
 

    IGNITING THE REACHES
    
    An Ace Book
    Published by The Berkley Publishing Group
    200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
    
    Copyright C) 1994 by David Drake.
    
    Book design by Arnold Vila.
    
    All rights reserved. This edition or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
    in any form without permission)
    
    First Edition: April 1994
    
    Library of Congress SMI 9 W-g-in-Publication Data
    
    Drake, David (David A.)
       Igniting the reaches / David Drake.-lst ed.
       P. cm.
       ISBN 0-441-00026-6
       1. Title.
    PS3554.R1963137 1994
    813'.54--dc2O
    
    Printed in the United States AAmerica
    
    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
    
                                      93-8725
                                       CIP
                                     
       
                                 To Rana Van Name
                          Who first heard about this one
                      when we were all going off to dinner;
                               And who is special.
                                     
    1
  
    Above Salute
    
      Piet Ricimer stood out like an open flame on the crowded,
    cluttered bridge of the Sultan as she orbited Salute. Stephen
    Gregg was amused by the young officer's flashy dress.
     Well, Ricimer was no younger than Gregg himself-but
    Gregg, as a member of a factorial family, was mature in ways
    that no sailor would ever be. More sophisticated, at any rate.
    Realizing that sophistication and maturity might not be the
    same made Gregg frown for a moment until he focused on
    the discussion again.
     "I suppose it might be Salute," mumbled Bivens, the
    navigator. Gregg had already marked Bivens down as a man
    who never saw a planetfall he liked-or was sure he could
    identify.
     "Look, of course it's Salute!" insisted Captain Choransky,
    commander of the Sultan and the other two ships of the argosy.
    "It's just this tub's lousy optics that makes it hard to tell."
     His vehemence made the landfall seem as doubtful as Bivens'
    concern had done. This was Gregg's first voyage off Venus,
    much less out of the solar system. He was too young at twenty-
    two Earth years to worry much about it, but he wondered at the
    back of his mind whether this lot would be able to find their
    way home.
     Besides the officers, three crewmen sat at the workstations
    controlling the forward band of attitude jets. The Sultan had
    been stretched by two hull sections after her first decade of
    service as an intrasystem trader. That had required adding
    another band of jets.
     The new controls and the sprawl of conduits feeding them had
    been placed on the bridge. They made it difficult for a landsman
    like Gregg to walk there under normal 1-g acceleration without
    tripping or bruising himself against a hip-high projection. Now,
    with the flagship floating in orbit, Gregg had even worse prob-
    lems. The spacers slid easily along.
     The most reassuring thing about the situation was the expres-
    sion of utter boredom worn by every one of the crewmen on the
    control boards. They were experienced, and they saw no reason
    for concern.
     "Sir," said Ricimer, "I'll take the cutter down and find us
    a landing site. This is Salute. I've checked the star plots
    myself."
     "Can't be sure of a plot with these optics," Bivens muttered.
    "Maybe the Dove got a better sighting than I could."
     "I'll take the six men who came with me when I sold The
    Judge," Ricimer said brightly. "I'm pretty sure I've spotted
    two Southern compounds, and there are scores of Molt cities
    for sure."
     Ricimer was a short man, dark where Gregg was fair. Though
    willing to be critical, Gregg admitted that the spacer was good-
    looking, with regular features and a waist that nipped in beneath
    powerful shoulders. Ricimer wore a tunic of naturally red fibers
    from somewhere outside the solar system, and his large St.
    Christopher medal hung from a strand of glittering crystals
    that were more showy than valuable.
     "Might not even be Molts here if it isn't Salute," Bivens
    said. "Between the twenty-third and twenty-ninth transits, I
    think we went off track."
     Choransky turned, probably as much to get away from
    his navigator as for a positive purpose, and said, "All right,
    Ricimer, take the cutter down. But don't lose her, and don't
    con me into some needle farm that won't give me a hun-
    dred meters of smooth ground. The Sultan's no featherboat,
    remember."
     "Aye-aye, sir!" Ricimer said with another of his brilliant
    smiles.
     "I'd like to go down with the boat," Gregg said, as much
    to his own surprise as anyone else's.
     That drew the interest of the other men on the bridge, even
    the common sailors. Piet Ricimer's face went as blank as a
    bulkhead.
     Gregg anchored himself firmly to the underside of a
    workstation with his left hand. "I'm Stephen Gregg,'-' he
    said. "I'm traveling as supercargo for my uncle, Gregg of
    Weyston."
     "I know that," Ricimer said, with no more expression in his
    voice than his face held.
     "Ah-Ricimer," Captain Choransky said nervously. "Factor
    Gregg is quite a major investor in this voyage."
     "I know that too," Ricimer said. His eyes continued to
    appraise Gregg. In a tone of challenge, he went on, "Can
    you handle a boat in an atmosphere, then, Gregg?"
     Gregg sniffed. "I can't handle a boat anywhere," he said
    flatly. "But I'm colonel of the Eryx battalion of the militia,
    and I'm as good a gunman as anybody aboard this ship."
     Ricimer's smile spread again. "Yeah," he said, "that might
    be useful."
     He reached out his hand to shake Gregg's. When he saw
    the landsman was afraid to seem awkward in reaching to take
    it, Ricimer slid closer. He moved as smoothly as a feather in
    the breeze. Ricimer's grip was firm, but he didn't make the
    mistake of trying to crush Gregg's hand to prove that he was
    as strong as the bigger man.
     "Maybe," Ricimer added over his shoulder as he led Gregg
    out through the bridge hatch, "we can give you some hands-on
    with the boat as well."

    2
    
    Above Salute
    
    "Tancred!" Ricimer shouted as he slid hand over hand pa~
    crewmen in the bay containing the other two sets of attitude-j(
    controls. "C'mon along. Leon, get Bailey and Dole from th
    main engine compartment. We're taking the cutter down!"
     "Bloody well about time!" agreed Leon. He was the Sultan's bosun,
    a burly, scarred man. Leon picked his way with
    practiced skill through a jungle of equipment and connections
    toward a back passage to the fusion thrusters.
     "Lightbody and Jeude are already in Cargo Three with the
    boat," Ricimer said as he plunged headfirst down a ladderw,
    toward the cargo holds.
     Gregg tried to go "down" feetfirst as he would on a ladder
    under gravity. The passage, looped with conduits, was
    too narrow for him to turn when he realized his mistake.
    Tancred, following, Gregg the proper way, was scarcely
    boy in age. His face bore a look of bored disgust as
    waited for the landsman to kick his way clear of obstacles
    he couldn't see.
     Though the Sultan wasn't under thrust, scores of machines
    worked within the vessel's hull to keep her habitable. Vents
    in the passage sighed like souls overwhelmed by misery.
     Three crewmen under Leon were readying the eight-man
    cutter when Gregg reached the hold. Tancred dogged the hatch
    closed, then joined the others with a snorted comment that
    Gregg chose not to hear.
     Ricimer was at the arms locker, handing a cutting bar to the
    wiry spacer. "Here you go, Gregg," Ricimer called. The hold's
    empty volume blurred and thinned Ricimer's tones. "What do
    you want to carry?"
     
    Gregg looked over the selection. The bridge had a separate
    arms locker, but the larger cabinet was here in Cargo Three,
    whose outer hatch provided the Sultan's main access-except,
    presumably, when the hold was full of cargo.
    The locker held a dozen breech-loading rifles, each with
    a bag of ammunition sized to that weapon's chamber. Two
    of the rifles were repeaters, but those would be even more
    sensitive to ammo variations than the single-shots.
    True standardization had ended a millennium before, when
    hit-and-run attacks during the revolt of the outer colonies
    wrecked automated factories throughout the human universe.
    Billions of people died in the Collapse that followed.
    Humanity had recovered to a degree. Mass production was
    technically possible again. The horror of complex systems that
    could be destroyed by a shock-and bring down civilization
    with them-remained. It was as much a religious attitude as
    a practical one.
    Most of the locker was filled with powered cutting bars,
    forty or more of them.Venerian ceramic technology made
    their blades, super-hard teeth laminated in a resilient matrix,
    deadly even when the powerpack was exhausted and could not
    vibrate the cutting edge. Apart from their use as weapons, the
    bars were useful tools when anything from steel to tree trunks
    had to be cut.
       There were also three flashguns in the locker. These had
    stubby barrels of black ceramic, thirty centimeters long and
    about twenty in diameter, mounted on shoulder stocks.
    Under the right circumstances, a flashgun's laser bolts were
    far more effective than shots from a projectile weapon. The
    flashgun drained its power at each bolt, but the battery in the
    butt could be replaced with reasonable ease. Under sunny con-
    ditions, a parasol accumulator deployed over the gunner's head
    would recharge the weapon in two or three minutes anyway,
    making it still handier.
       But flashguns were heavy, nearly useless in smoke or rain,
    and dangerous when the barrel cracked in use. The man car-
    rying one wasa target for every enemy within range, and
    side-scatter from the bolt was at best unpleasant to the shoot-
    er. Theyweren't popular weapons despite their undoubted
    efficiency.
       Gregg took a flashgun and a bandolier holding six spare
    batteries from the locker.
     Piet Ricimer raised an eyebrow. "I don't like to fool with
    flashguns unless I'm wearing a hard suit," he said.
     Gregg shrugged, aware that he'd impressed the sailor for the
    first time. "I don't think we'll run into anything requiring hard
    suits," he said. "Do you?"
     Ricimer shrugged in reply. "No, I don't suppose so," he said
    mildly.
     Carrying two single-shot rifles, Ricimer nodded the crewman
    holding another rifle and three cutting bars toward the boat. He
    followed, side by side with Gregg.
     "You owned your own ship?" Gregg asked, both from curi-
    osity for the answer and to find a friendly topic. He didn't
    care to be on prickly terms with anybody else in the narrow
    confines of a starship.
     Ricimer smiled At the memory. "The Judge, yes," he said
    "Captain Cooper, the man who trained me, willed her to me
    when he died without kin. Just a little intrasystem trader, bu
    she taught me as much as the captain himself did. I wouldn't
    have sold her, except that I really wanted to see the stars."
     Ricimer braked himself on the cutter's hull with an expert
    flex of his knees, then caught Gregg to prevent him from
    caroming toward a far corner of the hold. "You'll get the hang
    of it in no time," he added encouragingly to the landsman.
     The interior of the boat was tight for eight people. The
    bench down the axis of the cabin would seat only about five,
    so the others squatted in the aisles along the bulkheads.
     Gregg had heard of as many as twenty being crammed into
    a vessel of similar size. He couldn't imagine how. He had to
    duck when a sailor took the pair of rifles from Ricimer and
    swung, poking their barrels toward Gregg's eyes.
     Ricimer seated himself at the control console in the rear
    of the cabin. "Make room here for Mr. Gregg," he ordered
    Leon, who'd taken the end of the bench nearest him. The burly
    spacer gave Gregg a cold look as he obeyed.
     "Hatch is tight, sir," Tancred reported from the bow as he
    checked the dogs.
     Ricimer keyed the console's radio. "Cutter to Sultan's
    bridge," he said. "Open Cargo Three. Over."
     There was no response over the radio, but a jolt transmitted
    through the hull indicated that something was happening in the
    hold. The boat's vision screen was on the bulkhead to the left
    of the controls. Gregg leaned forward for a clearer view. The
    double hatchway pivoted open like a clam gaping. Vacuum
    was a nonreflecting darkness between the valves of dull white
    ceramic.
     Hang on, boys," Ricimer said. He touched a control, An
    attitude jet puffed the cutter out of the hold, on the first stage
    of its descent to the surface of the planet below.

    3
   
    Salute
    
    "Got a hot spot, sir," Leon said, shouting over the atmospheric
    buffeting. He nodded toward the snake of glowing red across
    the decking forward. The interior of the cutter was unpleasant-
    ly warm, and the bitter tinge of things burning out of the bilges
    made Gregg's eyes water and his throat squeeze closed.
     "Noted," Ricimer agreed. He fired the pair of small thrusters
    again, skewing the impulse 10 degrees from a perpendicular through
    the axis of the bench.
     The spacers swayed without seeming to notice the change.
    Tancred grabbed Gregg's bandolier. That was all that pre-
    vented the landsman from hurtling into a bulkhead.
     "Thanks," Gregg muttered in embarrassment.
     The young spacer sneered.
     Ricimer leaned over his console. "Sorry," he said. "I needed
    to yaw us a bit. There's a crack in the outer hull, and if
    the inner facing gets hot enough, we'll have problems with
    that too."
     Gregg nodded. He looked at the hot spot, possibly a duller
    red than it had been a moment before, and wondered whether
    atmospheric entry with a perforated hull could be survivable.
    He decided the answer didn't matter.
     "Do you have a particular landing site in mind, Ricimer?"
    he asked, hoping his raw throat wouldn't make his voice
    break.
     "Three of them," Ricimer said, glancing toward the vision
    screen. "But I don't trust the Sultan's optics either. We'll find
    something here, no worry."
     The cutter's vision screen gave a torn, grainy view of the
    landscape racing by beneath. A few cogs of the scanning raster
    were out of synch with the rest, displacing the center of the
    image to the right. Ragged green streaks marked the generally
    arid, rocky termin.
     Gregg squinted at the screen. He'd seen a regular pattern,
    a mosaic of pentagons, across the green floor of one valley.
    "That's something!" he said.
     Ricimer nodded approvingly. "There's Molts here, at least.
    Captain Choransky wants a place where the Southerns have
    already set up the trade, though."
     The Molts inhabited scores of planets within what had been
    human space before the Collapse. Tradition said that men
    had brought the chitinous humanoids from some unguessed
    homeworld and used them as laborers. Certainly there was no
    sign that the Molts had ever developed mechanical transport
    on their own, let alone star drive.
     It was easy to think of the Molts as man-sized ants and
    their cities as mere hives, but they had survived the Col-
    lapse on the outworlds far better than humans had. Some
    planets beyond the solar system still had human populations
    of a sort: naked savages, "Rabbits" to the spacers, susceptible
    to diseases hatched among the larger populations of Earth
    and Venus and virtually useless for the purposes of resurgent
    civilization.
     Molt culture was the same as it had been a thousand years
    ago, and perhaps for ten million years before that; and there
    was one thing more:
     A few robot factories had survived the Collapse. They were
    sited at the farthest edges of human expansion, the colony
    worlds which had been overwhelmed by disaster so swiftly
    that the population didn't have time to cannibalize their sys-
    tems in a desperate bid for survival. To present-day humans,
    these automated wonders were as mysterious as the processes
    which had first brought forth life.
     But the Molts had genetic memory of the robot factories
    humans had trained them to manage before the Collapse.
    Whatever the Molts had been to men of the first expansion,
    equals or slaves, they were assuredly slaves now; and they
    were very valuable slaves.
     Gregg checked his flashgun's parasol. Space in the boat was
    too tight to deploy the solar collector fully, but it appeared to
    slide smoothly on the extension rod.
     Two spacers forward were discussing an entertainer in
    Redport on Titan. From their description of her movements
    she must have had snake blood.
     The thrusters roared, braking hard. "So . . ." said Rici
    "You're going to be a factor one of these days?"
     Gregg looked at him. "Probably not," he said. "My brother
    inherited the hold. He's healthy, and he's got two sons
    already.
     He paused, then added, "It's a small place in the Atala
    Plains, you know. Eryx. Nothing to get excited about."
     The edge of Ricimer's mouth quirked. "Easy to say when
    you've got it," he said, so softly that Gregg had to read
    words off the smaller man's lips.
     The thrusters fired again. Gregg held himself as rigid
    caryatid. He smiled coldly at Tancred beside him.
     Ricimer stroked a lever down, gimballing the thrus
    sternward. The cigar-shaped vessel dropped from orbit
    its long axis displayed to the shock of the atmosphere. Now
    they'd slowed sufficiently, Ricimer slewed them into normal
    flight. They were about a thousand meters above the ground
     "You know, I'm from a factorial family too," Ricimer
    with a challenge in his tone.
     Gregg raised an eyebrow. "Are you?" he said. "I've
    always suspected that my family was really of some
    account in the service of Captain Gregg during the Revol
     His smile was similar to the one he had directed at Tan
    a moment before. "My Uncle Benjamin, though," Gregg
    tinued, "that's Gregg of Weyston ... He swears he's checked
    the genealogy and I'm wrong. That sort of thing matters
    a great deal-to Uncle Benjamin."
     The two young men stared at one another while the craft
    shuddered clumsily through the air. Starships' boats could
    operate in atmospheres, but they weren't optimized for
    duty.
     Piet Ricimer suddenly laughed. He reached over the con
    and gripped Gregg's hand. "You're all right, Gregg," he said.
    "And so am I, most of the time." His smile lighted the interior
    of the vessel. "Though you must be wondering.
     "And there . . ." Ricimer went on-he hadn't looked towards
    the vision screen, so he must have caught the blurred
    of metal out of the corner of his eyes-"is what we're look-
    ing for."
     Ricimer cut the thruster and brought the boat around
    slow curve with one hand while the other keyed the radio.
    "Ricimer to Sultan," he said. "Home on me. We've got what
    looks like a Molt compound with two Southern Cross ships
    there already."
     "And we're all going to be rich!" Leon rumbled from where
    he squatted beside the bow hatch. He touched the trigger of
    his cutting bar and brought it to brief, howling life-
     Just enough to be sure the weapon was as ready as Leon
    himself was.

    4

    Salute

    The Preakness, third and last vessel of Captain Choransky's
    argosy, spluttered like water boiling to lift a pot lid as she
    descended onto the gravel scrubland. Her engines cut in and
    out raggedly instead of holding a balanced thrust the way the
    thrusters of the Sultan's boat had done for Ricimer.
     Compared to the Sultan herself, the little Preakness was a
    model of control. Choransky's flagship slid down the gravity
    slope like a hog learning to skate. Gregg had been so sure the
    Sultan was going to crash that he'd looked around for some
    sort of cover from the gout of flaming debris.
     The flagship had cooled enough for the crew to begin open-
    ing its hatches. It had finally set down six hundred meters
    away from the boat, too close for Gregg's comfort during the
    landing but a long walk for him now.
     The roaring engines of the Preakness shut off abruptly.
    ground shuddered with the weight of the vessel. Bits of rock
    kicked up from the soil by the thrusters, clicked and pinged
    for a few moments on the hulls of the other ships.
     "Let's go see what Captain Choransky has in mind," Ricimer
    said, adjusting the sling of the rifle on his shoulder. He sighed
    and added, "You know, if they'd trust the ships' artificial
    intelligences, they could land a lot smoother. When the Sultan
    wallowed in, I was ready to run for cover."
     Gregg chuckled. "There wasn't any," he said.
     "You're telling me!" Ricimer agreed.
     He turned to the sailors. Two were still in the boat, while
    others huddled unhappily in the vessel's shadow. Venerians
    weren't used to open skies. Gregg was uncomfortable himse
    but his honor as a gentleman-and Piet Ricimer's apparent
    imperturbability-prevented him from showing his fear.
    
    "The rest of you stay here with the boat," Ricimer ordered.
    "Chances are, the captain'll want us to ferry him closer to the
    Southern compound. There's no point in doing anything until
    we know what the plan is."
     "Aye-aye," Leon muttered for the crew. The bosun was as
    obviously glad as the remainder of the crew that he didn't have
    to cross the empty expanse.
     "And keep a watch," Ricimer added. "Just because we don't
    see much here-"
     He gestured. Except for the Venerian ships-the crews of
    the Sultan and Dove were unloading ground vehicles-there
    was nothing between the boat and the horizon except rocky
    hummocks of brush separated by sparse growths of a plant
    similar to grass.
    "-doesn't mean that there isn't something around that thinks
    we're dinner. Besides, Molts can be dangerous, and you know
    the Southern Cross government in Buenos Aires doesn't want
    us to trade on the worlds it claims."
     "Let them Southerns just try something!" Tancred said. The
    boy got up and stalked purposefully around to the other side of
    the boat, from where he could see the rest of the surroundings.
     Gregg and Ricimer set out for the flagship. The dust of
    landing had settled, but reaction mass exhausted as plasma
    had ignited patches of scrub. The fires gave off bitter smoke.
     "Do you think there's really anything dangerous around
    here?" Gregg asked curiously.
     Ricimer shrugged. "I doubt it," he said. "But I don't know
    anything about Salute." He stared at the white sky. "If this
    really is Salute."
     From above, the landscape appeared flat and featureless.
    The hummocks were three or four meters high, lifted from
    the ground on the plateaus of dirt which clung to the roots of
    woody scrub. Sometimes they hid even the Sultan's 300-tonne
    bulk from the pair on foot.
     The bushes were brown, leafless, and seemingly as dead as
    the gravel beneath. Gregg saw no sign of animal life whatever.
     "How do you think the Southerns are going to react?"
    Ricimer asked suddenly.
     Gregg snorted. "They can claim the Administration of
    Humanity gave them sole rights to this region if they like.
    The Administration didn't do a damned thing for the Gregg
    family after the Collapse, when we could've used some help-
    didn't do a damned thing-"
     "Don't swear," Ricimer said sharply. "God hears us here
    also."
     Gregg grimaced. In a softer tone, he continued, "Nobody
    but God and Venus helped Venus during the Collapse. The
    Administration isn't going to tell us where in God's universe
    we can trade now."
     Ricimer nodded. He flashed his companion a brief grin to
    take away the sting of his previous rebuke. Factorial families
    were notoriously loose about their language; though the same
    was true of most sailors as well.
     "But what will the Southerns do, do you think?" Ricimer
    asked in a mild voice.
     "They'll trade with us," Gregg said flatly. He shifted his
    grip on the flashgun. It was an awkward weapon to carry
    for any distance. The fat barrel made it muzzle-heavy.and
    difficult to sling. "Just as the colonies of the North American
    Federation will trade with us when we carry the Molts to them
    The people out in the Reaches, they need the trade, whatever
    politics are back in the solar system."
     "Anyway," Ricimer said in partial agreement, "the South
    erns can't possibly have enough strength here to give us a hard
    time. We've got almost two hundred men."
     Choransky's crew had uncrated the three stake-bed trucks
    carried in the Sultan's forward hold. Two of them were run-
    ning. As Ricimer and Gregg approached, the smoky rotary
    engine of the third vibrated into life. Armed crewmen, many
    of them wearing full or partial body armor, clambered aboard
     Captain Choransky stood up in the open cab of the leading
    vehicle. "There you are, Ricimer!" he called over the head o
    his driver. "We're off to load our ships. You and Mr. Greg
    can come along if you can find room."
     The truck bed was full of men, and the other two would be
    packed before the young officers could reach them. Withou
    hesitation, Ricimer gripped a cleat and hauled himself onto th
    outside of Choransky's vehicle. His boot toes thrust between
    the stakes which he held with one hand. He reached down
    with the other hand to help Gregg into a similarly precarious
    position, just as the truck accelerated away.
     Gregg wondered what he would have done if Ricimer hadn't
    extended a hand, certain that his companion wanted to come
    despite the risk. Gregg didn't worry about his own courage-
    but he preferred to act deliberately rather than at the spur of
    the moment.
     He looked over his shoulder. The Sultan's other two trucks
    were right behind them, but the Dove's crew were still setting
        up the vehicle they'd unloaded. The Preakness was just open-
    ing her single hatch.
     "Shouldn't we have gotten organized first?" Gregg shouted
    into Ricimer's ear over the wind noise.
     Ricimer shrugged, but he was frowning.

    4    

    Salute

    The general rise in the lumpy terrain was imperceptible,
    when the trucks jounced onto a crest, Gregg found he could
    look sharply down at the ships three kilometers behind him.
     And, in the other direction, at the compound. Neither of the
    Southern vessels was as big as the Preakness, the lightest of
    Choransky's argosy. The installation itself consisted of a
    few orange, prefabricated buildings and a sprawling area marked
    off by metal fencing several meters high. The fence sparkled
    as it incinerated scraps of vegetation which blew against it.
    
       There was no sign of humans. Squat, mauve-colored figures
    watched the Venerians from inside the fence: Molts, oVer a
    hundred of them.
     Captain Choransky stood up in his seat again, aiming a
    rifle skyward in one hand. The truck rumbled over the dirt
    gaining speed as it went.
     "Here we go, boys!" Choransky bellowed. His shot cracked
    flatly across the barren distances.
     A dozen other crewmen fired. Dust puffed just short of the
    orange buildings, indicating that at least one of the men 
    wasn't aiming at the empty heavens.
     "What are we doing?" Gregg shouted to Ricimer. "Is this
    an attack? What's happening?"
     Ricimer cross-stepped along the stakes and leaned towards
    the cab. "Captain Choransky!" he said. "We're not at war
    with the Southern Cross, are we?"
     The captain turned with a startled expression replacing
    glee. "War, boy?" he said. "There's no peace beyond Pluto.
    Don't you know anything?"
 
     Choransky's truck pulled up between the two buildings.
    Gregg squeezed hard to keep from losing his grip either on
    the vehicle or the heavy flashgun which inertia tried to drag
    out of the hand he could spare for it. The second truck almost
    skidded into theirs in a cloud of stinging grit. The third stopped
    near the Southern starships.
     Gregg jumped down, glad to be on firm ground again. The
    smaller building was a barracks. Sliding doors and no windows
    marked the larger as a warehouse.
     Gregg ran toward the warehouse, his flashgun ready. Ricimer
    was just ahead of him. They were spurred by events, even
    though neither of them was sure what was going on.
     Ricimer twisted the latch of the small personnel door in the
    slider. It wasn't locked.
     The warehouse lights were on. The interior was almost
    empty. A man in bright clothing lay facedown on the concrete
    floor with his hands clasped behind his neck. "I surrender!" he
    bleated. "I'm not armed! Don't hurt-"
     Gregg gripped the Southern by the shoulder. "Come on, get
    up," he said. "Nobody's going to hurt you."
     "I got one!" cried the spacer who pushed into the ware-
    house behind Gregg. He waved his cutting bar toward the
    prisoner.
     Ricimer used his rifle muzzle to prod the blade aside as
    he stepped in front of the Venerian. "Our prisoner, I think,
    sailor," he said. "And take off your cap when you address
    officers!"
     The man stumbled backward into the group following
    him. One of the newcomers was Platt, another member of
    Choransky's command group. Platt wore a helmet with the
    faceshield raised. In addition, he carried a revolving pistol
    belted on over body armor.
     "Who else is here?" Gregg asked the Southern he held. He
    spoke in English, the language of trade-and the tongue in
    which the fellow had begged for mercy.
     "What's going on?" Platt demanded.
     Ricimer shushed him curtly. He stood protectively between
    Gregg and the newcomers, but his face was turned to catch the
    Southern's answers.
     "Nobody, nobody!" the prisoner said. "I was in here-all
    right, I was asleep. I heard a ship landing, I thought it was,
    so I went out and all the bastards had run away and left me!
    All of them! Taken the trucks and what was I supposed to do?
    Defend the compound?"
     "Why didn't you defend the compound?" Gregg asked. "I
    mean, all of you. There's the crews of those two ships as well
    as the staff here."
     Around them, Platt and a score of other Venerians were
    poking among bales of trade goods, mostly synthetic fabrics
    and metal containers. The warehouse was spacious enough to
    hold twenty times the amount of merchandise present.
     "Defend?" the Southern sputtered. He was a small man, as
    dark as Ricimer, with a face that hadn't been prepossessing
    before a disease had pocked it. "With what, half a dozen rifles?
    And there wasn't but ten of us all told. The local Molts bring
    us prisoners and we buy them. We aren't soldiers."
     "We should've landed right here in the valley," said Platt
    who'd drifted close enough to hear the comment. "Cap'n
    Choransky was too afraid of taking a plasma charge up the
    bum while we hovered to do that, though."
     "And so would you be if you had the sense God gave
    a goose!" boomed Choransky himself as he strode into the
    warehouse. "You got a prisoner, Mr. Gregg? Good work!
    There wasn't anybody in the house."
     The captain rubbed his cheek with the knuckles of his
    right hand, in which he held his rifle. "Like a pigsty, that
    place."
     "He says his fellows drove off in a panic and left him when
    they heard the ships.landing, sir," Ricimer said.
     Choransky stepped closer to the prisoner. "Where's the rest
    of your stock?" he asked.
     "You can't just come and take-" the Southern began.
     Choransky punched him, again using his right hand with the
    rifle. The prisoner sprawled backward on the concrete. His lip
    bled, and there was a livid mark at the hairline where the fore-
    stock struck.
     "We've got pretty much a full load," the Southern said in
    a flat voice from the floor. He was staring at the toes of
    his feet.
    
     He touched the cut in his lip with his tongue, then con-
    tinued, "There's a freighter due in a week or so. The ships
    out there, they don't have transit capability. The freighter,
    stays in orbit. We ferry up air, reaction mass, and cargo and...

          Choransky nodded. "Maybe we'll use them to ferry the
    water over and top off our reaction mass. Those ships, they've
    got pumps to load water themselves?"
     "Yes," the Southern muttered to his toes.
     Platt kicked the side of the prisoner's head, not hard. "Say
    'sir' when you talk to the captain, dog!"
     "Yes sir, Captain," the Southern said.
     "All right," Choransky said as he turned to leave the ware-
    house. "Platt, get the Molts organized and march them to the
    ships, Ricimer, you think you're a whiz with thrusters, you
    see if you can get one of those Southern boats working. I'll
    tell Baltasar to put an officer and crew from the Dove in the
    other."
     He strode out the door. Platt followed him, and the rest of
    the spacers began to drift along in their wake.
     "Right," said Ricimer. He counted off the six nearest men
    with pecks of his index finger. "You lot, come along with me
    and Mr. Gregg. I'm going to show people how to make a ship
    hover on thrust."
     He shooed them toward the doorway ahead of him with both
    arms. The chosen crewmen scowled or didn't, depending on
    temperament, but no one questioned the order.
     "You don't mind, do you?" Ricimer murmured to Gregg
    as they stepped out under an open sky again. "They haven't
    worked with me before. You won't have to do anything, but
    I'd like a little extra authority present."
     "Glad to help," Gregg said. He looked at his left hand. He'd
    managed to bark the knuckles badly during the wild ride to the
    compound. "Besides, I wasn't looking forward to those trucks
    again."
     Ricimer chuckled. His dark, animated face settled. Without
    looking at his companion, he said, "What do you think about
    all this, anyway? The way we're dealing with the Southerns."
     Gregg glanced around while he framed a reply. Venerians
    had unlocked the gate in the electrified fence and were herding
    out the Molts. Some crewmen waved their weapons, but that
    seemed unnecessary. The Molts were perfectly docile.
     The wedge-faced humanoids were a little shorter than the
    human average. Most of them were slightly built, but a few
    had double the bulk of the norm. Gregg wondered whether
    that was a sexual distinction or some more esoteric speciali-
    zation.
      Viewed up close, many of the Molts bore dark scars on their
    waxy, purplish exoskeletons. A few were missing arms, and
    more lacked one or more of the trio of multijointed fingers
    that formed a normal "hand".
     "I'm my uncle's agent," Gregg said at last. "And I can
    tell you, nothing bothers my Uncle Ben if there's profit in
    it. Which there certainly is here."
     Ricimer nodded. "I'm second cousin to the Mosterts," he
    said.
     One of the crewmen he'd dragooned showed enough initia-
    tive to run ahead and find the hatch mechanism of the nearest
    ship. It sighed open.
     "Really, now," Ricimer added with a grin to his compan
    ion. "Though what I said about a factorial family, there's
    evidence."
     Gregg laughed.
     "All three ships are Alexi Mostert's," Ricimer continued
    "In the past, my cousin's made the voyage himself, though he
    sent Choransky out in charge this time. I'm sure this is how
    Alexi conducted the business too."
     They'd reached the Southern Cross vessel. It weighed about
    50 tonnes and was metal-hulled, unlike the ships of the Venerian
    argosy. Metals were cheap and readily available in the asteroids
    of every planetary system; but ceramic hulls were preferable to
    vessels which had to traverse the hellish atmosphere of Venus.
    Besides, the surface of the second planet was metal-poor.
     Survival after the Collapse had raised ceramic technology
    a level higher than had been dreamed of while Venus was part
    of a functioning intergalactic economy. After a thousand years
    of refinement, Venerians sneered at the notion metals could
    ever equal ceramics-though the taunt "glass-boat sailers
    had started fights in many spaceports since Venus returned
    to space.
     "Some of you find the water intakes and figure out how,
    to deploy them," Ricimer ordered as he sat at the control
    console.
     The interior of the vessel stank with a variety of odors;
    some of them simply those of a large mass of metal to noses
    unfamiliar with it. The control cabin could be sealed. The
    rest of the ship was a single open hold.
     "What do you think of what we're doing?" Ricimer said to
    Gregg.

             Then, before the landsman could reply, he added in a crisp
             voice,"All hands watch yourselves. I'm going to light the
             thrusters."
             "I think. Gregg murmured as Ricimer engaged the ves-
             sel's AI, "that it's bad for business, my friend."
 
    6 
    
    Near Virginia
 
   Choransky and Bivens muttered, their heads close above a
    CRT packed with data. The navigator grimaced but nodded.
    Choransky reached for a switch.
     Ricimer turned from where he stood in the midst of the
    forward attitude-control boards he now supervised. "All right,
    gentlemen," he said. "We're about to transit again."
     He winked at Gregg.
     Gregg clasped a stanchion. He kept his eyes open,'because
    he'd learned that helped-helped him control vertigo. There
    wasn't anything in his stomach but acid, but he'd spew that
    sure as the sun shone somewhere, if he wasn't lucky.
     The Sultan lurched into transit space-and lurched out
    again calculated milliseconds later. The starship's location
    and velocity were modified by the amount she'd accelerated
    in a spacetime whose constants were radically different from
    those of the sidereal universe.
     They dropped in and out of alien universes thirty-eight times
    by Gregg's count, bootstrapping the length of each jump to
    the acceleration achieved in the series previous before they
    returned to the sidereal universe to stay-until the next inser-
    tion. The entire sequence took a little more than one sidereal
    minute. Gregg's stomach echoed the jumps a dozen times over
    before finally settling again.
     "There!" cried Captain Choransky, pointing to the blurred
    starfield that suddenly filled the Sultan's positioning screen
    "There, we've got Virginia!"
     "We've got something," Bivens said morosely. "I'm not 
    sure it's Virginia. These optics . . ."
      Dole, at one of the attitude workstations, yawned and closed
    his eyes. Lightbody took out his pocket Bible and began to
    read, moving his lips. Jeude, at the third workstation, appeared
    to be comatose.
     Two officers came in from aft compartments. They joined
    Choransky and Bivens at the front of the bridge, squabbling
    over the Sultan's location and whether or not their consorts
    were among the flecks of light on the positional display. It was
    obviously going to be some minutes, perhaps hours, before the
    next transit.
     Gregg maneuvered carefully through the cluttered three
    meters separating him from Ricimer. The landsman was
    getting better at moving in freefall. He'd learned that his
    very speed and strength were against him, and that he had
    to move In tiny, precisely-controlled increments.
     Ricimer grinned. "These were easy jumps," he said. "Wait
    till the gradients rise and the thrusters have us bucking fit to
    spring the frames before we can get into transit space, But
    you'll get used to it."
     "Where are we?" Gregg asked, pretending to ignore the
    spacer's comments.
     He spoke softly, but the combination of mechanical rack-
    et, the keening of the Molts-they didn't like transit any
    better than Gregg's stomach did-and the increasingly loud
    argument around the positional display provided privacy from
    anyone but the trio at the attitude controls. Those men were
    Ricimer's, body and soul. They were as unlikely to carry tales
    against him as they were to try to swim home to Venus.
     "The Virginia system," Ricimer said. "Both the captain
    and Bivens are pretty fair navigators. We're about a hun-
    dred million kilometers out from the planet; three jumps or
    maybe four."
     "Why are you sure and they aren't?" the landsman asked.
     Jeude turned his head toward the officers. He was a young
    man, fair-haired and angelic in appearance. "Because Mr.
    Ricimer knows his ass from a hole in the ground, sir," he said
    to Gregg. "Which that lot"-he nodded forward-"don't."
     "None of that, Jeude," Ricimer said sharply. His expression
    softened as he added to Gregg, "I memorized starcharts for
    some of the likely planetfalls when I applied for a place on
    this voyage."
     "But ... " Gregg said. He peered at the flat-screen positional
    display, placed at an angle across the bridge. It would be blurry
    even close up. "You can tell from that?"
     Ricimer Shrugged. "Well, you can't expect to have a perfect
    sighting or a precise attitude," he said. "You have to study.
    And trust your judgment."
     "I'd rather trust your judgment, Sir," Jeude said. When he
    spoke, it was like seeing a dead man come to life.
     "I think that'll do for me, too," Gregg agreed.
     "Right, it's Virginia and I don't want any more bloody
    argument!" Captain Choransky boomed. "We'll do it in four
    jumps."
     "I'd do it in three," Ricimer murmured. His voice was too
    soft for Gregg to hear the words, but the landsman read itt
    in his grin.
   
    7
    
    Above Virginia
    
    "If they don't make up their mind in the next thirty seconds,"
    Ricimer said in Gregg's ear, "we'll lose our reentry window
    and have to orbit a fourth time."
     "All right," Choransky said, as though prodded by the com-
    ment that he couldn't have heard. "That's got to be the settle-
    ment. We're going down."
     He threw a large switch on his console, engaging not the
    main thrusters directly but rather the Al which had planned
    the descent two and a half hours earlier. The thrusters fired
    in a steady 1-g impulse quite different from the vertiginous
    throbs required by navigation through transit space.
     Gregg's legs flexed slightly. It felt good to have weight
    again.
     Attitude jets burped, rocking the Sultan as they counteracted
    the first effects of atmospheric buffeting. Lightbody spread his
    fingers over his control keys.
     "Keep your hands off those, sailor!" Ricimer said sharply.
    "When I want you to override the Al, I'll tell you so."
     Such images as had been available on the positioning display
    vanished behind curtains of light. The Sultan's powerplant con-
    verted reaction mass, normally water, into plasma accelerated to
    a sizable fraction of light speed. When the thrusters were being
    used, as now, to brake the vessel's descent into an atmosphere,
    she drove down into a bath of the stripped ions she herself had
    ejected.
     "Shouldn't we have told the Dove and the Preakness we
    were going down?" Gregg said. He pitched his voice low,
    not only to prevent the captain from hearing but because he
    didn't want to interfere with Piet Ricimer's concentration if the
    young officer was busier than he appeared to Gregg to be.
     Ricimer pursed his lips. "One could say. . ." he replied. His
    eyes darted from one of the workstations to the next, checking
    to be sure his men were alert but not acting where silicon deci-
    sions were preferable. " . . . that Baltasar and Roon will see us
    going down, and that we need to land first anyway because the
    Sultan is such a pig. But one also could say that. . ."
     "Communication doesn't hurt," Gregg said, not so much
    putting words in the spacer's mouth as offering his own opin-
    ion.
     Ricimer nodded.
     The Sultan began to vibrate unpleasantly. Gregg wasn'
    sure whether it was his imagination until Ricimer scowled
    and called out, "Sir, that harmonic is causing trouble with the,
    controls. Can you give me-"
     Choransky swore and thumbed a vernier on his console. The
    increment to the Al's calculated power was minute, but it kept
    the hull from resonating with sympathetic vibration.
     Gregg frowned at the three workstations, trying to see any-
    thing different about them. "What was wrong with the con-
    trols?" he asked after a moment.
     Ricimer grinned, then mouthed, "Nothing," with the back of
    his head to the captain and navigator. "She would've shaken to
    bits in time," he said, amplifying his statement in a scarce
    louder voice. "And I don't know how much time."
     He glanced at Choransky, then turned again and added, he
    doesn't trust the Al for navigation, when he ought to; but
    won't overrule it for something like that, harmonics that an AI
    can't feel so a man's got to."
     Gregg watched as the display slowly cleared. The Sultan had
    scrubbed away her orbital velocity. Now she descended under
    gravity alone, partially balanced by atmospheric braking. The
    AI cut thruster output, so there was less plasma-generated
    interference with the optics which fed the screen.
     Virginia was slightly more prepossessing than Salute had
    been. The landmass expanding beneath the starship was green
    and gray-green with vegetation.
     The planet's main export was cellulose base, useful as
    raw material in the solar system albeit not a high-value cargo
    The few pre-Collapse sites on Virginia provided a trickle of
    artifacts which current civilization could not duplicate. There
    were no caches of microchips on Virginia or automated factories
    like those which made some planets so valuable.
    
       About thirty kilometers of slant distance away, metal glit-
    tered in the center of an expanse of lighter green. That was
    Virginia's unnamed spaceport, from which drones lifted mats
    of cellulose into orbit for starships to clamp to the outside of
    their hulls. Gregg squinted at the settlement, trying to bring it
    into focus.
     The display vibrated in rainbow colors. Something slammed into
    the Sultan.
     "Plasma bolt!" Gregg shouted in amazement.
    
     Captain Choransky disconnected the AI with one hand and
    chopped thruster output with the other. For an instant the
    starship hesitated as gravity fought the inertia of earlier thrust.
    Gregg's stomach flip-flopped.
     Ricimer reached past Dole and mashed a control button
    his workstation. "Gregg!" he shouted. "Get aft and tell the
    other two bands to give us side-impulse! Only Jet Two on
    each bank!"
     A bell on the navigational console clanged. Red lights
    flashing from Dole's workstation. Gregg didn't know what the
    alarms meant-maybe the Sultan was breaking up--and
    didn't understand Ricimer's words.
     He understood that he had to repeat the command to the
    sailors controlling the other two bands of attitude jets in the
    next compartment sternward, though.
     Gregg sprinted through the rear hatch. The starship was
    nearly in freefall as Choransky tried to drop out of the sight
    of the Federation gunners. Ricimer wanted to slew the vessel
    sideways as well, but the impulse from his forward attitude
    was being resisted fiercely by the crewmen at the other
    bands who didn't have a clue as to what was happening on the
    bridge.
    
     The Sultan yawed. Gregg jumped over a squat power sup-
    ply and through the hatch like a practiced gymnast, touching
    nothing on the way. "Those Federation heathens are shootin
    at us!" someone bleated behind him.
     The next compartment was even more crowded than the
    bridge. The double bank of attitude-control workstations, each
    with an officer standing in the middle of three seated crewmen,
    was against the starboard bulkhead. Platt and Martre were
    on duty.
     The port side was usually rolled hammocks and a table
    for off-duty men to do handwork. Now it was stacked with
    rations for the Molts-fungus processed carbohydrate bricks
    that stank almost as bad now as they did when the aliens
    excreted the residue. Half a dozen men clustered around the
    crates for want of anywhere better to be.
     Overhead a tannoy blurted fragments of Choransky's voice.
    The Sultan's intercom system worked badly, and the captain
    was nearly incoherent at the moment anyway.
     "What's going on?" Platt demanded. Gregg's appearance
    caught him leaving his station to go to the bridge.
     "Fire Jet Two, both bands!" Gregg shouted. "Not the oth-
    ers!"
     "You heard him!" Martre said, pointing to one of his team.
    Choransky had dropped the men on the central and rear atti-
    tude controls into an unexplained crisis when he switched
    off the artificial intelligence. Martre was delighted to have
    someone-anyone-tell him what to do.
     "What in hell is going on?" Platt repeated. The Sultan began
    to yaw as the attitude jets fought one another.
     Ricimer came through the hatch behind Gregg and darted
    for Platt's control set. Platt tried to grab him. Gregg put his
    right arm around Platt's throat from behind and clamped hard
    enough to choke off the officer's startled squawk.
     Platt's team members jumped up from their seats-to get
    out of the way rather than to interfere. Ricimer slid one control
    up. Tancred, off duty in the compartment a moment before,
    sprawled over a workstation in order to drop its slide and that
    of the third to the bottom of their tracks.
     Lights flickered. Gregg felt hairs lift on his arms.
     "Missed us, by the mercy of God," Ricimer said, and ther
    was no blasphemy in his tone. He seated himself properly at
    the workstation he'd taken over. "But not by much."
     Bivens stuck his head through the hatch from the bridge.
    "Stand by for braking!" he warned in a shrill voice.
     Gregg released Platt.
     The smaller man turned and croaked, "You whoreson!" He
    cocked a fist, then took in Gregg's size and the particular smile
    on the young gentleman's face.
     Platt turned away. Leon, who'd popped up from one of the
    lower compartments, judiciously concealed what looked like
    a length of high-pressure tubing in his trouser leg. The bosun
    nodded respectfully to Gregg.

     The thrusters cut in again with a tremendous roar, slowing
    the massive starship after her freefall through the line-of-sight
    range of the Federation guns. The braking effort was an abnor-
    mal several Gs, slamming men to the decks and causing some
    shelves to collapse. Gregg kept his feet with difficulty.
      On the bridge, the men at the forward attitude controls were
    bellowing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" in surprisingly good
    harmony.
  
    8
    
    Virginia
    
      The Sultan's long cigar shape lay on its side with the land-
    ing legs properly deployed and all three cargo hatches open.
    The ground beneath the thrusters fizzed and snapped as heat-
    stressed stones cooled.
     Gregg hunched in his hard suit and wondered whether he
    ought to drop the thick visor as well. That would mean using
    bottled air and seeing out through a slit, but at least it would
    keep the wind off him.
     Virginia's breezes slapped harshly against skin used to the
    weatherless corridors of Venus. The Sultan's thrusters had
    ignited pungent fires as she roared in to land, and miniature
    leaves blew from the scorched trees surrounding the starship.
    They were hard-shelled, and their tips were as sharp as shards
    of glass.
     More by luck than planning, Choransky had brought the
    Sultan down at the edge of a natural clearing. The ground was
    so thin-soiled that only ankle-high moss grew on it. That was
    fortunate, because the trees beyond the clearing were thirty or
    forty meters high, with trunks so thin and closely spaced that
    they resembled a field of giant wheat.
     Starships' plasma exhaust could clear landing sites in almost
    any vegetation, but the blazing, shattered trunks would form an
    impassable barrier. The debris would have locked the crew and
    cargo within the Sultan as surely as hard vacuum had during
    the voyage.
     A Molt stumbled off the ramp and bumped a guard. "God-
    damn your crinkly soul to Hell!" shouted the spacer as he
    lashed out with his boot. The chitinous alien tried to back
    away, but one of its legs flailed spastically. It fell toward the
    human again.
     Piet Ricimer grabbed the crewman by the collar and jerked
    him backward. "You!" Ricimer said. "If I hear you blaspheme
    that way again, you'll swab out all three holds alone! Do you
    think God no longer hears us because we're off Venus?"
     "Sorry, sir," the sailor muttered. Gregg had expected more
    trouble-and was moving closer in case it occurred. Ricimer's
    fierce sincerity shocked the man into quiet obedience.
     Navigator Bivens appeared at the edge of Cargo One. He
    cupped his hands before his mouth as an amplifier and shouted,
    "Watch out, boys. There's aircraft coming, the radar says."
     "We'll take them!" Gregg snarled, meaning life in general.
    He was glad an instant later that he hadn't spoken loudly
    enough for his new friend Ricimer to hear.
     And after all, the spacer was right. They were going to
    need the Lord's help here in the outer reaches of his uni-
    verse at least as much as they did among the familiar verities
    of home.
     Captain Choransky was on the radio, trying to raise the
    Sultan's consorts and whoever was in charge of the Feder-
    ation settlement. Ricimer, Gregg, and about two dozen armed
    crewmen shepherded the cargo of Molts onto the surface so
    that the holds could be washed down. So far as the men
    aboard the starship were concerned, Ricimer's task was the
    more important.
     They'd loaded ninety-eight Molts aboard the Sultan on
    Salute; a slight majority of the total, with the rest split between
    the smaller Venerian ships. Ninety-two had survived thus far,
    but many of them were on their last legs, and in a confined
    space they stank like death itself.
     A single air system served the entire starship. The Sultan's
    human complement had been breathing the stench throughout
    a voyage of seventeen days.
     Men checked their weapons. Only a few of those guarding
    the Molts had brought rifles: cutting bars were lighter and
    more effective, both for use and as threats. More riflemen
    and another flashgunner in a hard suit appeared at the lip of
    Cargo One a moment after Bivens called his warning.
     "Don't shoot unless I tell you to," Ricimer shouted to the
    men spread in a loose perimeter around the Molts. "Remember
    we aren't here to fight. We're traders!"
 
     "Hope they remember that," said Jeude as he spun his cut-
    ting bar for a test. His tone undercut the words.
     Gregg thought he heard the faint pop-pop-pop-pop of motors.
    He glanced at the cloud-streaked sky. The sound didn't have a
    clear direction.
     "Which way is the settlement?" he called to Ricimer.
     Ricimer turned from the Molt he'd helped over the coaming
    at the bottom of the ramp. The alien was the last to leave
    the Sultan. It was either sick or very old, and the ramp's
    four-centimeter lip had stopped it like a slab of bedrock.
     "That way," Ricimer said, pointing across the clearing toward
    south-southwest based on sun position. "Five klicks, a hair less.
    Once a ship the size of the Sultan commits to landing, you don't
    maneuver much."
     Someone hammered within the starship's hull, freeing a
    stuck latch. One, then five more meter-square hatches swung
    open along the Sultan's hull. The muzzle of a plasma cannon
    poked through the nearest opening.
     Ricimer looked at the Molts, milling slowly in the midst of
    the crewmen. Some of the aliens were rubbing their torsos
    with wads of moss they'd plucked. "Move them into the
    woods," Ricirner ordered. "Now! Nobody'd better be in the
    clearing if the heavy ordnance fires."
     Gregg focused in the direction of the settlement. The sound
    of motors was very close, though nothing was visible over
    the trees at the edge of the clearing. He aimed his flashgun
    at the expected target and shouted, "Don't fire until Mas-
    ter Ricimer orders!" to prevent anyone from mistaking his
    intent.
     The Sultan carried ten plasma cannon, but she was pierced
    with over forty gunports so that the heavy weapons could be
    moved to where they were needed. Even in weightlessness, the
    weapons' mass made them difficult to shift through the strait
    confines of the vessel. When the crews were working here on
    the ground, they'd be lucky if scrapes and bruises were the
    only injuries before the start of the fighting.
     If there was going to be fighting.
     Two aircraft crossed the edge of the clearing and banked
    in opposite directions. They were one- or two-place autogyros,
    
    moving at lOO kph or slower.
     Nobody fired at them, but one of the crewmen screamed,
    "Federation dog-mothers!" and waved his cutting bar. Leon
    grabbed the man's arm and growled at him before Ricimer
    could react.
     The first aircraft vanished beneath the treetops again. Three
    more autogyros appeared. One of them settled into the clear-
    ing. It bounced twice on the rocky soil but came to a halt
    within fifteen meters. Its four consorts began to circle the
    starship slowly at a hundred meters.
     Choransky, Bivens, and several other officers stamped down
    the Cargo Three ramp. They were all armed, Martre wore the
    helmet and torso of a hard suit and carried another flashgun.
    He nodded as Gregg fell in step to one side of the command
    group and Ricimer joined on the other.
     The autogyro's four-bladed support rotor slowed to a halt.
    The passenger getting out of the tandem seat to the rear was
    male, but Gregg noticed with distaste that the pilot was a
    woman. Gregg wasn't a religious zealot, but the way the North
    American Federation put women in positions of danger-
    women even served in the crews of Federation starships-
    would be offensive to any decent man.
     The autogyro was powered by an air-cooled diesel. Gregg
    didn't realize how noisy it was until the passenger shouted an
    order and his pilot shut the clattering motor off.
     "What do you mean shooting at us?" Captain Choransky
    shouted while he was still twenty meters from the aircraft.
    "Look at that!"
     He pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of the
    Sultan. Through air at such long range, the plasma bolt had
    only scoured away a patch of yellow-brown corrosion the
    Venerian atmosphere had left on the starship's white hull.
    Even such a relatively light weapon could have been fatal if
    it hit the thrusters during the descent, or if the Sultan's hull
    was crazed by long vibration.
     "You have no right to be here!" the Federation envoy said
    shrilly. "The Administration of Humanity has awarded exploi-
    tation of this sector to America!"
     The envoy was a tall, thin man with a full beard but almost
    no hair above the line of his ears. He wore a gray tunic over
    blue trousers, perhaps a uniform, with gaudy decorations on
    his left breast. His holstered pistol was for show rather than
    use, and he looked extremely apprehensive of the heavily-
    armed Venerians.
     "Brisbane's authority is a farce!" Choransky said. He stopped
    directly in front of the envoy and stood with his arms akimbo,
    emphasizing the breadth of his chest. "The Secretary General
    can't fart unless President Pleyal tells him to."
     The envoy swallowed. He met Choransky's glare, but Gregg
    had the feeling that was to avoid having to admit the presence
    of the other murderous-looking Venerians surrounding him.
    The Fed's courage wasn't in doubt.
     "Whatever President Pleyal may be to you," the envoy said,
    "he is my head of state. And his orders are that his domains
    beyond Earth shall have no dealings except with vessels of the
    North American Federation."
     Choransky poked the envoy's chest with one powerful fin-
    ger. "Balls!" he said. "Captain Mostert turned over his whole
    cargo on Virginia last year. I'm from Captain Mostert. Don't
    you recognize the damned ship?"
     The Federation envoy made an angry moue with his lips.
    "Port Commander Finchly, who dealt with your Captain
    Mostert," he said, "was arrested and carried back to Earth
    last month to stand trial. His replacement, Port Commander
    Zaloga, arrived with the orders for his predecessor's arrest."
     Choransky seized the grip of the cutting bar dangling from
    his belt. He also wore a slung rifle. The envoy shut his eyes
    but didn't move.
     "God grind your stupid bones to meal!" the captain said, hi~
    voice low-pitched but sincere. Then he went on in a grating bu,
    nearly normal tone, "Look, you tell your Commander Zalog,
    this. I'm bringing my other ships down, because they stink
    worse 'n sewers with the Molts we're carrying. And ya
    bastards need Molts!"
     The envoy's eyelids quivered.
     "Then we'll come talk to Zaloga, and talk like sensible
    people. If he's looking for a little something for himself to
    clear this, well, I guess something can be arranged. But no
    more shooting!"
     The envoy nodded, then opened his eyes. "I'll tell the com-
    mander," he said, "and I'm sure he'll talk with you himself.
    But as for your business..."
     For an instant there was something more than fear or
    formality in the Fed's voice. "Gentlemen, you know President
    Pleyal. It's as much as a man's life is worth to cross him."
     Choransky gripped the envoy by the shoulder, gently enough,
    and turned the man back toward his autogyro. "Pleyal's
      long way away," the Venerian captain said. "I'm here, and
    believe me, I'm not taking these stinking Molts back to Venus
    with me."
     Ricimer stepped in front of the envoy. "Sir," he said. "With-
    out trade your colony will die, and without outside resources
    the homeworlds--even Earth in her present condition-will
    die also. No orders that restrict trade can be in keeping with
    the will of God for mankind to survive."
     The Federation officer stared as Ricimer moved out of the
    way again. "Does President Pleyal recognize a god beyond
    himself?" he asked, half a taunt. He got into the aircraft.
     "And no shooting!" Choransky repeated in a loud voice as
    the Fed pilot restarted her motor.

    9
    
    Virginia
    The roar of the vessels landing made bones quiver. The glare
    of the thrusters was so intense that Gregg felt the bare backs of
    his hands prickle. He'd lowered his visor to protect his sight.
     They'd had to reload the Molts temporarily. With luck, the
    other ships could manage to avoid the Sultan when they landed
    around the edges of the clearing, but there was no way to safe-
    ly mark the location of off-loaded cargo among the trees. The
    aliens moaned as they were forced back aboard the vessel.
     From the Sultan's open hatchways Gregg, Ricimer, and
    score of other crewmen and officers watched their consorts
    land. Partly because of his filtered vision, partly due to simple
    unfamiliarity with the fine points of starship construction,
    wasn't until the vessels were within fifty meters of the ground
    that Gregg understood what was wrong.
     "That's not the Preakness with the Dove!" he bellowed to
    Ricimer. The spacer couldn't possibly hear him-and had no
    doubt known the truth within seconds of the time the starship
    came in sight, making a rare and dangerous simultaneous land-
    ing. "That's some Earth ship! She's got a metal hull!"
     Whatever the vessel was, she landed neatly in the clear area
    The Dove came down in an orange fireball fifty meters witin
    the margin of the forest, blasting splinters in every direction.
     Virginia's vegetation didn't sustain flames very well when it
    was green. The fire wouldn't be dangerous, but it would smoul-
    der and reek for days or longer. Ricimer, his face screened by
    the rosy filter which pivoted down from inside the brim of
    cap, shook his head in disgust at the Dove's awkwardness.
     The strange vessel was about the 150 tonnes of the Dove.
    The hull was more smoothly curved than that of a Venerian
    ship, but there were a dozen or more blisters marring the
    general lines. Some of the blisters were obviously weapons
    installations.
     Metal was easier to form into complex shapes than mold-
    cast ceramics. It was also easier to tack this or that extra
    installation onto a metal hull later, instead of getting the
    design right the first time.
     The Preakness had started her landing approach. Radio was
    useless when a starship's thrusters were swamping the RF
    spectrum with ions. Gregg didn't expect to learn anything
    until all the vessels were down.
     A personnel hatch on the newcomer's belly curve opened.
    The rock beneath still glowed white from the landing, distort-
    ing the vessel's appearance with heat waves.
     A man-a very big man-wearing a silver hard suit jumped
    out of the ship and ran heavily toward the Sultan. He must
    have heard the Preakness coming in, but he ignored the chance
    that the Venerian ship would crush his plasma-fried ashes to
    the rock.
     Gregg's'lips pursed. He risked raising his visor for a moment
    to be sure. The stranger carried a repeating rifle, as ornately
    splendid as his metal hard suit. The suit, at least, was functional.
    It had just protected its wearer across a stretch of stone so hot it
    was tacky.
     Gregg knew better than most what it took out of you to run
    in a hard suit, and how easy it was to trip with your helmet
    visor down. He strode down to the bottom of the ramp and
    offered the stranger a hand-a delicate way of warning the
    fellow of the raised lip.
     The stranger caught his bootheel anyway and shouted curses
    in German loud enough to be heard above the Preakness'
    approach. With his left gauntlet in Gregg's right hand, they
    clomped into Cargo Three. It wasn't often Gregg met some-
    body bigger than he himself was.
       Molts packed themselves tighter against the bulkheads to
    keep clear. The aliens understood human orders, even without
    the kicks that normally accompanied the words. Supposedly
    their mouth parts permitted them to use human speech, but
    Gregg hadn't heard one do so yet.
     The ramp/hatchcover began to rise before Gregg and the
    stranger were fully clear of it, lowering the noise level abrupt-
    ly. Piet Ricimer was at the control box.
     The stranger opened his helmet. "So!" he said in Trad
    English. "I am Kapitan, that is Captain Schremp of Dril-
    inghausen. My Adler has been here in orbit for a week, bt
    the Federation bastards, they even shot at us when we tried to
    land. And you are?"
     "The Sultan out of Betaport, Captain Choransky command-
    ing," Ricimer said easily. "I think the captain-"
     United Europe had not been involved in reopening the stars.
    Even now, the North American Federation and the Southern
    Cross were the only regions of Earth which showed a govern-
    mental interest in interstellar trade. Private ventures from
    Rhine Basin were not uncommon, though.
     From the rumors, the Germans' approach to trade was rough
    and-ready, even by the standards Captain Choransky applied.
     Choransky appeared at the ladder from the mid-deck. "What
    in God's name do you think you're playing at, landing at the
    same time as my Dove, you poxy bastard?" he roared a
    Schremp.
     "I thought it was better to stay close to one of your ships
    until I had time to explain," Schremp said without embarrass-
    ment. His full beard was blacker than seemed natural for
    man whose appearance otherwise was that of a fifty-year-old.
    "Explain that we are to be allies, yes? If we stay together, the
    pussies will be glad to deal with us, I'm sure!"
     He smiled. The expression made Gregg think of the stories
    about German "trade."

    10
    
    Virginia
    The orange berm of stabilized soil protecting the settlement
    was in sight, half a kilometer away. A uniformed Fed stood
    on it to watch the Venerians and Germans approach. He had
    either binoculars or an electronic magnifier.
     Piet Ricimer knelt and teased a thorny plant loose from
    the margin of the grainfield surrounding the Fed settlement.
    "Stephen?" he said to Gregg. "Do you ever wonder what life
    was like before the Collapse?"
     "What?" Gregg said. "Oh, you mean everybody rich with
    electronics? Well, sometimes."
     He'd thought he was losing his fear of open spaces. Now
    that they'd Jeft the dark trunks of the native forest for the
    cleared area supplying food for the settlement and the vessels
    that touched on it, he wasn't quite so sure.
     Well, it wasn't really fear, just discomfort. And God knew
    that there was plenty of other discomfort, wearing armor and
    carrying a flashgun and still managing to lead a five-klick
    march.
     "No, I meant. . ." Ricimer said. "See this? It's not a native
    plant, and I doubt the Feds brought it with them in the redis-
    covery."
     The other spacers were coming up slowly, but nobody else
    was within a hundred meters of Ricimer and Gregg. The whole
    sixty or so in the party probably stretched a klick back into the
    forest.
     "A thornbush?" Gregg said in puzzlement.
     Two more Feds had joined the observer on the berm. One
    of them carried a megaphone. Despite its greater access to
    pre-Collapse sites on the outworlds, the North American Fed-
    eration wasn't overall more technically advanced than Venus.
     "Not a thornbush," Ricimer said. His finger carefully freed
    a full yellow bloom from the native foliage concealing it.
    "A rose."
     "Stay where you are!" called the Fed with the megaphone.
    "Don't come any closer or we'll fire!"
     "Right," said Leon, wheezing with the exertion of keeping
    up-almost-with the leaders. "And if that was the worst I
    had to worry about, I'd still die in bed."
     "What you got, sir?" Tancred asked, squatting down beside
    Ricimer. "Hey! Artifacts!"
     The young spacer carried a rifle. He used the barrel of the
    weapon to sweep back the vegetation. Underneath was half of
    a shallow porcelain bowl. Varicolored birds sang on a white
    field. The material had survived its millennium of exposure
    well enough, but Gregg didn't think it was up to the quality
    of current Venerian manufacture.
     "Nothing valuable, though," Tancred said in disappoint-
    ment. "You know, when I signed on, I kinda thought I'd, you
    know, pick up handfuls of chips when we got out-system."
     "I think they're moving guns up behind the berm," Gregg
    said. "I can't see over, but there's some sort of commotion
    back there."
     Two autogyros pop-popped in slow circles overhead. A
    line of diesel-powered ground vehicles rounded the edge of
    the ravelin shielding a gap in the berm. The spacers hadn't
    bothered to unload the trucks their vessels carried, because
    the forest was trackless and the tree boles averaged less than
    a meter and a half apart'
     Choransky, Schremp, and a dozen men from each party
    joined the score of spacers who'd clustered around Ricimer
    and Gregg. As many more straggled along behind.
     "I heard them shout," Choransky said. "What was it?"
     "They told us not to come closer, sir," Ricimer said.
     Schremp snorted. "Why should we want to do that?" he
    said. "When they're coming to us, and they don't have to walk
    like dogs."
     The German leader wore only the torso and helmet from his
    hard suit. The face beneath his lifted visor was sweaty and
    bright red with exertion.
     Gregg eyed the German's armor speculatively. The metal's
    bright finish-it appeared to be silver-plated, not just highly
    polished-would reflect energy better than Gregg's suit, and
    if the core was titanium alloy, it might be lighter as well. The
    metal couldn't be as effective a heat sink as Venerian ceramic,
    though, and Gregg was willing to bet his armor's higher hard-
    ness against metal's ability to deform under extreme stress
    instead of shattering.
     Schremp glanced at Tancred. "Find anything valuable, kid?"
    he asked.
     Tancred's face tightened. Before he could speak, Ricimer
    said, "Just the remains of somebody's garden, from a long
    time ago."
     Schremp nodded and turned his attention to the oncoming
    vehicles that the other spacers were watching.
     Rather than trucks, the Feds approached in three tracked,
    open-topped tractors, each towing a flatbed trailer in which
    forty or so figures rode. Figures, not "men", because half
    of the personnel were Molts and many of the humans wore
    coarse, bark-fabric clothing.
     Though humans survived after a fashion on many outworlds,
    civilization did not. The men in indigenous dress were Rabbits,
    feral remnants of the pre-Collapse colonies.
     The Rabbits and Molts were armed with cutting bars and
    even manual axes. None of them wore armor. There were half
    a dozen troops in Fed uniform on each vehicle. Not all of them
    had firearms, and only two wore head and torso armor.
     "Huh!" said Jeude, scratching his neck with the edge of
    his cutting bar. "Those trucks're slower than glass flowing.
    I could walk as fast as that."
     "They haul mats of timber processed at field stations,"
    Ricimer explained. "They don't need to be fast."
     "They're riding," Gregg guessed aloud, "because they want
    to show they've got vehicles and we're on foot."
     "They got plasma guns in the fort," Leon said, eyeing the
    berm opposite the party of spacers. Metal glinted there without
    being raised quite high enough to make identification certain.
    "Them I'm willing to worry about."
     Gregg spread and raised his flashgun's parasol. The meter-
    square solar cell swayed awkwardly in the breeze, making the
    weapon harder to control.
     He didn't need to deploy the charger for any practical rea-
    son. He was carrying six extra batteries, and it was much faster
    to replace than recharge them in a firefight. The Feds weren't
    the only ones who could make silent threats, however.
     Ten meters from the spacers, the tractor-trailers swung
    broadside and halted. A man wearing a white uniform and
    a number of medals got out of the cab of the leading tractor.
    He waited for two more officers, one of them female, and
    pair of guards armed with rifles to get off the trailer behind
    him. With them in tow, he strode toward the spacers.
     The whole party of Venerians and Germans surged forward
    across the wheat.
     "Not so many!" the Fed leader cried, waggling his hand.He
    wore a pair of pistols completely swallowed by their cross
    draw holsters. At careful inspection his uniform, though fancy
    enough, was frayed at the cuffs and noticeably dingy.
     Choransky and Schremp muttered to one another for
    moment. Choransky looked around. "You lot stay where
    you are!" he ordered. The two captains, accompanied by
    Platt and two Germans-as choice a pair of cutthroats
    Gregg remembered seeing in his life-met the Feds between
    the waiting lines.
     Choransky seized the initiative by blustering, "I want
    know who you think you are, shooting at peaceful traders?"
     "I am Port Commander Zaloga," the Fed leader blustered
    back, "and there'll be no trade with illegal interlopers like
    yourself on this planet or any planet of the North American
    Federation."
     "North America is a thousand light-years away," said Cap-
    tain Schremp in a surprisingly calm voice. "We are here with
    cargo your people need, slaves from my Venerian fellows
    there and the highest quality sauces and dairy solids aboard
    my Adler. Surely you must be tired of eating the bland mush
    you grow here, not so?"
     "Your predecessor gave Captain Mostert a want list when
    landed on Virginia last year," Choransky put in. "We brought
    our Molts here at your orders."
     "My predecessor," Zaloga said, "was arrested for his trea-
    sonous dealings with interlopers like your Captain Mostert.
    You're not here at my orders. My orders are that you leave
    the planet at once. And as you see..."
     He pointed toward the settlement. Half a dozen soldiers
    lifted a small plasma cannon onto the top of the berm. Thr
    crew wore helmets, gauntlets, and padded coveralls against
    the effects of their own weapon.

        "I can enforce those orders!"
    
      "Can you?" Schremp said with a sneer in his voice. "Take
    them," he added flatly.
     Each of the Germans with him grabbed a Fed officer.
    Schremp himself caught Zaloga by the throat with his scarred
    left hand and squeezed hard enough to choke the port com-
    mander's protests into a startled bleat.
     Choransky grasped the rifle of a Fed guard and prevented
    the man from lowering his weapon. Platt tried to do the same
    with the remaining guard, but he wasn't strong enough to
    overpower the fellow. They struggled for a moment.
     Schremp, holding his repeater in one hand like a huge pistol,
    socketed the muzzle in the guard's ear and blew his brains
    out. The Fed's skull sagged sideways like a fruit dropped
    against concrete. Bits of colloid sprayed the female officer
    and the German who held her. She began to scream and kick
    hysterically.
     "Stephen!" Ricimer shouted. His grip on Gregg's shoulder
    was as firm as a C-clamp. He pointed toward the plasma
    cannon with his rifle. He didn't bother to shoot because it
    was hopelessly out of his range. "Stop them!"
     The half-armed militia on the trailers were too shocked
    by the violence to react, but the crew of the plasma gun
    were traversing their weapon squarely onto what had been
    the negotiating party. A bolt from that weapon-three or four
    centimeters in bore-would incinerate both command groups
    and probably a score of other spacers besides. The gunners
    might or might not fire-
     But Piet Ricimer was right. The choice couldn't be left
    to them.
     Gregg clashed his visor down and swore as the world blurred
    amber. The flashgun had a simple, four-post optical sight. He
    could only wish now that he'd checked the collimation, made
    sure that the point of aim was aligned with the point of impact,
    because at five-hundred meters you didn't have to be out by
    much to miss by a country klick.
     The parasol swayed, twisting against the stock to which it
    was connected. One of the Feds on the berm raised his arm.
     Gregg fired. The air snapped like the string of a powerful
    crossbow letting go. The line of the bolt was too sudden to
    see, but it left dazzling purple afterimages despite the filter-
    ing visor.
       Light haloed the plasma cannon. Metal sublimed from the
    trunnion Gregg hit, flashing outward in a shockwave that
    ignited as it expanded. The ball of fire threw down the four
    crewmen on that side and behind the weapon. They lay where
    they fell. The remaining pair, untouched, vanished behind
    the berm.
     Gregg lifted his visor. The air smelled burned. Half the
    members of the Fed militia had jumped behind the trailers.
    Those still visible had thrown down their weapons.
     Gregg's flashgun whined as it started to recharge. The sound
    cut off when he opened the compartment in the stock and
    removed the discharged battery.
     He thought he was fine, but his fingers fumbled and dropped
    the battery. He took a fresh charge from his side pocket and
    snapped it into the gun.
     "That was necessary," Piet Ricimer murmured beside him.
    "Not this, what these folk are doing. But what you did, if we
    were to survive."
     "Right!" said Captain Choransky. "Now, we're all going to
    trade like reasonable people. Isn't that right, Zaloga?"
     Schremp transferred his grip to the port commander's shoul-
    der. Zaloga was white-faced. He didn't attempt to speak, but
    he nodded agreement.
     "That was easy, not so?" Schremp said cheerfully.
     With the visor raised, Gregg could see a haze lift from the
    crew of the plasma cannon. Blazing metal vapor had ignited
    their clothing.
    
    11
    
    Venus
    The probe dangling a hundred meters below the Sultan record-
    ed the change in wind direction as it dipped into the third
    and final set of Hadley Cells layering the Venerian atmos-
    phere. Warning bells clanged on the forward attitude-control
    workstations and, slightly distorted, from the stations in the
    next compartment.
     "Oh, put a sock in it," Jeude muttered to his alarm.
     "Think of it as welcoming us home, Jeude," Piet Ricimer
    said cheerfully. "This old girl could pretty well con herself
    into dock from here."
     The Sultan twisted like a leaping fish when her hull passed
    through the discontinuity. Gregg felt a vague mushiness through
    his boots as the vessel continued her descent. Atmospheric
    density at this level was itself enough to slow a falling object
    appreciably.
     The upper reaches of Venus' atmosphere roared from west
    to east at 450 kph, transferring heat from the sun-facing side of
    the planet to the cooler dark. Ships had to take wind direction
    and velocity into account during reentry.
     But the top layer of sun-heated convection cells bottomed
    out and reversed course well above the planetary surface.
    Friction from the high-altitude cells formed an intermediate
    pattern of contra-rotating winds in the mid-atmosphere, but at
    much lower velocities.
     When the convection pattern reversed again near the sur-
    face, completing the sequence of Hadley Cells, average wind
    velocity had dropped to 30 kph. That was scarcely a noticeable
    breeze to a craft which had managed to penetrate the crushing
    high-altitude violence.
         "You know, Stephen, we should thank the Lord more often
    for our atmosphere," Ricimer said.
     He was smiling, but Gregg knew Ricimer too well to think
    that anything the spacer said referencing God was a joke.
     "As a warning of the Hell that awaits those who deny him?"
    Gregg suggested.
     "For saving us during the Collapse," Ricimer explained.
    "All of the settlements on Venus were underground, so raiders
    didn't have any easy targets. And very few outplanet captains
    chose to hit us anyway. They knew that defensive vessels
    couldn't prevent hit-and-run attacks-but that if their ship
    attacked Venus, the planet herself would fight them. And
    the planet would win, as often as not, against inexperienced
    pilots."
     "People died anyway," Gregg said. "Nine in ten died. Venus
    colony almost died!"
     The harsh edge in his voice was a surprise even to him-
    especially to him. Many factorial families had their own rec-
    ords of the Collapse, and the journals of the Eryx County
    Greggs were particularly detailed. Stephen Gregg had found
    that reading about the deaths of your kin and ancestors by
    starvation, wall fractures, and manufacturing processes which
    desperation pushed beyond safe limits was not the same as
    "learning history."
     Ricimer nodded. There was a tic of wariness though not
    fear in his expression. "Yes," he said, "the Lord scourged us.
    It had been easier to import some of our needs. When trade
    stopped, life almost stopped before we were able to expand
    food production sufficiently for the population."
     "The surviving population," Gregg said. His voice was very
    soft, but it trembled.
     Piet Ricimer rested his fingertips on the back of Gregg's
    right hand. "Never again, Stephen," he said quietly. "Trade
    must never fail. The tyrants who would stop it, President
    Pleyal and his toadies in Brisbane-the Lord won't let them
    stop free trade."
     Gregg laughed and put his arm around the smaller man's
    shoulders. "And we're the instruments of the Lord?" he said,
    only half gibing. "Well, I don't usually think of myself that
    way, Piet."
     As he spoke, Gregg realized that Piet Ricimer did usually
    think of himself as a tool of God. The odd thing from Gregg's
    viewpoint was that the holy types he'd met before always
    struck him as sanctimonious prigs, thoroughly unlikable ...
     "Prepare for landing," called Captain Choransky, hunched
    over a CRT loaded with scores of data readouts, each one
    crucially important in the moments of touchdown.
     The vessel was coming down nearly empty since her main
    cargo, nearly 1,000 tonnes of cellulose base, had been unloaded
    in orbit. The mats had to be armored with a ceramic coating
    before purpose-built tugs brought them down through an
    atmosphere which would have consumed them utterly in their
    unprotected state.
     The Sultan vibrated as the shockwaves from her thrusters
    echoed from the sides of the landing pit. Choransky chopped
    the feedlines, starving the thrusters an instant before the arti-
    ficial intelligence would have done so.
     The Sultan hit with a ringing impact. Gregg staggered but
    didn't fall against the workstations around him.
     "Not really dangerous," Ricimer murmured, to Gregg and
    to himself. "The lower hull may want some reglazing ... but
    after a long voyage, the torquing of so many transits, that'd
    be a good idea anyway."
     Vibration continued even with the Sultan's powerplant shut
    off. A huge dome rolled to cover the landing pit. When the
    pit's centrifugal pumps had dumped the Venerian atmosphere
    back into the hell where it belonged and the hull had cooled
    sufficiently, conveyor belts would haul the vessel into a stor-
    age dock. Betaport was a major facility with six landing pits,
    but the volume of trade she handled required that the pits be
    cleared as soon as possible.
     The men at the attitude controls stood up and stretched.
    "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Jeude said toward a bulkhead. "Get
    that personnel bridge out here."
     I got my pay," Dole singsonged, "and I want somebody to
    spend it with. I do want that."
     Lightbody looked at Dole. Ostentatiously, he took his Bible
    out of the pocket where he'd placed it on landing. He began to
    read, his lips forming the words as his right index finger traced
    the line.
     The bridge console beeped. The CRT, blanked when
    Choransky shut down, filled with characters.
     "What?" the captain demanded. "Are we getting hard copy
    of this?"

     Bivens squinted at the screen. "This is message traffic fro
    Captain Mostert," he said as he watched the data scrolled
    upward.
     "I know what it is," Choransky said angrily. He opened a
    cabinet beneath the CRT and threw a switch with no effect
    "Are we getting hard copy of it, that's what I want to know?"
     The duty of a ship's crewman was to do whatever a superior
    ordered him to do. It wasn't clear that a gentleman like Gregg
    had any superior aboard the Sultan; but he knew a great deal
    more about office equipment than anybody else on the ship
    did, and he didn't care to sit on his hands.
     Gregg stepped past Choransky, knelt to study the instal-
    lation for a moment, and reconnected the printer. It began
    spewing out copy as soon as he switched it on.
     "There you go," he said to the captain. "Somebody probably
    got tired of the way it clucked every time the board switched
    mode." To the best of Gregg's knowledge, the printer hadn't
    been used at any previous point in the voyage.
     The Sultan rocked.
     "About d-" Jeude began. He caught Ricimer's eye. "About
    time the personnel bridge got here," he finished.
     The vessel shuddered softly as ground staff evacuated the
    seal which clamped the enclosed walkway to the starship
    hull.
     "That message," Gregg said to Ricimer quietly. "Captain
    Mostert is summoning Choransky and his top officers to a
    meeting and party at his house in Ishtar City tomorrow morn-
    ing. He's going to have potential investors for a larger voyage
    present. Some of them may be from the Governor's Council.
    
     Gregg looked at him. "I suppose Uncle Benjamin will already
    have a reDresentative chosen," he said. "If he's interested."
    
    "I doubt my cousin Alexi would leave you on his doorstep."
    
     A hatch sighed open. The air pressure increased minutely
    Crewmen-none of them on the bridge-shouted "Yippee!"
    
     "Why are you asking?" Gregg said. "Are you going yourself?"
     "I'm not sure Alexi really expects me . . ." Ricimer explained.
    His grin flashed. "Though he is my cousin. I'm pretty sure the
    servants wouldn't bat an eyelash if I came with the nephew of
    Factor Benjamin Gregg, though."
     Gregg began to laugh. He put his arm around Ricimer's
    shoulders again. "I'll tell you what," he said. "We'll go see
    my uncle. He's in Ishtar City and I need to report anyway.
    Then we'll play it by ear, just as we've been doing"-he
    gestured upward-"out there."
     Gregg wondered as he spoke whether the reality of high-
    level politics would be as far from his expectations as the
    reality of trade in the Reaches had been.
     Ricimer must have been thinking something similar, because
    he said, "In Ishtar City, they won't be trying to shoot us, at
    least."
   
    12
    
    Venus
    
      Ricimer was darkly splendid when he emerged from the men's
    room outside the Western Rail Station in Ishtar City. The
    close-coupled spacer wore a tunic and beret of black velvet,
    set off by a gold sash and band respectively. His trousers were
    gray, pocketless and closely tailored. They fit into calf-height
    boots of natural leather, black and highly polished.
     "I don't see why you had to waste time changing," Gregg
    said sourly.
     Ricimer tucked a small duffel bag into the luggage on the
    porter's cart, then snugged the tie-down over it. "Why?" he
    asked. "We're not late, are we?"
     The traffic of Ishtar City buffeted them without so much as
    a curse. Pedestrians; battery-powered carts like the one holding
    their luggage; occasionally a passenger vehicle carrying some-
    one who chose to flaunt his wealth by riding, despite the puni-
    tive tax intended as much as a morality measure as it was for
    traffic control, though traffic control was necessary, especially
    here in the center of the Old Town. West Station served not
    only Betaport but the whole complex of hamlets and individual
    holds in Beta Regio and the plains southwest of Ishtar Terra.
     The rail links were built before the Collapse, close beneath
    the surface. During the recovery, Ishtar City grew from the
    administrative capital of a colony to the heart of a resur-
    gent, independent Venus. Housing and manufacturing expand-
    ed both downward and-much later, as ceramic techniques
    improved and fear of devastating war receded-into domes
    on the surface.
     Rail communications across the planet were improved pro-
    gressively rather than by a single, massive redesign. The traffic
    they carried continued to enter and leave the growing capital
    at the near-surface levels, creating conditions that were as
    crushingly tight as the living quarters of a starship on a long
    voyage.
     Gregg had been raised in an outlying hold. He knew that the
    discomfort he felt in this crowding was making him irritable.
     "No, it's not the time," he said, stolidly breasting the crowd,
    though his flesh crept from the repeated jarring on other humans.
    He knew the way to his uncle's house, so he led; it was as simple
    as that. "It's getting dressed up as if Uncle Ben was-" He
    started to say "God Almighty," but remembered his listener
    in time to twist the words into "-Governor Halys."
     Ricimer laughed. "You're going to see Uncle Ben, my
    friend. I will meet Factor Gregg of Weyston-and no, before
    you say, 'Do you think you'll fool him that you're not the
    jumped-up sailor I know you are-no. But he'll recognize
    that I'm showing him the respect which is his due ... from
    such as me."
     Gregg grimaced. He was glad Ricimer couldn't see his face.
    I never said you were a jumped-up sailor, Piet," he said.
     "You both humored me and guarded our baggage while I
    changed, my friend," Ricimer said. "This is important to me.
    Important to God's plan for mankind, I believe, but certainly
    to me personally. I appreciate everything you're doing."
     Many wealthy men, the Mostert brothers among them, now
    lived in the domed levels of Ishtar City where the ambience
    was relatively open. Uncle Ben's great wealth was a result of
    his own trading endeavors, but he had a conservative affection
    for the Old Town where the rich and powerful had lived when
    he was growing up. His townhouse was within a half kilometer
    of West Station.
     By the time they'd made half that distance through twist-
    ing corridors cut by the first permanent human settlements
    on Venus, Gregg wished he was in armor and lugging his
    flashgun ten times as far in the forests of Virginia. The trees
    didn't shove their way into and past pedestrians.
     "Stephen?" Ricimer said, breaking into Gregg's grim rev-
    erie.
     "Uh?" Gregg said. "Oh, sorry." As he spoke, he realized
    he was apologizing for thoughts his friend couldn't read and
    which weren't directed to him specifically, just at cities and
    those who lived in them in general.
    
       "When Captain Schremp spoke to the Federation on Virginia
    he referred to our cargo as slaves. Do you remember?"
     There was a ceramic patch at the next intersection, and the
    dwellings kitty-corner across it were misaligned. When Gregg
    was a boy of three, there'd been a landslip that vented
    portion of Ishtar City to the outer atmosphere. An error of
    a tunneling contractor, some believed, but there was too little
    left at the heart of the catastrophe to be sure.
     Over a thousand people had died, despite Ishtar City
    compartmentalization by corridor and the emergency seals
    in all dwellings. Uncle Ben had been able to pick up the
    present townhouse cheap, from heirs who'd been out of town
    when the disaster occurred.
     "Schremp!" Gregg said in harsh dismissal. "The Molts aren't
    even human. They can't be slaves."
     He pursed his lips. "The way the Feds treat the indigs-
    the Rabbits-maybe they're slaves. But that's nothing to do
    with us."
     "Yes, well," Ricimer said. "I suppose you're right, Stephen.
     Gregg looked back over his shoulder. His friend threw him
    a smile, but it wasn't a particularly bright one.
     The facade of Uncle Ben's townhouse was glazed a dark
    slate-gray. The style and treatment were similar to other gray
    dun, and russet buildings on the corridor, but it was unusually
    clean. The four red-uniformed attendants outside the door
    way kept loungers and graffiti-scribblers away from the Fac-
    tor's door.
     The attendants straightened when they saw Gregg, suddenly
    conscious that he'd been on a train for twenty hours from
    Betaport, striding toward them. One of the men recognized
    the Factor's nephew and pushed the call button.
     "Master Stephen Gregg!" he shouted at the intercom.
    focused on Ricimer and the luggage, then added, "And com-
    panion."
     There was no external door-switch. The valve itself was
    round, shaped like a section of a cone through the flats,
    a meter-fifty in diameter across the inner face. If the Venerian
    atmosphere flooded the corridor, its pressure would wedge the
    door more tightly sealed until emergency crews could deal
    with the disaster.
     Burt, a white-haired senior servant wearing street clothes of
    good quality, bowed to Gregg in the anteroom. Two red-suit
    underlings waited behind him to take the luggage from the
    porter.
     "Sir, the Factor is expecting you and Mr. Ricimer in his
    office," Burt said. "Will you change first?"
     "I don't think that will be necessary," Gregg said grim-
    ly. For God's sake! This was Uncle Ben, who up until a
    few years ago traveled aboard his intrasystem traders on the
    Earth-Asteroids- Venus triangle to check them out!
     "Very good, sir," Burt said with another bow.
     Uncle Ben had redone the anteroom mosaics since Gregg
    had last been to the townhouse. These were supposed to sug-
    gest a forest glade on Earth before toxins released during the
    Revolt finished what fifteen millennia of human fire-setting
    had begun.
     Gregg thought of tramping through the woodlands of
    Virginia. He smiled. Uncle Ben, for all his wealth and
    success and ability, was in some ways more parochial than
    the young nephew who until recently hadn't been out of the
    Atalanta Plains for more than a week at a time.
     Another liveried servant bowed and stepped away from the
    open door of the Factor's office.
     In Old Town, corridors and dwellings were all as close to
    three meters high as the excavators could cut them. Ceilings
    were normally lowered to provide storage space or, in poorer
    housing, to double the number of available compartments.
    Gregg of Weyston's office was full height, paneled in bleached
    wood with a barely perceptible grain. The material was natu-
    ral, rather than something reprocessed from cellulose base.
     "Good to see you, Stephen," the Factor said. Through a tight
    smile he added, "I see you've had a hard journey."
     Gregg glared at his uncle. "I'll change here, Uncle Ben,"
    he said. "For G-for pity' s sake, I could have sent my dress
    suit by a servant to report to you, if that's what's impor-
    tant."
     "My brother never saw much reason to dress like a gentle-
    man either, Stephen," the Factor said. "That's perfectly all
    right-if you're going to bury yourself in the hinterlands with
    no one save family retainers to see you."
     Gregg began to laugh. "May I present Mr. Ricimer, Uncle,"
    he said. "An officer of Captain Choransky's company and a
    cousin of the Mosterts." He paused. "He gave me the same
    lecture on our way from the rail station."
      Benjamin Gregg laughed also. He got up and reached over
    his broad desk to shake first his nephew's hand, then that of
    Piet Ricimer.
     Gregg of Weyston was dark where his brother's side of the
    family, the Greggs of Eryx, were mostly fair, but he was as
    big as his nephew and had been both strong and active 'till
    back problems slowed him down. Even now, the weight he'd
    gained was under control except for a potbelly that resisted
    anything short of the girdle he wore on formal occasions.
     The Factor gestured the younger men to chairs of the same
    blond wood as the paneling-as uncomfortable as they were
    obviously expensive-and sat down heavily again himself.
    "I've seen your report, Stephen," he said with a nod toward
    the sheaf of printouts on his dOsk. "It's as careful and precise
    as the accounts of Eryx always are. I'm impressed, though not
    surprised."
     He pursed his lips. "Now," he went on, "what is it that you
    and Mr. Ricimer feel you need to add in person to the written
    account you transmitted when you landed at Betaport?"
     "The Mosterts are giving a matinee this afternoon to launch
    plans for a larger expedition to the Reaches," Gregg said. "I
    suppose you've already made arrangements to be represented,
    but we'd like-I'd like-to be there on your behalf also, with
    Mr. Ricimer."
     He flicked his eyes to his companion. Ricimer was seated in
    his chair with the poised, unmoving alertness of a guard dog.
     The Factor nodded. "And why do you think I should be
    represented, Stephen?",he asked.
     The question took Gregg aback. "What?" he blurted. "Why-
    for the profit, Uncle Ben. You're a merchant, and there are huge
    profits to be made in out-system trade."
     The walls of the office were lined with books-hard-copy
    ledgers, some of them almost five decades old-and with
    memorabilia from the Factor's years of intrasystern trade. One
    of Gregg's earliest memories was of his uncle handing him
    a bit of clear crystal with waxy inclusions and saying that it
    was a relic of life from the asteroid belt before Earth had even
    coalesced as a planet.
     But this was a different Uncle Ben. He lifted his neph-
    ew's itemized report. "Yes," he said. "Profit. One hundred
    twelve percent on my investment on Captain Choransky's
    voyage."   

    "Possibly a little less," Gregg said in a desire to be precise.
    "I'm assuming a low valuation for tariff purposes, in the belief
    that Governor Halys will want to minimize the amount of her
    investment profits that pass through the Exchequer. I may be
    wrong."
        The Factor laughed. "You're not wrong, lad," he said. "If
    anything, you're overconservative. And in any event, over one
    hundred percent compares favorably with the thirty-three to
    thirty-five percent margin I try to run within the system."
    Gregg nodded, allowing himself a wary smile while he
    waited for the hook.
      "Until you factor in risk," Gregg of Weyston added, slap-
    ping the report down on his desk.
         The Factor looked sharply at Ricimer. "Mr. Ricimer," he
    said crisply. "I can see you're a spaceman. How do you assess
    the possibility that one or all of Captain Choransky's vessels
    would have been lost on the voyage just completed?"
        Ricimer lifted his chin to acknowledge the question. His
    eyes were bright.
        "In-system, landings are the most dangerous part of a voy-
    age," he said in a tone as cold and sharp as the blade of a
    cutting bar. "The risk varies from ship to ship, but say 
    three percent per vessel on the voyage in question because
    of the greater frequency of landings. Transits-again, that
    varies, but obviously the greater number of. entries increases
    the possibility of system failure and of being caught in a
    pattern of rising gradients in which a vessel shakes its hull
    apart in trying to enter transit space."
       The spacer tapped his right index finger on his chair arm
    while his eyes stared at a point beyond the Factor's ear. "I
    would say," he continued as his eyes locked with those of
    his questioner, "five percent on a well-found vessel, but I'll
    admit that the Sultan wasn't in the best condition, and I can't
    claim to have full confidence in the ship-handling abilities of
    the Dove's officers."
       Ricimer smiled bleakly. "You'll pardon me for frankness,
    sir," he said.
       "I'll pardon you for anything except telling me damned
    lies, lad," the Factor said, "and there seems little risk of
    that. But-what about the Federation and the Southern Cross,
    then? I've had more reports of the voyage than this one, you
    know."

     The older man brushed the sheaf of hard copy with his
    gers. "It's all over Betaport, you see. My Stephen there" he
    nodded, Uncle Ben again for the instant-"acquitted himself
    like a Gregg, and that surprises me no more than his accounts
    do. But one lucky bolt from a plasma cannon and then 
    your thrusters, your ship ... and all hope of profit for your
    investors, lad."
     His eyes were on his nephew now, not Ricimer.
    "And families at home to grieve besides."
     Gregg jumped to his feet. "Christ's wounds, Uncle Ben!"
    shouted. "Do you think I'm a, I'm a-" He shrugged angrily.
    "Some kind of a damned painting that's so delicate I'll
    if I'm put out in the light?"
     "I think," the Factor said, "that I'm an old man, Stephen.
    When I die, I don't choose to explain to my late brother that
    I provided the rope with which his son hanged himself."
     "I'll not be coddled!"
     "I'm not offering to coddle you!" the Factor boomed. "Go
    and work for me, boy, and I'll grind you into all the hard
    problems Gregg Trading falls against. If you can handle that,
    then-well, my brother had sons, and I have Gregg Trading.
    What I won't do is send you to swim with sharks."
     Piet Ricimer stood up. He put his hand in the crook of
    Gregg's elbow. "Let me speak, Stephen," he said in a quiet
    trembling voice.
     Gregg turned his back on his uncle.
     "Sir," Ricimer said. "You say you don't mind frankness
    and I don't know any other way to be."
     The Factor nodded curtly, a gesture much like that with which
    Ricimer had acknowledged the question a moment before.
     "You'll survive and prosper if you hold to the in-system
    trade," the spacer said. "So will your heir and very likely his
    heir, if they're as able as you. What won't survive if you and
    the other leading merchants who respect you turn your back
    on it is trade from Venus to the stars."
     "Assuming that's true," Gregg of Weyston said carefully,
    "which I do not assume except for discussion-what of it?"
    When humanity was at its height before the Collapse, ninety-
    eight percent of the humans in the universe were within the
    solar system. There'll always be trade for us here."
     "There were twenty billion people on Earth before the Col-
    lapse," Ricimer replied evenly. "If there are twenty million
    today, I'll be surprised. Earth is a poisoned hulk. Venus is-
    the Lord put us on Venus to make us strong, sir, but nobody
    can think our world is more than a way station on the path
    of God's plan. The other in-system colonies breed men who
    are freaks, too weak for lack of gravity to live on any nonnal
        planet. We need the stars."
    
     Gregg faced slowly around again. He was embarrassed by
    his outburst. If there had been a way to ease back into his
    chair he would have done it.
    
     "Man needs the stars, I accept," the Factor agreed with
    another nod. "And man is retaking them. Now, I don't accept
    Brisbane's dividing the Reaches between America and the
    Southerns, either-as a matter of principle. But principle
    makes a bad meal, and war makes for damned bad trade,
    in-system as well as out. Let them have it if they want it so
    bad. They'll still need manufactures from Venus, and it'll be
    Venerian ships that dare our atmosphere nine times in ten."
       Ricimer nodded with his lips pursed, not agreeing but rather
    choosing his words. The skin was stretched as tightly over the
    spacer's cheeks as it had been when he warned Gregg to shoot
    on Virginia.
    
     "The Southerns will do nothing, sir, as they've always done
    nothing with their opportunities," he said. "The Feds, now ...
    the Feds will continue to strip the caches of microchips they
    find in the Reaches. They'll try to run the few factories they
    find still operable, but they won't do the work themselves,
    they'll put Molts to it. And the Molts will do only what their
    ancestors were taught to do a thousand years ago."
     The Factor opened his mouth to speak. Ricimer forestalled
    him with, "What they do get from the Reaches, they'll use
    to strengthen themselves on Earth. They've been fighting the
    rebels on their own west coast for a generation. Perhaps the
    wealth they bring from the Reaches will permit them to finally
    succeed. And they'll fight Europe, conquer Europe I shouldn't
    doubt, because the Europeans can never conquer them and
    President Pleyal won't stop while he has a single rival on
    Earth."
    
     "Venus can't be conquered," the Factor said, leaping a step
    ahead in the argument and denying it harshly.
     "Perhaps not," the spacer agreed. "But all mankind can
        stagnate while President Pleyal forges an empire as rigid and
    brittle as the one that shattered in the Collapse. And if we fall
    back from the stars again I don't believe the Lord will give
    us another chance."
     The two fierce-eyed men stared at one another for a long
    moment. The Factor shuddered and said in a surprisingly gen-
    tle tone, "Stephen? What's vour opinion of all this?"
    
     Gregg touched his lips with his tongue. He smiled wryly
    and seated himself as he'd wanted to do for some while. "I'm
    not a religious man, Uncle," he said, kneading his fingers
    together on the edge of the desk and staring at them. "I
    don't like transit, and I don't like"-he looked up-"some
    of the ways trade's carried on beyond Pluto." The starkness
    of his own voice startled him. "But I think I could learn to
    like standing under an open sky. And I'm sure I'm going to."
    
     His lips quirked. "God willing," he added, half in mockery.
    Gregg's expression lost even the hint of humor. "Someone
    will ship me, Uncle Ben. It doesn't have to be an expedition
    that you back."
    The Factor glared at him. "Your father, boy," he said, "was
    stubborn."
    Gregg nodded. "He used to say the same of you, Uncle."
         Gregg of Weyston burst out laughing and reached across
    the desk with both hands, clasping his nephew's. "Then I
    suppose it runs in the family, lad. Go to your damned meeting
    then-I'll call ahead. And when you come back, we'll discuss
    what you in your business judgment recommend for Gregg
    Trading."
     Piet Ricimer stood formally, with his heels near together and
    his wrists crossed behind his back. There was the slightest 
    suggestion of relief on his face.


    Gregg hadn't met Councilor Duneen before-he'd never
    expected to meet the head of the Bureau of External Rela-
    tions-but there Duneen was at the side of Alexi Mostert,
    nodding affably and extending his hand. Siddons, by two
    years the elder Mostert brother, didn't appear to be present.
    "So . . ." Duneen said. He was short and a trifle pudgy, but
    there was nothing soft about his eyes. "You'd be Gregg of
    Eryx, then?"
    Gregg shook the councilor's hand. Duneen was only forty
    or so, younger than Gregg had expected in a man whom many
    said was Governor Halys' chief advisor. "That would be my
    brother, sir," he said.
    "Mr. Gregg's here representing his uncle, Gregg of Wey-
    ston," Mostert put in quickly. "A major investor in the voyage
    just returned, and we hope in the present endeavor as well."
    The Mostert brothers, Alexi and Siddons, had inherited a
    bustling shipping business from their father. They themselves
    had expanded the operations in various fashions. The political-
    ly powerful guests at this party were examples of the expan-
    sion as surely as the out-system trading ventures were.
    "Allow me to introduce my friend Mr. Ricimer, Councilor,"
    Gregg said. He noticed that Mostert's jaw tightened, but there
    was nothing the shipper could do about it. "One of Captain
    Choransky's officers on the recent voyage, and one of the
    major reasons for our success."
       "A sailor indeed, Mr. Ricimer?" Duneen said approvingly.
    I shouldn't have guessed it."
        He nodded minusculy toward the bar. The captains and
    navigators from the recent voyage clustered there like six
    sheep floating amongst shark fins. The spacers were dressed
    in a mismatch of finery purchased for this event combined
    with roughly serviceable garb that would have been out of
    place in a good house in Betaport, much less Ishtar City.
     Ricimer's turnout was stylish in an idiosyncratic way. For
    the party he'd kept the black tunic and boots, but he'd
    changed into taupe trousers and a matching neckerchief.
    His St. Christopher medal dangled across his chest on its
    massy chain, and he wore a ring whose similar metalwork
    clamped what was either a fire opal or something more
    exotic.
     "Yes sir," Ricimer agreed promptly. "A sailor proud to
    serve a governor who understands the value of out-system
    trade to God's plan and the welfare of Venus."
     Duneen shifted his feet slightly to close the conversation
    with Ricimer. Gregg started to put his hand out to his friend,
    but Ricimer already understood the signal and stepped away.
     "A keen lad, Mostert," the councilor said. "We'll have use
    for him, I shouldn't wonder."
     "Very keen indeed," Mostert replied with a touch of irri-
    tation.
     Gregg glanced around the gathering. About half the forty or
    so present were gentlemen--or dressed like it. He didn't rec-
    ognize them all. Most of the others were identifiably from the
    shipping trade: a mix of middle-aged men like Mostert him-
    self and younger fellows, acting as Gregg was for a wealthy
    principal.
     Councilor Duneen might have his own interests, but he
    was certainly here to represent Governor Halys as well. Out-
    system trade was a matter of state so long as President Pleyal
    claimed it infringed the sovereignty of the North American
    Federation.
     The meeting room had ceilings three and a half meters
    high. The additional half meter wasn't functional; it simply
    proved that the Mosterts' mansion made use of the great-
    er freedom permitted by buildings in the new domed quar-
    ters.
     Out-system vegetation grew in niches along three of the
    walls. None of it was thriving: varied requirements for nutri-
    tion and light saw to that. Still, the display showed the breadth
    of the Mosterts' endeavors, which was probably all that it was
    intended to do.
    
    Mostert stepped to a dais and rang a spoon in his glass for
    attention. "Councilor Duneen," he said, "gentlemen. As you
    all know, Mostert Trading is about to embark on a voyage
    promising levels and percentages of profit greater even than
    those of the voyage just returned under my subordinate, Cap-
    tain Choransky. I've called you together as interested parties,
    so that all your questions can be answered."
        "All right, Alexi," said a soberly-dressed man in his fif-
    ties; probably a shipper in the same order of business as
    the Mosterts, though Gregg didn't recognize him. "Are you
    talking about going to the Mirror this time, then?"
       "No," Mostert said. "No, Paul, the time isn't right for that
    just yet. We'll be penetrating other portions of the Reaches for
    the first time, though-planets that aren't well served by the
    Feds themselves. We'll be able to skim the cream of the trade
    there."
      "The cream," Paul rejoined, "is microchips, and that means
    going to the Mirror."
        "The Feds won't trade for chips anywhere," somebody else
    objected morosely. "Pleyal knows how good a thing he's got
    there."
      "We're talking about planets like Jewelhouse, Heartbreak,
    Desire," Mostert said loudly as he tried to get the discussion
    back on the track he desired. "Planets with valuable prod-
    ucts of their own and the remains of extensive pre-Collapse
    colonies being discovered every day. There weren't microchip
    factories there, no, but those aren't the only ancient artifacts
    that can bring huge profits."
       "The mirror worlds, all their settlements have forts and real
    soldiers," Captain Choransky said with the air of a man trying
    to explain why humans can't breathe water. "If we sashayed
    up to Umber, say, they'd just laugh at us."
       "If they didn't blow our asses away," Bivens added, shak-
    ing his head in sad amazement. "That's what they'd do, you
    know."
          Mostert grimaced. "We all know the orders President Pleyal
    has sent to his colonies," he said in brusque admission. "That
    won't last-it can't last. The colonies can't depend on Rabbits
    for labor. They need Molts to expand their operations, and they
    want to buy them from us. But-"
      "They want to buy if there's a gun to their head," interjected
     Roon, who'd commanded the Preakness.

     "But that means we don't go where they've got guns of their
    own," Bivens said.
     "They want to do most anything with guns to their head,"
    Roon added with a giggle.
     Mostert's face was naturally ruddy, so the best clue to his
    mental state was the way he suddenly flung his glass to the
    side with a fierce motion. The vessel clinked against the wall
    but didn't break.
     The clot of ships' officers, all of whom had drunk more
    than was good for them because they were nervous, grunted
    and looked away.
     Gregg smothered a smile. Alexi Mostert had used better
    judgment when he bought tumblers for this gathering than
    when he made up the guest list.
     Piet Ricimer swept the room with his eyes. "The best way
    to break the monopoly on out-system trade which the Feds and
    Southerns claim," he said in a clear voice, "will be for Venus
    to develop our own network of colonies, trading stations,
    perhaps our own routes across the Mirror or around it in transit
    space. But that will take time."
     He stepped closer to the dais though not onto it. His back
    was to Mostert but he held the eyes of everyone else. Gregg
    watched their host over Ricimer's head. Mostert's expression
    was perfectly blank, but his fingers were bending the spoon
    into a tight spiral.
     "For now," Ricimer continued, "we need to gain experience
    in out-system navigation in order to carry out what I'm con-
    vinced is God's plan. But-"
     His smile was as dazzling as the ring on his finger-
    "God doesn't forbid us to help ourselves while carrying out his
    will. The investors in the voyage just completed are wealthy
    by more than a hundred percent of their investments. Our
    mistress, Governor Halys"-Ricimer nodded to Duneen-"in-
    cluded. No one who's served with Captain Mostert can doubt
    that an argosy he commands in person will be even more
    successful."
     Gregg began to clap. He was only slightly surprised when
    light applause ran quickly across the room, like fire in cot-
    ton lint.
     "For you gentlemen who don't know him," Mostert called
    from the dais, "this is my relative Captain Ricimer. He'll be
    commanding one of the vessels in the new endeavor."
        There was another flurry of applause. Gregg raised an eye-
    brow. Ricimer acknowledged with something between a deep
    nod and a bow.
      A servant entered the room carrying a round package nearly
    a meter in diameter. He scanned the crowd, then homed in on
    Ricimer.
     "One moment, gentlemen," Ricimer said loudly to cut
    through the buzz of conversation following his speech and
    Mostert's.
     He took the package and ripped the seal on the thin, light-
    scattering wrapper. All eyes were on him.
     "Councilor Duneen," Ricimer continued, "we've spoken of
    the artifacts to be found beyond Pluto. I ask you to take this
    to Governor Halys, as my personal token of appreciation for
    her support of the voyage just ended."
     He reached into the package and removed the fragment of
    porcelain birdbath Gregg had last seen in a garden on Virginia.
    Though carefully cleaned, the broad bowl was only half com-
    plete-and that badly worn.
     There was a general gasp. Gregg's skin went cold. A flick
    of Mostert's wrist sent the spoon to follow the glass he'd
    thrown.
     "And this as well," Ricimer continued loudly. His left hand
    shook the wrapping away. He raised a copy of the birdbath in
    its perfect state, the scalloped circuit whole and the colors as
    bright as Venerian ceramicists could form them.
     Ricimer waved the ancient artifact in his right hand. "The
    past-" he cried.
     He stepped onto the dais and waved his right hand. "And
    the glorious future of Venus and mankind! God for Venus!
    God for Governor Halys!"

     Stephen Gregg clapped and cheered like everybody else in
    the meeting room. His eyes stung, and a part of him was angry
    at being manipulated.
     But tears ran down the cheeks of Piet Ricimer as well, as
    the young spacer stood clasped by both Mostert and Duneen
    on the dais.

    14
    
    Above Punta Verde
    
      "Featherboat Peaches landing in sequence," Ricimer said.
    "Peaches out."
     He cradled the radio handset and engaged the artificial intel-
    ligence. "Hang on," he added with a grin over his shoulder, but
    even Gregg was an old enough sailor by now to have cinched
    his straps tight.
     The thrusters fired, braking the 20-tonne featherboat from
    orbit, the last of Captain Mostert's argosy to do so. The deep
    green of Punta Verde's jungles swelled beneath them, though
    their landing spot was still on the other side of the planet.
     The screens dissolved into colored snow for a moment, then
    snapped back to greater clarity than they'd managed in the
    stillness of freefall. Gregg swallowed his heart again.
     Leon sat beside Gregg in the constricted cabin. He patted
    an outer bulkhead and muttered, "Silly old cow."
     "You know, Piet," Gregg called over the vibration, I nev-
    er did ask you how you got that replica birdbath made so
    quickly."
     "A friend in the industry," Ricimer replied without turning.
    "My, ah . . ."
     He looked back at Gregg. "My father preaches in the Jamaica
    hamlet outside Betaport," he said. Gregg had to watch his
    friend's lips to be sure of the words. "But there were ten of us
    children, and now the new wife. He has a ceramic workshop.
    Mostly thruster nozzles for the port, but he can turn out special
    orders too."
     Ricimer's voice grew louder. "He's as good a craftsman
    as you'll find on Venus. And that means anywhere in the
    universe.
       "Yes," Gregg said with a deep nod. "I was amazed at the
    high quality of the piece."
     That was more or less true, but he'd have said as much if the
    bath looked like somebody'd fed a dog clay and then glazed
    the turds. A Gregg of Eryx understood family pride.
     "You might," Gregg continued, changing the subject with a
    smile, "have parlayed it into something a little bigger than the
    Peaches. Your cousin really owed you for the way you put
    his voyage over with the investors. Councilor Duneen was
    impressed too, you know."
     For a moment the featherboat trembled unpowered as her
    remaining velocity balanced the density of Punta Verde's
    atmosphere. The thrusters resumed firing at low output, pro-
    viding the Peaches with controllable forward motion. The
    featherboat was now an atmosphere vessel. At best, the larger
    ships were more or less terminally-guided ballistic missiles.
     "Ah, this is the ship to be in, Stephen," Ricirner said, no less
    serious for the laughter in his eyes. "Isn't that right, boys?"
     "Beats the Tolliver, that's G-g-heaven's truth," Tancred
    agreed. "Leaks like a sieve, that one does. Wouldn't doubt
    they were all on oxygen bottles by now."
     The featherboat could accept twenty men or so in reason-
    able comfort, but the six men from Ricimer's intrasystem
    trader were more than sufficient for the needs of the vessel.
    Gregg wondered if that was why his friend had accepted the
    tiny command when he might have pushed for the 100-tonne
    Hawkwood or even the slightly larger Rose. Piet Ricimer was
    a first-rate leader, but the business of command as opposed to
    leadership didn't come naturally to him.
     "We ought to be coming up on a Molt city," Ricimer said,
    returning his attention to the viewscreen. As he spoke, the
    uniform green blurred by the featherboat's 200 kph gave way
    abruptly to beige. The Molts of Punta Verde used the trunks
    of living trees to support dwellings like giant shelf fungi. The
    smooth roofs underlay but did not displace the uppermost
    canopy, giving the city an organic appearance ...
     Which was justified. The Molts, though not indigenous to
    any of the worlds they were known to occupy, formed stable
    equilibria wherever man had placed them.
     "We're coming up on the landing site," Ricimer warned.
    "It'd be nice if they'd cleared a patch for us, but don't count
    on it."
       Plasma engines made communication between vessels dur-
    ing a landing impractical. The Desire, the argosy's other
    featherboat, had barely shut down when Ricimer went in,
    so the Peaches crew could only hope that matters had gone
    as planned in orbit.
     Ricimer overrode the AI, holding the Peaches in a stagger-
    ing hover. The Tolliver, 500 tonnes burden and owned by the
    government of Venus, was spherical rather than cigar-shaped.
    Her dome stood as high as the canopy beyond the area her
    thrusters had shattered. The 300-tonne Grandcamp was a good
    kilometer away, while gaps in the jungle between the big ships
    probably marked the Rose and Hawkwood.
     At least none of the bigger ships had crashed. That wasn't
    a given in the case of the Tolliver, eighty years old and at least
    twenty years past her most recent rebuild. The big vessel was
    intended to be serviced in orbit, but the state of her hull was
    such that she leaked air faster than it could be ferried up to
    her by boat.
     The Tolliver's size and armament were valuable additions,
    though. The fact that the ancient vessel came from Governor
    Halys made it a claim of official support.
     As well as a difficult gift to refuse.
     "We're going in," Ricimer said curtly as he reduced power
    and swiveled the main thrusters. Leon and Dole, operating
    without orders from their captain, pumped the nose high with
    the attitude jets.
     The Peaches lurched, balanced, and settled down on trees
    smashed to matchsticks when the Tolliver landed a hundred
    meters away. An instant before touchdown, the featherboat
    was wobbling like a top about to fall over, but the landing
    was as soft as a kiss.
     "Nice work, Cap'n," Lightbody grunted.
     "Only the best for my boys," Ricimer said with satisfac-
    tion.
     The viewscreen provided a panorama of the Peaches' sur-
    roundings, though not a particularly crisp one. Heavily-armed
    men disembarked from the flagship. One man, apparently clos-
    er than he cared to have been when the featherboat landed,
    hurled a fruit or seedpod at the Peaches. Gregg heard a soggy
    impact on the hull.
     Leon and Bailey undogged the main hatch topside. The
    Peaches had a forward hatch as well, but that was little more
    than a gunport for the light plasma cannon.
     Gregg frowned. "Shouldn't we let her cool?" he asked-
    aloud but carefully avoiding eye contact with the vessel's more
    experienced personnel.
     "Aw, just watch what you grab hold of, sir," Tancred
    explained. "Featherboats like this, we braked on thrust, not
    friction pretty much."
     "Will you pass the arms out as each man disembarks,
    Stephen?" Ricimer said. "You're the tallest, you see."
     And also the most likely to grab a handgrip that would sear
    him down to the bone, Gregg thought. Having a gentleman
    dispensing the weapons was good form, but the only reason
    arms were segregated aboard the Peaches was to keep them
    from flying about the cabin during violent maneuvers.
     Ricimer took another look at what was going on outside.
    A truckload of men seemed about ready to pull out, and
    additional crewmen were boarding two other vehicles.
     "Leon, bring a rifle for me, will you?" Ricimer said sharply.
    He moved from the control console to the hatch and out in
    three lithe jumps. The viewscreen elongated the figure of the
    young officer bounding swiftly toward the flagship.
     "He'll sort them out," Tancred said.
     "Anybody who'd ship aboard a chamber pot like the
    Tolliver," Leon muttered, "hasn't got enough brains to keep
    his scalp inflated. And the Grandcamp isn't much better."
     Gregg took his place beside the locker in the center of the
    ship. As each crewman hopped from the edge of the storage
    cabinet beneath the hatch-there was a ladder, but nobody
    used it-to the featherboat's outer hull, Gregg handed up a
    weapon.
     Tancred took a rifle; there were cutting bars for the remain-
    der of the crewmen. Besides his bar and the second rifle, Leon
    carried the torso and helmet of the captain's hard suit. He
    reached down from the hull to help Gregg.
     Gregg wore his faceplate raised, but the chin bar still reduced
    his downward vision. He jumped into a mass of vegetation that
    smoldered and stank but was thankfully too wet to burn. The
    remainder of the crew had followed their captain, but the bosun
    solicitously waited for Gregg.
     "I'm all right!" Gregg snapped.
     "It's the flashgun and you wearing armor, sir," Leon said.
    He scuffed his feet in the mat of leaves, bark, and splintered
    wood. "That's a bad load in muck like this."
     "Sorry," Gregg said sincerely. He knew that he'd spoken
    more sharply than he should have, because he hadn't been
    sure he was all right.
     Piet Ricimer was having a discussion with Mostert and a
    group of other officers beside the leading truck. They had to
    speak loudly to be heard over the air-cooled rotary engine. The
    need to shout may have affected tempers as well. Platt, who'd
    been aboard the Sultan, hung out of the vehicle's cab with an
    angry expression on his face.
     "But we can reconnoiter with the Peaches," Ricimer pro-
    tested. "This isn't a planet we know anything about except its
    coordinates-"
     "And the fact it's full of Molts, which is what the hell
    we're here for, Ricimer!" Platt snarled. Gregg suspected that
    Platt thought he rather than Ricimer should have been given
    a ship to command, though the officers hadn't gotten along
    particularly well during the previous voyage either.
     "I just don't think we should jump in without investigating,"
    Ricimer said. "There's no sign of Southerns here and-"
     "Calm down, both of you," Alexi Mostert said in obvi-
    ous irritation. His helmet and breastplate were gilded and
    engraved, and he carried a pistol as well as a repeating rifle.
    Sweat ran down the furrow between his thick eyebrows and
    dripped from his nose.
     "We're not looking for Southerns, we're looking for Molts!"
    said Cseka of the Desire.
     "Only the ones of us who've got balls," Platt added.
     Gregg put his big left hand on Ricimer's shoulder. "I've got
    balls, Mr. Platt," he said in a deliberate voice that was loud
    enough to rattle glass. "And I think it's a good idea to know
    what we're doing before we do it."
     Actually, a quick in-and-out raid seemed reasonable to Gregg.
    He'd have backed Ricimer in the argument if his friend said he
    thought they'd landed in a desert.
     "Look, buddy!" Platt shouted. "You just sit back here on
    your butt if you want to. I don't have a rich daddy to feed my
    family if I'm too-" Captain Mostert stepped onto the running board of 
    the cab and thrust, not shook, his fist under Platt's nose and mus-
    tache. "That's enough!" he said.
    
    Platt jerked back, his face twitching nervously.
    
       Mostert turned to look at the remainder of the officers
    around him. "This group goes now," he said. "Three trucks.
    Quile's sending fifty men from the Grandcamp, so we'll take
    the Molts from both sides. Surprise is more important than
    poking around."
     He jumped down from the running board and glowered at
    Ricimer. "We know where the bloody city is, man," he added
    harshly.
     Gregg still had a hand on his friend's shoulder. He felt
    Ricimer stiffen; much as Gregg himself had done when Platt
    suggested he was a coward.
     The lead truck accelerated away, spewing bits of vegeta-
    tion from its six driven wheels. The forest's multiple cano-
    pies starved the undergrowth of light, opening broad avenues
    among the boles of the giant trees. The other two truckloads
    of men followed. There were several officers besides Platt in
    the force, but it wasn't clear to Gregg who was in charge.
     Piet Ricimer clasped his hand over Gregg's on his shoulder
    and turned around slowly.
     "Come on, come on!" Mostert shouted. "Let's get the rest
    of these trucks set up."
     "I wonder how surprised these Molts are going to be,"
    Ricimer murmured to Gregg, "when they've heard six starships
    land within a klick of their city?"
        The jungle drank sound, but the clearing itself was bedlam.
     The loudest portion of the racket came from the Tolliver's
    pumps, refilling the old ship's air tanks. There was plenty of
    other noise as well. Piet Ricimer supervised a team probing for
    groundwater between the Peaches and the flagship. The rotary
    drill screamed through the friable stone of the forest floor.
    Nearby, crewmen argued as they loaded three more trucks to
    follow the lead element of Molt-hunters.
     Gregg was only twenty meters from the featherboat. Even
    so, it wasn't till he turned idly and noticed Dole waving from
    the hatch that he heard the man shouting. "Sir! Get the captain!
    Platt, he's stepped on his dick for sure!"
     Gregg opened his mouth to ask a question-but realized that
    whatever the details were, Ricimer needed to hear them worse
    than he did. He lumbered toward the drilling crew, feeling like
    a bowling ball with the burden of his weapon and armor.
     Gregg felt out of place, both in the lush greenery surround-
    ing the landing site and, at a human level, while watching
    knowledgeable sailors refit the vessels for the next hop. If he'd
    been among the crews off to snatch Molts for the ships' holds,
    Gregg would have a person of importance: better equipped
    and more skillful than the men around him, as well as being
    a leader by virtue of birth. He had no place in the argosy's
    peacetime occupations.
     Rather than join the raiders on the second set of trucks,
    Piet Ricimer had pointedly taken charge of the drilling. The
    equipment was carried in the flagship's capacious holds, but
    Ricimer operated it with his own crew. A cable snaking from
    one of the Tolliver's external outlets powered the auger's
    electric motors.
     The ceramic bits had reached the subsurface water levels.
    The tailings, crumbly laterite somewhere between rock and
    soil, lay in a russet pile at the end of the drill's ejection pipe
    a few meters away. The crew-including Ricimer himself,
    Gregg was surprised to see-now manhandled sections of
    twenty centimeter hose to connect the well with the Tolliver's
    reaction-mass tanks.
     It struck Gregg that he could have stood radio watch, freeing
    Dole to help with the drilling, or he could have laid down his
    weapon for the moment and carried sections of hose. Because
    he was a gentleman, no one had suggested that ... and the
    thought hadn't crossed his mind until now.
     "Piet!" he called. "Dole's got something on the radio. There's
    been trouble with the raid."
     Other operators than Dole had caught an emergency signal.
    As Gregg spoke, one of the ships distant in the forest honked
    its Maxon. The siren on top of the Tolliver's dome began to
    wind up, setting nerves on edge and making it even more
    difficult to hear speech in the clearing below.
     The raiding party had blown a gap in the tangle of trunks
    which the flagship knocked down on landing. Ricimer looked
    up at the curtain of foliage overhanging that, the only route by
    which the vehicles could return to the ships. Not so much as
    a leaf twitched in the still, humid air.
     "Stephen," Ricimer said, "can you get four more rifles from
    the Tolliver? If I send one of the men, they'll be refused." He
    looked back from the jungle and made eye contact. "And I
    need to get the Peaches ready."
     "Yes," Gregg said. He set off for the flagship's ramp at
    something between a long stride and a jog. The sweat soak-
    ing his tunic and scalp was suddenly cold, and his muscles
    trembled with the adrenaline rush.
     "Bailey and Jeude, go along to carry," he heard Ricimer call
    behind him. "But don't get in his way. The rest of you, come on!"
     Gregg had never been aboard the Tolliver before, but the
    men milling at the central pillar of the lower hold drew him to
    the arms locker. Incandescent bulbs in the ceiling left the rest
    of the enorm(fus room dim by comparison with the daylight
    flooding through the open hatch behind Gregg. The air smelled
    sour, reeking with decades of abuse.
       The Tolliver carried a crew of a hundred and sixty on this
    voyage. About half the men had joined the initial raiding party,
    but scores waited uncertainly about the arms locker and the
    trucks being assembled in the clearing.
     Captain Mostert was neither place. He must have climbed
    six decks to the bridge when the alarm sounded.
     Two sailors were handing out cutting bars under the
    observation of an officer Gregg didn't know by name. "You
    there!" Gregg said to one of the sailors. "I'm Gregg of Ery
    and I need four rifles now!"
     "But-" the sailor said.
     "There aren't any rifles left, sir," said the other attendant,
    the man Gregg hadn't addressed.
     "There may be some unassigned firearms still on the bridge
    Mr. Gregg," the overseeing officer put in.
     "May there indeed!" Gregg exploded. "Who in hell do you
    think I am, my man?"
     He wasn't angry, but the soup of hormones in his blood
    gave his voice a trembling violence that counterfeited towering
    rage. Gregg was a big man in any case, the tallest in the hold
    With the bulk of his helmet and body armor, he looked like
    a troll.
     He looked at the men around him. The nearest started back
    from the gentleman's glare.
     "You!" Gregg said, pointing to a man with a repeater. His
    eyes were beginning to adapt to the interior lights. "You-'
    another rifleman. "Y-" and the third man was holding out
    his breechloader to Gregg before the demand fully crossed his
    lips. Jeude and Bailey collected the weapons and bandoliers of
    sized ammunition without orders.
     None of the other crewmen present held firearms.
     Gregg focused on the officer. "You, you've got a rifle too.
    Quick, man!"
     The man clutched the repeating carbine slung over his shoul-
    der. "But I own this!" he protested.
     "God strike you dead!" Gregg roared, raising the massive
    flashgun in his right hand as though he intended to preempt the
    deity. "We've got a battle to fight, man! Go up to the bridge if
    you need a gun!"
     Jeude stepped to the officer's side and silently lifted the
    weapon by its sling. The man opened his mouth, then closed
    it again.

     "Oh, for God's sake!" he blurted. He ducked so that Gregg's
    two subordinates could remove both the carbine and the belt
    of cartridges looped in groups of five to match magazine
    capacity.
     "Come along, you two!" Gregg said. He spoke to keep con-
    trol of the situation. Bailey and Jeude were already ahead of
    him, silhouetted against sunlight. "There isn't much time!"
     It occurred to Gregg as he spoke that there might not be
    much time, but he personally didn't have a clue as to what was
    going on. That didn't bother him. He'd carried out his task.

    
    13

    Punta Verde
    
    A jet of foul steam spouted from around the Peaches as Gregg
    and his helpers lumbered toward the vessel. The thrusters
    had fired, barely enough to rock the hull. Leon and Dole
    were locking the bow hatch open to the outside hull. The
    muzzle of the 50-mm plasma cannon had been run out of
    the port.
     "What's going on?" Bailey shouted to the visible crewmen.
     A projectile struck the featherboat's bow hard enough to
    make the hull ring over the siren's continuing wail. Dole
    and Leon jumped back. Neither was injured, but there was
    a greenish smear across the ceramic.
     The shot had come from above. Gregg paused, scanning
    the trees a hundred meters away at the clearing's edge. He
    couldn't see anything-
     Bailey and Jeude had stopped when he did, looking nervous
    but waiting for orders. Another missile whicked into the matted
    vegetation between them at a 45' angle. The body of the shaft
    was smooth wood, thumb-thick and perhaps a meter long. An
    integral filament grew from the end of the shaft, stabilizing
    the missile in place of fletching.
     "Get aboard!" Gregg shouted to the crewmen. "Now!"
     He still couldn't see anyone in the high branches from
    which the projectiles must have come, but the foliage quiv-
    ered. Gregg lowered his visor, aimed the flashgun, and fired.
     Vegetation ripped apart in a blast of steam. Gregg threw up
    his visor to be able to scan for targets better as his hands
    performed the instinctive job of reloading. His mind was cold
    as ice, and his fingers exchanged batteries with mechanical
    crispness.
      After ten or fifteen seconds, something dropped from the
    place where the laser bolt had scalloped the vegetation. Gregg
    couldn't make out a figure, but a flicker of mauve suggested
    the color of the Molts they'd loaded on Salute. The falling
    body made the second canopy, then the undergrowth, quiver.
     Two more missiles snapped from the curtain on the other
    side of the trucks' passage. Gregg saw them, foreshortened
    into black dots as they sailed toward him. One missed his
    shoulder by a hand's breadth as he aimed the flashgun again.
     He didn't have time to close the visor. He froze the sight
    picture, squeezed his eyes shut, and fired. The dazzle burned
    through the veils of mere skin and blood vessels and left purple
    afterimages when, he tried to see what he'd accomplished.
     "Mr. Gregg!" a voice called. "Mr. Gregg, please, get aboard,
    the captain says!"
     Gregg ran back toward the Peaches. A projectile struck the
    hull in front of him and glanced away in two major pieces and
    a spray of splinters from the center of the shaft where it broke.
    He wondered if the arrows were poisoned.
     He grabbed one of the handholds dished into the featherboat
    during casting and hauled himself up. Leon and Tancred aimed
    rifles out of the hatch. As Gregg rose above the curve of the
    hull, Tancred fired at the jungle behind him.
     Bits of jacket metal and unburned powder bit Gregg's face
    like a swarm of gnats. He shouted, "God flay you, whore-"
     A Molt projectile slammed into the middle of Gregg's back
    and shattered on his body armor. His breastplate banged for-
    ward into the hull, driving all the breath out of his lungs. Leon
    let his rifle fall into the featherboat's interior so that he could
    lean forward and catch the gasping gentleman's wrists.
     "Take the flashgun," Gregg wheezed.
     Tancred worked the bolt of his repeater and fired again.
    "Stubborn bastard," the bosun snarled, probably meaning
    Gregg, but he lifted the flashgun with one hand and dropped
    it behind him down the hatch while he supported Gregg with
    the other.
     The Peaches lifted a meter or two with a wobbly, unbalanced
    motion. She rotated slowly about her vertical axis.'Gregg saw
    another projectile as a flicker of motion in the comer of his
    eye, but it must have missed even the vessel.
     Leon gave a loud grunt and hauled the gentleman up with a
    two-handed grip. Gregg managed to find a foothold and thrust
    himself safely over the hatch coaming with no more grace or
    control than a sack of grain. Bailey and Dole were waiting
    inside to catch him.
     Ricimer was at the controls. Lightbody and Jeude were
    hunched forward, wearing helmets. Leon hopped down from
    the hatch to pick up his rifle again.,
     The plasma cannon fired and recoiled. Vivid light across
    and beyond the visual spectrum reflected through the gunport
    and the open hatch. The thunderclap made the featherboat
    lurch as though Ricimer had run them into a granite ledge.
     "That'll make the bastards think!" Jeude crowed from the
    bow. He opened the ammunition locker and took out another
    round for the plasma cannon, though it would be minutes
    before the weapon cooled to the point it could be safely
    reloaded.
     The egg-shaped shell was a miniature laser array with a
    deuterium pellet at the heart of it. When the lasers fired, their
    beams heated and compressed the deuterium into a fusion
    explosion. The only way out in the microsecond before the
    laser array vaporized was through the gap in the front of the
    egg, aligned with the ceramic bore. The deuterium, converted
    to sun-hot plasma by the energy of its own fusion, ripped down
    the channel of the barrel and devoured everything in its path.
     Gregg got to his feet. He found the flashgun and loaded a
    fresh battery from the pack slapping against his chest.
     "The Molts ambushed the trucks before they ever got to the
    city," Leon shouted in explanation. "The buggers are up the
    trees, Platt says."
     "I noticed," Gregg said grimly as he stepped onto the stor-
    age locker again. A sharp pain in his ribs made him gasp. His
    mouth tasted of blood, but he thought he must have bitten
    his tongue when the arrow knocked him forward. Tancred
    stood head and shoulders out of the hatch, trying awkwardly
    to reload his rifle.
     The Peaches was fifty meters above the ground, wobbling
    greasily and moving at the speed of a fast walk. The plasma
    bolt had blown a huge crater in the foliage. A dozen tree
    trunks, stripped bare of bark and branches, blazed at the edge
    of the stricken area.
     Piet Ricimer kept the featherboat rising a meter for every
    meter it slid forward. By the time the Venerians reached the
    edge of the original clearing, they were high enough that their
    thrusters seared the topmost canopy into blackened curls and
    steam.
     Gregg stepped to the front of the long hatch and nudged
    Tancred aside. The young spacer grimaced but didn't protest
    aloud. Leon and Bailey, each holding a rifle, climbed onto the
    locker as well.
     There were no targets. Indeed, from the topside hatch, noth-
    ing was visible over the bow save an occasional giant tree
    emerging from the general "landscape." Massed blooms added
    splotches of yellow, brown, and eye-catching scarlet to the
    normal green.
     Accelerating very slightly, the Peaches proceeded in the
    direction the raiders' trucks had followed through the jungle.
    If there were Molt warriors beneath, they fled or died in the
    vessel's superheated exhaust.
     Somebody tugged at the thigh of Gregg's trousers. He
    looked down.
     "Sir," called Dole over the waterfall roar of the thrust-
    ers. "The captain, he needs you." He jerked his head toward
    Ricimer, facing forward over the control console.
     Gregg knelt and stepped down into the featherboat's bay.
    He didn't duck low enough; his helmet cracked loudly against
    the hatch coaming, no harm done but an irritation. Between
    armor and the big flashgun in his arms, he was clumsy as a
    blind bear.
     Despite the open hatch and gunport, the vessel's interior
    was much quieter than the outside. "Stephen," Ricimer said,
    "we're getting close to the vehicles. If I overfly them, they'll
    be broiled by our thrusters."
     Ricimer's eyes were on the viewscreen. His hands moved
    as two separate living creatures across the controls, modifying
    thrust and vector. Dole seated himself at one of the attitude-jet
    panels, but from the rigidity of the crewman's face, he was
    afraid to do anything that might interfere with Ricimer's deli-
    cate adjustments.
     "The only way I can think to break our people loose is to
    go down into the canopy and circle," Ricimer continued in a
    voice that was controlled to perfect flatness, not calm. "The
    men on the ground don't have any targets, but the Molts aren't
    camouflaged from their own level or a little above."
      "Right," Gregg said. "Take us down." He turned.
      "Stephen!" Ricimer said.
     Gregg looked back. Ricimer risked a glance away from
    the viewscreens so their eyes could meet. "It will be very
    dangerous," Ricimer said. "And I have to stay here."
     "Do your bloody job, man!" Gregg snapped in irritation.
    "Leave me to mine."
     He climbed onto the locker again and moved Tancred aside.
    "Get ready," he ordered his fellow gunmen as he lowered his
    visor. "We're going down. Everybody take one side."
     The Peaches shuddered and lost forward way for a moment.
    The stem dipped. The featherboat dropped into the canopy
    with its bow pitched up 20', advancing at barely a fast walk.
    An arrow clanged against the underside.
     Shadows and the faceshield's tint came dangerously close
    to blinding Gregg. He saw movement over the Peaches' bow,
    three Molts on a platform anchored where a pair of branches
    crossed between trunks. A catwalk of vine-lashed poles led
    into the green curtain to either side.
     One Molt was cocking a shoulder-stocked weapon with a
    vertical throwing arm. Another fired his similar weapon at the
    featherboat's bow, not the men above the hatch. A crewman's
    rifle spoke.
     Gregg squeezed off. The carapace of the Molt cocking his
    launcher exploded. The blast of vaporized flesh threw both
    his/her companions off the platform.
     The Peaches nudged into a tree bole and crushed it over,
    tugging out the distant roots. The catwalk separated and fell
    away. Gregg saw poles flying from another walkway, unguessed
    until the moment of collapse. All his men were shooting, and he
    thought he heard muffled gunfire from the ground.
     The laser was the wrong weapon for a close-quarter firefight
    like this. He couldn't see well enough with the visor down to
    react. "Give me a rif-" he shouted as he fed a fresh battery
    into the flashgun's stock.
     The plasma cannon fired. The shockwave threw Gregg
    backward. If the Peaches hadn't bucked at the same time, he
    might have fallen flat. The directed thermonuclear explosion
    bored a cone of radiant hell hundreds of meters through
    the mid-canopy. Foliage to either side of the path withered
    and died.
     Gregg saw a Molt plunging toward the ground like a flung
    torch. The aliens wore no clothing, but the creature's entire
    body had been ignited by the discharge.
      Ricimer guided the featherboat along the ionized track. Molt
    constructions showed vividly where the leaves were burned
    away.
     Gregg saw an alien clinging to the poles ofa catwalk whose
    farther end had vanished. Instead of shooting the Molt he saw,
    he aimed at the high crotch where the poles were still attached.
    The flash of his bolt illuminated a pair of Molts crouching in
    the darkness. They hurtled to either side, while their fellow
    dropped in the tangle of his poles.
     The featherboat nosed to starboard. Ricimer needed to encir-
    cle the site in order to free the raiders pinned down below. He
    or Dole had corrected the attitude to lower the bow. A gnarled,
    wrist-thick branch struck Gregg hard enough on the head to
    make his eyes water despite the helmet.
     At least a dozen Molts fired a simultaneous volley. All the
    missiles were aimed at the gunmen this time. An arrow struck
    just in front of the hatch coaming and glanced upward into
    Gregg's chest. The impact stabbed daggers through his ribs.
     A crewman screamed behind him. A pair of Molts reloaded
    on a catwalk only twenty meters ahead of the Peaches. The
    bow would throw them down in a moment. Gregg fired any-
    way and saw the bodies cartwheel away, one of them head-
    less.
     He flipped up his visor and turned. "A rifle!" he shouted.
        "Give me a-"
     Leon was trying to keep Bailey from climbing out of the
    hatch. An arrow had plunged into Bailey's right eye and down,
    pinning his face to his left shoulder. The crewman gobbled
    bloody froth, His remaining eye was wild.
     Tancred bellowed wordlessly as tears streamed down his
    cheeks. He didn't appear to be physically injured. He worked
    the bolt of his repeater and pulled the trigger, but the weapon's
    magazine was empty.
     "Get down, all of you!" Gregg ordered. He dropped his
    flashgun and gripped the repeater at the balance. Tancred
    resisted momentarily. Gregg punched the boy in the pit of
    the stomach. He crumpled. Gregg snatched the bandolier and
    broke the strap free with the violence of his tug.
     Bailey suddenly collapsed. Leon straightened and brought
    up his breechloader. Molt projectiles crossed in the air between
    Gregg and the bosun. "Get down!" Gregg repeated as he
    thumbed cartridges into the integral magazine.
      The Peaches rocked into a series of tree trunks in quick suc-
    cession. One splintered at the point of impact. The other tree
    pulled out of the thin soil and tilted crazily, half-supported by
    vines and branches interlocking with those of their neighbors.
    As the featherboat passed over the tangle, her superheated
    exhaust devoured those impediments and sent the trunks crash-
    ing the remainder of the way to the ground.
     A Molt aimed his weapon down at the hatch. Gregg shot the
    creature through the body. Recoil brought a sharp reminder
    of the injured ribs. He chambered the next round, rotated to
    his left where motion shimmered in the corner of his eye, and
    smashed the triangular skull of an alien seventy meters away.
     Leon fired. A projectile grazed the back of Gregg's helmet,
    making his vision blur.
     "God rot your bones in Hell!" Gregg screamed in the bosun's
    face. "Get down and load for me! I've got armor!"
     As he spoke, he fired the last round in his magazine. A Molt
    dropped his weapon to one side of a catwalk and fell to the
    other. He managed to grasp a guy rope of braided vine and
    cling there for the instant's notice Gregg had to give anything
    that wasn't immediately lethal.
     He dropped the repeater. Tancred offered him a loaded rifle
    stock-first, from the featherboat's bay. Leon ducked down as
    ordered. Either the words or the sense or the naked fury in
    Stephen Gregg's face had penetrated the bosun's conscious-
    ness.
     With his visor up, Gregg felt like a god. He could see
    everything, and he couldn't miss. The Peaches was unstable
    at low speed even without grinding her hull into huge trees
    which themselves weighed tonnes. It didn't matter. Gregg and
    the gunsights and each Molt were one until the flashshock
    signaled the need to seek another alien target.
     Two more arrows hit Gregg-on the right side and in the
    back, squarely over the smear where he'd been struck while
    boarding the featherboat. He was aware of the impacts,the
    way he saw the black and green of vegetation-facts, but
    unimportant when only the mauve smudges of Molt bodies
    mattered.
     He didn't bother to look down when he'd emptied a rifle,
    just dropped it and opened his hand to take the fresh weapon
    a crewman would slap there. The carbine from the Tolliver's
    officer had a five-round magazine and was dead accurate.
    Gregg used it to shoot the eye out of a Molt warrior at least
    a hundred meters away.
     A comer of Gregg's mind noted two trucks glimpsed where
    the Peaches had cleared a sight line to.the ground. Men hud-
    dled beneath the vehicles and behind nearby trees. A few of
    them waved. Molt projectiles stood out from the thin panels of
    the truck bodies like quills on a porcupine, and from sprawled
    men as well.
     The featherboat yawed uneasily as Ricimer brought her bow
    onto a new heading. Gregg hadn"t fired for-he didn't know
    how long. There weren't any targets, though occasionally he
    glimpsed an empty platform or catwalk.
     The Peaches nosed onto the track her thrusters had cleared
    on the way to the ambush site. Over the bow Gregg saw the
    trucks again, all three of them, retreating toward the ships.
    They jounced over the buttress roots of trees at the best speed
    they were capable of. He realized he couldn't hear anything,
    not even the roaring thrusters, though he felt the vibration
    through his feet and the hatch coaming against which he
    braced his belly.
     The clearing the Tolliver had blasted was a bright splotch
    without the shadow-dappling of the jungle beyond. The flag-
    ship had run out several of her big plasma cannon. Men rose
    from hasty barricades to greet the returning trucks.
     "That's okay, sir," said a voice close to Gregg's ear. "We'll
    take over now."
     A wet cloth dabbed at his forehead. He wasn't wearing his
    helmet anymore.
     "Jesus God! What happened to his head?"
     "Arrow must've hit right over the visor. Jesus!"
     The last thing Gregg saw was the worried face of Piet
    Ricimer, framed by the hatch opening above him.

    17
    
    Punta Verde
    
      Gregg didn't recognize the ceiling. He turned his head. A wave
    of nausea tried to turn his stomach inside out. Nothing came
    up except thin bile, but the spasms made his rib cage feel as
    though it was jacketed in molten glass.
     Piet Ricimer leaned over him and gently Mopped the vomit
    away with a sponge. "Welcome back," he said.
     "I feel awful," Gregg whispered.
     Ricimer shrugged. "Cracked ribs, a concussion, and uncon-
    scious for three days," he said. "You ought to feel awful, my
    friend."
     "Three days?"
     "I was beginning to worry a little," Ricimer said without
    emphasis. "The medic thought most of it was simple exhaus-
    tion, though. You were operating"-he smiled wryly-"well
    beyond redline, Stephen."
     Gregg closed his eyes for a moment. "Christ's blood, I feel
    awful, " he said. He looked up again. "Sorry."
     "You've had quite a time," Ricimer said. "The Lord makes
    allowances, I'm sure."
     "Where are-" Gregg began. He broke off, winced, and
    continued, "Just a bit. I'm going to sit up."
     "The medics-" Ricimer said. Gregg lurched up on his right
    elbow and gasped. Ricimer slid an arm behind his friend
    back but followed rather than lifted Gregg the rest of the
     way up.
     The gentleman sat with his eyes closed, breathing in quiet
    shallow breaths. At last he resumed, "Where are we?"
      "The argosy hasn't moved if that's what you mean," Ricimer
    said. "You and I are in a cabin on the Tolliver."
     His smile had claws of memory. "They were going to put
    you in the sick bay," he added. "But I didn't think you ought
    to be disturbed by the other wounded men."
     "I don't think I'm going to stand up just yet," Gregg
    said deliberately. He opened his eyes and saw the worry
    on Ricimer's face melt into a look of studied unconcern.
    "We're going to lift off, aren't we?" he pressed. "Mostert
    can't possibly think we can capture enough Molts here to be
    worth the, the cost."
     "As a matter of fact. . ." Ricimer said. Gregg couldn't be
    sure of his tone. "The village we attacked-city, really, there
    are thousands of Molts living in it. The Molts were impressed.
    They've dealt with the Southerns before, but they'd never met
    anything like us."
     Looking at a corner of the ceiling, Ricimer went on, "Leon's
    in the sick bay, you know. Splinters through the shoulder from
    an arrow that hit the hull beside him."
     Gregg pursed his lips, remembering flashes of the way he'd
    shouted at the bosun. "I didn't know that," he said.
     Ricimer shrugged. "He'll be all right. But I heard him telling
    a rating from the Tolliver in the next bed, 'Our Mr. Gregg,
    he's a right bastard. He went through them bugs like shit
    through a goose, As soon kill you as look at you, Mr. Gregg
    would.' "
     "Lord, I'm sorry," Gregg whispered with his eyes closed. "I
    was. . ' "
     "He's proud of you, Stephen," Ricimer explained softly.
    "We all are. Our Mr. Gregg. And the Molts were so impressed
    that they want us to help them against their neighbors forty
    klicks away. In return, we get the prisoners."
      "Well, I'll be damned," Gregg said.
     "Not for what you did three days ago," Ricimer said. "Eight
    of the men with the trucks were killed, but none of them would
    have made it back except for us. Especially for you."
     "Especially for you," Gregg corrected. He met his friend's
    eyes again. "Bailey?" he asked.
     Ricimer shook his head minusculy. "No. But that's not-
    anyone's fault."
     "When do we. . ." Gregg said. "The raid, the attack. When
    is it?"
      "Three days from now," Ricimer said. "The Molts are get-
    ting their army, I suppose you'd call it, together. But Stephen,
    I don't think-"
     "I'm going," Gregg said. He set his lips firmly together,
    then held out his hand toward his friend. "Now," he said.
    "Help me stand. .

    18
    
    Punta Verde
    
    Because the four men stationed at the Peaches' hatch all
    wore body armor and helmets, Gregg knocked elbows when
    he twisted to either side. Even so, the hatchway was less
    crowded than the featherboat's bay in which twenty more
    heavily-armed men waited.
     The Hawkwood at three hundred meters altitude led the
    expedition. She wobbled across the sky, losing or gaining
    twenty meters of elevation in an instant and slewing side-
    ways by twice that much. The Hawkwood had a good enough
    thrust-to-weight ratio to make atmospheric flight a possible
    proposition, but not an especially practical one. They were
    using her because Mostert needed the firepower and the hun-
    dred men he could cram into the vessel's hull.
     Four lifeboats, each with a dozen or more men aboard,
    veed out to the Hawkwood's flanks. They skimmed the
    treetops, buttoned up but still washed dangerously by hot,
    electrically-excited exhaust from the leading vessel's thrusters.
    Occasionally one of them, buffeted or simply blinded when the
    Hawkwood slid to the side, dipped into the forest. As yet, none
    of them had been noticeably damaged by such mishaps.
     The featherboats closed both arms of the vee. Gregg noted
    with grim amusement that the Desire to starboard porpoised
    almost as badly as the Hawkwood did, while Piet Ricimer kept
    the Peaches as steady as if she ran on tracks.
     A kilometer ahead of the expedition's leading vessel, Gregg
    saw an incandescent rainbow: sun catching the plume of another
    spaceship's thrusters. The reason the Molts had allied them-
    selves with the Venerians was that their rivals were in league
    with the southerners.
     No one would hear Gregg if he shouted. The flashgunners
    in the hatch had their visors locked down against the retina-
    crisping dazzle of the Hawkwood's exhaust. That and the
    engine roar isolated them as individuals. The other three came
    from the Rose. Gregg wouldn't recognize any of them with
    their helmets off.
     Anyway, it wasn't the hatch crew which had to be warned
    but rather the vessels' captains. Their view was even blurrier
    than Gregg's through his filtered visor. It was possible that
    the distant vessel wasn't hostile ... but it was equally possible
    that pigs flew on some undiscovered planet.
     Gregg aimed his flashgun at the top of the distant plume
    where the other vessel had to be. He tried to steady his weap'-
    on. The shot was beyond human skill, but the vivid lance
    across the optics of the expedition vessels would at least call
    attention to the interloper.
     The world fluoresced with a shockwave that felt for an
    instant like freefall. Forest vaporized in the bolt from the
    Peaches' plasma cannon. Despite the featherboat's distant
    position, Ricimer had seen the target as soon as Gregg had.
     The interloper appeared startled, though it was untouched
    by the blast. It lifted from where it lurked in the upper canopy
    and ripped a series of brilliant sparks toward the Hawkwood.
    It appeared to mount a multishot laser rather than a plasma
    weapon.
     The 14-cm Long Tom in the Hawkwood's bow belched a
    sky-devouring gout of directed energy toward the interloper.
    Foliage exploded. Eighty meters of a giant tree leaped upward
    like a javelin, shedding leaves and branches as it rose. It had
    been struck near the base. The target dived to vanish within
    the forest again.
     Mostert brought the Hawkwood's bow around to starboard.
    He ignored the danger to the cutters on that side and the
    Desire in his eagerness to bring his port six-gun battery into
    play. These lighter weapons, 8- and 10-cm plasma cannon, had
    no target by the time they bore, but the gun captains loosed
    anyway. Gregg could imagine Piet Ricimer white-lipped at his
    controls as he watched his cousin's actions.
     The squadron's destination was in sight: flat mushrooms
    rising beneath the topmost foliage. The city's extent seemed
    greater than that of the one Platt had tried to attack. These
    domes were mottled gray instead of being beige.
     The Peaches swung wide and dipped as the other Venerian
    vessels homed in on the Molt stronghold. Ricimer was waiting
    for the Southern vessel to reappear. Gregg tightened his grip on
    the flashgun, then forced himself to relax so that he wouldn't
    be too keyed-up to react if he had to. The featherboat's plasma
    cannon was still too hot to reload, so it was up to him and his
    fellows if the target appeared.
     It didn't. The Southerns had already shown more courage
    than Gregg would've expected, engaging a force that was so
    hugely more powerful.
     The Hawkwood lowered toward the canopy, pitching and
    yawing. As she neared the treetops, her starboard battery fired.
    Four fireballs flared across the nearest Molt dome. Farther
    back across the stronghold, misdirected blasts blasted another
    structure and the topmost fifty meters from one of the forest's
    emergent giants.
     The squadron's leader sank into the jungle at the edge of
    the stronghold in a barely-controlled slide. The cutters and the
    Desire settled in beside her.
     The Peaches swept over the outer ring of domes and into
    the interior of the stronghold.
     Gregg glanced down. The cellulose-based roof of the near-
    est dome was afire where the plasma discharges had struck
    it. Gangs of Molts sprayed the flames with a sticky fluid.
    Warriors on the roof of the structure fired point-blank at the
    featherboat with rifles as well as indigenous weapons. An
    arrow that missed the Peaches arched high over Gregg's head.
     As he took her down, Ricimer rotated the Peaches on her
    vertical axis like a dog preparing its bed. The dome they'd
    overflown was completely alight from the plasma exhaust.
    Warriors and members of the firefighting team were dark
    sprawls within the sea of flame.
     The Molts had cut away the undergrowth and mid-level
    vegetation within their stronghold. The boles of emergents
    split and corkscrewed as the thrusters seared them. Walkways
    connecting the domes burned brightly. The city stretched near-
    ly a kilometer across its separate elements.
     The featherboat grounded, then sank a meter lower when
    what appeared to be soil turned out to be the roof of a turf-
    and-laterite structure covering the interior of the stronghold.
     An unarmed Molt clawed its way through the broken surface,
     shrieking until one of the flashgunners shot him.
     A warrior leaned from the crotch of an emergent, aiming
    his rifle at the Peaches seventy meters below. Gregg's hasty
    snap shot struck a meter below the Molt. The trunk blew apart
    with enough violence to fling the alien in one direction while
    the upper portion of the tree tilted slowly in the other.
     Shouting men tried to push past Gregg. He lifted himself
    out of the hatch and toppled to the ground when his boot
    caught on the coaming. Armor and the flashgun made him
    top-heavy. Somebody jumped onto Gregg's back as he tried
    to rise. Finally he managed to roll sideways, then get his feet
    under him again.
     The interior of the stronghold was as open as a manicured
    park. Here and there Molts popped to the surface from the
    underground shelter, but none of them were armed. Occasional
    warriors sniped from distant trees. The featherboat's thrusters
    had cleared the immediate area of catwalks by which the
    defenders might have approached dangerously close.
     More-many more-Molts boiled from the lower levels of
    the burning dome. They were all warriors. The domes were
    actually the tops of towers rising from the ground. They were
    connected by gray vertical walls. At a close look, the material
    was wood pulp masticated with enzymes and allowed to solidi-
    fy into something akin to concrete-hard papier-mache.
     Gregg reloaded his flashgun. Men leaped from the featherboat
    and hesitated. Those with rifles fired at Molts, but the disparity
    in their numbers compared to those of the aliens was shock-
    ingly apparent. Gunfire and cries could be heard through the
    dome.  
       
     "Follow me!" Gregg shouted as he fired his flashgun at
    closed door in the base of the burning tower. His bolt shattered
    the Door and ignited it, as he'd hoped. He lumbered toward it.
     Three Molts swinging edged clubs rushed Gregg from the tower.
       The battery Gregg was loading hung up in its compartment.
    When he tried to force it with his thumbs the connectors bent.
      A sailor Gregg didn't know aimed his rifle in the face of
     a Molt and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The sailor
    yelled and ran.
     Gregg lunged forward, stepping inside the nearest alien's
    stroke instead of taking it on the side of his head. The Molt
    caromed away from Gregg's armored shoulder. As the warrior
    fell, Gregg saw the creature wore a pistol holster on its sash,
    but the weapon was missing.
     Gregg clubbed his flashgun at the second Molt as the creature
    swung at him. Their blows, both right-handed, described the two
    halves of a circle. The flashgun's heavy barrel crunched a broad
    dent in the wedge-shaped skull. The alien's club was wooden,
    but dense and metal-hard. It rang on Gregg's helmet.
     His limbs lost feeling. He slipped down on his right side.
    He could see and hear perfectly well, but his body seemed to
    belong to someone else. The third Molt stood splay-legged
    before him, raising his weapon for a vertical, two-handed
    chop. The Molts of this city had a tinge of yellow in their
    chitinous exoskeletons, unlike the smooth mauve of the clan
    with which the Venerians were now allied.
     A bullet punched through the thorax of the Molt about
    to finish Gregg. The warrior fell backward in a splash of
    ichor. Piet Ricimer loaded a fresh round, butt-stroked the Molt
    beginning to rise from where the impact of Gregg's body had
    flung him, and bent to Gregg.
     "Leon!" he shouted. "Help Mr. Gregg-"
     Gregg twisted his body violently. As though the first motion
    broke a spell, he found he had control of his arms and legs
    again.
     "Leon," he said. He tried to shout, but the words came out
    in a slurred croak. The bosun gripped his shoulders to help him
    rise. "Gotta cut through the wall from this side."
     The Venerian raiders wore half-armor or at least helmets for
    the assault. One man lay with a pair of arrows crossing through
    his throat, but that appeared to be the only fatality. A rifleman
    fired from the featherboat's open hatch. There might be a few
    others inside, either left for a guard or unwilling at the crisis
    to put themselves into open danger.
     The rest of the force, eighteen or twenty men, was coalescing
    into a frightened group in the open area between the Peaches
    and the stronghold's wall. Most of them couldn't have realized
    where Ricimer was landing them. They'd spread momentarily
    when they jumped from the featherboat, but realization of how
    badly outnumbered they were drove the Venerians together
    again. Some of them were wounded.
      For their own part, the Molts were equally confused by the
     series of events. A hundred or so warriors threatened the band
    of Venerians, but they didn't press closer than five meters or
    so in the face of gunfire. Relatively few of the aliens carried
    projectile weapons. Gregg suspected the shooters had been
    stationed high in the tower for a better field of fire. The
    Peaches' thrusters had cooked most of those, though others
    were bound to swarm to the point of attack from neighboring
    towers.
     "With me!" Ricimer shouted. "We'll cut through the wall!"
    He waved his rifle in a great vertical arc as if it were a saber
    and ran forward. Gregg felt like a hippo when he moved wear-
    ing armor. His friend sprinted as though he were in shoes and
    a tunic.
     Gregg took the jammed reload out of the flashgun's com-
    partment and flung the battery as a dense missile at the nearest
    Molt. He inserted a fresh battery. "Come on, Leon," he said
    as he backed slowly with his face to the enemy. "I'm fine,
    you bet."
     Leon carried a cutting bar. He swung it in a showy figure
    eight with the power on. The blade vibrated like a beam of
    coherent light. He and Gregg were the rear guard. The wall
    was thirty meters away. Gregg expected the Molts to rush
    them, but instead warriors hopped uncertainly from one jointed
    leg to another as the flashgun's muzzle flicked sideways.
     Gregg's heel bumped something. He glanced down reflex-
    ively. An unseen marksman slammed an arrow into Gregg's
    breastplate. He pitched backward over the body of an alien
    eviscerated by a cutting bar. Thirty or forty warriors charged
    in chittering fury. Gregg scrambled to his feet in a red haze.
    
     The barrel had cracked when he used the weapon as a mace.
    Instead of frying the Molt at the point of aim, it blew up like a
    ceramic-cased bomb, hurling shrapnel forward and to all sides.
    None of the fragments hit Gregg, but the concussion knocked
    him on his back again.
      Several Molts were down, though their exoskeletons were
    relatively proof against small cuts. The rush halted in surprise,
    though. A four-shot volley from the rest of the company
    dropped several more aliens and turned the attack into a rout.
       Piet Ricimer knelt beside Gregg and rose, lifting the whole
    weight of the bigger man until the bosun grabbed the opposite
    side.  
     "I'm not hurt!" Gregg shouted angrily. "I'm not hurt!" He
    wondered if that was true. He seemed to be standing a few
    centimeters away from his body, so that the edges of his flesh
    and soul didn't quite match.
     The flashgun's barrel had disintegrated as completely as a
    hot filament suddenly exposed to oxygen. Gregg threw away
    the stock and picked up a repeater with Southern Cross mark-
    ings. He didn't know whether it was a crewman's loot from
    an earlier voyage, or if a Molt had carried the weapon. There
    was an empty case in the chamber but two cartridges in the
    magazine.
     A five-meter section of wall as high as a man sagged,
    then collapsed outward when crewmen kicked the panel to
    break the joins their hasty bar-cuts had left. Several armored
    Venerians burst through from outside the stronghold. Behind
    them were scores of allied Molts carrying projectile weap-
    ons and long wooden spears in place of the locals' edged
    clubs.
     Gregg felt himself sway. He lifted his visor for the first time
    since he boarded the Peaches for the attack. He knew the air
    was steamy, but it touched his face like an icy shower. He
    thought of unlatching his body armor, but he wasn't sure he
    retained enough dexterity to work the catches.
     Ricimer put a hand on Gregg's shoulder. "We did it," Ricimer
    croaked. "We've made the breakthrough. The Molts can carry
    the fight now."
     He guided Gregg toward the featherboat. The tower was
    fully involved, a spire of flames leaping from the ground to
    twice the eighty-meter height of the structure that fed them.
    The radiant heat was a hammer. Gregg was too numb to
    connect cause and effect, so Ricimer led him clear.
      The stronghold's defenders lay all about. Most of them were
    dead, but some twitched or even made attempts at connected
    motion. Allied Molts ripped open the ceiling of the under-
    ground chamber as soon as they were within the stronghold's
    walls, then disappeared from sight.
     High-pitched screams came from distant portions of the
    city. The cries went on longer than human throats could have
    sustained. There had been other breakthroughs now that the
    Venerians had smashed the point at which the defenders con-
    centrated against the assault. Gregg saw flames quiver upward
    through the sparse interior vegetation.

      The Molt Gregg had bodychecked and Ricirner then clubbed
     was sitting up. It followed their approach with its eyes but did
     not move.
      Gregg presented his rifle.
     "Kill me, then, human," the Molt said in high-pitched but
    intelligible English.
     "We're not here to kill p-p-p-" Ricimer began. "We're not
    here to kill you, we want workers."
     A band of twenty or thirty defending warriors sprinted
    across the clearing the featherboat had made toward a
    neighboring tower. Allied Molts pursued them. Both sides
    paused and exchanged a volley of projectiles. A few fell.
    The survivors continued their race. Gregg covered the action
    with the rifle he'd appropriated, but he didn't bother to
    fire.
     Ricimer put his hand on the shoulder of the Molt who had
    spoken. "Do you yield, then?" the spacer demanded.
     "I yield to you, human," the Molt said calmly. "But the
    Y'Lyme will kill me and all my clan. We sold them to the
    slavers for a brood-year. Now they will kill us all."
     "Nobody's going to kill you," Ricimer said harshly.
     Smoke seeped from the soil in a dozen locations. Fires
    had started in the underground chambers. Allied Molts-
    Y'Lyme--came up, driving yellow-tinged locals ahead of
    them. Those hidden below were juveniles or cramped with
    age. Y'Lyme began to spear them to death. The victims seemed
    apathetic.
     Ricimer's captive made a clicking sound that Gregg sup-
    posed was a laugh. "The slavers called me Guillermo," he
    said. "I was in charge of my clan's trade with them."
     Platt jogged over to Ricimer and Gregg with three crewmen
    from the Tolliver. He carried a cutting bar. It and his breast-
    plate were smeared with brownish Molt internal juices. Behind
    Platt, Captain Mostert and other members of his headquarters
    group entered the stronghold through the gap the Peaches crew
    had cut.
     "I'll get him!" Platt cried. He stepped to Guillermo and
    raised his howling bar.
     "Hey!" Ricimer shouted. He stepped between Platt and his
    would-be victim. "What do you think you're doing?"
     Platt shoved Ricimer aside. "Killing fucking Molts!" he
    said. "Till they all give up!"
  
    19
    
    Sunrise
    
    When the six Venerian captains conferred by radio about the
    moon they were orbiting, Piet Ricimer suggested the name
    Sunrise because of the way sunlight washed to a rose-purple
    color the gases belching from a huge volcano. The name
    stuck, at least for as long as the argosy refitted here. The
    next visitors, years or millennia hence, would give it their
    own name-if they even bothered.
     Between the sun and the moon's primary, a gas giant on the
    verge of collapsing into a star, Sunrise was habitably warm
    though on the low side of comfortable. The atmosphere stank
    of sulphur, but it was breathable.
     Cellular life had not arisen here, nor was it likely to
    arise. The primary raised tides in Sunrise's rocky core and
    swamped the moon's surface every few years with magma or
    volcanically-melted water which refroze as soon as the tremors
    paused.
     The planet-sized moon was a useful staging point in the pat-
    terns of transit space connecting the Reaches with the worlds
    of the Mirror, where the sidereal universe doubled itself in
    close detail. There would be a Federation outpost on Sunrise-
     Except for storms that battered the moon's atmosphere with
    a violence equal to the surges in the crust itself. Landing a
    large vessel on Sunrise would have been nearly suicidal for
    pilots who had not trained in the roiling hell of Venus.
     For that matter, the Tolliver's landing had been a close
    brush with disaster and the Grandcamp was still in orbit.
    Captain Kershaw's cutter ferried him down to attend the con-
    ference. 
    
     There hadn't been any choice about landing the flagship.
    Quite apart from the need to replenish the Tolliver's air sup-
    ply, her disintegrating hull required repairs that could best be
    performed on the ground. Ricimer had hinted to Gregg that
    nothing that could be done outside a major dockyard was
    going to help the big vessel significantly, though.
     "I say we head straight for home," said Fedders of the Rose.
    "We've got our profit and a dozen times over, what with the
    shell from Jewelhouse. The amount of risk we face if we try
    to move the last hundred Molts isn't worth it. And I'm talking
    about strain to the ships, irregardless of the Feds."
     "We can't make a straight run for Venus," Kershaw pro-
    tested. "I can't, at least. The gradients between transit uni-
    verses are rising, and I tell you frankly-the Grandcamp isn't
    going to take the strain."
     The buzz of crews overglazing the Tolliver provided a con-
    stant background to the discussion. Portable kilns crawled
    across the hull in regular bands, spraying vaporized rock onto
    the crumbling ceramic plates. The process returned the flag-
    ship to proper airtightness so long as she remained at rest.
    The stress of takeoff, followed by the repeated hammering of
    transit, would craze the surface anew.
     "It's not the gradients-" said Fedders.
     "The gradients are rising," Ricimer interjected quickly.
    "They're twenty percent above what the sailing directions we
    loaded on Jewelhouse indicate is normal."
     "All right, they are," Fedders snapped, "but the real problem
    is the Grandcamp's AI not making the insertions properly.
    And the Federation's Earth Convoy is due in the region any
    day now."
     "That's enough squabbling about causes," Admiral Mostert
    said forcefully. "The situation is what's important. And the
    situation is that the Tolliver can't make a straight run home
    either. We're going to have to land on Biruta to refit and take
    on reaction mass."
     Kelly of the Hawkwood muttered a curse. "Right," he said
    to his hands. They were clenched, knuckles to knuckles, on the
    opalglass conference table before him. "And what do we do if
    the Earth Convoy's waiting there for us? Pray they won't have
    heard how we traded on Jewelhouse?"
     "And Bowman," Stephen Gregg murmured from his chair
    against the bulkhead behind Ricimer-Captain Ricimer-at
    the table. The aged flagship had few virtues, but the scale
    of her accommodations, including a full conference room as
    part of the admiral's suite, was one of them. "And Guelph. We
    didn't actually blow up any buildings either of those places
    but the locals did business with us because forty plasma guns
    were trained on them."
     A particularly strong gust of wind ripped across the surface
    of Sunrise. The Tolliver rocked and settled again. A similar
    blast when Gregg and Ricimer trekked from the Peaches to
    the flagship had skidded them thirty meters across a terrain of
    rock crevices filled with ice.
     I don't suppose there'd be another uncharted stopover we
    could use instead of Biruta, would there?" Fedders suggested
    plaintively. "I mean . . ."
     Everyone in the conference room, the six captains and their
    chief aides and navigators, knew what Fedders meant. They
    also knew that Sunrise had been discovered only because
    of the Peaches' one-in-a-million piece of luck. Ricimer cast
    widely ahead of the remainder of the argosy, confident that
    he could rendezvous without constantly comparing positions
    the way the other navigators had to do.
     The voyage thus far had been a stunning success. The
    Venerians loaded pre-Collapse artifacts from two Federation
    colonies, and on Jewelhouse they'd gained half a tonne of the
    shells that made the planet famous. The material came from
    deepwater snails which fluoresced vividly to stun prey in the
    black depths of the ocean trench they inhabited. Kilo for kilo,
    the shell was as valuable as purpose-designed microchips from
    factories operating across the Miffor.
     When the voyage began, Mostert's men were willing to
    take risks for the chance of becoming wealthy. Now they
    were wealthy, all the officers in this room ... if only they
    could get home with their takings. There was no longer a
    carrot to balance the stick of danger; and that stick was more
    and more a spiked club as the condition of the older vessels
    degraded from brutal use.
     "We should be ahead of the Earth Convoy," Mostert said.
    His heavy face was without visible emotion, but the precise
    way his hands rested on the conference table suggested the
    control he exerted to retain that impassivity. "We'll load,
    repair, and be gone in a few days. We can offer the authorities
    on Biruta a fair price for using their graving docks. They need
    Molt labor as badly as the other colonies."
     "There's only one place to land a starship on Biruta," Fedders
    said with his eyes on a ceiling molding. "That's Island Able.
    And they'll have defenses there, the Feds will . . ."
     A starship which committed to land on Biruta had no options
    if batteries at the port opened fire. The seas that wrapped the
    remainder of the planet would swallow any vessel which tried
    to avoid plasma bolts that would otherwise rip her belly out.
     "They won't know we're from Venus," said Mostert. "I'll
    go in first with the guns ready for as soon as we're down."
     He looked at his cousin. "Ricimer," he said. "You can
    bring your featherboat in at the same time the Tolliver lands,
    can't you?"
     "Yes," Ricimer said softly. "We could do that. It'll confuse
    the garrison."
     Mostert nodded. "If we give them enough to think about,
    they won't act. So that's what we'll do."
     He looked around the conference table. "No further ques-
    tions, then?" he said with a deliberate lack of subtlety.
     No one spoke for a moment. The Venerians had accessed
    the data banks in the Jewelhouse Commandatura while they
    held the Fed governor and his wife under guard. The infor-
    mation there suggested that the annual Earth Convoy was due
    anytime within a standard week of the present ...
     "If there isn't any choice," Piet Ricimer said in the grim
    silence, "then-may the Lord shelter us in our necessity."
     Gregg remembered the terror in the eyes of the wife of the
    Jewelhouse governor. He wondered if the Lord saw any reason
    to shelter the men in this room ... including Stephen Gregg,
    who was of their number whether or not he approved of every
    action his company took.
 
    20

    Biruta
    
      Biruta's atmosphere was notably calm. That, with the plan-
    et's location at the nearer edge (through transit space) of the
    Reaches and the huge expanse of water to provide reaction
    mass, made Biruta an ideal way station for starships staggering
    out from the solar system.
     The Peaches had to come in at the worst part of the flag-
    ship's turbulence. She bucked. and pitched like lint above an
    air vent. Ricimer and the men on the attitude jets, Leon and
    Lightbody this time, kept the featherboat on a reasonably
    even keel.
     Jeude and Tancred in their hard suits hunched over the
    plasma cannon forward. They'd opened the gunport at three
    klicks of altitude, though they'd have to run the weapon out
    before they brought it into action.
     Gregg smiled grimly as he gripped a stanchion and braced
    one boot against a bulkhead. He was getting better at this. And
    there were amusement parks where people paid money to have
    similar experiences.
     Guillermo stood across the narrow hull from Gregg. From
    his first landing, the Molt rode as easily as if his jointed legs
    were the oil-filled struts of shock absorbers.
     "Guillermo," Gregg called. "Did your genetic memory cov-
    er space flight? Landings, I mean."
     "Yes, Mr. Gregg," the Molt said. "It does."
     Gregg wasn't sure precisely what Guillermo's status was.'
    So far as Mostert was concerned, Guillermo was an unsold
    part of the cargo loaded at Punta Verde. The larger vessels
    still carried fifty or sixty other Molts ... who would be sold
    here at Biruta.
    
     To Gregg and the Peaches crewmen, the alien who'd taken
    over Bailey's duties in the course of the past four planetfalls
    wasn't simply merchandise. Gregg wasn't sure Guillermo had
    ever been merchandise to Piet Ricimer.
     "What're them ships there?" Lightbody muttered as he peered
    at the viewscreen over his control consoles. "They're not big
    enough to be the Earth Convoy."
     "Water buffalo," Leon said. "Liftships, laser-guided drones.
    The Feds' biggest ships boost to orbit with minimum reaction
    mass to keep the strain down. Liftships, they're just buckets
    to ferry water up to them."
     Island Able was a ragged triangle with sides of about a
    kilometer each. A complex of buildings and two very small
    ships-featherboats or perhaps merely atmosphere vessels-
    were placed at the northern comer, protected by an artificial
    seawall.
     Grounded near the eastern comer were the water buffalo,
    ships in the 50-to-80-tonne range. Until the bosun explained
    what they were, Gregg thought the vessels' simple outlines
    were a result of the screen's mediocre resolution.
     On the third, western, corner, the Feds had built a fort with
    four roof turrets. Even as bad as the viewscreen was, Gregg
    should have been able to see the barrels of the guns if they
    were harmlessly lowered.
     "Captain," he said, glad to note there was no quaver in his
    voice. "I think the fort's guns are muzzle-on to us."
     "They might track the Tolliver, Stephen," Ricimer said, "but
    I don't think they'd all four track us. I don't think the turrets
    have their guns mounted."
     As he spoke, his hands played delicately with the thruster
    controls. The Tolliver rotated slowly on its vertical axis as
    it dropped. One or more of its attitude jets must be mis-
    aligned. Ricimer held the Peaches in a helix that kept the
    featherboat between the lobes of two of the flagship's huge
    thrusters.
     The Tolliver settled close to the administration complex in
    a blast of steam and gravel. The featherboat hovered for a
    moment. When the flagship's cloud of stripped atoms dissi-
    pated suddenly like a rainbow overtaken by nightfall, Ricimer
    brought them in a hundred meters from the Tolliver. They
    flanked the direct path between the bigger ship and the Fed-
    eration buildings.
   
       It was probably not chance that the line at which the
    featherboat came to rest pointed her bow and plasma cannon
    at the fort a kilometer away.
     Gregg and the Molt undogged the roof hatch. Steam bil-
    lowed in like a slap with a hot towel. Jeude and Tancred
    remained at their gun, but the remainder of the crewmen got
    to their feet.
     Gregg glanced at the viewscreen. Two Federation trucks
    drove close to the Tolliver, dragging hoses. "What-" he
    started to say.
     The trucks suddenly bloomed with a mist of seawater. It
    paled to steam as it cooled the landing site and the vessel's
    hull. The hoses stretched to intakes out beyond the line of
    Island Able's gentle surf.
     "They think we're the Earth Convoy," Ricimer said. It was
    only when he grinned broadly that Gregg realized how tense
    his friend had been beneath his outer calm. "They don't let
    their admirals sit aboard for an hour or so while the site cools
    naturally."
     "They aren't going to bother with us, though, are they?"
    Dole grumbled. "Not that it looks like there's much entertain-
    ment on this gravel heap."
     "I think if we suited up, Stephen," Ricimer said, "we could
    get to the Tolliver about the time they opened up for the local
    greeting party. Eli?"
     "They got some platforms out a ways, fella told me on
    Jewelhouse," Jeude called in response to Dole's comment.
    "Not on the island, though. Not enough land."
     "Sure," Gregg said. He thumped his armored chest. "I'd feel
    naked getting off a ship without a hard suit, the way things
    have been going. The leggings won't make much difference."
     Guillermo opened the armor store and sorted out ceramic
    pieces, the full suit sized to Ricimer's body and the lower
    half of Gregg's. Ballistic protection alone didn't justify the
    awkwardness and burden of complete armor.
     Piet Ricimer latched his torso armor over him, then paused.
    He looked around the featherboat's bay, even glancing at the
    suited gun crew behind him. In a clear, challenging voice, he
    said, "Guillermo, when we get back home, I'll have a suit
    made to fit you. I don't like carrying crewmen who don't
    have a way to stay alive in case we have to open the bay in
    vacuum."

     "Too fucking right," Dole said, responding for the crew.
     "And I'll chip in on the cost," Gregg said evenly, completing
    the answer of the question that nobody was willing to admit
    had been asked.
     Ricimer's smile lit the bay. "Leon, you're in charge," he
    said, "Stephen, let's go watch my cousin negotiate."
 
    21
    
    Biruta
    
    Five meters from the Peaches, the shingle was cool again.
    Gregg lifted his visor. Another Venerian ship dropped from
    orbit, but for the moment it was no more than a spark of
    high-altitude opalescence. The thunder of its approach had
    yet to reach the ground.
     An airboat supported by three boom-mounted ductted
    props lifted from the administrative complex. Gregg tapped
    Ricimer's shoulder-armor on armor clacked loudly-and
    pointed. "Look," he said, "they're sending a courier to the
    outlying platforms."
     Instead of heading off with a message that couldn't be
    radioed because of interference from starship thrusters, the
    airboat hummed a hundred and fifty yards across the shin-
    gle and settled again before the Tolliver's lowering cargo
    ramp.
     Piet Ricimer chuckled. "You wouldn't expect a Federation
    admiral to walk, would you, Stephen?" he said. "The locals
    expect high brass with the Earth Convoy, so they've sent a
    ride for them."
     Four Federation officials descended from the airboat. They'
    put on their uniforms in haste: one of them still wore grease
    stained utility trousers, though his white dress tunic was in
    good shape.
     The vehicle had only six seats. One of those was for the
    driver, who remained behind. Presumably some of the locals
    planned to walk back.
     Gregg and Ricimer walked in front of the boat, following
    the officials to the flagship's ramp. The driver looked startled
    when he saw the two strangers were armed as well as wearing
    hard suits. Ricimer had a rifle, while Gregg carried a replace-
    ment for the flashgun that had failed at Punta Verde.
     Ricimer eyed the driver through the windscreen, then raised
    a gauntleted index finger to his lips in a shush sign. The
    driver nodded furiously, too frightened even to duck behind
    the plastic bow of his vehicle.
     "Administrator Carstensen?" called the leader of the local
    officials from the foot of the ramp. The Tolliver's dark cargo
    bay showed only shadows where the crew awaited their visi-
    tors. "I'm Port Commander Dupuy. We're glad to welcome
    you to Biruta. I'm sure your stay will be enjoyable."
     "I'm sure it will too, gentlemen," boomed Alexi Mostert.
    "I'm absolutely sure that you'll treat me and my ships as if
    we belonged to your own Federation."
     "What?" said Dupuy. "What?"
     The man in greasy trousers was either quicker on the uptake
    or more willing to act. He spun on his heel and started a long
    stride off the ramp-
     And froze. Between him and escape were the officers from
    the featherboat, huge in their stained white hard suits. The Fed
    official drew himself up straight, nodded formally to Ricimer
    and Gregg, and turned around again.
     "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you gentlemen to be our guests
    for a time," Mostert continued. "We'll pay at normal rates
    with Molt laborers for the supplies we take, I assure you ...
    but so that there aren't any misunderstandings, I'll be putting
    my own men in your fort and admin buildings. I'm sure you
    understand, Mr. Dupuy."
     If the Federation official made any reply to Mostert, his
    words were lost in the roar of the Hawkwood, landing with
    her plasma cannon run out for use.


    22
    
    Biruta
    
    "Easy, easy . . ." echoed Leon's voice through the fort's super-
    structure. Heavy masses of metal chinged, then clanged loudly
    together-the trunnions of a 15-cm plasma cannon dropping
    into the cheek pieces. "Lock 'em down!"
     "Look at this," Ricimer murmured to Gregg in the control
    room below-and to Guillermo; at any rate, the Molt was
    present. Ricimer slowly turned a dial, increasing the magni-
    fication of the image in the holographic screen. "Just look at
    the resolution."
     "Boardman, use the twenty-four-millimeter end, not the
    twenty-two!" Leon shouted. "D'ye have shit for brains?"
     The bosun's twenty-man crew was completing the mounting
    of the fort's armament. The heavy plasma cannon had been
    delivered by a previous Earth Convoy. In three days, the
    Venerians had accomplished a job that Federation personnel
    on Biruta hadn't gotten around to in at least a year.
     On the other hand, the Feds in their heart of hearts didn't
    expect to need the fort. The Venerians did.
     "This is what we'll have on Venus soon," Ricimer said.
    "This is what all humanity will have, now that we have the
    stars again."
     The five Venerian ships-the Grandcamp had vanished after
    the first series of transits, and only an optimist believed that
    she or her crew would ever be seen again-clustered together
    near the buildings at the north end of the island. Men were
    busy refitting the battered vessels for the long voyage back to
    Venus. They used Federation equipment as well as that carried
    by the argosy.
  
     "All right," Leon ordered. "You four, torque her down tight.
    Luong, you and your lot are dismissed. Take the shearlegs and
    tackle back to the Tolliver with you. Anders, you're in charge
    here until you're relieved."
     Ricimer had focused on the Rose, eight hundred meters
    across the island. At the present magnification, Gregg could
    identify some of the crewmen fitting new thruster nozzles
    beneath the vessel. The holds gaped open above them, letting
    the sea breeze flow through the vessel.
     "We could see right into the ship if the light was a little
    better," Gregg agreed.
     Guillermo said, "The third control from the right." His three
    jointed fingers together indicated the rotary switch he meant.
    "Up will increase light levels above ambient."
     Ricimer touched the control, then rolled it upward. The
    edges of the display whited out with overload. Shadowed areas
    congealed into clarity beneath the ship, within the holds, and
    even through the open gunports.
     "You've seen this sort of equipment before?" Ricimer
    asked.
     The Molt flicked his fingers behind his palms in the equi-
    valent of a shrug. "It's a standard design," he said. "My
    memory-
     "Memory" was a more or less satisfactory description of
    what amounted to genetic encoding.
     "-includes identical designs."
     "They'd have to be," Gregg realized aloud. "It's not as
    though the Feds built this. Their Molts did."
     The huge advantage the North American Federation had
    over other states was its possession of planets whose auto-
    mated factories had continued to produce microchips for years
    or even centuries after the Collapse. When the factories finally
    broke down, they left behind dispersed stockpiles of circuitry
    whose quality and miniaturization were beyond the capacity
    of the present age,
      Fed electronics were not so much better than those of the
     Venerians as greatly more common. But Fed electronics were
    better also ...
      "Once Venus has its trade in hand," Ricimer said, "we'll do
    it properly. The Federation goes by rote-"
      He nodded to Guillermo. Leon, muttering about the lazy
     frogspawn crewing some vessels he could name, clomped
    down the ladder serving the gun stations on the roof.
     "--only doing what was done a thousand years ago. We'll
    build from where mankind was before the Rebellion-new
    ways through the Mirror, new planets with new products. Not"
    
     "Old ways is right," Leon said as he entered the control
    room. "Those guns we mounted, they're alike as so many
    peas. Men didn't make them, Molts and machines did. The
    Feds just sit on their butts and let the work do itself-like"
    
     Guillermo looked at the bosun. "Is work by itself good?" the
    Molt asked. "How can it matter whether you pull a rope or I
    pull a rope or a winch pulls the rope-so long as the rope is
    pulled?"
     "Centralized production is sure enough bad," Leon said.
    "That's what caused the Collapse, after all. That and people
    having too much time to spend on politics, since they didn't
    have to work."
     "It's more than that," Piet Ricimer added. "Machines can't
    create. They'll make the same thing each time-whether it's
    a nozzle or a flashgun barrel or a birdbath. When my father
    or even one of his apprentices makes an item, it has . . ."
     He smiled wryly to wipe the hint of blasphemy away from
    what he was about to say. "A man's work has what would be
    a soul, if the work were a man rather than a thing."
     Guillermo's head moved from Leon to Ricimer, as if the
    neck were clicking between detents. "And my race has no
    soul," the Molt said. The words were too flat to be a question.
     "If you do have souls," Ricimer replied after a moment's
    hesitation, "then in selling your fellows as merchandise, we're
    committing a sin."
     Man and Molt looked at one another in silence. The alien's
    face was impassive by, virtue of its exoskeletal construction.
    Piet Ricimer's expression gave up equally little information.
     Guillermo cocked his head in a gesture of amusement.
    "Things are things, Captain," he said. "But I'll admit that the
    number of things may be less important than how you use the
    things you have. And your Venus clan uses things very well."
    The siren at the Federation fort started to wail.
    "Damn the timing!" Gregg snarled. "Leon, did the men from
    the Tolliver finish up?" "Yes", Leon said.     
    "All tight," Gregg decided aloud. "Piet, I'll run across to
    the flagship and find out what's going on. You can-"
     Ricimer smiled. "I think we can learn what's happening
    more easily than that, Stephen," he said.
     As he spoke, he tapped pairs of numbers into a keypad on
    the console. Each touch switched the holographic display,
    either to a lustrous void or an image:
     An office in the island's administrative complex, where half
    a dozen Venetians had put down their playing cards when the
    siren blew;
     A panorama from a camera placed a hundred meters above
    the empty sea;
     Another office, this one empty save for a chair over which
    was draped the uniform jacket of a Federation officer.
     "Seventeen," Guillermo suggested, pointing.
     Ricimer keyed in one-seven. The screen split, with Alexi
    Mostert on the left half, saying to the Federation officer on
    the right side, "Yes, your Administrator Carstensen, if he's
    in charge! And don't even think of trying to land without my
    permission!"
     "I thought," Gregg said softly, "that we might manage to
    get away before the Earth Convoy arrived."
     "It's no problem, sir," Leon said in mild surprise. "If they
    try to land, we'll rip 'em up the jacksies while they're braking.
    It's suicide for ships to attack plasma batteries on the surface."
     "That's not the whole question, Leon," Piet Ricimer said.
    The right half of the screen had gone blank. On the left,
    Mostert was in profile as he spoke with subordinates. The
    Federation communications equipment completely muted all
    sound not directed toward it, so Mostert's lips moved silently.
     The right side of the screen solidified into an image again.
    This time it was a heavy-jowled man in his fifties, wearing
    Federation court dress. He looked angry enough to chew nails.
    For the moment, he too was talking to someone outside the
    range of the pickup.
     "Federation ships with Fed crews, they'll be in much worse
    shape than ours were," Ricimer continued in a bare whisper.
    "If we don't let them land, at least half of them will be lost ...
    and that will mean war between Venus and the Federation."
     "I'll fight a war if that's what they want, Mr. Ricimer,"
    Leon said. He didn't raise his voice, but there was challenge
    in the set of his chin.
     Gregg smiled tightly and squeezed the bosun's biceps in a
    friendly grip. "We'll all do what we have to, Leon," he said.
    "But war's bad for trade."
     The Federation leader faced front. "I'm Henry Carstensen,
    Administrator of the Outer Ways by order of President Pleyal
    and the Federation Parliament," he said. "You wanted me and
    I'm here. Speak."
     The crispness of both the visual and audio portions of the
    transmission were striking to men used to Venerian commo.
    There was no sign that Federation AIs made a better job of the
    complex equations governing transit, though . .
     "First, Your Excellency," Alexi Mostert said unctuously, "I
    want to apologize for this little awkward-"
     "Stop your nonsense," Carstensen snapped. "You're holding
    a Federation port against Federation vessels. Is it war, then,
    between Venus and Earth-or are you a pirate, operating
    against the will of Governor Halys?"
     "Neither, Excellency," Mostert said. "If I can explain...?"
     "I'm not interested in explanations!" Carstensen said. "I
    have ships in immediate need of landing. If one of them is
    lost, if one crewman dies, then the only thing that will prevent
    the forces of Earth from devastating your planet is your head
    on a platter, Mostert. Do you understand? My ships must be
    allowed to land now."
     The Venerian commander bent his head and pressed his
    fingertips firmly against his forehead.
     "Cousin Alexi's going at it the wrong way," Ricimer said
    dispassionately. "With a man like Carstensen, you negotiate
    from strength or you don't negotiate at all."
     "I'll see how they're coming on the fourth gun," Leon said
    abruptly. He bolted from the control room.
     Mostert lifted his head. "Then listen," he said. "These are
    the terms on which I-"
     "You have no right to set terms!" Carstensen shouted.
     "Don't talk to me about rights, mister!" said Alexi Mostert.
    "I've got enough firepower to scour every Federation platform
    off the surface of this world. I can fry your ships even if you
    stay in orbit. If you try to come down there won't be bits big
    enough to splash when they finally hit the water. These are my
    terms! Are you ready to listen?"
     "Much better, cousin," Piet Ricimea murmured.
     Administrator Carstensen lifted his chin in acceptance.
    "Your eight ships will be allowed to land," Mostert said.
    "Their guns will be shuttered. As soon as they're on the
    ground, the crews will be transported to outlying platforms.
    There will be no Federation personnel on Island Able until my
    argosy has finished refitting and left."
     "That's impractical," Carstensen said.
     "These are my terms!"
     "I understand that," Carstensen said calmly. It was as though
    the Federation official who started the negotiation had been
    replaced by a wholly different man. "But some of my vessels
    are in very bad shape. They need immediate repairs or there'll
    be major fires and probably a powerplant explosion. I need to
    keep maintenance personnel and a few officers aboard to avoid
    disaster."
     The Venerian commander's lips sucked in and out as he
    thought. "All right," he said. "But in that case I'll need liaison
    officers from you. Six of them. They'll be entertained in com-
    fort for the few remaining days that my ships need to complete
    their refit."
     Carstensen sniffed. "Hostages, you mean. Well, as you've
    pointed out, Admiral Mostert, you're holding a gun to the
    heads of nearly a thousand innocent men and women as it
    is. I accept your conditions."
     Mostert licked at the dryness of his lips. "Very well," he
    said. "Do you swear by God and your hope of salvation to
    keep these terms, sir?"
     "I swear," Carstensen said in the same cool tones which had
    characterized his latter half of the negotiations.
     Carstensen stood up. His console's pickup lengthened its
    viewing field automatically. The administrator was surprising-
    ly tall, a big man rather than simply a broad one. "And I swear
    also, Admiral," he said, "that when President Pleyal hears of
    this, then your Governor Halys will hear; and you will hear
    of it again yourself."
     The convoy's side of the screen went blank.
     "I'm not worried," Mostert said to the pearl emptiness. His
    side of the transmission blanked out as well.
     Piet Ricimer turned to Gregg with an unreadable smile.
    "What do you think, Stephen?" he asked.
     "I think if your cousin isn't worried," Gregg replied, "then
    he's a very stupid man."
  
    23
    
    Biruta
    "Slow down," Gregg said to Tancred, who was driving the
    guards back from the fort at the end of their watch. He
    peered into the darkness behind the brilliant cone of the
    truck's ceramic headlamps and the softer, yellower gleam of
    lights from the Federation vessels. "That looks like-stop, it's
    Mr. Ricimer."
     Tancred brought the vehicle to a squealing halt. "Christ's
    blood!" he said. "I don't care what oaths those Feds swore.
    This is no safe place for one of our people alone."
     The Earth Convoy lay across the center of Island Able. The
    straggling line was as close a group as the vessels' condition
    and their pilots' skill permitted. The Feds were well separated
    from the five Venerian ships at the north end of the island, but
    the metal-built vessels controlled the route between there and
    the fort on the western comer.
     Changing the guard at the fort required driving through the
    midst of the Federation fleet. That didn't feel a bit comfort-
    able, even for twenty armed men in a vehicle; and as Tancred
    said, it was no place for a Venerian on foot.
     "He's not alone," Gregg said, clutching the flashgun closer
    to his breastplate so that it wouldn't clack against the cab
    frame as he got down. "He's with me. Leon?" he added to
    the men in amorphous shadow in the truck bed. "You're in
    charge till we get back."
     Ignoring the crewmen's protests, Gregg jumped to the shin-
    gle and crunched toward his friend. After a moment, the truck
    lurched forward again.
    
      The sea breeze sighed. It was surprisingly peaceful when
    the truck engine had whined itself downwind, toward the
      administrative complex and Venerian ships. Work proceeded
    round the clock on several Federation ships, but the uniformly
    open horizon absorbed sound better than anechoic paneling.
     "What in the name of heaven do you think you're doing
    here, Piet?" Gregg demanded softly. "Trying to be the spark
    that turns this business into a shooting war?"
     "I'm just looking at things, Stephen," Ricimer answered.
    "But not for trouble, no."
     Though Gregg thought at first that his friend was a deliber-
    ate provocation, standing in the very middle of the ragged Fed-
    eration line, he realized that except for the moment Ricimer
    was swept by the truck's headlights he was well shielded by
    darkness. The young captain wasn't going to be noticed and
    attacked by a squad of Federation engine fitters who objected
    to his presence.
     "It's a good place to find trouble anyway," Gregg grumbled.
    "Look, let's get back to where we belong."
     "Listen," Ricimer said. A large airboat approached low over
    the sea with a throb of ducted fans. A landing officer used a
    hand strobe to guide the vehicle down beside the Federation
    flagship three hundred meters from Gregg and Ricimer. It
    landed on the south side of the vessel so that the latter's
    800-tonne bulk was between the airboat and the Venerian
    ships.
     "Well, they've been bringing in supplies," Gregg said. "Tak-
    ing cargo off too, I shouldn't wonder."
     "Listen, " Ricimer repeated more sharply.
     Gregg heard voices on the breeze. They were too low to
    be intelligible, and from the timbre the speakers had nothing
    important to say anyway.
     But there were a lot of them. Several score of men, very
    likely. And they had disembarked on the north side of the
    airboat so that it blocked the view from the Venerians and the
    night vision equipment in the fort.
     "Oh," Gregg said. "I see."
     "Boats came in the same way last night," Ricimer explained.
    "Three loads. I thought I ought to be sure before I-told my
    cousin something that he's not going to want to hear."
     Gregg grimaced in the darkness. "Let's get on back," he
    said. "Look, we leave tomorrow morning. It'll be all right."
     Ricimer nodded or shrugged, the gesture uncertain in the
    darkness. "We'd best get back," he agreed.

    "No, the admiral's still up in his cabin," said the steward
    who'd turned angrily from the midst of banquet preparations.
    The man calmed instantly when he saw that two officers and
    not a fellow crewman had interrupted him. "Captain Fedders
    is in with him and some others."
     Level Four, the higher of the Tolliver's two gun decks,
    was bustling chaos. The flagship was pierced for fifty guns
    and carried twenty on the present voyage. The eight on this
    level were run out of their ports to provide more deck space
    for banquet tables. Officers' servants from the three larger
    vessels combined on the flagship to prepare and present the
    celebratory dinner.
     The Tolliver's vertical core was taken up by tanks of air and
    reaction mass. The remaining space, even when undivided as
    now on Level Four, wasn't really suitable for a large gathering,
    but it was the best available aboard the ships themselves.
     Fed structures on Island Able provided minimal shelter for
    low-ranking service personnel. No buildings could be solid
    enough to survive the crash of a starship, so all comfortable
    facilities were on artificial platforms at a distance from the
    island. The barracks, the only large building in the adminis-
    trative complex, was a flimsy barn with no kitchen. It smelled
    as much of its previous Molt occupants as the holds of the
    Venerian vessels did.
     Guests-the officers and gentlemen from the other ves-
    sels-had already drifted to the flagship's banquet area, get-
    ting in the way of the men who were trying to prepare it.
     The ships had been repaired to the degree possible outside
    a major dockyard. The only people on duty were the stew-
    ards, a port watch on each vessel, and the guard detachment
    in the fort-supplied by the Tolliver for this final night on
    Biruta.
     In the morning the argosy would lift for Venus, carrying
    cargo of enough value to make every officer rich, and every
    crewman popular for three days or a week, until he'd spent
    or been robbed of his share. The investors, Gregg of Weyston
    among them, would have their stakes returned tenfold. Even
    assuming the Grandcamp had come apart in the strain of
    forcing her way between bubble universes as the energy gra-
    dients separating them rose, the voyage had been a stunning
    success.
    
     Gregg followed Piet Ricimer up the companionway to the
    bridge on Level Six. Behind them, coming from barracks in
    the administrative complex, were Administrator Carstensen's
    six hostages and the Venerian gentlemen watching over them.
    Mostert had invited the "liaison officers" to the banquet,
    although it had become obvious by the second day that the
    Feds were not nearly of the rank their titles and uniforms
    claimed.
     Alexi Mostert, wearing trousers of red plush but still holding
    the matching jacket in his hand, stood in the doorway of his
    cabin, partitioned off from the bridge proper, and shouted,
    "God grind your bones to dust, Fedders! Don't you know an
     order when you hear one?"
    
     Three officers of the flagship, Mostert's personal servant,
    and Fedders of the Rose were part of the tableau surrounding
    the admiral. Two crewmen, detailed to the port watch while
    their fellows partied on a lesser scale than their leaders, lis-
    tened from behind one of the pair of plasma cannon mounted
    vertically in the passageway.
    
     "Don't you know danger when you see it, Mostert?" Fedders
    shouted back. "I tell you, they're cutting gunports in the side of
    the big freighter facing us. What d'ye think they're planning to
    do from them? Wave us goodbye?"
    
        Unlike the other officers on the bridge, Fedders wore ship-
    board clothing of synthetic canvas and carried a ceramic hel-
    met instead of dress headgear. The fact that Fedders was fully
    clothed and had forced himself on Mostert while changing was
    an implicit threat that made the admiral certain to explode, but
    the discussion probably would have gone wrong anyway.
     Mostert clutched his tunic with both hands. The hair on the
    admiral's chest was white though his hair and beard were
    generally brown. For an instant, Gregg thought from the way
    Mostert's pectoral muscles bunched that he was going to rip
    the garment across.
     Instead he deliberately unclenched his hands and said, "All
    fight, Fedders, I'll put a special watch on what our Terran
    friends are doing. You. Report to your ship immediately and
    don't leave her again until we land in Betaport."
     "Punishing me isn't going to stop the Feds from blasting the
    hell out of us as we lift, Mostert!" Fedders said. "What we
    need to do is take over their ships right now and put every
     damned soul of them off the island before it's too late!'

     "He's right, Admiral," Piet Ricimer said, careful to stay a
    non-threatening distance from Mostert.
     "Christ bugger you both for fools!" Mostert bellowed. He
    tugged at the tunic, unable to tear the fabric but pulling it all
    out of shape or the possibility of wearing. "Both of you! To
    your ships! Now, or God blind me if I don't have you shot for
    treason!"
     Galliard, the Toliiver's navigator, was a friend of Fedders'.
    He took the Rose's captain by the elbows and half guided, half
    pushed him toward the companionway.
     "Sir," said Ricimer, "blasphemy now is-"
     "You canting preacher!" Mostert said. "I've enough chap-
    lains aboard already. Get to your ship-and see if you can find
    some courage along the way!"
     Ricimer's face went white.
     Gregg set his flashgun down to balance on its broad muz-
    zle. He stepped deliberately between his friend and Mostert.
    "Admiral Mostert," he said in a voice pared to the bone by
    anger. "If a man were to address me in that fashion, I would
    demand that he meet me in the field so that I might recover
    my honor."
     The cold fury in the gentleman's voice slapped Mostert out
    of his own state. The admiral wasn't afraid of Gregg, but
    neither was he a mere spacer with money. There was no profit
    in making Gregg of Weyston's nephew an enemy.
     "I assure you, Mr. Gregg," he said, "that no part of my
    comments were directed at you."
     "Come away, Stephen," Ricimer said, drawing Gregg around
    to break his eye contact with Admiral Mostert.
     "The Tolliver will lift last of the argosy," Mostert said in
    a gruffly reasonable voice. "We'll have our guns run out. At
    the least hint of trouble we'll clear the island!"
     Ricimer picked up the flashgun by its butt. Gregg reached
    for it numbly but his friend twitched the weapon to his side.
     "We've gotten this far without having trouble that the Gov-
    ernor, that Governor Halys can't forgive," Mostert said. He
    sounded wistful, almost desperate. "We're not going to start
    a war now!"
     "You'll need to change for the banquet," Ricimer said as he
    directed Gregg down the companionway ahead of him. "The
    Peaches should have some representative there, after all."

    24
    
    Biruta
    
    "To the further expansion of trade across the universe!" Alexi
    Mostert called from the head table. He raised the glass in his
    right hand. That was the only part of the admiral which Gregg
    could see from where he sat, a third of the way around the
    curve of the deck.
    "Expansion of trade," murmured the gathered officers and
    gentlemen in a slurred attempt at unison. The night's heavy
    drinking hadn't begun. A combination of relief at going home
    and fear of another series of transits like the set which had
    devoured the Grandcamp had given some of those present a
    head start on the festivities, however.
    The banquet was served on rectangular tables, each of which
    cut an arc of the circular deck space. The sixty or so diners sat
    on the hull side, while stewards served them from the inner
    curve. The Tolliver's galley was on Level Three, and the two
    companionways were built into the vessel's central core.
    The hostages were spaced out among the Venerians. The
    older man beside Mostert, supposedly the deputy commander
    of a Fed warship but probably a clerk of some sort, looked
    gloomy. The female Gregg could see on almost the opposite
    side of Level Four was terrified and slobberingly drunk. To
    Gregg's immediate left sat a man named Tilbury, younger
    than Gregg himself. He was keyed to such a bright-eyed pitch
    that Gregg wondered if he was using some drug other than
    alcohol.
        Well, perhaps the hostages thought they would be slaugh-
    tered when the argosy left-or as bad from their viewpoint,
    carried off to the sulphurous caves of Venus.
    "Sir," said a steward. "Sir. " To get Gregg's attention, the
    fellow leaned across the remains of a savory prepared from
    canned fruit. "There's an urgent call for you on the bridge.
    From your ship."
     Walking would feel good. Gregg was muzzy from the meal,
    ,more drink than normal, and reaction to the scene on the
    bridge two hours before. He still trembled when he thought
    about that ...
     "All right," he muttered, and slid his chair back. The breech
    of a 20-cm plasma cannon blocked his path to the right. Even
    run out, the heavy weapons took up a great deal of space. He
    could go to his left and maybe creep between the corners of
    two tables, but that would be tight. Tilbury looked ready to
    explode if awakened from his glittering dreamworld to move.
     Gregg ducked under the table. He knocked his head by
    rising too quickly and found himself on the other side with
    something greasy smeared on the knees of his dress trousers.
    They were gray-green silk shot with silver filaments, and
    they'd be the very devil to clean.
     Cursing his stupidity, not the call that summoned him, Gregg
    strode to the companionway and climbed the helical stairs three
    treads at a time.
     The bridge felt shockingly comfortable. The petty officer and
    two crewmen on watch had opened the horizontal gunports. The
    mild cross-breeze made Gregg realize how hot and crowded
    Level Four was.
     "Here you go, sir," the petty officer said as he gave Gregg
    the handset. It would have been nice if they could have stripped
    the Federation communications system out of the port build-
    ings ... but this was a trading voyage.
     "Go ahead," Gregg said into the handset. At least it was a
    dual frequency unit, so the two carrier waves didn't step on
    one another if the parties spoke simultaneously.
     "Stephen," said Piet Ricimer's crackling voice, "I don't
    think the Feds are going to wait till tomorrow. Their three
    warships are clearing their gunports, and airboats have been
    ferrying more men onto the island all night."
     Gregg moved to an open gunport within the five-meter
    length of the handset's flex. He peered out. The circular port
    looked south. He couldn't see the Peaches, but the Federation
    convoy bulked across the night sky like a herd of sleeping
    monsters.
     "What do you. . ." Gregg said. He shook his head, wishing
    that he could think more clearly. The bridge watch watched
    him covertly. " . . . want me to do?"
     Biruta's moon was a jagged chunk of rock. Even full, as
    now, it did little to illuminate the landscape. The silhouettes
    of Federation ships were speckled by light. The Feds were
    opening, then closing their gunports to be sure that the shut-
    ters wouldn't jam when the order came to run the guns out
    for use.
     "Stephen," Ricimer said tautly, "you've got to convince
    Mostert to take some action immediately. I know what I'm
    asking, but there's no choice."
     "Right," said Gregg. He put down the handset and glanced
    around for the petty officer.
     He didn't know the man's name. "You, he said, pointing.
    "Sound the general alarm now. Now!"
     "What?" said the petty officer. One of the crewmen threw a
    large knife-switch attached to a stanchion. The flagship's siren
    began slowly to wind.
     A plasma cannon fired from one of the Federation vessels.
    
     Gregg was fully alert and alive. "Get those guns slewed!"
    he cried as he jumped into the companionway. With his right
    hand on the rail, he took the fifteen steps in three huge,
    spiraling jumps and burst out onto the banquet room again.
     Men were looking up, alarmed by the siren and drawn to
    
    the electric thump of the plasma discharge
    
     "We're being attacked!" Gregg shouted. "Get to your-"
     Tilbury rose from his seat, looking toward Admiral Mostert
    as though the two of them were the only people in all the uni-
    verse. The Federation hostage lifted the short-barreled shotgun
    which had been strapped to his right calf.
     Gregg dived over the table at him. As he did so, three guns
    salvoed from the Rose, lighting the night with their irides-
    cence. The metal hull of the Federation flagship bloomed with
    white fireballs which merged into a three-headed monster.
     Gregg hit Tilbury. The shotgun fired into the ceiling. Lead
    pellets splashed from the hard ceramic.
     Gregg slammed the smaller Terran into the bulkhead hard
    enough to crush ribs, but he couldn't wrest away Tilbury's
    shotgun as they wrestled on the deck in a welter of food and
    broken crockery. Tilbury giggled wildly.
     Gregg suddenly realized that the weapon was a single-shot.
    He released it, gripped Tilbury's short hair, and used the
    strength of both arms to slam the hostage's head against the
    deck until the victim went limp.
     Something crashed dazzlingly into the Tolliver. A portion
    of the hull shattered. The rainbow light was so intense that it
    flared through the gunports open to the east, south, and west
    together. Gregg couldn't tell where they'd been hit.
     "Stand clear!" somebody roared as he switched on the gun-
    nery controls for the weapon Gregg sprawled under.
     Gregg jumped to his feet. There was already a crush of
    men at the nearer companionway. Gregg fought into them.
    He was bigger than most, and adrenaline had already brought
    his instincts to full, murderous life.
     A 20-cm gun, beside the one whose captain had given
    a warning, fired at the Fed convoy. The cannon recoiled,
    pistoning the air in a searing flash.
     Under normal circumstances, plasma cannon were fired by
    crews wearing hard suits, in sections of the vessel partitioned
    off to protect nonarmored personnel from the weapons' rav-
    ening violence. There was neither time nor inclination to rig
    the ship for battle now.
     The blast knocked down the men nearest to the gun. Rib-
    bons and the gauze ornaments of their clothing smoldered.
    The other south-facing cannon fired also. Three Fed bolts
    raked the Tolliver. A red-hot spark shot up the center of the
    companionway.
     By the time Gregg reached Level Three, there was only one
    officer ahead of him. That fellow stumbled midway down the
    next winding flight, and Gregg jumped his cursing form.
     The Tolliver's crewmen were running forward the Level
    Two plasma cannon; the shutters had already been raised
    for ventilation. The internal lights had gone off. A glowing
    hole in the outer hull showed where a Federation bolt had
    gotten home. The air stank of insulation, ionized gases, and
    burning flesh.
     Gregg dropped into the hold and ran down the ramp. His
    hard suit and flashgun were on the featherboat. In his urge to
    get to familiar equipment and his friends, he hadn't thought
    about arming himself aboard the flagship. Now he felt
    naked.
     Plasma spurted from the flank of a 100-tonne Federation
    warship. There were four bolts, but they were light ones.
    Two struck the Rose, throwing up sparks of white-hot ceramic
    slivers. The Delight bucked, then collapsed into separate bow
    and stem fragments with only glowing slag between them.
    The Hawkwood, lying slightly to the north of all the Venerian
    ships save the Peaches, had not been hit by the cannonading
    thus far. Five 10-cm plasma cannon along her starboard side
    volleyed. The bolts converged squarely amidships of the
    spherical Federation flagship. White-hot metal erupted as if
    from a horizontal volcano.
    For several seconds, steam from blown reaction-mass tanks
    wreathed the vessel. The vapor was so hot that it didn't cool
    to visibility until it was several meters beyond the hull. A
    secondary explosion, either a store of plasma shells or com-
    pressed flammables, spewed fire suddenly from every port and
    hatchway on the huge vessel.
    Gregg was running toward the Peaches. The concussion
    knocked him down. He looked over his shoulder. The Fed
    eration warship's thick hull gleamed yellow as it lost strength
    and slumped toward the shingle.
    Gregg scrambled forward, dabbing his hands down before
    he got his feet properly under him. Carstensen's disintegra-
    ting flagship threw a soft radiance across the island. Most of
    the plasma cannon on both sides had fired and were cooling
    before they could be reloaded. Twin shocks from the Tolliver
    indicated the guns on the lower level had been brought into
    action.
    Gravel spat from beneath the Peaches; Ricimer had lighted
    the thrusters. A pebble stung Gregg's thigh. "Wait for me!" he
    screamed. He could barely hear his own voice over the roar of
    the incandescent Federation flagship.
    A handheld spotlight spiked Gregg from the featherboat's
    batch. It blinded him, so he didn't see the rope flung to him
    until it slapped him in the face. "Quick! Quick!" a voice
    warned faintly.
    Gregg braced his boot against the curve of the hull and
    began to pull himself upward, hand over hand. As he did so,
    the thrusters fired at mid-output. The Peaches lifted a meter
    and began to swing.
    Two of the fort's plasma cannon fired simultaneously. A
    large airboat approaching from the west blew apart only a
    few meters above the sea, showering the surface with debris,
    bodies, and blazing kerosene. A second airboat, slanting down
    Darallel to the first, around to a halt beside the fort.
     Federation soldiers, humans and Molts together, jumped
    out of the vehicle. Rifles flashed and spat, mostly aimed at
    the Venerian defenders. More Federation troops spilled from
    nearby cargo vessels and ran toward the fort.
     Gregg flopped over the hatch coaming and into the
    featherboat's bay like a fish being landed. Internal lights
    were on, but his retinas were too stunned by plasma discharges
    for him to be able to see more than shadows and the purple
    blotches across his retinas.
     "Give me my flashgun!" he cried as he tried to stand up.
    "And a helmet, Christ's blood!"
     The Peaches' bow gun fired, jolting the hovering featherboat
    into a wild yaw. Somebody lowered a helmet onto Gregg's head,
    visor down. Leon said, "Here you go, Mr. Gregg," and pressed
    the familiar angles of a flashgun into his hands.
     "Ammo!" Gregg demanded as he jumped on top of the
    storage locker to aim out the hatch. Even as he spoke, he
    realized that Leon had slung a bandolier heavy with charged
    batteries over the laser's receiver.
     Bullets or gravel spit by other thrusters clicked against the
    featherboat's hull. The Rose was under way, swinging to bring
    her portside guns to bear on the Federation convoy.
     Three bolts from Fed ships punched the Rose as she slowly
    rotated. Sections of ceramic hull blew out in bright showers.
    The third hit doused internal lighting over the forward half of
    the vessel. Then her six-gun port battery cut loose in a volley
    timed to half-second intervals.
     During the truce, the Feds had mounted guns in their largest
    ship, a cylindrical cargo hauler of 1,000 tonnes. It was the
    vessel closest to the Venerian ships and its fire had been
    galling. Now the freighter's hull plating, thinner than that of
    a warship, vaporized under the point-blank salvo. The last of
    the six bolts blew through the ship's far side. Flame-shot gases
    gushed from both bow and stern.
     The Tolliver and three surviving ships of the Earth Con-
    voy settled into a series of punch and counterpunch. Indi-
    vidual bolts from the Venerian flagship's heavy guns were
    answered by double or triple discharges from lighter Feder-
    ation weapons.
     A yellow-orange spot on the hull of a Fed warship indicated
    where a plasma cannon had been run out again after being
    fired. The barrel, stellite rather than ceramic in normal Terran
    usage, still glowed from the previous discharge. Gregg used
    it as his aiming point and fired.
     His flashgun couldn't damage the vessel's hull, but the laser
    bolt might snap through the open port. Even better, a bolt that
    passed down the cannon's bore would detonate the shell out
    of sequence, turning it into a miniature fusion bomb instead
    of a directed-energy weapon. That would require amazing luck
    under the present conditions-
     But the Venerian argosy was going to need amazing luck if
    any of them were to survive this treacherous attack.
     The Tolliver's bow guns fired. Scratch crews had pivoted
    the weapons from vertical to horizontal gunports.
     Each hit on a Fed hull belched gouts of flaming metal, but
    the ships continued to work their guns. Bubbles of glowing
    vapor flashed through the interior of the vessels. Even with
    partitions rigged within the compartments to limit blast effects,
    Terran casualties must have been horrendous.
     Federation troops rushed from the two freighters toward
    the Tolliver. Harsh shadows from plasma weapons confused
    their numbers: there may have been a few score, there may
    have been over a hundred. Some were Molts, angular and
    thin-limbed.
     Gregg fired, trying to keep his aim low. The flashgun wasn't
    a particularly good weapon against troops well spaced across
    an empty plain. A laser bolt striking in front of the ragged line
    would spray gravel across the attackers. That provided some
    hope of casualties and considerable psychological effect.
     Ricimer slewed the Peaches eastward, keeping the feather-
    boat's bow toward the hostile vessels. Gregg wondered if his
    friend was taking them out of the battle. A single plasma bolt
    could gut the featherboat. All that had saved them thus far was
    being some distance from the fighting and therefore ignored
    by Federation cannoneers.
     Gregg fired again. Tancred was beside him with a repeater,
    a better choice for the task. Rifles and a flashgun flashed
    from the Tolliver's holds where crewmen prepared to meet the
    Federation attack. The Venerians were badly outnumbered.
     The Peaches' bow gun fired. Ricimer had swung the
    featherboat to a position that entiladed the line of Fed-
    eration troops. The plasma bolt flashed the length of the
    attackers, killing half a dozen of them outright and throwing
    the survivors back in panic. Burning bodies and the sparks of
     detonating ammunition littered the shingle.
     One rifleman-a Molt-stood silhouetted against the blaz-
    ing freighter and aimed at the featherboat. The alien soldier
    was almost four hundred meters away. Gregg aimed as if
    the boat quivering beneath him were the bedrock solidity of
    a target range.
     The Molt fired and missed. Gregg's laser lighted the Molt's
    instantaneous death. The creature's torso exploded as its body
    fluids flashed to steam.
     Why had it fought to preserve Federation claims?
     Why did anybody fight for anything?
     The fort's heavy guns fired in pairs. The Rose flared like the
    filament of a lightbulb. Because the Venerian ship had risen
    to fifty meters, her underside was exposed. One bolt shattered
    half her forward thrusters.
     Captain Fedders and the Rose's AI tried to keep control. A
    quick switch of the angle of the surviving thruster nozzles
    kept the ship from augering in under power, but nothing could
    prevent a crash.
     The Rose nosed into the shingle at a walking pace, yawing
    to port as she did so. Fragments of ceramic stressed beyond
    several strength moduli flew about in razor-edged profusion,
    far more dangerous than the spray of gravel gouged from
    the ground. The stem of the vessel came to rest in fairly
    complete condition, but the bow disintegrated into shards of
    a few square meters or less.
     Light winked toward the Peaches from a port open onto
    the flagship's bridge. For a moment Gregg thought some-
    one had mistaken them' for a Fed vessel; then he realized
    that Mostert or one of his men was using a handheld talk-
    between-ships unit to communicate with the featherboat. The
    TBS used a modulated laser beam which wasn't affected by
    plasma cannon and thrusters radiating across all the radio
    bands.
     Ricimer brought the Peaches in tight behind the Tolliver.
    The Hawkwood was already there. A line of men transferred
    crates and bales of goods from the flagship's holds to the
    lighter vessel.
     The guns of the recaptured fort hammered the Tolliver.
    The plasma bolts blew pieces of the west-facing hull high
    above the vessel, glittering in the light of burning ships. Gregg
    grunted as though he'd been struck by medicine balls, even
    though the flagship's mass was between him and the bolts'
    impact.
     The featherboat grounded hard. Gregg didn't have any tar-
    gets because they were behind the Tolliver. He felt as though
    he'd come to shelter after a terrible storm. His bandolier was
    empty. He was sure there had been six spare batteries in it at
    first, and he didn't remember firing that many rounds.
     His laser's ceramic barrel glowed dull red.
     Crewmen in one of the Tolliver's holds extended a boarding
    bridge to the featherboat. The end clanged down in front of
    Gregg. Tancred and Dole clamped it to the coaming. Gregg
    moved back, out of the way. He stumbled off the closed locker
    and into the vessel's bay.
     Guillermo caught him; the Molt's hard-surfaced grip was
    unmistakable. Gregg was blind until he remembered to raise
    his helmet's visor. The featherboat's interior was a reeking
    side-corridor of Hell.
     Forward, the plasma cannon's barrel threw a soft light that
    silhouetted the figures of the armored crewmen who were
    about to load a third round. The bore must still be dangerously
    hot, but needs must when the Devil drives.
     Piet Ricimer got up from the main console. "Stephen, you're
    all right?" he called.
     The seats before the attitude-control boards weren't occu-
    pied. Guillermo and Lightbody had run them until the Peaches
    grounded. Now Lightbody caught and stowed bales of cargo
    that the men at the hatch swung down to him.
     "We're going to take aboard men and valuables from the
    Tolliver," Ricimer said. "She's lost, she can't lift with-"
     A drumroll interrupted him. It started with a further
    exchange by plasma cannon and ended in the cataclysmic
    destruction of another Federation vessel. Light from plasma
    bolts reflected through the Tolliver's interior and brightened
    the image of the flagship's holds on the viewscreen behind
    Ricimer.
     "We're all lost," Gregg said. Ionized air had stripped the
    mucus from his throat. He wasn't sure he had any voice
    left.
     "No!" Piet Ricimer cried. Perhaps he'd read Gregg's lips.
    "We're not lost and we're not quitting!"
     Gregg pawed at a bandolier hanging from a hook. Its pockets
    were filled with rifle cartridges, but the satchel beneath it held
    more flashgun batteries. He lifted the satchel free, only vaguel
    aware that the bandolier dropped into the litter on the deck whe
    he did so.
     "Who said quitting?" he muttered through cracked lips.

    25
    
    Biruta
    
    If it had been Mostert's ships against the Earth Convoy alone,
    the Venerians would have ruled Island Able at the end of the
    fight. Better crews, heavier guns, and the refractory ceram-
    ic hulls made the argosy far superior even to Carstensen's
    warships. The thin-skinned freighters were little better than
    targets. All of them were gapped and blazing by now.
     But possession of the fort was decisive. Its meters-thick
    walls could withstand the Tolliver's heavy plasma cannon,
    and the separately-mounted guns could be destroyed only one
    at a time by direct hits. The only way to take the fort was as
    the Feds had done, by a sudden infantry assault that ignored
    casualties. The Venerians had neither the personnel nor a
    chance of surprise to reverse the situation.
    
     The flagship fired a plasma cannon directly over the Peaches.
    Men transferring cargo screamed as the iridescent light shad-
    owed the bones through their flesh. Tancred wasn't wearing
    a helmet. He fell into the featherboat, batting at the orange
    flames licking from his hair.
     The concussion threw Gregg forward. His mouth opened,
    but his bludgeoned mind couldn't find a curse vile enough
    for the gunner who fired in a direction where there were no
    hostile targets.
     "Look-" Ricimer said/mouthed, and turned from Gregg to
         point at the viewscreen s fuzzy panorama.
    
     One of the remotely-controlled water buffalo had lifted from
    the station at the far end of the island. It slid slowly toward the
    three surviving Venerian ships, only a few meters above the
    ground.

     The Tolliver fired another 20-cm plasma cannon at the water
    buffalo. Though the gunport was next to that of the first
    weapon, the discharge seemed a pale echo of the unexpected
    previous bolt. At impact, steam blasted a hundred meters in
    every direction. Moments later the unmanned vessel emerged
    from the cloud, spewing water from a second huge gap in its
    bow plating.
     The Federation drone was full of seawater, nearly a hundred
    tonnes of it. Guns that fired at the water buffalo bow-on,
    even weapons as powerful as those of the Tolliver, could
    only convert part of that reaction mass to steam. The bolts
    couldn't reach the thrusters, the only part of the simple vessel
    that was vulnerable.
     The amount of kinetic energy involved in a loaded water
    buffalo hitting the Tolliver would be comparable to that lib-
    erated by a nuclear weapon.
     Ricimer bent to put his lips to Gregg's ear and shouted,
    "Stephen, if I bring us alongside, can you hit a nozzle with-"
     "Do it!" Gregg said, turning away as soon as he understood.
    We'll do what we have to.
     Crewmen cursing and shouting for medical attention hunched
    beneath the roof hatch. Cargo, more than a dozen cases of
    valuables transferred from the flagship in the minutes before
    the gun fired overhead, choked the narrow confines. Gregg
    bulled his way through, treating people and goods with the
    same ruthless abandon.
     If he didn't do his job, it wouldn't matter how badly his
    fellows had been injured by the ravening ions. If he did do
    his job, it might not matter anyway ...
     The featherboat lifted. Guillermo was alone at the attitude
    controls. Lightbody must have been one of those flayed by
    the side-scatter of ions. Nevertheless, the Peaches spun on her
    vertical axis with a slow grace that belied her short staffing.
     The liftship came on like Juggernaut, moving slowly but
    with an inexorable majesty. It was already within five hundred
    meters of the Venerian ships. Plasma cannon clawed at one
    another to the south, but the gunfire was no longer significant
    to the outcome.
     The Peaches pulled away from the flagship. The boarding
    bridge cracked loose, bits of clamp ricocheting like shrapnel
    off the featherboat's inner bulkheads. There'd been a few
    bales of cargo on the walkway, but the crewmen carrying
    them had either jumped or been flung off when the cannon
    fired above them.
    Gregg aimed, over the barrel of his flashgun rather than
    through its sights for the moment. He didn't want to focus
    down too early and miss some crucial aspect of the tableau. He
    wouldn't get another chance. None of them would get another
    chance.
    The Peaches swung into line with the water buffalo. Leon
    and Jeude fired their plasma cannon, a dart of light through
    Gregg's filtered visor. The featherboat's bow lit like a display
    piece. A line of ionized air bound the two vessels. At the point
    of impact, a section of steel belly plates became blazing gas.
    The drone's thrusters were undamaged.
        Greg felt the Peaches buck beneath him. His bare hands
    stung from stripped atoms, but he didn't hear the crash of the
    discharge. His brain began shutting down extraneous senses.
    Cotton batting swaddled sound. Objects faded to vague flick-
    ers beyond the tunnel connecting him to his target.
    "Reloads, Mr. Gregg," said a voice that was almost within
    Gregg's consciousness. Tancred stood beside him in the hatch.
    He held a battery vertically in his left hand, three more in
    his right.
       The featherboat was on a nearly converging course with the
    water buffalo. Neither vessel moved at more than 8 kph.
    Did the Feds think they were going to ram? That wouldn't
    work. The heavily laden drone would carry on, locked with
    the featherboat, and finish the job by driving the Hawkwood
    into the flagship in a blast that would light a hemisphere of
    the planet.
      Three hundred meters.
     Water spurted in great gulps from the drone's bow. The
    plasma bolts had hit low, so each surge drew a vacuum within
    the water tank and choked the outflow until air forced its way
    through the holes.
        Two hundred meters. Ricimer's course was nearly a recip-
    rocal of his target's.
       The water buffalo sailed on a cloud of plasma from which
    flew pebbles the thrusters kicked up. The nozzles were white
    glows within the rainbow ambience of their exhaust.
    The Fed controller kept his clumsy vessel within a few
    meters of the ground. He was very good, but as the Peaches
    closed he tried to lower the water buffalo still further.

         One hundred meters. At this pace, the featherboat would
    slide ahead of the drone by the thickness of the rust on the
    steel plating. They would pass starboard-to-starboard.
     The water buffalo grazed the shingle, then lifted upward on
    a surge of reflected thrust. Its eight nozzles were clear ovals
    with hearts of consuming radiance.
     Gregg fired. He was aware both of the contacts closing
    within the flashgun's trigger mechanism and of the jolt to his
    shoulder as the weapon released.
     The laser bolt touched the rim of the second nozzle back on
    the starboard side. The asymmetric heating of metal already
    stressed to its thermal limits blew the nozzle apart.
     There was no sound.
     Gregg's fingers unlatched the flashgun's butt, flicked -out
    the discharged battery, and snapped in the fresh load. He
    didn't bother to look at what he was doing. He knew where
    everything in the necessary universe was.
     Tancred shifted another battery into the ready position in
    his left hand.
     The drone's bow dropped, both from loss of the thruster and
    because the vessel had risen high enough to lose ground effect.
    It was beginning to slew to starboard.
     FifTy meters.
     Only the leading nozzles were visible, white dashes alter-
    nately rippled and clear as water gushed over the bow just
    ahead of them. The drone was a curved steel wall, crushing
    forward relentlessly.
     There was no sound or movement. The rim of the starboard
    nozzle was a line only a centimeter thick at this angle. The
    sight post centered on it.
     Trigger contacts closed.
     The universe rang with light so intense it was palpable.
    Gunners in the fort had tried desperately to hit the featherboat
    but not the drone almost in line with it. They missed both, but
    the jet of plasma ripped less than the height of a man's head
    above the Peaches.
     The water buffalo yawed and nosed in, much as the Rose
    had done minutes before. At this altitude, the Fed controller
    couldn't correct for the failure of both thrusters in the same
    quadrant.
     The roar went on forever. Steam drenched the impact site,
    but bits of white-hot metal from the disintegrating engines
    sailed in dazzling arcs above the gray cloud.
     Piet Ricimer slammed the featherboat's thrusters to full
    power. Guillermo at the attitude jets rolled the vessel almost
    onto her port side. The Peaches blasted past to safety as
    the ruin of the Federation drone crumpled toward her. For
    a moment, the featherboat was bathed in warm steam that
    smothered the stench of air burned to plasma.
     Gregg didn't lose consciousness. He lay on his back. Some-
    one removed his helmet, but when Lightbody tried to take the
    flashgun from his hands, Gregg's eyes rotated to track him.
    Lightbody jumped away.
     There were voices. Gregg understood the. words, but they
    didn't touch him.
     We're low on reaction mass.
     When the cannon's cool enough to reload, we'll choose
    one of the outlying platforms and top off. They must be
    down to skeleton crews, with all the force they threw into
    the attack.
     Then?
     Then we go back.
    
     Gregg knew that if he moved, he would break into tiny
    shards; become a pile of sand that would sift down through
    the crates on which he lay. Hands gentle beneath their calluses
    rubbed ointment onto his skin. The back of Gregg's neck was
    raw. The pain didn't touch him either.
     How is he?
     He wasn't hit, but ... take a look, why don't you, sir?
    I'll con.
     Stephen.
     "Stephen?"
     Everything he had felt for the past ten minutes flooded past
    the barriers Gregg's brain had set up. His chest arched. He
    would have screamed except that the convulsion didn't permit
    him to draw in a breath.
     "0h, God, Piet," he wheezed when the shock left him and
    the only pain he felt was that of the present moment. "Oh,
    God."
     His fingers relaxed. Lightbody lifted away the flashgun.
     "I think," Gregg said carefully, "that you'd better give me
    more pain blocker."
     Piet Ricimer nodded. Without turning his head, Gregg
    couldn't see which of the crewmen bent and injected some
    thing into his right biceps. Turning his head would have hurt
    too much to be contemplated.
     He closed his eyes. Because of where he lay, he couldn't
    avoid seeing Tancred. The young crewman's body remained
    in a crouch at the hatchway despite the featherboat's vio-
    lent maneuvers. The plasma bolt had fused his torso to the
    coaming.
     When the water baked out of Tancred's arms, his contract-
    ing muscles drew up as if he were trying to cover his face with
    his hands. His skeletal grip still held reloads for the laser, but
    the battery casings had ruptured with the heat.
     Tancred's head and neck were gone. Simply gone.
    
    26    

    Biruta
    
    When the Peaches returned to Island Able with full tanks
    and her bow gun ready, the Hawkwood had vanished and
    the Tolliver was a glowing ruin, the southern side shattered
    by scores of unanswered plasma bolts. By the time the fort's
    guns rotated to track the featherboat, Piet Ricimer had ducked
    under the horizon again.
     Stephen Gregg was drugged numb for most of the long
    transit home, but by the time they prepared for landing at
    Betaport, he could move around the strait cabin again.
     He didn't talk much. None of them did.

    27
    
    Venus
    
    Stephen Gregg walked along Dock Street with the deliberation
    of a much older man who fears that he may injure himself
    irreparably if he falls. Four months of medical treatment had
    repaired most of the physical damage which the near miss had
    caused.
     You couldn't doubt your own mortality while you remem-
    bered the blackened trunk of the man beside you. Gregg would
    never forget.
     The docks area of Betaport was crowded but neither danger-
    ous nor particularly dirty. The community's trade had reached
    a new high for each year of the past generation. Accommo-
    dations were tight, but money and a vibrant air of success
    infused the community. The despair that led to squalor was
    absent, and there were nearly as many sailors' hostels as there
    were slums.
     On the opposite side of the passage was the port proper,
    the airlocks through which spacers and their cargoes entered
    Betaport. The Blue Rose Tavern-its intemally-lighted sign
    was a compass rose, not a flower-nestled between a clothing
    store/pawnshop and a large ship chandlery with forty meters
    of corridor frontage. The public bar was packed with spacers.
    
     The ocher fabric of Gregg's garments shifted to gray as
    the eye traveled down it from shoulders to boots. He wa
    so obviously a gentleman that the bartender's opening was
    "Looking for the meeting, sir? That's in the back." He gestured.
    
     "Good day to you, Mr. Gregg!" Guillermo called from the
    doorway. The Molt wore a sash and sabre attache of red silk and

    cloth of gold. His chitinous form blocked the opening, though
    he didn't precisely guard it. "Good to have you back, sir."
     Men drinking in the public bar watched curiously. Many of
    the spacers had seen Molts during their voyages, but the aliens
    weren't common on Venus.
     "Good to see you also, Guillermo," Gregg said as he passed
    into the inner room. He wondered if the Molt realized how
    cautious his choice of words had been.
     There were nearly twenty men and one middle-aged wom-
    an in the private room. Piet Ricimer got up from the table
    when Guillermo announced Gregg. Leaving the navigational
    projector and the six-person inner circle seated at the table,
    he said, "Stephen! Very glad you could come. You're getting
    along well?"
     "Very well," Gregg said, wondering to what degree the
    statement was true. "But go on with your presentation, I'm-
    I regret being late."
     Gregg never consciously considered turning down his
    friend's invitation-but he hadn't gotten around to making
    travel arrangements until just after the last minute.
     Ricimer turned around. "Mr. Gregg represents Gregg of
    Weyston," he said to the seated group. "Stephen, you know
    Councilor Duneen and Mr. Mostert-"
     Siddons Mostert was a year older than his brother. He
    shared Alexi's facial structure, but his body was spare rather
    than blocky and he didn't radiate energy the way his broth-
    er did.
     The way his brother did when alive. After four months, the
    Hawkwood had to be assumed to have been lost.
     "Factors Wiley and Blanc-"
     Very wealthy men, well connected at court; though not
    major shippers so far as Gregg knew.
     "Comptroller Murillo-"
     The sole female, and the person who administered Governor
    Halys' private fortune. She nodded to Gregg with a look of
    cold appraisal.
     "And Mr. Capellupo, whose principal prefers to be anony-
    mous. We've just started to discuss the profits, financial and
    otherwise, to be made from a voyage to the Mirror."
     "And I'm Adrien Ricimer," interrupted a youth who leaned
    forward and extended his hand to Gregg. "This voyage, I'm
    going along to keep my big brother's shoulder to the wheel."

     Gregg winced for his friend. Adrien, who looked about
    nineteen years old, had no conception of the wealth and power
    concentrated in this little room. This was a gathering that
    Gregg himself wouldn't have been comfortable joining were
    it not that he did represent his uncle.
     "Adrien," Piet Ricimer said tonelessly, "please be silent."
     Brightening again, Ricimer resumed, "This is the Mirror."
     He flourished a gesture toward the chart projected above
    the table. "This is the core of the empire by which President
    Pleyal intends to strangle mankind ... and it's the spring from
    which Venus can draw the wealth to accomplish God's plan!"
     The navigational display was of the highest quality, Venerian
    craftsmanship using purpose-built chips which the Feds had
    produced in a pre-Collapse factory across the Mirror. The unit
    was set to project a view of stars as they aligned through transit
    space, not in the sidereal universe.
     In most cases, only very sensitive equipment could view
    one of the stars from the vicinity of another. For ships in
    transit through the bubble universes, the highlighted stars were
    neighbors-
     And they all lay along the Mirror.
     The holographic chart indicated the Mirror as a film, thin
    and iridescent as the wall of a soap bubble. In reality, the
    Mirror was a juncture rather than a barrier. Matter as under-
    stood in the sidereal universe existed in only one portion of
    transit space: across the Mirror, in a bubble which had begun
    as a reciprocal of the sidereal universe. The two had diverged
    only slightly, even after billions of years.
     There were two ways to reach the mirrorside from the solar
    system. One was by transit, a voyage that took six months if
    conditions and the captain's soul were favorable and more
    than a lifetime if they were not.
     The other method required going through the Mirror, on
    one of the planets which existed partly in the sidereal uni-
    verse and partly as a reflected copy mirrorside. The interior
    of the Mirror was a labyrinth as complex as a section of
    charcoal. Like charcoal it acted as a filter, passing objects of
    two hundred kilograms or less and rejecting everything larger
    without apparent contact.
     There was no evidence that intelligent life had arisen on the
    mirrorside. Human settlement there had begun less than a gen-
    eration before the Collapse, and none of those proto-colonies
    survived beyond the first winter on their own. Because men
    had vanished so suddenly, they hadn't had time to disrupt the
    colonies' automatic factories in vain, desperate battles. Some
    of the sites continued to produce microchips for centuries,
    creating huge dumps of their products.
    
     Some factories were designed with custom lines to tailor
    limited runs to the colony's local needs. Often those lines
    had been shut down at the time their supervisors fled or
    were killed, so the equipment had not worn itself out in the
    intervening centuries. With the proper knowledge, those lines
    could be restarted
    
     Molts carried that genetically-encoded knowledge. The Fed-
    eration had begun to bring some of the factories back in
    service.
     "That's where the wealth is, all right," said Murillo. "Bu
    President Pleyal has no intention of giving any but his own
    creatures a chance to bring it back."
    
     "We need the governor's authorization to redress damages the
    Federation caused by its treacherous attack," Siddons Mostert
    said forcefully, his eyes on Councilor Duneen. "The ships, the
    lives-my brother's life! We can't bring back the dead, but we
    can take the money value of the losses out of the hides of their
    treacherous murderers "
    
     Gregg's mouth quirked in something between a smile and
    a nervous tic. He understood perfectly well how to reduce
    injuries to monetary terms. Life expectancy times earnings
    reduced by the value of the interest on the lump-sum payment
    He'd done the calculation scores of times for the relatives of
    laborers killed on the family holdings.
    
     He thought that if Administrator Carstensen appeared in
    person with the mulct for Tancred-and a very modest
    amount it would be-he, Stephen Gregg, would chew through
    Carstensen's neck if no better weapon presented itself.
     "No," said Duneen. He looked around the gathering. Though
    a passionate man, the councilor's voice was for the moment
    as cold as chilled steel. "Governor Halys absolutely will
    not authorize an act of war against the North American
    Federation."
     "But all I ask is leave to organize a trading expedition,'
    Piet Ricimer said quietly. His index finger idly pointed from
    one point on the chart to another. -Prize, Benison, Cauldron;
    Heartbreak, Rondelet, Umber. Names for a trader to conjure
    with. The source of the Federation's wealth, and the core of
    the empire President Pleyal schemed to build.
     Damn him, Gregg thought. Only when startled eyes glanced
    around did he realize he had spoken aloud.
     "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said. "Milady."
     He nodded with cold formality, then continued, "Mr. Ricimer.
    Factor Benjamin Gregg, my principal, was extremely pleased
    on his return from your recent voyage. Despite the difficulty
    and losses at the end of it. I'm confident that he'll be willing
    to subscribe a portion of any new venture you plan."
     "What are we talking about precisely?" Capellupo demanded
    bluntly. "A fleet? Five ships? Ten?"
     "Two," Piet Ricimer said. "And they needn't-shouldn't,
    in fact-be large."
     "Two?" Murillo said in surprise. She looked at Mostert,
    who sat beside her.
     The shipper shrugged and made a wry face. "It wasn't my,
    ah, first thought either, madam. But Mr. Ricimer has very
    settled notions. And he's been on the scene, of course."
     "He hasn't been to the Mirror," Capellupo said flatly. The
    agent wasn't precisely hostile, but he obviously regarded it as
    his duty to press the points that others might be willing to
    slough. The stories that returned aboard the Peaches made
    Piet Ricimer a hero in Betaport; and to the local spacefaring
    community, President Pleyal was Satan's brother if he wasn't
    the Devil himself.
     "My brother's been to the gates of Hell!" Adrien Ricimer
    burst out angrily. "That's where-"
     "Adrien!" Piet Ricimer said.
     "I just. . ." Adrien began. He stopped, a syllable before
    something would have happened-an order to leave, that
    might or might not have been obeyed; a scuffle, with Stephen
    Gregg doing what had to be done if the conference were to
    continue.
     "You're quite right, Mr. Capellupo," Piet Ricimer resumed
    smoothly. "Things that are true for other parts of the Reaches
    don't necessarily hold for Federation outposts on the Mirror.
    We'll reconnoiter the region before we proceed further, stag-
    ing out of an undeveloped world Admiral Mostert explored on
    the voyage just ended."
     Sunrise ... Gregg thought. Which Ricimer and the Peaches
    had discovered.

     "The need to keep a low profile while gathering information
    along the Mirror is one of the reasons I think a modest force
    is the best choice for this voyage," Ricimer continued. "The
    Peaches, a featherboat which I own in partnership with Factor
    Mostert-"
     He nodded toward Siddons. Piet must have bought part of
    the little vessel with his share of the cargo packed aboard her
    in the last moments on Biruta.
    "-and another vessel a little larger, say fifty to a hundred
    tonnes. That and fifty men should be sufficient."
     Factor Wiley, a stooped man known both for his piety and
    his ruthlessness in business transactions, frowned. "Mostert,
    you could fund a business this small yourself," he said. "Why
    is it you've called this lot together? I thought you must be
    planning a full-scale expedition to capture some of the planets
    Pleyal's heathens try to bar us from."
     Councilor Duneen looked at him. "I don't know that so
    public a gathering-"
     He glanced at the men standing around the walls of the
    modest room. Gregg knew that many of them or their prin-
    cipals were major shipping figures; in Duneen's terms, they
    were rabble.
     "-is the best place to discuss such matters."
     "This is where we are, Councilor," Murillo said with unex-
    pected harshness. Gregg's eyes flicked to her from Duneen.
    There was clearly no love lost between Governor Halys' chief
    public and personal advisors.
     Murillo jerked her chin toward Mostert in a peremptory
    fashion. "Go on, say it out loud. You want to compromise as
    many powerful people as you can, so that you'll be protected
    when President Pleyal asks the governor for your head."
     "I want as many successful people as possible," said Piet
    Ricimer, speaking before Siddons Mostert could frame the
    answer demanded of him, "because I intend to make everyone
    who invests in this voyage extremely wealthy. Wealth even in
    the governor's terms, milady."
     He flashed Comptroller Murillo a hard smile, not the joyous
    one Gregg had seen on his friend's face before.
     "I want to bring wealth to so many of you," he continued
    forcefully, "because this won't be the last voyage. There'll be
    scores of others, hundreds of others. Voyages that you send
    out yourselves, because of the profit you see is waiting beyond
    Pluto. Voyages that no one here will be concerned in, because
    others will see the staggering wealth, the inconceivable wealth,
    and want some for themselves. And they'll find it! It's waiting
    there, for us and for Venus and for mankind-with the help of
    God!"
     "Venus and God!" Duneen cried, turning toward Murillo to
    make his words an undeserved slap.
     Hear hear, Venus and God crackled through the room. Gregg
    did not speak.
     "And no, milady," Ricimer said as the cheers faded, "I
    don't expect investors on Venus to bring me safety. I saw
    what safety Admiral Mostert gained by being in the governor's
    own ship when he met Federation treachery. There'll be no
    safety beyond Pluto until decent men wrest the universe from
    President Pleyal and his murderers!"
     "Which we will do!" Murillo cried as she rose to her feet,
    anticipating the cheers that would otherwise have been direc-
    ted against her. Neither she nor her mistress would have sur-
    vived in a male-dominated society without knowing how to
    turn political necessity into a virtue.
     "Factor Mostert will discuss shares in the venture with you,
    milady and gentlemen," Ricimer said when the applause had
    settled enough for him to be heard by at least those nearest to
    him. "I need to talk over some personal matters with my old
    shipmate here, Mr. Gregg."
     They stepped together into the public bar. Sailors watched
    them with open curiosity, while the gentlemen's liveried attend-
    ants tried to conceal their interest in the enthusiasm from the
    back room.
     "Marvin?" Ricimer asked the bartender. "May we use your
    office?"
     "Of course, Mr. Ricimer," the bartender replied. He lifted
    the bar leaf to pass them through to the combined office/store-
    room behind the rack of ready-use supplies.
     Part of Gregg's mind found leisure to be amused. Ricimer
    had set this meeting not in a townhouse but on ground where
    he had an advantage over the nobles who were attending.
     Ricimer closed the door. "What do you think, Stephen?" he
    asked.
     Gregg shrugged. "You have them eating out of your hand,"
    he said. "Even though they know you're going as a raider this
    time, not to trade."

     Ricimer lifted his jaw a millimeter. "President Pleyal can't
    be allowed to trap mankind within the solar system again," he
    said. "Nobody can be allowed to do that. Whatever God's will
    requires shall be done."
     He quirked a wry grin toward Gregg. "But that isn't what I
    was asking, Stephen. As you know."
     "Of course Uncle Ben will support this," Gregg said. As an
    excuse for not meeting his friend's eyes, he turned to survey
    the kegs and crates of bottles. The Blue Rose had its beer
    delivered instead of brewing on-premises, as taverns in less
    expensive locations normally did.
     "I ... was afraid that would be your answer," Ricimer said
    quietly. "When you didn't contact me after we got back. Well,
    I'm sorry, but I understand."
     Gregg turned. "Do you understand, Piet?" he demanded.
    "Tell me-how many people do you think I've killed since
    you met me? You don't have to count Molts."
     "I do count Molts, Stephen," Ricimer said. He crossed his
    wrists behind his back and looked directly into Gregg's angry
    gaze. "You killed because it was necessary to save your own
    life and those of your friends. We all did, whoever's finger
    was on the trigger."
     "It was necessary because I went beyond Pluto," Gregg said.
    He didn't shout, but the way his voice trembled would have
    frightened anyone who didn't trust Gregg's control. "So I'm
    not going to do that again."
     "I can't force you, Stephen," Ricimer said. "But I want you
    to know that I don't think of you as merely an investor or even
    as a friend. Your abilities may be necessary to our success."
     "You know, Piet," Gregg said, "I don't care if you think
    I'm a coward. I suppose I am.... But what I'm afraid of
    is me."
     "Stephen, you're not a coward," Ricimer said. He tried to
    take Gregg's right hand in his, but the bigger man jerked
    it away.
     "I don't hate killing," Gregg shouted. "I like it, Piet. I'm
    good at it, and I really like it! The only problem is, that makes
    me hate myself"
     "Stephen-" Ricimer said, then twisted away. He clenched
    his fists, opened them again, and pressed his fingertips against
    the wall of living rock. "The Lord won't let His purpose fail,"
    he whispered.

     Ricimer turned around again. He gave Gregg a genuine
    smile, though tears glittered in the corners of his eyes. "You'll
    be taking that troubleshooting job your uncle offered you?" he
    asked.
     Gregg nodded. "We haven't discussed it formally," he said.
    "Probably, yes."
     He hugged the smaller man to him. "Look, Piet," he said. "If
    you needed me ... But you don't. There's plenty of gunmen
    out there."
     Ricimer squeezed Gregg's shoulder as they broke apart.
    "There's plenty of gunmen out there," he repeated without
    agreement.
     An outcry from the street redoubled when the men within
    the tavern took it up. Feet and furniture shuffled.
     Gregg opened the office door. The sailors were already
    gone. The gentlemen from the back room were crowding
    toward the street in turn, accompanied by their servants. The
    bartender himself rubbed his hands on his apron as if thinking
    of leaving himself.
     "Marvin?" Ricimer asked.
     "The Hawkwood's landed, Mr. Ricimer," the bartender
    blurted. "They're bringing the crew through the airlocks right
    now, what there's left of them."
     "The Hawkwood?" Gregg said in amazement.
     "Yessir," Marvin agreed with a furious nod. "But the crew,
    they're in terrible shape! The port warden says they loaded two
    hundred men on Biruta and there's not but fifteen alive!"
     Guillermo followed as Ricimer and Gregg pushed out onto
    Dock Street. Ricimer's status as a local hero cleared them a
    path through the gathering mob. The gentlemen who'd attend-
    ed the meeting had to fight their way to the front with the help
    of their servants.
     The airlock serving Dock Three, directly across the corridor
    from the tavern, rumbled open. A whiff of sulphurous fumes
    from the outer atmosphere dissipated across the crowd. Port
    personnel carrying stretchers, some of them fashioned from
    tarpaulin-wrapped rifles, filled the lock's interior.
     "Alexi!" Siddons Mostert cried as he knelt beside his supine
    brother. An ambulance clanged in the near distance, trying to
    make its way through the people filling the corridor. "Ricimer
    and I thought that avenging you was all we could offer your
    memory!"

    Alexi Mostert lurched upright on his stretcher. He looked
    like a carving of hollow-cheeked Death. His skin had a grayish
    sheen, and all his teeth had fallen out. "Ricimer?" he croaked.
    "That traitor!"
    Ricimer stood beside Siddons Mostert. It was only when
    Ricimer jerked at the accusation that Alexi's wild eyes actually
    focused on him.
    "Traitor!" Alexi repeated. He tried to point at Ricimer, but
    the effort was too great and he fell back again.
    Spectators looked from the Hawkwood's hideously wasted
    survivors to the man Mostert was accusing-and edged away.
    Ricimer drew himself up stiffly.
    Gregg had lagged a step behind Ricimer. Now he moved to
    his friend's side.
    What's this?" Factor Wiley demanded. "Traitor?"
    "He abandoned us," Alexi Mostert said, closing his eyes to
    concentrate his energy on his words. "Half our thrusters were
    shot out before we could transit. We had only a week's food
    for as many people as we'd taken aboard, and only half the
    thrusters to carry us. He-"
    Mostert opened his eyes. This time he managed to point a
    finger bony as a chicken's claw at Piet Ricimer. "He ran off
    and left us to starve!"
    "No!" Stephen Gregg shouted. "No! That's not what hap-
    pened!"
    The crowd surged as the ambulance finally arrived. Men
    who'd heard Mostert bellowed the accusation to those farther
    back. Soon the corridor thundered with inarticulate rage.
    Gregg shouted himself hoarse, though he couldn't hear his
    own voice over the general din. When he thought to look
    around for his friend, he saw no sign of either Piet Ricimer
    or his Molt attendant.
    
    28
    
    Venus
    
      "Mr. Gregg, gentlemen," said the servant in fawn livery. He
    bowed Gregg into the Mostert brothers' drawing room, then
    closed the door behind the visitor.
     "Very good to see you again, Mr. Gregg," Siddons Mostert
    said with a shade too much enthusiasm. He rose from the
    couch and extended his hand.
     "And that in spades from me, Gregg," said his brother.
    "But I won't get up just this moment, if it's all the same
    with you."
     A month of food and medical care had made a considerable
    improvement in Alexi Mostert. If Gregg hadn't seen the sur-
    vivors as they were carried into Betaport, though, he would
    have said the shipowner was on the point of death. Alexi sat
    in a wheelchair with a robe over his legs. His hands and face
    had filled out, but there was a degree of stiffness to all his
    motions.
     "I'm glad to see you looking so well, sir," Gregg said as he
    leaned over to shake Alexi's hand. "And I appreciate you both
    giving me this audience. I know you must be very busy."
     The drawing room was spacious but furnished in a deliber-
    ately sparse fashion. Room was the ultimate luxury on Venus,
    where habitable volume had to be armored against elements as
    violent as those of any human-occupied world.
     As if to underscore that fact, the room's sole decoration
    was the mural on the long wall facing the door. In reds
    and grays and oranges, a storm ripped over the sculptured
    basalt of the Venerian surface. In the background, a curve
    overlaid by yellow-brown swirls of sulphuric acid might have
    been either the Betanort dome which protected the Mosterts'
    townhouse-or the whim of an atmosphere dense enough to
    cut with a knife.
     "Pour yourself a drink and sit down, lad," Alexi said. He
    gestured toward the glasses, bottles, and carafe of water on the
    serving table along the short wall to his left.
     Gregg nodded and stepped toward the table. When his back
    was turned, Alexi continued, "I was planning to call on you,
    you know, as soon as I got my pins under me properly. I'm
    told that you were the fellow who saved my life by bringing
    down that Fed drone."
     "Saved the lives of everyone who was saved," Siddons said
    primly. "And saved the cargo loaded on the Hawkwood, which
    is quite a nice amount."
     He cleared his throat. "Ah, the share-out on the cargo isn't
    quite complete yet," he added. "But if your uncle is concerned
    about the delay, I'm sure ... T'
     Gregg turned to his hosts holding a shot of greenish-gray
    liquor in one hand and a water chaser in the other. He sipped
    the liquor, then water. "Uncle Benjamin trusts you implicitly,
    gentlemen," he said. "We await the accounting with inter-
    est, but you needn't hurry such a complex matter on our
    part."
     Every factory on Venus distilled its own version of algal
    liquor, slash, according to recipes handed down since before
    the Collapse. The Mosterts' sideboard contained wines and
    liquors imported from Earth at heavy expense, but it was slash
    that Stephen Gregg grew up with. This version was all right,
    though it hadn't the resinous aftertaste of Eryx slash that made
    outsiders wince.
     "We were actually wondering whether it was business or
    pleasure that brought you to us tonight, Gregg," Alexi said
    carefully. "You're welcome for either reason, of course, ship-
    mate."
     There was a glass of whiskey on the arm of his wheelchair.
    The level didn't change noticeably when he lifted it to his lips
    and set it down again.
     Gregg barked out a laugh. "Oh, business," he said, "indeed
    business. I thought I'd relax at Eryx for a time, you know,
    when we got back. But that didn't work very well."
     "Your brother's the factor I believe?" Siddons said.
    
     Gregg nodded and looked at the shot glass. It was empty.
    "Dead soldier," he said.

     He flipped the glass into a waste container across the room.
    Neither the glass nor the ceramic basket broke, but they rang
    in different keys for some seconds.
     Gregg giggled. "Sorry," he apologized. "I shouldn't have
    done that." He rotated on his heel and poured slash into a
    fresh tumbler. With his back to his hosts he continued, "My
    brother August was very kind, but I could tell he wasn't, well,
    comfortable around me."
     His arm lifted and his head jerked back. He put down the
    shot glass, refilled it, and faced the Mosterts again.
     "He'd talked to my doctors, August had," Gregg said, "and
    they-well, you know about doctors, Admiral. I shouldn't
    have told them about the dreams. They don't understand.
    You know that."
     Gregg smiled. The smile slowly softened. His eyes were
    focused on the mural rather than the two seated men.
     "Ah. . ." Siddons said. "This is Gregg of Weyston's busi-
    ness that you've come to us with, Mr. Gregg?"
     "No," said Gregg. "No." He gave an exaggerated shake of
    his head. "This is my own business."
     He looked at Alexi Mostert with absolutely no expression
    in his eyes. "You've been getting a better perspective on what
    happened at Biruta, have you, Admiral? Than you had right
    when you docked, I mean."
     "I hope nothing I may have said when I was delirious, Mr.
    Gregg . . ." Alexi said. The fingers of his right hand opened
    and closed on the whiskey glass. ". . . could have been con-
    strued as an insult directed toward you. To be honest, I don't
    recall anything from docking until I awakened in hospital three
    days later."
     "It wasn't until my brother read the report compiled for
    Governor Halys that the details of that very confused business
    became clear, Mr. Gregg," Siddons said.
     "Nobody insulted me, Admiral," Gregg said. "Besides, I
    wouldn't kill anybody just because of words. Not anymore."
     He giggled. "My brother didn't like it when I said it was
    fun to kill people. He thought I was making a bad joke."
     Siddons got up from the couch, then sat again before he'd
    reached a full standing position. "The compilation of accounts
    from all the survivors-including those of the Peaches, of
    course- created a degree of understanding that, ah, individuals
    didn't possess."
    
    You understand that, don't you, shipmate?" Alexi said. "It
    was Hell. Hell. There's no other word for it."
    Gregg tossed off his shot. "I understand Hell," he said. He
    smiled again.
    "I suspect I owe my cousin an apology," Alexi said heavily,
    looking at his glass. "During the whole trip home, all I could
    see in my mind was     the featherboat running off instead of
    staying to help us."
    "He knows now that you loaded reaction mass and came
    back," Siddons put in with a forced grin. "It was all a very
    tragic time."
    "Ricimer's a friend of yours, I believe, Mr. Gregg?" Alexi
    said.
      "Best friend I've ever had," Gregg agreed nonchalantly. "I
    wonder if he has the dreams, do you think, Admiral?"
      He hurled the shot glass into the waste container. Both
    glasses and the container rang together. "Sorry, I didn't mean
    to do that."
       Gregg turned to the serving table. "I don't think an apology
    really does much good," he said as he tilted the decanter of
    slash. "Do you, gentlemen?"
    
   "You're here on Mr. Ricimer's behalf, is that it?" Siddons said.
    
        Gregg glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "Nope," he
    said.
    He looked down, raised the glass to his lips, and poured
    again before he faced around. "I'm here on my own. Piet, he's
    trying to put together an expedition still. He's having trouble
    even buying a featherboat, though."
    "I believe one of my secretaries made problems about my
    cousin buying the remaining share in the Peaches," Alexi said.
    I'll put that right immediately."
    "A lot of people won't touch Piet because of the trou-
    ble when the Hawkwood landed, you know," Gregg said.
    He hadn't drunk any of the chaser since his first sip on pour-
    ing it. "Stories travel better than corrections do.   You know
    how it is."
    He threw back his head and emptied the shot glass.
    "I'm not responsible for anything that happened while I was
    delirious!" Alexi Mostert shouted from his wheelchair.
        "We're all responsible for everything we do, Admiral,"
    Gregg said through his smile. "D'ye sometimes dream about
    things you haven't done yet? I do."
     He looked at Siddons. "You don't have the dreams, do
    you, Master Siddons? You're lucky, but you're missing some
    interesting things, too. You know, a man's head can be there
    and then poof! gone, not an eyeblink between them. Right
    beside you, a man's head is just gone."
     Alexi's glass fell onto the floor of polished stone. Both
    brothers jumped. Gregg chuckled and returned to the serv-
    ing table.
     "What do you think might be a fair recompense for the
    inconvenience I've caused my cousin, Mr. Gregg?" Alexi
    Mostert said hoarsely.
     "Well, it occurs to me that a simple commercial proposition
    might turn out to everybody's benefit," Gregg said toward
    the wall.
     He swung around. "For his expedition, Piet wanted a
    featherboat, which he could provide himself, and a bigger
    ship. If Mostert Trading provided an eighty tonner, with crew
    and all expenses-why, that'd prove the stories about Piet
    betraying you on Biruta were false. Wouldn't it, Admiral?"
     Siddons leaned forward on the couch. He took a memo-
    randum book from his waist pouch. "What share-out do you
    propose?" he asked.
     "For the vessels," said Gregg, "equal shares. Officers and
    crewmen sharing from a single pool, with full shares for those
    who-"
     Gregg's unfocused eyes made his grin even more horrible.
     "-don't make it back."
     Alexi Mostert leaned back in his wheelchair and forced
    a laugh. "So that was the business that brought you here,"
    he said.
     "Oh, no, Admiral," said Stephen Gregg. His voice was as
    soft as the quiver of wind against the dome far overhead. "But
    if this commercial transaction goes ahead, then there won't be
    any need for my business."
     Gregg turned his chaser over. Water splashed his boots and
    the floor. He walked to the stone wall and twisted the tumbler
    against it.
     The glass held for a moment. Then a scratch from the harder
    basalt destroyed the integrity of the man-made material. The
    tumbler shattered into powder and spewed between Gregg's
    fingers.
       He looked at the brothers. "Sooner or later, they always
    break," he said. "Everything does, you know?"
     "We accept your terms," said Alexi Mostert without expres-
    sion. "Will you notify Mr. Ricimer so that we can formalize
    the agreement?"
     Gregg dusted his hands together. Because his right palm
    was wet, shards too tiny to be seen except as a glitter stuck
    to the skin.
     He shook his head. "No, gentlemen," he said, "that's for
    you and Piet to work out together. He doesn't have any idea
    that I'm here, you see. I'd like it to stay that way."
     Gregg cocked an eyebrow. Siddons looked up from his
    notebook, Alexi Mostert nodded minusculy in agreement.
     "Then I'll take my leave of you," Gregg said. "I appreciate
    you giving me your time,"
     He put his hand on the door. As soon as the panel quivered
    at his touch, the servant in the hall swept it fully open. "And
    I hope our next meeting," Gregg concluded, "will be at the
    share-out party when Mr. Ricimer's expedition returns."
     "Mr. Gregg?" Alexi Mostert called.
     Gregg turned in the hallway. "Sir?"
     "Will you be accompanying the expedition yourself?"
     "That's right," Gregg said. "I've decided that's where I
    belong. Beyond Pluto."
     Mostert nodded stiffly. Gregg disappeared down the hall
    behind the footman.
     "That's odd," Siddons Mostert said. "The level of slash in
    the decanter doesn't seem to have gone down as much as it
    should have."
     "That young gentleman may not have been drunk," his
    brother said, "but you won't convince me that he's not crazy.
    Not after I saw him in action on Biruta. I think we'd best take
    him at his word."
     "Yes," Siddons said as he rose to his feet. "I'll call Ricimer.
    Shall we offer the Dalriada, do you think?"
    
    29
    
    Benison
    
    Ricimer brought the Peaches to a near halt a meter above
    the ground, then slid her forward between the boles of the
    broadleaf trees. The yellow-rimmed hole the thrusters seared
    on entering the forest would be obvious from the air. If the
    featherboat herself was concealed, though, an observer might
    assume the interlopers had taken off again.
     Gregg and the new crewman, Coye, flung the main hatch
    open. Benison's atmosphere was sweet and pleasantly cool in
    comparison to the fug within the Peaches after a voyage of
    seventeen days.
     "Not so very bad, Piet," Gregg said approvingly as he
    raised his visor. He lifted himself out on the featherboat's
    deck, glancing around with the nervous quickness of a mouse
    on the floor of a ballroom. The flashgun was a useless burden
    in this pastoral woodland. ,
     "I don't see the piles of microchips, though," Coye mut-
    tered. Gregg didn't know the sailor well enough to be sure
    that he was making a joke, but he chuckled anyway.
     As armed crewmen hopped up to join Gregg, waiting for the
    lower hull to cool, Piet Ricimer talked to Captain Dulcie of
    the Dalriada. When Gregg bought the remaining half share in
    the Peaches' hull from the Mostert brothers, Ricimer invested
    some of his capital thus freed into first-class electronics for
    the featherboat. Her viewscreen and voice radio were now both
    enhanced to diamond clarity.
     "Find a landing site at least fifty klicks from here, Dulcie,"
    Ricimer ordered. "And stay away from the cultivated fields.
    There's no sign of Fed patrols, but they can't very well miss a
    ship the size of the Dalriada if it drops on top of them. Over."
    
     "Weren't we coming in alongside the Mirror, sir?" Leon
    said quietly to Gregg. The bosun peered about him as if
    expecting to see a glittering wall in the near distance.
     "I can't imagine that Mr. Ricimer didn't land us where
    he intended to, Leon," Gregg replied. Dulcie's reply was an
    inaudible murmur within the vessel. "I suppose we're here
    on Benison because he wants to get experience of the Mirror
    where it's safer to do that."
     Piet wasn't forthcoming with his plans. Gregg didn't like
    to press, because he was pretty sure his friend wouldn't tell
    him anything useful anyway. It wasn't as though any of them
    needed to know, after all.
     Adrien Ricimer had equipped himself with helmet, torso
    armor, and a slung cutting bar as well as the repeater he
    carried. He called, "The fields are that way!" and leaped to
    the ground. He sprawled full length, overborne by his load.
     Gregg jumped down beside him. In the guise of helping the
    boy up, he kept a grip on him. "When your brother's finished
    administrative chores," he said to Adrien, "it'll be time to go
    exploring."
     Adrien gave an angry shrug and found that it had absolutely
    no effect on the bigger man's grip. When he relaxed, Gregg
    let him go. The rest of the crew joined them, moving a few
    steps into the forest to get clear of ground which the thrusters
    had baked.
     Benison was three-quarters of an Earthlike world with a diam-
    eter of 14,000 kilometers. Three-quarters, because a section
    centered in the planet's northern hemisphere didn't exist either
    in the sidereal universe or across the Mirror. The mirrorside of
    Benison was an identical three-quarters of a planet, orbiting an
    identical sun and clothed in similar though genetically distinct
    native vegetation.
     The juncture that turned a single world into a near duplicate
    of itself was not in the three-dimensional universe. Benison's
    orbit and planetary rotation had no effect on the boundary that
    separated the sidereal universe from the bubble that mimicked
    it across the Mirror.
     It had been noted, though not explained, that the apparent
    thickness of the boundary layer was directly proportional to
    the percentage of planetary mass that existed in the paired uni-
    verses. It was possible to cross the Mirror on Benison, but the
    length of the route made it impractical to carry any significant
        quantity of goods from side to side that way. Umber, the 5,000
    kilometer disk of a planet whose calculated diameter would
    have been over 12,000 kilometers, carried virtually all of the
    direct trade between mirrorside and the sidereal universe.
     Ricimer and Guillermo jumped down from the featherboat.
    "Dulcie says that apart from air and reaction mass, the
    Dalriada's in perfect condition," Ricimer explained, obvi-
    ously pleased with the situation. "He'll keep his crew close
    by the ship and relax while we do what exploring there is."
     The men stiffened, waiting for direction. Ricimer went on,
    "Stephen and I will cover Guillermo while he talks to field
    workers. Leon, you're in charge of the ship until we return.
    If that's more than two hours, I'll radio."
     He patted the flat radio hanging from the right side of his
    belt, where it balanced the forty rounds of rifle ammunition on
    the left.
     "You're leaving me under him?" Adrien said in amazement.
     Piet looked at him. "No," he said with scarcely a hint of
    hesitation. "You'll come with us, Adrien ... But leave the
    rifle, that's too much to carry."
     Gregg nodded mentally. Adrien couldn't get into too much
    trouble with a cutting bar.
     "Look, I'll take off my armor instead. I-"
     "Leave the rifle, Adrien," Ricimer repeated, very clearly the
    captain.
     Adrien's handsome face scrunched up, but he obeyed with-
    out further comment.
     Benison's open woodlands were as alien to Gregg as any-
    thing beyond the corridors of Venus, but he found they had
    a friendly feel. The leaves overhead provided a ceiling of
    sorts, but they didn't have the overpowering immensity of
    Punta Verde's layered forests.
     Small animals chirped and mewed, unseen. Sometimes the
    ankle-high ground cover-neither moss nor ferns, but similar
    to both---quivered ahead of the party.
     Guillermo led, carrying a fist-sized direction finder. The
    Molt slung a holstered revolver from a pink sash like the
    one he'd worn on Punta Verde when he was captured. Piet
    was next in line. Twice Adrien tried to come abreast of his
    brother and talk, but Piet brushed him back.
     Gregg brought up the rear with his flashgun and his
    thoughts. He was nervous around Adrien Ricimer. He was
    afraid of his own temper, afraid that one day he was going
    to crush the bov like a bull.
         Afraid that jealousy was as much a reason for his anger as
    Adrien's brashness.
     They came to the verge of cultivated fields a quarter klick
    from the landing site. Hectares of waist-high sorghum stretched
    for as far as Gregg could see. Stripes and wedges of native
    vegetation, taller and a brighter green, marked patches too wet
    or rocky for gang plows.
     A pair of high-wheeled cultivators crawled across the fields
    in the middle distance. Guillermo immediately entered the
    open area, pushing through the saw-edged leaves with chitin-
    clad ease.
     "Wait!" Gregg said. Shouldn t you take your, your sash
    off?"
     The Molt's triangular head turned almost directly backward
    though his torso didn't move, "Any human observer will think
    I'm a supervisor, Mr. Gregg," he said. "A thousand years ago,
    his ancestors would have thought the same."
     Guillermo resumed his swift progress toward the Federation
    equipment. Gregg sighted on the nearer vehicle, but his laser's
    1.5x scope didn't provide enough magnification to tell whether
        the driver was a Molt or perhaps a Rabbit.
    
     It hadn't occurred to him until Guillermo spoke that all the
    aspects of Molt-human interaction had been set before the
    Collapse. The thought made him a little queasy. He had a
    vision of eighty generations of Stephen Greggs sighting their
    flashguns toward treetops full of defiant warriors ...
     "The Dalriada's truly a first-class ship," Piet Ricimer mur-
    mured as the three men watched Guillermo from the forest-
    edge undergrowth. "I suppose it's my cousins' way of making
    apology for the business when the Hawkwood landed, Though
    after that ordeal, nobody could blame Alexi for wild talk."
    
    "I wanted to call him out!" Adrien snarled.
    
     Neither of the older men spoke. Had the Mosterts bothered
    to respond, they would have sent servants to beat the pup
    within an inch of his life--or beyond. Betaport would have
    applauded that bandlingy of lower-class scum who insulted his
    betters by claiming the right of challenge.
    
     A red film lowered over Gregg's eyes. He pointed the
    flashgun toward the ground. He didn't want an accident
    because his trigger finger trembled.

     Guillermo jumped off the cultivator he'd mounted and
    returned toward the waiting humans. The vehicle had never
    paused in its slow progress across the sorghum.
     "Frankly, I did my cousins an injustice," Piet continued.
    "I expected them to, well, ignore that they'd been mistaken.
    Instead, well-I couldn't have hoped for a finer ship than the
    one they provided. I'd hoped to involve more of the ... upper
    levels of the nation in this expedition than I've done. But that
    will come next time."
     "Sometimes people come through when they come right up
    against it," Gregg said. "I'm glad your cousins did."
     His voice was hoarse. He coughed, as if to clear his throat.
     Guillermo rejoined them. The Molt's chestplate pumped
    with exertion, sucking and expelling air from the breathing
    holes along the lateral lines of his torso. "They'll meet us
    tonight," he said.
     "Those will?" Adrien asked. "The workers?"
     "Not them," his brother explained. "Their kindred, who've
    escaped and hide along the Mirror. The only food available is
    what's grown here on the plantations, so I was sure that there'd
    be contact between free Molts and the slaves."
    
     He nodded toward the Peaches to start the party walk-
    ing back. "I want to understand the Mirror better before I
    make final plans. That means I need someone to guide me."


    30
    
    Benison

    Coye waggled Gregg's booted foot to awaken him before
    going on to each next man in the lean-to and doing the same.
    Gregg pulled his helmet on as he got up. He was already fully
    dressed, with the flashgun sling over his right arm.
     The sky was faintly pale where it could be glimpsed through
    the foliage, but it did nothing to illuminate the forest floor.
    Even the featherboat's off-white hull was easier to sense than
    see in the first moments of wakefulness.
     Gregg was stiff in odd places. The bed of springy boughs
    had seemed comfortable when he lay on it, but it had locked
    his body into one posture as the thin pad over the Peaches'
    decking hadn't done during the voyage. His sinuses were
    stuffy from pollen, either native or drifting from the nearby
    plantation.
     And he was afraid. Clambering up the side of the featherboat
    was good for the fear. The massive solidity of the Peaches'
    hull soothed Gregg in a fashion that the personal weapon he
    carried could not.
     In the hatchway Leon, who'd shared the watch with Coye,
    whispered to Piet Ricimer. Clipped to the coaming was the
    sonic scanner, another piece of hardware purchased with the
    profits of Mostert's disastrous voyage. Rather than magnify-
    ing sounds for the operator to classify, the scanner plotted an
    ambient and indicated changes above that baseline on a screen.
    It didn't tell the operator what a sound was, but it gave volume
    and vector.
     Gregg glanced at the readout. He lay across the hull beside
    the hatch and aimed his weapon toward the line of peaks
    which the scanner had noted-footsteps or brush rustling past
    an oncoming body.
     Ricimer laid his left hand across the eyepiece of the
    flashgun's sight. "Guillermo's out there," he whispered. "He's
    meeting them."
     "Sirs?" the Molt called in a clear voice. "Our friends are
    here. We're coming in."
    . Gregg glimpsed the movement of several bodies. Faint light
    bloomed. Three strange Molts accompanied Guillermo. One
    of them brought a phosphorescent twig out of the pot which
    had covered it. In this near-total darkness, the bioluminescent
    sheen was as good as a magnesium flare.
     The strange Molts were noticeably bulkier though not taller
    than Guillermo. One carried a breechloader, while the others
    had one-armed "bows" similar in design to those the Venerians
    had faced on Punta Verde.
     Piet Ricimer swung his legs over the hatch coarning and
    jumped to the ground in front of the Molts.
     "This is K'Jax," Guillermo said, dipping both forelimbs
    toward the rifleman in a gesture of respect. "I have told him
    that you need a guide through the Mirror."
     "Why?" said K'Jax. His eyes and those of his fellows tracked
    quickly across the humans facing them, hesitating minutely at
    each weapon they noted.
     "Because I need to know more about the Mirror in order
    to determine how best to take from the Federation the wealth
    belonging to all persons," Ricimer replied calmly. Gregg noted
    that his friend had left his rifle in the featherboat. "Wealth
    which the Feds claim as their own."'
     "So you want us to be your servants," K'Jax said flatly.
     The Molt leader spoke unaccented English, but his into-
    nations were as mechanical as those of a synthesizer. By
    contrast, Guillermo's voice couldn't be told from that of a
    human except that the Molt clipped his labials slightly.
     "I want you to be our allies," Ricimer said. "The Feds
    are your enemies as well as ours. We can provide you with
    weapons. A few now, more after we're successful and return-
    though that will be sometime hence, perhaps as much as a
    year. But I will return."
     K'Jax clucked. "I am the chieftain of Clan Deel," he said.
    "They burned my limbs when I would not work for them. I
    fled as others have fled."
     The Molt leader glanced around, at his silent fellows and
    the forest which surrounded him. He had a look of rocklike
    solidity, a soul that could be pulverized but never changed in
    essence.
     "If they let us grow our own crops," K'Jax continued, "we
    would ignore them. When we clear fields, they find us and
    attack, and they hunt us with planes. So we raid their fields.
    We kill them when we can. One day we will kill them all."
     His chitinous fingers caressed his Federation breechloader,
    designed for human hands but adaptable to those of a Molt.
     K'Jax clucked again. The sound was that of a repeater
    chambering the next round. "If you're the enemy of the Fed-
    eration, human," he said, "then you don't have to pay me or
    mine for our help. When do you want to pass through the
    Mirror?"
     "Now?" said Ricimer.
     "Now," K'Jax agreed. He and his fellows turned.
    
     Gregg jumped down from the featherboat. He was pleased
    and a little surprised to land squarely on his feet without
    stumbling. The satchel of spare batteries slapped his thigh.
     "Leon, you're in charge," Ricimer said. "Guillermo and Mr.
    Gregg accompany me."
     "I'm going too!" cried his brother, stepping closer.
     "Adrien," Piet Ricimer said sharply, "you will stay with the
    vessel and obey Leon's directions."
     The bosun tossed a rifle and bandolier from the hatch.
    Despite the poor light, Ricimer caught the gear in the air.
     The Molts paused five meters off in the darkness. Ricimer
    glanced at them, then said to Leon, "If we're not back in four
    
    days, use your judgment. But we should be back."
     He strode swiftly after K'Jax with Gregg and Guillermo
    flanking him. Gregg was glad when the local Molt covered his
    glowing wand, because only then could they be sure Adrien
    Ricimer would not be able to follow.
 
    31
    
    Benison

    "This is the Mirror," said K'Jax.
     The words brought Gregg up like a brick wall. He'd got-
    ten into a rhythm in the darkness, tramping along close to
    Guillermo. The concept of distance vanished when each stride
    became a blind venture. The Molt's night vision was better
    than a human's, though occasionally Guillermo brushed a
    shadowed tree bole and Gregg collided with him.
     Gregg edged closer with his left hand advanced. He instinc-
    tively gripped the flashgun close to his body and pointing
    forward, though his conscious mind realized there was no
    material threat before him.
     His hand felt cold. He saw nothing, absolutely nothing
    until the Molt uncovered the torch again. Gregg's left arm
    had vanished to the elbow. Only the degree of shock he felt.
    
     One of K'Jax's fellows must have gone ahead. The tran-
    sition was hard to see because an image of the sidereal uni-
    verse shimmered on it in perfect fidelity. The reflected forest
    appeared as real as the one through which Gregg had just
    come.
     "We've laid poles along the ground within," the Molt leader
    said. He pointed down. The crudely-chopped end of a sap-
    ling about a hundred millimeters in diameter protruded from
    the transition. "Touch one foot against them to keep your
        direction."
     He clucked. The sound must be equivalent to a laugh. "Don't
    disarrange the poles," he added. "You can walk forever in the
    Mirror.
       He vanished through the boundary. His fellow with the light
    followed, then Guillenno.
     "Stephen?" Ricimer said.
     "Sure," said Gregg. He stepped into nothingness, feeling as
    detached as he had when he aimed at the oncoming water
    buffalo.
     The interior of the Mirror was not only lightless but empty.
    There was a feeling of presence everywhere in the sidereal uni-
    verse, the echo from surrounding existence of the observer's
    being. Nothing echoed here, nothing was here. Gregg had to
    be standing on something, but there was no feeling of pressure
    against the balls of his feet when he flexed his body upward
    as an experiment.
     He slid his left foot sideways, suddenly aware that he wasn't
    sure of direction. When his foot stopped, he knew that he must
    be in contact with the pole, but he couldn't feel even that.
     "God our help in ages past," Gregg whispered. He shuffled
    forward, picking up the pace. Now that he had begun, there
    was nothing in life that he wanted so much as to be out of this
    place. "God who saved Eryx when the ground shook and the
    sky rained fire. Be with me, Lord. Be with me. . ."
       There was a gap between one sapling and the next. Gregg
    was a vessel for another's will, the will of the man who had
    stepped into the Mirror seconds ago. He wasn't afraid for the
    instant his boot wandered unchecked, only doubtful. It was
    as if he were falling, painless and even exhilarating until the
    shock that would pulp him, bones and spirit together.
      He touched the next pole in sequence and stepped on.
    Gregg's skin began to prickle. He wasn't sure whether the
    sensation was real or, like the flashes of purple and orange
    that crossed his vision, merely neuroreceptors tripping in the
    absence of normal stimuli.
        Needles of ice. Needles driving into every cell of his skin.
    Needles sinking deeper, probing, penetrating his bone marrow
    and the very core of his brain. He could no longer tell if he
    still carried the flashgun. He felt nothing when he patted his
    left palm in the direction where his chest should be.
    Gregg knew now why men so rarely entered the Mirror. Part
    of his mind wondered whether he would have the courage to
    cross the barrier again to return to realside, but only part. For
    the most part, his intellect was resigned to spending eternity
    within the Hell that was the Mirror.
       The shock of the tree trunk was utter and complete. Gregg
    shouted and grasped the coarse bark that had bloodied his
    lip. The air was warm and there was enough light to read
    by, enough light to see Guillermo reaching in surprise
    steady the young gentleman who had walked straight into a
    tree several meters beyond the edge of the Mirror.
     Piet Ricimer appeared from nowhere, his eyes open and
    staring. Only when he tripped on a sprawling runner and
    flew forward did awareness flame back into his expression.
    Ricimer hit the ground, wheezing and chuckling in a joy that
    echoed Gregg's own.
     The Molts watched, Guillermo and the locals together.
    Their expressionless faces could have been so many grotesque
    masks.
     "How long were we. . ." Ricimer asked as Guillermo helped
    him to his feet. Gregg held onto the tree with which he'd
    collided. He thought he would probably fall if he let go. "In
    there. In the Mirror."
     Guillermo and the Benison Molts talked for a moment in
    a clicking language nothing like Trade English. "About four
    hours," Guillermo finally said to Ricimer. "It's nearly dawn
    on the other side as well as here."
     Gregg tried to understand how long he'd been walking. His
    mind glanced off the concept of duration the way light reflects
    from a wall of ice. The experience had been eternal, in one
    sense, but-his thigh muscles didn't ache the way they should
    have done after so long a hike. Perhaps brain functions slowed
    within the Mirror. . .
     "How far is the nearest Federation colony on this side?"
    Ricimer asked. He tried to clean away the loam sticking to
    the front of his tunic, but after a few pats he stopped and
    closed his eyes for a moment.
     Gregg deliberately let go of the tree and squeezed his cut
    lip between his thumb and forefinger. The tingling pain helped
    to clear his brain of the icy cobwebs in which the Mirror had
    shrouded it.
     "Two kilometers," K'Jax said. He pointed his free hand
    eastward. "They build spaceships there. There are a few
    mines, some crops. Most of the settlements are on the oth-
    er side."
     The Molt leader nodded to indicate his fellows. "We stay
    on the other side, because the fields there are too extensive for
    the humans to guard well. When they bring in extra troops and
    hunt us there, we cross to here."
     "Let's take a look at the settlement," Ricimer said. "I think I
    can walk." He looked at Gregg. "Are you all right, Stephen?"
     . "I'll do," Gregg said. Maybe. He wasn't sure that he could
    walk two klicks, but his intellect realized that he'd probably
    be better off for moving.
     He wasn't sure he could bear to reenter the Mirror, either;
    and perhaps that would be possible also.
     K'Jax and his fellows set off without comment, as they had
    done earlier at the Peaches. To them, the decision appeared to
    be the act. Gregg wondered whether Guillermo's less abrupt
    manner was a response learned as an individual when he was
    liaison to the Southerns for his clan rather than a genetic
    memory.
     Ricimer threw himself after the Molts. Guillermo hung at
    his side, but after the first staggering steps both humans were
    back in control of their limbs.
     "Don't the Feds conduct combined operations?" Ricimer
    asked. "Hunting you on both sides of the Mirror at once?"
     "They try," K'Jax replied. "Their timing isn't good
    enough."
     "Humans don't enter the Mirror," another of the local Molts
    added unexpectedly. "They send us as couriers. Molts." He
    made the clucking noise Gregg had decided was laughter.
     The vegetation here was nothing like that on the sidereal
    side of the Mirror. The trees grew in clumps from a common
    base, like enlarged grasses. The foliage formed a dense net
    overhead, but the volume beneath was divided into conical
    vaults rather than the cathedral aisles of a forest whose trees
    grew as individual vertical columns.
     After a time, Gregg shifted the flashgun from his right arm
    to his left. The weapon was less accessible there, but he
    couldn't bring himself to believe they were in serious danger
    of ambush. He wasn't a good judge of distances, certainly not
    in gullied forest like this.
     Everything seemed profitless: this hike, this expedition; life
    itself. Passage through the Mirror had blighted his mind like a
    field ripped by black frost. He could only pray that the effect
    would wear off-or that the Feds would anticipate his own
    sinful consideration of looking down the short, fat barrel of
    his laser as his thumb stroked the trigger.

     "K'Jax?" Gregg called suddenly. He supposed they shouldn't
    make any more noise than necessary, but it was necessary for
    him to blast his thoughts out of their current channel. "Does the
    Mirror bother you Molts? Does it make you feel as if . . ."
     "As if your mind had been coated in wax and sectioned for
    slides?" Piet Ricimer offered. It hadn't occurred to Gregg to
    ask his friend.
     "Yes," said the Molt leader flatly.
     "Does it go away?" Gregg demanded.
     "Mostly," said K'Jax. He continued striding ahead, not
    bothering to look back as he spoke. The Molts took swifter,
    shorter strides than humans of similar height.
     "Until the next time," said another of the locals. "We enter
    the Mirror only when we must, so it doesn't matter what it
    costs."
     "But you entered it for us," said Ricimer.
     "You are enemies of our enemies," the Molt explained.
     From the head of the line, K'Jax stopped, knelt, and
    announced, "The settlement is just ahead. The humans call
    it Cedrao."
     Gregg eased forward in a crouch to bring himself parallel
    with K'Jax. He noticed that one of the local Molts turned to
    watch their backtrail, his projectile weapon ready.
     The trees grew up to the edge of a twenty-meter drop. From
    that point, the ground fell away in a series of a dozen compa-
    rable steps, about as broad as they were deep. The Peaches had
    overflown similar country as Piet brought her in, but it didn't
    lie within fifty kilometers of their eventual landing point.
    Divergence on the mirrorside of Benison included details of
    tectonics as well as biology.
     Below the escarpment, the tilted remains of ancient sedi-
    ments, lay a broad valley. Sunrise painted into a pink squiggle
    half a kilometer distant the river that had cut through the rocks
    over ages.
     On the near bank was a straggle of two or three hundred
    houses. The community stank of human and industrial wastes
    even at this distance.
     "Cedrao," K'Jax repeated.
     Ricimer sighted through the hand-sized electronic magnifier
    which he carried. Gregg suspected that a simple optical tele-
    scope would have been nearly as effective and considerably
    more rugged, but Piet liked modern toys.

     A steam whistle blew from a long shed at one end of the
    community. An autogyro was parked behind the cast-concrete
    building that appeared to be the Commandatura. A few pedes-
    trians wandered the street between the river and the dwellings.
    All of those Gregg could see through the flashgun's sight were
    Molts.
     Ricimer backed away from the edge of the bluff and stood
    up. "How many humans live in Cedrao?" he asked.
     "A few score," K'Jax said. "Transients when a ship lands.
    And a few human slaves."
     "Rabbits," Guillermo explained.
     "You could capture the town by a surprise attack," Gregg
    said/suggested.
     "If we attacked," said the Molt watching their backtrail, "the
    Molts down there would fight us too. They aren't Deels. They
    won't hunt us in the woods, but they'll resist an attempt on
    their clan."
     "K'Jax and his fellows ran away from humans and formed
    their own clan," Guillermo said. "Others of my folk bond to
    their supervisors." He clucked as the locals had done.
     Guillermo himself had bonded to his supervisor-as he
    knew very well.
     Ricimer shook himself. "We can go now," he said.
    "Though-Stephen, would you prefer to, ah, rest on this
    side before we cross the Mirror again?"
     "I don't want to think about it," Gregg said in a voice as
    pale as hoarfrost. "If I thought about it for a day, I'd, I'd ...
    It'd be harder."
     K'Jax strode off in the lead as brusquely as he'd executed
    each previous decision of the human leader. The others fell
    into line behind him.
     "Piet?" Gregg said.
     "Um?" his friend said, grinning wryly back over his shoul-
    der.
     "Why did we come here at all?"
     Ricimer looked front again and nodded his head. "Because I
    had to see," he said at last. "See the Mirror, and see how Presi-
    dent Pleyal was really developing the worlds he claims."
     He looked back at Gregg again. All the humor was gone
    from his face. "They can't be allowed to continue, Stephen,"
    he said. "Everything here, everything on Jewelhouse and Biruta
    and everywhere the Federation squats-slavery, cruelty, and
    no chance of survival if there's the least shock to the home
    government. Mankind will return to the stars. President Pleyal
    and his henchmen can't be allowed to stop it, no matter what
    it takes."
     "Oh, I know what it'll take," Stephen Gregg said, as much
    to himself as to his friend. His right hand rested on the grip of
    his flashgun, while his left gently rubbed the weapon's barrel.
    "And it can be arranged, you bet."
    
    
    32

    
    Near Rondelet

    "We ought to go down and get them," said Adrien Ricimer.
    "There's probably a dozen ships on Rondelet for the taking."
     He turned. Because everyone aboard the Peaches wore
    his hard suit, there was much less room than usual in the
    featherboat's interior. Adrien's elbow clacked against the back
    of Gregg's suit. For an instant, Gregg's right fist bunched. He
    didn't look around. After a moment, he relaxed.
     "I watched the Rose come down with her thrusters shot
    away, boy," Dole said from the scanner readout. "I don't
    much want to watch from the inside when another drops."
     The featherboat slowly orbited Rondelet at ten light-seconds
    distance; the Dalriada kept station a little less than a light-
    second away. Piet had narrowed the viewscreen field to the
    image of the planet alone, since a spherical panorama was
    useless on this scale, but even so Rondelet was no more than
    a cloud-streaked blue bead.
     Radar and even optical magnifiers on the planet could find
    the ships. There was no reason to assume that would happen so
    long as the Venerians kept their thrusters and transit apparatus
    shut down. Chances were good that an incoming Federation
    vessel would spend a number of close orbits trying to raise
    an operator on the planet's surface who could supply landing
    information.
     "Ionization track," said Dole.
     Coye, crewing the plasma weapon with Leon, reacted by
    latching down his faceshield. There was no need for that yet,
    but the slap click startled Gregg into doing the same thing.
    Gregg quickly reopened his visor, embarrassed but obscurely
    happy to have something to do with his hands at a moment he
    had no duties.
     "Adrien," Piet Ricimer ordered his brother, "get the Dalriada.
    We'll handle this, but they're to be ready to support us. Leon,
    don't run the gun out until I order. Everyone, check your suit
    now before we open up."
     As Ricimer spoke, his fingers accessed scanner data and
    imported it to the AI's navigational software. The AI would
    set a course for interception, updating it regularly as further
    information came in.
     Gregg peered over the console toward the viewscreen, try-
    ing to make out the target they were hunting. It might not have
    registered as yet on the small-scale optical display.
     "I'm lighting the thrusters," Piet Ricimer said.
     The featherboat shook like a wet dog as the separate engines
    came on-line at fractionally different moments. Ricimer held
    the thrusters to low output, just enough to give the Peaches
    maneuvering way.
     Gregg shook his head and laughed harshly. Jeude, crouched
    across the central chest from Gregg, looked at him in concern.
    The two of them would be the boarding party, if and when it
    came to that.
     Behind Gregg, Adrien talked excitedly to Captain Dulcie of
    their consort. "Don't worry about me," Gregg said. "I just
    want it to happen. But it'll happen soon enough."
     "I'm about to engage the AI," Piet Ricimer said. His voice
    was clear and calm-but also loud enough to be heard through-
    out a larger vessel than the Peaches.
     Gregg clamped his armored left arm to a stanchion. He held
    the flashgun to his chest with his right, so that it wouldn't flail
    around under acceleration. He should have checked his satchel
    of reloads again, but there would be time for that ...
     "Enga-"
     Gregg's tripes inverted repeatedly in a series that had by now
    become familiar if not comfortable. It was like watching an
    acrobat do backflips, only these were in four dimensions and
    he was them.
      -ging."
     Rondelet vanished from the viewscreen. A fleck of light
    grew between intervals of transit, when grayness blinked like
    a camera shutter across the screen. At the sixth jump, the
    fleck was a ship for the instant before disappearing through
    transit space.
     On the seventh jump, the Peaches and its target were paral-
    lel and so apparently close on the screen that Gregg imagined
    that he could pucker and spit across to the other vessel's metal
    hull. He closed his visor, though for the moment he left the
    vents open to save the hard suit's air bottle.
     "I'll take the communicator, Adrien," Piet said. He lifted
    the handset from his brother's half-resisting grip and switched
    it from radio to modulated laser.
     The screen blanked and cleared. The vessels retained the
    same alignment, though they must have shifted some distance
    within the sidereal universe. The featherboat's Al had locked
    courses with the Federation ship. For the moment, the Fed
    crew was probably unaware that they had company, but they
    had no chance now of escaping.
     There were infinite possible actions but only one best solu-
    tion. Given the task of predicting what another navigational
    computer would do, an Al with sufficient data could find the
    correct answer every time.
     "Federation cargo vessel," Ricimer said in a voice punc-
    tuated by intervals of transit. "Shut down your drives and
    prepare for boarding. If you cooperate, you won't be harmed.
    Shut down your drives."
     "Sir," said Leon. "I want to run the gun out."
     "Go ahead, Leon," Ricimer agreed calmly.
     The bosun activated the hydraulics which opened the bow
    port and slid the muzzle of the plasma cannon clear of the hull.
    A flexible gaiter made an attempt at sealing the gap between
    hull and gun tube, but it leaked so badly that Dole shut down
    the Peaches' environmental system as soon as Ricimer ordered
    the gun brought to battery.
     Pressure in the featherboat's hull dropped abruptly. The
    vents in Gregg's suit closed automatically and he began to
    breathe dry bottled air. Sound came through his feet.
     Another jump. Another. The Federation vessel was no longer
    on the viewscreen. Adrien swore.
     Another jump and there was the target again, the four thrust-
    ers podded on its belly brilliant. At this range the Peaches'
    50-cm plasma cannon would shatter all the nozzles and prob-
    ably open the hull besides.
 
     The Fed ship wasn't very prepossessing. Judging from hull
    fittings of standard size, particularly the personnel hatch, it
    was barely larger than the featherboat-30 tonnes burden at
    most. It was a simple vessel, even crude. Gregg suspected
    it had been built here in the Reaches in a plant like the one
    they'd viewed on the mirrorside of Benison.
     "Take the heathens, sir!" Lightbody said from the attitude
    controls. The processor in Gregg's helmet flattened the voice
    transmitted by infrared intercom.
     "Federation vessel--?" Ricimer began. As he spoke, vacuum
    drank the target's exhaust flare. For a moment, the nozzles
    stood out, cooling visibly against the hull their glow lighted.
    The Feds vanished again; the Peaches jumped and they did
    not.
     The featherboat's AI corrected. After a final, gut-wrenching
    motion, the Peaches lay alongside the target. The thrusters and
    transit drives of both vessels were shut down.
     "Boarders away," Piet Ricimer said.
     "Boarders away!" Gregg echoed as he and Dole threw the
    undogging levers that opened the featherboat's main hatch.
     Dole stepped onto the coaming and checked his lifeline.
    The Federation ship hung above them, a section of its hull
    framed by the Peaches' hatch. He flexed his knees slightly
    and jumped.
     Gregg climbed onto the hull. He couldn't see Rondelet or
    even the yellow sun the planet orbited. Perhaps they were
    below the featherboat. The metal skin of the Federation vessel
    was a shimmer of highlights, not a shape. He'd never been
    outside a ship in vacuum before.
     "I'm anchored, sir," Dole's voice called. Gregg couldn't see
    the crewman. "Hold my line and come on."
     Gregg hooked his right arm, his flashgun arm, across the
    end of Dole's lifeline. The multistrand fiber was white where
    the featherboat's internal lighting touched it. A few meters
    beyond the vessel, it vanished in darkness.
     "I'm coming," said Stephen Gregg. He pushed off, too hard.
    His mouth was open. His limbs held their initial grotesque
    posture as though he were a dancer painted on the wall of
    a tomb.
     The pull of the line in the crook of Gregg's arm made him
    turn a lazy pinwheel. The Fed ship rotated away. He saw the
    featherboat beneath him as a blur of grays and lightlessness.
    The brilliant star beyond was Rondelet's sun. The few tran-
    sits the Feds made before the Peaches brought them to had not
    taken the vessels beyond the local solar system.
    Gregg hit, feet down by accident. His legs flexed to take
    the shock. "Good job, sir!" Dole cried as he steadied Gregg,
    attributing to skill what luck had achieved.
      The boots of the hard suit had both electromagnets and suc-
    tion grippers, staged to permit the same movements as gravity
    would. The suction system held here, as it would have done on
    a ceramic hull. The Fed ship was made of nonferrous alloys,
    probably aluminum. A plasma bolt would have made half the
    hull blaze like a torch. No wonder the crew had shut down as
    soon as they were aware they were under threat.
      "Open them up, Dole," Jeude called. "They don't have
    suits, just an escape bubble, so they say they can't work the
    controls."
       Jeude must have stuck his head out of the featherboat's
    hatch in order to use the IR intercom. Gregg thought he could
    see a vague movement against the straight lines of the coaming
    when he looked back, but that might have been imagination.
    He felt very much alone.
       Large ships were normally fitted with airlocks for operations
    in vacuum. Small vessels didn't have space for them. In the
    case of this flimsy craft, cost had probably been a factor
    as well.
       Dole twisted the 'Wheel in the center of the hatch. It was
    mechanical rather than electronic. He had to spin it three full
    circuits before an icy twinkle of air puffed over him, shifting
    the hatch on its hinges at the same time.
      As soon as the hatch had opened sufficiently for his armored
    form, Stephen Gregg pulled himself into the captured vessel
    behind his flashgun. He was unutterably glad to have a job he
    could do.
        The three Fed crewmen cowered within the milky fabric
    of an escape bubble. Such translucent envelopes provided a
    modicum of protection at very little cost in terms of money or
    internal space. Inflated, they could keep one or two-three was
    stretching it, literally-persons alive so long as the air supply
    and C02 scrubbers held out.
       One of the two humans in the bubble was a Rabbit. The
    remaining crewman was a Molt. Alone of the three, the Molt
    didn't flinch when the laser's fat muzzle prodded toward the
    bubble.
     Dole scrambled in behind Gregg. "The captain's coming,"
    he said. "Leave the hatch open."
     The speaker on the vessel's control panel was useless with-
    out air to carry the sounds to the boarding party. Piet must
    have used radio or intercom to alert the crewman while he was
    still out on the hull.
     The cabin of the captured ship was small. It was partitioned
    off from the cargo spaces with no direct internal communica-
    tion. The Venerian featherboat was cramped and simple, but
    this ship had the crudity of a concrete slab.
     A third armored figure slid through the hatchway, carrying
    a rough coil over his shoulder: Dole's lifeline, which Ricimer
    had unhooked from the Peaches before he launched himself
    toward the captive. Dole reached out and drew the hatch
    closed.
     When the dogs were seated but the air system had only
    begun repressurizing the cabin, Piet Ricimer opened his visor.
    "Gentlemen," he announced in a voice made tinny by the rar-
    efied atmosphere, "when you've answered my questions, I'll
    set you down on the surface of Rondelet where your friends
    can rescue you. But you will answer my questions."
     Another man would have added a curse or a threat, Gregg
    thought. Piet Ricimer did neither.
     Though with the flashgun aimed at the captives from point-
    blank range, threatening words wouldn't have added a lot.

    33
    
    Sunrise

    "The meeting's in ten minutes," said Piet Ricimer, wobbling
    as a long gust typical of Sunrise stuttered to a lull. Though
    the two men were within arm's length of one another, he
    used the intercom in order to be heard. "Time we were getting
    back."
     "You're in charge," Gregg said. There were no real hills in
    this landscape. He'd found a hummock of harder rock to sit
    down on. There was enough rise for his heels to grip and
    steady his torso against the omnipresent wind. "The meeting
    won't start until you get there."
     A three-meter rivulet of light rippled toward them across the
    rocks and thin snow. The creature was a transparent red like
    that of a pomegranate cell. Twice its length from the humans,
    it dived like an otter into the rock and vanished.
     Gregg's trigger finger relaxed slightly. He leaned on his
    left hand to look behind him, but there was no threat in that
    direction either.
     The Peaches, Dalriada, and the prize Ricimer had named
    the Halys were a few hundred meters away. The ships had
    already gathered drifts in the lee of the prevailing winds. Tem-
    porary outbuildings housed the crusher and kiln with which the
    crews applied hull patches, though neither Venerian vessel was
    in serious need of refit.
     On a less hostile world, men would have built huts for
    themselves as well. On Sunrise, they slept in the ships.
     "What do you think, Stephen?" Ricimer asked. He faced
    out, toward a horizon as empty as the plain on which he stood.
    Occasionally a tremble of light marked another of the planet's
    indigenous life forms.
      Gregg shrugged within his hard suit. "You do the thinking,
    Piet," he said. "I'll back you up."
     Ricimer turned abruptly. He staggered before he came to
    terms with the wind from this attitude. "Don't pretend to
    be stupid!" he said. "If you think I'm making a mistake,
    tell me!"
     "I'm not stupid, Piet," Gregg said. He was glad he was
    seated. Contact with the ground calmed him against the atmos-
    phere's volatility. "I don't care. About where we go, about
    how we hit the Feds. You'll decide, and I'll help you execute
    whatever you do decide."
     A creature of light so richly azure that it was almost material
    quivered across the snow between the two men and vanished
    again. Gregg restrained himself from an urge to prod the rip-
    pling form with his boot toe.
     Ricimer laughed wryly. "So it's up to me and God, is it,
    Stephen?" He clasped his arms closer to his armored torso. "I
    hope God is with me. I pray He is."
     Gregg said nothing. He had been raised to believe in God
    and God's will, though without the particular emphasis his
    friend had received. Now-
     He supposed he still believed in them. But he couldn't
    believe that the smoking bodies Stephen Gregg had left in
    his wake were any part of the will of God.
     "I'm going to go back there and give orders," Ricimer
    continued. His face nodded behind the visor, though the suit's
    locked helmet didn't move. "There's a risk that my plan will
    fail disastrously. Even if it succeeds, some of my men will
    almost certainly die. Stephen, you may die."
     "All my ancestors have," Gregg said. "I don't expect to be
    any different."
     He raised his gauntleted hand to watch the fingers clench
    and unclench. "Piet," he said, "I trust you to do the best job
    you can. And to do a better job than anybody else could."
     Ricimer laughed again, this time with more humor. "Do
    you, Stephen? Well, I suppose you must, or you wouldn't
    be here."
     He put out a hand to help his friend stand. "Then let's go
    back to Peaches, since until I do my job of laying out the plan,
    none of the rest of you can do yours."
 
    34
    
    Sunrise
    
    The command group met on the featherboat rather than the
    much larger Dalriada because of the electronics with which
    Ricimer had outfitted the vessel he and Gregg owned person-
    ally. The planning kernel which coupled to the Al was the
    most important of these toys at the moment. It converted
    navigational information into cartographic data and projected
    the result onto the Peaches' viewscreen.
     An image of Umber, simplified into a tawny pancake marked
    with standard symbols, filled the screen now.
     There were ten humans-the gentlemen and officers of the
    expedition-and two Molts packed into the featherboat's bay.
    John, the Molt captured aboard the Halys, had asked and been
    allowed to join the Venerians.
     John's recent knowledge of Umber was an obvious advantage
    for the raid; Guillermo operated the display with a skill that none
    of the humans on the expedition could have equaled. Nonethe-
    less, several of the Dalriada's gentlemen looked askance at
    seeing aliens included in the command group.
     "There's only one community on this side of Umber,"
    Ricimer said as Guillermo focused the screen onto the upper
    edge of the pancake. "It's paired with a single community
    across the Mirror. The planetary surface is entirely desert on
    both sides, lifeless except for imported species."
     From straight on like this, Umber appeared to be a non-nal
    planet with a diameter of about 5,000 kilometers. Instead, it
    was a section from the surface of a spheroid 12,000 klicks in
    diameter-had the remainder of the planet existed.
     Umber's gravitational attraction was normal for the calcu-
    lated size and density of the complete planet-slightly below
    that of venus. There was nowhere to account for that gravity 
    in realSide, mirrorside, or both.
    
    "Umber City is built along the Mirror," Ricimer continued.
    "The Population varies, but there are usually about a thousand
    Persons in residence."
        
    "Both sides?" asked Wassail, the Dalriada's navigator.
    
        Gregg was impressed by the way Wassail showed
    interest in new concepts. Dulcie, the Dalriada's captain, was
    competent, but as dull as his vessel's artificial intelligence.
     "This side only," Ricimer said. "The community on
    mirrorside is much smaller and ninety percent of the resi-
    dents are Molts. On realside, up to a third at any given time
    are Feds."
    "One Venerian's worth six of those Fed pussies any day," Adrian
    boasted.
    
     "We aren't here to fight," his brother said sharply. "We're
    going to take them by surprise, load with chips, and be away
    before they understand what's happened."
      His lips pursed, then flattened into a smile of sorts. "Our
    task is somewhat complicated by the fact that another vessel
    attacked a freighter as it was starting to land on Umber two."
    
     Ricimer nodded toward John to source the data. "The
    attempt was unsuccessful-the attacker pursued into the
    atmosphere, and guns from the fort drove the hostile vessel
    off. It was sufficient to alarm the entire region, however.
    Umber sent couriers to neighboring planets and to Earth."
    
    "A ship from Venus?" asked Bong. He was a younger son of a 
    prominent Venerian family.
     "It was metal-hulled " Ricimer said. "In all likelihood Ger-
    man."
     He turned to face the screen in order to discourage further
    questions. "The spaceport is here," he said, pointing at the
    lower edge of the developed area.
      The port area was bounded by four large water tanks on
    the right. They held reaction mass brought from Rondelet on
    purpose-built tankers. Artesian wells supplied the town with
    drinking water, but such local reserves couldn't match the
    spaceport reaction mass requirements.
     The fort, a circle smaller than those of the water tanks, was
    sited below the lowest rank of dwellings. Below it in turn
    were the outlines of six starships, ranging from 20 to about
    100 tonnes burden.
     The ships, typical of the traffic Umber expected at any given
    time, were a symptom of a problem with the planning kernel.
    Its precision was a lie.
     The kernel assembled data on Umber from the Halys'
    navigational files and from interrogations of two of the Fed
    crewmen. The third, the Rabbit, hadn't said a word from the
    time he was captured until Ricimer landed him, as promised,
    back on Rondelet.
     The sum of that information was very slight. The kernel
    fleshed it out according to stored paradigms, creating streets
    and individual buildings in patterns which fit the specific data.
    It was easier for humans to visualize acting in a sketched city
    than in a shading marked DEVELOPED AREA, but that very
    feeling of knowledge had a dangerous side.
     "The fort mounts four heavy guns," Ricimer went on. "They
    can be aimed and fired from inside the citadel, but there are no
    turrets or shields for the loading crews."
     "Molts," John said.
     Ricimer nodded. "The guns will certainly be manned, though
    two weeks without further trouble is long enough for some of
    the increased watchfulness to fade away.
     "In the center of the community is a park fifty meters by
    seventy-five," Ricimer continued, "parallel to the Mirror. It's
    stocked with Terran vegetation, mostly grasses and shrubs. No
    large trees. The Commandatura faces it."
     He tapped the screen. "All the colony's control and commu-
    nications are centered in the Commandatura, and valuables are
    frequently stored in the vaults in the basement."
     "Microchips?" Wassail asked.
      "Chips, valuable artifacts," Ricimer agreed. "They're
    brought across the Mirror here'~-he indicated the "east-
    ern" end of town, assuming north was up-"by a sectioned
    tramway laid through the Mirror. Molts push the cars through
    from mirrorside and back."
     Guillermo murmured to John, who said, "No Molts are
    allowed to live west of the park. They use Rabbits for house
    servants." The click he added at the end of the statement was
    clearly the equivalent of a human spitting.
     Piet Ricimer bowed his head, a pause or a silent prayer.
    "We'll proceed as follows," he resumed. "The Halys will land
    an hour after full darkness. Mr. Gregg will command."
     Adrien Ricimer jumped to his feet. "No!" he said. "Let me
    lead the attack, Piet! I'm your brother!"
     Everyone stared at him. No one spoke. Gregg began to
    smile, though it wasn't a pleasant expression.
     "Adrien," Piet Ricimer said through dry lips, "please sit
    down. You're embarrassing me. You will be my second-in-.
    command for the assault on the Commandatura."
     Adrien's face set itself in a rictus. He hunched back into
    his seat.
     "Stephen," Ricimer continued, "you'll have Dole as your
    bosun-is that satisfactory?"
     "Yes.
     "As well as John and four men from the Dalriada. Captain
    Dulcie, you will provide Mr. Gregg with four of your most
    trustworthy people. Do you understand?"
     "I'll pick the men, sir," Wassail volunteered. "You'll want
    trained gunners?"
     Ricimer nodded. "Yes, that's a good idea. Now, when the
    Halys has captured the fort . . ."
     Stephen Gregg's mind wrapped itself in a crackling reverie
    that smothered the remainder of his friend's words. He would
    go over the complete plan at leisure. For now, all Gregg could
    focus on was the initial attack that might be the end of his
    involvement in the operation, and in life itself.
    
    35
    
    Umber

      The Halys lurched into freefall. Dole cursed and reached for
    the main fuel feed.
     "Don't, " Gregg snapped, "touch that, Mr. Dole."
     The thrusters fired under direction from the artificial intelli-
    gence. The vessel yawed violently before she came to balance
    and resumed a measured descent. John, crewing both sets of
    attitude controls, didn't move during the commotion.
     "Christ's blood, sir!" Dole protested. "That's rough as a
    cob. I could do better than that!"
     "We're here to look like Feds landing," Gregg said cool-
    ly. "That's what we're going to do"-he gave Dole a tight
    smile-"if it kills us. That means we let the AI bring us in,
    as coarse as it is and as crude as the thrusters it controls."
     Gregg looked at the Molt on the attitude controls. "Is this
    how you would have landed if it had been you and your
    regular captain, John?" he asked.
     "Yes," the alien said.
     The Halys' viewscreen was raster-scanned. Synchronous
    problems divided the display into horizontal thirds, and the
    image within those segments was bad to begin with. Nor did it
    help visuals that a windstorm was blowing dust across Umber
    City as the raiders came in.
     The four men from the Dalriada braced themselves against
    stanchions and tried to keep their cutting bars from flopping.
    They seemed a solid crew. The three common sailors showed
    a natural tendency to look to the fourth, a gunner's mate
    named Stampfer, when orders were given, but they'd showed
    no signs of deliberately rejecting either Gregg's authority or
    Dole's.
      That was as well for them. Stephen Gregg might not trust
    himself at piloting a starship, but he could damned well see
    to it that his orders were obeyed the second time.
     The viewscreen's jagged images of sandy soil and the three
    ships already docked on Umber vanished suddenly in a wash
    of dust. "Hang on, boys," Gregg said. "Here it comes."
     The thrusters slammed up to three-quarter power. Two of
    the attitude jets fired, controlling the yaw from the thrusters'
    asymmetry. The corrections were so harsh and violent that it
    was a moment before Gregg realized that the final shock had
    been the landing legs grounding.
     He let go of the stanchion and flexed life back into his left
    hand. His right biceps had twinges also, from the way he'd
    clamped the flashgun against his chest.
     He gave a broad grin. "Gentlemen," he said, "I can't begin
    to tell you how glad I am that's over."
     For a moment, none of the crewmen spoke. Then Stampfer
    broke into a grin of his own and said, "Too fucking right,
    sir!"
     Dole got up from the thruster controls. He nodded toward
    the hatch. "Shall I?"
     Gregg switched off the Halys' internal lights. "Just crack
    it," he ordered. "Enough to check the local conditions. We
    aren't going anywhere for ... fifteen minutes, that'll let them
    go back to sleep in the fort."
     Dole swung the hatch far enough to provide a twenty-
    centimeter opening. The six humans instinctively formed a tight
    arc, shoulder-to-shoulder, to look out. One of the Dalriadans
    eased the hatch a little farther outward; Gregg didn't object.
     Dust blew in. It created yellow swirls in the glow above
    instrument telltales. The outside light of the fort was a similar
    blur, scarcely brighter though it was less than a hundred meters
    away. Gregg couldn't see the docked ships from this angle, but
    they'd shown no signs of life from above.
     Dole covered the breech of his rifle with a rag. Even so,
    the chance of the second round jamming when he tried to
    reload was considerable. Gregg consciously avoided checking
    his laser's battery, because he'd get nonconducting grit on the
    contacts sure as Satan loved sinners.
     Well, even one shot would be too much. If a threat wasn't
    sufficient, they were going to need a warship's guns; and they
    didn't have a warship.

     "I'll lead," he said, repeating the plan aloud to fill time,
    his and his men's, rather than because he thought any of
    them had forgotten it. "They'll be expecting us to register
    for tariff . . ."
    
    The door beneath the light was steel and closed. It didn't open
    when Gregg pushed the latchplate. He pounded the panel with
    the heel of his left hand. Nothing happened.
     He was terrified, not of death, but of failing so completely
    that he became a laughingstock for the expedition.
     Dole muttered something to John. The Molt reached past
    Gregg, rapped the latch sharply to clear it of dust, and slammed
    the panel with the full weight of his body. Chitin rapped against
    the metal.
     The door gave. Gregg pushed it violently inward with his left
    boot, bringing the flashgun up to his shoulder as he did so.
     One of the six Molts in the room beyond had gotten up to
    deal with the door. He fell flat on the concrete floor when he
    saw he was looking down a laser's muzzle. The others froze
    where they sat at the desk they were using as a dining table.
     Gregg jumped into the room so that his crew could follow
    him. "Who else?" he demanded in a harsh whisper. John
    chittered something in his own language.
     A seated Molt pointed toward the inner door. He used only
    half his limb as though fearing that a broader gesture would
    leave his carapace blasted across the wall behind him. Things
    like that happened when the man at the trigger of a flashgun
    was keyed-up enough.
     "One human," John said. "Perhaps asleep." He indicated
    the ladder through the ceiling. "There's no one in the gun
    room."
     "Stampfer, check it out," Gregg whispered. "One of you,
    open the door for me."
     He slid into position. The door panel was thermoplastic
    foam with a slick surface coating, no real obstacle. It opened
    outward.
     A Dalriadan touched the handle, well aware that gobs of
    molten plastic would spray him if the flashgun fired into the
    panel. He jerked it open as Stampfer and two men clattered
    up the ladder.
     Gregg pivoted in behind his flashgun. His visor was up,
    despite the risk to his retinas if he had to fire, but even so he
    couldn't find a target in a room lighted only by what spilled
    from the chamber behind him.
     Something blurred. "What? What?" cried a woman's voice.
     Dole found the light switch. A young woman, pig ugly by
    the standards of anyone who hadn't spent the past month in a
    male-crewed starship, sat up in a cot that was the only piece
    of furniture in the room. She looked terrified.
     Gregg let out his breath in a sigh of relief that told him just
    how tense he had been. "Madam," he said, "you'll have to be
    tied up, but you will not be harmed in any way. You are a
    prisoner of the Free State of Venus."
     "What?" she repeated. She tugged at her sheet. It was caught
    somewhere and tore. The hem covered her collarbones like a
    stripper's boa, leaving her breasts and navel bare.
     "Tie her, Dole," Gregg said as he turned to leave. "And no
    problems! We're not animals." ,
     "Of course not, sir," the bosun said. His voice was so meek
    that Gregg knew he'd been right to be concerned.
     "While I go call down Piet and the others," Gregg added
    to himself. "May God be with them."
    
    36
    
    Umber

    The Peaches grounded hard; Leon at the control console under-
    stood that speed was not only more important than grace, speed
    was the only important thing.
     Lightbody and Jeude threw the undogging levers, and a big
    Dalriadan hurled the hatch open with a lift of his shoulders.
    Dirt which the featherboat had gouged from the park as it
    landed dribbled through the opening.
     "Follow me!" Piet Ricimer cried. He stepped to the coam-
    ing and pushed off in a leap that carried him clear of the
    plasma-blasted ground. He sprawled onto all fours, jabbing
    the knuckles of his rifle hand on a bush which exhaust had
    seared into a knot of spikes. "Follow me!"
     His men were following, squirting from the hatchway
    like somebody spitting watermelon seeds. He'd stripped
    the Peaches' interior for the operation, even shipping the
    bow gun onto the Dalriada. Sixteen armed men were still
    a claustrophobically full load for a landing from orbit.
     The Commandatura was a stuccoed two-story building with
    an arching false front to give the impression of greater height.
    There were no lights on inside, but windows in neighboring
    structures began to brighten. There was surprisingly little inter-
    est, given that the featherboat had landed squarely in the
    center of town. The spaceport was close enough that residents
    must be used to the roar of thrusters at all hours of the day
    and night.
     The entrance doors were double glass panels in frames of
    baroque metalwork. Blowing sand had etched the glass into
    milky translucence.
     Ricimer pushed the door. It didn't give.
     "I got it!" bellowed the torso-armored Dalriadan who'
    lifted the hatch. He hit the doors shoulder-first. Glass dis-
    integrated into dangerous shards-
     Terran ceramics! sneered a back part of Ricimer's mind.
     -and the Dalriadan crashed through into a terrazzo lobby.
    The empty hinges clicked back and forth from the impact.
    They were intended to open outward.
     A Molt wearing a dingy sash of office, probably a janitor
    stepped from a side room, then fled back inside. A Venerian
    swept his cutting bar through the door and kicked the remnants
    aside as he and two fellows pursued.
     Ricimer took the stairs to the second floor three at a time. He
    used his left hand to pull himself even faster by the balustrade.
    He fought to keep his eyes on the top of the stairs, not the
    step he was striding for as instinct would draw them. One of
    his men found the main light switch and brought the building
    to brilliant life.
     "Somebody watch these rooms!" Ricimer called as he round-
    ed the newel-post on the second floor and started up the black
    metal stairs to the communications center on the roof.
     Every member of the landing party had been briefed on
    his job during the assault. Despite that, it was still possible
    that in the rush of the moment the men told off for cellar
    ground-, and second-floor duties were all going to follow the
    commander to the roof.
     The latch turned but the door at the top of the stair tower
    resisted. Ricimer put his shoulder against it. He was panting.
    The panel whipped away from him, pulled by the same strong
    wind that had held it closed.
     The roof was a thicket of antennas and the guy wires that
    kept them upright. Lamps around the roof coping, ankle-height
    on three sides and taller than a man in front, cast a dust-dimmed
    illumination across the tangle. The antenna leads merged at the
    three-by-three-meter shed on a back corner of the roof. Ricimer
    ran to the structure, hopping like a spastic dancer to clear guys
    crossing his path.
     The Dalriada was coming down, three minutes behind the
    featherboat, as planned. Gusts of wind compressed the roar of
    her thrusters into a throbbing pulse.
     "Let me, sir," Leon cried as Ricimer reached for the door
     Ricimer nodded, knelt, and presented his rifle. The bosun
    leaned past him and gripped the latch in his left hand, while
    his right held a cutting bar ready to strike. He jerked the
    door open.
     The man inside the commo shack was asleep in his chair,
    His right hand trailed to the floor. A bottle had rolled away
    from him. Wind rattled another bottle, empty, against legs of
    the console.
     Leon sniffed the fluid in the partial bottle and said, "Phew!
    I'd sooner drink hydraulic fluid!"
     "Find the emergency channels," Ricimer ordered. "Start
    broadcasting that everyone should get into their bomb shelters
    immediately."
     "Do they have bomb shelters, sir?" asked Marek, one of the
    pair of Dalriadans who had followed Ricimer to the roof as
    they were supposed to do.
     "If they don't," Ricimer said, "they'll be even more fright-
    ened than if they do."
     Leon pulled the radioman from his swivel chair and slung
    him out of the shack. The fellow still didn't awaken. Ricimer
    had heard him snore, so he wasn't dead of alcohol poisoning.
    Not yet, at any rate.
     The lot to the east of the Commandatura was a fenced
    vehicle store, The building beyond it was two-story, with
    lines as simple as those of a concrete block. Lights went on
    behind the bank of curtained windows on the upper floor, but
    they went off again almost instantly.
     Ricimer frowned. That showed an undesirable degree of
    alertness on somebody's part.
     The Dalriada shook the city. The vertical glare of her
    eight small thrusters stood every vertical form in a pool of
    its own shadow. Moving with the ease of a featherboat, the
    70-tonne vessel lowered beside the Peaches, demolishing the
    remainder of the park. Clods of imported dirt and the stony
    bedrock beneath pelted the Commandatura's facade and the
    other buildings nearby.
     The thrusters shut off with a sucked-in hiss, hugely loud in
    the silence that followed. Guillermo handed Ricimer unasked
    the portable radio he could use now that plasma exhaust didn't
    blanket the RIF spectrum.
     As Ricimer put the modular unit to his mouth and ear, Leon
    came out of the commo shack and said, "I put Marek on the
    horn, sir." He thumbed toward the console. The Dalriadan had
    arranged three microphones before him on the ledge. He spoke
    earnestly into all of them at the same time. "What next?"
     Ricimer opened his mouth to speak. Something glimmered
    on the upper floor of the building across the parking lot.
    "Watch--!" he said.
     At least a dozen rifles volleyed from the other building. Leon
    pitched forward, blood spraying from his mouth. Something
    punched Ricimer's right thigh below his body armor; another
    round slammed high on his left shoulder. The bullet splashed
    on the ceramic, but its shock threw Ricimer down. Bits of
    red-hot jacket metal stung his cheek.
     A bullet-severed guy wire howled a sour chord. The antenna
    it braced fell over.
     Adrien was yammering something on his radio. Ricimer's
    own unit was the command set. He held the radio above his
    face as he lay on his back and switched it to the glowing
    purple override setting.
     "Ricimer to Dulcie!" he called. He wasn't shouting. "Hit
    the building across the parking lot from us. It's a barracks.
    Use your cannon to-"
     The Dalriada had landed with her eight 10-cm weapons run
    out to port and starboard. The crash of the first gun to fire cut
    Ricimer's orders short.
     The point-blank bolt punched low through the front of the
    building and blew out all the ground-floor windows. Glass and
    framing shotgunned in all directions, driven by a rainbow-hued
    fireball.
     The barracks walls were thermoplastic sheathing on a metal
    frame. They were beginning to sag outward when a second
    plasma cannon fired into the upper story.
     The Feds' armory exploded in a numbing blast. Chunks of
    roof lifted and rained down from a black mushroom cloud.
    The remainder of the barracks flattened across the immediate
    neighborhood like a crushed puffball.
     Marek stumbled out of the commo shack. The secondary
    explosion had wrecked the equipment and torn off three walls,
    but the Dalriadan seemed unhurt. Lights all over the city went
    out when the barracks exploded.
     Guillermo examined Leon with a pencil flash. Ricimer
    glanced over. The bosun wasn't wearing a gorget to lock his
    helmet and body armor together. A bullet had drilled through
    the back of Leon's neck and exited where his nose had been
    until that instant.
     Guillermo switched off the light.
     It must have'been instantaneous, All things were with God.
     Ricimer rolled to his knees. He thought he was okay, though
    a double spasm shook his right thigh as he moved. He rotated the
    radio's control to its green setting, normal send-and-receive.
     "-basement vault open," Adrien's voice was saying. Did
    the boy even realize he'd been locked out of the net? "But the
    real value, the purpose-built chips, they're at the tramhead.
    Let's go get them now. They're worth ten times the old pre-
    Collapse run! Answer me, Piet!"
     "Ricimer to Adrien," Piet said. He stood up unaided, but
    he had to grasp Guillermo's shoulder an instant later when
    his thigh spasmed again. "Stay where you are. I'm coming
    down. Break. Ricimer to Dulcie, over."
     "Go ahead, sir," the Dalriada's captain caroled back. "Did
    you see how we blasted those bastards? Ah, over."
     "Don't release your follow-up party until further orders,"
    Ricimer said. He was feeling dizzy. Perhaps that was why
    Dulcie's delight in the-necessary and ordered-slaughter
    struck him so wrong. "Ricimer out."
    
     He released the sending key and handed the radio back
    to Guillermo. It would be some minutes before the ground
    beneath the Dalriada cooled enough for the second sixteen-
    man team to disembark, but Ricimer didn't want them scat-
    tering before he determined how best to deploy them. The
    expedition had only three handheld radios-his, Adrien's, and
    the one with Stephen's party in the fort. When the additional
    crewmen left the Dalriada, they were out of touch except by
    shouted commands.
     "Come on," Ricimer said to Marek and Guillermo. "There's
    nothing more for us here."
        The Dalriadan glanced down at Leon.
    
    Ricimer was already heading for the stair tower. Their duties
    were to the living. The dead were in the hands of God.

    37
    
    Umber
    
    The Commandatura basement was divided by concrete walls
    into a larger and a smaller volume. The former was a jumble
    of general storage, unsorted and in large measure junk. The
    smaller room was intended as a vault, but the open door
    couldn't have been closed until some of the boxes piled around
    it were removed.
     A man in Federation whites cowered against the wall outside
    the vault. A Dalriadan held a flashlight on him, while another
    waved a cutting bar close to the prisoner's face. When the
    Venerian saw Ricimer appear at the foot of the stairs, he
    triggered the bar. Its whine brought a howl of terror from
    the captive.
     "Stop that," Ricimer ordered sharply.
     His brother came out of the vault, holding a handful of looted
    microchips. "See Piet?" he said, waving his booty through
    flashlight's beam. "They're old production here, and it'll take
    forever to load them with the power out. You! Heathen! Tell
    my brother about the new stock."
    The prisoner had opened his eyes a crack when the cutting
    bar went off. "Sirs," he whimpered, "the latest production-
    they're just now being brought across the Mirror. It's only
    two weeks till the Earth Convoy arrives, so they're being
    stored in the blockhouse at the head of the tramway."
     "Why?" Ricimer demanded. He shook his head to try to
    clear it. His sight and hearing were both sharp, but all senses
    weren't.
     "So as not to have to shift it twice, sirs," the prisoner said.
    His sleeve insignia marked him as a mid-level specialist of
    some sort, probably a clerk pulling night duty. He'd opened
    his eyes fully and had even straightened up a little against
    the wall. "The blockhouse is safe enough for a few days,
    surely."
     "Not now it isn't!" Adrien cried exultantly, "Let's go clear
    it out now! Right, Piet?"
     A Dalriadan crashed down the stairs so quickly that he
    almost bowled Ricimer out of the way. Guillermo's presence
    brought him at the last instant to the realization the man with
    his back to the stairs was his commander.
     "Schmitt and Lucius got two of the trucks running, sir!" the
    man shouted. "The windshield's blown off, but they run. Do
    we go?"
     Ricimer started to shake his head, still trying to clear it.
    He pressed his hands to his face instead when he realized the
    gesture would be misinterpreted. He wished he could think.
    He must have left his rifle on the roof, or was that one of the
    weapons Guillermo now carried?
     "Yes, all right," he said through his hands. "I'll have the
    second team begin loading these as soon as they can open the
    Dalriada. I wish-"
     He didn't know how he'd meant to finish the sentence.
     Adrien and the Dalriadans bolted up the stairs. Ricimer
    wobbled as he started to follow. He got his stride under control
    and shook away the Molt's offered hand.
     He wished Stephen were here.
     Jeude met him at the ground-floor staiihead. "We're get-
    ting the navigational data out of the computers, sir," he said,
    waving a sheaf of flat transfer chips. "Lightbody's finishing
    up. We got the emergency backup running when the mains
    power blew. Hey, what was that bang?"
     "Leon's dead," Piet Ricimer said inconsequently. "I-you
    two stay here, finish your work. It's important. We'll be back,
    Tell-"
     He shook his head. "Guillermo, give him the radio.
    Adrien has one already. Tell Captain Dulcie to put the
    second team to loading the vault's contents as soon as
    they can. We're going after purpose-built chips at the, at
    the tramhead."
     "Piet!" Adrien's voice echoed faintly through the wrecked
    doorway. "Come on if you're coming!"
     "We're coming," Piet Ricimer mumbled as he staggered
    forward. Guillermo paced him. One jointed arm curved about
    the commander's waist, not touching him but ready to grasp
    should Ricimer fall.
     Jeude watched them with a worried expression.
    
    As the first truck roared out of the parking lot, a Dalriadan
    helped lift Piet Ricimer onto the bed of the second while
    Guillermo lifted him from behind. He was very tired. The
    truck driver accelerated after Adrien in the leading vehicle.
    The Molt had to run along behind for a few steps before he
    could jump aboard.
     Though the wind had abated, the lead truck lifted freshly-
    deposited dust from the street and spun it back in the follower's
    headlights in a double whorl. The diffused illumination joined
    them as a bar of opaque yellow.
     Occasionally the edges of murky light touched a Molt stand-
    ing in front of a building, watching the vehicles. Once a human
    ran out into the street ahead, shouting and waving his arms.
    He jumped to safety when Adrien's truck didn't slow. The
    Dalriadan beside Ricimer fired at the sprawling figure but
    missed.
     Instead of being laid out in a straight line, the street to the
    tramway kinked like a watercourse. The trucks, diesel stake
    beds, were clumsy, and even the leading driver's visibility
    was marginal. The modest pace, grinding gears, and frequent
    jolting direction changes hammered Ricimer into a kind of
    waking nightmare.
     Something changed, but Ricimer wasn't sure what it was.
    Then he realized the vehicles had pulled up at a line of steel
    bollards. Beyond the waist-high barrier was a low building with
    several meters of frontage. One leaf of the front double door
    was open. The facade was pierced by four loopholes besides.
     "Master, are you all right?" someone/Guillermo murmured
    in Ricimer's ear.
     Men jumped out of the trucks. Adrien swung from the cab
    of the other vehicle and strode to the bollards. Beyond the
    blockhouse, the Mirror could be sensed but not seen.
     "I'm-" Piet Ricimer said. He pitched sideways, off the
    truck bed. Guillermo tried to grab him but failed.
     Ricimer knew that he'd hit the pavement, but he felt no
    pain. His right leg was cold. The trousers were glued to his
    skin by blood from the thigh wound that he only noticed now.
    He couldn't make his limbs move.

     A Molt wearing a Federation sash stepped out of the block-
    house, "Halt!" he ordered in Trade English. "Who are you?"
     Adrien shot the alien in the head. "C'mon, boys!" he cried.
    "They're just Molts!"
     The wall gun mounted at one of the loopholes fired a 1-kg
    explosive shell into Adrien's chest. Ricimer saw his brother's
    body hurled back in a red blast. Adrien's helmet and bits of
    his shattered breastplate gleamed in the flash of the second
    gun, which fired from the other side of the door. The round
    hit a Dalriadan, blowing off both legs and lifting his armored
    torso several meters in the air.
     Guillermo knelt and lifted Piet Ricimer in a fireman's carry.
    The Molt had discarded his weapons to free both arms.
     Rifle bullets pecked craters in the surface of the blockhouse.
    A Venerian jumped into the cab of the other truck. A shell
    struck the engine compartment and blew blazing kerosene
    across the men falling back in confusion. The cannons' muzzle
    flashes were yellow-orange, brighter than those of the bursting
    charges.
     Guillermo jogged down the dusty street. Only the wall
    guns were firing. A crewman passed them, screaming,
    "Jesusjesusjesus!" Ricimer saw the man was missing his
    right arm.
     That was the last thing he noticed before night stooped down
    on him with yellow pinions.

    38    

    Umber
 
    Flame burped over the roofs of the darkened city. The light
    was gone before Gregg could jerk his head around to watch it
    directly. The sound which came a moment later was hollow,
    choong rather than a bang.
     "What was that, sir?" Dole called from the control room.
    "Was it a bomb?"
     A post-mounted tannoy and omnidirectional microphone
    connected the unprotected gun deck on the fort's roof with
    the thick-walled citadel set off in a corner below. The latter
    had room for only the battery controls and one person, the
    fort's human officer.
      The emergency generator had fired up without hesitation
    when external power failed after the explosion. It was a ceram-
    ic diesel of Venerian manufacture. Trade would have been a
    boon to both sides.
     Gregg stared at Umber City. The center of the community
    was a rose and magenta glow, though the flames were too low
    to be seen above the buildings on the southern side of town.
       He realized that his bosun couldn't hear him. He turned
    and said "it was probably a fuel tank rupturing in the heat.
    Don't bother us with questions, Mr. Dole."
    
    and called loudly toward the microphone array "No problems!"
    
    "Watch it! Watch it!" Stampfer cried.
    
     A cutting bar's note rose to a high scream as the gun mount
    twisted enough to free the sides of the blade. Gregg pressed
    himself against the roof's chest-high windscreen. The light
    metal bonged from the pressure.
    
    A Dalriadan tugged his cutting bar hard to free it and
       jumped clear. A tag of metal fractured. The heavy plasma
    cannon sagged slowly toward the deck, restrained but not
    supported by the remaining mount.
     "There we are!" the crewman said triumphantly. "Let 'em
    try to use that one as we take off."
     "One down," Stampfer said, "three to go. Get at it."
     He looked over to Gregg. "We're not equipped for this, sir,"
    he added apologetically. "It's a job for a machine shop, not
    cutting bars."
     "Do what you can," Gregg said. "Likely that the Feds'll
    have other things on their minds by the time we lift."
     "I wish they'd tell us what was going on," one of the
    Daltiadans said wistfully.
     "They've got their own duties!" Gregg blazed. "So do you!
    Get to it!"
     He turned, more to hide his embarrassment at overreacting
    than to look at the city. He wished somebody'd tell him what
    was going on too. The sophisticated handheld radios Ricimer
    had bought for the expedition couldn't listen in on calls on the
    net that weren't directed to them.
     When the Dalriada fired its main battery and the target
    went up in a gigantic secondary explosion, Gregg and his
    outlying squad spent nearly a minute convinced there'd been
    a catastrophe. Dulcie had finally responded to Gregg's call,
    but he didn't know anything about what Piet and the landing
    party were doing either.
     Stampfer, the two crewmen on deck with him, and John
    changed batteries in their cutting bars and sawed at a mount
    of another 20-cm cannon. Gregg had expected to disable the
    guns as he left the fort by blasting the control room. Though
    the fort did have director control, the individual cannon each
    had a mechanical triggering system that was too simple and
    sturdy to be easily destroyed.
     That meant they had to cut the gun mounts-properly a
    third-echelon job, as Stampfer said. But you did what you
    had to do.
     Gunfire thumped from the east end of town. Gregg squinted
    in an attempt to see what was happening-nothing at this
    distance, not even the flicker of muzzle flashes.
     He glanced back at his men. They hadn't heard the shooting
    over the howl of their bars, and they probably wouldn't have
    understood the significance anyway.

     The weapons firing were bigger than handheld rifles. The
    expedition hadn't brought any projectile weapons that big.
     A car with a rectangular central headlight sped toward the
    fort from the west end of town. The vehicle wasn't following
    a road. It bounced wildlv and occasionally slewed in deep dust.
    
    "Watch it!" Gregg cried. "We've got company. Dole, Gallois,"
    
     "Yessir-ir," crackled the tannoy. One Dalriadan guarded the
    prisoners in the ready room, while Dole kept track of distant
    threats in the control room. All they needed for this to become
    an epic disaster was for the Earth Convoy to arrive while the
    raid was in progress.
    
    "Don't shoot!" he added. "They may be our people.'
    
     They might be a party of whirling dervishes from the Moon,
    for all he knew. Why the hell didn't anybody communicate?
     "Stampfer!" he said. "Cut away this fucking shield for me!"
    
    He kicked the windscreen; it flexed and rang. "It won't stop
    anything."
    
     Stampfer triggered his bar and swept it through the screen
    in a parabola, taking a deep scallop out of the thin metal,
    The windscreen depended on integrity and a rolled rim for
    stiffening. The edges of the cut flapped inward, shivering like
    a cold human.
     The car swung to a halt beside the door on the fort's north
    side. It was an open vehicle with three people aboard, all Feds.
    
    "Hold it!" Gregg called, aiming the flashgun.

     "You idiots!" screamed the woman who jumped from the
    left side of the car. "We're under attack! Are you blind?"
    
    She waved a pistol in Gregg's direction.
    "Drop your guns!" Gregg ordered. "Now!"
    
    His visor was down, but the light outside the fort was good
    enough that he could see the woman's expression change from
    anger to fear.
    The two men climbing from the other side of the car put
    
    their hands in the air. The woman fired at Gregg.
     He didn't know where the bullet went. It didn't hit him.
    He put a bolt from his flashgun into the fuel tank of the car
    The tank must have been nearly empty, a good mix of a
    and hydrocarbons, because it went off like a bomb instead of
    merely bursting in a slow gush of flame.
     The shock threw the woman against the fort's wall and
    straightened Gregg as he groped for a reload. She was scream-
    ing. Gregg raised his visor and tried to locate the others.
    Somebody was running back toward Umber City. He couldn't
    see the remaining Fed; he was probably in the ring of burning
    diesel.
     A bullet whanged through the north and south sides of the
    windscreen but managed to miss everything else. The shooter
    was in one of the houses, but the twinkling muzzle flash didn't
    give Gregg a good target.
     He keyed the radio. "Gregg to Ricimer!" he shouted. "We're
    under attack. What is your status? Over!"
     A shot winked from one of the houses only a hundred
    and fifty meters away. The bullet slapped the concrete and
    ricocheted upward.
     Gregg sighted, closed his eyes because he hadn't time to
    fool with the visor, and squeezed. His bolt cracked through
    an open window, liberated its energy on an interior wall, and
    turned somebody's bedroom into a belching inferno.
     Nobody answered him on the radio. More Feds were shoot-
    ing. A bullet that glanced from one of the plasma cannon
    splashed bits onto Gregg's hand as he reached for his battery
    satchel. Pity the fort's architect had made sure the big guns
    couldn't be trained on the city.
     Dole knelt beside Gregg, fired, and reloaded. He must have
    cleaned his rifle of grit while he had time.
     "Stampfer," Gregg called without looking behind him. "How
    long to disable all the guns?"
     "Jesus, sir-"
     Something moved between buildings. Gregg's snap shot was
    instinctive. Only when the rattling explosion followed his bolt
    did he realize that he'd hit another vehicle. This one was loaded
    with enough ammunition to flatten both the adjacent structures.
    He blinked as if he could wipe the afterimages of his own shot
    from the surface of his eyes.
    "-at least a fucking hour!"
     "Hey!" shouted a Dalriadan. "Hey, that Molt of ours just
    jumped off the roof and run away!"
     "So let him go," Gregg snarled. "Dole, get back to the Halys.
    Don't light her up, I don't want to lose the radio-"

     It seemed he'd already lost the fucking radio, so far as
    everybody in the main party was concerned.
     "-but be ready to go. Leave me your rifle! Stampfer, can
    that gun you cut loose still fire?"
     "You bet! "
     'Get down in the control room. Send your men off with
    Dole, they're no good now. Don't worry about the prisoners,
    the tape'll hold long enough. Move, everybody!"
     Dole fired again toward the city. "Sir," he said, "I don't
    want to leave-"
     A bullet struck the center of Gregg's breastplate. His chest
    went numb with the whack! The inside of both arms burned
    as though they'd been scraped with a saw blade.
     "Get the fuck out, you whoreson!" Gregg screamed as he
    lurched to his feet. He fired into the night, without a conscious
    target. A figure flung its rifle away and fell from a second-story
    window. It was a Molt. It lay on the ground, its Federation
    trappings burning brightly enough to illuminate the body.
     Everyone else had left the roof. Gregg ducked below the
    level of the windscreen, no protection but it blocked his oppo-
    nents' view.
     The dismounted plasma cannon was already pointed gener-
    ally to the north. Gregg put his shoulder against the barrel and
    tried to slew it more nearly in line with the houses from which
    the rifle fire came. The gun wouldn't move. His boots slipped
    on the deck.
      "Dalriada to Gregg!" the radio flopping against his side
    shrilled. The voice might have been Dulcie's, though it was
    an octave higher than Gregg had heard before from Dulcie's
    throat. "For God's sake save yourself! Mr. Ricimer's dead
    and-"
    
     Two plasma cannon blasted from the center of town,
    backlighting rooftops like a strobe light. Even as the second
    blast rang out, thruster exhaust blanketed the RF spectrum.
     Gregg's radio roared with static. He prodded at it with a
    finger, trying to find the power switch. The static pulsed as
    he switched bands uselessly instead. He smashed the unit with
    the edge of his hand, using his torso armor as the anvil to his
    rage. Fragments of thermoplastic and electronic components
    flew.
     The Dalriada rose on a huge billow of plasma, shaking the
    world. A moment later, the Peaches followed, dancing like lint
    in the larger vessel's exhaust.
     Gregg screamed in fury, backed a step, and kicked the twisted
    gun mount with his bootheel. Metal creaked. He pushed again
    at the barrel, planting his hands as close to the muzzle as he
    could to maximize his leverage. The massive weapon slid a
    millimeter, then jounced across the decking for half a meter
    before it locked up again. The edge of the muzzle scored a
    bright line in the concrete.
    
     Gregg jumped into the stairway to the ready room and
    hunched there. "Go ahead, Stampfer!" he shouted. He didn't
    have time to close the armored door above him. He'd seen
    figures scuttling toward the fort out of the corner of his eye.
    "Shoot! Shoo-"
     The plasma cannon fired. The bolt, the residue of a directed
    thermonuclear explosion, struck the deck at a flat angle and
    sprayed out over a 120* arc. The portion of windscreen in the
    blast's path vaporized; the shockwave blew the rest of it off
    the fort's roof, along with everything else smaller than the
    other cannon. The rifle and bandolier Dole left according to
    orders were gone forever
    
     Scattered backflare seared Gregg's hands even though he
    huddled below roof level and clasped them against his chest.
    The cannon recoiled hard, shearing the remaining mount and
    dumping the weapon itself over the lip of the building.
     Stampfer stumbled out of the control citadel. He mouthed
    words, but Gregg couldn't hear them. Gregg waved the gunner
    and Guillermo to the hlast-scarred roof.
    
     The line of thirty houses facing the fort was on fire, every
    one of them. Some were built of concrete, but the surge of ions
    had ignited their interiors as surely as those of houses built of
    less refractorv materials.
    
     For a moment Gregg thought he was still being shot at. No
    bullets sparked or whined around him. Rifle ammunition was
    cooking off in the blaze.
    
     There were still three mounted plasma cannon. Gregg stared
    at them transfixed. He could hold the fort himself while the
    Halys lifted the rest of his party to safety.
    
     Stampfer seized Gregg by the hand and rotated him so
    that they were face-to-face. The Dalriadan patted the nearest
    plasma cannon with his free hand
    
     "C'mon!" he said, speaking with exaggerated lip movements
    to make himself more comprehensible to his half-deafened
    commander. "These're fucked good by the backblast. The
    training gear's welded. Let's get out while we can!"
     Stampfer jumped off the south side of the deck, keeping the
    fort's bulk between him and the burning city.
     Gregg followed. When he threw his arms out to balance him,
    pain lancing across his pectoral muscles stopped the motion.
    He fell on his face and had to shuffle his knees forward to
    get back up.
    
     He began running, ten paces behind Stampfer. The vessel's
    side hatch was open, and the glow of her idling thrusters was
    a beacon to safety.
    
    39
    
    Sunrise
    
    Dole waited poised at the controls while a gust of unusual
    violence even for Sunrise channeled between the hulls of the
    Dalriada and that of the metal-built ship lying parallel to her.
    The wind settled to 15 or 20 kph.
     "There!" the Halys' bosun said as he shut the thrusters down.
    with a flourish. "That's greasing her in!"
     "I'll go see what I can learn about why we were abandoned
    on Umber that way," said Stephen Gregg in an expressionless
    voice. He reached for the hatch control.
     "Sir?" Dole said, sharply enough to draw Gregg's attention
    back from its bleak reverie. "Ah-d'ye think you're going to
    need the flashgun you're carrying?"
     Gregg stared at him. "That depends on what I learn," he
    said evenly.
     "Right, right," said Dole as he rose from the console. "So
    wait for a minute while I get my gear on too, -okay?"
     Stampfer got up from the attitude controls. He laced his
    fingers together over his head and stretched them against the
    normal direction of the joints. "I guess we'll all go, sir," he
    said toward the bulkhead. "It was all our asses they left to
    swing in the breeze, wasn't it?"
     "Too right," murmured Gallois, already half into his hard
    suit.
     "Say, said another of the Dalriadans plaintively as he donned
    his armor, "does anybody know what that other ship's doing
    here with our two?"
     "I don't know what it's doing," Gregg said as he waited for
    his men to equip themselves, "but I'm pretty sure what it is
    is the Adler. They're Germans from United Europe."
     He paused while he remembered Virginia. "The captain's a
    man named Schremp," he added. "I could have lived a good
    deal longer without seeing him again."
     Dole had brought the Halys in between two ships lying
    within a hundred meters of one another. It was a form of
    bragging, proving how much better he could do than the
    Halys' AI.
     It had also been dangerous, but Gregg felt too bloody-
    minded to care if misjudgment sent them crashing through
    the side of the Dalriada. Anyway, it was a short walk hatch-
    to-hatch in the brutal wind.
     The ramp to the Dalriada's forward hold dropped as soon
    as Gregg opened the Halys. He and his crew started toward
    the larger vessel. A single man waited for them in the hold.
    He raised his visor as they entered.
     It was Piet Ricimer.
     "Good Christ!" Gregg blurted. "Piet, I-Dulcie told me you
    were dead."
     "Thanks to the goodness of Christ," Ricimer said, a reproof
    so gentle you had to know him well to recognize it, "nothing
    happened to me that rest and a great deal of blood plasma
    couldn't cure."
     He glanced toward the ramp. "I'm going to close the hatch
    now," he said, reaching for the control. "You'd better step
    forward, Gallois."
     Gregg embraced him. Their suits clashed together loudly.
     "I thought you were, were lost too, Stephen," Ricimer mur-
    mured. "When I came to, I asked where you were. They said
    they were sure you'd lifted off of Umber, but you hadn't joined
    them on the run to Sunrise."
     "Them bastards took off like scalded cats!" Dole snarled.
    "And us in a Federation pig that thinks it's a miracle to come
    within four zeros of her setting on a transit. Of course we
    were going to be a couple days behind, if the bastards didn't
    wait up on us!"
     "I've got something to discuss with Captain Dulcie," Gregg
    said in a voice as pale as winter dawn. He clapped his friend
    on the back and moved toward the companionway to the
    bridge.
     Ricimer stepped in front of him. "No, Stephen," he said. "I
    made the plans, I gave the orders. The fault was mine."
     "You were unconscious!" Gregg shouted.
    "I was responsible!" Ricimer shouted. They were chest-to-
    chest. "I am responsible, under God, for the future success of
    this- voyage. Me!"
     Both men eased back by half-steps. They were breathing
    hard. "Stephen," Ricimer said softly. "What's done is done. It's
    the future that counts. Those mistakes won't happen again."
     Gregg smiled savagely. "So, it's forgive and forget, is that
    it, Piet?" he said.
     "No, Stephen," Ricimer said. "Just forgive." He wet his
    lips with his tongue. "It was good enough for our Lord, after
    all."
     Gregg laughed. He turned to his crew. "How do you men
    feel about that?" he asked mildly.
     Men shrugged within their hard suits. "Whatever you say,
    sir," Stampfer said.
     Gregg put his flashgun muzzle-down on the deck. "What I
    say," he said, "is that we all swore an oath to obey Captain
    Ricimer when we signed on for this voyage. So I guess we'd
    better do that."
     He grinned lopsidedly at his friend.
    
     Ricimer unlatched his hard suit. "We can leave all the gear
    here," he said. "I'll be going back aboard the Peaches after
    the meeting myself."
     "Meeting?" Gregg repeated as he began to strip off his
    armor also.
     "Yes," Ricimer said. "You're just in time for it. Captain
    Schremp has a crewman who was aboard the Tolliver when
    we refitted here on the previous voyage. As a result he located
    us, and he wants us to joinforces with him on the next stage
    of our operations . . ."

    40

    Sunrise

    A dozen members of the Dalriada crew bent over equipment in
    the compartment adjoining the bridge and captain's suite. They
    weren't precisely lurking; even after the casualties on Umber,
    space aboard the 70-tonne vessel was tight. There was no ques-
    tion that the men's nervous attention was directed toward the
    meeting, though.
     Besides the Dalriadans, three metal hard suits stood in pools
    of condensate. One of the suits was silvered, and the rifle slung
    from it was the ornate, pump-action repeater Gregg had seen
    on Virginia.
     Ricimer led Gregg onto the bridge. The ten men already
    there crowded it. Only Wassail among the DaIriada's officers
    would meet Gregg's cold eyes, but the Germans nodded to the
    Venerian.
     To Gregg's surprise, Schremp clearly recognized him. Of
    course, Gregg hadn't forgotten Captain Schremp . . -
     "Rondelet," the German captain boomed before Ricimer had
    seated himself again at the head of the chart table. "There's
    a hundred occupied islands with Fed ships at a score of the
    at any given time. None of them are defended to the degree-"
    
     He waved a hairy, powerful hand. "Umber was suicide. You
    were lucky to get out of it as well as you did, Ricimer."
     'Umber might not have been such a problem," said Stephen
    Gregg from where he stood by the hatch, "except some idiot
    had botched a raid two weeks before and roused the whole area."
    
     One of the Germans muttered a curse and started to get up
    from his chair. Schremp waved him down with a curt gesture
    and said, "We needed a featherboat on Umber, that is so.
    On Rondelet your featherboat comes in low, eliminates the
    defense battery, and the larger ships drop down and finish the
    job. Together, it's easy."
     "Our raid on Umber wasn't such a failure as it may have
    appeared to outsiders," Ricimer said coolly. "I've reviewed the
    pilotry data we gathered there, and it's clear that the Federation
    holds Rondelet in considerable strength. Each of the magnates
    there has an armed airship of his own ... and as you've pointed
    out, Captain Schremp, there are more than a hundred of these
    individual fiefdoms."
     "They're spread out," insisted one of Schremp's henchmen,
    a squat fellow with blond hair on his head but a full red beard.
    "We pick an island where a ship is loading, strip the place, and
    we're gone before the neighbors wake up."
     "Or," Ricimer said, "we're a few seconds late in lifting off,
    and there's a score of airships circling the island, waiting to put
    plasma bolts into our thrusters when we're a thousand meters
    up. I think not."
     Schremp's hands clenched on the chart table. He deliberately
    opened them and forced his face into a smile. "Come now,
    Captain Ricimer," he said in a falsely jocular tone. "There
    are always risks, of course, but these Principals as they call
    themselves-they live like kings on their little islands, yes,
    but they don't have armies. A dozen or so armed Molts for
    show, that is all. They won't fight."
     "My late brother," Ricimer said with a perfect absence of
    emotion, "was saying something very similar when a Molt
    killed him."
     Gregg's face went as blank as his friend's. He'd wondered
    why Adrien wasn't present ... He reached over, regardless of
    the others, and squeezed Ricimer's shoulder.
     "The Earth Convoy will top off and refit on Rondelet on its
    way to Umber," Wassail put in. He'd obviously studied and
    understood the data lifted from Umber's Commandatura also.
    "It's due anytime now."
     "All right," snarled the blond German, "what do you propose
    we do? Calisthenics on the beautiful beaches outside and then
    go home?"
     "No, Mr. Groener," Ricimer said. "My men and I are going
    to Benison, What your party does is of course your own affair."
     "Benison?" Schremp cried. "Benison? There's nothing but
    local trade there. Food ships to Rondelet and Umber. Where's
    the profit there?"
     "A ship itself is worth something," said Dulcie, "when you
    pay for it at the point of a gun." The Dalriada's captain h
    brightened noticeably when Ricimer said they weren't going
    to attack another well-defended target.
     Schremp stood up. His right fist pumped three times, end
    ing each stroke millimeters above the tabletop. "Are you all
    cowards?" he demanded. "Did you all have your balls shot off
    on Umber, is that it?"
     He turned and pointed at Gregg. "You, Mr. Gregg," he said.
    "Will you come with me? You're not a coward."
     Gregg had been leaning against the hatchway. He rocked
    himself fully upright by flexing his shoulders. "My enemies
    have generally come to that conclusion, Captain," he said.
    "Neither am I a deserter, or a fool."
     Schremp didn't flinch at Gregg's tone, but Dulcie stared a
    his hands in horror.
     "So be it!" Schremp said. Everyone in the room was stand
    ing. "You will not help us, so we will help ourselves."
     He led his entourage off the bridge, bumping betwee
    chairs and Venerians pressed against the bulkhead. At th
    hatch Schremp turned and said, "Captain Ricimer, for you
    further endeavors, I wish you even better fortune than you
    had on Umber!"
     Gregg closed the hatch behind the Germans. They would be
    several minutes in the next compartment donning their hard
    suits-unless they were angry enough to face Sunrise weather
    unprotected as they returned to the Adler.
     The Venerians looked at one another, visibly relaxing.
    "Well," said Dulcie, breaking the silence, "I think picking
    up the local trade on Benison is far the best idea."
     Ricimer gave him a lopsided smile. "Oh," he said, "that
    isn't my plan at all, Captain Dulcie. Though we are going to
    Benison."

    41
    
    Benison
    
    Lightbody would be watching the panel, but Gregg had set the
    sonic scanner to provide an audio signal before he let himself
    doze off in the featherboat's bay. The peep-peep-peep of the
    alarm wakened him instantly, even though when he came alert
    the tiny sound was lost in the shriek of a saw fifty meters away
    cutting into the frame of the Halys.
     Lightbody, bending down to arouse Gregg, seemed surprised
    he was already up. "Somebody's coming from the east, sir," he
    whispered. "I think it must be the captain coming back."
     "I think so too," Gregg said. He checked the satchel of
    reloads, aimed his flashgun, and then tested his faceshield's
    detents to be sure that it would snap closed easily if he needed
    the protection. Daylight through the foliage had a soft, gold-
    en tinge.
     The saw stopped. Somebody cheered in satisfaction. The
    men were treating their work as if it were a normal ship-
    wright's task, ignoring the fact they were on a hostile planet.
    Realistically, there was no silent way to remove a thruster and
    the transit system from a ship built as a single module; besides,
    five hundred meters of the dense forest would drink the noise
    anyway. The comfortable, even carefree manner of the men
    under his temporary command irritated Gregg nonetheless.
     "I'm coming in," called Piet Ricimer. He was out of sight,
    to prevent a nervous bullet or laser bolt. "I'm alone, and I'm
    coming in."
     "Thank God for that!" Gregg said. He jumped down and
    met his friend ten meters from the Peaches. They shook, left
    hand to left hand, because Gregg held the flashgun to his side
    on its muzzle-forward patrol sling.
         "Where's Guillermo?" Gregg asked.
    "With K'Jax and his, well, Clan Deel," Ricimer explained
    as they walked back to the featherboat. "There's fifty or sixty
    of them coming. I came on ahead."
     "We need that many?" Gregg said.
     "For portage," his friend replied. "I don't want more than
    one trip through the Mirror. I'll only need a few of our people,
    humans; specialists. Ah, I want you to remain in charge of the
    base party and the vessels."
     They'd reached the Peaches. Men without specific tasks-
    and Dulcie, who was supposed to be overseeing work on the
    Halys-strode toward their commander along the paths tram-
    pled to mud beneath the trees.
     "I want to be able to flap my arms and fly," said Gregg
    evenly. "That's not going to happen either."
     "We've got the AI dismounted and we're almost done
    sectioning it for carriage, Captain Ricimer," Dulcie boomed
    with enthusiasm. "And the powerplant, thrusters and plumb-
    ing, that's already complete. The ship's pretty well junked,
    though."
     Ricimer nodded absently to him. "The Halys wasn't a great
    deal to begin with," he said. "But she'll do. Stephen-"
     Gregg shook his head. "There was work to be done here,"
    he said. "Fine, I stayed while you went off to find the Molts.
    I'd sooner have gone, but I understood the need."
     "And-" began Ricimer.
     "Now, " Gregg continued forcefully, "the operation's on the
    other side of the Mirror, and there's nothing to do here but wait.
    I'm sure Captain Dulcie can wait just as well as I could."
     He nodded pleasantly at the Dalriada's captain. Dulcie
    blinked, suspicious that he was being insulted but relieved
    at the implication that he wouldn't be expected to take a front
    rank in the coming raid. "Well, I'm sure you can depend on
    me to do my duty, gentlemen," he said.
     "An autogyro - patrolling the fields came close enough we
    could hear it," Gregg said. "The camouflage net over the
    Dalriada did the job. That's the only threat in the past
    three days. Don't tell me you're not going to need a shooter
    worse on mirrorside. Because if you do, I'll call you a
    liar, Piet."
     Ricimer shook his head. "Well," he said, "we can't have
    that. I think six of the men will be sufficient. How did those
    with you aboard the Halys work out, Stephen?"
     "None of them were problems," Gregg said without hesita-
    tion. "Dole and Stampfer I'd take with me anywhere."
     "Then we'll take them on this operation," Ricimer said. He
    smiled. "I'm not sure they'll find it so great an honor after
    they've had personal experience with the Mirror."
     Ricimer's face hardened. "I'll inspect the supplies and equip-
    ment for the operation now," he added crisply. "If possible, I'd
    like to leave as soon as Guillermo gets here with our allies."
    
    "I've got them," Gregg called up to the Molt invisible in the
    treetop as the wicker basket wobbled down into his arms.
     Gregg transferred handfuls of recharged batteries from the
    basket to an empty satchel, then replaced them with another
    dozen that had been run flat with the tree cutting and shaping.
    The bark-fiber rope was looped around the basket handle and
    spliced instead of simply being tied off. Otherwise it would
    have been simpler to trade baskets rather than empty and refill
    the one.
     "Ready to go!" he called. He stepped back as the Molt
    hoisted away.
     The solar collector had to be above the foliage to work. It
    was easier to lift batteries up to the collector than it would
    have been to haul fifty meters of electrical cable through the
    Mirror so that the rest of the charging system could be at
    ground level.
     "And so, I think, are we, Stephen," Piet Ricimer said, shock-
    ing Gregg as he turned without realizing his friend had walked
    over to him as he stared up into the tree.
     "Ready?" Gregg said in surprise. He looked toward the
    starship in the center of the circle that had been cleared to
    provide the vessel's framework.
     The portable kiln still chugged like a cat preparing to vomit,
    grinding, heating, and spraying out the sand and rock dumped
    into its feed hopper. The routine of work over the past week had
    been so unchanging that Gregg was subconsciously convinced
    it would never change.
     "Lightbody and Stampfer are clearing the kiln," Ricimer
    said. He smiled wanly. "My father would never forgive me
    if I put up a kiln with the output lines full of glass. That can
    cause backflow through the feed chute the next time you use
    the equipment."

     Side by side, the two officers walked toward the ship, which
    was possibly the ugliest human artifact Stephen Gregg had ever
    seen.
     The crewmen waited expectantly. The Molts who aided
    them when possible-Venerian ceramic technology belonged
    to the post-Collapse era, so it was not genetically coded into
    the aliens' cells-were ready to begin loading the ship with the
    piled equipment and supplies, but no one had given the order
    to begin.
    
    "Gentlemen," Piet Ricimer said loudly. Everyone's attention
    was on him alreadv.
    "We're men of action, not ceremony " Ricimer continued.
    "Nonetheless, I thought we should pause, for a moment
    to pray."
    

      The ship was a framework of wooden beams, covered with
    planks sawn from the neighboring forest with cutting bars. 
      The rough-hewn planks were sealed and friction-proofed
    with a ceramic coating applied by one of the portable kilns
    the expedition carried to make repairs. It was the largest item
    the Molts had had to carry through the Mirror. Gregg couldn't
    imagine how K'Jax, who took the load himself, had managed.
    
     "I considered calling our ship the Avenger," Ricimer said.
    His voice, strong from the beginning, grew firmer and clearer
    yet. Gregg recalled Piet mentioning that his father was a lay
    preacher. "But vengeance is for the Lord. Our eyes must be
    on the benefit to all men- that will occur when our profit leads
    our fellows to join in breaking the Federation monopoly."
    
     They'd installed the artificial intelligence and transit apparat-
    us from the Halys in the flimsy wooden vessel. By comparison
    with this construction, the shoddy Federation prize was a marvel.
    
     "And I thought of naming her the Biwa," Piet continued.
    "It was on Biruta that the treachery of the Federation author
    ities proved to us all that the Federation had to be fought and
    defeated if men were to live as God wills among the stars. But
    Biruta was the past, and we must view the future."
     For power and direction, they had a single thruster from
    the Halys, gimballed with ceramic bearings held in hardwood
    journals. If anyone but Piet Ricimer had offered to take off in
    such a contraption, Gregg would have made sure to be out of
    the probable impact zone. Instead, he would be aboard her.
     "The future is Umber-the unprotected mirrorside where
    Pleyal's henchmen store the chips that will launch a hundred
    further vessels when we return laden with them," Ricimer said.
    "Therefore, under God, I name this ship the Umber. May she
    bear us to triumph!"
     The tanks of reaction mass were wood partitions sealed with
    glass much like the hull itself Air was a greater problem. They
    couldn't build high-pressure tanks, so the crew would have to
    breathe from bottles attached to their hard suits for the entire
    voyage. They were taking along all the expedition's containers.
    At best, it would be very,close.
     "Friends and allies," Ricimer concluded. "Friends! Let us
    pray."
     He bowed his head.
     God help us all, thought Stephen Gregg.
    
    42
    
    Mirrorside, near Umber
    The Umber trembled in the atmosphere like a bubble deforming
    in a breeze. Umber's tawny planetary disk shuddered past in
    the viewscreen. There was no sign that the ship was descend-
    ing.
     Guillermo was in what appeared to be a state of suspended
    animation. Gregg hadn't realized that Molts could slow their
    metabolism at will. For Guillermo, the entire voyage would be
    a blank filled with whatever dreams Molts dream.
     For the humans aboard the Umber, the voyage was a living
    Hell.
     "Get on with it!" Coye whimpered. "For God's own sake,
    set her down!"
     Lightbody snicked open a knife and put the point of its
    ceramic blade to the throat of his fellow crewman. "Blaspheme
    again," he said in a voice husky with tension and pain, "and it
    won't matter to you if we never touch down!"
     Gregg knocked up Lightbody's hand with the toe of his boot.
    Dole was lurching upright with his rifle reversed to club the
    butt. Gregg caught the bosun's eye; Dole forced a grin and sat
    down again.
     The Umber bucked harder than usual. Gregg lost his feet
    but managed to sit with a suggestion of control by letting his
    hand slide down one of the poles cross-bracing the interior.
    He wanted to stand up; he would stand up. But not for a
    moment yet.
     Ricimer bent over the control console, hunched forward from
    the wicker back of his chair-the Umber's sole piece of 
    furniture. Piet had to balance thrust, the slight reaction mass
    remaining in the tanks, and the vessel's wooden frame. At a
    slight excess of atmospheric braking, the hull would flex and
    the ceramic coating would scale off like bits of shell from a
    hard-boiled egg.
     If the Umber wasn't opened to a breathable atmosphere soon,
    everybody aboard her was going to die from lack of oxy-
    gen.
     "Oh, God, Coye moaned. He raised his air bottle to his
    mouth and squeezed the release vainly again. He hurled the
    empty container away from him. It hit Stampfer. The gunner
    either ignored it or didn't feel the impact.
     The Umber tracked across the planetary surface in a recip-
    rocal of her previous direction. Gregg hadn't felt a transition,
    but they had reversed at the Mirror.
     The ship had slowed. The ragged settlement looked good
    as it passed through the viewscreen.
     Gregg stood up. His head hammered so hard it
    threatened to burst it wide open. He wanted desperately to sip
    air from the bottle. Instead he walked over to Coye, ducking
    under a brace that was in the way.
     Gregg put the bottle to the crewman lips. Coye tried to
    trigger the release himself. Gregg slapped away Coye's greedy
    hands and gave him a measure of air.
    
     It was the hardest act that Gregg remembered ever having
    performed.
     Filters scrubbed C02 from the jerry-built vessel's atmos-
    phere, but that did nothing to replenish the converted oxygen.
    Rather than release the contents of the air bottles directly into
    the ship's interior, Gregg doled them out on a schedule to
    the individual crewmen. Human lungs absorbed only a small
    percentage of the oxygen in a breath, so the exhaled volume
    increased the breathability of the cabin air.
     To a degree.
     Everyone was on his last bottle. Most of them had finished
    theirs. It was going to be very close.
     Piet Ricimer adjusted the fuel feed and thruster angle. Gregg
    swayed forward from deceleration. Through the cross brace, he
    felt the Umber creak with strain.
     He wondered if the ship was going to disintegrate so close
    to their goal. Part of his mind noted that if impact with the
    atmosphere converted his body to flaked meat, the pain in his
    head would stop.
     Very deliberately, he took a swig from his air bottle. The
    feeling of cold as gas expanded against his tongue eased the
    pain somewhat, even before the whiff of oxygen could dif-
    fuse into his blood ... but the bottle emptied before his finger
    released the trigger.
     Umber's natural surface was too uniform for Gregg to
    able to judge their velocity against it. When the Federation set-
    tlement came in sight again, it was clear that Piet now had the
    wooden vessel in controlled flight rather than a braking orbit.
     Umber City on the planet's realside wasn't prepossessing.
    The community here on the mirrorside was a dingy slum.
     Two small freighters sat on the exhaust-fused landing field
    They resembled the Halys; like her, they had been built in the
    Reaches, very possibly in the yards on Benison. Memory of the
    prize he had so recently commanded made Gregg dizzy from
    recalled luxury: the ability to fill his lungs without feeling
    was being suffocated with a pillow.
     There were six human-built structures. Four of them were
    large enough to be warehouses, constructed of sheet metal. A
    smaller metal building stood between the larger pairs, at the
    head of the tramline crossing the Mirror.
     A large circular tank formed the center of the landing field
    Like the similar structures on realside, it held reaction mass
    the ships that landed here, Dedicated tankers shuttled back
    forth between Umber and the nearest water world, replenishing
    the reservoir. The local groundwater was barely sufficient for
    drinking purposes.
     A small barracks and an individual dwelling built of concrete
    each had a peaked metal roof while all the other structures
    were flat. There was no need of roof slope in a climate as arid
    as Umber's; someone had decided on the design for esthetic
    reasons, probably to differentiate human habitations from that
    of the alien slaves.
     The Molt dwellings looked like a junkyard or, at best, a sea
    of metal-roofed anthills. Walls of sandbags woven from heavy
    cloth supported sheet-metal plates. Loose sand was heaped over
    the plates to anchor them against the wind.
     On Punta Verde and among K'Jax' folk on Benison, Molts
    adapted their buildings to varied sorts of locally available
    materials. Gregg was sure that they would have occupied a better
    community on Umber's mirrorside, if their human masters
    allowed them basics. The sand could be stabilized by cement
    powder, heat-setting plastic with a simple applicator, or port-
    able kilns of the sort any modest Venerian spaceship carTied-
    and would trade away for a handful of microchips.
    The Federation administrators weren't saving money by
    condemning the aliens to this squalor: they were making a
    political statement. Duty on the mirrorside of Umber was
    worse than a prison sentence for the humans involved. They
    felt a need to prove they were better than somebody else.
    It was, in its way, a rare example of the Feds treating Molts
    as something other than objects. The Molts became persons for
    the purpose of being discriminated against.
    "There. . ." Ricimer murmured. He eased back a millimeter on
    the fuel feed. The image advancing on the viewscreen slowed
    still further, then began to expand. The Umber dropped against
    the pilot's precisely-measured thrust. The landing field was
    directly beneath the vessel,
      Gregg turned from the viewscreen to the hatch. He stared
    at it for some seconds before the oxygen-starved higher lev-
    els of his mind responded to what his lizard brain was try-
    ing to tell him. He staggered across the bay, avoiding the
    frame members but tripping on Jeude's sprawled feet on the
    way.
       The hatch was a half meter across. They'd had to bring large
    fittings into the Umber before the hull was sealed. The wooden
    edges of the hatch and jamb were beveled to mate under inter-
    nal pressure. They were ceramic-coated and smeared with the
    milky, resilient sap of a mirrorside climbing vine immediately
    before the ship was closed for liftoff.
      The square panel was wedged closed on the inside. Gregg
    grabbed the handle of one wedge and strained against it. It
    didn't move. He grunted in frustration.
      "The other way, sir!" Jeude croaked. "You're pushing it
    home."
      That's exactly what he was doing.
    Dole had gotten cautiously to his feet, but he swayed where
    he stood. It was hard to imagine that in the recent past the crew
    had enough energy to fight.
      Gregg didn't need help, now that Jeude had oriented him.
    The closures were paired, one on each of the four surfaces.
    Stampfer knocked them home with a mallet on Benison. Gregg
    used his left hand on the forward handle to anchor his pull on
    the wedge opposite. The right side gave, the top gave-
      He switched the power grip to his left hand, because his right
    fingers were bleeding from pressure cuts. The forward closure
    pulled out. Gregg lost his balance with it and fell backward.
     Dole, Jeude, and Lightbody reached over him, grabbed the
    hatch crossbar, and tugged inward with their combined strength.
    Though the bottom wedge was still in place, the hatch jumped
    from its jamb and tilted inward.
     The air that blasted past it was dusty and tinged with ions
    from the thruster's exhaust. Its touch was as close to heaven
    as Gregg expected ever to know.
     "Coming in!" said Piet Ricimer, his voice high-pitched and
    trembling with relief.
     The Umber grounded in a controlled crash and immediate-
    ly rolled onto her portside. She'd been launched from a cra-
    dle. Hydraulically-extended landing legs to stabilize the craft
    on the ground were out of the question, and fixed outriggers
    would have put too much strain on the hull during atmospheric
    braking.
     The hatch was nearly overhead. Gregg stepped to a cross
    brace-he was still too logy to jump-and thrust his flashgun
    through the opening. Ricimer stroked Guillermo awake. The
    Molt was strapped to what now was the starboard bulkhead.
     "Follow me!" Gregg cried as he crawled through the hatch.
    His battery satchel, slung at hip level, caught on the jamb. A
    crewman below gave Gregg a boost. He slid down the hull
    and hit Umber's mirrorside on his shoulder and chest.
     He didn't care. He was breathing in deep lungfuls of air,
    and it would be a long time before any injuries outweighed
    the pleasure of that feeling.
     A pair of Molts stared at the Umber from the open door of
    the warehouse two hundred meters away. Other Molts clustered
    near the tramhead, apparently intent on their own thoughts.
    Gregg didn't see any humans.
     He glanced over his shoulder. Dole had squirmed through
    the hatch with a repeater held high to keep it from knocking
    the hull as he dropped to the ground. Gregg reached up to help
    control the bosun's fall.
     The Umber herself was in amazingly good condition. The
    ceramic coating had flaked away in patches from her under-
    side when she scraped onto the landing field, but the rest of
    the hull appeared intact. She could be made to fly with a
    little effort.

    It would take much greater effort to convince any of the
    present complement to crew her again, though.
    
     Piet Ricimer was the third man out. He must have used his
    rank to press ahead of the other men. Gregg and Dole together
    caught him as he slid down.
    
     "Let's go," Ricimer said as he unslung his rifle. He grinned.
    Guillermo hopped easily to the ground beside them. "Since we
    don't have a battalion to back us up, I think we'd best depend
    on speed."
     The four of them spread into a loose skirmish line as they
    moved toward the tramhead. Jeude climbed through the hatch,
    jumped to the ground, and fell. He brushed off his rifle's receiv-
    er as he jogged to a place between Dole and Ricimer.
    
     The warehouses were on the left, with the Molt hovels strag-
    gling against the Mirror beyond. Gregg took the right side of
    the Venerian formation, toward the barracks and house. None
    of Umber's structures seemed to have windows. The doors to
    the residences were on the far side.
     The wind blew hard enough to sting sand against Gregg's
    bare hands, but it didn't raise a pall the way the storm had
    during the assault on realside. At least the weather was coopera-
    ting. He really wished there'd been time to don his body armor,
    but there wasn't. Suits for the whole crew were stored in the
    Umber, but removing them would mean dismantling the ship.
     Lightbody joined them. Gregg looked back. Stampfer was
    climbing through the hatch. All the men carried rifles. Besides
    a cutting bar, Guillermo wore a holstered pistol, but Gregg
    wasn't sure how serious a weaDon it was meant to be.
    
    The Molts at the tramhead watched the Venerians. Many
       of them turned only their heads, giving the crowd an uncanny
    resemblance to an array of mechanical toys.
    
     The line reached the buildings. The Molts in the warehouse
    doorway had moved only their heads to track the Venerians.
    Ricimer turned and gestured toward Coye, running to catch
    up with them. "Coye!" he called, aided by the breeze. "Watch
    that pair!"
    
     Gregg stepped smoothly around the corner of the block,
    the nearer of the two buildings on his end, and presented
    his laser. The doors in the middle of both buildings were
    closed tightly against the windblown sand. There were no 
    windows on this side either.
     Nothing to see, and no one to impress by pomp.

    "Who is in charge here?" Ricimer called to the Molts at the
    warehouse.
     None of them reacted until Guillermo chittered something
    in his own speech. One of the Molts said in English, "Our
    supervisors have gone across the Mirror for the celebration."
    
     Guillermo continued to talk in quick, clattering vocables.
    The local Molts moved, slight shifts of position that relieved
    the Venerians' tension at the abnormal stillness of a moment
    before. Ricimer approached the group. His men hung back by
    a step or a half-step each, so that the line of humans became
    a shallow vee. None of the aliens was armed or appeared
    
     Guillermo turned to Ricimer and explained, "The Earth Con-
    voy has arrived on the realside. There will be a party in Umber
    City. The humans from here have crossed the Mirror to join it."
     "Most of the humans" said the Molt who had spoken
    before. He wore a sash of office, gray from a distance but
    grease-smeared white when Gregg saw it closer. "Under-clerk
    Elkinghorn is still here."
     The Molt pointed. Gregg was already turning. The bar-
    racks door had opened. The woman who'd started toward
    the tramhead had failed to latch it properly behind her: as
    Gregg watched, the door blew open again, then slammed with
    a bang.
     "Hey!" she called. She wore uniform trousers and tunic,
    but she had on house slippers rather than boots. "Hey! Who..?"
    
    "Hold it right where you are!" Dole shouted as he aimed.
    
    "Don't!" Piet Ricimer cried. "Don't shoot!"
    
     The woman turned and ran back toward the door from which
    she'd come. A bottle flew out of the pocket of her tunic and
    broke on the ground. It was half full of amber liquor.
    
     Elkinghorn was ten meters away. Gregg aimed. He was coldly
    furious with himself for not having continued to watch the
    building.
    Elkinghorn threw open the door. Gregg fired past her head.
    
     Elkinghorn flung herself backward, onto the ground. The
    laser bolt converted paint and insulation to blazing gas. It blew
    the door shut and bulged the sides of the barracks.
     "I think," said Gregg as he clicked a fresh battery into his
    flashgun, "that she'll be in a mood to answer our questions
    now."

    43
    
    Umber

    "Not a thing!" Jeude snarled as he stamped into the secretary's
    residence. "Not a damned thing."
     "There's food," said Stampfer, closing the outer door behind
    himself and his partner in searching the nearer warehouse. The
    gunner sucked on a hard-cored fruit so lush that juice dripped
    into his beard. With his free hand, he pulled another fruit from
    his bulging pocket. He offered it to Ricimer, Gregg, and the
    Fed captive promiscuously. "Want one?"
     Gregg shook his head at Stampfer and said to Jeude, "Maybe
    Dole and Coye had better luck."
     "It's not up to date," Elkinghorn said miserably from the
    outpost's central computer. "I know it shows twelve cases of
    Class A chips here, but as God is my witness, they've all been
    trucked across. All of them."
     She squeezed her forehead with her right hand, then resumed
    advancing the manifest with the light pen in her left, master,
    hand. She was trembling badly.
     Ricimer had refused to give the prisoner more liquor. She'd
    been drinking herself comatose in irritation at being left behind,
    "in charge", while the rest of the outpost's complement crossed
    to Umber City for the celebration. The laser bolt had shocked
    her sober, but she wasn't happy about the fact.
     "That other warehouse, Dole's looking, but it's not going to
    do a bit of good," Jeude replied. "Supplies, machinery-trade
    goods for other colonies on the mirrorside, that's all there is."
     Stampfer dropped his pit on the coarse rug. He began eating
    the fruit in his left hand.
     Lightbody came in the door, carrying his cutting bar in
    his hand. "I got through the sidewall of the barracks," he
    announced, "but it wasn't any good. You torched her right
    and proper, sir."
    
     He nodded to Gregg. "Fully involved. Zip, I cut through the
    wall, and boom, the roof lifts off because air got to the inside
    that had about smothered itself out."
     Gregg shrugged sheepishly. "I thought she might have a gun
    inside," he said.
     "There's no guns here," the prisoner said. "There's nothing
    but Christ-bitten desert here, so what's to shoot?"
     Anger raised her blood pressure. She dropped the light pen
    and pressed both hands to her temples. "Oh, God, I need a
    drink so bad," she groaned.
    
     Ricimer stood. "Tie her," he said to Lightbody. At the
    tramhead, the Venerians had found a coil of rope woven
    somewhere on mirrorside. The Molt laborers said they used
    it to bind bulky loads onto the cars. "And give her a drink, if
    there is one."
     Jeude shrugged and took a bottle out of his sabretache.
     The door opened and banged closed again. Dole and Coye
    came into the office with a drift of sand despite the near air-
    lock.
     "It's all outgoing stuff, sir," the bosun said, echoing Jeude
    of a moment before. "There's not a chip in the settlement."
     He noticed the office console and pointed his breechloader
    at it. "Besides whatever's in that unit, I guess."
     Ricimer looked at his men. Greg winced mentally to see his
    friend's haggard face. While the rest of them simply tried not
    to scream during the slow suffocation of the Umber's approach,
    Piet brought the jerry-built vessel down softly by the standards
    of a manual landing on a proper ship.
     "We've gotten here too late to find the chips I'd hoped,"
    he said quietly. "Over the past week, the stockpile was tak-
    en across the Mirror in anticipation of the Earth Convoy's
    arrival."
     He licked his lips, chapped by sand blown on the dry wind.
    "The chips haven't vanished. With the celebration going on,
    officials of Umber City and the convoy won't have had time
    to complete loading the ships. They may not even have started
    yet...
     Ricimer's voice grew louder, stronger. Gregg grinned coldly
    to see gray tension vanish from his friend's face and his eyes
    brighten again.
     "To get the chips, we would have to cross the Mirror again,"
    he said. "To return to Umber City. You all know the risks. You
    all know-"
     His voice would have filled a room of ten times the volume
    of this office.
     "-that I failed before, that many of our f-friends and loved
    ones were killed because of my miscalculation. The risks are
    even greater now, because the convoy and all its personnel will
    be in Umber City."
     "Hey, it's not that dangerous," Jeude protested. "The Feds
    won't be expecting us this direction, right?"
     Ricimer's head rotated like a lathe turret. "They didn't expect
    us before," he said harshly to Jeude. "That didn't prevent them
    from reacting effectively."
     He scanned his assembled men. "Guillermo tells me the labor
    force here will help us, run the trams the way they do for their
    masters. He's organizing that now. In exchange, we will take
    every slave off this planet. We can't return them to their home
    planets, but they'll be able to live free on Benison with K'Jax."
     "Gonna be tight . . ." Dole muttered. Catching himself, he
    added quickly, "Not that we're not used to it. No problem."
     Free with K'Jax, Gregg thought. He was willing to grant that
    Molts were "human", whatever that meant. He hadn't seen any-
    thing to suggest they were saints, though; or that K'Jax would
    be considered a particularly benevolent leader of any race.
     "I won't order you men to go to Umber City again with me,"
    Ricimer went on fiercely. "I won't think the less of anyone who
    wants to stay. But I'm going across, and with the help of God
    we will triumph!"
       
    Stampfer dropped the second fruit pit on the floor. "I haven't
    come this far for nothing!"
    
    Yeah! Sure! Count me in from the remainder of the crew.
    Gregg said nothing. He was smiling slightly, and his eyes glazed.
    
     Gregg shook himself to wakefulness. "If the Earth Convoy's
    in, then so is Administrator Carstensen," he said in a trembling
    gentle voice. "I'd like to meet him and discuss Biruta. For
    a short time, at least."
    
     Coye, who hadn't been around Stephen Gregg as long as
    some of the others swore softly and turned awav from the
    flashgunner's eyes.
   
    
    44
    
    Umber
    
    The tramcars were constructed of wire netting on light metal
    frames. Each car's weight and that of the Molt pushing it had
    to be subtracted from the potential payload.
     Gregg eyed a car dubiously. "A motor wouldn't weigh as
    much as a, a person," he said. "If you've got tracks through
    the Mirror, then they'll guide the car whether or not there's
    somebody behind it pushing."
     "Motors will not work in the Mirror," said the Molt leader.
    Her name was Ch'Kan.
     "Electric motors?" Ricimer asked.
     "Diesel, electric---even flywheels," Ch'Kan said. "None of
    them work in the Mirror."
     She clicked her mandibles to indicate some emotion or other.
    "We work in the Mirror. Until we die."
     The tracks ran from the warehouses to the lambent surface
    of the Mirror. The rails were solid and spiked deep into the sur-
    face of Umber for as far as the eye could follow them. Beyond
    the transition zone, the rails were laid with short gaps between
    ends. They weren't attached because there was no ground with-
    in the Mirror, merely a level which objects could not penetrate.
     The Molts said that sometimes cars tilted off the rails. The
    slave pushing the vehicle could usually find his way to one
    end of the tramway or the other by following the tracks.
     If he or she abandoned the load within the Mirror, the Feder-
    ation supervisors whipped the creature to death for sabotage.
     Ricimer clambered into a tramcar. It creaked under his
    weight.
     "I'd better go in the first one," Gregg said. He climbed into
    a car in a siding beside his friend's. The main line split to
    serve both warehouses, and there were a dozen lay-bys on
    each branch to allow cars to pass and be sorted.
     The Feds had left a dozen Molts on mirrorside for routine
    tasks. Most of the labor force had crossed with their masters
    to handle cargo for and from the Earth Convoy. Their heads
    rotated from one human officer to the other, waiting for clear
    directions. The Venerian crewmen watched in silence also.
     "I'll lead, Stephen," Ricimer said with a touch of iron in his
    voice. The sun had set. Pole-mounted lights at the tramhead
    threw vertical shadows down across his face.
     Gregg smiled and shook his head. "When you get a
    flashgun," he said, "and learn to use it the way I can use
    this one-"
     He nodded his weapon's muzzle in the air. He handled the
    flashgun as easily as another man might have waved a pistol.
     "Then you can lead. For now, we need as much firepower
    up front as we can get. And that's me, Piet-not so?"
     Ricimer shrugged tightly. "Go ahead, then," he said.
     The crewmen got into cars like those of their leaders.
    Stampfer's almost upset from a combination of his short legs
    and weight, but two Molts balanced the vehicle for him.
     The Molt leader threw a switch lever, then stepped around
    behind Gregg's car and began to push it forward. He heard
    the wheels squeaking, a loud pulse at the end of each full
    turn. Gregg concentrated on that so completely that he barely
    started to tremble by the moment his face gleamed at him and
    the terrible cold turned his soul inside out.
     Only the cold. Utterly the cold.
     The car wheels clacked at the gaps between rails. If Gregg
    could have counted the jolts, he would have known the length
    of the trip. The tracks were no longer straight, though. They
    curved, and the rails were seconds clicking on a circular dial
    that would take him back to zero before starting again.
     Only the cold.
     The change was sudden and much sooner than Gregg
    expected. Time and space within the Mirror were not constants.
    However the temporal or spatial distance between realside and
    mirrorside was measured, it was shorter on Umber than had
    been the case on Benison.
     The tramcar plunged Gregg into the sidereal universe. The
    shock was like a bath in magma. Floodlights overhead and the
    fireworks streaking the sky toward the center of Umber City
    merged with the patterns of frozen color which Gregg's optic
    nerves fired to his brain in the frozen emptiness.
    Gregg gasped and threw himself sideways. The tramcar
    tipped over, as he intended. He wasn't sure he had enough
    motor control to climb out of the car normally.
      He had to get clear of its confinement now.
     Gregg hadn't been within a klick of the realside tramhead
    during the raid on Umber City, and Piet's fainting recollections
    of shots and chaos were of limited help for visualizing the
    place. Gregg hit the stone pavement, pointing his flashgun and
    trying to look in all directions at once.
      The blockhouse was set three meters forward of the Mirror
    to provide space for the tracks to split and curve right and left
    of the building. Instead of individual switched sidings, the
    architect who laid out the tramway on realside used these two
    fifty-meter tails of trackway to store empties. At the moment,
    the lengths of track were nearly full of cars.
      Rather than a wall, the rear face of the blockhouse was
    protected by a grille that was now rolled up to the roofline.
    The building's interior was stacked with rough wooden cases
    whose volume ranged from a quarter cubic meter down to half
    that size. There was a narrow passageway to the open door in
    the front wall, but Gregg couldn't tell if the loopholes to either
    side were blocked.
      Cases of more irregular size were stacked to either side of
    the blockhouse. There were others between it and the bollards
    which formed a deadline separating the stored valuables and
    Umber City. Twenty or more Molts, singly or in pairs, poised
    to lift containers.
    The diesel trucks that would normally have transported car-
    go to the landing field were burnt skeletons in front of the
    bollards. They'd been dragged out of the immediate way but
    not removed from where the defenders' own fire had destroyed
    them during the previous raid.
      A human cradling a double-barreled shotgun oversaw the
    gang of Molt porters. Another human stood beside the back
    corner of the blockhouse, watching aliens work. A radio hung
    from the second man's belt. His weapon, a brightly decorated
    rifle, leaned against the wall beside him.
      The shock of hitting the ground broke Gregg's mind free
    of the frozen constraints that bound it until that moment. The
    clatter as his tram toppled drew the eyes of Molts and human
    officials together. One of Gregg's trouser legs was caught in
    the car's netting.
     "Don't move!" he shouted. The short trip through the Mirror
    hadn't numbed him, but it sharpened his voice to an edge of
    hysteria more disquieting than the fat muzzle of his laser.
     The man by the blockhouse stiffened as though he'd been
    given a jolt of electricity. His hip bumped the ornate rifle and
    knocked it down. As it rattled away from him, he threw both
    hands in front of his face and screamed, "Lord Jesus Christ!"
    
     Ch'Kan called to her fellows in a sequence of liquid trills.
    A second car squealed out of the transition behind Gregg, but
    his attention had focused down on the man with the shotgun
    
    Everything beyond the Fed's face and torso vanished behind
    a mental curtain as gray as a sight ring.
    
     The fellow's uniform was white with blue epaulets instead
    of the yellow of Federation ground personnel. He was big
    almost as tall as Gregg and much bulkier. The short-barreled
    weapon in his hands looked like a child's toy. His teeth were
    bared in a snarl in the midst of his neatly-cropDed beard and
        moustache, and he spun to bring the shotgun to bear
    
     To Gregg's adrenaline-speeded senses, the Fed was turning
    in slow motion. Gregg felt his trigger reach its release point
    beneath the pad of his index finger.
     The target, bathed in vivid coherent light, flipped optically
    into the photographic negative of a human being. The Fed's
    shout turned into an elephantine grunt as all the air in his
    lungs exploded out his, open mouth. The body toppled. The
    head and shoulders lay at an angle kinked from that of the
    legs and lower chest. A smoldering tatter of cloth and flesh.
    
     Gregg kicked hard. His trouser leg tore. He got to his feet,
    keeping the flashgun pointed at the remaining Federation offi-
    cial while the fingers of his right hand switched the discharged
    battery.
     " . . . now and at the hour of our death," the Fed mumbled.
    His eyes were open, but he'd only half lowered his hands. 
        Ricimer carefully got out of the cart that had brought him
    across the Mirror. He glanced at the rifle in his hands as though
    he'd never seen anything like it before, then pointed an index
    finger at the body.
    
     "Get that into the building and out of sight," he said in a
    firm, clear voice.
     Two of the Molts immediately obeyed. The rest of the labor
    party moved slightly away from the piled crates, distancing
    themselves from their duties for the Federation. A car with Dole
    aboard shimmered through the transition layer. The bosun's
    face was set, and his eyes stared vacantly.
     Gregg stepped over to the Fed official. The man was in
    his early twenties. He had fine features and blond hair that
    was already starting to thin. Gregg gripped the Fed's shoulder
    with his left hand, to immobilize the fellow and to focus his
    horror-struck attention.
     Ch'Kan pointed to Ricimer. "Here is the man who will take
    us away from this place," she said. Now that the immediate cri-
    sis was past, she had switched to Trade English. "We will load
    the cargo on carts and take it back to mirrorside for him."
     A gush of fireworks streaked above the city. The vessels of
    the Earth Convoy were hidden by darkness and the buildings,
    but some of them played searchlights with colored filters into
    the air.
     A party of Molts trudged up the central street toward the
    bollards. In the uncertain illumination, Gregg couldn't spot the
    armed guard who he was sure accompanied the group to prevent
    pilferage and malingering. He squinted, holding the flashgun
    down at his side where its unexpected outline wouldn't cause
    alarm.
     "Whether or not you help us," Piet Ricimer said to the Molts
    who stared at him, "I'll take any of you who want to go to
    Benison and release you with your own free fellows. If you do
    help me and my men, though, you bring closer the day that we
    can smash the Federation's grip on the stars and free all your
    fellows."
     Not so very long ago, Gregg thought, you and I were in the
    business of supplying crews just like this one. But times change,
    and men change ... and maybe occasionally they change for
    the better.
     Coye came out of the Mirror. Stampfer's cart followed on
    the heels of the Molt pushing Coye. Dole's expression was
    one of blinking awareness, but he still stood in the car while
    a Molt looked on from behind.
     "Dole!" Gregg called. "Come watch this guy. Tie him or
    something."
      "You're going to be fine," he added to the prisoner. "Just
    don't play any games. Because I'll smash your skull all over
    the stones if you do."
     Gregg didn't speak loudly. He knew he was very close to
    the edge. If he'd shouted the threat, it might have triggered his
    arm to move, swinging the laser's heavy butt. And anyway, he
    didn't need to shout to be believable.
     Dole and the Molt who'd pushed him took the white-faced
    prisoner and began to secure him with pieces of rope from the
    coil they'd brought. Under Guillermo's direction, Molts were
    loading the empty tramcars. They concentrated on the smaller
    cases stenciled as new-run chips.
     Ricimer patted Gregg on the back as he strode past. "I'm
    going to see what else is in here," he explained. "Keep a
    watch on that gang coming, though they don't seem in much
    of a hurry."
     Gregg peered around the back corner of the blockhouse.
    "Coye," he called. "Stampfer. Keep down, will you? Behind
    the stacks of cases or inside the building."
     It didn't much matter whether Feds saw Guillermo and the
    Molts reloading the cars-no one was likely to pay enough
    attention to note that the chips were going in the wrong direc-
    tion. Too many armed humans around the blockhouse could
    be more of a problem.
     The ground on which the blockhouse stood was slightly
    higher than that of Umber City and the spaceport beyond
    though the slope would have been imperceptible on a surface
    less flat than the pres ' ent one. Because the city was so full of
    transients, illuminated windows marked the roads though the
    was no streetlighting as such.
     The floodlit Commandatura stood out in white glory. The
    park and the street between it and the building were hidden
    behind intervening structures. Tricolored bunting and the Fed-
    eration's maple leaf emblem hung between the windows of the
    second floor.
     Besides the fireworks at the park, occasional shots whacked
    the air. That could mean either "happy shooting" toward the
    starless sky or the quarrels of drunken sailors getting out of
    hand. Whichever, it was useful cover if there was trouble with
    the party nearing the blockhouse.
     The guard walked beside her charges, near the front but
    generally hidden by the line of alien bodies. Glimpses showed
    Gregg that she had reddish hair, no cap, and carried a weapon
    slung muzzle-down over her right shoulder.
     "Sir," Dole said tensely. "This guy's-"
     "Not now," Gregg whispered. Only the right side of his face
    projected beyond the comer of the blockhouse, His flashgun,
    muzzle-up, was withdrawn to his side so that the oncoming
    party wouldn't see it.
     "There's a radio back there," Ricimer said as he came from
    the front of the building, "but the loopholes are both covered
    by box---"
     He continued to speak for a moment. Gregg's mind turned
    the words into background buzz. It was no more than the hiss
    of the breeze and the sting of sand on his neck.
     The oncoming Molts reached the line of bollards. Guillermo
    trilled to them in their own language. The remainder of the co-
    opted aliens continued to load cars. Now that all the Venerians
    had crossed on the single track, the Molts could begin taking
    chips over to mirrorside.
     "Blauer?" the Fed guard called. Besides the slung carbine,
    she carried a quirt in her right hand. She slapped the shaft
    against her left palm. "Hey! Blauer!"
     The Molts nearest to her flattened to the pavement. Gregg
    stepped around the comer and leveled his flashgun. "Don't,"
    he said in a high, distant voice.
     The woman blinked, held by the laser's sight line like a
    beetle pinned to a board. She dropped the quirt, then shrugged
    carefully to let the carbine sling slide off her shoulder without
    her hands coming anywhere near the weapon.
     "Now come forward," Gregg ordered quietly, He nodded to
    Stampfer, poising behind a loaded tramcar. Stampfer ran out
    to pick up the carbine while Lightbody and Coye secured the
    new prisoner.
     She didn't speak, but her eyes glared hatred at everything
    her gaze touched.
     "Jesus!" Gregg said, letting his breath out for the first time
    in too long. The air stank of cooked filth, the effluvium of the
    torso shot into the previous guard. His hands were shaking and
    he almost gagged.
     Molts were widening the narrow aisle into the blockhouse.
    Piet put a comforting hand on Gregg's arm. "I want to clear the
    loopholes inside," he said. "We may need them before we*re
    done."
     "Right," Gregg said. He looked down at the receiver of his
    flashgun. The present locked into focus again.
     "Right," he repeated. "I can't believe they blocked those wall
    guns off. You'd think the Feds would've learned a lesson from
    our first raid, wouldn't you?"
     "They learned they didn't have to be afraid of raiders,"
    Ricimer said with a slight grin. "Not every lesson is the right
    lesson."
     "There's more coming, sir," Stampfer called from the shelter
    to which he'd returned. "Molts, anyhow."
     "We'll handle them the same way," Ricimer replied. "Maybe
    we won't have any real problems with this."
     "Captain!" Jeude called from inside the blockhouse.
    "There's somebody on the radio, wondering where his
    cargo is."
     "I'll handle it," Ricimer said, brushing past a Molt coming
    out of the building with a case of chips.
     "Look at this, Mr. Gregg," Dole murmured, holding up their
    first captive's rifle. "Don't it look like it's ..." 
     "It sure does . . ." Gregg agreed. He handed his flashgun
    to Dole and took the richly-carved pump gun. The chance
    of there being another rifle so much like Captain Schremp's
    wasn't high enough to consider.
     The blond captive lay on his side, with his ankles and wrists
    tied together behind his back. Gregg knelt beside him, waggled
    the ornate weapon in his face, and then touched the muzzle to
    the prisoner's knee.
     "Tell me exactly how you got this rifle," he said. His finger
    took up the slack on the trigger. He hadn't checked to be sure
    there was a round in the chamber, but they'd learn that quickly
    enough when the hammer fell.
     "I bought it!" the Fed screamed. "From the flagship's purser!
    I swear to God I bought it!"
     Gregg eased off the trigger very slightly. He tapped again
    with the muzzle. "All right," he said. "Where did the purser
    get it?"
     "Oh, God, I just wanted a rifle," the blond man moaned.
    He squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn't escape the caress
    of the weapon. It would blow his leg off at this range. "I don't
    know, I just asked around when the convoy landed. They all
    do a little business on the side, you know how it is, and I had
    a few chips saved back. Oh God oh God."

    "Blauer, you make me want to puke," sneered the female
    prisoner unexpectedly. She turned her head from her fellow
    to Gregg. "You want to know where it came from? From a
    pirate like you!"
      "Go on," Gregg said. He raised the repeater's muzzle and
    handed the weapon back to Dole. Threatening the woman
    would be counterproductive; and anyway, she had balls.
    "We caught them on Rondelet," she said. "They were attack-
    ing a mansion when we came out of transit. We smashed their
    ship from orbit and they all surrendered. Were they friends of
    yours?"
       Piet joined the tableau. He didn't interrupt.
    "Not really," Gregg said. By habit, he checked the flashgun.
    Dole returned to him. "What happened then?"
      "Then we hanged them all," the woman said. "After we'd
    convinced them to talk. Too bad they weren't friends!"
       Gregg stood up. "Well," he said mildly to Ricimer. "We
    know what Schremp did after he left us. I can't say I'm sorry
    he's gone."
      Ricimer nodded. "We can get to one of the wall guns
    now," he said. "It's a one-kilogram. There's only a few shells
    for it."
      Molts pushed laden tramcars into the Miffor one after the
    other. They moved at a measured, almost mechanical pace, a
    skill learned to prevent them from running up on each other's
    heels in the hellish void beyond the transition layer.
      Ricimer stepped past Gregg to peer at the labor party trudg-
    ing up from Umber City. "They'll be here in a few minutes,"
    he said.
      Gregg smiled tightly. He indicated the female prisoner with
    the toe of his boot, "Gag that one," he said to Dole. "Or she'll
    try to warn the next batch. And I don't want to kill her."
      Piet Ricimer squeezed his friend's shoulder again.
   
    45
    
    Umber

    The Umber tramway had thirty-four cars. There'd been thirty-
    five when the Venerians arrived, but Gregg had bent the trucks
    of the one that carried him when he kicked his way free. He
    didn't remember anything so violent occurring, but his right
    leg ached as though a piano'd fallen on it.
     The Molts were starting a second round trip to mirrorside.
    Because there was only a single trackway, none of the cars
    could return until all had gone across. The blockhouse was
    nearly emptied; five bound and gagged Federation guards lay
    out of sight within it.
     Lightbody had draped a tarpaulin over the corpse. Gregg
    hadn't killed anybody since that one. The sudden dissolution
    of the man's chest had merged with the soul-freezing trip
    through the Mirror in a shadowland that Gregg would revisit
    in his nightmares.
     The front of the blockhouse was pierced by four loopholes,
    though there were only two wall guns. Ricimer watched Umber
    City from one of the clear openings while he responded to
    radio traffic with a throat mike and plug earphone.
     Gregg remained at the right rear comer of the structure.
    Ricimer looked back over his shoulder at his friend with a
    wan smile and tapped the earphone. "The watch officer on
    the Triple Tiara's getting pretty insistent about where his
    cargo is," he said. "He doesn't get to join the party until
    it's loaded."
     Gregg tried to grin. The result was more of a tic, and
    his eyes returned to the street beyond immediately. "That's
    his problem." 
     "Yeah. I told him I had the same problem, but once the
    porters left here, there wasn't a thing I could do about how
    fast they marched."
     The fireworks had ended. Snatches of music drifted up
    when the breeze was right. The captured guards said there
    was always a banquet when the convoy arrived: a sit-down
    meal in the Commandatura for the brass, and an open-air
    orgy in the park for common sailors and the journeymen of
    the community's service industries.
     Both sites had suffered during the previous raid. If anything,
    that would increase the sense of celebratory relief.
     Gregg heard the ringing sound of a distant engine. A green,
    then a red and a green light wobbled into the sky beyond the
    rooftops.
     "They're coming!" Gregg called. "One of the ships just
    launched an autogyro."
     Four of the Venerian enlisted men were with Piet inside
    the blockhouse, crewing the I-kaygees. Jeude squatted behind
    one of the shrinking stacks of boxes. Like Gregg, he wore a
    white jumper stripped from a prisoner. He kept out of sight
    because the guards with the two remaining labor gangs might
    nonetheless realize that he wasn't one of their number.
     An autogyro wasn't a threat. One of the watch officers was
    sending a scout to track down the missing cargo. No problem.
     Ricimer murmured to the gun crews, then handed the com-
    munications set to Dole. He strode back to Gregg and eyed
    the situation himself.
     "Jeude," Gregg said. "Stand up--don't look like you're
    hiding. If he lands, we'll pick him up just like the guards.
    No shooting."
     He looked at Piet. "Right?"
     "Right. . ." Ricimer said with an appraising frown. "That
    would be the best result we can hope for."
     The appearance of things at the tramhead shouldn't arouse
    much concern. The raiders had been sending excess Molt
    laborers back to mirrorside to load the ships under Guillenno's
    direction. Ch'Kan acted as straw boss here. If shooting started,
    Guillermo could be better spared than any of the Venerians-
    though Gregg wouldn't have minded the presence of K'Jax
    and a few of his warriors.
     Piet looked over the remaining cargo and pursed his lips.
    "We shouldn't get greedy and stay too long," he said.
       "We'll be all right for a while yet," Gregg said.
     Gregg's mouth spoke for him. His mind was in a discon-
    nected state between the future and past, unable to touch the
    present.
     His eyes tracked the path of the autogyro, visible only as
    running lights angling toward the blockhouse at fifty meters
    altitude. Its engine and the hiss of its slotted rotor were occa-
    sionally audible. There was no place to fly on Umber, but the
    ships of the Earth Convoy were equipped for worlds like Ron-
    delet and Biruta, where solid ground was scattered in patches
    of a few hectares each.
     In Gregg's mind, humans and Molts exploded in the sight
    picture of his flashgun. Every one a unique individual up
    the instant of the bolt: the snarling guard here, the woman
    beneath the fort trying to shoot him; a dozen, a score, perhaps
    a hundred others.
     All of them identical carrion after Stephen Gregg's light-
    swift touch.
     More to come when the present impinged again. Lord God
    of hosts, deliver me.
     Ricimer touched the back of his friend's hand. "Why don't
    you go into the blockhouse, Stephen?" he suggested. "We
    shouldn't have more than two humans visible."
     "I'll handle it," Gregg said. He watched as the autogyro
    turned parallel to the Miffor and approached the tramhead
    from the west. "I'm dressed for it."
     He plucked at the commandeered tunic with his free hand.
    He held the flashgun close to the ceiling of the blockhouse so
    that it couldn't be seen from above.
     Ricimer nodded and moved back.
     The Federation aircraft zoomed overhead, its engine sing-
    ing. The sweet, stomach-turning odor of diesel exhaust wafted
    down.
     The Molts hefted cases, pretending they were about to carry
    them to the spaceport. The last of the tramcars had disappeared
    into the Mirror some minutes before, so the crew had no real
    work. A few of them looked up.
     Jeude waved. Gregg raised his free hand, ostensibly to shade
    his eyes from the floodlights but actually to hide his face.
    Two faces peered down from the autogyro's in-line cock-
    pits.
     "Fooled them that time, Mr. Gregg!" Jeude called.

    "So far," Gregg said to the men within the blockhouse, "so
    good."
     His expression changed. "They're coming back," he added.
    "I think they're going to land."
     The note of the diesel changed as the pilot coarsened the
    prop pitch. He was bringing the autogyro down, very low and
    slow, between the rear of the blockhouse and the Mirror.
    They couldn't land there because of the tracks.
       The autogyro swept by with its fixed landing gear barely
    skimming the pavement. The fuselage was robin's-egg blue,
    and the rotor turning slowly on its mast was painted yellow
    with red maple leaves near the tips. Both the pilot and the
    observer wore goggles, but there was no mistaking the shock
    on their faces when they saw the number of humans, standing
    and lying bound, within the blockhouse.
    
     The diesel belched a ring of black smoke as the pilot brought
    it to full power. He banked hard, swinging the nose toward the
    city. The observer craned his head back over the autogyro's
    tail as he held a microphone to his lips.
    
     "We're fucked!" Dole shouted from the blockhouse radio.
    "They've spotted-"
     The fuselage faded to gray, but reflection from the pavement
    still lighted the rotor blades a rich yellow-orange. The flashgun
    was tight against Gregg's shoulder. Though the autogyro was
    turning away from him, it wasn't quite a zero-deflection shot
    yet. He swung through the tail surfaces and continued the
    graceful motion even after his trigger finger stroked with the
    sights centered between the forward cockpit and the glittering
    dial of the prop.
     All he'd wanted to do was to bring the aircraft down, to
    punch his laser through the thin plastic hull and smash the
    engine block. The fuel tank was directly behind the diesel. It
    ruptured, hurling a ball of blazing kerosene over hundreds of
    square meters of the nearest buildings.
     The pilot and observer were the two largest pieces of debris
    from the explosion. They were burning as they fell, but impact
    with the ground would have been instantly fatal even if they'd
    survived the blast.
     "Now we'd better leave," Gregg said as he reloaded.
     "Not yet!" Ricimer said crisply.
     He clicked off the interior light, then pointed to the blond
    prisoner wearing ground-personnel flashes. "You! How do we
    turn out these area lights?" Though Ricimer was inside the
    blockhouse, the toss of his head adequately indicated the four
    pole-mounted floodlights bathing the site.
     "There's no switch!" the Fed bleated. "It's got a sensor, it
    goes on and off with sunlight!"
     The Commandatura darkened suddenly as a Federation offi-
    cial had the same idea and executed it with dispatch.
     Jeude stood up. He still carried the repeating carbine he'd
    liberated from a Venerian officer on Punta Verde. He shot out
    the first bulb, worked the bolt, and missed the second. The
    reflector whanged as the bullet pierced its rim.
     Jeude finished the job with the remaining three cartridges
    in his magazine. The blockhouse and its surroundings weren't
    in the dark, but now the illumination came from the burning
    buildings fifty meters beyond the bollards.
     "Why don't we go back now, Piet?" Gregg asked in much
    the voice that he'd have offered a cup of coffee. He had four
    charged batteries remaining, plus the one in the laser. His
    fingertip ticked over the corner of each in the satchel. He
    didn't touch the battery contacts, because the sweat on his
    skin would minusculy corrode them.
     The siren on the Commandatura began to sound.
     "Because if we go back now. . ." Ricimer said. His voice
    seemed calm rather than controlled, and he spoke no louder
    than he needed to for Jeude and the wall gun crews all to hear
    him. ". . . we meet the empty cars returning from mirrorside.
    We have to wait until they've all come through."
     "Christ's blood!" Dole said as he realized how long that
    would take.
     Ricimer turned on the bosun like an avenging angel. "Mr.
    Dole!" he said. "I suggest that you remember that the next
    words we speak may be those we have on our lips when we
    go to meet our God. Do you understand?"
     Dole swallowed and fell to his knees. He pressed his palms
    together, but his face was still lifted toward his captain with
    a look of supplication.
     Ricimer shook himself and bent to lift Dole to his feet.
    "He'll understand," Ricimer muttered. "As He'll understand
    the fear that causes me to lose my temper."
     A bullet, fired from somewhere within the town, slapped
    the front of the blockhouse. Gregg didn't hear the shot, and
    he couldn't spot the muzzle flash through the glare of burning
    buildings either. The nearest portion of the street was lighted
    by the houses and scattered pools of kerosene, but beyond that
    the pavement was curtained in darkness.
     "Madam Ch'Kan," Ricimer called to the Mott leader. "Get
    your people to cover. Tbere's room for most of you in the
    blockhouse without affecting our ability to fight. Jeude-if
    you stay there to the side, you won't be as well covered when
    it comes time to run for the tramline."
     Jeude shook his head. "Those loopholes, they're nothing but
    bull's-eyes. I'll take my chances here, thank'ee kindly."
     He patted the waist-high breastwork of boxed microchips
    which hadn't been carried back to mirrorside yet.
     The Molt leader chittered to her fellows. Four of them lay
    behind crates the way Jeude had. The rest-there were about
    twenty on this side of the Miffor-shuffled quickly into the
    blockhouse and knelt, beneath the level of the loopholes.
     Another bullet sang past nearby. The sound ended abruptly
    as the projectile vanished into the Mirror. At least they didn't
    have to worry about ricochets from behind.
     Lightbody flinched instinctively. Stampfer muttered a curse,
    and the frozen stillness of the other crewmen showed that they
    too were affected by the unseen snipers.
     All of the Federation guards had carried firearms. Piet
    Ricimer chose a captured weapon, a long-barreled breech-
    loader, and the owner's cross-belts with about fifty tapered
    cartridges in the loops. He carried the gear over to Jeude,
    deliberately sauntering. Gregg chuckled.
     Crewmen watched Ricimer through the loopholes in the side
    of the blockhouse. He set the rifle beside Jeude and said loudly,
    "Here. I don't like to trust repeaters not to jam."
     Fed soldiers volleyed. There were six or eight of them, sited
    on a three-story rooftop some two hundred meters away. This
    time a breeze parted the curtain of flame enough for Gregg
    to see the nervous yellow winking of muzzle flashes. The
    structure beneath them was dark, but Gregg knew where it
    must be.
     "Gunners!" he shouted as he locked down his visor. "Here's
    your aiming point!"
     The flashgun jolted in his hands. Smoke may have scattered
    the coherent light somewhat, but not to a great enough degree
    to prevent the bolt's impact from shattering the concrete roof
    coping.
       White-hot lime in the cement hadn't faded below yellow
    when Jeude fired toward it with his carbine. Stampfer, pro-
    fessionally quick and angry with himself for feeling windy a
    moment before, was almost as fast. The 1-kg shell burst with
    a bright flash that hurled a Fed soldier backward.
     The whop! of the bursting charge echoed the muzzle blast
    of the short-barreled wall gun. Dole, firing the other weapon
    of the pair a moment later, put his round a meter or two low.
    The aiming error was a useful one, because the shell went off
    within the building and set the contents of a room on fire.
     Gregg stepped back into the blockhouse as he changed bat-
    teries in his laser. The breechblocks of the wall guns clanged
    as the gunners cammed them open, then closed again after the
    loaders dropped in fresh rounds. Propellant residues from the
    shell casings smelled like hot wax.
     An empty cart emerged from the transition layer. The Molt
    pushing it took three steps forward, numbed by the Mirror,
    before he noticed the battle going on around him. He gaped.
     Ch'Kan shouted to the laborer. He broke into a multijointed
    trot, pushing the car to the end of the branch. There it was
    out of the way of later comers like the one already entering
    realside.
     A bullet struck one of the metal bollards and howled horribly
    away. None of the Venerians seemed to notice. The wall guns
    banged.
     Piet and Jeude aimed out over their breastwork. The crewman
    fired as fast as he could work his carbine's bolt, then picked
    up the powerful single-shot. Ricimer watched as much as he
    aimed, but after a moment he fired. Gregg saw shards of glass
    fly into the street from a window eighty meters away.
     Gregg raised his visor to scan for a worthy target. He had
    only four charges left, and the flashgun was too valuable a
    weapon to empty with indiscriminate firing. He thought of
    taking one of the captured rifles, but instinct told him not to
    put the laser down.
     Movement beyond the smoke.
     Something was coming around the corner where the street
    leading to the tramhead kinked and hid whatever preparations
    went on beyond it. The flashgun came up. Gregg closed his
    eyes over the sight picture and fired.
     Actinics from the bolt pulsed orange through the skin of
    Gregg's eyelids. The blockhouse shuddered behind a puff of
    dust and smoke. The Feds had brought up a landing array
    from one of the ships, three 4-cm barrels on a single wheeled
    carriage. The shells were comparable to those thrown by the
    wall guns in the blockhouse.
     Only one tube fired before Gregg's laser stabbed into the
    open magazine attached to the trail of the array's carriage.
     The blast was red and went on for a considerable while,
    like a man coughing to clear phlegm. Some shells burst like
    grenades against walls and rooftops where the initial explosion
    hurled them. The bodies of the crew, Molts and humans both,
    lay around the ruined weapon. Burning scraps of clothes and
    shell spacer lighted them.
     The Fed round hit the door in the center of the blockhouse
    facade and sprang it. The hinges and the staple of the closure
    bar held, but acrid smoke from the shellburst oozed around
    the edges of the armored panel. The inner face of the door
    bulged, and the center of the dent glowed faintly.


    46
    
    Umber
    
    The wall guns were silent. Dole swung his out of the way to
    fire through the loophole with a rifle while Coye used the othe
    opening to the left of the door. Stampfer and Lightbody took
    turns at the loophole on their side, but the gunner had left his
    1-kg in position. He'd saved a shell back for special need
    where Dole had fired off the entire stock of ammunition.
     Tramcars continued to reappear from the Mirror. Ch'Ka
    called directions to each blinking laborer who followed a
    car.
     Occasionally the newcomer stumbled away when his fac-
    ulties warmed enough to realize what was going on aroun
    him. One Molt even plunged back into the Mirror in
    blind panic that must have ended only when he starved
    in the interdimensional maze.. Ch'Kan herself pushed aban-
    doned cars out of the way or simply toppled them o
    the rails.
     Molts in the blockhouse reloaded rifles for the Venerians
    to fire through the loopholes. Gregg saw two of the aliens
    solemn as judges, using their delicate "fingers" to work loose
    a cartridge case that had ruptured instead of extracting from
    the hot breech of a repeater.
     Gregg slung his flashgun. Its barrel was shimmering. If he'
    laid the weapon down on the cold stone, the ceramic might
    have shattered. The Molts had left Schremp's rifle beside
    Gregg by chance or intent. He took it and let his cold killer's
    soul search for movement.
     A bullet sparked through the wire sides of a cart being
    pushed toward the line of those stored on Gregg's side of the
    blockhouse. A second bullet shattered the head of the Molt
    pushing the cart. Her body continued to pace forward.
     Gregg spotted the shooter at a ground-floor window of a
    nearby building whose roof was ablaze. He aimed through the
    post-and-ring sight, squeezed into the third muzzle flash, and
    felt the concrete explode beside his left ear as the Fed soldier
    fired at the glint of Schremp's silvered receiver.
     Grit and bullet fragments slapped Gregg's head sideways.
    His helmet twisted and flew off. He knelt and patted his face
    with his left hand. His cheek felt cold and his hand came away
    sticky.
     "This is the last!" Ch'Kan called in the high, carrying treble
    to which Molt voices rose at high amplitudes.
     Piet Ricimer turned from where he crouched behind the
    row of crates. The breech of his rifle was open and streaming
    gray powder gases. "Ch'Kan!" he ordered. "Start your people
    through. Fast! We're safe when we're into the Mirror!"
     "They're coming!" Stampfer warned,
     Gregg looked toward the city. He didn't have binocular
    vision, but he only needed one eye for the sights. Shadows
    approached through the smoke, moving with the doll-like jerki-
    ness of men in hard suits.
     Stampfer's wall gun banged. A figure fell back in a red flash.
    Gregg pumped his rifle's action, aimed low, and fired. Maybe
    the Feds were wearing only head and torso armor rather than
    complete suits. Flexible joints might not stop a bullet at this
    range, and a hammerblow on a knee could drop a man even
    if the projectile didn't penetrate.
     The target fell. The man or woman fell, but that didn't mat-
    ter, wouldn't matter until the dreams came. Gregg pumped the
    slide again, very smooth, and dropped another Fed. Schremp
    had bought a first-rate weapon, if only he hadn't turned it into
    a sighting point for every hostile in the world.
     The sniper who'd almost nailed Gregg from the window
    didn't fire again. Close only counts in horseshoes ...
     Half the attackers were down; the others crowded close to
    the buildings instead of advancing. The Molts who'd brought
    the carts through had mostly returned to the Mirror, though
    nearly a dozen alien bodies lay or thrashed on the pavement.
    There hadn't been much cover for them, and they'd been sil-
    houetted against the Mirror for Feds who wanted soft targets.
    Molts in the blockhouse poised to leave under Ch'Kan's fluting
     direction.
     Gregg shot at a Fed and spun him, though for a moment th
    target didn't seem willing to go down. The pump gun shucked
    out the empty case, but there wasn't quite enough resistanc
    as the breech slapped home again. It hadn't picked up a fresh
    round because the tubular magazine was empty. Gregg reached
    down for the shoulder belt that came with the rifle, slung with
    pockets each holding five rounds.
     Rainbow light erupted from the spaceport. It silhouetted
    buildings for an instant before the vessel rose too high. Gregg
    got a good view of the craft -while it was illuminated by
    the reflection of its own exhaust from the ground. It was a
    ship's boat, a cutter; but a large one, nearly the size of the
    Peaches.
    
       Gregg dropped the rifle and ammo belt to unsling his
    flashgun. The cutter's hull would be proof against the amount
    of energy the laser delivered, but if the vessel tried to overfly
    the blockhouse and fry the raiders with its exhaust-well, Gregg
    had smashed thruster nozzles under more difficult conditions.
     Molts streamed from the shelter of the blockhouse at a
    measured trot. A part of Gregg's mind wondered about send-
    ing aliens to safety while humans remained at risk; but the
    Venerians were needed as a rear guard until the last instant . . .
    and anyway, Piet didn't think in terms of men and not-men.
    
    Neither did Gregg at the moment. His universe was a place
    in which targets would appear if only he waited.
    
     The cutter slanted slowly upward to fifty meters, turning on
    its vertical axis. The starboard side swung parallel to the front
    of the blockhouse a kilometer away. At this distance, Gregg
    didn't have an angle to hit a thruster no matter how steady his
    aim was.
     A few Feds still fired from the town. Venerians shot back,
    but the crewmen were tensed to follow the Molts in a moment
    or two. Quick, scuttling movement beyond the screening smoke
    indicated that the Feds planned something, but there were no
    good targets just now.
    
    "By God, we're going to make-" Jeude cried in a tone of
    burgeoning triumph.
    
     Because the cutter was illuminated from below, Gregg didn't
    guess the existence of the vessel's large side-opening hatch
    until the Fed gunner opened fire with the laser mounted in
    the hold. It was a powerful weapon, pumped by the cutter's
    fusion drive. The tube tripped six or eight times a second -to
    keep from overloading individual components
      The gunner's aim was good for line. Though he started low,
    the cutter was rolling on its horizontal axis and walked the
    burst on. A bollard blazed like a magnesium flare. Pavement
    between there and the blockhouse shattered into shrapnel of
    fist size and smaller, flving in all directions. It was no danger
    to Gregg at the rear corner of the structure.
    
     The laser hit the front of the blockhouse and blew off meters
    of the concrete facing. The grid of reinforcing wires acted as
    a cleavage line, saving the inner ten centimeters of thickness,
    but a pulse of coherent light streamed through a loophole
    unhindered.
     Coye blew apart in a flash of painful density. Dole, a meter
    away, screamed from the burst of live steam that had been his
    loader an instant before. Gregg felt something splash his left
    ankle. He didn't pay attention to what it was.
    It didn't matter. He had a target.

     Gregg aimed as the Fed laser ripped across the last of
    the Molts entering the Mirror. Parts of three or more of the
    aliens-the destruction was too great to be sure of the num-
    ber-sprayed out in a white-hot dazzle.
    
     Shouting to encourage themselves, fifty or more Fed soldiers
    rose and charged the blockhouse. Piet Ricimer's rifle cracked
    alone to meet them.
    
     The target was a klick away; Stephen Gregg was using a
    handheld weapon. He had no doubt at all that he would hit.
    He and the flashgun and the cutter's hatch were beads on a
    wire that would be straight though it stretched to infinity. He
    squeezed.
     The hatch flared, becoming a rectangle of momentary white
    against the dark hull. Gregg's bolt had punched a bulkhead
    inside the cutter, converting an egg-sized dollop of metal to
    
    blazing gas. The shock hurled one of the weapon's crew
    forward, out of the hatch.
    
     The laser slewed left and down but continued to fire. Gouts
    of flame leaped each time a pulse stabbed into Umber City. The
    Fed infantry paused, looking back at what had been their hope.
     The laser's wild firing stopped after a few seconds. Reflected
    light glimmered as the gunner swiveled his tube back on
    target.
     Gregg swung his reloaded flashgun up to his shoulder. Beads
    on a wire. He squeezed the trigger.

     The second bolt's impact was a brief flash, followed
    ropes of coruscating blue fire that grew brighter as they a
    the metal away from all four sides of the hatch. Gregg had
    severed one of the armored conduits which powered the laser's
    pumping system. The generator's full output dumped into the
    cutter's hull through a dead short.
     "Run for it!" Ricimer cried. He stood and swept his rifle's
    barrel toward the tramline like a cavalryman gesturing with
    his saber. "Stay between the rails!"
     Stephen Gregg locked the lid of the butt compartment down
    over his last charged battery.
    
     Jeude ran hunched over, carrying the heavy rifle in his right
    hand and dragging his carbine by its sling in his left. The three
    Venerians surviving within the blockhouse ran for the tramline
    also. Coye's legs to the pelvis, baked to the consistency
    wood, remained standing behind them. Piet waited till his men
    had reached the mirror.
     The Federation cutter rolled over on its back and plunged
    out of sight. The flash and the shockwave three seconds later
    were much greater than a vessel so small could have caused
    by hitting the ground. The cutter must have dived into one of
    the starships, perhaps the one which had launched it.
    
     He was hard to see against the concrete, but some of the
    Fed soldiers had now reached the bollards. Several of them
    fired simultaneously. Something hot stabbed Gregg's abdomen.
    
     He squeezed. The bolt from the flashgun illuminated a
    figure who stood at the central window of the blacked-out
    Commandatura. The target existed only for the instant of the
    shot, high-intensity light converted to heat in the flesh of
    the man.
     Gregg turned to run. A bullet had carried away the heel of
    his right boot. He fell over. When he tried to get up, he fell
    again.
    
     Half a dozen Fed soldiers continued their assault even
    the cutter's crash broke the glass out of all the remaining
    windows in Umber City. They'd ducked as Gregg leveled his
    lethal flashgun, but they came on again when he fell.
     Gregg levered his torso off the ground. It was over. 
    
     "On my soul you won't have him!" Piet Ricimer screamed.
    He held the short-barreled shotgun a Fed guard had carried.
    It belched twice, bottle-shaped flares of powder gases burning
    ahead of the muzzle. A soldier staggered backward at either
    shot. The unexpected flashes and roars did as much to stop
    the attack as the actual damage did.
     Gregg felt arms around him. He knew they must be Piet's,
    but he couldn't see his friend for the pulsing orange light that
    swelled silently around him.
     The orange suddenly flipped to cyan. Then there was noth-
    ing.
     Nothing but the cold.

    47

    Above Benison
    
    "Lift the suit around me and latch it," Gregg said. "I'll be fine
    with it carried on mv shoulders. I just don't want to bend too much.
       Weightlessness in orbit above Benison made his guts shift
    into attitudes slightly different from those of the gravity well in
    which he'd been wounded. The result wasn't so much painful
    as terrifying. Part of Gregg's mind kept expecting ropes of
    intestine to suddenly spill out, twisting around his shocked friends.
    
    His left eye was undamaged. Blood from his cut brow had
    blinded it temporarily.
     "Stephen," Ricimer said, "you can't do any good in your
    present condition. You'll only get in the way. Besides, the
    mirrorside authorities don't have the strength to interfere with
    us and K'Jax' people together, if they so much as notice."
    
     "Lightbody," Gregg said. "Pick up my body armor and latch
    it around me." He glared at Ricimer.
     The Venerians hadn't bothered to formally name the ships
    they captured on Umber's mirrorside. Because you had to call
    them something, the other vessel was Dum and this one, Dee.
    Lightbody looked from Gregg to Ricimer and fingered his
    pocket Bible. The three of them were the only humans aboard.
     Ricimer sighed. "No, I'll take care of it," he said to the
    crewman. He reflexively crooked his leg around a stanchion
    to hold him as he lifted the torso of the hard suit "Is it just
    this?"
     "I'm sorry," Gregg said. He stretched his arms out to his
    side so that Ricimer could slide the right armhole over him.
    The movement was controlled by his fear of the consequences.
    "I-if I give in to it, I will die, I think. I don't want to push
    too hard, really. But I can't just. Lie back."
     "Okay, now lower them," Ricimer said. The backplate was
    solid, with hinges on the sides and the breastplate split along
    an overlapping seam in the middle. Ricimer closed the left
    half of the plate carefully over the bandaged wound.
     One of the Molts from Umber was a surgeon. It was typical
    of Federation behavior that she and other specialists had been
    sent to the labor crews when there was need to carry crates
    to the spaceport.
     Because the surgeon had survived the firefight, and because
    there was a reasonably-equipped clinic on Umber's mirrorside,
    Gregg had survived also.
     When Gregg awakened halfway through the voyage back
    to Benison, Lightbody offered him the bullet. He'd taken the
    battered slug because he was still too woozy from analgesics
    to refuse, but now he was looking forward to tossing it away
    discretely as soon as they were on a planet again.
     "Dum has arrived," Guillermo called from the control con-
    sole, where he watched the rudimentary navigational equip-
    ment. "Shall I radio her?"
     He was one of the half dozen Molts awake on the two
    vessels together. The rest were in suspended animation. Air
    wasn't a problem this time, but there were limited provisions
    available. Besides, with all the cargo, there was no space to
    move around as it was.
     "Yes, of course," Ricimer said. "Tell Dole that we'll set
    down first, but I'll wait till he's ready to follow immediately."
     "If there's no trouble with the locals, Piet," Gregg said
    quietly, "then it won't matter whether I'm holding a rifle or
    not. If there is trouble, then I'm still the best you've got."
     His lips smiled. "Even now."
     Ricimer latched the strap over Gregg's left shoulder. "You
    never explained why you waited to fire that last shot," he said,
    his eyes resolutely on his work. "After you brought the cutter
    down,"
     "It was an idea I had," Gregg said. A Molt who had been
    watching the proceedings without speaking handed him the
    helmet that replaced the one Gregg had lost beside the block-
    house. Coye hadn't worn his through the Mirror, and he had
    no need of one now.
    
     "I thought that Carstensen would be watching the. . . pro-
    ceedings," Gregg continued.
     "You thought?" Ricimer said sharply.
     "I felt he was," Gregg said. He was embarrassed to explain
    something he didn't understand himself. "Sometimes when,
    when there's . . ."
     His voice trailed off. Piet met his gaze from centimeters
    
     "Sometimes when I've got a gun in my hands," Gregg
    continued coldly, "I know things that I can't see. I saved
    one charge in the flashgun. And I was willing for whatever
    happened later if I'd sent that bastard to Hell to greet me."
     He licked his dry lips. "I'm not really thinking when I'm like
    that, Piet," he said. "And I don't care to remember it later."
    
    "Yes," said Ricimer. "Do vou want to wear the rest of..."
    
    Gregg shook his head. "This'll be fine," he said. "It's really-"
    
    "Mr. Dole reports they're ready to land," Guillermo called.
    "All right," Ricimer said. "I'll take the console for landing."
    
     He handed Gregg the breechloader and cross-belts Jeude
    had brought back through the Mirror because he was too dazed to
    do so.
    "The Lord has mercy for all who love Him, Stephen," he said.

    48
    
    Benison

    Piet shut off the thrusters. The Dum dropped the last meter and
    pogoed back on the shock absorbers, simply springs rather than
    oleo struts, of her landing outrigger.
     Gregg jounced in the hammock that was all the mirrorside
    builders had provided in the way of acceleration couches.
    Everything felt all right; though he didn't suppose there'd be
    nerves to tell him that the stitches holding his guts together had
    all let go. He got up, carefully but trying to hide his concern.
     "Sorry," Ricimer said as he undid his harness. "I was getting
    so irregular a backwash from the ground that I shut down
    sooner than I cared to do."
     "Any one you walk away from, sir," Lightbody said cheer-
    fully. He stood and stretched at the rudimentary attitude-control
    panel. He'd let the AI do the work, wisely and at Ricimer's
    direction. "Not as though we're going to need these again,
    anyhow."
     "That's not a way I like to think, Mr. Lightbody," Piet said
    tartly. He latched on his own body armor. The suits were too
    confining to wear safely while piloting.
     The two Molts from Umber went into the Dum's single hold
    to wake their fellows. Guillermo stepped to the personnel hatch
    in the cockpit bulkhead and undogged it.
     Ricimer glanced at the viewscreen. It was almost useless.
    If you knew what the terrain of Benison's mirrorside looked
    like, you could just make out the skeletons of multitrunked
    trees, burned bare by the exhaust.
     Gregg checked the chamber to make sure his rifle was
    loaded. It was a falling-block weapon. He would have pre-
    ferred a turn-bolt with more power to cam a bulged or corroded
    case home. Beggars can't be choosers.
     "I'm ready," he said aloud.
     Guillermo dragged the hatch inward hard. Hot air surged in;
    heat waves rippled from the baked soil beyond. K'Jax rose into
    sight twenty meters away, just beyond the burned area. Both
    of his bodyguards now carried firearms.
     "Any trouble here, K'Jax?" Ricimer called. The relief in
    his voice was as evident as that which Gregg felt at seeing
    the situation they had planned on.
     A glint in the upper atmosphere indicated Dole was bringing
    the Dee down right on their heels. The nearest Federation set-
    tlement was hundreds of klicks away, so the chance of being
    disturbed really hadn't been very high. It was only paranoia,
    Gregg supposed, that had made him so fearful ever since they
    reached orbit.
     "None here," said the Molt leader. "But across the Mirror,
    the humans came and attacked your ships. One was destroyed,
    and the other two fled."

    49
    
    Benison
    "You're all right now, Mr. Gregg," said the black-bearded
    Federation guard whose chest was a tangle of charred bone.
    The corpse gripped Gregg with icy hands. "You've passed
    through the Mirror, sir."
     Gregg shouted or screamed, he wasn't sure which. He swung.
    The butt of the rifle he was carrying struck a tree and spun the
    weapon out of his hands. The Molt who'd tried to stop Gregg,
    already five paces from the edge of the Mirror, ducked away
    from the rifle and Gregg's flailing hands.
     "Oh!" Gregg said. "Oh." He took a deep breath, closed
    his eyes, and said, "I'm all right now," before he opened
    them again.
     It was overcast on Benison's realside. Gregg had traveled
    enough by now that open skies bothered him less than they
    once had, but the tight gray clouds were a relief after another
    episode with the Mirror.
     The Molt he'd swung at was T'Leen, whom K'Jax had sent
    with Ricimer and Gregg as a guide. He picked up the rifle,
    examined it-a smear of russet bark on the stock, but no cracks
    or serious damage. He gave the weapon back to Gregg.
     "I'm sorry," Gregg said. "I don't handle the Mirror well."
    And I'm getting worse, like a man sensitized to an allergen.
     Piet sat on the stump of a tree burned off close to the
    ground by a plasma bolt, Guillermo stood beside him, ready
    to grab if his master toppled from what couldn't have been a
    comfortable seat.
     The Mirror took it out of a fellow. Even on Umber where the
    boundary was shallower, what must it have been like to carry a
    man the size of Stephen Gregg through in your arms?
       Gregg forced himself to walk toward Ricimer. He felt
    increasingly human with every consciously-directed step. The
    wound in his lower abdomen was a frozen lump, but that was
    better than the twist of fiery needles he'd been living with
    since he awakened during transit.
     Piet smiled and started to get up. His face went blank.
    Guillermo reached down, but Ricimer managed to lurch to
    his feet unaided. He smiled again, this time with a mixture
    of relief and triumph.
     "There's no sign that the Feds harmed either the Peaches
    or Dalriada," he said. "After all, we'd dismantled the Halys."
    
     A party of armed Molts appeared from the forest surround-
    ing the blasted area. T'Leen clicked reassuringly to them.
    K'Jax remained on mirrorside for the moment, greeting and
    working out power arrangements with the newcomers from
    Umber.
     A plasma bolt had struck the bow of the Halys. It came from
    a powerful weapon, but the depth of atmosphere between target
    and the bombarding vessel in orbit dispersed the effect over
    several square meters. An oxidized crust of thin metal plated
    the soil around the noint of impact. Metal icicles jagged where
    
    they'd cooled on lower portions of the hull.
    
     A dozen other bolts had vaporized chunks of forest in the
    immediate neighborhood. That didn't say a great deal for the
    Feds' fire direction, though Gregg realized there were severe
    problems in hitting anything with a packet of charged particles
    that had to pass through kilometers of atmosphere.
     "How did they find us, do you think?" he asked Ricimer.
     Piet clambered aboard the Halys. The hatch, open when the
    bolt hit had crumpled in on itself like foil held too close to a
    flame.
     He looked back. "Schremp, I suppose," he said. "Or one of
    his men. I said we were going to Benison to mislead them.
     Ricimer grinned. "Without lying, you see. Carstensen must
    have sent a warship from Rondelet to check out the report."
     His grin became bleak. "The next time," he said, "I'll lie."
     T'Leen returned to the humans with others of the clan in
    tow. "Fire came from the sky," he said. "Eight days ago, in
    that area."
    He pointed in the general direction where the Dalriada had been.
     "Were the ships hit?" Ricimer asked.
     "No, not then," the Molt said. T'Leen's voice lacked human
    inflections', but the vocabulary of Trade English was close to
    the surface of his mind, in contrast to the impression Gregg
    had of K'Jax.
     "The fire came again, nine times," T'Leen went on. "It
    didn't hit any of us, or the ships. We ran into the Mirror,
    all but K'Jax and I and S'Tan. The large ship fired guns into
    the sky."
     T'Leen cocked his head to one side, then the other, in a
    gesture Gregg couldn't read. "We have never seen guns like
    those used before. If we had guns like those, we would drive
    the humans off this world."
     Gregg mentally translated "human" as "Fed" when members
    of K'Jax' clan used the word. At moments like this, he was
    less than certain that the Molts didn't mean exactly what
    they said.
     "The fire from the sky stopped when the large vessel began
    to shoot," T'Leen said. "The ships took off, the little one and
    then the large one."
     He pointed to the Halys. "This they left. S'Tan would have
    gone back to bring the clan from mirrorside, but the fire came
    again. Here."
     His chitinous fingertips clicked against the ruined hull.
    "Then soldiers came on vehicles and aircraft, and we went
    across the Mirror too," T'Leen said. "There was nothing
    more here."
     "Well," Gregg said. "They got away, at least. Dulcie and
    the crews did."
     He wondered how much of the chill in his guts was physical
    and how much came from the realization that he might spend
    the rest of his life on Benison.
     "It was my fault," Ricimer said as he examined the vessel's
    cockpit.
     Though the dispersed bolt had opened the Halys as com-
    pletely as a pathologist does a skull before brain removal, the
    interior of what remained wasn't in too bad a condition. That
    was partly because the Venerians themselves had gutted her
    thoroughly to create the Umber, abandoned on the mirrorside
    of her namesake.
     "The fire that did this," T'Leen said. "And burned the forest.
    That was from guns like those on your ship?"
       Gregg nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Plasma cannon. Probably
    bigger ones than the Dalriada mounts. Not so well served,
    though."
     "We thought so," said T'Leen. "One day we will have such
    guns."
     Gregg sighed and wiped the stock of his rifle with the palm
    of his hand. How many times would he have to run into the
    Mirror to save himself from Fed hunters?
     "A ship in orbit's at a disadvantage in a fight with ground
    batteries," he said to divert his mind from an icy future. "The
    Feds didn't get lucky when they sprang their surprise, so they
    eased off and let our people get away."
     He snorted. "I've got a suspicion the Halys will be promoted
    to a Venerian dreadnought in that Fed captain's report."
     "Stephen!" Ricimer said. "Switch your radio on to Channel
    Three!"
     "Huh?" said Gregg. The helmet radio was designed for use
    by men in vacuum wearing gauntlets. He clicked the dial on the
    right temple from Channel One, intercom, to Channel Three
    which th ' e squadron used for general talk-between-ships, then
    pressed the dial to turn the unit on.
     ". . . to Ricimer, we've been attacked by the enemy. We'll
    remain in orbit for another day. Call us when you return.
    Dulcie to Ricimer. We've been attacked-"
     Gregg switched his radio off. The static-broken voice, a
    recording that presumably played in segments interspersed
    with dead air for a reply, was the most welcome sound he'd
    ever heard.
     "Piet!" he said. "We're saved!"
     A cold as terrible as that of the Mirror flooded back into
    his soul. "Except we can't call them," he said. "These hel-
    met intercoms won't punch a signal through the atmosphere.
    Stripping the commo system out of Dee or Dum and setting
    it up in working order will take a lot more than a day with
    the tools and personnel we've got."
    
     "Yes," Ricimer said crisply. He looked down at their Molt
    guide. "T'Leen," he said, "please recross the Mirror and tell
    the personnel there to immediately begin bringing the cargo
    over to this side. First of all, send across all of my crewmen.
    T'Leen flexed his elbow joints out in his equivalent of a shrug.
    
     "What work, Piet?" Gregg asked.
     It was possible to travel from mirrorside to realside through
    normal transits, though it was a brutal voyage that might take
    years. Dum and Dee would never survive it, but they could
    capture a larger ship-
     Six humans and perhaps a few Molt volunteers. Most of
    their weapons abandoned on the realside of Umber. Capturing
    a ship that could journey home from the mirrorside.
     Right. And perhaps the angels would come down in all
    their glory and carry Stephen Gregg to Eryx without need
    for a ship at all.
     "To put the Halys in shape to lift off," Ricimer said.
     "What? Piet, we gutted her before we left. She's got three
    thrusters, no AI, and she's been torn to Hell besides!"
     "Yes," Ricimer said. "But if she lifts me to orbit, then I
    think I can raise our friends with my helmet radio."
     Gregg stared at the ruined vessel. They'd cut frame members
    to remove the thruster. "Piet," he said. "She'll twist, flip over,
    and come in like a bomb."
     Like the Federation cutter he'd brought down on Umber.
     Ricimer smiled gently. "If that's God's will, Stephen," he
    said, "so it shall. But if we give up hope in the Lord's help,
    then we're already lost."
     Gregg opened his mouth. He couldn't think of anything to
    say, so he turned away quickly before Piet could see his tears
    of frustration.
   
    50
    
    Benison

    The thrusters crashed to life. The Halys yawed nose-down
    to starboard as her stem came unstuck. The Venerians had
    removed the starboard stem unit to power the Umber. Ricimer,
    a suited doll in the open cockpit, seemed to have overcompen-
    sated for the imbalance.
     "Forward throttle, sir!" Dole screamed. Piet couldn't hear
    him over the exhaust's crackling roar, and it wasn't as though
    the deathtrap's pilot didn't know what the problem was.
     Besides, Gregg knew instinctively that Dole's advice was
    wrong. Gregg couldn't pilot a boat in a bathtub himself, but
    he knew from marksmanship that you were better off carrying
    through with a plan than to try to reprogram your actions
    mid-execution.
     You'd probably gotten it right when you had leisure to con-
    sider. Your muscles couldn't react quickly enough to follow
    each flash of ephemeral data. If you kept your swing and
    squeeze constant, the chances were that the shot and the target
    would intersect downrange.
     If you were as good a shot as Stephen Gregg.
     Ricimer was at least as good a pilot as his friend was a
    gunman.
     The Halys continued to lift with her nose low. Her bow
    drifted to starboard so that as the blasted vessel climbed, she
    also wheeled slowly.
     "You've got her, Piet," Gregg whispered. "You've got her
    you do!"
     They'd rigged manual controls to the Halys' remaining
    thrusters, using what remained of the reel of monocrystal that
    they'd left on mirrorside after the Umber was complete. They
    couldn't fit her with a collective: they didn't have a test facility
    in which to check alignments and power delivery, so that a
    single control could change speed and attitude in a unified
    fashion. Flying the Halys now was like walking three dogs
    on separate leashes-through a roomful of cats.
     "He's got it!" Stampfer shouted, clapping his big hands
    together in enthusiasm. "I didn't think-"
     He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. Lightbody
    read his Bible with his back to the launch. Jeude squatted
    beside him. His eyes drifted toward the book, but every time
    they did, he set his mouth firmly and looked away.
     Cased microchips stood in neat piles just within the edge of
    the undamaged forest. The only Molt present was Guillermo.
    The aliens had shifted the cargo through the Mirror more than
    an hour before the Venerians finished rerigging the Halys.
    K'Jax immediately gathered both Clan Deel and the new-
    comers from Umber and whisked them away.
     He claimed he was doing that because the spaceship's liftoff
    would call Feds to the site. That might well be true, but
    Gregg suspected K'Jax wanted to absorb the new immigrants
    beyond human interference. Absorb them, and assert his own
    dominance.
     The Feds had eased K'Jax' difficulties. The cutter's weapon
    had caught Ch'Kan, last of her people to run for the Mirror and
    safety.
     Gregg's momentary shiver of hatred for K'Jax wasn't fair,
    wasn't even sane. The clan chief hadn't created the situation
    from which he was profiting. He was simply a politician
    handed an opportunity. A single strong clan under a leader
    with experience of Benison's conditions was to the benefit of
    all the race ...
     With the exception of one or two of the newcomers who
    would balk, and who would become examples for the rest.
     Gregg stroked the fore-end of his rifle. His feelings were
    quite insane; but it was just as well that K'Jax, a faithful ally,
    was nowhere around just now.
     The Halys rose slowly. Her nozzles were toed outward,
    because if they'd been aligned truly parallel Piet would have
    had insufficient lateral stability. Half the attitude jets had been
    destroyed or plugged when the plasma bolt hit. Manually-
    controlled thrusters were as much as one man could hope to
    handle anyway.

    The Halys reached the cloud base and disappeared.     
     A patch of cloud glowed for some moments. Lightning
    licked within the overcast. The charred exhaust had created
    free ions.
     Gregg looked at his command: a Molt and five humans,
    himself included. Four firearms if you counted Guillermo's pistol.
       None of the personnel in perfect condition, and Gregg able
    to move only by walking slowly. If he'd been physically able
    to survive the shock of takeoff, he'd have been in the Halys.
    
    "Mr. Dole," he said crisply. "You, Lightbody and Jeude there."
    
     Between the Halys' exhaust on landing and takeoff, and the
    plasma bolts the Feds had directed at her from orbit, fires had
    burned an irregular swatch a hundred meters by three hundred
    into the forest, Large trees spiked up as blackened trunks, but
    in general you could see across the area. Gregg pointed to the
    forest.
     "Stampfer, Guillermo and I will wait across the clearing,"
    he continued. "That way we'll have any intruders in a crossfire."
    
    Jeude glanced at the nartv's eouinment. "Some cross fire,"
    
     Gregg smiled tightly. He hefted the heavy rifle Jeude him-
    self had brought back from Umber City. "I'd prefer to have
    a flashgun, Mr. Jeude," he said. "But if the need arises, I'll
    endeavor to give a good account of myself with what's avail-
    able."
    The smile disappeared; his face looked human again. "Let's go."
      He heard Dole murmur as the parties separated, 'If it's him
    with a sharp stick and the Feds with plasma guns, Jeude,
    I know which I'm betting on!"
    

    51
    
    Benison

    "They're coming!" Stampfer said. He clicked his channel
    selector across the detents, making sure that the increasing
    crackle of static blanketed the RF spectrum. "Mr. Gregg,
    they're coming! I can hear the thrusters!"
     "Mr. Dole," Gregg said, speaking loudly on intercom mode,
    though he knew that wouldn't really help carry his voice over
    the hash of plasma exhaust. "Don't show yourselves until
    we're sure this is friendly."
     He cut off the helmet radio and looked at Stampfer-
    Guillermo wasn't going to run out into the middle of the
    clearing waving his arms. "Us too," he said. "We don't know
    it's Piet. We don't even know it's a spaceship."
     "Aw, sir," the gunner said. The thrusters were a growing
    rumble rather than just white noise on the radio. "It couldn't
    be anybody else!"
     He craned his neck skyward.
     The vessel overflew the clearing at a thousand meters. Its
    speed was in the high subsonic range. It was a ship's boat.
    From the hull's metallic glint it was of Terran manufacture.
     Perversely, Gregg's first reaction was an urge to smirk
    knowingly at Stampfer, who had been so sure the news had
    tb be good. Next he wondered what they could do about it ...
    and the answer was probably nothing, though he'd see.
     "It may be a boat they've captured, like the Halys," Gregg
    said aloud.
     "The larger settlements on Benison usually have a cutter
    available," Guillermo said. "This craft comes from the direc-
    tion of Fianna, which is the nearest settlement."
        "Or it could be from orbit," said Stampfer, as gloomy now as
    he had been enthusiastic a moment before. "The Fed warship
    that drove them away before-Dulcie may not be the only one
    that came back and waited for something to happen."
     The sound of the thruster had died away to a shadow of
    itself. Now it rose again, the sharper pulses syncopating the
    dying echoes of the previous pass. The boat was coming
    back.
     "I doubt a warship from the Earth Convoy has been wasting
    the past week and a half in orbit here, Mr. Stampfer," Gregg
    snapped. He wasn't so much frightened as completely at a loss
    for anything to do. The local Feds had noticed Piet's liftoff.
    They'd sent a cutter to scout the location.
     The boat roared over the clearing again, this time within
    a hundred meters of the ground. It had slowed considerably,
    but not even Gregg could have hit the vessel in the instant it
    was visible overhead. A rifle bullet wouldn't have done any
    damage to a spacegoing hull, but the Feds might be concerned
    about laser bolts.
     If only he hadn't lost the flashgun ...
     "Stampfer and Guillermo," Gregg said. "Go directly across
    the clearing to Mr. Dole's force and inform him that all of
    you are to run for the Mirror immediately. Go!"
     Neither of them moved. "Hey," said Stampfer. "We can still
    fight!"
     "God's blood, you fool, there won't be a fight!" Gregg
    shouted. "They'll come over on the deck and fry us with
    their exhaust. Go!"
     Stampfer looked at the Molt, then back at Gregg.
     "His injury won't permit him to run," Guillermo said to the
    gunner.
     "We'll help him," Stampfer said. He forcibly wrapped
    Gregg's left arm across his shoulders.
     "No, there's not enough-" Gregg began, and then it truly
    was too late. The boat was coming back, very fast and traveling
    parallel with the clearing's long axis. The pilot wanted to get
    the maximum effect now that he'd identified the target by the
    waiting crates.
     Did he know what the crates contained? Probably not, but it
    wouldn't matter. Though the cargo was hugely valuable, none
    of it was going into the pockets of the boat's crew. They would
    be far more concerned about their own safety, especially if
    word of the bloodbath in Umber City had reached Benison
    by now.
     "Let go of me," Gregg said. He had to shout to be heard.
    "I'll get one shot at least. Guillermo, you shoot too."
     Gregg aimed, wondering which side of the clearing the Feds
    would ignite on their first pass. Either way, it wouldn't be long
    before they finished the job.
     Guillermo took the pistol from his holster. He pointed it
    
    vaguely toward the north end of the clearing. His head rotated
    to stare at Gregg rather than the sight picture.
     Was the pilot perhaps a Molt too?
    
     The boat, transonic again, glinted over the rifle sight. Gregg
    squeezed.
     The boat's hull crumpled around an iridescent fireball. The
    bow section cartwheeled through the sky, shedding sparkling
    bits of itself as it went. The stem dissolved in what was less
    a secondary explosion than a gigantic plasma flare involving
    the vessel's powerplant. The initial thunderclap knocked Gregg
    and his companions down, but the hissing roar continued for
    several seconds.
     "Metal hulls," said Stampfer, seated with his hands out
    behind him to prop his torso. "Never trust them. Good ceramic
    wouldn't have failed that way to a fifty-mike-mike popgun."
     The Peaches boomed across the clearing, moving too fast to
    land on this pass. Gregg saw the featherboat bank to return.
     "Not bad shooting, though," Stampfer added. "Not bad at
    all."
     Gregg didn't have the strength to sit up just at the moment.
    He tried to reload the rifle by holding it above his chest, but
    after fumbling twice to get a cartridge out of its loop, he gave
    that up too.
     "Only the best for Piet's boys," he said, knowing the words
    were lost in the sound of the featherboat returning to land.
    
   
    52
    
    Venus

    The personnel bridge shocked against the hull of the Peaches.
    The featherboat rocked and chattered as the tube's lip tried to
    grip the hot ceramic around the roof hatch. A hiss indicated
    the Betaport staff was purging the bridge even though they
    didn't have a good seal yet.
     "Boy, they're in a hurry for us!" Dole said with a chuckle.
    "When Customs sent our manifest down from orbit, that got
    some action, didn't it?"
     "What do you figure the value is, Captain?" Jeude asked.
    "All those chips?"
     He gestured, careful both because he wore a hard suit in
    anticipation of landing and because of the featherboat's packed
    interior. They'd skimped on rations for the return voyage in
    order to find space for more crated microchips.
     "I never saw so many, just here. And the Dalriada, it's as
    full as we are for all she's so much bigger."
     Ricimer looked at Gregg and raised an eyebrow.
     Rather than quote a figure in Venerian consols, Gregg said,
    "I'd estimate the value of our cargo is in the order of half or
    two-thirds of the planetary budget, Jeude."
     His mouth quirked in something like a smile. It was amusing
    to be asked to be an accountant again. It was amazing to realize
    that he was still an accountant, a part of him. Humans were like
    panels of stained glass, each colored segment partitioned from
    the other.
     "Of course," he added, still an accountant, "the quantity of
    chips we're bringing is great enough that they'll depress the
    value of the class on the market if they're all released at the
    same time."
     "They will be," Ricimer said, his eyes on the future beyond
    the Peaches' hatch. "To build more starships for Venus, to
    give them the best controls and optics as they've already got
    the best hulls and crews."
     He looked at his men. "The best crews God ever gave a
    captain in His service," he said.
     "What'll a personal share be then, Mr. Gregg?" Lightbody
    asked. His right hand absently stroked his breastplate, beneath
    which he carried his pocket Bible. "Ah-for a sailor, I mean,
    is all."
     "If they let us keep it," Stampfer said. "You know how
    the gentlemen do-begging your pardon, Mr. Gregg, I don't
    mean you. But it may mean a war, and it may be they don't
    want that."
     "It was a war on fucking Biruta, wasn't it?" Jeude said.
    "Nobody cared about that but the widows!"
     "I cared," Gregg said without emphasis. And at the end,
    Henry Carstensen cared; though perhaps not for long.
     "Well, we all cared," Jeude said, "and all Betaport cared.
    But the gent-the people in Ishtar City, they let it go by."
     He gave Gregg a pleading look. "The governor, she won't
    give our cargo back, will she, sir?"
     Gregg looked at Ricimer, who shrugged. Gregg smiled cold-
    ly and said, "No, Jeude, she won't. Her own share's too great,
    and the value to the planet's industrial capacity is too great.
    Pleyal's government will threaten, and they'll sue for recov-
    ery . . . but they'll have to sue in our courts, and I doubt they
    can even prove ownership."
     Ricimer looked surprised.
     Gregg laughed. "You're too innocent to be a merchant,
    Piet," he said.
     He rapped a case with his armored knuckles. "How much
    of this do you think was properly manifested on Umber-and
    so subject to Federation taxes and customs? My guess is ten
    percent. A quarter at the outside. And they'll play hell getting
    proper documentation on that."
     "And our share, Mr. Gregg?" Lightbody repeated.
     "Enough to buy a tavern in Betaport," Gregg said. "Enough
    to buy a third share in a boat like the Peaches, if that's what
    you want to do."
     Enough to stay drunk for a month, with the best friends of
    any man on Venus during that month. Lightbody might not be
    the one to spend his share that way, but you can't always guess
    how a man would act until he had the consols in his hands.
     "I want to go out with the cap'n again," Dole said. "And
    you, Mr. Gregg."
     Gregg gripped the back of the bosun's hand and squeezed
    it.
     "Open your hatch," a voice crackled on the intercom. The
    featherboat's ceramic hull didn't form a Faraday cage the
    way a metal vessel's did, but sulphur compounds baked on
    during the descent through Venus' atmosphere were conduc-
    tive enough to diffuse even short-range radio communications *
    "Captain Ricimer and Mr. Gregg are to proceed to the person-
    nel lock, where an escort is waiting."
     "Hey, the royal treatment!" Jeude crowed as he reached for
    one of the undogging levers. "Not just coming in like the cargo,
    we aren't."
     "We" would do just that, enter Betaport when the landing
    pit cooled enough for machinery to haul the Peaches into a
    storage dock. Jeude thought of his officers as representing all
    the crew.
     In a manner of speaking, he could be right.
     Gregg started to lock down his faceshield. Ricimer put out a
    hand. "I think the tube will be bearable without that," he said.
    "Not comfortable, but bearable for a short time."
     "Sure," Gregg said.
     Positive pressure in the personnel bridge rammed a blast o
    air into the Peaches when the hatch unsealed. The influx must
    have started out cool and pure, but at this end of the tube the
    hot reek made Gregg sneeze and his eyes water.
     The crewmen didn't seem to be affected. Gregg noticed
    that none of them had bothered to close up, as they could
    have done.
     Ricimer murmured something to Guillermo and climbed into
    the bridge. He extended a hand that Gregg refused. 
    
     The two men walked along the slightly resilient surface of
    the personnel bridge. With their faceshields up they could
    talk without using radio intercom, but at first neither of them
    did so.
    "I don't suppose they understand," Ricimer said. "Do you think..."
   
     "That Governor Halys could find her life a lot simpler if she
    handed a couple of high-ranking scapegoats to the Federation
    for trial?" Gregg said. "No, I doubt it."
     He snorted. "As Stampfer implied, sailors don't think the
    way gentlemen do. And rulers. But I don't think she'd bother
    throwing the men to Pleyal as well."
     "It'll go on, what we've started," Ricimer said. The side-
    walls of the tube had a faint red glow, but there was a white
    light-source at the distant end. "When they see, when all Venus
    sees the wealth out there, there'll be no keeping us back from
    the stars. This time it won't be a single empire that shatters
    into another Collapse. Man will have the stars!"
     Gregg would have chuckled, but his throat caught in the
    harsh atmosphere. "You don't have to preach to me, Piet,"
    he said when he'd hacked his voice clear again.
     Ricimer looked at him. "What do you believe in, Stephen?"
    he asked.
     Gregg looked back. He lifted a hand to wipe his eyes and
    remembered that he wore armored gauntlets, "I believe," he
    said, "that when I'm-the way I get. That I can hit anything
    I aim at. Anything."
     Ricimer nodded, sad-eyed. "And God?" he asked. "Do you
    believe in God?"
     "Not the way you do, Piet," Gregg said flatly. Time was
    too short to spend it in lies.
     "Yes," Ricimer said. "But almost as much as I believe in
    God, Stephen, I believe in the stars. And I believe He means
    mankind to have the stars."
     Gregg laughed and broke into wheezing coughs again. He
    bent to lessen the strain on his wound.
     His friend put out an arm to steady him. Their armored
    hands locked. "I believe in you, Piet," Gregg said at last.
    "That's been enough this far."
     They'd reached the personnel lock set into one panel of the
    huge cargo doors. Ricimer pushed the latchplate.
     The portal slid sideways. The men waiting for them within
    the main lock wore hard suits of black ceramic: members of
    the Governor's Guard. Their visors were down. They weren't
    armed, but there were six of them.
     "This way, please, gentlemen," said a voice on the intercom.
    A guard gestured to the inner lock as the other portal sealed
    again. "Precede us, if you will."

     The guards were anonymous in their armor. They weren't
    normally stationed in Betaport, but there'd been plenty of time
    since the Peaches and Dalriada made Venus orbit to send a
    contingent from the capital.
     Piet Ricimer straightened. "It was really worth it, Stephen,"
    he said. "Please believe that."
     "It was worth it for me," Gregg said. His eyes were still
    watering from the sulphur in the boarding tube.
     A guard touched the door latch. The portal slid open. Gregg
    stepped through behind Ricimer.
     Three more guards stood to either side of the lock. Beyond
    them, Dock Street was full of people: citizens of Betaport, fac-
    tors from Beta Regio and even farther, and a large contingent
    of brilliantly-garbed court officials.
     In the midst of the court officials was a small woman.
    Stephen Gregg could barely make her out because of his tears
    and the bodies of twelve more of her black-armored guards.
     They were cheering. The whole crowd was cheering, every one.


    Author's Afterword: Drake's Drake
    
    Truth is something each individual holds within his heart. It
    differs from person to person, and it can't really be expressed
        to anyone else.
    
     Having said that, I try to write fiction about people who
    behave as closely as possible to the way people do in my
    internal version of truth. One of the ways I achieve that end
    is to use historical events as the paradigm for my fiction: if
    somebody did something, another person at least might act that
    way under similar circumstances.
    
     In the present instance, I've built Igniting the Reaches on
    an armature of events from the early life of Francis Drake
    (including acts of his contemporaries, particularly the Hawkins
    brothers and John Oxenham). This isn't biography or even
    exegesis. Still, I wound up with a better understanding of the
    period than I had when I started researching it, and I hope I
        was able to pass some of that feel on to readers.
    
    My research involved a quantity of secondary sources rang-
    ing from biographies to treatises on ship construction by naval
    architects. These were necessary to give me both an overview
    and an acquaintance with matters that were too familiar to con-
    temporary writers for them to bother providing explanations.
     The heart of my reading, however, was The Principall
    Navigations of the English Nation, the 1598 edition, edited
    by Richard Hakluyt: Hakluyt's Voyages. I've owned the
    eight-volume set since I was in law school many years
    ago and have dipped into it on occasion, but this time I
    had an excuse to read the volumes straight through and take
    notes. The Voyages provided not only facts but a wonderful
    evocation of the knowledge and attitudes of their time.
    
     The authors of the accounts varied from simple sailors to
    some of the most polished writers of the day (Sir Walter
    Raleigh, whatever else he may have been, was and remains
    a model of English prose style). I appreciated the period far
    better for the careful way two sailors described coconuts-
    because people back home wouldn't have the faintest idea of
    what they were talking about. (Another writer's description
    of what is clearly a West African manatee concludes, "It
    tasteth like the best Beef", which also told me something,
    
     When one views the Age of Discovery from a modern view-
    point, one tends to assume that those involved in the events
    knew what they were doing. In general, they didn't. It's useful
    to realize that Raleigh, for example, consistently confused the
    theatre of his activities on the Orinoco with explorations of
    the Amazon by Spaniards starting in the latter river's Andean
    headwaters. Indeed, Drake was practically unique in having
    a well-considered plan which he attempted to execute. (That
    didn't keep the wheels from coming off, much as described
    here.)
     I'll add here a statement that experience has taught me will
    not be obvious to everyone who reads my fiction: I'm writing
    about characters who are generally brave and occasionally
    heroes, but I'm not describing saints. Some of the attitudes
    and the fashions in which my characters behave are very
    sinful.
     I would like to believe that in the distant future, people
    will be perfect-tolerant, peaceful, nonsexist. Events of the
    twentieth century do not, unfortunately, suggest to me that
    we've improved significantly in the four hundred years since
    Drake.
     Let's work to do better; but we won't solve problems in
    human behavior if we attempt to ignore the realities of the
    present. 

    