wave. Seconds later, we could hear a report duller than that of theMizpah' s cannon but equally loud. Ricimer held a gyro compass in his left hand. "This way," he directed. Twenty meters into the forest, the Porcelain was out of sight. "The bloody whoreson!" Gregg repeated as he jogged along beside his friend and leader. * * * "How . . ." I said. My voice was a croaking whisper. I couldn't see for sweat between the angry passes I made across my eyes with my sopping kerchief. " . . . do you stand this?" I finished, concluding on a rising note that suggested panic even to me. I deliberately lowered my voice to add, "You're wearing armor, I mean." Piet Ricimer squeezed my shoulder. Ricimer's face was red, and the sleeves of his gorgeous tunic were as wet as my kerchief. "You'll harden to it, Moore," he said. He spoke in gasps. "A kilometer isn't far. Once you're used to, you know. It." "The men won't follow . . ." Gregg said. He was a pace ahead of us, setting the trail through the flimsy, clinging vegetation. He didn't look back over his shoulder as he spoke. "Unless the leaders lead. So we have to." "A little to the right, Stephen," Ricimer wheezed. "I think we're drifting." Then in near anger he added, "Macquerie says the base was set on the firmest ground of the continent. What must the rest be like?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Each of my boots carried what felt like ten kilos of mud. The hilt of the cutting bar had a textured surface, but despite that the weapon kept trying to slide out of my grip. I was sure that if I had to use the bar, it would squirt into the hands of my opponent. The assault force straggled behind the three of us. How far behind was anybody's guess. About a dozen crewmen, laden with weapons and bandoliers of ammunition, slogged along immediately in back of me. They were making heavy going of it. The mud had stilled their initial chatter, but they were obviously determined to keep up or die. Three of the spacers were the regular watch from the attitude-control consoles. I suspected the others were among Ricimer's long-time followers also. With their share of the wealth from previous voyages, why in God's name were they undergoing this punishment and danger? And why had Jeremy Moore made the same choice? The day before sailing, Eloise had made it clear that there was a permanent place for me. On her terms, of course, but they weren't such terrible terms. The only thing that kept me up with the leaders was that Iwas with the leaders. I was with two undeniable heroes; staggering along, but present. "If she'd really crashed," Ricimer said, "we'd have—she'd shake the ground. TheMizpah. " "Fired off all ten guns descending," Gregg muttered. There was a streak of blood on his right hand and forearm, and his sleeve was ripped. "Means they landed with them empty. Feds may be cutting all their throats before we come up. Stupid whoresons." Then, in a coldly calm voice, he added, "Stop here. We've reached it." I knelt at the base of a spray of huge, rubbery leaves. My knees sank into the muck, but I didn't think I could've remained upright without the effort of walking to steady me. Ricimer halted with his left hand on Gregg's shoulder blade. Sailors, puffing and blowing as though they were coming up after deep dives, spread out to either side of the trail we had blazed. The native vegetation had been burned away from a hundred-meter band surrounding the Federation base. Water gleamed in pools and sluggish rivulets across the scabrous wasteland. The natural landscape was inhuman and oppressive; this defensive barrier was as ugly as a cinder. The perimeter fence was of loose mesh four meters high. Judging from the insulators the fence was electrified, but it didn't provide visual screening. Trees heavy with citrus fruit grew within the enclosure. In the center of the fenceline were a gate and a guard tower, at present unoccupied. Two men were strolling toward the tower up a lane through the trees. They were laughing; one carried a bottle. Both had rifles slung. Gregg aimed his flashgun from the concealment of a plantainlike growth with blue leaves the size of blankets. "Wait, Stephen," Ricimer ordered. He took off his gilt-braided beret, wiped his face in the crook of his arm, and put the beret on again. "Mister Sahagun!" he called, stepping out into the cleared area. "Mister Coos!" At the words, I recognized the pair as two of the gentlemen who'd transferred to theMizpah. They'd Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html taken off their heavy armor. I'd thought they were Federation soldiers whose bullets might kill me in the next seconds. Sahagun groped in startlement for his slung weapon before he recognized the speaker. "Ricimer, is that you?" he called. "Say, we're supposed to bring you in, but I just see that this bloody gate is locked. We'll—" Gregg had shifted infinitesimally when Sahagun touched his rifle. Now he moved an equally slight amount. His flashgun fired, a pulse of light so intense that the native foliage wilted from the side-scatter. Great leaves sagged away, fluttering in the echoes of the laser's miniature thunder. I tried to jump to my feet. I slipped and would have fallen except that a sailor I didn't know by name caught my arm. The bolt hit the crossbar where it intersected the left gatepost. Metal exploded in radiant fireballs which trailed smoke as they arced away. Coos and Sahagun fell flat on ground as wet as that through which we'd been tramping. "That's all right," Gregg called as he switched the battery in his weapon's stock for a fresh one. As with his friend and leader, there was no hint of exhaustion in his voice now. "We'll open it ourselves." "I think," said Piet Ricimer softly, "that we'll wait till our whole force has come up before any of us enter the base." There was nothing menacing in his words or tone, but I felt myself shiver. * * * "Ah, glad you've made it, Ricimer," said Thomas Hawtry as he rose from the porch of the operations building. A score of men stood about him. Many of them were frightened-looking and dressed in rags of white Federation uniforms. "I've got some very valuable information here,very valuable!" Hawtry spoke with an enthusiasm that showed he understood how chancy the next moments were likely to be. Like the others of theMizpah 's gentlemen, he'd put aside his breastplate and rifle. "In a moment, Mister Hawtry," said Piet Ricimer. He wiped his face again with his sleeve. "Captain Blakey. Present yourself at once!" TheMizpah had come down within a hundred and fifty meters of the administration buildings and base housing, blowing sod and shrubbery out in a shallow crater. The multitube laser that slashed the descending vessel from a guard tower had shattered a port thruster nozzle. Yawing into the start of a tumble, theMizpah had struck hard. The port outrigger fractured, though the vessel's hull appeared undamaged. Our men and Molts from the base labor force now surveyed the damage. I bubbled with relief at having gotten this far. Clouds scudded across the pale sky. It felt odd to know that there was no solid roof above, but it didn't bother me the way I'd been warned it might. I wondered where I could find a hose to clean my boots. I glanced down. My legs. They were covered in mud from mid-thigh. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Blakey broke away from the group beside theMizpah and trotted toward Ricimer. TheMizpah 's plasma cannon were still run out through the horizontal bank of gunports. To fire paired broadsides into the Federation base as the ship descended, Blakey must have rolled theMizpah on her axis, then counter-rolled. "There's a treasure right here on Decades," Hawtry said, pretending that he didn't realize he was being ignored, "and I've located it. The Feds here are too cowardly to grab it up themselves!" A freighter was docked at the far edge of the perimeter, nearly a kilometer from the administration building. That ship had taken much of theMizpah gunners' attention. One blast of charged particles had struck her squarely, vaporizing a huge hole. The shock of exploding metal dished in the light-metal hull for half its length and set fire to the vessel's interior. Dirty smoke billowed from the wreck and drifted through the nearby fenceline. I couldn't imagine any purpose in shooting at the freighter beyond a general desire to terrorize the defenders. In all likelihood, the Feds stationed here wouldn't have been aroused to defense except for the sudden blaze of cannonfire. Blakey whipped off the broad-brimmed hat which he, like many experienced Venerian travelers, wore under an open sky. "Mister Ricimer," he blurted, "I didn't have any choice. It was Mister Hawtry who—" "May I remind you that I gave you specific direction to land a kilometer north of the Federation compound, Captain Blakey?" Ricimer said in a knife-edged voice. "No one but the Lord God Almighty takes precedence to the orders I give on this expedition!" "No sir, no sir," Blakey mumbled, wringing his hat up in a tight double roll. The spacer's hair was solidly dark, but there was a salting of white hair in his beard and mustache. "Now, wait a minute, Ricimer," Hawtry said. He remained on the porch, ten meters away. The Federation personnel about him were easing away, leaving the gentlemen exposed like spines of basalt weathered out of softer stone. "TheMizpah 's condition?" Ricimer snapped. "We'll jack up the port side to repair the outrigger," Blakey said. He grimaced at his crumpled hat. "Then we'll switch the thruster nozzle, we've spares aboard, it's no—" "You lost only one thruster?" Ricimer demanded, his tongue sharp as the blade of a microtome. "Well, maybe shock cooling from the soil took another," Blakey admitted miserably. "We won't know till we get her up, but it's no more than three days' work with the locals to help." I noticed that one of the Federation personnel was a petite woman who'd cropped her brunette hair short. She nervously watched the byplay among her captors, gripping her opposite shoulders with her well-formed hands. I wondered if we'd be on Decades longer than three days. Although a great deal could happen in three days. "Look here, Ricimer!" boomed Hawtry as he stepped off the porch in a determination to use bluster Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html where camaraderie had failed. "The Molts that have escaped from here, they loot the ships that crash into the swamps. There've beenhundreds, over the years, and the Molts have all the treasure cached in one place. That's the real value of Decades!" Ricimer turned his head to look at Hawtry. I couldn't see his eyes, but the six gentlemen stepping from the porch to follow lurched to a halt. "The real value of Decades, Mister Hawtry," Ricimer said in a tone without overt emotion, "was to be the training it gave our personnel in discipline and obedience to orders." Ricimer turned to the men who'd accompanied him from the flagship. "Dole," he said mildly, "find the communications center here and inform theAbsalom andKinsolving to land within the perimeter. Oh—and see if you can raise Guillermo aboard thePorcelain to tell them that we're in control of the base." "I'll go with him," I volunteered in a light voice. "I, I'm good with electronics." "Yes," Ricimer said. "Do it." Dole didn't move. I started toward the administration building as an obvious place to look for the radios. Stephen Gregg laid a hand on the top of my shoulder without looking away from Ricimer and the gentlemen beyond. I stopped and swallowed. Ricimer swiveled back to theMizpah 's captain. "Mister Blakey," he said. "You'll leave repairs to the Mizpah in the charge of your navigator. You'll proceed immediately to thePorcelain, in company with Mister Hawtry and the other gentlemen adventurers who were aboard theMizpah when you decided to ignore my orders." "Lord take you for a fool, Ricimer!" Hawtry said. "If you think I'm going to rot in a swamp when—" Gregg locked down his helmet visor with a sharpclack. The flashgun's discharge was liable to blind anyone using it without filters to protect his eyes. Dole snicked the bolt of his rifle back far enough to check the load, then closed it again. Others of Ricimer's longtime crewmen stood braced with ready weapons. A cutting bar whined as somebody made sure it was in good order. "There'll be no blasphemy in a force under my command, Mister Hawtry," Ricimer said. Though his voice seemed calm, his face was pale with anger. "This time I will overlook it; and we'll hope the Lord, Who is our only hope for the success of these endeavors, will overlook it as well." Hawtry stepped backward, chewing on his lower lip. He wasn't a coward, but the muzzle of Gregg's weapon was only two meters from his chest. A bolt at that range would spray his torso over hectares of swamp. Ricimer's posture eased slightly. He reached into his belt pouch, handed Blakey the compass from it, and resumed. "You will find thePorcelain on a reciprocal of this course. Tell Mister Salomon that your party will guard the vessel until we're ready to depart. The crew will be more comfortable here at the base, I'm sure." Hawtry let out a long, shuddering breath. "We'll need men to deal with the menial work," he said. Ricimer nodded. "If you care to pay sailors extra to act as servants," he said, "that's between you and Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html them." Hawtry glanced over his shoulder at the accompanying gentlemen. Without speaking further, the group sidled away in the direction of theMizpah and the gear they'd left aboard her. Gregg opened his visor. His face had no expression. Dole plucked at my sleeve. "Let's get along and find the radio room, sir," the bosun said. "You know, I thought things were going to get interesting for a moment there." I tried to smile but couldn't. I supposed I should be thankful that I could walk normally. Back|Next Contents Framed Back|Next Contents DECADES Day 8 I turned at the console to look out the window of the commo room. Halfway across the compound, male prisoners from the Decades garrison and the damaged freighter were unloading spoiled stores from theAbsalom 231. With my left hand I picked a section from the half orange while my right fingers typed code into the numeric keypad. "That's it!" said Lavonne. She'd been Officer III (Communications) Cartier when Decades Station was under Federation control. "You've got the signal, Jeremy!" "Thanks to you and this wonderful equipment," I added warmly, patting my hand toward Lavonne without quite touching her. I pursed my lips as I looked over the console display. "Now if only the Mizpah 's hardware weren't a generation past the time it should've been scrapped . . ." The console showed the crew emptying the hulk, from the viewpoint of the port-side optical sensors in theMizpah 's hull. Occasionally some of the Venerians and Molts replacing theMizpah 's damaged thrusters came in sight at the lower edge of the display, oblivious of the fact they were being electronically observed. Because theMizpah 's sensors only updated the image six times a second, the picture was grainy and figures moved in jerks. Lavonne stripped the fascia from one of the orange sections I'd handed her, using her fingers and the tip of a small screwdriver. "Why, we could connect all the tower optics with this!" she said in pleased wonder. "Superintendent Burr keeps worrying that one day the Molts on guard will decide to let in the wild tribes from the swamp. But someone could watch what's going on in the towers from here." Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Several people came up the stairs from the lower level of the admin building, talking among themselves. I'd left the commo room's door ajar, though I'd made sure the panel could be locked if matters with Lavonne proceeded faster than I expected. "Ah—it's Molts that you're afraid of," I said, "and you use Molts forguards ?" "Well, the ones who've been trained to work for humans are trustworthy, I suppose," the woman said defensively. "Freshly caught ones used to escape from the holding pens while the ships carrying them laid over here." She bent past me to tap the screen where a corner of the inner compound was visible past the cargo hulk. Electrified wire surrounded thatch-roofed wooden racks. If it hadn't been for the voices in the hallway, I'd have taken up the offer implicit in Lavonne's posture. "That was years ago," she added, straightening. "They can't get out of the station now that the perimeter's fenced too." The door opened. Piet Ricimer stepped in, his head turned to catch Gregg's voice: " . . . who on Duneen's staff was paid to load us withgarbage in place of the first-quality stores we were charged for." I jumped to my feet, knocking my knees on the console. Macquerie and Guillermo entered behind Ricimer and his aide. I'd learned to recognize Guillermo from the yellowish highlights of his chitin and his comparatively narrow face. It was odd to think of the aliens as having personalities, though. "I've, ah, been connecting the squadron's optics through the console, here, Ricimer," I said. "Ah—save for thePorcelain; I'd have to be aboard her to set the handshake." I was nervous. What I'd done here had been at my own whim; and there was the matter of Lavonne, not that things there had come to fruition. Birth in a factorial family made me the social superior of the general commander, but I hadn't needed Hawtry's humiliation to teach me that the reality here was something else again. Ricimer glanced at the display. "From theMizpah ?" he said. "I'm delighted, Moore." Gregg offered me a bleak grin over the general commander's shoulder. Lavonne, who'd moved toward a corner when the command group entered, eyed the big man speculatively. There were things about women that I wouldnever understand. "I was surprised to find you aboard after we lifted off," Ricimer commented. "Stephen explained, though; and I can see that you'd be an asset in any case." "I, ah, regret the inconvenience I've caused," I said. I nodded to the pilot. I'd tried to avoid Macquerie thus far during the voyage, but a starship was close confinement for all those aboard her. If there was going to be trouble between us, best it happen under the eyes of Ricimer—and more particularly Gregg. Macquerie smiled wryly. "My own fault not to wonder why somebody was buying me drinks, Mister Moore," he said. Unlike the others, Macquerie respected me for my birth. "Anyway, Captain Ricimer says he'll put me down on Os Sertoes with my in-laws." A white asterisk pulsed at the upper corner of the screen as Macquerie spoke. I noticed it from the Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html corner of my eye. The icon might have been there for some while, and I didn't have any notion of what it meant. I opened my mouth to call a question to Lavonne. Before I spoke, Guillermo reached an oddly-jointed arm past me and touched a sequence of keys. Captain Blakey, his image streaked by static, snarled, "Comein, somebody, isn't there anybody on watch on this Goddamned planet?" Piet Ricimer put his left hand on my shoulder, guiding me out of the way so that he could take over the console. The general commander's grip was like iron. If I'd hesitated, he would have flung me across the radio room. "I'm here, Captain Blakey," Ricimer said. The static thinned visibly with each passing moment. I recognized the pattern. Thrusters expelled plasma, atoms stripped of part or all of their electron charge. The exhaust radiated across the entire radio frequency spectrum, with harmonics as it reabsorbed electrons from the surrounding atmosphere. A thruster was firing in the vicinity of thePorcelain . . . "Mister Hawtry's taken the cutter!" Blakey said. "He and the others, they're sure they know where Molt treasure is and they've gone off to get it. They have a map!" "Do you know where—" Ricimer began. Blakey cut him off. "I don't know where they're going," he blurted. "I wouldn't go, sir, I refused! But they got two of the sailors to fly the cutter for them, and now there's nobody aboard the ship but me and the other four sailors they brought. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn't even let me to the radio to warn you, sir." "We can't call the cutter while its thruster's operating," Gregg said. "Not that the damned fools would listen to us." "Outside of the plateau the station's on . . ." Captain Macquerie said grimly. "I know, you think it's a swamp, but it's the only solid ground on the continent. Five klicks in any direction from the station, it's soup. It maybe won't swallow them, but they'll play hell unclogging their nozzles to lift off again." My face grew still as glass; my mind considered the capabilities of the console built to the standards of the chip-rich North American Federation. The cutter's motor created RF hash that would smother normal attempts at communication, but that meant the thruster itself was a signal generator. "The superintendent got the map years ago from an old drunk in the maintenance section," Lavonne volunteered. "He really believes it, Burr does. But even if it was real, it'd be suicide to go so far outside the base." I changed displays to a menu, then changed screens again. A jagged line drew itself across a display gridded with kilometer squares and compass points. "There's a range and vector," I said to the room in general. "I don't have terrain data to underlay." The track quivered into a tight half-circle and stopped. The thruster had been shut off. The terminus was a little over ten kilometers from the screen's reference point—the console itself. Ricimer nodded and said crisply to Guillermo, "Alarm?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html The Molt entered a four-stroke command without bothering to call up a menu. One of Guillermo's ancestors, perhaps more than a thousand years before, had been trained to use a console of similar design. That experience, genetically imbedded, permitted the Molt to use equipment that he himself had never seen before. A four-throated horn in the roof of the admin building began to whoopHoo-Hee! Hoo-Hee! So long as men depended on Molts and pre-Collapse factories to provide their electronics, there would be no advance on the standards of that distant past. I was one of the few people—even on Venus—who believed therecould be improvement on the designs of those bygone demigods. I reached between Ricimer and Guillermo to key a series of commands through the link I had added to the system. TheKinsolving 's siren and the klaxon on theMizpah added their tones to the Fed hooter. Absalom 231 didn't have an alarm, or much of anything else. Ricimer flashed me a smile of appreciation and amusement. Stephen Gregg's mouth quirked slightly also, but the big gentleman's face was settling into planes of muscle over bone, and his eyes— I looked away. When Ricimer nodded to Guillermo, the Molt entered fresh commands into the console. The hooter and klaxon shut off, and theKinsolving 's siren began to wind down. "This is the general commander," Ricimer said. His voice boomed from the alarm horns; the tannoys of the three Venerian ships should be repeating the words as well. "All Porcelains report armed to the cargo hulk. Captain Winter, march your Kinsolvings at once to the flagship. Other personnel, guard the station here and await further orders." Ricimer rose from the console in a smooth motion and swept me with him toward the door. Gregg was in the lead, Guillermo and Macquerie bringing up the rear. Lavonne gaped at us. Her confusion was no greater than my own. "But theAbsalom. Captain?" Macquerie said. "Surely . . ." "TheMizpah can't lift, theKinsolving with the featherboats aboard won't hold but thirty or forty men," said Stephen Gregg in a voice as high and thin as a contrail in the stratosphere. His boots crashed on the stair treads. "The hulk's half empty. This is a job for troops, not cannon. If it's a job for anyone at all." "We can't abandon them, Stephen," Piet Ricimer said, snatching up his breastplate from the array in the building's entrance hall. The others, all but the Molt, were grabbing their own arms and equipment. I supposed my cutting bar was somewhere in the hardware, but I didn't have any recollection of putting it in a particular place. Guillermo wore a holstered pistol on his pink sash, but the weapon was merely a symbol. "Can't we, Piet?" Gregg said as he settled the visored helmet over his head. "Well, it doesn't matter to me." I thought I understood the implications of Gregg's words; and if I did, they were as bleak and terrible as the big gunman's eyes. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "Stand by!" Piet Ricimer called from the control bench of theAbsalom 231. "Stand by!" Dole shouted through a bullhorn as he stood at the hatch in the cockpit/hold bulkhead. The bosun braced his boots and his free hand against the hatch coaming. A short rifle was slung across his back. Most of the eighty-odd spacers aboard the hulk were packed into the hold, standing beside or on the pallets of stores that hadn't yet been dumped. At least half the food we'd loaded at Betaport was moldy or contaminated. Fortunately, the warehouses at Decades were stocked in quantities to supply fleets of the 500-tonne vessels which carried the Federation's cargoes. I was crowded into the small crew cabin with about a dozen other men. I gripped the frame of the bunk folded against the bulkhead behind me. I had to hold the cutting bar between my knees, because its belt clip was broken. The hulk's thrusters lit at half throttle, three nozzles and then all four together. The moment of unbalanced thrust made the shoddy vessel lurch into a violent yaw which corrected as Ricimer's fingers moved on the controls. "If he hadn't shut off the autopilot," Jeude grumbled to my right, "the jets'd have switched on about quick enough to flip us like a pancake. Which is what we'd all be when this pig hit." "If he hadn't shut off the autopilot," said Lightbody to my left, "he wouldn't be our Mister Ricimer. He'll get us out of this." The tone of the final sentence was more pious than optimistic. TheAbsalom 231 lifted from its hobbling hover to become fully airborne. The roar of the motors within the single-hulled vessel deafened me, but flight was much smoother than the liftoff had been. "Say, sir," Jeude said to me, "wouldn't you like a rifle, sir? Or maybe a flashgun like your friend Mister Gregg?" "I've never fired a gun," I shouted in reply to the solicitous spacer.Your friend Mister Gregg. Did Gregg and I have friends, either one of us? "I thought all you gentlemen trained for the militia," Lightbody said with a doubtful frown. He held a double-barreled shotgun, perhaps the one he'd had when guarding access to thePorcelain. Bandoliers of shells in individual loops crossed his chest. "Well, don't worry about it, Mister Moore," Jeude said cheerfully. "A bar's really better for a close-in dustup anyway." Someone in the hold—most of them, it must be to be heard in the cabin—was singing. " . . . is our God, a bulwark never failing." Macquerie and Guillermo peered from either side over Ricimer's shoulders to see the hulk's rudimentary navigational display. The Molt had downloaded data from the base unit to theAbsalom 231 before leaving the commo room. I couldn't guess how fast we were traveling. The hulk wallowed around its long axis. No starship was meant for atmospheric flight, and this flimsy can less than most. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Gregg stood behind the general commander, but he didn't appear interested in the display. He glanced back, his face framed by his helmet, and noticed me. Gregg bent down and touched the sliding switch on the hilt of my cutting bar. "That's the power switch," Gregg said, speaking with exaggerated lip movements instead of bellowing the words. "Click it forward to arm the trigger." I laid my thumb on the switch. "Thank you," I said. My mouth was dry. Gregg shrugged and straightened again. "There it is!" Macquerie shouted. "There it is, a pentagon, and there's the cutter!" "Stand by!" Dole cried, his amplified voice a dim shadow as thruster noise doubled by reflection from the ground. The men in the hold couldn't hear the bosun's warning, but the changed exhaust note was as much notice as veteran spacers needed. TheAbsalom 231 lurched, wobbled, and swung an unexpected 30° on its vertical axis. Jeude grabbed me as centrifugal force threw me forward. The hulk hit with a sucking crash. My shoulders banged into the bed frame behind me, but I didn't knock my head. More people than me had trouble with the landing. Two of the sailors in the cockpit lost their footing, and the clangor of equipment flying in the hold sounded like someone was flinging garbage cans. "Move! Move! Move!" Dole shouted. Gregg was at the cockpit's external hatch, spinning the manual undogging wheel more powerfully than a hydraulic pump could have done the job. My bar had spun away at the landing. Lightbody retrieved the weapon as Jeude hustled me forward with a hand on my elbow. "Think that was bad," Jeude remarked, "you'll appreciate it when you ride in a hulk with anybody else piloting." Gregg jumped out the hatch, his shoulders hunched and the flashgun cradled in both hands. Piet Ricimer followed, wearing a beret and carrying a repeating carbine. "For God and Venus!" he cried. Guillermo leaped clumsily next, half pushed by a sailor named Easton who followed him. Lightbody cleared the hatchway, his shotgun at high port. The opening was before me. The ground was meters below; I couldn't tell precisely how far. The vegetation was similar to what we'd seen on the trek from thePorcelain to the Federation base, but it seemed lusher. Huge leaves waved in the near distance, hiding the figures who brushed their supporting trunks. I jumped with my eyes closed. A leaf slapped my face and tore like wet paper. I landed and fell over when my right leg sank to the knee in soupy mud. I could see for five meters or so between the stems in most directions, though the broad leaves were a low ceiling overhead. The trees rose from pads of surface roots. Between the roots, standing water alternated with patches of algae as colorful as an oil slick. I struggled upright. My left boot was on firmer ground than the right, though I couldn't tell the difference visually. I saw a group of figures ahead and struggled toward them. Jeude hit with a muddy splash and a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html curse. "Easton, what's the line?" Piet Ricimer demanded. The pudgy sailor bent over an inertial compass the size of his hand. The swamp was alive with chirps and whooping. I hadn't noticed anything like the volume of sound nearer the base. I sank into a pool hidden by orange weed floating in a mat on its surface. Lightbody reached back and grabbed me. A lid lifted from the ground at Easton's feet. The underside of the lid had a soft, pearly sheen like the inner membrane of an egg; the hole beyond was covered with a similar coating to keep the wet soil from collapsing. The Molt in the spiderhole rammed a spear up into Easton's abdomen. The fat Venerian screamed and dropped the compass. Gregg shot the Molt at point-blank range with his flashgun. The alien's plastron disintegrated in a white glare and a shock wave that jolted me a step backward. Shards of chitin stripped surrounding leaves to the bare veins. Easton lurched three steps forward until the spear protruding from his belly tripped him. He fell on his face, his legs thrashing against the soft dirt. Jeude turned and fired. I couldn't see his target, if there was one. Screams and shots came from the direction of the hulk's rear loading ramp. Piet Ricimer picked up the compass, wiped its face on his sleeve, and checked a line. Gregg slung his flashgun. He hadn't had time to lower the filtering visor, so he must have closed his eyes to avoid being blinded by his own bolt. Easton carried a rifle. Gregg pulled it and the bandolier of ammunition from the body which still trembled with a semblance of life. "Guillermo," Ricimer ordered coolly as he dropped the compass in his purse, "go back to the ship and sound recall with the bullhorn. The rest of you, follow me to the cutter!" He swung the barrel of his carbine forward, pointing the way for his rush. Another spiderhole gaped beside him. Lightbody and Gregg fired simultaneously, ripping the Molt with buckshot and a bullet before the creature was halfway into its upward lunge. Ricimer vanished beyond a veil of dropping leaves. The others were following him. I stumbled forward, terrified of being left behind. The only thing I was conscious of was Gregg's back, two meters in front of me. Guns fired and I heard the whine of a cutting bar, but the foliage baffled sound into a directionless ambience. I burst out of the trees. A swath of bare soil bubbled and stank where the cutter's motor had cleared it while landing. The boat itself lay at a skew angle five meters away. A human, one of the sailors who'd accompanied the gentlemen exiled to thePorcelain, lay beside the vessel. A Molt of olive coloration leaned from the cutter's dorsal hatch, pointing a rifle. Ricimer shot the Molt and worked the underlever of his repeater. Ten more aliens with spears and metal clubs rushed us from the opposite side of the clearing. I was the man closest to them. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
