14

The off-worlders paused to examine several more displays but were not tempted to make a purchase until they were nearly ready to quit that part of the market. A metallic glitter on the foremost table of one of the large booths caught Van Rycke’s eye. Even from a distance of several feet, he could see that it was a synthetic cloth of silver netting, exquisitely complex and extraordinarily fine.

He touched Dane’s arm. “Give that a look over. If it seems worth it, make an offer.”

The Cargo-apprentice nodded and stepped briskly toward the booth, taking care to conceal from both the Canuchean merchant and his own companions the considerable trepidation with which he viewed the assignment. True, his chief had been giving him an ever-increasing amount of responsibility, but the transactions he had thus far initiated had been small and straightforward, all of them concerned with minor outfitting of the starship. This was much larger in scope and was for Trade itself. It would also involve real bargaining, or it would if he did not blow it the first time he opened his mouth.

The Canuchean displayed the examination length of the silver netting with a grand flourish, all the while extolling its beauty and virtues as enthusiastically as if it were the genuine article straight out of Siren’s far-famed mills.

Once his litany of praise ended, however, he eyed Thorson’s brown uniform as if in askance. “We deal chiefly in credits on Canuche,” he said doubtfully.

Dane declared that the Solar Queen intended to pay by that means. He saw the flash of greed glint in the other’s eyes and set himself for battle. Specie or specie credit was always the preferred method of payment on any Federation planet, and the merchant was going to attempt to secure as much as he could.

It was the apprentice’s job, on the other hand, to minimize what the Queen had to lay out. Straight credits, being more desirable than an exchange of goods or services, were also more valuable. They generally bought more as a result, and Thorson was determined that those entrusted to him should do so. He held to his role as a prospective purchaser interested but by no means overwhelmed by the proffered goods and most assuredly in no desperate need of them. In the end, after much discussion, he succeeded in shaving off an 8 percent discount for the Queen and then heaped another 2 percent on top of it as a bulk order bonus for taking all twelve bolts available.

“Not bad at all,” Van Rycke gloated when they were out of sight and earshot of the booth. “The youngster’s beginning to show a little promise. I don’t know if I’d have had the nuggets to demand a bulk discount for a dozen bolts of cloth.”

“A nice move,” the Captain agreed, “but do we need twelve bolts?”

“It’ll sell,” Jan assured him. “Some primitive society will go for it, and it’s absolutely stellar quality. If that cloth was real silver, we could take it anywhere in the inner systems.”

“We still can,” Dane interjected. “Those planets tend to enjoy greater wealth and luxury than the outer and rim worlds, but there are plenty of very ordinary people working away on all of them. They can’t afford clothes spun out of precious metals, but those conscious of fashion will grab a good synthetic. If we aren’t planning a trip in there ourselves in the near future, we’ll be encountering ships like the Black Hole that are. Any one of them’d be glad to pick up some of this in exchange for goods we’ll find more immediately useful.”

“I agree,” Rael said, “but I don’t think you’ll have to trade any of it off. You’ll sell, and you won’t have to leave the outer systems to do it. A dozen bolts wouldn’t be anything to a large manufacturer. It could go even faster in individual sales in a fairly big town, much less in a city.

Aphrodite comes to mind at once. So does Sultana, which might actually be your best bet if you can swing in that far.

The teachers there’d jump at this for use in training, although, of course, they won’t bring anything fake into the temples.”

“Hera’s even closer,” Dane suggested. “According to Mara’s notes, the priestesses there love glitter. They sew and paste mirrors and all sorts of beads and pieces of metal and strips of lace on their robes. They should go for this like a drowning man for oxygen.”

“True enough, and as you so sagely point out, Hera’s close by.”

Thorson’s head lifted in gratification at his chiefs ready acceptance of the viability of his suggestion. He did not see the look of pride that accompanied it. That was an extremely obscure bit of information, a one-line margin note jotted down as a reminder on an old reorder list. Van Rycke had not recalled it himself, although he doubtless would have done so before long, and he was pleased that his fledgling, who had obviously been studying the files, had beaten him to it.

With the business of the cloth’s potential saleability settled, the Cargo-Master felt at liberty to address another matter whetting his curiosity. His blue eyes flickered in Cofort’s direction. “Speaking of Sultana, Doctor, I’m wondering how you’ve managed to pick up her most cherished art form.”

She smiled. “I first saw her Ibis dancers when I was eight years old. It was love at first sight. I’d always detested sports, and even then I thought formal exercise a galactic-class bore, necessary to maintain health and muscle tone, perhaps, but a waste of time, plentiful as that is in space. This beautiful, complex dance was different. I wanted it, and I was determined to learn how to perform it.

“I bought every tape and book my credits would allow and pestered my father for more, then I secretly worked with them, deciphering and copying the moves as best I could. I’d made such progress by the time he finally caught me at it that he sought to arrange for lessons for me the next time we planeted on Sultana, which was a regular port on our trade route. I was good enough that his request was granted.”

“He was damned lucky you didn’t disappear,” Miceal told her bluntly. “Those people worship beauty. You must have had that even then, and you were a dancer, besides.”

She shook her head. “To them, I was the ultimate tragedy. I had the talent to dance, but it was stillborn. I had come to it far too late. Sultanites literally begin preliminary training when they’re six months old. Their parents start giving them coordination exercises at that age. They encouraged me to continue all the same because they, their teachers, recognized that my love for their art is genuine.

“I’m fully aware of my limitations. I’d never be allowed on any temple floor, much less on an altar, but I don’t expect that. I dance for my own pleasure and well-being.”

“You can perform for us some day,” Van Rycke promised.

Rael flushed scarlet. “You’re not a tamed audience! And I know you all . . .”

Jellico laughed, but he draped a surprisingly comforting arm around her shoulders. “Power down, Doctor. Our good Cargo-Master’s only running you over the jets. Ibis dancing’s potentially too potent a force for disruption to be loosed in the confines of a starship. Rest assured that you’ll be allowed to continue exercising to your heart’s content in complete privacy.”

The four spacers moved into that part of the huge market where the gems and jewelry were sold.

Here the difference between the Solar Queen and the Roving Star, the chasm between the credits each starship had at her disposal, between the routes they flew, were made clearly apparent. The really good pieces, finished or unset, coming for sale on Canuche of Halio were offered in the major enclosed facilities, not in this open field, yet they could not give the top line of even what was on display of the mounted stones more than a passing glance.

Miceal’s expression darkened as he continued to watch the Medic. Inevitably, her eyes went to the best pieces, lingered on the really good ones. She knew they were beyond the means of her party and said nothing, but the way she looked at them was sufficient. It was not hard to imagine her disappointment. Teague Cofort would have gone for those choices. Space, Deke Tatarcoff probably could have picked up a couple or three of them. So could the Queen, he thought bitterly. Of course, then they would have nothing left with which to lay in a Trade store ...

He stopped himself with a mental oath. What was he doing? Was this accursed woman driving him to feel ashamed of his own starship?

Jellico’s mood improved again once they left the highpriced jewelry behind and found themselves surrounded by stalls stocking goods within their range.

He had no time for brooding then. The Solar Queen had almost no jewelry left, and these mid-line goods, particularly the numerous beads, were of intense interest to her Captain.

Now that she was free to act, Rael Cofort shone. She unerringly seized upon the beautifully marked agates, the oddly colored sodalite strand whose dark lavender shade might be a fault but was also strikingly attractive. She found the three unpitted strings in a bundle of otherwise poor garnets, and she spotted uniquely shaped beads and strange clasps to add distinction to the Queen’s growing collection of interesting if relatively uncostly trade material.

Van Rycke glowed with satisfaction. Cofort was performing exactly as he had seen her do in that other market but with the grand difference that on this occasion she was working for the Solar Queen, not against her.

He permitted her to do only the choosing. Although each individual piece cost little, the total of their gem and mineral purchases would be significant. This was Queen business, and he was not about to turn the crucial bargaining over to any temporary hand.

Dane watched him with the awe of a knowledgeable beginner for a superb master in his craft, and with pleasure.

Someday, he would have a similar post and would perform, he hoped, with skill equal to that of his chief.

Jellico and Cofort’s impressions might be less precisely tuned, but they were no less powerful. Both were veterans in Trade and recognized an ability so well honed that it transcended the professional to move into the realm of art.

Once the Cargo-Master was satisfied that they had secured everything they needed or wanted that the Queen could afford, he indicated that they should return to the freighter with their treasures. All four of them were burdened with a number of fairly substantial packages by that time. The cloth, of course, would be delivered to the ship, but when one purchased gems and minerals, he took care to carry them away with him.

“Could we at least go by the loose stones?” the Medic asked wistfully.

“If you like,” Jellico replied. “I thought you agreed with Van that we wouldn’t take any.”

“Aye. This is for me. I just want to look.”

“The Roving Star deals heavily in them,” Van Rycke recalled.

She nodded. “We do our own setting, you see. Our Steward’s a master jeweler. — He’s taken prizes from some of the biggest guilds in the ultrasystem. — He mounts what we bring to him, both for Trade and for the rest of us personally. All we have to do is supply the materials, and he produces individual works of art. I’ve gotten in the habit of checking out anything that might conceivably be of interest as a result.”

“It can’t hurt,” the Cargo-Master said. He touched one of the packages he carried. “This local stuff’s nice. I wouldn’t object to having a few loose stones on hand.”

That part of the big market given over to unmounted gems and the metals used to complement them was not extensive, and there was almost no variety in the type of jewels offered. Canuchean amethysts and red garnets made up more than 90 percent of the stock. Most of the rest consisted of surplanetary fancy garnets, all of them flawed and none of good color, much to the woman’s disappointment.

The remainder were various small, imported semiprecious gems common throughout the ultrasystem. There were no sunstones at all that day.

The Free Traders bought a few stones, fewer than they might have if the quality had been better. All were single specimens. The sets, presorted packets containing from two gems to three dozen or more, they left alone. Most such lots were of very low grade, and they had plenty from which to choose at reasonable cost without having to settle for the patently inferior.

One stand featuring them did catch Cofort’s eye. It was a small, uncovered operation specializing in both imported and on-world stones plus a smattering of the more interesting readily available minerals. The array of colors was wonderful and was rendered more striking still by the masterful arrangement the merchant had employed to display his wares.

She picked up several of the clear packets encasing his goods and held them high so that Halio’s light might play over the contents before carefully replacing them again.

When she seemed to linger over one lot labeled rose tourmalines, the Canuchean was quick to pick up on her apparent interest.

“Those have better than average color. They go for fifty a carat.”

The spacer’s arched brows lifted even higher. “Hedon’s Gem Guild wouldn’t get that for stellar-quality synthetics, which these are not.”

The man drew himself to the full of his not inconsiderable height. “If they were stellar quality or anything approaching it; they wouldn’t be selling in sets. As for the rest, these tourmalines are natural ...”

“Save it for the locals,” the Medic snapped. “Preferably the visually handicapped. It’s painfully obvious that just about every stone on this table is manufactured. — If you wish to argue the point, Canuche has thoughtfully supplied appraisers to settle such disputes. Their booth’s just over there. One of my comrades can fetch—”

“Power down, space hound. I’m only a salesman, not a gemologist. It’s as easy to fool me as anyone else. This stuff looked good to me, and I took it on faith, that’s all.”

“Of course,” she responded dryly. She had figured he would back down quickly under that threat. The official appraisers were noted for doing their job, and the penalties for fraud were severe. The merchant might have bluffed his way out of this, but he would then be under close observation for a very long time, which would seriously handicap the questionable enterprise he was running.

“Look, I’ll sell at a loss to prove my good intentions. Take what you want for ten a carat.”

“Ten? We do this for a living, too, remember? You got them for a quarter a carat, maybe half for a few of the best. You’ll be making a good profit at one credit.”

“One! I won’t be able to meet my rent!”

“Stow that debris, my friend. By rights, I shouldn’t go higher than three-quarters. Besides, we’re only taking a couple of sets as curiosities, one for me, one for my comrades to split. Synthetics like these wouldn’t move too well, and I really don’t believe your style of doing business deserves the reward of a big order.”

She looked over a number of the sets before selecting two, one containing all rose-colored stones, the other a mixture of rose and green. The gems in both were cut as cabochons rather than with light-firing facets.

After watching carefully while the discomfited merchant weighed her selection, she paid him based upon the scale he had named and, much to his relief, withdrew with her companions.

Cofort caught the way Dane was looking at her and laughed. “You didn’t think I had it in me, Viking?”

He started. That was the nickname some of his more insufferable classmates back at the Pool had used to taunt him. There was no barb in it now, though. In fact, he rather liked the sound of it... “Well, you usually come across as a rather quieter individual.”

Her eyes sparkled. “I wasn’t loud back there, either,” she teased.

“Neither are Patrol lasers,” Jellico told her. “They make their point, too.”

Her manner grew grave again. “I didn’t think Mr. Van Rycke would mind my taking the helm. The sum involved was infinitesimal, and one set is for me. I’ll keep the other as well if you really don’t want it.”

“Not at all,” replied the Cargo-Master. “As you said, it’s a curiosity.”

“We’ll see just how much of a curiosity when we get back to the Queen.”

There was such an air of mystery, of superiority, about her that his eyes narrowed. “That’s where we’re heading right now, Doctor Cofort. On all burners.”

15

Van Rycke ushered his companions into his office. The panel had scarcely closed behind them before he turned to Rael. “All right. What treasure have you found for us amid the debris?”

“Maybe none,” she replied, as she accepted the shears he held out to her and slit open each of the packets. She spilled then- contents out in two carefully separated piles.

“Which does the Queen want? The cost was the same.”

“The bicolored one.”

“Good choice,” she said as she separated two pink stones from it. “These appear to be the only ones,” she remarked after a few seconds’ examination of the rest. A similar study of her own packet produced another prize, this one somewhat larger than the first two.

Rael peered closely at all three, holding them so that they caught the full of the bright light from the desk lamp.

Her head rose in a gesture of triumph. “Star rubies,” she announced. “Very old and unquestionably the real thing. They’ll have to be tested for quality, but I suspect it’s first rate.”

“So that’s why you chose cabs rather than faceted stones,” Miceal said softly.

She nodded. “I’d spotted them right off. I couldn’t be entirely sure without examining them more carefully, but I knew I did have something out of the ordinary. I just had to be careful not to arouse his suspicion by paying too much attention to those particular sets.” She made a wry face. “I’d probably have been vacuum-brained enough to tell him if that son hadn’t tried to give us such a doing. Fifty credits a carat for those little mass-produced toys of his!”

“What if we had refused the packet you picked up for us?” the Cargo-Master asked.

The Medic answered Van Rycke, but it was Jellico’s eyes that she met and held. “Temporary hand or permanent, I am part of this ship, and I’m entitled to your trust. I’d proven my knowledge of gems. If you couldn’t go along with me blindly, or at least indulge my whim if you suspected nothing more, when the outlay was so insignificant, then you’d deserve to take your loss.”

“You’d have just held onto both packets and kept mum about the rubies?” Jan asked.

“Naturally. What else would you expect me to do?”

“Fair enough,” the Captain said. “We were testing you. You had the right to return the compliment.”

Dane fingered the rubies, although he did not pick them up. It would be too much like him to drop one of them— Cofort’s probably—and send it skittering into some crevice from which it could not be extracted short of dismantling the ship. “What’re they worth?”

“That I couldn’t venture to say with certainty, not until they’ve been tested,” she replied, “but if they’re as good as they look, they’re worth plenty. Mr. Van Rycke will be the better one to lay the proper valuation on them once he has the necessary information to do it.”

“They’re old to judge by the way they’ve been polished, probably Terran . . .” The Cargo-Master stopped speaking.

His breath caught. “Spirit of Space!”

“What’s the matter?” Miceal demanded.

“Most of Terra’s good star ruby sources were played out long ago, the best of them centuries ago, and there’s never been anything to equal their output since anywhere in the Federation. If these stones originated in one of those old mines, we’re looking at the stuff of legend. They’ll go for whatever the market’ll bear.”

“If we can locate that market,” his Captain said gloomily.

“Hedon. We keep our mouths shut and fire all our tubes to get there. Our small constellation here, our double star,” he corrected, recalling that one of the three did not belong to the Queen, “could well pay for that voyage and a number of others after it even if we moved nothing else at all on any of them.”

“Do you really think that’s what we’ve got?” Rael asked in awe.

“There’s a very strong possibility of it. Doctor, judging by surface appearances at any rate. Neither this sheen nor this color has been around for a very long time.”

“What if they aren’t as old as we think or aren’t from one of the famous Terran mines?” Thorson asked, trying to keep his head in the face of his superiors’ enthusiasm.

They had seen what seemed like real prizes turn sour before, and he did not want to work himself into the same pitch over what could be nothing more than an extremely costly shot at the next galaxy. A trip to Hedon of Eros was an expensive proposition, and they had nothing else whatsoever that they could hope to trade there. “They’re not even very big.”

“About a carat each for ours. The Doctor’s is half that weight again. That’s not bad for a major gemstone. They’re also dead matches for one another both in color and cut, and the Queen’s two for size as well. That means we can bill them as a suite. No, provided they’re natural, we have ourselves a treasure, whatever their age or source. — Assuming they’re not hot, of course.” Rael had been careful to secure documentation of the sale, but they would still get no profit in that event and would be out the cost of the voyage as well.

Dane nodded, inwardly hoping that their “treasure” would at least prove of sufficient resale value to match the efforts they would have to expend to establish its authenticity and then dispose of it.

The answer to that lay in the future, but there were other mysteries still to be resolved. He turned his attention to the woman. “How did you spot them, Rael? For that matter, how’d you know the rest were synthetics?”

“Oh, by the color. Manufactured stones are subtly different from their natural counterparts. Usually, they’re more intense than real ones, and the shade or tone’s at least a wee bit off.” She forestalled his next question. “How these came to be in those sets, I couldn’t begin to say. They’ve probably been knocking around for a long time, moving from place to place with no one suspecting their true nature. All the gems in these two lots look like they were previously mounted. They were probably part of a large, low-value shipment gathered from all over the ultrasystem and split up into sets for resale at marginal profit.”

“That’s more or less what I figure, too,” the Cargo-Master agreed.

There was a strange note in his tone, and she looked up to find him studying her intently. “What’s wrong?” she asked in surprise.

“I hesitate to use the word preternatural. Doctor. It’s too melodramatic coming from anyone but Craig Tau. However, the stones on that stand were not the work of amateurs, The fact that they were synthetic would not have been instantly apparent to most of us, myself included, and I’m not precisely a novice at buying and selling such items.

Add to that the fact that absolutely no one else I’ve ever known could possibly have smelled out that rats’ nest and it rather makes me wonder about you.”

“That’s only because you’re judging by purely Terran standards,” she told him calmly. “When I introduced myself as Teague Cofort’s sister, I should have been more specific. We’re actually half-siblings. Our mothers were different. Very different. In point of fact, I’m a genetic impossibility.”

Her chin lifted. “I don’t know Mother’s race or homeworld. My father just returned to the ship with her one day after a short absence on some planet neither they nor his crew would ever name. She definitely was not of Terran blood, not human at all, although she was very beautiful by human standards. There were some significant physiological and genetic differences, incompatibilities. Marriage was possible between them. Conception should not have been and certainly not a viable birth. That notwithstanding, I was conceived, born, and have managed to thrive.

“Like most intelligent beings, I have my own set of gifts and talents. Most seem to have come from my father, some from Mother, but none are of a nature to set me apart from the better part of the Federation’s citizens. Whatever strengths I might have came by the time-honored means of determined effort and practice. If I hadn’t been reared in an environment like space where the lack of other distractions does wonders for the ability to concentrate on a long course of study or training, I doubt I’d have achieved much with them at all, and even with that push, I’m a far voyage from being some sort of ultrawoman.

“Admittedly, my senses are pretty acute, but there’s nothing super-anything about them.

“I do have a good feel for color and can differentiate between shades quite finely, but I learned that from our former Cargo-Master, Mara’s predecessor. Other than that, my vision’s not remarkable. — No pin spotting at ten miles or peering through titanone plates.

“It’s much the same with hearing. My sense of smell is keen, which is usually more disadvantage than blessing. I have trained myself to separate and identify different odors even when they’re components in a melody. That’s a bit uncommon, I suppose, but don’t imagine I can perform like a tracking or hunting animal, or you’re in for a major disappointment.

“Sensitivity to aroma and refined sense of taste go together. You can be sure that I appreciate Mr. Mura’s fine hand with his seasonings and that I don’t let many chances for a good feed of real food pass me by when they crop up.”

The expression of each of her companions brightened into a grin. That, at least, was typical of their kind. When a space hound hit the surface of a basically Terran-type planet and had some free time, it was almost inevitably to an eating place that he first hurried rather than to the local version of a Happy City.

Rael did not smile. “The last sense I have is touch, and that’s not terribly extraordinary, though I’ll admit to preferring the feel of that Thornen silk to that of our uniforms.

“There’s nothing else,” she continued firmly and a little wearily, “no sixth-plus powers. I don’t read minds or see past or future or move solid objects by will alone.”

“What about conversing with animals?” Miceal asked quickly.

“No,” she said firmly. “I wish I could. They’re often a galaxy nicer than our own kind. They like me because they know how much I like them. Maybe it’s a little unusual,” she conceded, “but it’s nothing more than that. Plants, too, grow for me as they do for other gardeners who understand their ways and enjoy working with them. There’s no particular magic in it.”

The Captain gave a slight shake of his head. “No go, Cofort. A lot of people like animals, but none of them affects Queex the way you do.”

Her eyes hardened, and a sharp edge turned her voice into a whip. “A lot of people love animals and take tri-dees of them, too, but they don’t often get results like you’ve got tacked up on your office wall. Do you use some sort of compulsion to force your subjects to appear and then pose and freeze in place for you?”

Jellico flushed so that the scar stood out white on his cheek, but he said nothing. The rebuke had been neatly delivered. It was not an overreaction, either. Had the Medic been a real member of the crew, it might have been different. There would have been strong bonds of trust and confidence between them then, though his right to pry would have been no greater. As it was, any admission of esper abilities could prove highly dangerous for Rael Cofort.

Van Rycke cleared his throat. “I suppose I can consider myself answered,” he said to break the uncomfortable silence that followed. “Well, whatever the extent of your talents, Doctor, we’ve got reason to be grateful to them. They’ve done good work all along and have topped it off by locating a potentially very nice prize for us.”

The Medic inclined her head in formal acknowledgment. “Thank you, Mr. Van Rycke.”

“We seem to be finished here,” he said. “The day’s Still young, and there’s a good part of the market still left unexplored. — Thorson, you’d best stay here and classify our new acquisitions. Log it all in and stow everything.”

“Aye,” Dane responded cheerfully. He had been anticipating that.

“Doctor Cofort may be able to give you a hand later,” Jellico suggested.

He glanced at the woman. “Write up a report about these rubies now, while the details’re fresh in your memory.

Describe the purchase in full and put down all our surmises, clearly labeled as such. Just in case those stones should prove to be hot, I want as much documentation on hand as possible to attest to our innocence.”

“Aye, Captain. — I’ll just say we bought the sets by chance, though, if you don’t mind. We’re doing this to settle potential questions, not raise more.”

“Handle it however you think best. If I want more or something different, I’ll tell you when I see the report.”

The four dispersed. Dane and Van Rycke hurried to be about their work.

Cofort moved quickly as well to get on with her assignment, but Miceal stopped her at the door. “How about some jakek?”

“Fine. I always enjoy a cup,” the Medic responded, silently adding a mental reservation about quality. Jellico would never rival Mr. Mura in a galley,

Hael Cofort entered her commander’s office first, automatically activating the cabin lights as she did so. Queex gave a delighted whistle at the sight of her but did not forget the duties of a hoobat for all his pleasure at this particular human’s visit. He glared suspiciously at the door to see who else might be invading his territory.

Since only its rightful occupant followed, he satisfied himself with a single, decidedly unmusical call and grasped the bars with four of his legs, ready to leap out as soon as the door opened.

The woman did not disappoint him. She laughed softly and slid into Jellico’s chair so that she could comfortably reach the hoobat’s cage, then slipped the latch and swung the barrier back. In that instant, Queex was airborne in a spring that carried him to her upper arm. From there, he scurried to her shoulder.

Cofort braced her hand against the edge of the desk. At that signal, Queex descended to her forearm and draped himself across it, three appendages dangling on each side.

She began to rub the area between and around the protuberant eyes until he relaxed into a limp image of ecstasy.

The Captain watched them a moment and shook his head, “Are you sure you’re not working some sort of spell on him?”

“Haven’t you ever had a really good massage?” she countered. “Besides, he’s such a sweetheart. It’s easy to please him. — Isn’t it, little pet?”

As if in answer, the odd creature started to emit a quiet, purring whistle.

Miceal said nothing. Any response he might have made—in any one of several languages—would have been appropriate only in very different company. He was fond of Queex himself, considerably more than he would publicly admit, but Rael Cofort was the only person he had ever met, human or xeno, who could call a hoobat a sweetheart and little pet.

He rolled the chair and its two occupants aside and opened the bottom drawer of the desk. Jellico took a big thermos from it. This he held to his ear and shook briskly.

The resulting sloshing sound told him it was still about half full, so he stood it upright in the space he cleared for it between two stacks of papers and set the controls for reheat. That done, he retrieved two cups from the same drawer and put one before the Medic, the other beside himself as he casually dropped into the visitor’s chair. “It’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.”

When a buzz announced that the jakek was hot, he filled his guest’s cup and his own.

Rael sipped the dark liquid, concealing her grimace behind the thick rim. Jakek was making great headway all along the starlanes, threatening to supplant the caffeine-laden Terran coffee as the Federation’s all-around beverage of choice. The crew of the Solar Queen, though, with the exception of herself and the Captain, remained staunchly loyal to the traditional brew despite the fact that it was available only in synthetic or concentrate form to space hounds plying the rim. Jellico appreciated too well how much the Steward had to do to demand special luxuries for himself. He usually prepared his own in the thermos, rather to the detriment of its flavor. For the four-hundredth time, she vowed to get up early some morning soon and wheedle or pummel Frank Mura into letting her loose in his precious galley, Jakek was heavily used on the Roving Star, and she could program a range ...

She felt the man’s eyes on her and looked up. His expression was somber. “Do you doubt my story?”

“I’m just sorry we put you through that inquisition in there.”

“You had to ask, didn’t you?”

“Aye, but we seem to make a habit of tearing your wounds. I don’t enjoy tormenting you.”

She looked into the steaming liquid. “There’s no disgrace in my ancestry, and I don’t mind speaking about my mother. She was respected and greatly liked as well as loved. All the crew who knew her told me that. Father was the only one who’d never talk about her.”

“He blamed you?” Jellico asked gently.

“No, but he held himself responsible. I think it must have been with him all the time. He loved her, you see.”

She sighed. “None of us knew how much until he was dying. He never called for me or Teague or Teague’s mother. Just for her. I believe he was glad to be joining her.”

The man nodded slowly. His younger comrades would not have understood that, but he had lived long enough, experienced enough, that he could comprehend it somewhat.

Another thought struck him suddenly. “Your mother was a Medic, too?” he ventured.

“Among her own people, aye, or so we believed. She never actually admitted to it, or to much else about her past. She apparently had buried that completely when she came with my father. It is one of the reasons I was drawn to the profession, I suppose. She fought so hard for me, battled to remain alive long enough that I could live without her. I felt I owed it to her to do something positive with myself, to try to make some return for that struggle.”

“Apart from being happy?”

Rael looked closely at him. “I don’t knock that goal, friend, but medicine is in me, rising from several springs. This is undoubtedly one of them, and to my mind, it’s as valid as any of the others.”

“No doubt it is.” He smiled. “You’re a strong-willed woman, Rael Cofort, for all your quiet manner. I have trouble envisioning you being stampeded into any major course unsuited to you.”

When they had finished the jakek, Jellico came to his feet and took the empty cups. He would drop them off in the galley on his way out. “You can keep Queex company and work in here if you want. Take your time, but if you do finish soon enough, see if you can’t give Thorson a hand. Bear in mind, though, that he’s boss with respect to Cargo when Van’s away.”  ,

“I was born a Free Trader,” the woman responded irritably. “I think I know the protocol.”

“Aye, but you’ve also managed to establish yourself as something of an authority in the kinds of goods he’ll be cataloging. — Dane’s good. I don’t want him overawed into surrendering either his authority or his duties.”

“He won’t be,” she promised.

Miceal studied her somberly. He was not quite sure that he believed her, or, rather, that he should believe her. That mixed-blood story was an old standby for gaining sympathy, although in this case there was a considerable body of apparent evidence to support the Medic’s assertions. He could not press her further, either, not yet. Her frankness— or seeming frankness—had tied him. He had no facts or so much as a solid suspicion to lay against her, and if he pushed Rael now, it would have to be in a serious challenge that could only result in the termination of her association with the Solar Queen. He was not ready to force that. He did not want to force it.

Morally, he could not do so without significant cause.

Canuche Town was not Trewsworld, and it was most assuredly no place to abandon this particular woman. She had done extremely well for Deke Tatarcoff out there in the market, but the method by which she accomplished that service might well have bought her a passage straight into disaster.

Jellico hesitated. More than restraint from initiating a clash between them was required of him. As long as Cofort remained part of the Queen’s company, it was his duty to see to her safety, but apart from the two services, the Navy and Patrol, a starship’s Captain could exert only so much control over the surplanetary off-duty activities of his crew.

Damn it, there was danger! It might be only potential, but it was quite real. “I don’t know your plans for tonight, but I don’t want you, or any of the others for that matter, wandering about Canuche Town alone or even in pairs. Go in at least fours or not at all, which is what I would prefer.”

He braced himself. No independent-minded Free Trader, particularly one not even bound long-term to his ship, was likely to accept that remark or the imperious tone in which it had been uttered with any semblance of good grace.

Whatever her instinctive reaction, however, the woman’s temper held. Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him sharply. “What’s the matter, Miceal?” she asked quietly.

He sighed. “Beauty’s a commodity in Happy City. If any of its creatures happened to witness your work with that piece of Thornen silk, they’ll set the value of a small river tear, and a prime stone at that, on you and maybe more depending on their specific interests. The most spineless vermin in the ultrasystem would try to grab a prize like that if they thought they could get away with it.” Anger shot through him, hot and sharp. “Whatever you do with your life, I won’t see you slaving for those subbiotics!”

Rael’s head lowered. “I’m aware of that possibility,” she told him. “I wasn’t planning on taking chances. As for wandering around, after that business with the port rats, I don’t find the idea of exploring Canuche Town after dark particularly appealing. Once the markets and shops close, there isn’t much here apart from the restaurants to draw me away from the Queen anyway. I’ll be happier and better occupied working on Doctor Tau’s study.”

The Captain’s anger deepened. Aye, he thought bitterly, she would have to have recognized that peril. Comeliness was as a rule an asset in Trade, particularly when dealing with humans, who tended to respond favorably to those they considered to be attractive. Anything greatly beyond that was another matter. Too striking an appearance could be a decided disadvantage under a great many circumstances, and Rael Cofort would have been a potential target even as a very young girl.

Sympathy swept over him. He wanted to take her in his arms, hold and shield her . . .

Jellico resisted that impulse, but he did not want to leave the Medic with the gloom he had aroused weighing her down. He made himself smile, as if at himself. “I’ve wasted a lot of breath with that warning,” he said. “You know, or should know, all of it as well as I do. — Space, I may have some years on you, but given the fact that you were born on a freighter, there probably isn’t all that much disparity in the amount of time we’ve spent wandering around the starlanes.”

Her eyes sparkled. “You’ve certainly put it to better use, then, m.

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afford to buy natural jewels. Synthetics could broaden the Solar Queen’s potential customer base enormously, in fact, given their greater intensity of color, the cheaper article might actually prove the preferred item in some markets.

The credit outlay to get started would not be much, either, and the test stock would claim only a minute portion of their ever-precious cargo space.

The apprentice nodded to himself in satisfaction. He needed to do some more reading. Then he would put together the figures, outline probable good markets and a Trade strategy, and lay his proposal before his chief.

Van Rycke should go for it. Making a profit, not exposing obscure murder plots, was the Queen’s function in life, and this looked like a fine chance to open up a brand-new subfield and effectively monopolize it, at least in this Sector, for a couple or maybe three years until the other Traders caught wise and could move on their own accounts.

“Dane! I thought you were still in the hold.”

He looked up. Rip Shannon had just come into the crew’s cabin and was looking at him in mild surprise. “I finished up there twenty minutes ago,” he responded.

The other’s dark face clouded. “I saw Rael go down nearly that long ago, and the hatch was still unfastened when I glanced at it just now.”

Thorson straightened. “That calls for some investigation.”

“Easy, friend,” Rip said hastily. “She probably has a good reason ...”

“She’s got no right to be there, not without the CargoMaster’s approval, or mine in Van Rycke’s absence.”

“You want some help?”

That gave him pause. “No,” he replied slowly. “I’m not accusing her of anything.” Once more, his expression hardened. “Just stick around. If I’m not back reasonably fast, come looking for me, and be real careful when you do.”

Dane grimaced at the melodramatic cast of his whole reaction to his shipmate’s announcement. Blast Rael Cofort anyway, he thought irritably. Why was it that she seemed to bring out that in him, or managed to get them all involved in situations that demanded an oversized response?

On Ali Kamil, it might look good. He, on the other hand, made a ridiculous hero.

All the same, he did not stop. Cargo and Trade goods were his responsibility. He had no choice but to check out any interference with either. A sabotaged shipment had once given the Queen galaxy-class trouble, and he was not about to risk a replay of that. There was neither profit nor pleasure in the close proximity of extremely unpleasant death.

Cofort was still in the hold when the Cargo-apprentice reached it moments later. Everything looked to be in order, and there was nothing to indicate what she had been doing since her arrival, but she had the examination length of the silver fabric out and had unfolded a corner of it. This she was holding out from her so that she could view it against the gray background of the hold and against the warm, pale flesh of her other hand.

Thorson cleared his throat. The woman glanced at him, then looked again at the silver net. “I didn’t have a chance to examine our acquisitions closely before. This is really lovely. You did very well with it.”

Rael sighed as she returned the length to its place.

“When I was aboard the Roving Star,” she said bitterly, “I listened to Teague and didn’t buy any such basically useless luxuries. Now, I can’t afford them. I’ll never be able to have them, either, not as long as I remain a virtuous, hardworking rim Free Trader.”

The Medic stopped speaking, seeing the open suspicion in her companion. “Power down, boy,” she snapped. “No Cofort’s ever turned jack. I don’t intend to start any new traditions in that line.”

“You wouldn’t admit it if you did,” he replied, trying to make his response sound light but not quite succeeding.

Rael shrugged delicately. “We deal with some beautiful things. I’m not expected to be immune to the charms of all of them, I hope. — You certainly aren’t.”

The man started, and her lips curved into a smile that was not all good-humored sympathy. “I saw the way you looked at that leather utility belt before you settled for the one you bought. If you can want a lot of things you can’t have, why deny me the same right?”

“But you can have some of this,” he countered quickly, picking up on what he saw as the flaw in her argument. “There’s nothing stopping a crew member from buying part of a cargo for personal use. This is faux cloth, not the real thing. A small length of it wouldn’t run you that much.”

She shook her head. “You don’t have enough of it to split your stock. Twelve full bolts isn’t much to offer as it is. Any less, and you can wave farewell to the hope of a quick bulk sale.”

“You’re so concerned about the Solar Queen’s profits?” Dane demanded sarcastically.

Rael’s chin lifted. “One is always loyal to the ship to which one is bound, however long or short the term of service.”

“So tradition goes,” he said. “I haven’t been out of Pool and in space long enough to see if it actually holds true or not.”

“It holds. Usually. The ships where it doesn’t have a tendency to disappear with all hands. Besides, Cargo-Master Van Rycke isn’t likely to fragment the value of his stock by selling off part of it at this stage.” Her response had been cold. Dane Thorson was too sensitive about his youth and lack of experience to call attention to them if he wasn’t trying to be smart. “While I’m with the Queen, I’ll serve her interests.”

“And afterward?”

“Afterward, I’ll compete with her if I have to. So will you, most likely, when you finally qualify.”

Both were silent for some moments after that.

Rael’s eyes fell first. “That was a low blow. I’m sorry, and sorry I was down here without your say. I came looking for you as per Jellico’s instructions, but I should’ve left again when I didn’t find you. I guess I just fell into old habits. I had free run of the Star’s holds.”

“You were good with cargo, I suppose?” he asked sourly. Why not? She was good with everything any way important to him.

“Very good with a lot of it. Teague wanted me for CargoMaster. He was furious when I opted for Medic training instead.” Her back seemed to straighten. “Maybe I was wrong. I liked cargo work and frontline Trade, and unquestionably, I’d have been more useful to him in that capacity, but medicine had the stronger call. I chose to answer it and stuck by that decision.”

“That’s why you left the Star?”

“No,” she said wearily. Her mouth hardened. “I left, Thorson. I wasn’t kicked off. I’ve given reasons why. If you don’t choose to believe them, well, that’s nothing much to either of us, is it?”

Dane decided to try one more tack, although he doubted he would accomplish anything. If the Medic was playing them false, she had thought her role through thoroughly. She had not lacked an answer yet for any question they had put to her. Even Van Rycke and Jellico had not been able to trap her or trip her up.

“By the sound of it, you had some real credits at your disposal on the Roving Star. Have you been on your own so long that you’re completely wiped out?” He felt uncomfortable asking that. It was none of his business and crossed the border into discourtesy by a considerable margin. Cofort would be within her rights to tell him to go fire his burners someplace.

The woman frowned but kept rein on her temper. “No, I haven’t been on the loose that long. The bulk of my former earnings as well as my inheritance from my father are hatching in the Star’s account. Teague wouldn’t release them.”

“What?”

For the first time, she gave him a genuine smile. “He’s not a villain of the starlanes. Everything’s sitting quite properly in a trust. My brother’s not using it. He can’t. He’s just holding it until I latch onto a permanent berth.”

“You’re out of your minority.”

“I know, but those are the terms of the trust. Besides, there isn’t that much involved. We Coforts pour most of our shares of everything back into our ships.” Her head rose. “You don’t think we got where we are without considerable dedication and sacrifice, do you?”

“No. Cofort and his crews are known for that, but . . .”

“But nothing. I wanted to make it on my own, and I’d be begging to be back-alleyed if I went wandering around the starlanes with too impressive a roll. It’s worked out. I haven’t starved even if I haven’t managed to prove myself the greatest phenomenon to bless Trade in this century.”

The woman laughed softly, ruefully. “I suppose I was sort of cherishing that hope, but you can probably imagine how fast I had to flush it down the disposal tubes.”

Dane chuckled despite himself. “You may do it yet,” he told her as he sighed inwardly. She had managed it again, he thought, turned the discussion completely away from questions uncomfortable to herself. He was not surprised, at least. Rael Cofort had proven remarkably adept at doing that since she had first brought herself to the attention of the crew of the Solar Queen. Only time would show whether or not she was using that skill to cover some sort of bad surprise she had planned for the lot of them.

17

The three apprentices, Jasper, and Rael were at the table when Jellico and Van Rycke strode into the mess the following morning. The Medic had Sinbad on her lap, cradled against her left arm. He was eating daintily from her other hand, which she held cupped before him.

“I thought he was beginning to look a little rotund,” Miceal remarked.

Rael glanced up. “He’s a hero again, fortunately an unwounded one this time. Someone,” she added pointedly, “was careless about reattaching the nets properly when he returned to the ship last night”

“Ouch,” muttered the Cargo-Master.

Weeks put down his fork. “Any good leads?” He had been with the Solar Queen a long time, and he knew full well that these two would not have been abroad in the wee hours merely to sample the kind of delights Happy City had to offer.

Van Rycke’s eyes danced like Terra’s sky on a sunny day. “A charter, my friends, a nice, fat, easy charter that’ll completely fill our bulk cargo holds.”

“What’re we carrying and to what port?” Dane asked eagerly.

“Equipment and chemicals to the dome mines on Riginni.”

He held up his hands when the faces of the four men at the table fell. “I’m not overjoyed, either, at the thought of revisiting her again so soon, but it’s a good run, and there could be at least a couple of others like it if we move fast enough.”

He lowered his large frame into the chair nearest him.

“We encountered one Adroo Macgregory, who is founder, president, chairman of the board, and just about High King of Caledonia, Inc. That’s the biggest conglomerate on Canuche. He’d already realized there was a fine market for his products in those new mines and had personally arranged via transceiver a large sale of everything from digging and crushing equipment to construction materials to chemicals of various sorts. He’s eager to move fast, before some competitor can edge him out. There’s no time to buy or license a freighter long-term, so he was planning to utilize several of those currently in port for his initial few runs. After witnessing the stampede Rael started in the market yesterday, though, Macgregory decided to give the Queen a shot at the whole charter, on condition that we’re prepared to accept delivery and lift within the next couple of days. We carry through on that, and we’ll get the work as long as we’re willing to take it and he’s still hiring independents, which he does warn won’t go on forever.”

He fixed the woman with a wicked grin. “Our agreement’s only verbal as yet. He won’t actually seal it until he has our Doctor Cofort present as well.”

Seeing the mischief on the pair, Rael merely arched her brows. “Now that’s a remarkable display of pure democracy!” she declared. “Imagine wanting not only the Solar Queen’s most exalted officers but also a lowly unskilled hand to officiate at so important a transaction!”

Jellico chuckled. “Actually, Macgregory wants to make a change in your employment status. He intends to offer you a place in his sales organization.”

“He what?” she asked, simultaneously trying unsuccessfully to silence her companions’ laughter with an impatient wave of her hand.

“That’s absolutely correct,” the Cargo-Master affirmed.

“He claims that anyone capable of bringing two of his staid close competitors to the brink of fisticuffs—his word—by the mere act of waving a piece of cloth around in the air a few times could do good work in advancing the cause of Caledonia, Inc. — Seriously, Rael, he recognizes precisely what you did and promises that if you’re willing and show both ability and industry, you’ve got an excellent future with his company.”

“Why tell my superiors that he plans to bid for my services?” she inquired bluntly.

“He wants to avoid acquiring a reputation of being an underhanded dealer and scaring off potential interstellar customers. Besides,” Jellico added, “he probably doesn’t think he’s got much real chance of luring you away from us. Space hounds just don’t like quitting the starlanes, however good the offer.”

“Not for a planet like Canuche of Halio, at any rate,” she agreed firmly and with considerable feeling. “When’re we meeting with him?”

“Noon. He’s buying us lunch in one of Canuche Town’s most exclusive restaurants, the Twenty-Two, down by the waterfront, so don’t do too good a job on those syntheggs and sausage.”

“No fear of that. I loaded up for Sinbad’s sake, not mine.”

Ali leaned against the padded backrest of the bench enclosing the table on three sides. “Now that that’s settled,” he drawled, “there remains a possibly intriguing tale to be told. No one made any mention of ‘fisticuffs’ yesterday.”

“We’d left by then,” the Captain told him. “We met Deke Tatarcoff on our way back to the Queen, and he confirmed that there was not one but several near battles before the Thornen silk found a home.”

“He was one happy man,” Van Rycke said as he picked up the story. “He got absolute top price for the bolt and then sold the little examination length for very nearly the same sum. Everything else went as well, albeit at a more reasonable price. He claimed all he’s got left are a couple of scraps of lint and declared that if he’d found them in time, he’d probably have moved those as well.”

Jellico placed the small delicate-cargo box he had been carrying on the table and reverently lifted two bottles out; of it. “From Tatarcoffs private stock. — You’re the one who earned them, Rael. You decide their fate.”

The woman eyed the labels. Wine. Hedon vintage, golden white, dry, and the vineyard was good enough that she recognized the name. They would have no trouble trading this if they chose.

She shook her head. No. Deke was a connoisseur of wine. His personal supply was legendary, and he maintained it strictly for his own pleasure, not for sale or barter.

These bottles had been given in that spirit, and she felt they should be used accordingly. “We’re worth an occasional luxury. We’ll turn them over to Frank and see what he can produce to accompany them. He should enjoy that challenge, especially here on-world where he can get his hands on fresh produce.”

18

Rael smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle out of her tunic. Dress uniforms did that to one, she thought. With their high collars and stark, dramatic styling, they tended to render the victim wearing one acutely conscious of his potential for imperfection. Maybe that was even a subtle part of their purpose. A little uncertainty went far in keeping a person alert ...

She glanced at her companion. Miceal Jellico, too, was encased in his formal uniform, but if he felt discomfort or a sense of confinement, he was far too practiced to give any sign of it.

Van Rycke, walking a few paces ahead, was, perhaps, the more striking figure with his greater height and bulk comprised of rippling muscle, but she found Jellico more impressive. Lean, wiry, with the feline grace a lifetime in space had bequeathed to him, bearing the aura of an authority that carried not merely the welfare but the very lives of others, he looked the part of the master of a starship plying the perilous lanes on the rim. The hard features, the blaster-burned cheek, the eyes like tempered titanone served only to emphasize that role.

Her eyes swept the constantly shifting lunchtime crowd.

Their host had instructed the Free Traders to come to the lobby of this, the tallest building in Canuche Town, promising to meet them here and escort them to the exclusive restaurant at its summit.

The men with her raised their hands suddenly in recognition and greeting, and she studied closely the individual who returned the gesture.

Adroo Macgregory was like Miceal, she judged at once.

He was older, with more white in his hair than dark. His eyes were a deep blue, his face rounder and fuller, but the two were of one breed. Space hound or planet hugger, she recognized that strength and independence of spirit. This one would not lightly bargain his soul or his season’s profits away.

The Canuchean made his way through the throng to join their party. He immediately put out his hand in the ancient Terran greeting universally recognized wherever the mother world’s seed had taken root. “Right on time. It’s good to see you again, Captain Jellico, Mr. Van Rycke.”

“We’re pleased to see you as well, Mr. Macgregory,” the former replied. He motioned the Medic to step forward. “This is Doctor Rael Cofort.”

The man inclined his head in an old-fashioned bow. His eyes sparkled even as they seemed to penetrate her to her very soul. “You’re lovely for a fact. Doctor Cofort, but mortal like the rest of us, I’m relieved to see. I’d be a bit uncomfortable trying to deal with a vision.”

Her smile broadened. “You’d manage all the same if it was good for business.”

Macgregory laughed. “I would indeed. Doctor.”

Their host ushered the off-worlders toward a roped-off lift platform. As he passed the uniformed gatekeeper he said, “We have a reservation for four,” unnecessarily, apparently, for the woman began to raise the barrier as soon as she saw him.

Other groups were boarding as well, chiefly pairs with a couple of threesomes thrown in. All fell silent as they stepped onto the platform, even as Adroo did. None were mere pleasure parties, and these close quarters lacked the privacy for the kind of top-level business discussions in which they intended to engage.

As soon as it was fully loaded, the lift started to rise. Rael leaned against the sturdy guardrail and peered over the edge to watch the teeming lobby recede as floor after floor flashed by. Soon, the crowd below appeared to be no more than a sea of animated miniature toys.

Because the lift was an express, free of any call to slow or pause in its ascent, it rose with a speed that almost crossed the threshold of comfort. Its motion was perfectly smooth, however, and it would take more than a peaceful rise like this to disturb the three spacers.

Only seconds after it had begun to move, the platform began to slow into a gentle stop that brought it flush with the floor of the Twenty-Two’s reception area. The offworlders stepped from it to find themselves on the stable hub of a broad, very slowly revolving disk on which were set a large number of tables, some near the core or in the center of the moving area, some right by the outer rim.

They were not surprised by the arrangement; it was a very old one that remained popular for the simple reason that it was so effective. People loved to dine in such a setting wherever there was height and a view of sufficient interest and beauty to warrant the construction of such a facility.

This establishment made particularly good use of the design, Miceal had to admit. In place of the usual flat roof and tall, broad window panels, the entire restaurant was enclosed in a huge glassteel dome, inches thick in fact but so transparent as to seem not to be there at all. It must be truly spectacular here on a clear night, he thought, with the stars and Canuche’s two tiny moons shining above, mirrored below by the lights of the populous town and the harbor. By day, much of that splendor was absent, for the high, steep slopes rising sharply on either side of the narrow bay restricted the view to the uninspiring community flowing up from the industrial belt at the water’s edge to pour over the crests into the invisible regions beyond. The harbor itself saved the situation as far as he was concerned.

The building was not so terribly high as to destroy the detail of the scene below, and the ever-busy port offered a wealth of activity to catch and hold an observer’s attention.

A formally suited individual approached their party.

“My usual table’s on the outside,” Adroo whispered, “but if that’ll bother you, we’ll change. You’re here to enjoy a damn good meal, not to have your palates blunted by the peculiarities of the place.”

Even as he spoke, his guests saw what he meant. The restaurant extended beyond the walls that confined the lower portions of the building, and the part of the floor that comprised the overhang was constructed of the same marvelously strong, clear material that fashioned the dome enclosing them. The tables placed there seemed to be standing on the air itself.

Jellico could bolt down food just about anywhere, but when a real feast was put before him he preferred to devote his attention to it and not be distracted by theatrics or dramatic surroundings, however attractive or interesting.

Rael’s delight, on the other hand, was open for once, and he offered no protest. “We’re not likely to be eating in the Twenty-Two anytime soon again,” he said. “Let’s go for the full experience.”

They were soon seated in comfortably upholstered chairs drawn up around a white-covered table. Water was immediately set before them, and they were given hot, moist towels for their hands.

The newcomers were conscious not so much of unease as of a sense of disorientation at first. The floor felt solid beneath their feet, but so clear was the glassteel that any downward glance seemed to make a lie of both touch and knowledge. For a time, all three off-worlders kept their eyes carefully fixed on their plates until the fascination of the scene revealed below outstripped the instinct to flight, and they began at last to enjoy the strange perspective and the array of activity it revealed.

It was just this experience that moved most people to make their first visit to the Twenty-Two, and they were left in peace to savor it. Their waiter discreetly watched until the four began at last to look about for him. At that point, he approached their table.

“Will there be any change from our meat entree? We also offer fowl, waterfood, or vegetables,” he added for the benefit of the spacers, who were quick to declare that they would be delighted to have the house meal.

“What has Max put together for us today, Charles?” Adroo inquired after giving his own assent.

The man smiled expansively. “Just about heaven, Mr. Macgregory. Broiled round of rambeef, black and white pasta balls with gravy, and young sweet sil pods in white sauce. The after-sweet is a fourteen-layer cream torte.” No pre-entree courses were served on Canuche and no beverages save water during the meal itself so that nothing might dull or alter the taste of the main course. Dessert was always followed by either jakek or coffee.

“It sounds good, Charles. Thanks.”

Once the waiter had gone, Macgregory drew an official-looking multicopy document from the portfolio he was carrying. “My lawyers drew this up for me last night. I’ve already signed and sealed it, so all that’s needed to activate it are your signatures.”

Van Rycke took it and read it over carefully. He nodded his agreement. “It covers everything we discussed,” he said as he affixed his signature. He passed it to Jellico, who signed as well. He took the Queen’s copy, which he folded and slipped into the document pouch on his belt; the other he returned to the industrialist. “Thank you, Mr. Macgregory.”

“My pleasure,” Macgregory responded with satisfaction.

He fixed his attention on Rael. “Now that I can’t be accused of holding that contract over your head, I believe we have something to discuss. Doctor Cofort. — Your Captain did tell you of my offer, I presume?”

“He did,” she replied, “or told me of its nature, rather. He gave me no details.”

“Those are for us to work out if you’re interested in pursuing the matter. It would entail no small change for you, and I expect you’ll have to give it some pretty deep thought.”

She smiled. “Deeper than you imagine, Mr. Macgregory. I didn’t simply choose or fall into a career in space, you see. I was born on a Free Trader. The stars are in my blood. It’d go against everything I am to try to settle on any one world.”

“Think about it all the same. I won’t press you for an immediate decision—I wouldn’t trust the judgment of anyone who’d give me one now under these circumstances— but a drastic change can work out well for a person. I had a bad case of wanderlust in my youth, and I’ve never been sorry for settling down and going into business.”

The woman nodded slowly. “All right, Mr. Macgregory. I will give the possibility serious consideration, but I can’t honestly see myself pursuing it. Even if I were willing to quit the starlanes, I’m still a Medic. I don’t want to give that up to spend my life selling, whatever the product.” Rael eyed him pensively. “Would you mind answering a question, Mr. Macgregory?”

“Probably not. If I do, I’ll tell you when I hear it.”

“You could’ve had the Thornen silk if you’d wanted it. Why didn’t you take it?”

He chuckled. “Not for lack of interest, I assure you. — Every man should know himself and what suits him. I’m a worker ant and must content myself with the browns, blacks, and grays of my kind. Butterfly wings belong to other folk. That material would look ridiculous on my person or in my home, which is as plain as myself now that my wife’s dead. I did toy with the idea of getting it for my sons and dividing it between them, but I’ve never spoiled them with extravagant presents and decided my best course was to stick to that policy.” He laughed. “Besides, I was having too good a time watching my colleagues make noble fools of themselves. I didn’t want to ruin the fun by entering the fray myself.”

Jellico smiled at that, but his eyes were on the woman.

Macgregory was right to try to lure her into his sales organization, he thought. Rael Cofort could move just about anything, herself not least of all, and she did not have to resort to conscious technique or flamboyant stunts to do it. Her talent for fixing her complete attention on a speaker, as if she found him genuinely valuable and infinitely interesting, saw to that. People were going to respond to that, and it would be a rare one who would not give her a favorable hearing in turn.

Their food was brought to them at that point, and the spacers quickly discovered that it was not the view that brought patrons back time after time to the Twenty-Two. Everything was absolutely fresh and superbly prepared.

Canucheans did not go in heavily for strong spices, but the dishes they produced were not lessened because of their delicate, natural taste. The chef here had the best ingredients at his disposal, local and imported, and his hand, though restrained, was unquestionably a master’s.

While they ate, their host filled them in on Canuche’s history and present status both in response to queries by Van Rycke and in keeping with surplanetary courtesy, which prohibited the discussion of business while food was actually before one’s guests.

“. . . She’s an old planet and an odd one. There’s little or no life at all on any of the three continents in the northern hemisphere save a bit right along the coasts.”

“Burn-on?” Jan asked.

“We don’t know. If so, it happened so long ago that all direct evidence has disappeared. It wouldn’t be the Forerunners who did it but rather their Forerunners. A lot of our scientists think a natural disaster, or series of them, might’ve been responsible, and a small minority says the north might never have supported more than we have now in the way of biotics.”

“That’s not very likely,” Jellico said.

“No. It doesn’t fit the pattern shown anywhere else in the galaxy where there’s water and a reasonable atmosphere. Weathering makes soil, and something, evolutionarily speaking, eventually comes along to live in it.”

“Besides, there is native life on Canuche.”

“Yes. Very little and all low level in the north, as I said. The south has a reasonably rich flora. The fauna is species poor, but those creatures that are present often exist in vast numbers. Rambeeves are an example, as are the several kinds of fowl we’ve elected to farm.”

“What about the sea?”

“The same general picture holds for all four oceans. Poor in variety but with large populations of the species that are present. Life of any sort is scarce or entirely absent from smaller bodies of water, north and south.”

“Something happened here, right enough,” the Captain declared. “Someday, maybe Federation scientists or Canuche’s own will discover what it was.”

“We keep hoping,” Adroo replied.

Rael fixed her eyes on her plate. She did not have to hear more or read a library of documentation to be convinced gut level, in her own heart and mind, that Ali Kamil was right. The chill of that realization filled, all but overwhelmed, her. Canuche of Halio had been shattered in the past and maybe more than once, badly enough that most of the rich fauna and flora that should have graced such a planet had been eliminated, leaving the field open on each level of the food chain for the surviving species, plant and animal, to expand into great megapopulations.

She looked up again as the industrialist continued his account of his homeworld’s history.

“Our First-Ship ancestors realized they had no natural paradise,” he told them, “and decided to turn her peculiarities to their advantage and industrialize on a grand scale here in the north. The south, they devoted to farming. Canucheans knew from the start that we wanted to be self-sufficient and since this was a closed colony, claimed and settled by one group at one time, our ancestors enjoyed the luxury of being able to lay pretty definite and precise plans before ever taking ship for her surface. Canuche provides the resources to meet our basic needs on-world, and the colony’s founders made that a prime part of our life charter. — No society can count itself secure, safe from the danger of being overwhelmed by alien influences, or from being annihilated or starved outright, if it has to depend on outsiders for the really essential goods and services. It hasn’t always been easy, and there have been periods of strong temptation, but thus far we’ve managed to appreciate our founders’ wisdom and stick with their ideals and instructions.”

Macgregory was a native of the capital, and his pride in it was apparent when their conversation turned to Canuche Town itself a few minutes later.

“Canuche Town’s actually a misnomer,” he told them. “It may not be an inner-system megalopolis, but we have over two million residents and at least half that number again in the suburbs. That qualifies us as a city by anyone’s lights.

“Like the other Canuchean towns, this is a community of individual neighborhoods. When our future First Shippers were developing their plans for the organization of our urban centers, it was decided to keep our workers near their jobs, ideally within walking distance or, at worst, a short commute away. Each of the neighborhoods thereby created is regarded and treated as a separate entity within the city and has its own schools, hospitals, shopping places, essential support services, and general entertainment and self-improvement facilities, which are often one and the same. Connecting and managing everything are an excellent public transport system and a civic government kept small enough and close enough to its constituents to remain responsive and effective. — The whole system’s efficient, and everything’s kept on a decent, human scale.

“You’re actually seeing us just about at our worst from up here,” Macgregory informed them. “Houses aren’t packed in this tightly in most places, but between the plants down in the waterfront region and the docks themselves, there’s a huge demand for workers. As I mentioned before, they live as close as possible to their jobs. It’s a slum, in point of fact, or the Canuchean version of a slum. We don’t have the poverty and the major problems associated with that in many other places.”

“Why the docks at all?” Van Rycke inquired. “Air transport’s efficient, cheap, and fast.”

“So are bur boats. Added to that, they don’t take half a neighborhood out with them if one goes down. That happened with a big air transport during Canuche’s early years. Once was enough. Besides, the boats provide work for a lot more people. As incomprehensible as that may seem to a lot of off-worlders, keeping our population fully employed has just about top priority on Canuche. You don’t work, you emigrate.”

“What about the spaceport, then?” the Medic asked hastily, hearing the defensive irritation in their host’s voice. Handling the problem of a population a planet could not wholly support simply by kicking the excess off-world was not a policy favored by the Federation at large. “Granted it provides some good jobs, but starship crashes have been among the worst disasters in Federation history.”

“It’s not physically within the city,” he replied a trifle grimly, “and we do insist that all ships make their approach and depart from the landward side.”

“That’s about as much as anyone can do,” Jellico told him, “and the general procedures at the port’re as tight as I’ve encountered anywhere.”

The Captain gazed a moment through the transparent wall. “What are we seeing down there? What, for instance, is that huge white building on the right?”

“That’s Caledonia, Inc.’s, contribution to Canuche Town’s prosperity.” The industrialist scowled momentarily. “If I’d listened to my instincts instead of to my fools of financial advisers, there’d be two more stories on it, but even as it is, it’s the biggest single facility in the city, employing some thirty thousand people on-site alone, not counting our cadre of longshoremen, the crews manning our ships and transports, and those maintaining our feeder lines.”

“Factory?” Van Rycke asked.

He nodded. “Basically. It’s what we call a hodgepodge plant. We do some light manufacturing from scratch and a lot of assembly of parts and products begun elsewhere as well as a great deal of research and development.”

“Is that the usual procedure for the big manufacturers here?”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Caledonia deals in construction and mining supplies, including very heavy major equipment, and in chemicals. Much of the preparation of both is done inland, either for safety’s sake or on or near the mining sites for economic reasons. Some of the smaller items can go more completely through the manufacturing process here, but almost all the chemicals are piped to us in their component parts and blended or treated or whatever in the plant, then sent to their destinations as quickly as possible. We don’t like holding them here. A good many of them have properties that make it undesirable to store them in quantity in a populous region.”

“What do the other factories make?”

“You name it. Every major company on Canuche has some sort of office in the city, and most of them do active work here. Few of us can resist the opportunity offered by the harbor. Anything produced in Canuche Town can be shipped directly from here with almost no intermediate transport costs, and the proximity of the spaceport is a plus beyond price for importers and exporters alike.”

Van Rycke studied the body of water below, an inlet six miles long and approximately a mile wide, whose dark blue color proclaimed considerable depth. “You could have done worse than that,” he remarked. “It’s what decided your ancestors to build on this site, of course?”

“Naturally. It’s one of the finest on a planet well supplied with good ports. — Just .look at this setup! Twelve miles, six on each bank, of Hat waterfront land perfect for industrial facilities of every sort. The slopes on either side are steep but not cliffs. People can readily live on them. The channel, which we call the Straight and Narrow, is sufficiently broad to permit the ready passage of any two vessels ever likely to travel our seas, and it’s deep enough that in the old days, it would have been termed almost bottomless.

“We’re truly blessed with respect to our defenses against the side effects of Canuche’s bad weather, too. Both the current and the prevailing wind run parallel to this part of the coast, and only under the rarest combination of unfortunate circumstances does a storm pummel it head-on. Even in that event, we usually escape its worst fury. The heights on the seaward side break the force of the gales, and the Straight pushes in at a diagonal. It opens away from the flow of the current, and a lot of the sea’s anger simply bypasses us. The harbor area has had real trouble from storms or the ocean on only four or five occasions since the area was first settled.”

“There’s still the potential for danger,” the woman warned, “if not from nature, then as a result of your own efforts. A few products at least of all those made or shipped here must be inflammable or violently unstable. These slopes are high and steep enough to confine and reflect back a blast or a sudden fire acting like one. The rest of the town would be spared a lot of grief as a result, but this area would pay the passage for all.”

Macgregory looked at her with new respect. “You’ve got an eye. Doctor, and a head to go with it. — The city planners are aware of that risk. It was brought home to us by the possibility scenarios we ran during the Crater War. Canuche went heavily into munitions production at the time. Quite literally every port of any size was handling the finished products or their components, and none of those in charge was stupid enough not to realize the enormous potential for disaster inherent in dealing with such materiel. We were determined to hold on to both our profits and our lives.

“Canuche Town responded by keeping the war goods as much as possible away from the city and inner harbor.” He turned in his chair so he could gaze back over his shoulder.

“See those red docks on the shoulders framing the mouth of the Straight?”

“Aye.”

“They continue some distance beyond along the seaward side, as far as there’s level land to hold the piers backing them. All combat materiel was loaded from them. Nothing ever did happen, praise the Lord of Light and Dark, but if a ship or dock had gone up, the worst of the blast would have broken on the heights or bypassed us, even as natural storms do. We’d have suffered some from the resultant sea surge, but that, too, would mostly have gone by.

“Munitions aren’t the same industry now, I’m not sorry to say, and they’re handled entirely on the west coast, where there are lower population levels. We use the red docks for fuel shipments, especially concoctions intended for the spaceport, the raw ingredients to make them, and other chemicals with chancy natures.”

“Aren’t those fuel tanks?” Jan inquired, pointing to a cluster of three tall cylinders just beneath their table. He could see approximately fifty similar structures scattered all along the waterfront. They were more heavily concentrated in some spots than others, but no section on either shore appeared to be completely devoid of them.

“Yes, they are that,” The industrialist’s voice was cold.

“I’ve made myself an unpopular man trying to have them removed and that damned stuff stored underground where it belongs.”

“One good fire’ll educate everyone for you,” Rael told him glumly.

“No doubt, but the poor people living and working around the thing’ll be the ones who foot the tuition bill.”

Jellico sighed to himself. They would wind up with a brace of disaster scholars in the party, he thought sourly. If the conversation turned to a detailed comparison of some of history’s grimmer episodes, it would be to the decided detriment of a magnificent meal. He, for one, wanted to reap full enjoyment out of the incredibly rich torte the waiter Charles had just set before him.

The Cargo-Master was of the same opinion. “Canuche’s citizens appear on the whole to be doing their part to ensure their safety. That and keeping on the alert are about all anyone can do.” He was quiet while he ate an experimental forkful of the torte. “This is excellent! — What other cargoes do your ships handle? There’s scarcely a dock vacant down there.”

The older man smiled. “A graphic description of folks being blown halfway to the next galaxy is no aid to the digestion,” he agreed. “To answer your question, almost anything grown or made on Canuche or imported from off-world finds its way to these docks at some point or other.

“Most of the bigger corporations own the port facilities fronting their establishments.—Caledonia has the four adjacent to our plant plus two red docks for the chemicals. — The rest are leased from the city by the smaller companies and the independent freight and passenger lines.

“The independents tend to group similar products together where practicable. Caledonia has its own longshoremen and equipment, but most draw on the city pool, and it’s more economical to have any necessary specialists and specific gear more or less permanently nearby and on hand. For example, all sorts of southern-made goods and produce come in to the docks in the Cup area, right there below us where the Straight ends and the two banks meet, and the various products the north makes to meet their needs are sent off to them from there. Three large corporations pull in a big part of their profits on fertilizer alone at this time of year despite the fact that the farmers mainly use animal byproducts. Sil plants respond so well to a feeding of ammonium nitrate that a lightly treated field will produce three crops in a year in subtropical areas, two in temperate regions.”

“Ammonium nitrate?” the Medic asked, frowning slightly.

“A common natural salt. Canuche has vast stores of it.”

“It sounds familiar,” she said, “though I don’t recall the Roving Star ever carrying any. One of my brother’s other ships or her predecessor may have done so at some time or other.”

“I doubt it,” Van Rycke told her. “There’s no interstellar or even intrasystem Trade in it. The stuffs plentiful throughout the galaxy. Any planets we’ve found thus far who want it either have enough of their own or the means of readily making it or a reasonable substitute. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall any other planet’s making a real industry out of it, though my memory could be failing me on that. Synthetics and animal products have either overshadowed or entirely supplanted it in most places for centuries.”

Adroo nodded. “True. It’s the fact that we have so much of it so readily available that gives it its strength here, that and because sil plants respond so well to it.”

He pointed to the scurrying workers and machines loading medium-sized crates on a squat-looking ship. “That freighter’s kind of interesting. She bears the pretentious name of Regina Man’s and is an independent that carries just about everything she can cram into her holds or on her decks. That’s not the norm on Canuche. Most skippers don’t care for a great deal of diversity. They’d rather not have to worry about more than one or two types of cargo at a time. Not this one, though. She took on coring drills and the stems supporting them from one of my competitors yesterday morning, then picked up an immense cargo of small items from another—screws, nuts, bolts, nails, and spikes of every conceivable description, some fashioned from metal and a lot from sundry synthetics. Passable stuff, too,” he added grudgingly, “though none of it would win any contests against Caledonia’s counterparts.”

The industrialist smiled at that display of chauvinism.

“Oh well, it’s a sad man who can’t or won’t take pride in his own.”

“What’s she loading now?” Jellico asked, peering down at what seemed to be a scene of utter frenzy but which he knew was in-fact a well-ordered operation. “Do you have any idea?”

“Considering where she’s berthed, a good guess would be a consignment of rope of various types, including twine and string. A large shipment of it was brought to that dock yesterday evening.”

“You know everything that comes and goes on these docks?” the Cargo-Master asked dryly.

Macgregory laughed. “Hardly, Mr. Van Rycke. It’s just like I said before. A lot of the docks’re either owned or permanently leased by fairly big organizations with well-known products and imports, and similar types of goods tend to move from fixed spots. I don’t have a clue about the numerous small, independent lots that go in and out every day, and if someone wants to make a big secret of what he’s doing, I wouldn’t know what he’s hiding.” His eyes sparkled momentarily. “Unless I think it’s worth the effort of finding out, that is.” His guests would know full well that his position gave him the power if not the official authority to do that under most circumstances if he chose to exercise it. “Like most independents, the Regina Man’s has her own band of regular customers. That makes for a similar cargo mix, just about what I described, often along with some ammonium nitrate or benzol thrown in. She’ll spend three or four days in port loading up and refueling, make her run, and come back to repeat the cycle. — No mystery at all about her.”

Seeing that the four had finished their torte, Charles returned to the table. “Would you like some jakek or coffee?”

“Jakek,” Miceal responded quickly. Inwardly, he mourned that local etiquette forbade the requesting of a second helping of the torte to go with it. That had been one of the finest examples of the culinary art he had enjoyed in a stellar age.

“Jakek,” Rael said somewhat absently.

Van Rycke eyed his shipmates with disapproval. “Coffee for me, please. Old is best after a fine meal like this.”

“I’m old-fashioned as well,” agreed Adroo. “That’ll be two cups of jakek and two of coffee, Charles.”

“Very good, sir.” He deftly retrieved the used plates and cutlery and withdrew as unobtrusively as he had arrived.

Some minutes later, he returned with a tray bearing the four cups, which he set before their proper recipients.

Jellico sipped his. “As good as any I’ve tasted even on Hedon,” he averred.

“So’s the coffee,” Jan remarked. “A special blend, Mr. Macgregory?”

He nodded. “Yes. Max’s secret. We could easily enough find out the varieties he brings in, but not the proportions he uses.”

“That would only spoil the mystery.”

“Precisely.”

Rael Cofort raised her cup to her lips but held it there while she gazed beyond it seemingly into the depths of space. Suddenly, she set it down again with enough force that the resulting click against the saucer caused her three companions to turn toward her. “Mr. Macgregory,” she asked tensely, “you said ammonium nitrate is frequently loaded in the Cup area?”

“Yes,” he answered, surprised. “Just about every week. Nearly daily at this time of year. Why?”

“Then Canuche Town is a death wish awaiting fulfillment.”

19

A frown darkened the Cargo-Master’s features, but Jellico silenced him with a sharp shake of his head. A cold dread chilled his own heart. It was not the Medic’s words but the deadly, calm certainty with which she had spoken them that drove the spear through him. That tone compelled attention, the more powerfully from those who knew this woman at all.

Adroo Macgregory was not pleased, but he, too, was gripped by his guest’s manner. Groundlessly or not, she was afraid for his city. “It’s an old, stable compound, Doctor. You can jostle it, drop containers of it, run a transport over it without any effect whatsoever.”

“Aye, but give it a sudden, extreme increase in temperature, and you’ve got an atom bomb on your hands. — I’m not exaggerating, Mr. Macgregory. Ammonium nitrate sounded familiar to me, not because I’d heard of it in connection with Trade but because of my own studies. History tells loud and clear what it can do. That stuff has caused galactic-class chaos before now, and given everything else stored and made around here, there’s enough of it down there right now to literally annihilate everything and everyone between these slopes if absolutely everything went wrong, and maybe a good part of the city beyond as well.”

“You’re sure?” the Solar Queen’s Captain asked quietly.

“Aye. The incidents I’d studied took place in the far past. As Mr. Van Rycke says, ammonium nitrate hasn’t been big business, or real business at all, for a very long time, but it has caused trouble before, and it’ll do it again. Canuche Town’s primed for it.”

“She’s right if that blasted stuff’s as bad as she claims,” the Canuchean cut in sharply. “The Cup’s the worst conceivable place for an accident involving a volatile substance. — I’ll look into this. Doctor Cofort. If your claims prove out, before you lift with your last charter from me, you’ll find ammonium nitrate being handled on the red docks, with shipments so scheduled as not to bring it into contact with too much else that might exacerbate an accident.”

“Will you be able to get the dock space for it?” Jan asked doubtfully. “Everything looks pretty locked up down there.”

“Out at the very tip, yes, which is where it belongs anyway by the sound of it. Those piers’re too far away from everything to be considered convenient, so there are always a number of them available. We don’t ship that much sensitive material at a given moment nowadays to tie them all up. Or we didn’t.”

“You’ll have to delve far back for confirmation,” Rael warned, “to the first Martian settlement and pre-space Terra.”

“I have the people to do the digging, Doctor. Don’t you worry about that. I also have the means to collect evidence more directly. — I’ll have to ask you to excuse me for a few minutes. They have sealed booths here. There are some calls I have to make.”

Rael watched him go, then lowered her eyes to the table to avoid those of her companions. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“He mentioned that two million people live in Canuche Town,” Miceal said.

He took a sip out of his cup and scowled. “Space, woman, why couldn’t you at least have waited until we’d finished our jakek?”

“The coffee’s no less good,” Van Rycke told him, although he glanced nervously below even as he spoke. The motion of the restaurant had already begun to put the Cup behind them. The effect would be strictly illusory in the event that the worst happened while they were up here, of course, but it was a definite psychological comfort to see it go.

He frowned again as an old memory stirred. “I think she’s right, Miceal. Way back in my first year at the Pool, we had an old cracked-helmet retired Cargo-Master as an instructor. I recall his mentioning that ammonium nitrate used to be on the hazardous cargo list at one time before it was dropped for never being carried. I believe he also mentioned that it was actually used as an explosive in olden times. — Damn, I should have remembered that as soon—”

“Power down, Van,” Jellico said calmly. “Even you’re not a computer. — Here comes our host.”

Macgregory did not reclaim his chair. “Come on, space hounds. We’re about to witness an experiment.”

One of the calls the Canuchean industrialist had made was to order a transport for his party, and a large four-wheel passenger vehicle was waiting for them at the entrance of the tower building when they emerged from it a few minutes later.

It made no delay in carrying them through the crowded streets and deposited them in short order before the main entrance of the giant Caledonia, Inc., plant.

Adroo nodded to the guard stationed there and led his guests inside. “Our research quarters are this way.”

It was through the clerical portion of the huge facility that he conducted them rather than through those sections where Caledonia’s numerous products were made or assembled. Here were no coverall-clad laborers driving their minitrucks, lifters, or manipulators or commanding their banks of robots but, rather, fashionably dressed men and women seated at desks or moving in an office worker’s universal hurry along the seemingly endless hallways.

Once again, Rael was struck by the suitability of their Trade uniforms. They attracted no notice, or none beyond the inevitable interest aroused by the company in which they traveled.

She gave a wry smile. That held true only for their dress uniforms, she amended. They would not make such an appealing picture after a few hours shoving cargo around, particularly on some low-mech steam pit like Queex’s Tabor or Amazoon of Indra.

“Here’s the Research Center,” Macgregory told them at last, echoing the sign on the big double swinging doors as he pushed his way through them.

Another maze of corridors awaited them on the other side, in general appearance much the same as those they had left behind save that the people they encountered now were wearing white. Most also had their hair confined in san-nets and their hands covered by the light, supple laboratory gloves that were standard equipment in such installations throughout the Federation.

A technician whom Rael judged to be about Dane Thorson’s age approached them. “We’re all set, Mr. Macgregory.”

“Lead the way.”

In response, she opened a door on their left, this one a panel that silently slid to a tight close behind them.

They found themselves in a hall or walkway about five feet wide that completely encircled a sealed chamber walled off from them by a barrier of some colorless, transparent material. The ceiling above the enclosed place was a mass of lights and odd instruments as complex in appearance as the bridge of the Solar Queen. The floor was a seamless sheet of dull-finished metal.

The whole place was empty save for a single metal sphere approximately one foot in diameter resting in splendid isolation in what appeared to be its exact center.

“The control panel’s over here,” the technician told them.

They followed her a quarter around the perimeter of the room until they came to a two-foot-square board of dials and gauges that made a fitting complement to the bewildering ceiling inside.

“That ball is a miniature laboratory,” Adroo explained.

“We put the substance to be tested in the bottom half, seal on the top, and introduce whatever forces or elements we want while the sensors fixed on the interior monitor the results. Despite being easily handled, it’s a sturdy little device and is equipped with escape valves to release gases before they can build up dangerous pressure levels.”

Jellico tapped the crystal wall separating them from the ball. “Shatterproof?”

“Of course. We don’t take chances when dealing with potentially hazardous materials. Those balls are strong, but they’re not invincible, and neither are my staff members who have to deal with them.”

“What now?”

“We’re more or less simulating the hold of a freighter. We packed a proportionally equivalent volume of ammonium nitrate in the lab, and now we’re going to subject it to some abuse.”

“Electricity first, sir?” the white-garbed woman asked. “Or a spark?”

“I believe Doctor Cofort mentioned a sudden, sharp rise in temperature. Try direct contact with fire.”

“Very good, sir.”

She bent over her console. Her fingers deftly touched one button, then moved to a finely calibrated dial. Immediately, a slender wire descended from the ceiling. It hovered over the sphere an instant before finding and entering a small hole at its top. “We’ll start out with a relatively cool flame, like that of a normal fire,” she said, “and increase the temperature every few milliseconds until there’s a reaction ...”

A sudden, searing flash lit the sealed chamber followed almost in the same instant by a sharp clap of sound clearly audible through the screening walls confining it. Rael stifled a scream as she threw her hands before her face in an instinctive effort to ward off the glowing objects hurtling toward them from the shattered ball.

It was over seemingly in the moment it began. When the observers collected themselves once more, they stared in awe at the place where the miniature laboratory had been.

All that remained of it now was a blackened patch on the floor and some twisted fragments scattered throughout the chamber.

“Lord of Light and Dark,” whispered the Canuchean woman. “The valves were operational . . .”

“They just couldn’t handle this,” Jellico responded briskly. His fingers followed the line of the scratch a piece of shrapnel had gouged in the shielding material in front of him. If the barrier had not held, it would have sliced through his throat. “Your little lab wasn’t designed to endure old-fashioned brute force,” he told her. “It was meant to conduct sane experiments, not contain a bomb blast.”

“A what?” Macgregory demanded sharply.

Van Rycke shrugged. “What else would you call it? It even fitted the stereotype image—a round, explosive-filled metal ball with a fuse sticking out of it, or sticking into it in this case.”

“It behaved like one at any rate,” Adroo agreed. He turned to his employee. “You recorded the whole thing, of course?”

“Naturally.” There was no diffidence in that answer. This was her job; she knew how to do it. “There were some returns from the lab as well. I won’t know how much we got until I go over the recordings.”

“Get on it, then see if you can replicate the results under a variety of circumstances. Use less expensive bomb cases. We can recoup our costs later as part of a civic service claim, but we’re not likely to collect in a hurry.”

She smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“And for the Lord of Light’s sake, don’t get yourself or anyone else killed. That may be a safe room, but it’s not going to hold a baby planetbuster.”

“I’ll be careful. — What’re we going to do, Mr. Macgregory? If a cargo goes up, the blast’ll be almost literally infinitely worse than this little pop we just made. It won’t be confined to a sterile, empty, shielded chamber, and more than one hold will almost certainly be involved even at the outset. Once the inevitable happens and the chain reaction starts, all the Federation’s hells will be on us for a fact.”

“We don’t panic. — First, we’ve got to charge our blasters, get all our evidence together, then I hit the City Council with it. Luckily, everyone on it has some interest in the harbor. That should help jab a needle in their tails. — Doctor Cofort, I’ll need your historical information for a backup.”

“I’ve just got a temporary berth on the Queen and have nothing with me. However, I can tell you where to set your researchers looking.”

“Good enough. Fasmit the details to me as soon as you get back to your ship. Mr. Van Rycke has the code.”

The industrialist gave his head a sharp shake. “I’ve been remiss. It’s past time for another evacuation drill.”

“Evacuation?” Jan inquired.

“Canuche was spared during the Crater War. A lot of other worlds weren’t. I’ve seen the tapes, both of those struck by the combatants and those hit even more viciously by jacks taking advantage of the general chaos. I’ve also seen evidence of what can happen when people don’t respond correctly or in time to natural upheavals—storms, earthquakes, and the like.

“All my employees are required to keep on hand a week’s supply of concentrates, water, first aid supplies, any necessary specific medications, and blankets for every human and animal member of their household plus a tent or other portable shelter for them all and a surplanetary transceiver to keep abreast of news. Periodically, I order them to carefully shut down the plant and feeder lines, take their emergency gear, and leave the city for the hardpan beyond. The only concession I make is to exclude ailing or handicapped persons and a caregiver if one is needed. I’m out to save lives, not take or endanger them.”

“They put up with that?” Rael asked.

Macgregory smiled. All spacers had to accept discipline, but such blind obedience would be an alien concept to the mind of a Free Trader. “There’s always something extra to sweeten the paychecks of those who comply. The odd one who doesn’t finds a dismissal notice. Besides, one of the very few times in its history that Canuche Town suffered real injury from the ocean occurred only a few years back. Our weather forecasters told us to expect trouble, and, because my people were concentrated in the most immediately threatened neighborhoods, I forced a full evacuation early. They spent one hell of a miserable night, but when the waters came, nobody was hurt, and those whose property was damaged received financial help to repair or replace it.

“The rest of the populace wasn’t told to leave until much later. There was haste» some confusion, and a little panic at the end. A handful of injuries occurred as a result and a few deaths, all of those among the fools who refused to go at all.

“My policy proved itself in the time of testing, and since then, I haven’t gotten much static when I’ve demanded a refresher course on the procedures.”

His lips tightened. “Now I see how much more important it is than even I’d realized. Danger’s a lot closer to us than a chance attack from the stars or a freak, fairly readily predicted combination of foul weather or geophysical events.”

Adroo squared his shoulders. “That’s my business and Canuche Town’s. Thank you, all three of you, for your help thus far. I may also want a deposition from you, just a description of our conversation today and what you observed here plus any knowledge you have about ammonium nitrate.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Miceal answered for his party. “I can’t help with background detail, unfortunately, but I’ll apply to Trade records and see if we can’t uncover more for you. Van and Rael will, of course, do what they can as well.”

“Again, my thanks.—In the meantime, I have a living to make. To get back to our original reason for meeting, Captain, how soon can you begin to accept deliveries?”

“Right away.”

“We’ll start tomorrow morning, then.” He turned to Rael.

“Here’s my card, Doctor. It lists my private code. I haven’t forgotten my offer. Hell, after all this, you needn’t take a sales job. Name what you want, and if it isn’t on the books now, I’ll create a post to your specifications.”

She nodded gravely. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Macgregory, and if I turn it down, it won’t be for want of gratitude.”

20

Miceal Jellico watched the spaceport manipulator swing a huge, metal-banded crate to the Solar Queen’s wide-open hatch. There, Rael deftly guided the clamps of the starship’s smaller version of the all-purpose large-cargo handler into place and signaled to Van Rycke, who was at the controls of their machine, to lock them. A second wave to the outer world caused the holds on the port manipulator to be released.

Once more, the crate rose. It disappeared through the hatch, where it would be delivered to Dane in the bulk cargo hold for final stowing.

Jellico walked over to the Cargo-Master. “That the last of the big stun?”

“Aye,” he said as he switched off the motor and swung down from the control seat. “Just those boxes now.” He pointed to a tall stack of space-sealed containers of several different types and sizes. “We could handle those manually if need be, not that anyone’s Whisperer bait enough to do it while better’s available. We won’t be getting the real small stuff until tomorrow morning.”

“You and Thorson can manage without your assistant?”

“We had to manage before she came.” He turned his head. “Cofort!” he shouted. “Come on down! Our Captain’s pulling rank and commandeering your services.”

Seconds later, the woman joined them. “What now?” she asked, smiling. As she spoke, she rubbed her hands against the legs of her trousers to dry them. Machine help or none, loading and sorting bulk cargo was still heavy work.

“As Van says, I want to borrow you for a few hours.”

“Sure thing.” She saw that he had rented a flier and glanced back at the ship. “It’ll only take a few minutes to wash and change ...”

“No need. Just grab your cap and silicates to screen out Halio’s rays.”

“Will do,” she responded.

The Medic returned to the waiting men an edifyingly short time later. “All set,” she informed them.

“Excellent.” Jellico pointed to the flier’s front passenger seat. “Hop in.”

“Good luck with your lizards,” Van Rycke called after him.

His commander scowled but then raised his hand in farewell. “Just see that none of this valuable cargo’s left out to face the rigors of the night air.”

With that, he activated the controls, and the vehicle, a light-duty passenger four-seater, shot away from the Queen.

Miceal laughed softly. “He’s right about the lizards. I am stealing you to help me on a personal project.”

“So I gathered,” Rael responded. “That’s tri-dee gear I see on the rear seat unless I’m very much mistaken. — What’s the story about the lizards?” she asked curiously. “I thought Canuche didn’t have anything worth mentioning in the way of wildlife, especially here in the north.”

“Nothing much in terms of variety, size, or high development on the intelligence scale,” he corrected. “What’s here is both interesting and important, simply because they are here, if for no other reason.

“The lizards we’re seeking are a prime example. They’re small—three inches long excluding that much again of tail—winged, and a beautiful deep green in color. They’re relatively common in their natural range but can’t be kept in captivity—Canuchean conservation and anticruelty laws forbid any further attempts to do so—and no one’s ever been able to study or make any sort of pictorial record of them in the wild. As soon as a person gets even within long-lens range, every lizard present drops into the foliage. If they can be discovered at all, they’re hunched up in tight little balls that won’t release again until the intruder is gone, depending on camouflage and the poison in their skins to protect them.

“A number of theories have been proposed to account for the acuity of their senses, particularly since they’re equally adept at avoiding time-set, unmanned equipment, and I’ve got one of my own that I wouldn’t go about propounding before too many people for fear I’d be thought straight Whisperer bait.”

“I’m flattered. — What’s your explanation?”

“Some sort of telepathy would account for it.” He raised his hand when he saw her look of incredulity. “I’m not talking about the fancy stuff beloved of novelists and video writers. This would be more basic, the ability to sense interest in them, perhaps. In the wild, that’d mean only a couple of things—either a potential mate or a potential predator. An excited xenobiologist would come across as the latter, I should imagine.”

“You may well be right,” she agreed slowly. “Biologically, they wouldn’t have any reason to develop the power to differentiate more finely, and humans haven’t been on the scene long enough to have had much effect on that aspect of their lives.”

“That’s about the way I’ve reasoned it out.”

“What’s my part in this?”

“I want to try an experiment, to see if your presence or your active efforts will calm them sufficiently for me to get some shots.”

“But I have no power to draw them! I told you I didn’t...”

“Not directly, maybe, but I’ve seen how Sinbad and Queex respond to you. Cats have been associated with humans a long time and are noted for the affection they sometimes bestow on those they favor. The same can’t be said for hoobats. You’ve worked your own brand of magic on my six-legged comrade, and I’m hoping something similar might occur with Canuche of Halio’s green lizards. At any rate, it’ll do no harm to give it a try.”

“No, I suppose not.”

When the Medic remained silent for several seconds, he glanced at her. She was sitting quietly, her expression grave, her eyes lowered.

Miceal sighed. “This isn’t meant to be a trial, Rael. If you really don’t want to do it, you can just watch, or we can turn back altogether.”

She looked up. “I know what a coup this would be for you if you could pull it off. I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

“No way. It’s a chance worth taking, but if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t.”

The project was important to him, all right, but Jellico reined in his eagerness. Cofort’s gift, assuming she had one in the first place, probably would not work if she was too upset. — Space, he did not want to upset her at all. “You never got a chance to eat,” he said. “Reach back there and pull out the sandwiches Frank thoughtfully produced for us. I fear he innocently imagines we’ll be stopping for a formal picnic someplace, but we’ll be too busy if we succeed and back in good time for dinner if we don’t. Either way, you won’t have another crack at a meal for a while.”

The woman was not slow to comply. She eagerly wolfed down the Steward’s offering, both because she was hungry and because it was extremely good. “Treat Mr. Mura kindly,” she advised. “He’s an asset not to be underrated.”

“I doubt any member of the Queen’s crew would be guilty of that particular error, my friend.”

The flier had not left the spaceport and city very far behind before the nature of the country flowing by beneath them changed abruptly and to Rael’s mind much for the worse.

The yellowish ground was hard, compacted to the point that it could be classed as soft rock rather than soil, and dry save where streams and small rivers knifed their way through it. Vegetation was sparse and low even along the watercourses. It did not exist anywhere in sufficient quantity to significantly hold the particles worked loose from the miserly ground by the forces of weathering.

“Much of the interior’s hardpan like this,” Jellico informed her.

“It seems to go on forever,” she replied with distaste.

“This patch runs about twenty miles wide and some three hundred long. Once we get across it, we’ll see some more typical inner coastal land. That’s not particularly pretty, either, but it’s got some variety, at least.”

The transition was sharp when they reached the end of the hardpan. The countryside now beneath them was wetter than the barren place they had left behind. Its soil was real, and a fairly continuous blanket of plants grew upon it, most of them ranging from ankle to knee high. The common color, varied by a number of lighter and darker exceptions, was a fine, deep green, and Miceal informed his companion that among these fronds, stems, and roots dwelled almost the total roster of the north’s terrestrial wildlife, most of which was quite small and very low on the intelligence scale.

The Captain eased their vehicle to the ground. “Let’s see if we can’t rouse some photogenic green lizards. Doctor.”

Taking his tri-dee equipment and a pair of distance lenses, he started moving slowly away from the machine, walking carefully, as if he was trying to become part of the natural world around them. Catching up her share of the equipment, Rael did her best to emulate him.

They traveled several hundred yards, then he raised his hand to signal a halt. “This should be far enough. There ought to be a few around. Whether we’ll be able to get a glimpse of them’s another matter.”

Jellico trained his lenses on a patch of vegetation and began to quarter it visually. It betrayed no sign of the little creatures he was seeking, and he moved on to the next clump.

A quarter of an hour passed before he straightened in satisfaction. “There! I can make out a couple of them. — See. They look like little balls of moss.”

The woman spotted them as well. She could discern the lines where limbs and head were tucked in, but there was no sign that either creature was still alive.

They should be rather pretty little things, she thought, with that green color and equipped with wings. She would like to see them flying around, or even just relaxed enough to let her get a good look at them.

Green lizards must be harmless, peaceful, slow-flying beings if this was their typical response to interest from other life forms. It worked because their skins contained powerful poison glands; nothing biting into them once would repeat the experiment. Unfortunately, humans could not be repelled by that means, and she was glad Canuchean authorities were taking steps to protect the small animals.

Rael recalled herself to her purpose for being with this expedition. She did not rightly know how to begin, but she decided after some reflection to start by thinking kindly thoughts about the lizards. If Miceal was right and they could pick up interest in them, they might also be able to read that.

It was not a major order, at least. She was gently disposed toward them and sympathized with their situation.

It was probably wise to avoid most so-called intelligent beings, but she truly did wish they would make an exception in this case. She and Jellico meant them no hurt at all.

They only wanted to watch a while and capture a few images for later study and enjoyment ...

For several minutes, it looked as if the experiment was a failure; then a tiny, sharply pointed snout disengaged itself from the living ball and gazed tentatively about. Seconds later, the entire body uncoiled, followed in a breath’s space by the second lizard.

Each animal climbed the stem nearest it and worked its way outward along the bottom of the lowest frond. When they had traveled so far along the big leaves that they started to bend, the creatures deftly released their front legs, retaining their grip with the rear pair and tails. Two membrane-thin, pale green wings unfurled and began to beat slowly to support the lizards’ upper bodies.

Several times, she saw their heads dart in to touch the bottom of a leaf. Were they feeding, she wondered, picking up insects or spores or maybe some extrudate from the plant? Her lenses were not quite good enough to tell her that, but the Captain’s tri-dees could be developed at very high magnification and should be able to give them the answer, to that question and to a number of others besides.

For over an hour, the two green lizards clambered and fluttered from leaf to leaf. At last, both scrambled to the ground and scurried away from the stand of plants. Within moments, the thick growth had completely screened them from the off-worlders’ sight.

The Medic gave a long, lingering sigh. “They were so wonderful,” she said softly.

Jellico looked at her, as he had more than once during the past hour. She had been completely absorbed in watching the little creatures, more so even than he had been himself, and she had been happy in her absorption. Happy and unguarded. He realized this was the first time he had seen her shields go down for any significant length of time.

Her eyes were bright when they turned to him, but it was no longer possible to read with any certainty what lay behind them.

“How do you think we did?” she asked.

He slid his camera back into its case. “If a small part of these come out, we’ll have exceeded our goal by a stellar margin. — Thank you, Rael Cofort.”

“My pleasure,” she replied, happy in herself and for him, “though I can’t rightly say that I did much. I didn’t feel anything in particular happening.”

“I’d say it’s likely that you helped,” he said dryly, “considering that no one has ever before been able to study those little creatures in action since the day they were first discovered.”

The woman frowned. “Miceal, how’re you going to explain what we did? We don’t really understand it ourselves.”

“I’m not going to attempt an explanation,” he responded rather stiffly. “I’ll probably forget to mention the telepathy theory altogether.”

“You can’t do that!” she told him sharply. “You’re too much a scientist.”

“No,” he agreed slowly. “I couldn’t. I’m only going to touch on it in passing, though, toss it in as a possibility, and suggest we may have succeeded because we were full of hope, not anticipation or excitement that might come across as hunting instinct. I can’t say more since we don’t know what actually happened or if anything did happen at all. — I imagine you’re not eager to wind up as part of an esper research project?”

“Space, no! I’d hitch a ride on Sanford Jones’s glowing comet first.” She shuddered. “Apart from the likelihood of running into trouble about the mystery surrounding my mother’s antecedents, I know too much medically. There isn’t any such thing as esper training and won’t be for another few decades—or centuries if the funding dries up. All they do now is take folks apart for weeks and sometimes years at a stretch, and they don’t always remember to put them back together again.”

“That’s more or less the way I had it figured,” he said. “We can’t publish what we tried. If the wrong people read about it and got interested, I wouldn’t be able to protect you and neither would Teague. Esper research is a government project, and if they really wanted you for it, they’d get you.”

“They won’t hear anything from me,” she promised fervently. Rael gave him a sidelong glance. “You’re an awful worrier, aren’t you?” she remarked. “You can find the gloomy side of anything.”

Jellico laughed softly. “That’s a prerequisite for my job. A starship Captain lacking that trait doesn’t usually last long enough to acquire it. Unfortunately, his ship and everyone else aboard normally go out along with him.”

His fingers drummed on the controls. He glanced at her as determination firmed in him. “Rael, I’d like some answers. None of this will go beyond me, and I know I’m out of my lane, but ...”

She sighed. “I’d like to be able to do more with animals. It seems that might actually be possible, and I’ll work at it, but right now, I have to stand by what I said before. I don’t know what happened here or if anything happened. I certainly can’t supply an explanation.”

“I’m not challenging that.”

“What are you challenging?”

“Nothing. I just want to put a few questions to rest.” The gray eyes gripped hers. “What happened to you in the Red Garnet?”

Her breath caught, and she started to frown, but she stopped herself. Ali and the others were this man’s shipmates and subordinates. They would have described the whole incident in detail for him even if they had kept quiet about that part of it in front of the Patrol-Colonel. “I panicked.”

“Aye. Why?”

Her eyes wavered. “I felt. . . something in there. What, I don’t know, though believe that I’ve tried to figure it out. Maybe it was the rats’ collective hunger, maybe some afterglow of the victims’ horror and pain. Maybe it was something filthier, the eagerness of the subbiotics who could run an operation like that. They probably saw every stranger who walked into their lair as potential prey.” She shuddered. “It was all over the place, choking and draining me. I— I had to get out of there!”

She regained command of herself. “I figured, too, as much as I could reason, that the others’d follow if I ran. Of course, a fight almost erupted instead . . .” Her lips tightened into a hard line. “I’ve got no excuse. I blew it badly, and you’d have been within your rights to boot me off the ship.”

“None of my lads asked for that,” he responded quietly.

Her eyes, which had been fixed on her clasped hands, lifted. “Would . . . would you have done it?”

“No. I’d have upheld your contract. Your term of service is almost out, and you’re not going back into space with us.”

She just nodded. Jellico watched her for a moment. If he was ever going to hear the rest, it would have to be now, while she was thoroughly demoralized. “How can you function as a Medic?” he asked bluntly. Her answer to that could break her story, and it could give him some of the insight into her that he ever more strongly wanted to have.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” the woman responded without hesitation.

Her brows came together as she sought words to convey her meaning. “I’m definitely not what is usually thought of as an empath. I don’t experience another’s pain or emotions, but I do feel—uneasy when someone nearby is ill or injured. It is not a pleasant feeling. It’s horrible, in point of fact, but it’s not debilitating.”

For a moment, anger drove back her pallor. “That’s how I found the poor apprentice on the Mermaid. I knew something was wrong and hunted until I discovered him. If I hadn’t, he’d probably have died where he lay. Slate certainly wouldn’t have bothered looking for him even if he were missed in time. The bastard never even came to see him when he was dying.” Her voice cracked. “Oh damn . . .” she muttered as she was forced to fall silent.

Miceal’s fingers brushed hers. “It’s all right to care, you know,” he told her gently. “Space, you’re a Medic. You’re supposed to care.”

Cofort withdrew her hand. “The effect isn’t cumulative,” she went on, her tone steady and impersonal once more. “I was afraid it might prove so when I started my emergency room rotation, but I had no difficulty. I was able to set the discomfort aside the same as if I were dealing with a single patient and get on with my work.”

“Your gift has no real effect, then?” he asked thoughtfully.

“It might in a sense. I proved remarkably able at triage, and I could single out the most serious cases present, the heart attacks as opposed to the bad sprains.”

“What about during the plague?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t conscious of anything particular then except for the constant fear and grief, but I was only a child, and we were all scared. I may have been picking something up, and I suppose I might have developed some inborn ability for handling the pressure, but I can’t recall anything of the sort. I know the rest, such as it is, developed as I grew. It was a major factor in my choosing medicine as my specialty.”

Rael seemed to slip into her own thoughts and said nothing more for several seconds. She roused herself abruptly and faced him. “What now. Captain?”

“We head back to the Queen.” His hands rested On the controls, but he did not activate them immediately. “I don’t know what life is like in the Cofort organization, but the Solar Queen welcomes whatever talents her crew has. That extends to passengers and temporary hands. Bear that in mind if yours start working on you again.”

Miceal brought the machine to a halt again just before they reached the outskirts of Canuche Town’s suburbs.

Rael was surprised, but when she looked to the Captain for clarification, she found him staring straight ahead, his gaze apparently fixed on some point in the far distance. “Is something wrong?” she inquired anxiously.

“Wrong, no, but the Queen will be lifting tomorrow.”

“Aye. By midafternoon if nothing delays delivery of the last Caledonia shipment.”

“Are you going to accept Macgregory’s offer?”

“No.”

“Think carefully, Rael. He meant every word of it. You’re not likely to run into a chance like this again.”

“Do you want me to accept it?” she asked carefully.

“What I want’s irrelevant. It’s your life, and this is a major decision.”

The woman shook her head. “No, I’m not going to accept. I don’t like Canuche of Halio. She’s Adroo Macgregory’s homeworld, and he naturally loves her. I’m not going to tell him how I feel about her, but of all the Federation’s habitable planets on which I might eventually choose to settle, this one’s pretty near the bottom of the list. Besides, I don’t want to leave the starlanes. That’s where I was born, and that’s where I belong.”

Jellico’s eyes dropped. He realized he had been gripping the controls so tightly that his knuckles glistened white under the stretched skin and hastily eased his hold. “I think that’s the wiser choice, though maybe not the most financially sound one,” he told her.

She studied him gravely. “I answered your question. Now answer mine. Did you wish me to accept Mr. Macgregory’s offer?”

“No. No, I did not. It would’ve been a disaster. Macgregory’s every inch an autocrat—benevolent maybe, but a despot all the same. A Free Trader’s too independent to stay under the thumb of someone like that long-term.”

“You’d have let me go ahead despite that?”

“I had no right to stop you, Rael, though I would’ve raised the question for your consideration and stressed it pretty strongly had you given me a different answer.”

His eyes were somber. “That’ll leave you at loose ends once we lift. Do you have anything particular in mind?”

Cofort nodded. “I was planning to approach Deke Tatarcoff. I’ve never known him not to be shorthanded, and I’ve given him good reason to respect my abilities. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll just hang around for a while. This port’s busy enough that I’m bound to pick up a berth in fairly short order, even if it’s just another single-voyage hop to some backwater hole.”

She saw him start to frown and shrugged delicately. “If it looks like there’s going to be a delay, I have no objection to taking on-world work for a time to keep body, soul, and store of credits together. Some of the hospitals in Canuche Town can probably use a part-time Medic, and should worse come to worse, I might even try to wrangle a temporary job out of Adroo Macgregory.”

“It sounds reasonable,” he said without looking at her. “I have to confess that I had some reservations about just leaving you here.”

“I’m not one who’s ever likely to let herself starve.”

“No.”

Her voice softened. “Thank you, Miceal Jellico,” she said. She sat a little straighter. “Let’s go back and develop those tri-dees. I’m dying to see what we gained for our efforts.”

Jellico shivered. Even this far from the shore, the sea breeze was sharp and cold and would remain so for a while yet, until Halio had warmed the land sufficiently to reverse the thermal currents and bathe the city in dry, hot, inland currents.

That alteration in the flow of the breeze, quite independent of the predominant prevailing winds, which moved parallel to the land, was a real blessing to the inhabitants of the city during the blistering months of the summer. A heat haze might shimmer over Canuche Town’s streets by day, but at night, people slept well beneath light blankets.

Rael joined Jellico at the hatch, and they descended together. Both had business in the city. The Captain intended to get the flier back to the rental agency before he had to pay a second day’s charges for it, and she had asked to accompany him since he would be passing close to the Caledonia plant. She wanted to give Macgregory her answer face-to-face or at least deliver a personal letter to his office if he should not be there this early rather than merely calling in her refusal over the Queen’s transceiver as they prepared her for space. He deserved the courtesy of the greater effort on her part.

She smiled as she took her place in the passenger seat.

The vehicle had done them good service the previous evening ferrying them all to the restaurant the crew had chosen for their last-night dinner. It had been a fine affair all around. If their eatery had not been another Twenty-Two. the food had been good, and they had enjoyed it and themselves, Ali Kamil as thoroughly as any of his comrades. He had seemed more at ease than she had hitherto seen him, certainly more so than he had been since they had planeted on Canuche of Halio. The confirmation of the industrial planet’s apparently dark history and the reality of the peril still hanging over her had affirmed and the reality of his gift. That was a relief in itself, and it was a relief that they would soon be leaving the dangerous world behind.

“We’ll cut around by the Cup,” Miceal told her as they started out. “It’s a bit longer that way, but I want to get a good look, at the ships.”

“You’re the skipper. Besides, I’d like to see them close up myself.” She stifled a yawn. “After crawling out of my bunk so soon in order to see Mr. Macgregory, I hope he is an early riser.”

“That one? You can put credits down oh it. He won’t squander valuable daylight hours in bed.”

“You needn’t squander any time, either,” she told him, “at least not waiting for me. Once you drop me off, just turn the flier in and go on back to the Queen. I’ll find my way home.”

“Not a chance. Van’d be asking what happened to my wits if I failed to make so obvious a courtesy call on our illustrious client.”

They soon came within sight of the ocean. Only two large vessels were at dock in the Cup, the low, squat Regina Maris and another slightly larger craft with the name Sally Sue displayed on her prow and sides. A number of small boats attended to the freighters’ needs or to their own.

Both of the big ships were the center of considerable activity. Miceal slowed the flier down to hover to better observe the scene. “Look at that, Rael,” he said softly. “It’s like a moment frozen in time. A few centuries back, that’s what we’d have been doing.”

She nodded. If that was all there was, they would be part of it. Trade was in their souls, and neither of them would have been content with the role of sedentary shopkeeper.

She frowned somewhat disapprovingly as she continued to study the on-worlders working around the Regina Maris.

A bit of concentrated study stripped some of the perfection from the picture for one who was familiar with the management of bulk cargo. “They go in for a lot of fuss, don’t they?” she remarked. There was not half this ado when a starship was being loaded.

Jellico started to agree, but then he frowned. Commotion was one thing; idleness was another. There were a lot of dock laborers just standing about, leaving the cargo lying where it was. Those people were paid by the hour.

Whether he traversed a single planet’s seas or the starlanes, no ship’s master would tolerate a pack of idlers leeching away his always tight port expense funds. “She’s in trouble,” he announced sharply even as he sent the flier surging forward.

In another moment, they came to a stop beside a group of longshoremen. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“What’s it to you, space hound?” one countered. There was no real hostility in the question, just a petty enjoyment in momentary superiority over the off-worlder with his supposedly more interesting lifeway.

“Most Captains sympathize with a ship in trouble,” he responded more mildly than he would have done with one of his own kind.

“A bit of a fire on the Man’s,” the speaker told him. Miceal’s expression registered his concern, and the longshoreman continued quickly. “It’s not the same thing as you chaps have to face in space,” he assured them, “at least not here in port where the crew can get off quickly. This is nothing, anyway. They’ll probably have it out in a few minutes.”

“Maybe,” interjected the older man standing beside him.

Jellico eyed him curiously. “You have your doubts?”

“I was the one who smelled the smoke and alerted her Captain. To my mind, he should forget about saving the. cargo and really pour in water and foam. Masters have lost ships before by playing around with steam for too long.”

“Steam?” Rael asked.

He nodded. “Live steam. It replaces the oxygen in the air, smothering a blaze while being reasonably kind to the goods stored around it. It’s most useful in the early stages of a tightly confined fire, though. Give the flames any chance to spread, to escape into the hull between the holds, and you’ve got big trouble.”

“You think that’s happened here?”

“Well, it’s not for me to say, but a fire large enough for me to sniff out just by walking near an open hatch is a deal more than a spark, and I’m willing to put down a few credits that they haven’t gotten it licked even yet.”

“How long have they been at it?”

“Full blast? Only about ten minutes. — Uh-oh, there goes the alarm. They want the Fire Department. That means they’re kissing the cargo good-bye. — See, the crew’re being sent ashore.”

“There shouldn’t be all that much to be damaged, should there?” the Medic asked, trying to recall what Macgregory had told them about the kinds of goods the Regina Man’s was taking on. “Just the rope. Her insurance should cover that.”

“Sure, and the rest, too, but exporters don’t like to ship with vessels that sacrifice their cargoes too willingly. Also, the season’s rush on nitrate’ll be over soon ...”

Rael Cofort’s face went white. “What?”

“Ammonium nitrate. A fertilizer. My lads loaded fourteen hundred tons of it in her number two hold and another eight hundred and twenty tons in number four yesterday evening. The fire’s between them in number three where the rope’s stowed. Both’re likely to be drenched and ruined . . .”

“Spirit of Space . . . ,” she whispered.

“It’s a common substance,” he told her in surprise.

“Until you bring a flame or too much heat near it,” Jellico said tersely. “Then it’s a bomb.”

“Bomb! What in . . .”

“Recently we saw an experiment to illustrate that. If that ship goes up, it’ll be like a low-grade planetbuster. You people would be smart to take off, pick up your families, and keep going until this is all over.”

“Right,” one of the women standing near them cut in. “We’d find something left out of our paychecks if we tried that.”

“Better lose a few hours’ pay to panic than not be able to collect it at all because you’re dead.”

“I’ll take responsibility,” their chief informant declared, confirming the spacers’ impression that he was the group’s foreman. “I’ve got a kid up the slope in the Cup school. I’m taking him, my wife, and her mother and heading for the hardpan. The rest of you do the same.” He glanced at the pair in the flier. “What about you two?”

“We like living,” the Captain replied.

The Canucheans wasted no time in clearing after that.

Rael did not watch them go. Her eyes were fixed on Jellico. “Miceal, we can’t . . .”

He gave an impatient shake of his head. “These eateries should all have public surplanetary transceivers, and they’ll be empty with everyone out watching the fire. I’ll warn the Queen and spaceport. You tell Macgregory and the Stellar Patrol.”

As Jellico predicted, they found available booths in the first eating place they entered and both hastened to sound the alarm before the dreaded explosion rendered it worthless.

Tang Ya was on duty at the Solar Queen’s transceiver.

He, like the rest of the crew, had heard his comrades’ report of the Caledonia experiment and required no detailed explanation. “We’re ready to go now,” he told him. “All the rest of us are on board, praise the Spirit of Space. How long do we give you?” He hated to ask that, but for the sake of the ship and the bulk of her company, there had to be a limit on the time they could afford to wait.

“Lift at once and make for the hardpan outside the city. Set down again a mile or so to the south of it to get you out of direct line with any residual blast effects, and wait there until I tell you the fire’s out here or until the commotion stops. If the Man’s does go up, they’ll be needing help at that point. Rael and I’ll either make our way out to you or be tied up with the rescue effort ourselves.”

Most likely, they would either be in need of saving or beyond it, but his Captain was as aware of that as he was.

“Will do. We’ll pass the word to the others here as well.”

“Thanks, Tang.”

Miceal’s head bowed as he stepped from the booth. He loved the Solar Queen and had always imagined he would meet his death aboard her or striving in some manner for her.

The spacer squared his shoulders and looked up. Death on Canuche of Halio might be a distinct possibility, but it was by no means a certainty for either of them. There was no reason to blindly assume that he and Rael Cofort would not be returning to the starship and to the cold, dark reaches of interstellar space that was her domain.

He had to wait a few minutes for his companion, but she nodded gravely when she finally joined him. “I got to them both,” she told him. “Mr. Macgregory’s starting a full evacuation immediately. He’ll also contact the Fire Department to let them know what we’re facing and warn the hospitals to move as much of their gear as they can, especially their emergency facilities, out onto the hardpan so they’ll be ready to start taking on cases at once if need be. Colonel Cohn’s putting in calls for aid to the other towns all along the coast. — What about our own people?”

“They’ll do what they must.”

They found the battle against the ship fire raging in full fury when they went outside again, with fireboats and fliers pouring streams of foam and seawater into the Regina Maris’s hold, augmented by the closer attention of the small firetransports crowding the dock and the men and women carrying the fight to the deck itself.

As the efforts to contain the fire became ever more spectacular, so the crowd gathered to watch it increased in proportion. Laborers delayed upon leaving their shifts or before going to their tasks; office workers left their desks to congregate outside their buildings or stood by windows offering grandstand views; messengers and passersby with more time to spare shouldered their way through to the dock itself to secure as unobstructed as possible an observation post. Rael judged that there had to be in excess of four thousand people in and around the Cup’s seafront alone and easily that many again scattered farther away along the banks and on the opposite shore. A number of small merchant and pleasure craft had also drawn near, keeping just far enough away as not to interfere with the work of the fireboats.

“The smoke’s coming up white now,” her companion observed. “It looks like they’ve just about got it licked.”

“I sincerely hope so. I won’t object one bit if I come out looking like a total vacuum-brain in all of this.” Her mouth hardened. It was not over yet, not quite. “If anything does happen, most and probably all of these people are going to be killed.”

Before Jellico realized what she was doing, she had started pushing through the onlookers, showing consummate skill in weaseling her way with the deft aid of elbow and foot into minute spaces that had not seemed to exist a moment before. He was hard pressed to keep up with her.

The Medic did not stop until she had reached the firetransport that was her target. Its crew, engrossed as both were in managing the big fire gun, did not notice her until she had leapt aboard.

“This thing’s got a public address system?” she demanded before either could recover enough from his surprise to order her off.

“Of course ...”

“Switch it on!”

He complied, moved by her earnestness and air of authority. Besides, the fire was well under control, and he was curious.

“You people,” the woman called into the mike he handed her, “the show’s almost over, but the danger isn’t. Until the last spark and hot spot has been extinguished, there’s the chance of a serious explosion. You’re exposed to the full force of it out here.”

Miceal mentally nodded his approval. Even now, with the fire on the Regina Marts almost out, knowledge of the full peril she represented too suddenly imparted to all these people could provoke a panic that would almost certainly claim a large number of the lives they were striving to preserve.

A siren sounded farther up the shore. Rael glanced in the direction of the noise, then raised the mike again. “I spoke with Adroo Macgregory of Caledonia, Inc., before coming here. See, he has already evacuated his plant and ordered his people out of the city.”

Someone near her laughed. “That kindergarten! Are they walking two by two with their fingers on their lips?”

She glared frigidly in the direction of the speaker, whom she could not actually identify. “This is a real evacuation, not a drill for which he planned well in advance. What in all the hells do you think it’s doing to his business operations? People like Mr. Macgregory don’t throw that Volume of credits away unless they believe there’s a damn good reason for doing so. — He called it right on target the last time he gave a similar order if I heard the story correctly.”

Her audience greeted that with silence. Many looked uncomfortably over their shoulders. The storm to which she referred was recent enough history to still be sharp in the memories of all of them.

Miceal’s eyes glittered coldly. Most of the watchers were inclined to move, but it would require some effort to push their way back, to reverse the general pressure of the crowd, and they were not sufficiently concerned to make the start.

Suddenly, he caught hold of the fire gun and whipped it around, depressing the nozzle as he did so. The powerful stream hit the pavement at the feet of the spectators with the force of a sledge, and those nearest it leapt back, cursing, as splintered pieces flew up in every direction.

“Get moving, now, or by all the Federation’s gods, I’ll give you a blast of this across the shins. If you’re going to stay here and die, you might as well have a good excuse for doing it. I’m prepared to accommodate you and supply it.”

The nearer fireman started to shove him aside, but the other, who had just closed their transceiver, intervened.

“Let him be. They’re right.” His voice dropped. “Except if the Mans blows, it won’t be a small, contained blast affecting only the ship and this dock. It’ll take out just about the whole Cup and maybe a great deal more besides.”

His voice rose again as he took the mike from Rael. “All right, folks, move along. Leave the Cup area entirely. We’ve just been informed that there is still some danger of a detonation. If one occurs, we’ll have to be able to get medical help in quickly for any of our people who’re hurt. — Get going, now. You’re blocking ground traffic and making it hard to bring in anything by air.”

The onlookers muttered but slowly began to disperse. By now, most of them were upset enough by the talk of explosions to be grateful for the excuse to leave the threatened area without having to appear panicked themselves.

“Quick thinking,” the fireman told the two spacers. He shuddered. “It’s almost over, but I wouldn’t have been very happy working here all this time had I known what was actually shadowing us.” He eyed the retreating civilians.

“You two had best join them,” he added sternly.

“That’s our intention,” the Captain assured him as he slipped over the side of the vehicle and lightly dropped to the ground. He gave his hand to steady Cofort while she followed suit.

With much of the pressure of the throng easing up around them, they experienced little difficulty in working their way back to their machine.

Rael opened the door but paused beside it. Her eyes were dark, troubled. “If something goes wrong, they’ll be needing Medics.”

“Only live ones. — Move!”

She wasted no more time but sprang into the flier even as Jellico himself did.

The vehicle rose until it was a couple of feet above the heads of the pedestrians and started toward one of the narrow side streets leading into the open dock area.

“Wouldn’t we make better time higher up?” the Medic asked.

“We’d also fall a heck of a lot farther if we got thrown down by a blast concussion.”

Rael made no comment. She fixed her attention on the street along which they were traveling.

All the structures lining it appeared to be old. They had been constructed of Canuchean stone rather than the metals and synthetics of a later stage, more prosperous colony, and all of them obviously had been put up at the same time from a single set of plans. One was the image of all the others.

Each of the buildings had an underground story, or maybe several, perhaps devoted to storage or deliveries. At least, the entrance was invariably a broad, steeply sloping ramp leading into an attractively arched, covered loading dock.

To Cofort’s surprise, Miceal did not turn onto the avenue when they reached it. “Why are we sticking to the back roads?” she asked curiously, knowing there was probably an excellent reason for taking the slower, more irregular route.

“Maybe for no purpose,” he responded grimly. “I hope we won’t have to find out.” His mouth compressed into a hard line. “I should be sent to the Lunar mines for criminal neglect. As soon as we reach the Queen, give your friend Colonel Cohn another call and have her order the Regina Man’s towed out to sea for the final cleanup. There would be no danger to the city now if I’d thought of it sooner.”

The woman frowned. “Neither did I. Power down, will you. We couldn’t work out everything. We’re just Free Traders, not a pair of professional disaster planners.”

She glanced up at him, mischief suddenly lighting her eyes as she laughed softly. “You’d make one fine tyrant, Captain Jellico,” she told him. “That was a masterful stroke with the fire gun.”

“One needs a variety of abilities in Trade . . .”

Whatever else he might have said was silenced as light avoid the chance of chain-reaction disaster but still close enough to offer a comforting sense of community. Most of their crews were also assembled beside their vessels, staring intently eastward.

“I could try to talk those port guys into bringing a flier out to us,” Rip ventured. “They’re probably not so mad that they wouldn’t do it for a share of the news. I could fly over the city ...”

“You’ll keep your scrambled-circuited fins planeted where they are!”

Shannon was not the only one to stare at Alt. The Engineer-apprentice gripped himself. He resumed his normal casual manner, but the deadly serious note did not leave his voice. “You’d be looking for a quick ride on Sanford Jones’s comet, my boy. I saw fighters, big ones, blown out of the sky by the concussion of a major blast, never mind one of those little civilian bubbles. I wouldn’t want to be in the air in one of them even this far out, much less hovering over Canuche Town, if that accursed ship blows.”

“Is the Queen safe?” Jasper asked in concern. “And these others who followed us?”

“Out here, aye.” It was Johan Stotz who answered for his apprentice. He and the Cargo-Master had just come out of the ship to join them. “Van and I’ve been running a series of possibility scenarios on the computer. We’re well away from triple the blast we could expect even if two or more freighters went up, and shrapnel definitely won’t reach us, which was our biggest danger at the spaceport.”

“That’s over four miles from the coast, closer to five, in fact!” exclaimed Weeks.

“Not an impossible distance for a big explosion,” Kamil said tensely. “It wouldn’t take much. All you’d need is for a single piece of red-hot metal to pierce the liquid fuel reservoirs and none of us would have anything more to worry about, provided we’d led virtuous lives.” He turned to his chief. “A fire storm could travel this far. So could gas.”

“That’s why Jellico insisted that we go south as well as inland. We’re not in easy line with the city, and the winds’re blowing toward it, not us. They’re also augmented by the thermal breeze as long as the daylight and heat hold.”

Thorson looked eastward again, then back to his shipmates as an idea came to him. “Could we try to focus the near-space viewer on the town?”

“Probably!” Tang agreed eagerly. “Devices designed for use in space don’t work perfectly in an atmosphere, and we’ll have to play with the magnification, but we should be able to get something. It’ll be better than nothing, at any rate.”

The Solar Queen’s bridge was even smaller than her mess, but none of them grumbled about the lack of space as they gathered around the big screen while their Com-Tech adjusted one after the other of the controls directing its operation.

Gradually, the image of Canuche Town appeared before them, at first hazy to the point of uselessness, then as clear as if they were spying on it through impossibly powerful but otherwise standard distance lenses. Deftly, Ya depressed the focus until it rested right on the eastern horizon.

“We can’t see the docks,” Karl Kosti said, voicing the disappointment of all.

“Hardly,” Tang told him. “The whole seaport area is on a significantly lower level than the rest of the city. The viewer can’t penetrate solid rock or bend around it. We’ll know it if that ship explodes, but we won’t be able to observe the blast itself or its effects on its immediate, environs. — Sands of Mars! Look at all those people! There are thousands of them, and they all seem to be heading this way.”

“Macgregory’s staff and their families probably,” Van Rycke deduced. “He’s ordered evacuations before. The Captain or Rael will have warned him, too.”

“I could check, see if there’s something coming over the civilian waves or if the Patrol’s broadcasting anything on the public channels ...”

Ya shook his head even as he finished speaking. It would not be well to have any auditory equipment actively receiving if a major explosion occurred. As an added precaution, he increased light and radiation screening on the visual receptors.

For a few minutes, he kept the lines of moving people on the screen, confirming that they were indeed making for the hardpan, then switched back to scanning the serene infinity of roof-fringed sky on the horizon.

More minutes went by. The tranquility of the unchanging scene began to draw some of the tension out of the spacers.

A burst of light ruptured the field of blue. A vast sound followed it, loud and sharp even at this remove.

As the first great flash of brilliance faded, a column of brown smoke clawed its way some six hundred feet into the air. Several dark specks seemed to balance for a moment on it, then fell back into it and plummeted to the concealed ground.

“Her hatches,” Dane heard someone, Shannon maybe, say.

Soon, in nearly the same instant, more debris shot into view, some of it dark, a lot glowing red. Much of what they saw was clearly discernible, stark proof of the sizes involved. Thorson gaped at it. That stuff was not just big. It was enormous, great pieces of what had moments before been the Regina Marts.

One sight, rather pretty in itself, puzzled him, as it did most of his comrades. Burning spheres accompanied by equally brilliant sparks and streamers filled one portion of the sky, held there a fraction second, and dispersed as would a burst of demoniac fireworks.

The Cargo-Master again supplied the explanation.

“Rope. The Man’s was shipping a load of it. The balls are aflame and are casting off fragments as they burn. — The Spirit of Space help the places where they land. They’ll be more than hot enough to torch anything flammable that they touch.”

Van Rycke’s grim prediction was not long in finding fulfillment as explosion after explosion followed that first mighty detonation. They did not have to actually see the stricken area to know what was happening, not with computer-generated possibility and probability scenarios to augment their own knowledge and imagination.

Many buildings collapsing under the awesome force of the blast wave took fire directly from the explosion’s heat as particularly volatile contents ignited or detonated. Others began to burn when flaming or blazing-hot shrapnel slammed into the rubble that was all that remained of many or through roof, walls, or splintered windows of those still partly standing, starting smaller fires that soon reached vulnerable materials. The exposed fuel tanks were almost immediate casualties, breaking and falling at once when the blast’s fist slammed into them or crumbling and exploding when struck by flying material that made them out as accurately as would missiles shot by a sentient foe.

Escaping chemicals, alone or in bastard combinations, released deadly gases. Others created corrosive pools or added still more fuel to the hellish caldron the seaport area had become.

The topography of the region magnified the effects of the already awesome disaster. In dooming its own, however, it to a great extent shielded the rest of Canuche Town as the high, sharp slopes deflected much of the force of the explosion back down on the already shattered communities below and caught the bulk of the debris it had set in deadly flight.

Pieces thrown high enough did get through, bringing fire, destruction, and terror wherever they came to ground.

Jan, who was senior officer in Jellico’s absence, at last turned his back to the screen, unconsciously straightening his powerful shoulders as he did so. “There may be some new fires or an odd blast or two, but I’d say the worst’s over. Those people need all the help they can get and need it fast if a lot more aren’t going to die who should make it.

“Steen, Johan, Tang, stay with the Queen. Keep her ready to lift fast again if you must, though I doubt that’ll be necessary now, and hold the transceiver open. The rest of us’ll see if we can’t make ourselves useful.”

The Canuchean refugees had set up their camp, a small city in itself, a good half mile north of the starship’s emergency berth.

The spacers found little confusion there, and Dane Thorson had not been long within its bounds before he felt a fierce pride in these people.

He was seeing the spirit that had carried Terra’s offspring to the stars and won them their place there, on planet after planet where survival itself should have been inconceivable. The refugees had a headstart in that everything was well ordered thanks to Adroo Macgregory’s preparations, the training he had insisted upon giving his people, who, with their households, made up the vast majority of those currently assembled here. Those who had actually endured the blast itself had not yet begun to arrive in number.

There was grief and fear, but the Canucheans were responding with the determination to fight, not permitting themselves to sink into despair. The very young and those otherwise unable to give aid were gathered together in the keeping of appointed caregivers. The rest were already heading back to their stricken city and seaport.

The Stellar Patrol was visibly active. Rael’s warning had reached them in time. They, too, along with the city’s police and emergency services whom they, in turn, had alerted, had evacuated and gotten far enough out that they now had personnel and gear to send back in.

The Queen’s crew found Ursula Cohn at a makeshift command post seemingly surrounded by communications equipment and an ever-changing sea of grim-faced men and women, civilians and members of the various services alike, all either bringing reports to her or awaiting her orders.

Her strained eyes swept those around her. They stopped when they came to rest on Van Rycke and Thorson. “You people probably gave this town its life. You’ve certainly cut down on the amount of dying. Help’s already on the way from communities all up and down the coast. By nightfall, we’ll have mostly everything we’ll need in terms of supplies, equipment, and manpower.”

“By nightfall, a lot of people alive right now are going to be dead if they’re left where they are that long,” the CargoMaster stated flatly. “We’re here to lend a hand. The rest of the Spacers’ll probably be following pretty close on our heels.”

“We can use you.” Her expression clouded. “Any word from your Captain or Doctor Cofort?”

“No.”

“We’ve commandeered every functional flier and transport we can find. I’m giving you and your crew priority status behind my people and medical personnel. I can’t send you all back into the town on one vehicle, but every one of you’ll be at work within half an hour.”

“That’s all we want.”

“That transport over there is refueling for another trip in. You and Mr. Thorson can go with it.”

“We appreciate that, Colonel. Thanks.”

The two Free Traders hastened to claim their promised places, squeezing in so that as many others as possible would be able to board.

Dane kept his eyes lowered, not wanting to meet those of his chief. Van Rycke and Jellico went far back as a team, and they were a close one . . .

Suddenly, another thought pierced him. Poor Queex!

Only two people in all the ultrasystem had loved him, and he had lost them both in one black instant of destruction.

23

Miceal turned his flier perpendicular to its former course, threw it into hover, and flipped it onto its side so that its undercarriage faced the sea and the blow that was to come.

Even as the invisible fist of energy slammed into the machine, he leapt from it, yanking Cofort after him as he sprang.

The vehicle gave one jerk, as if it had truly been struck by a massive solid object, but the man was only dimly aware of that or of the way in which it was hurled against the building beside them. The flier had given them a fraction-second of shelter, and by launching themselves into motion, traveling with the blast wave instead of meeting it with their bodies in the full grip of inertia, they had won a measure of freedom of action. It would not last long, but if they moved fast and luck was with them, they might improve their chances of surviving reasonably intact—if his reasoning was in any way correct.

Jellico stumbled as he struck the pavement but managed to keep his feet. Shoving the woman before him, he dove into the nearest of the dark, refuse-littered entrances to the buildings’ subterranean levels and slammed her to the ground.

Rael gave a sharp cry as she landed hard against a broken stone block and went limp.

The Captain knew she was hurt but could “not pause to attend to her. They were too far in, and their time was almost gone despite his having moved almost instantaneously in response to the explosion’s assault. Desperately, he jerked her inert body out toward the light, positioning them directly beneath the arch, close to but not actually leaning against the seaward wall.

Only a superhuman effort of will enabled him to do that much. The world around them was chaos, an insane whirl of sound, flying, crushing debris, and fire. The Trader Captain felt as if he were being pummeled by a crew of Malkites specifically trained to reduce a human body to dismembered pulp.

He set himself to endure. They were nearly three long blocks from the site of the explosion, far enough to blunt some of its initial force, and their hastily claimed hiding place provided some shelter. This much they could survive if fortune did not go back on them.

The same could not be said for the structures around them, utterly exposed and inflexible as they were. With the precision of a planned mechanical demonstration, one after another collapsed under the seemingly irresistible impact of the blast wave striking them head-on.

Jellico’s stomach twisted in pure terror as a deep, crushing rumble told the fate of the building in whose entrance they cowered. Spirit of Space! Had they escaped being crisped or torn asunder or shredded by shrapnel and flying glass only to meet their ends in this rat’s hole?

He hunched over Rael, striving to shield her, to give her whatever protection his body could provide . . .

It had begun in an instant; it was over in seconds. The physical torment ended abruptly, and the infernal din subsided, lessened by distance. Even the shouts and cries of the injured survivors outside became less immediate.

There had been no move or sound from his companion since he had flung her into this place, and Miceal hastily turned to her. Immediately, all his fear returned, closing his throat, very nearly stopping his breath. She was lying perfectly still, her eyes closed, the thick lashes looking ominously dark against the uncommonly pale skin. Was she dead? Could such beauty remain in dying, or was it merely that death had not yet had time to lay its full mark on her?

He reached out to touch her neck in search of a pulse, but in that moment, Rael moaned softly, and her eyes opened.

It was comforting to find the Captain bending over her, alive and apparently unscathed.

The open, albeit rapidly fading, dread on his face scattered that nascent sense of well-being even as it formed.

She hastened to sit up but fell back again with a sharp cry of pain she was not quick enough to quell.

Jellico’s arm was under her shoulders in a moment.

“What’s wrong, Rael?” he demanded tensely. “How badly are you hit?” Just because he had managed to weather the blast wave’s hammering without taking significant harm was no guarantee his comrade had been so fortunate. Internal injuries could take a while to kill . . .

“This business of having one’s life saved has its disadvantages,” she grumbled. “I think I must be one prize-winning bruise. I’ll probably scare the starlight out of myself every time I go under the steam jets for a while. — Give me a pull up, will you? I should be mobile on my own after that.”

He complied. The woman winced as she gained her feet but then straightened. “I’ll live,” she assured him after taking several quick, experimental breaths.

She eyed him curiously. “What made you dump us in here?” she asked.

“I remembered that the arch is one of architecture’s strongest structures, and these ones were all solidly built out of good natural materials. Each of them also extended enough beyond the main part of the buildings that they might not necessarily be dragged down as well if the big structure went, especially if the brunt of the shock wave passed above them, as was possible since all of the arches are low to the ground. I just hoped I was reading it right and that it would be enough.”

Jellico was hard pressed not to shudder openly. Any turn of chance, any frown of fortune at all, and they could both have been dead or worse. “What about the rest?” Rael Cofort asked suddenly, sharply, “the other poor folk fleeing with us?”

As she spoke, she was already whirling toward the entrance, bracing herself as she did so. She did not anticipate seeing the gross primary injuries that would be encountered closer to the dock, those caused by the sudden, violent change in air and tissue pressure. The shock wave itself and the even more vicious blast wind had weakened and dispersed enough at this distance from their point of origin to spare them that—they could not otherwise have come through its assault so well themselves—but the area could not hope to have escaped the rest. Secondary injuries would abound, wounds resulting from flying shrapnel and glass and from falling masonry. Much tertiary damage had probably occurred as well. Their flier had been caught and tossed. Human beings had doubtless been thrown as well, and flesh and bone shattered when slammed into solid metal or stone at high velocity. When she left this place, she would be walking into pure horror.

As the Medic tried to fortify herself, she stepped out onto the narrow street.

Former street. It was now but a depression in a sea of high-mounded debris. The buildings on both sides had been flung down. Only a few of the arches remained standing, still marking the entrances to the now rubble-filled understories.

Precious few even of those had survived, she saw with an inner shiver. She and Jellico had been fortunate indeed in his choice of shelter.

The air was foul. She was aware of the stink of it even through all the numbing horror of the scene spread out before her. The odor of burning was everywhere, burning wood and synthetics, cloth and chemicals, the stench of burning flesh. A lot of people had been working in the shattered buildings that had become their tombs, and a great many of the ruins were afire.

Corpses lay everywhere, not in the windrows she had feared to see—the warning had been given soon enough to prevent that—but still with terrifying prominence. Most of those that she saw appeared to have been felled either by debris from the explosion itself or by material from the falling buildings.

Rael quickly ascertained which bodies she passed were no more than shells and paid them no farther attention; there were still some of the living here as well, not many of them, and they desperately needed help.

She was bitterly aware of the pitifully little care she could provide. In living and dead alike, most of the injuries she saw were ghastly—eyes gouged out, noses sliced off, people with their entire faces gone. Here were amputated or shredded limbs, bodies torn open or pinned to the solid pavement ^in grim testimony to the power of the force driving the missiles that had struck them down. One poor devil had been bisected by a huge, thin spear of metal, apparently one of the drilling stems stowed aboard the Regina Mavis.

Nearly all the living who had been hit in the head, face, or arms bore other grave wounds as well. Those even marginally capable of walking alone or with the help of friends or strangers had already staggered or been assisted out of the area in search of aid in other, hopefully less devastated districts of the stricken city.

The Captain, drawing upon his own considerable knowledge of first aid, was similarly occupied. He knelt beside the body of a woman. Flying glass had gotten her, and she had not died instantly.

Sighing, he came to his feet again. “I’ve seen wars, everything from primitive through interstellar, but I don’t think I’ve ever run into anything as bad as this.” They were not looking at the worst, either. Those caught much closer to the seat of the explosion would have sustained even heavier injuries, and this was, at least, a commercial area.

The victims, though pitiful and tragic, were all adults.

From the little he could see above the mountains of rubble, the destruction appeared to be equally horrendous on the primarily residential slope above. There were, or had been, children there, a lot of them.

The two spacers worked together more or less in silence.

There was so little that they could do. They were survivors themselves, without supplies or gear of any sort. All they were able to offer was first aid, utilizing the victims’ own clothing for bandages and whatever other materials they were able to glean from the wreckage around them. In each case, they did what they could and then moved the sufferer into the middle of the street, as far as possible from the threat of fire from the collapsed buildings on either side.

After that, they had to leave him with the poor comfort of their assurance, which they both prayed would prove accurate, that rescue teams would soon be penetrating the shattered area and would collect the injured then.

The final case they handled was a big man deeply comatose as a result of a massive head injury. Jellico and Cofort lifted and carried him to the center of the street and placed him with the other living victims, although neither of them believed he would survive very much longer.

Rael slipped on the rubble as they were settling him. She fell heavily, barking both her knees, but she was scarcely aware of doing so as waves of agony ripped through her side and chest.

Despite herself, she cried out, and it was several long seconds before she could make the attempt to stand.

Miceal steadied her. His eyes were dark with concern as they searched her face. “That was the last one,” he said gruffly. “Let’s get the hell out of here. You need a doctor yourself, and I’ll be more effective with some equipment . . .”

The woman pulled away from him. She turned on him in fury. “I’m a Medic, and I’m on my feet. You can help me, or you can go back to the ship, but damn it, don’t try to interfere with my work!”

Jellico started to protest but stopped himself. “I’m with you,” he said quietly.

She eyed him for a moment, as if not trusting him, then nodded. “Thank you, Miceal.”

“Where to, Doctor? You’re the Medic. This is your line. You call it.”

“To the docks,” she responded without hesitation. “The worst cases will be closest to that, and they may have to wait the longest before any real help can reach them.”

“Most there will have been killed outright,” he pointed out.

Rael nodded. “We’ll work our way back inland again until we start finding a few we can try to aid.” Or comfort a little if nothing else.

“All right. It’s as good a plan as any.”

Neither of them looked at the crumpled remains of their flier as they moved away from it. By the grace of whatever gods ruled this accursed planet, it had apparently not killed or seriously injured anyone, but neither of them could take credit for that fact. Not that they could have done anything had they stayed with the’ machine, apart from very probably dying in it.

The off-worlders worked their way down the street until they came to the place where it intersected with what had been the avenue.

Because the place was that much closer to the blast site and more open besides, the proportion of the dead to those still alive was greater than they had encountered near their shelter. A larger number of people had been caught here, however, and those who survived tended to be even more severely injured than their earlier patients, and the pair found themselves hard-pressed on every side by victims desperately in need of aid.

They had no choice but to triage those they discovered still alive, treating first the ones whose chances for survival were the greatest, leaving the most hopeless cases for last.

The choosing fell to Rael Cofort. It was a bitter task, especially so when one of those she ordered set aside was still conscious, but more lives would be saved in the end by ordering their efforts in this manner, and so she grimly held to the policy need had dictated that they adopt. Her strength was such that it kept Jellico firm in his determination to abide by her decisions, that and the seemingly unerring correctness of them.

Cofort had told him that she had proven capable at triage work when she had done her emergency room practical training, but he quickly realized that she was more than merely good. It was as if she were somehow reading her patients’ bodies and selecting those in whom the spark of life was burning the strongest.

Her skills, too, were superb. With all the limitations under which they had to operate, that was still apparent even to a layman like himself. Rael Cofort was practicing actual medicine with the first aid they had to offer.

The Medic’s side hurt abominably, but she strove not to visibly favor it as they clambered along the rubble-strewn remnant of the street. She would have been ashamed to do so even had she not been determined to conceal as much as possible of her continuing pain from Jellico. What right had she to study herself for so little in the face of the massive agony all around her?

She had little opportunity to dwell on her own difficulties. Conditions worsened with every step closer to the water that they took. Survivors were few, and they were not always easy to locate among the mountains of rubble and the mangled corpses of their fellows. Rael leaned on her talent, used the sickening unease that told her someone nearby was in trouble to locate those still able to receive help. It was difficult to pinpoint a particular source of suffering with the collective misery of the district pouring into her, but she forced herself to concentrate as she had aboard the Mermaid. Usually, it worked. Usually, but not in every case.

Sometimes, they located the victim but could not reach him. Sometimes, they could help a little but could not free their patient and had to leave him pinned or partly buried with only a cairn of debris raised nearby to alert properly equipped rescuers to his presence, markers whose meaning they would have to communicate to the appropriate authorities as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Jellico’s hands balled into tight fists by his side. He felt sick with frustration and the seeming hopelessness of their efforts. He could do little for the people they found accessible in the streets and nothing for the handful of buried victims. He could not even be of much help to Rael Cofort as she faced and made decision after wrenching decision.

All he could do was stick with her, that and offer no protest in face or stance, do or say nothing to add to the weight she already carried.

They had traveled more than a third of the ruined street when suddenly both Free Traders stopped walking. They listened intently, their heads turning toward one of the remaining arches, the only one still standing on this block.

They spotted him quickly, a man sitting braced against its farther, seaward side, sobbing aloud. It was that sound which had caught their attention.

The pair hastened toward him. Rael’s eyes closed momentarily as they drew nearer. He was clutching a human leg to his breast. It had been severed at midthigh, and the material still clinging to it matched the blood-stained trousers he was wearing.

“I’m a Medic,” she said by way of introduction as she knelt beside him. “What happened?”

He stared at her blankly for a moment but then answered coherently enough. “I was walking along kind of fast when the explosion came. It knocked me down, but I got up again and started running. Then something, that metal thing over there, hit my leg. It was a red-hot ... It hurt . . .” He squeezed the limb still tighter. “I fell, but I didn’t see for a minute . . .”

While he had been speaking, the woman was examining both parts of the wound. “You were lucky,” she declared, making herself speak matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing the result of a minor stumble. “The cut is straight and clean, and the missile was so hot that it cauterized as it sliced through.”

“Lucky .. .”

“Hold on to that leg. They’ll want to put it back.”

“It’s too late!” For the first time, emotion, anguish, broke through the numbness that had seemed to envelop him.

“It’ll be too late! There’re too many hurt. They’ll all need first-time treatment just to live before anyone’ll be able to do a fix-up job like this. The leg’ll be dead . . .”

“Nonsense,” she responded briskly. “Ultrahyperbaric restoration can reawaken life in tissue detached for a full two weeks and probably longer.”

Rael finished her examination. “You didn’t lose much blood. That’s standing you in good stead, but we’re going to help you to the center of the street where you’ll be easier to spot by the rescue teams.-I want you to lie back and set your mind on getting well. It shouldn’t be all that much longer now before you’re under full, proper care.”

“Space,” Jellico muttered as they moved away from the Canuchean. “I hope we don’t run into too many more like that one.”

“At least he’ll survive and regain all or most of his mobility,” she replied grimly.

It had been hard leaving the man, but he was not in dire peril. There was not a whole lot they could have done for him by remaining with him unless they had rigged up a stretcher from some of the debris and tried to carry him out, which they were not prepared to attempt at this point.

There were simply too many others for whom prompt first aid could mean the difference between survival and death.

They could not have evacuated him in any event. Given her own injuries, she could not have held up her end of a stretcher, not for any distance. Whatever her will to the contrary, broken ribs demanded and would force a certain degree of consideration.

The Medic sighed. “I doubt we’ll be able to do much of anything for very many of those that we’ll encounter from here on in.”