The off-worlders’ hearts pounded fast and painfully as they continued to make their way along the short stretch that still separated them from the sea and the site of the great explosion itself. If things were so bad here, what combination of the Federation’s hells would they find when they reached the source of all this chaos? Would they find anything, living or dead, whole or shattered, there at all?
Rael’s gloomy words proved accurate, and they encountered only the dead on the little length that remained of the ruined street.
They reached its end at last. Both paused, steeling themselves to face the horrors they knew lay beyond, then they passed between the final segments of the great mounds of rubble that confined them on each side.
There, they froze. Before them lay the Straight and the remains of what had been Canuche Town’s bustling docks.
Now little among these splinters indicated what had once stood here.
The Regina Man’s and the pier at which she had been loading were simply gone. Debris-littered water occupied the place where they had been. Of those who had been battling the fire, there was no sign, nor would there ever be for most of them. They had been atomized under the double impact of blast wave and blast wind, whose force at the point of their sudden creation could well have reached 2,400 miles per hour or more.
Bodies in plenty lay farther back, between their vantage point and the place where the Man’s had been. All were grossly damaged by the forces generated by the explosion itself, by fire, or from having been thrown at high velocity and great force against ruthlessly unyielding surfaces. They had died, all of them, before flying debris or collapsing structures could pose any threat to them. They would have to be examined all the same, but that was merely an exercise in humanity with no hope of reward.
Rael shuddered. The loss of life would have been immeasurably worse had they not succeeded in driving most of the spectators off the pier when they had, but what they found here was still purely the stuff of nightmare.
She wrenched her eyes away from the slaughter at her feet. The havoc that had rent the land had not spared the sea. Water and shoreline were dotted with the wrecks of boats that had gathered too near in their interest in the fire.
Most had been ripped apart, but a few had only been blown ashore or now silently rode the wavelets, crewless but otherwise apparently unhurt. The Salty Sue, the only big vessel berthed close to the Man’s, had, like those smaller ghost ships, survived surprisingly well. A transport-sized hole had been blown in her prow, and she herself had been more than half beached, but she remained a recognizable entity that could be repaired and put back to work again.
For the first time, the spacers got a good look at the slopes, both above them and on the opposite side of the harbor. Neither shore had been spared, though the nearer, of course, had taken infinitely harder punishment.
As with the seaport and commercial areas, no building remained erect, only part of a wall standing here and there, and smoke seemed to be rising from a thousand different sources. For all the visible portion of Canuche Town, the catastrophe was total.
Of greater significance at the moment than the magnitude of the disaster was the sight of figures moving about amidst the wreckage, some carefully, some rapidly and erratically. Death was not quite as universal up there as it was closer to the sea. Distance had given the residents that much grace.
Even more heartening to see were the masses of people crossing the crest and heading down, a steady, organized flood of them. The remainder of the city had survived, then, and the rescue effort was under way.
“It’ll be a while before they make it as far as here,” Rael remarked, quelling the hope rising in her heart. There would be more deaths yet before this was finally over and part of history.
She frowned as she looked once more at the scene of carnage around them. “It should be worse,” she said tightly. “The detonation had to have thrown out more fire.”
“Everything’s wet. I’d say there was a pretty big splash, lucidly straight into the air and back into the bay again instead of a slosh and surge over the shore, or we’d have been drowned in our rat hole. The water must have kept the heat off the victims.” The ones they could see here. Those on the ship herself and on the dock nearest her would have ceased to have physical form before they could be incinerated.
All around them was the irrefutable physical evidence of the explosion’s power. Not forty yards to Jellico’s left, a 150-foot motorized floating dock had been dropped after having been blown a good 200 feet out of the water below.
He tried not to think about what probably lay beneath it, or of what he could see on top of it, either. There lay the incredibly crushed remnants of three firetransports. A fourth vehicle, less heavily damaged, had been brought to a stop against its side. That one bore the black and silver colors of the Stellar Patrol.
Rael saw the direction of his gaze and started for the displaced dock. Her own injuries made her grateful for her companion’s help in scaling the monstrous thing, but she refused to give in further to them. If Miceal came to suspect the extent of the damage she had taken, he would pull her out of this hopeless fight, force her to return at once for aid.
That she was not prepared to do, not while she herself was in no immediate danger and others decidedly were.
She glanced at the nearest of the Fire Department vehicles, then involuntarily up at Miceal.
The Captain shook his head. “Forget it, Rael,” he told her gently. “None of them survived. It’s impossible that they should.”
Still, they looked at each transport, confirming that there was no life in any of them. They held no dead, either. The blast had carried off the lighter bodies of their crews. Only one corpse was to be seen on the dock, a man’s, naked except for one sock of a type adopted by seamen and others engaged in heavy physical outdoor labor the ultrasystem over. Jellico thought he might have been a sailor blown from a nearby vessel or else a dockworker. From the angle at which he was lying, they judged that his back had been broken in several places.
“There’s nothing we can do up here,” the Medic said.
The gnawing unease was flogging her again, demanding action despite her weariness and pain. “Someone around here is hurt. Let’s check out that Patrol flier first and then hunt around the base of this thing. — Damn it, I wish some of those Canucheans would light their burners and get down here! To judge by what we’ve seen thus far, anyone we come across is going to be in a pretty bad way.”
“You’re not in such a good way yourself,” he said sharply after seeing her wince as she lowered herself to the dock in preparation to scramble over its side.
“I don’t pretend to be as tough as you, Miceal Jellico,” she told him irritably. “These muscles are going to be singing me a sad story for some time to come. — You could give me a hand down if you’d like to be helpful.”
“Down here! Help!”
Both froze.
Jellico went to his knees beside his companion. The cry seemed to have come from the wrecked flier. They could see two people. One was lying across the rear seat, one in the front, the latter almost concealed by the great, jagged metal shard that had felled him. Had they not been studying the machine so closely, they would have missed seeing him.
The spacers made no delay in climbing down. Rael hastened first to the victim in the back, that one being the more readily accessible.
After a few moments, she drew back, her mouth twisting. First aid had been attempted, but injuries of this magnitude rendered any such effort worthless. The woman had been eviscerated, and the damage done to her lungs, while not visible, must have been greater still. How the poor creature had survived long enough to receive any treatment at all ...
“Rael! Over here! He’s alive!”
She hurriedly backed out of the flier and ran to its opposite side, where Miceal was already beside the vehicle’s second occupant.
The woman caught her breath in horror. “Keil!”
The Patrol-Yeoman did not look like the same man. He appeared years older, his face marred by pain, fear, blood, and plain dirt, but there was no doubting the accuracy of her identification. As if to confirm it, he turned his head at the sound of her voice. It was about the only part of his body, certainly the only visible part, with a full range of free movement. “Doctor Cofort?”
“That’s right, my friend.”
“Gayle? Yeoman Argile? She’s dead?” There was more statement than question in that.
She nodded. “Aye. That was inevitable anyway. Most of her lungs had to have been ruptured.”
His eyes closed in the infinite weariness of defeat. “I know. I had to try to get her out, though. — I was farther away and only got flattened, and the flier somehow wasn’t damaged at all, so I took it and went back to the dock. Where it used to be. Gayle was near there, still alive. No one else was.”
He paused, then went on. “I did what I could for her and tried to make a run for it. That’s when this thing hit me and made an end of me, too. I think it’s part of the supports of one of the fuel tanks . . .”
“Nothing’s made an end of you, not yet!” She squeezed down beside him to try for a pulse count and to peer into his eyes. The pupils were even, at least. . . “Let me push in there so I can get a better look at you.”
“I’m finished,” the Yeoman stated flatly, his manner calm and quite certain but with an urgency underlying it.
“So are you two if you hang around here any longer. Maybe you are no matter how far you can run now.”
“What do you mean?” Jellico demanded sharply. Whatever one felt about the agents of the Stellar Patrol, they were not given to displays of hysterics even under gross provocation.
“See that ship over there?” he asked, pointing toward the Salty Sue with a toss of his head. “She’s got several holds full of that damned ammonium nitrate, too, nine thousand nine hundred tons of it, plus a couple of thousand tons of sulphur and I don’t know how many barrels of benzol on deck and below. She’s on fire right now, or if she isn’t, the pier right next to her certainly is in several places. One blaze or another will get to her soon enough, and she’ll go up with a bang that’ll make the Man’s explosion seem like a harmless little puff of a dry run.”
Doctor Tau was wedged in between Jasper Weeks and Karl Kosti, sharing with four Canuchean laborers a transport somewhat too small to carry so many.
He was only vaguely aware of the discomfort of the journey. The people around them were taking almost the whole of his attention. Most of them were moving away from Canuche Town, lines of dazed, frightened refugees. A horribly high percentage of their number were obvious physical as well as emotional casualties of the disaster, struggling on with the assistance of their fellows to reach medical care at one of the temporary hospitals set up in the camp on the hardpan until the grave danger of fire subsided sufficiently for the facilities to return to the city itself.
He did not see any of the more severe cases, of course.
They were being brought in by flier and transport, but what he did observe was sufficient to reveal the scope of the catastrophe that had stricken this community. His trained eyes appraised each group, and he silently shook his head.
In saner times, many of these so-called walking wounded would rightly be labeled gravely injured themselves.
Just about all of Canuche Town’s windows had shattered, and jagged shards of glass had flown everywhere, causing the greatest part of the injuries sustained in the outermost parts of the city. Others, and he realized there would be many more of them as people from farther within Canuche Town began reaching this point, had been struck by falling materials or were burn or gas cases. A few stumbled along, blood flowing from their ears and noses, victims of the blast concussion.
Once more, he shook his head. Already, it was a nightmare, and it would only grow worse as they neared the place where the explosion had occurred. He acknowledged the bonds laid on him by the ancient oath he had taken, but that notwithstanding, he was not looking forward to the work that lay in front of them all.
The spaceport, when they reached it, was alive with activity. It was to there that the relief convoys were coming, and several had arrived already.
Relatively little visible damage had been sustained at the facility. It was located far enough from the coast that only a minute amount of debris had reached it, and most of the power driving that had been spent. He had learned from Colonel Cohn, however, that two people had been killed when a piece of sheet metal had skimmed over their transport and decapitated them. The potential for grave disaster had unquestionably been here, and the starships had done well to lift when they had.
Once they passed through the port, their transport was not long in reaching Canuche Town itself and then the place where it was to pick up its load of badly wounded for the return trip.
Tau walked over to the waiting stretchers to see what he and his comrades might expect to encounter.
What he found there was no worse than he had anticipated, but seeing the actual victims drove the enormity of the horror more sharply home, and he returned to the others even more sobered.
Their instructions were simple—to start searching the thickly populated slope above the harbor. Whenever they found a group engaged in a rescue that called on them for aid or discovered someone who was trapped, they were to provide whatever help they could.
Since the Solar Queen trio had come bearing digging equipment and first aid supplies, they had no need to wait for gear to be issued to them. They separated from the Canuchean laborers who had traveled with them and started out at a brisk pace.
When they crested the rise above the slope, all three stopped as if on command.
The sight meeting their eyes was almost beyond credulity. Here and there, part of a wall rose up out of the ruin, windowless, roofless, more pathetic than the unidentifiable jumble around them. Nothing else remained. Even the bay was wreckage and desolation only.
Total as the destruction obviously was, Ganuche Town was already crying its defiance. Fire and smoke were everywhere to be seen, but so, too, were those assembled to quell them. Fire brigades stationed in less dreadfully visited districts, bringing their equipment and foam in by flier and on their backs, had poured into the port region and had already begun to isolate and beat down a number of the individual blazes.
That their efforts had begun to show effect so soon, that they were able to have an effect at all, lay in large part with the thoroughness of Macgregory’s evacuation operation.
The Caledonia plant itself was gone, a victim of the volatile materials already present within its walls, but with all the feeder and fuel lines shut down along their whole length, no new materials arrived to support the voracious fire that had consumed the installation itself. Had that not been done, given the key location of the place and the vast volume of the chemicals pouring into it, there would have been little hope of quelling the flames in this part of the seaport for a long time to come and no hope whatsoever for any living victims pinned in the rubble around it.
The spacers were spared the horror of having to watch bloodstained adults and children frantically seeking one another amidst the ruins. The first people into the district had shepherded wounded into the hands of medical personnel and then to the refugee camp, where efforts to reunite families had already begun.
That part of the tragedy should have been worse than it was, too, and once again, thanks was due to Adroo Macgregory that it was not. The Caledonia, Inc., workers and their people had formed a large percentage of the population of the heaviest-stricken areas, and no few of their neighbors, remembering the storm that had sparked such an evacuation before, had taken warning and fled with them. Those who remained, alive or dead, who had not already been discovered lay buried beneath the ruins of their homes and workplaces.
The Free Traders passed several groups striving to free the trapped. Because they had to start someplace, the rescuers had begun their efforts at the crest of the slope. These first parties had their particular situations on the perimeter in hand by then. Much as they would have welcomed more help, they were willing to forgo it, realizing how desperately laborers were needed farther downslope.
At last, they came upon a party more frantically engaged than any they had thus far encountered. The forewoman was alternately wielding her ax with no little skill and driving her navies on with a vocabulary that would have reduced any proverbial Navy Master Sergeant to a state of silent awe.
She spotted the three and summoned them in one instant. “Stop gawking, space hounds, and get to work! There’s a damn big job on here.”
They hastened to obey. “What’s the specific problem?” Tau asked the grim-faced Canuchean when he reached her side.
She pointed down, and his breath caught in sick horror.
There, far below them, was a small child, a toddler. She was held in place, but apparently only by her clothing, for she was squirming around and was shrieking her discomfort and terror. They could have reached her and drawn her out with no more difficulty than that of hard, careful labor had they enjoyed the luxury of unlimited time, but that last they did not have. A slow fire was inexorably eating its way toward her, and it was patent even from one hurried glance that it would reach her long before they could hope to do so.
“We won’t get within twenty feet other in time,” he said. “If that near. It’s not far from her now.”
“Would you suggest that we stop working and just watch the show?” the woman snarled.
“No!” Anger and anguish mixed equally in Karl’s bellow.
Jasper Weeks said nothing. He stood where he was, watching the tot and the fire. “This is like a chimney,” he said quietly, as if to himself. “She probably fell or was blown down there, and she’s certainly not badly stuck.”
“Very observant,” the Canuchean snapped. “Now start chopping, you son—”
“No, listen! You’ve got plenty of rope. Someone small enough could be let down and try to get her.”
Her breath caught. She eyed him carefully, then the others. “It’s got to be you or me. No one else’d have an iceberg’s chance.”
“My idea. Besides, you’re in charge here. You’re needed more.” There was no point in pretending to be oblivious to the danger a would-be savior faced of getting stuck himself and joining the child in her fate instead of rescuing her from it.
The other nodded. “Have at it, space hound.”
With time in such short store, the work crew squandered none of it. Even while their chief and the spacer were discussing which of them should make the effort, they fetched and began to ready the rope.
The harness they rigged was no more than a large loop held by a fixed knot that would neither release nor tighten in such a fashion as to squeeze in upon him. A smaller piece was fastened to it at chest height so that he would be able to tie himself and the little girl to it for additional support—if he could get to her in time.
Jasper stripped off his belt lest it catch on any of the jagged debris but left his clothing on. The uniform was close-fitting, and he would need the protection it would afford.
Kosti, by far the biggest man there, drew a length of the line about himself. He would belay while a monstrous stone block served as anchor.
Weeks pulled the rope over his shoulders and lowered it until he was sitting in the loop, then gingerly let himself over the edge.
It was at once apparent that he had set himself no easy task. What he had described as a chimney was in fact no more than a relatively clear space in the sea of rubble, open more in the visual than the physical sense. He was not at all certain he would be able to get by all the obstructions extending into it. Also, the fire seemed much closer from this angle than it had from above.
It was a drop of less than fifty feet, but there could be no hurrying the descent if he did not want a broken leg or to find himself inextricably wedged. Every few inches, he had to wriggle and twist to escape collision with one shard or another, and there was no point in beginning to count the number of times he struck something despite all his care.
Assuming he lived to leave this miserable hole, he would have some interesting bruises to show for his work. Weeks swallowed hard. He was down about twenty-five feet now, and it was not his fear that was making him sweat like this. It was getting hot, and smoke was fouling the air.
Worse, the space seemed even tighter, and a new dread entered his mind. If it got much narrower than this, he would not be able to come back up with the girl in his arms, if he could reach her at all. He would have to send her up first, and he very much doubted the line could be lowered to him again, which would have to be done slowly for fear of its catching and tangling before . . .
It seemed that he was dropping by bare inches instead of feet, but in the end, he came within reach of the child, just barely ahead of the lead tongues of the fire.
Jasper tried to keep himself between the flames and the tot. They had not yet reached the point of actually touching her, but the heat was already blistering.
He could not quite come even with her, and she was not of an age that he could expect to get any help or information from her. He leaned over at a precarious angle until he could see how she was held and gave an audible sigh of relief. A piece of pipe had torn through the skirt of her frock, which had then become twisted about it. He could get to it readily and slice through it with his knife without hurting her.
The spacer grabbed hold of the little Canuchean with his left hand and held her tightly despite her yowl of protest and fear. He could not risk freeing her only to have her fall farther down.
It was done, but they were out of time. The material covering his thigh was smoldering.
“Karl, pull! I’ve got her!”
Bad as the journey down had been, the ascent was worse. Twice, he was seriously afraid they would not be able to pass at all, and several other times, they had to maneuver through places very nearly as tight. It required careful work to get through, and that took time, a constraint not binding the fire licking hungrily below. Ever in his mind and in the minds of those above was the knowledge that if the blaze suddenly leapt up toward the greater supply of air on the surface, they would both be cooked as they hung there. Only the fact that the ruins in this place were porous and also quite poor in flammable material had saved them thus far, a tenuous leash indeed to be holding so fearful a force.
They passed the worst stretch. A little more speed was possible after that, the small increase that could be permitted without threatening to snag the line or batter the pair too greatly.
There was no escaping some hammering. Weeks wrapped himself as a living shield around his tiny charge, but in so doing, he thereby vastly reduced the efforts he could make on his own behalf. Time and again, his body struck hard against solid projections, on several occasions sharply enough that he was scarcely able to retain his hold on rope and child.
Suddenly, unbelievably, there was only clear air above them. Hands reached out, drew him onto solid ground.
Jasper was conscious of broadly smiling faces and unrestrained cheering. He was smiling himself as he handed the little girl over to Craig Tau, then the world seemed suddenly to tilt sideways, and a not unwelcome darkness settled over it.
Van Rycke paused at the crest. “It doesn’t take much for us to do a proper job on ourselves, does it?”
“How could everyone have forgotten how dangerous ammonium nitrate can be?” Dane half asked, half demanded. So much misery, and most of it could have been averted had the salt been handled with the deference its nature demanded.
“Because no one else has used it on a large scale for a very long time, so it hasn’t had a chance to cause trouble. A lot of other things have and, thus, replaced it in our collective memory.” He grimaced. “Who expects death and destruction to come from a common, old-time fertilizer?”
Thorson did not try to suppress the shudder passing through him. All those poor people ... “Where do we start first, sir?” The disaster was so vast, they would be of use no matter where they went.
“Down at the water. Nobody seems to have gotten that far, so the need’ll be greatest there, once we get far enough away from the explosion site that people could live through it. Of course, we’ll stop if we encounter anyone in dire trouble higher up.”
The younger man nodded his agreement but made no verbal answer. Their unvoiced hope was a slim and forlorn one. Their comrades had been very close to the Regina Man’s, maybe on the vanished dock itself. There was precious small chance that either of them had survived.
The Cargo-Master moved rapidly despite the rubble-littered streets, so quickly that Dane had to push himself to keep pace.
At first, there was little to be seen apart from the ruins of homes and businesses, but as they descended, corpses became an ever more frequent sight. While people remained still trapped or in need of care, little attention could be spared for the dead, and bodies were left lying where they had fallen or had been dropped after having been pulled from the rubble.
The apprentice tried to avert his eyes, but he found himself staring at the grim remains. The horror was such that it generated its own fascination, one he was powerless to resist completely.
He looked into the frozen face of one dead girl and stopped in mid stride. “Mr. Van Rycke!”
His chief turned around. He glanced sharply at the woman and then started to move away once more. “She’s dead. Has been almost from the start.” It depressed him to look at her. She was, or had been, younger than Thorson when he had first joined the Queen.
“But she’s been shot!”
Jan faced the corpse again. She lay where the force of the killing blow had thrown her, the once luminous eyes wide and starting, still showing the surprise of an instantaneous, utterly unexpected death. A large, round hole with burn damage at its edges marred the exact center of her forehead.
Van Rycke searched the ground around her for several minutes. At last, he picked up a small, partly flattened blob of metal and held it up for Dane’s examination. “There’s your pellet, or one like it. That it struck like this so far upslope was a vile turn of chance, but the load of screws, nails, and other small items the Man’s was carrying will have created real havoc below. We’ll be seeing more samples of its work if we get that far down.”
Frank Mura, Shannon, and Kamil pushed their way right through the residential section down into the commercial district. Only a few groups had penetrated this far as yet, and they had decided among themselves that they might be able to accomplish more good there than on the better-organized heights.
All three were quiet. Apart from the heavier nature of the materials comprising these ruins, there was little to differentiate them from those above. The destruction was such that there was no means of telling upon a casual glance whether a specific site had once held a home, office, or factory building.
There were more dead as well, and the corpses were more visible. The closer proximity of the explosion assured that, as did the fact that no one had yet been through this area to remove or stack them.
They encountered living victims as well. Many, they were able to help. For others, there was little they or anyone else could hope to do. In every case, the Free Traders did as they had been instructed and moved the injured into the center of the street for easy sighting and pickup by the fliers that would soon be coming over this part of the district.
A cry, a wail for help, halted them. Even with the three of them searching and the shouting continuing, it took several minutes to locate its source, a crevice roughly half a foot square in the mound of rubble beside them. Inside, they could just see the face of a man.
Working with infinite care lest they dislodge more debris and turn that narrow place into a tomb, they slowly enlarged the hole until they were able to draw the victim out.
Incredibly, the Canuchean was whole apart from the most minor scrapes and bruises. He appeared dazed, but that was the shock of what had happened to him. There was no sign of head or other major injury.
He went of his own accord to the middle of the street and sat down, fixing his eyes on the slope above, which was fairly clearly visible from that place. “I was kind of lucky, I guess,” he said more or less to his rescuers. “I was at my computer when I heard a loud bang and instinctively dived under the desk. I didn’t even have time to turn around when the ceiling came down. It couldn’t have been much more than that, or the desk couldn’t have protected me.
“Anyway, when everything got quiet, I crawled out and just kept going until I got stopped here. I didn’t want to go back into the dark, so I waited. Somebody had to come sometime.”
He gave a great sigh. “That was my house up there, right next to where the grade school used to be.”
“A lot of people got out,” Rip Shannon told him gently, “and a lot of others have been rescued by now. It wasn’t quite as bad higher on the slope even if it looks from here like it was.”
All’s voice was sharper. “You said only the ceiling seemed to have come down on you. Could anyone else be alive in there?”
“I— don’t know. It was dark as an unlit mine, and I didn’t hear anyone. There were six of us on the computer staff, though, and ten in the clerical pool next door ...”
Rip started to swear, but Mura’s raised hand silenced him. He gripped his temper. It was not the Canuchean’s fault. The man was stunned, and his mind could not yet grasp anything much beyond himself and his own situation. He had given them their lead. The rest was up to them. Hopefully, help would reach them before too many more hours had passed.
The spacers quickly traced the Canuchean’s escape route to its source. All of them were slender, agile men armed with good head lamps, and they were not long in discovering that his report was accurate. By some presently unaccountable quirk of chance, the moderately large room in which they found themselves had taken relatively light damage, and they located its five other occupants without difficulty. One was dead, his neck broken, and another was fairly severely injured, but the remaining three were little worse off than the initial survivor.
These last, they led out first and then carried their more critically hurt co-worker, leaving the dead man for a future trip.
Before going back inside a second time, Mura gave a hasty report of what they had discovered over his portable transceiver. Conditions that had shielded one floor or room might have been repeated elsewhere, perhaps many times over. That could be the salvation of a lot of lives if it were known, and he dared not assume that they would be able to deliver the information in person. They would have to venture again and again into the ruins, where any shift of the freshly piled, unsettled rubble or any other mischance could bury them forever.
Frank drew his sleeve across his face to wipe off the sweat, smearing the coating of grime, soot, and blood into an even tighter clinging paste.
The second office, which housed the clerical workers, was not so well preserved, and the one beyond it was infinitely worse. After that third chamber, they had been compelled to quit the ruins altogether lest they just bring the whole thing down on the poor wretches still trapped there. Only when a backup company armed with major emergency equipment arrived in response to Mura’s report were they able to resume the massive effort.
It seemed to be about over now, he judged. They appeared to have discovered all the survivors at this site. At least, all that had come out in the last several trips were bodies and parts of bodies.
His eyes shut with infinite weariness. Had Japan suffered like this, he wondered, before volcano and giant wave had combined to throw her islands, population, and ancient culture beneath the cloaking surface of Terra’s ocean? It had taken two days and the night between them. Had desperate rescue teams struggled on even as they were doing here in the face of ever-mounting calamity throughout all that first day and night and maybe part of the second day until an implacably furious nature had left none alive to save or be saved?
The Steward shook his head and looked with concern at the party just pulling itself out of the ruin. That was not his own history. It was not the history of his parents or grandparents. For Ali Kamil, this was his boyhood returned.
Apart from the fact that the cause had been cruel accident rather than human savagery, he had seen all this, lived it, and he had survived. Would he be able to do so a second time?
Frank watched the Engineer-apprentice haul himself erect and claim the luxury of stretching cramped, exhausted muscles. His face was blank, a mask, but his dark eyes were alive and afire, blazing like a pair of young stars pulled out of the depths of space.
Kamil had been tireless in his efforts. More than that.
They all had worked and were working, but Ali had proven to be worth any three of the rest of them. He seemed to have no fear of the treacherous rubble and ventured time and again into it without hesitation or apparent qualm, and once inside, he rarely failed to accomplish his mission. He had an almost uncanny feel for it, for locating hidden, otherwise lost survivors, for figuring with a minimum of lost time how best to shove or pry or lift away the material confining them. When this day was over, it would be the darkly handsome space hound that the greater part of the people brought alive out of this place would have to thank for their deliverance.
Jellico twisted around. The Salty Sue was clearly visible from the shattered Patrol flier, and so, too, were the clouds of smoke and the sullen glow of flames rising from the broken dock beside her. He could not tell whether the freighter herself was already ablaze.
He came to his feet. “The ship’s my business,” he told Cofort and the injured yeoman. “A Medic’s what’s needed here at the moment, and that we’ve got”
Rael looked up at him. “Miceal . . .”
The Captain shook his head. “You’re hurt,” he said quietly, “and Keil’s hurt worse.” His voice dropped. “He’s also been alone through too much of this already.”
It was a command, however softly voiced. The woman’s head lowered, as much to conceal the weight of grief and loss she feared she would not otherwise be able to mask as to give her assent.
Jellico said nothing more to either of them. He turned from the pair and ran for the threatened freighter. Maybe there was no chance, probably there was none, but he was not going to surrender to the Grim Commandant without the best damn fight of his life. He would not quietly give over Rael or that wounded Yeoman or the rest of his crew, most of whom would by now be working in the ruins above, oblivious to the peril once again overshadowing them all.
His lips tightened. If only the Patrol agent’s transceiver had not been shattered in the crash he would at least have been able to sound the alarm, but one quick look had been sufficient to tell him he would send no warning out by that route, and there would be no point at all in trying to do so on foot. With the possibility of flight blocked, the fires would have to be kept away from the Sally Sue’s cargo if a second, even more violent explosion was not to rip them all to shreds.
For one instant, he knew a stab of regret as hard and sharp as a physical blow. Perhaps he should not have refused Rael Cofort’s help, he thought. If nothing else, they might then at least have met their deaths together.
Angrily, he put that from his mind. The Medic had her own work to do, and with one or more cracked ribs, she would have been hard pressed to carry the strenuous activity that probably lay ahead of him if he was given the time to half begin. Fate had assigned each of them his own task in this one. They had no alternative, either of them, but to accept that fact and get on with it.
The need for speed lay on him like the lash of a force whip, with only minutes or maybe mere seconds standing between them all and oblivion, but the course he had to run was neither smooth nor straight. Rubble of every conceivable size and nature lay strewn in his path. Some of it he could sidestep or jump. Some large pieces forced him to detour altogether.
Each time he had to try a new way, his heart beat faster in fear. If he miscalculated, failed to follow the route he had so hastily planned out for himself, and wound up in a morass of big stuff or blocked by a wall of rubbish that would require real climbing, he might as well just sit back and wait for death . . .
The Salty Sue was in front of him. To his relief, he saw that she was as yet untouched. Only the dock beside her was aflame. It was not a massive conflagration, either, praise the Spirit ruling space, but rather several small fires, two of them already perilously near the freighter, burning independently of one another.
Luck was with him. Access to the dock had not been blocked, and the freighter’s deck was reasonably close to its surface. The Free Trader raced for her, dodging the flames and those places where the surface was splintered and either raised or altogether absent.
Only when he reached the Salty Sue did he at last come to a stop. Her rail was near but still far enough to make the gaining of it a challenge in itself.
It was a leap, he thought, even for a fully fresh man, but to judge by those fires, he had no option but to succeed and to do it in his first couple of tries.
Jellico steeled himself, tested his balance, and sprang.
His hands closed over the sturdy curve of the railing even as his feet slammed against the side. With that for a brace, he leapt again, this time vaulting over the rail onto the deck of the imperiled vessel.
Miceal did not pause. He had always liked watercraft and had indulged that liking by learning as much as he could about them, seeking practical experience as well as theoretical knowledge when he got the chance. That should stand by him here. Canuche of Halio was a typical industrial mechanized colony, and her people were not particularly innovative. They had no need to be with respect to the forms of transportation they adopted. The information he had picked up elsewhere should apply well enough here to allow him to accomplish what he had to do.
The freighter’s hatches were open, blown off by the force of the explosion. He ran for the stern-most one and half climbed, half dropped below. To his relief, the seacocks were where he expected to find them, and he threw them open, letting the cold ocean water into as many of the holds as were low enough to receive it.
That done, the spacer returned to the deck and darted once more to the prow.
He had come up none too soon. One of the fires was already licking the Salty Sue’s side.
Jellico’s tongue ran across dry lips. The metal plates would not burn, but her deck would once the flames came so far.
That was irrelevant. As far as he knew, the ammonium nitrate inside did not require the actual touch of fire to go up. A significant rise in temperature would probably accomplish that just as effectively.
The fire guns, too, were stored where reason and his knowledge of similar vessels said they should be. He freed the one closest to the charging fires. Now, if only it still functioned. Equipment like this was built to keep on working under emergency conditions, but an explosion of such magnitude at such proximity . . .
The foam came. Miceal played it on the nearest fire, driving it back, away from the ship, then sprayed a longer stream on the second blaze that was making fast inroads toward her.
For the first time, he felt a touch of relief. As long as the press of battle remained close to this level, he should be able to hold the ship, provided the gun kicked over to seawater when the supply of foam was exhausted. There were others, of course, but none quite so well situated, and there was no guarantee any of them would work if this one did not.
Twenty minutes went by. A third fire was challenging the Sally Sue, bigger and hotter than the others and stronger by a large measure in its advance.
Great black clouds of hot smoke formed its van. The stuff stank, and he wondered precisely what was feeding it. His throat and chest felt as if they were burning in their turn with every breath of it that he was compelled to draw.
The stream of foam sputtered suddenly and was gone.
For an eternal instant, he was left with a limp feeder hose in his left hand, then it stiffened once more, and a strong, cold, silver river shot from the gun.
It looked lovely in that moment, but the man’s eyes followed it somberly. The supply might be unlimited, but water was not as efficient as foam, and all the fires on the dock were rapidly gaining in strength, threatening to merge into one overwhelming conflagration.
They were definitely attacking along a wider front. It was a rare moment now when he was not faced with a serious assault, usually with more than one, and not a moment at all when the ultimate hopelessness of his stand was not starkly apparent to him.
Miceal acknowledged his doom when he finally noticed the barrels. There were about twenty of them lying in a jumble on the farther side of the dock, where the flames and smoke had combined to screen them from his sight and awareness. A sudden, brief clearing of the air revealed them, tall, sturdy metal cylinders with the word benzol emblazoned across them. He did not know how much heat that stuff could take, but he imagined there was a point, probably not terribly high, at which it would go up. When that happened, the Salty Sue would follow, and they would all die, Rael, himself, everyone in Canuche Town and what remained of Canuche Town itself. She was carrying so much more ammonium nitrate than the Man’s that total obliteration was a certainty.
Rael Cofort’s head remained bowed. She should be with the Queen’s Captain, fighting this battle beside him, if need be, dying beside him.
Her hands balled. He had been right to order her to stay where she was. She had her own business here, a patient in deep need of help, and she was patently unfit for heavy work. Her efforts to examine Keil’s injuries had so aggravated her own that it was taking all her will not to surrender, not to sit back and give herself over to the pain rending her side.
That could not even be considered. She was a Medic, and she would function as one while the need was there and life remained in her, whatever her own discomfort and whether she was fated to die before her work was completed or not.
Keil Roberts was severely wounded. If he did not get into surgery, he would die of those injuries eventually, but she could patch him up well enough to hold him until he could be flown out.
The missile transfixing him could not be removed. She would have been afraid to try that alone even if she were physically equal to the task. There was too much danger that she would not be able to stanch the ensuing hemorrhage rapidly enough. He had lost too much blood already, and any further significant drain would severely compromise him.
She would need bandages. Rael went to the rear seat of the flier and drew her knife from her belt. Working swiftly, she cut what was left of the tunic off the dead woman and ripped it into large strips, then returned to her patient.
Luckily, the full weight of the huge missile had not come directly down on him. His right leg had been caught and viciously torn, but the massive thing pressed on him in such a way as to greatly retard the flow of blood. He was still alive because of that, but the respite was only temporary. The slow, steady drain had already badly weakened him, and unless it was brought to a stop soon, it would kill him.
The woman crawled and squirmed along the floor of the transport until she was beside Roberts and able to work on his injuries. It was a cramped, punishing position, but she could function. That was all she could allow to matter. She fixed her concentration on what she had to do, ignoring the agony that was her body. Fortunately, Keil could not see her face and was probably too absorbed in his own pain to be aware of any discomfort she was not strong enough to conceal.
It was slow work, but at last she was able to wriggle back out and creep to the door of the transport, where she could sit upright and rest for a few moments supported by the seat and metal frame. Her eyes closed, and she struggled to breathe evenly, fearing that any deep or ragged movement of her chest would sharpen the agony in her side to the point that it would overpower her. It would not take much more at all to do that.
The worst stabbing soon lessened with the easing of her position. The Medic straightened and carefully studied her patient.
She was satisfied. He was deathly pale, of course, and in pain, but he seemed to have weathered her treatment well enough. There was no more she could -do for him now except offer support and encouragement until help arrived.
If they or anyone else were around much longer to give or receive it.
For the first time, Rael permitted herself to look in the direction of the Salty Sue. Her heart gave a great leap. It was a terrible sight, and it was magnificent. Flames were clearly visible now. The several small fires had grown fewer and larger as one had merged into another, presenting a far more formidable and threatening aspect. At present, three of them actively imperiled the freighter, and those Jellico was struggling to hold at bay.
Pride swelled in her even as tears blurred her eyes.
Courage was necessary to a starship Captain, but to her mind it was one thing to face the dangers, known and unknown, of interstellar travel, even the blasters and lasers of a pirate wolf pack, and another to stand alone against the awesome, mindless primal power of fire.
Her hands clenched and whitened by her sides. It was a foredoomed effort! The dock provided too much fuel for the flames. They would swell and grow until no individual could hope to oppose their advance . . .
“He needs help,” Keil observed quietly.
She glanced at him, then nodded and came to her feet, stifling the gasp the movement drew from her. Her work here was finished, and she was needed on the deck of the Sa7Jy Sue.
“Rael!”
She turned quickly. Van Rycke and Dane Thorson! “Miceal!” she shouted, pointing to the ship. “The Captain! He’s trying to save that freighter. She’s loaded with ammonium nitrate!”
Dane took one look at the war his commander was waging and broke into a run.
His young body was hard and unwearied by the fast but relatively untrying advance he and Van Rycke had made to the coast. The rugged way ahead of him did little to slow him even when he had to jump or detour around some major obstacle, and he reached the pier in rather less time than Jellico had taken.
Once there, he did stop. He frowned. Why was the Captain turning his gun on the back of the dock, just about at the limit of its useful range? There was fire enough far closer to claim his attention . . .
He saw the barrels, probably the remnants of a larger consignment, the most of which must have been flung into the water during the explosion and its aftermath. The better part of these had been knocked over as well but had stayed fairly near to one another. The flames were licking at the closest of them.
His eyes darkened. He recognized as well as Jellico had before him the danger they represented. The containers were obviously well insulated, but they were designed to guard against mischance, not long-term, direct contact with open fire. The contents must be getting perilously close to the explosion point.
If even one of them went, that would be the end. The rest would rupture and go up in almost the same moment and the freighter a breath’s space later. Even if by some miracle she did not, she would have taken fire many times over, multiple fires that would set her off in a matter of minutes.
The end result would be the same.
The Cargo-apprentice dove through the tall, narrow band of flame assaulting them, moving so quickly that he gave the fire no time to bite on him. He flung himself at the nearest barrel, seizing it in his arms and shoving it back toward the edge of the dock.
He released it again in the next moment with a sharp cry.
The metal was hot, not quite glowing but not terribly far from it. His flesh felt as if it were searing beneath his clothing.
Steeling himself, he grasped the cylinder again. Tears welled in his eyes. His gloves were giving his hands some protection, but the lighter tunic provided little defense for his chest or arms. They were burning.
Cursing, he manhandled his burden to the end of the pier, flung it over.
He did not pause to listen for the hiss of hot metal striking cold seawater or to see the answering rise of steam or splash. The other barrels were in equal danger, presented an equal threat. Each would have to be served in the same manner.
The next one was on its side. It would roll easily, but he would have to use his knees as well as his hands.
It was no less hot than its predecessor. As he had anticipated, his trousers gave no greater protection than the tunic had, and this time the pain in his hands equaled anything he felt elsewhere. They were already damaged, and the gloves were only meant to guard against the hazards of rough manual labor, not to meet the challenge of fire and extreme heat. He could not have expected them to shield him forever.
The burning increased with every moment he remained in contact with the metal. The apprentice wondered how he would be able to endure that level of punishment long enough to dispose of this barrel, and his heart and courage sank at the thought of the eighteen more remaining after it.
All of them had to be removed, or his efforts would be valueless.
It would not be that bad, he told himself savagely, not all of it. The third barrel, aye, he would suffer with that one, but the others were farther back, out of direct contact with the flames and at least a little distant from their heat. They should not be so brutally hot.
He staggered toward his next target only to be driven back from it. Jellico had seen him and had been trying to give him as much cover as possible, but another of the fires had pushed too close to the ship, and the Captain had been compelled to switch his attention to that, leaving this front free to continue its assault.
Thorson pushed right into its shimmering shadow. What difference whether he seared himself like a steak against the container or was turned into a human torch, he thought bitterly. He would die equally painfully either way.
For one instant, he thought he would take fire, but though his exposed skin blistered, he managed to push the barrel over and out of the flames’ direct reach. It was not quite as hot as the others, he judged as he rolled it toward the edge. It had not been on the front line as long as the other two. Hope stirred in his heart. If that held true for the rest, and the effect was magnified by distance, then he might win this impossible race. Even with the hungry fire advancing unchecked and himself already fairly severely burned, he should be able to shift reasonably cool barrels quickly enough to put them once and for all out of danger.
They were not all that heavy in themselves, and he was nothing if not experienced in moving cargo by this time.
What would happen to him after that was another matter, but it was not his immediate concern, and he refused to allow himself to dwell on it. The task before him demanded his full attention. Miceal started at the sight of a movement, a man, opposite him on the dock. At first, he thought it was an illusion, delirium even, the product of smoke and flame and his own imagination, augmented by the increasingly pungent fumes he was compelled to breathe, sickening and weakening him beyond any weariness. He recognized Thorson then, but before he could try to shout instructions to him, the young man realized their peril and moved of his own accord to dispose of the barrels.
The Captain cringed at the thought of how hot that metal had to be, but there was no help for it. They had to be dumped.
Was that still possible? The apprentice had proven his courage and determination often enough, but he had never been challenged like this. The cost of every contact with those containers and the ever-present, ever-increasing horror of the fire itself would have been sufficient to break an older, more experienced man, whatever his knowledge of the stakes riding on him. Jellico could not say how much of it he himself could have taken.
There was almost nothing he could do to help. Those barrels were located right at the limit of the fire gun’s range.
Its stream reached barely far enough to discourage the fire from sweeping over Dane, and even that pitiful defense would have to be terminated long before the job was done.
The Sally Sue was under too heavy an assault herself . . .
Miceal whipped the fire gun down, training its muzzle on the dock just before him. An arm of fire had worked its way along the pier and was licking right at the ship’s side almost at his feet.
It was a small advance, and he was not long in driving it back, but the three major fires had now become one.
Jellico’s heart was heavy. Thorson’s suffering and sacrifice were for nothing. He would not be able to keep up his own part. He would be able to hold out a few minutes more, five or perhaps ten, but the deadly little fires had become a conflagration that would soon sweep over him and the ship he was battling to save. He would go down still fighting, but that would be small comfort to those he had failed to save. It had just been too big a task for only one man . . .
A thud sounded beside him as someone sprang onto the deck.
His head turned sharply. Jan Van Rycke!
The Cargo-Master grinned but said nothing as he raced for the nearest fire gun, seized and activated it.
It functioned, praise the Spirit ruling Space, and a powerful stream of foam belted a gap in that part of the fire wall nearest them.
Three minutes later, another stream joined it from a point near the freighter’s middle. Rael!
Miceal’s spirit sang. This equipment was designed to handle major trouble—witness the stand he had been able to make alone guarding so broad a front. With the three of them manning the guns, they had a chance—not a certainty—but for the first time a true chance of defeating the primal force before them.
They had won. They had seen the fire fall back, great patches of it dying under cold water and smothering foam, well before the air above them had suddenly filled with Fire Department fliers, all spilling what had seemed like half an ocean of foam.
Jellico smiled at the memory as he wearily leaned back against his pillow. The four spacers had just about drowned along with the flames, but he did not recall hearing any protests. He himself certainly had not been inclined to object.
A knock brought him back to his present surroundings.
It had been soft and rather timid and was not immediately repeated. Rael Cofort.
He sat up quickly and began refastening the collar snaps on his tunic. “Come in,” he called as he pressed the last into place.
The woman obeyed instantly. She had Queex with her, draped over her arm, but almost without thinking, she set him on Jellico’s desk. Her eyes fixed on the Captain’s face, studying him intently. His voice had sounded hoarse, but that was nothing, merely the result of the abuse his throat and lungs had taken. It would clear up of its own accord soon enough.
“Mr. Wilcox said you’d knocked out,” she said.
“Mr. Wilcox should keep his mouth shut,” he grumbled.
“Not with me pestering him. — You’re all right, Miceal?”
“Aye. I just started running out of fuel. Since there’s no need to play ultraman at the moment, I decided to call it an evening.”
“Smart move. It’s no fun having one’s lungs scrubbed.”
She moved closer to him and touched her fingertips to his forehead, “There doesn’t seem to be any fever.”
“I told you I was all right,” he responded irritably.
“I know, but I am a Medic. Habit’s hard to break.” She turned to the desk. “I guess we should leave and let you get some rest.”
“No. Stay a bit.”
Jellico’s cabin was full size, unlike hers, and was outfitted with a permanent desk and a chair.
She released the seat from its fastenings and drew it next to the wide bunk.
Miceal saw her grimace as she sat down, and now it was his turn to examine her closely. “Eight broken ribs. I knew you were hurt, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“It wasn’t until the end, or at least it didn’t hurt so much. I completed the job on myself when I was working on Keil. It took a lot of maneuvering to get in to him.”
“Well, I started it. I was the one who threw you onto that block.”
“Considering the shape those who’d been near us were in, I don’t think I’ve got much call for complaining,” she told him dryly.
“All the same, I am sorry.”
Rael smiled, but her eyes were somber. “Thanks for not telling me to leave Keil back there and run.”
“I did think of it,” he admitted, “but I knew there was too much titanone in your spine for you to listen, so I spared you the insult.”
She gave him an incredulous look and laughed. “I was terrified, my friend, m fact, I terrify easily. It’s just that...”
The Captain smiled. “Precisely, Rael Cofort.”
He shifted into a more comfortable position. “I more or less lost contact with the universe back there just after the fliers pulled us out. What happened? I know you assured me everything and everyone were clear, but Medics have a bad habit of softening down the story for the supposed wounded.”
“You were pretty sick,” she told him gravely. “That was straight poison you were breathing. A little greater concentration and ...”
“Well, I’m fine now. — You called the Fire Department?”
She nodded. “With Mr. Van Rycke’s transceiver, and Keil kept on calling after I went to join the battle. — He’s going to be fine, by the way,” she added triumphantly, “though he wouldn’t have lasted much longer without us.”
“Without you.”
She shrugged. “Dane’s about the worst hurt. Doctor Tail has him bundled up in burn cream and bandages at the moment, and he won’t be shoving cargo around for the next few weeks, but he didn’t take permanent damage, praise the Spirit of Space. We got the cream on him fast enough that there won’t even be any scarring.” She smiled. “Sinbad’s with him now, offering feline company and comfort.
“Jasper took some very bad bruises and minor singes.
He’ll be stiff and damn sore for a while, but otherwise he’s all right.”
“How’s Alt?” he asked quietly.
“Sound out. Both Doctor Tau and I are sure of that.
Whatever memories this aroused, he’s faced them and filed them where they belong. — He’s a strong man, Miceal, stronger than I would’ve thought just meeting him.”
“People tend to underrate him.” He swung into a sitting position. “What’s going to happen to Canuche Town itself?
And there’s the little matter of our charter. Now that the blasted life-and-death business is over, I’d like to know how that stands.”
The Medic smiled. “You’ll live! — Mr. Macgregory’s terribly busy, naturally, but he did talk to Mr. Van Rycke for a few minutes. The waterfront is to be restored and the rest of the damage repaired as soon as possible. The Caledonia plant will not only be rebuilt but will be enlarged.
Needless to say,” she added grimly, “ammonium nitrate will be handled with proper respect everywhere on-world from here on in.
“As for the Queen’s business, she’s to lift with her cargo as soon as she can. By the time she gets back, another shipment will have been brought in from some of the nearer factories and will be waiting for loading at the port. Adroo Macgregory has no intention of losing out on a good business opportunity merely because he’s suffered a setback here. — His phrasing.”
Jellico laughed. “A man after my own heart! — We’ll lift as fast as we can fuel up.” He frowned slightly. “Assuming we can get any fuel. Everything’ll be in short supply around here for a while.”
“Friend, there is nothing the Solar Queen wants or needs that she won’t get on Canuche of Halio. The other ships’re in pretty solid, too,” she added. “Their crews followed ours with manpower and supplies when they were needed most, and they’ll get precedence after the Queen on any charters going on this planet in the foreseeable future. This is one place where the Companies won’t even have a chance, not for a very, very long time to come.”
“It’s worked out well enough, then,” the Captain said slowly. “For us. The Canucheans lost a deal more than buildings and goods.”
Rael nodded slowly. “I wish we all could’ve moved sooner.”
She shifted in her seat. Miceal was beginning to look tired, and she was feeling weary herself.
She picked up the hoobat, who had been watching silently from his perch on the desk. “Shall I leave Queex? He’s been worried about you.”
Jellico winced at the Taboran’s answering screech. “Doctor Cofort. you’ll never make a xenobiologist if you insist on anthropomorphizing an X-Tee creature’s reactions ...”
“Queex is a shipmate, and I know him well enough by now to recognize when he’s upset, which he has been since we all limped back on board,” she informed him haughtily.
“I stand corrected. Doctor. — Hand him over here.”
Queex scurried up the man’s arm, then dropped to the bunk and settled himself in the still-warm spot its proper occupant had vacated with a great, rasping whistle of contentment.
“I hope he doesn’t object to being shifted,” Jellico commented. “That’s my place, and I’m not about to surrender it to a hoobat.”
“I’ll fetch his cage,” the woman promised. “He’ll probably be happier in there anyway.”
“Praise the Spirit of Space for small favors,” he muttered.
He ran his finger down the surprisingly soft feathers.
“He’s all right where he is for the time being.. One of the others can get the cage later on. — You’re not going to be lifting anything heavier than flatware and a cup until those ribs heal.”
“Aye, Captain,” she responded meekly to the command in his tone.
The feeling of contentment suddenly deserted Jellico. He glanced uneasily at the Medic, recalling some of the things she had said—and not said—during this visit. She had mentioned Thorson’s being unable to work but not that she would take over the lighter portions of the job for him, and she had spoken of the Solar Queen’s lifting with her cargo; she had not used the words we or our.
He lowered his eyes and pretended to concentrate on Queex, whose head he carefully rubbed. “Are you still planning to leave the Queen?”
“Captain or not, you just try to put me off, Miceal Jellico!”
He smiled broadly, partly from relief, partly to conceal it.
“That borders pretty closely upon insubordination,” he observed.
Fear gripped Rael, however, and she did not answer him as he expected. The Solar Queen had encountered a small galaxy of trouble since she had joined the ship’s company.
Superstition had a powerful hold on some space hounds, even among the best, the bravest, the most intelligent of their breed. If Jellico had come to believe she was, in fact, a jinx . . .
Her eyes fell. Initially, she had intended using her association with the Solar Queen as a means of gaining control of the funds currently tied up with the Roving Star and then, as soon as she had acquired the experience and reputation she required to bolster her credentials, to cut loose again and return to her brother’s organization on her own terms. Slowly, without her even realizing it, that purpose had altered, and for all her Trader’s discipline, she was hard-pressed to face this man without betraying the misery the possibility of his rejection, the possibility that he might fear her, aroused in her. “Seriously, Miceal,” she said in the low tone that was all she could trust herself to use steadily, “you are the skipper. If— you don’t think I fit in with the best interests of the ship for some reason, I’ll take my earnings to date and pull out, no questions asked.”
“No!”
She looked up and smiled. There was no mistaking the decision in that roar. “After all this, I wasn’t sure I’d be wanted . . .”
“I want you, damn it!” Miceal gripped himself. He was annoyed by the sharpness of his own response. He made himself go on quickly, as if without hesitation, in a quieter tone. “Doctor, life’s been interesting since you’ve come aboard, right enough, but what you don’t seem to realize is that life’s been interesting aboard the Solar Queen since the day she was launched. That’s not likely to change, and I’m not about to quit the starlanes or my ship as a result, especially since things seem to get just as lively in the supposed safety of a planet’s surface.”
Rael smiled once more, somewhat shyly this time. His vehemence had taken her a little aback, but it was surprisingly pleasing. “Maybe we’ll have a bit more peace and quiet from now on,” she ventured hopefully. “We’ve surely earned it.”
“Maybe,” Jellico agreed. He, for one, doubted it, but whatever fortune was to bring, he found himself looking forward to facing it. The Queen had seen her share of trials in the past and had claimed a reasonable quota of profit, and right now, her future and his own seemed to shine bright with promise.