Part 46 (2/2)
”You know,” Varian began in a hushed but startled tone as she was settling herself, ”poor old Gaber was right. We are planted. At least temporarily!”
Lunzie stared at her, then made a grimace. ”That's not the comfort I want to take with me into cold sleep.”
”Does one dream in cryogenic sleep, Lunzie?” Varian asked as Lunzie handed her a cup of the preservative drug.
”I never have.”
Lunzie gave Kai his dose. The young leader smiled as he accepted it.
”Seems a waste of time not to do something,” he said.
”The whole concept of cold sleep is to suspend the sense of subjective time,” Lunzie pointed out.
”You sleep, you wake. And centuries pa.s.s,” added Triv, taking his beakerful.
”You're less help than Varian is,” Lunzie grumbled.
”It won't be centuries,” Kai said emphatically. ”Not once EV has those uranium a.s.says. It's too raking rich for them to ignore.”
Lunzie arranged the cold-sleep gas tank controls to kick in as soon as its sensors registered the cessation of all life signs. She held her dose in her hand. She wouldn't risk them all if she stayed awake. Her body heat would register as a giff to any heavyworld over-flight of the area. She could stay awake.
But if she slept with these, she would, for once, have someone she knew, people she liked and had worked with. She wouldn't be quite so alone when she woke. That was some consolation. Before she could talk herself into some drastic and fatal delay, she tossed the dose down and lay down along one side of the deck, pillowing her head on a pad and settling her arms by her side.
Who knows when they'll come for us, she thought, unable to censor dismal thoughts. She grabbed at another consolation: the heavyworlders didn't get her, or the others. She'd wake again. And there'd be another settlement due her.
The leaden heaviness began to spread out from her stomach, permeating her tissues. The air on her cooling skin felt uncomfortably hot, and grew hotter. Suddenly Lunzie wanted to get up, run away from this place before she was trapped inside herself again. But it was already too late to stop the process. She felt her consciousness sinking fast into another death of sleep. Muhlah!
Chapter One.
On the FSP Fleet heavy cruiser Zaid-Dayan ”We have resources they don't know about,” Sa.s.sinak said, and not for the first time. It did not rea.s.sure her.
The convivial mood in which Sa.s.sinak and Lunzie had first made their plans to combine forces against the planet pirates had long since evaporated. They had been carried by the euphoria following the incredible Thek cathedral which had dispensed right justice to Captain Cruss who had illegally landed a heavyworlder colony transport s.h.i.+p on the planet Ireta, right under the bows of Sa.s.sinak's pursuing cruiser. The Thek conference had elicited considerable fascinating information about the Captain's superiors. Apart from sorting out the problem of which race ”owned” Ireta, the Thek had departed without reference to bringing the perpetrators of planet pirating to a similar justice.
Neither Sa.s.sinak nor Lunzie felt they would be lucky enough to obtain more support from the Thelcs, even if that long-lived race were the oldest of the s.p.a.ce-faring species. Theks rarely interfered with members of the various ephemeral species that they had discovered over the centuries. Only when, as on Ireta, some ancient plan of their own might be jeopardized would they intervene. As a rule, Thek permitted all their 2.
client races, from the lizard-like Seti, the shape-changing Wefts, the marine Ssli down to humans, to ”dree their ain weirds,” No sooner than the Thek had resolved the matter of Ireta then they had departed, leaving Sa.s.sinak and Lunzie with an irresistible challenge: to seek out and destroy those who indulged in the most daring sort of piracy-the rape and pillage of entire planets and the ma.s.s enslavement of their legally resident populations. The problems were immense. Sa.s.sinak was too experienced a commander to ignore real problems, and Lunzie had seen too many good plans go wrong herself. Lunzie, sprawled comfortably on the white leather cus.h.i.+ons in Sa.s.sinak's office, watched her distant ofispring with amus.e.m.e.nt. She was so young to be so old.
”So are you,” Sa.s.sinak retorted.
Lunzie felt herself reddening.
”There's no such thing as telepathy,” she said. ”It's never been demonstrated under controlled conditions.”
”Twins do it,” Sa.s.sinak said. ”I read that somewhere. And other close relatives, sometimes. As for you and me . . . n.o.body knows what that many deepfreezes have done to your brain, and what my life's done to me. You were thinking I'm young to be so old, and I was thinking exactly the same thing about you. You're younger than I am ...”
”Which doesn't give you the right to play boss,” said Lunzie. Then she wished she hadn't. Sa.s.sinak's fece had hardened . . . and of course to her, she did have the right. She was the captain of her s.h.i.+p, one step below her first star, and she had ten more years of actual, awake, living-experience age.
”I'm sorry,” Lunzie said quickly. ”You are older, and you are the boss ... I'm just still adjusting.”
Sa.s.sinak's quick smile almost rea.s.sured her. ”Same here. But I do have to be the boss on this s.h.i.+p. Even if you are my great-great-great, you don't know which pipes hold what.”
”Right. Point taken. I will be the good little civilian.” And try, she thought to herself, to adjust to having a distant ofispring not only older than herself but quite a 3.
bit tougher. She leaned forward, setting her mug down on the table. ”What are you thinking of doing?”
”What we need/' said Sa.s.s, frowning at nothing, ”is a lot more information. The kind of proof we can bring before the Council meeting, for instance. Take the Diplo problem. Who's been contacting whom, and whose money paid for that heavyworlder seeds.h.i.+p? Which factions of heavyworlders are involved, and do they all know what they're doing? Then there's the Paraden family. I have my own reasons to think they're guilty, root and branch, but no proof. If we could get someone into position, some social connection ...”
Lunzie picked up her mug, gulped down the last of her drink, and tried to ignore the hollow in her belly. Was she about to do something stupid, or brave, or both?
”I ... might be able to help with the Diplo bit.”
”You? How?”
Sa.s.sinak had been thinking of her own heavyworlder friends, but she hated to use any of them that way. It would be too risky for them if some agent within Fleet caught on.
”They don't let many lightweights visit Diplo, but because of their continuing medical problems, genetic and adaptive, medical researchers and advisors are welcome. As welcome as lightweights ever are. I'd need a refresher course with a Master Adept ...”
Sa.s.sinak pursed her lips. ”Hmmm. That's reasonable, the refresher part. If anyone were watching you, they'd expect you to. You've gone a stage or so beyond your rating, haven't you? And you people go back fairly regularly, once you're in the Adept rating, so I've heard. ...”
She let that trail away, in case Lunzie wanted to ofier more information, but wasn't surprised when Lunzie simply nodded and went on to talk about Diplo.
”Doctors are expected to ask questions. If I were on a research team, perhaps statistical survey of birth defects, something like that, I'd have a chance to talk to lots of people as part of my job.”
Sa.s.sinak c.o.c.ked her head to one side; Lunzie barely stopped herself from making the same gesture.
4.
”Are you sure you're not doing this just to exorcise your own heavyworld demons? From what you've said ...”
Lunzie didn't want to go into that again. ”I know. I have reason to hate and fear them. Some of them. But I've also known good ones; I told you about Zebara.” Sa.s.sinak nodded, but looked unconvinced. Lunzie went on. ”Besides, 111 have time to talk to the Master Adept renewing my training. You know enough about Discipline to know that's as good as any psych software. If a Master says I'm not stable enough to go, 111 let you know.”
”YouTl discuss it with him?” By Sa.s.sinak's tone, she wasn't entirely happy with that.
Lunzie sighed internally. ”Not everything, no. But my going to Diplo, certainly. There are certain special skills which can make it easier on a lightweight.”
”Just be sure a Master pa.s.ses you. This is too important to risk on an emotional storm, and with the trouble you've had ...”
”I can handle it.” Lunzie let her voice convey the Discipline behind it, and Sa.s.sinak subsided. Not really Impressed, Lunzie noticed, as most people would be, but convinced for the time being.
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