Part 46 (1/2)

”See you when you get here.”

It took her, as he had known it would, twenty minutes, a fifth of the time that it would have taken him in a sedately paced, planet-bound bubble. He heard the noise, a deeper sound than the city bubblecraft, before he saw it, skin opaqued and gleaming in the moonlight, falling out of the night sky like a meteorite to land at the estate gates. The dragoncats raced to the attack and then heeled to Timithos' whistle; Rhani had already warned him to keep them in.

Lamonica swung from the bubble. Dana and Rhani went to meet her. She wore a silver-and-lavender jumpsuit. ”Good evening,” she said.

”Domna Rhani Yago, Starcaptain Tori Lamonica.”

Lamonica nodded without ceremony. ”If anyone's looking for me, they won't have any trouble finding me,” she said. ”All they'll need to do is follow the wind.”

”No one'll look. Did you move _Lamia_?”

”I said I would.”

Dana sighed. ”Then we're in business. Otherwise, we'd have had to turn around to go right back to Abanat.”

Rhani said, ”Now what will you do?”

”Now we'll go to the Net. As soon as I know what's happening there, I'll get in touch with Tam Orion. I'll route the call through LandingPort Station.”

”I see.” Rhani looked at the blond Starcaptain. ”Your payment's on record, Starcaptain Lamonica. All you have to do is spend it.” Lamonica said, ”It's a pleasure doing business with you, ma'am.”

Dana said, ”We're in a hurry, let's move.” He could not wait to be gone.

He felt as if his blood was singeing his veins. Rhani was looking at him as if she wanted to tell him something. He touched her shoulder; she closed her hand over his. Tenderness, regret -- he could not a.n.a.lyze the emotions that traveled like light between them.

Meaninglessly he said, ”It'll be all right, Rhani-ka.”

She smiled. The bubble door opened. Lamonica swung into the pilot's seat, hands on the ceiling bar. Dana followed her. He folded himself into the pa.s.senger's chair. Rhani waved. Then the bubble s.h.i.+vered and went up.

_Lamia_'s skin was pewter-colored. As they dropped toward her, Dana saw her s.h.i.+ning dully in the starlight. Lamonica had positioned her perfectly, between two hills twenty-five kilometers from the Yago estate.

Once in the s.h.i.+p, Lamonica moved to the pilot's chair. Dana took the navigator's seat. Events were happening very fast, and he made himself slow down, relax, breathe, d.a.m.n it. He touched the control panel with his fingertips.

He wanted to pinch himself hard to make sure that he, at least, was real.

Lamonica was rus.h.i.+ng through the takeoff checkout. ”What's going on?” she said. ”Am I likely to be stopped?”

”No, Rhani made a s.h.i.+tload of calls. You're clear with LandingPort Station and at Abanat Landingport.”

”And we're going to the Net. Are they expecting us?”

”No. That's why we're going out there. No one can reach them; they're not answering their lines. About an hour ago, they sent a distress signal in navigator's code, and it was cut off.”

”So someone's on it.”

”The Net commander and the chief navigator, and a pa.s.senger.”

”What are we supposed to do?”

”_We_ are supposed to do nothing. You're going to take me out to the Net, and I'm going to go in and look. There's a back-up repair crew waiting on the Moon. If I signal you, you'll call them.”

”Right. Going under Drive,” she said. The s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+vered. Dana closed his eyes. A hum filled the big round room, half-audible, half-subliminal. Gravity increased. Dana slumped in the contoured chair. He was not uncomfortable: he had done this so many times that his body adjusted automatically, not fighting the weight, waiting for it to pa.s.s.... It pa.s.sed. His breathing slowed to its normal rhythm. He opened his eyes. In the vision screen in front of him he saw a swelling darkness, tinged with a red luminosity which, he knew, came from the heating of the outer sh.e.l.l of _Lamia_ herself. The glow faded. On the surface of the swelling planet he saw distinctly one large and three small pinpoints of light. And then, as it always did, the view turned inside out. The swelling began to shrink. The planet's rim appeared in the screen, growing in arc and glowing with a purer and purer radiance. _Lamia_ sped from shadow to sun. With reflex born of practice, Dana reached to cut in the light screens.

”Hey,” Lamonica said. He looked at her, and realized that he was weeping.

His eyes burned and his nose was thick. She handed him a cloth; he wiped his face clean of tears. Standing, he went to the water cooler and drew a cupful of water. He bounced a little; Lamonica had set the s.h.i.+p's gravity at two-thirds gee. The screen was dark now, with the edge of the moon in focus: they were going in the same direction but Lamonica had switched the camera readout on the vision screen.

”Thanks,” he said, reseating himself.

She kept her eyes on the controls. ”Bad time?”

”I've had better.”

”It's over now,” she said.

”Yeah.” He dug his fingers into the chair's resilient foam. ”Sol will freeze,” he said, ”before I come back to Sardonyx Sector.” She said, ”Don't say that yet, you're still in it.”

The words stung like salt on a wound. He could leave it behind, Dana thought, but it would never leave him. The pain and helplessness he had known was etched solidly into its own small corner of his brain.

”Explain this to me,” Lamonica said.

”Explain what?”

”You were a slave when we met in the bar. Tonight you call me and you're free.”

”This trip to the Net is the price of that freedom.”

”Is it on a contract?” Lamonica said.

”Yes, of course.”

”I wondered....” Her forefinger made little circles on the arm of her seat. ”Any contract involving slavery is only good in Sector Sardonyx, right?”

”Yes.” His throat muscles tensed.

”So what are we doing here?” she said. ”Say the word, and I'll change _Lamia_'s trajectory, shoot us past this big silver prison, and Jump. Two weeks in the Hype and we land on Nexus. You'll never have to hear the name Yago again.”

He gazed at the moon. Already he thought he could see the Net, a spark of constant brilliance against the satellite's mottled surface. He imagined the screen changing, brightening to a rainbow nimbus, and then darkening to the stygian darkness of the Hype.... _Lamia_ was Tori Lamonica's. Hers was the course choice, hers the responsibility. All he had to say was yes.

But Rhani Yago would know that he had broken a promise; left a contract unfulfilled. Tori Lamonica would know it. And he would know it himself. It would be, he reflected, supremely ironic if he freed himself from Sector Sardonyx by ”rescuing” Zed Yago from the Net. Seen that way, this whole expedition turned into a joke, an expression of the universe's, or the luck's, cosmic and comic sense of justice.

The universe cared nothing for Dana Ikoro's pain, or for the memories that corded the muscles of his neck, dried his mouth to cotton, and gave him stomach cramps.

”Can't do it,” he said.

Lamonica splayed a hand in the air. ”It's up to you.”