Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Sixteen

WHEN THEY MADE starrise at Thalaassa, they were both in the pilots' seats, both suited, both ready. All Sunshine's diagnostics had been ran and reported her ready. The program remained running where Gabriel could get at it quickly if he needed it, and the JustWadeln software was running in standby, waiting for real space in which to work.

Normally Gabriel despised countdowns, having endured too many of them in some armored shuttle while in the marines. But now he watched the clock with fierce interest as the digits in the tank decremented themselves. When the "one" finally slipped into "zero" and vanished, the tank went black and he could barely contain his excitement. Starrise washed upwards around them in something unexpected, the brightest pure white Gabriel had ever seen, with not the slightest admixture of any other color. Is that lucky? he said, staring into the fighting field while waiting for it to bring up tactical. We should hope so, Enda said. Look.

The image of surrounding space in the tank and in the fighting field shimmered and resolved itself. There was a whole swarm of small arrowlike shapes, sleek and deadly, approaching them fast on system drive from about a thousand kilometers out.

Those designs Gabriel knew all too well: the Insight-designed software went out of its way to describe them and their fighting capabilities in gleeful and malicious detail. VoidCorp, he said. Sesheyan Employee ships.

There were a lot of them, too many of them. Sixteen, the fighting software said. But what Gabriel did not fully understand was that some of them seemed to be avoiding the potential fight. They kept on going, heading away, heading out-system.

They think they can take us with just this many, Enda said, sounding surprisingly annoyed at the prospect.

They can! Gabriel thought but didn't say. It wasn't so much a question of massed armaments as it was numbers. When that many people engaged you, sooner or later you would miss someone coming up from behind, move a little more slowly than you should-and that would be the end of it. Maybe so, he said, but it seems we're not the only reason they're here. Anyway, damned if I'm going to be mobbed by these people when there's someone in the system who's supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. He asked the tank for another view, a wider one of the system, specifically concentrating on larger ships present there. There was some in-system freight traffic, ships that Gabriel had learned to recognize from their previous stays here-but not what he was looking for. Where the hell is Schmetterling? he asked.

Not here, apparently, said Enda. At least it does not show anywhere in system scan.

They could be anywhere, dammit. Gabriel was fuming as he scanned the software, trying to sort out all the VoidCorp ships' positions in his head. Bloody Galactic policemen, all over you like a cheap suit when you don't want one, and when you do want one, they're nowhere to be found!

But there was no more time for that. Twelve of the VoidCorp fighters were now moving in on Sunshine in a standard englobement, which was nice for the JustWadeln software-it had intervention routines for that-but there weren't enough guns aboard Sunshine to handle that kind of attack effectively, and the software was plaintively asking for more.

This is going to be a problem, Gabriel heard Enda say softly.

Do you trust the software intervention routines? Gabriel inquired.

I trust them to take care of easy shots and point out difficult to me, but you will notice, if you read the manual, that the Insight performance warranty does not extend to those routines. They stopped insuring them when a few pilots' families sued them after the pilots were killed. It was impossible to prove that the software was not somehow at fault.

Gabriel shook his head. We 're on our own, then.

More or less.

He still could not understand how Enda could sound so cheerful even when they were outnumbered and outgunned. Do you know something I don't know?

You mean, do I have a hunch? No, but I am not sure any of us is ever alone. Philosophy, Gabriel thought helplessly. Well, if it helps you to shoot straight.

The englobement completed itself around Sunshine, the VoidCorp ships disposing themselves roughly on an dodecagon's vertices, preparatory for an inward push and firing run. The JustWadeln software's fighting field shimmered around them both and displayed best dispositions for gunnery, hit percentages for each gun, suggestions for maximum fire result and optimum firing distance.

Enda ignored it, picked a direction and threw Sunshine that way in a spinning, corkscrewing path, then started shooting.

Gabriel began firing too, picking the closest target and trying to get a sense of windage, but the craft slipped aside as he fired and then came in on a line for him again, firing right back. Enda twisted them out of range, hammering again at the first ship she had targeted, trying to break their formation globe and slip through. It was a standard response: get the englobing group to lose their cohesiveness and the value of their attack formation disintegrates almost immediately. However, these ships' pilots seemed not to be even slightly interested in losing their attack's cohesiveness, and as they slipped aside from Enda's attack and reformed, Gabriel began to think that the only thing going to disintegrate was Sunshine. The globe came after them as Enda broke through, mostly firing their lasers. Not a terribly effective attack, but bad enough if you blinded out the software or smoked some component that your enemy ship's manufacturer had not thought important enough to shield adequately. Enda concentrated on putting some distance between Sunshine and the attackers. Little ships like those could not have infinite power capacity, and they were often more poorly provided for power storage than a less well-armed but more mundane mining ship might be. They might be able to make the fighters expend enough power for drive that they would have none to spare for lasers and would have to fall back on whatever other armament they had, using it up and forcing an early return to base-wherever "base" might be. In this case, it probably meant a big VoidCorp ship. Though they could have come all the way from Iphus or one of the other VoidCorp facilities back at Corrivale, that seemed unlikely. And if these fighters failed in what they were supposed to do, it struck Gabriel as all too likely that their base ship would come looking for them.

Are we going to keep running forever? Gabriel asked.

Odd that you should mention that, Enda said as she flipped Sunshine end for end and began firing at the approaching globe of fighters. They split apart to reform around Sunshine as they came back in, but as they split, Enda kicked in the system drive hard and shot straight through them, firing en passant. One bloom of fire burst out as she tore through, and Gabriel fired ahead of them at one fighter that seemed unwilling to get out of their path.

It side slipped at the last moment, and sweat broke out all over Gabriel at the nearness of the passage. He caught a glimpse of nuzzleflare as they passed, but Enda saw it too and threw them sideways, so hard that the artificial gravity flickered and Gabriel's teeth banged together.

This is not a tactically advantageous situation, Enda said as she spun Sunshine around and fired again. Another of the VoidCorp ships bloomed into brief flame and darkness. We may have to run. 1 didn't come here to run, Gabriel said. I came here to go to Rhynchus. The feeling had begun to dog him that something bad was happening and was likely to keep happening unless he got to the bottom of the situation on Rhynchus. Gabriel was beyond questioning the feeling now. We need to do whatever it takes to stay here, he said. If it takes getting them all- Let us be busy, then, Enda interrupted.

They fought. It went on for another fifteen minutes or so without pause, Enda throwing Sunshine back and forth through the VoidCorp ships' slowly decreasing numbers. They got several good shots and some that were positively lucky. Once the software took over from Gabriel and made a shot for him, blowing up a fighter, but the pressure was taking its toll. One plasma cartridge missed them simply because Enda made a mistake in the way she threw Sunshine. Otherwise everything would have been over for them right then. Through the link Gabriel could hear her breathing becoming labored, and it occurred to him that brilliance in fighting did not always mean endurance. How long could Enda keep this up? Come to think of it, how long can I ? he wondered. Gabriel was sweating terribly inside the e- suit. Even the suit's cooling equipment could not keep up with the fine mist of condensation inside the faceplate that was beginning to interfere with his view into the fighting field.

Maybe it was a dumb idea, trying to fight this many. Their opponents seemed to know it. Some of them were hanging back while two or three at a time concentrated on attack. They'll wear us down sooner or late, he thought to himself. Maybe we really should cut our losses and get out of here, we've been awfully lucky.

But if we do leave, they'll go on with-Gabriel was not sure even now exactly what he suspected, but he didn't think VoidCorp ships in the neighborhood of Rhynchus could mean any good. He was torn. Enda, what do you-

Another plasma cartridge went off, entirely too close. The ship shuddered and the hull began moaning in protest. Oh, not again! Gabriel said. Enda-

Something else coming in, Enda said between gasps. She was working hard, and one more VoidCorp ship had just gone down at her hands, but Gabriel didn't think she could keep it up much longer. Look at tactical. Not another VC. Different design. Gabriel searched in the fighting field for some indication of the other ship's ID, but nothing was showing. The ship was big, though, twice the size of Sunshine at least.

"Cutting in, Sunshine," said a voice on local comms, and both Gabriel and Enda jumped. It was a gravelly voice, very matter of fact with a slight drawl. Practically as it spoke, that other ship dove in among the VoidCorp vessels and took two of them out with paired blasts from what appeared to be top and bottom mass cannons.

As the other ship flashed past them, the Insight fighting software identified her as carrying weapons the kind and size of which Gabriel had only been able to dream about when they were doing Sunshine's outfitting. He's an arsenal all to himself! Gabriel said. Who is he, where the hell did he spring from? I would not care, Enda said, firing again, and another VoidCorp ship spun away trailing fire and escaped air, but apparently we are not as "on our own " as we thought we were- "Friend," Gabriel said down comms, "whoever you are, you're welcome!"

"Helm's my name," replied a gravelly voice. "Introductions can wait, but a lady name of Delde Sola suggested you were coming this way-thought you might be able to use some help." "Was she ever right. Forgive me for not going visual to greet you," said Gabriel, "but we've got our hands full at the moment."

"No problem, plenty of time later after we finish off these Corpses."

I wish I had your faith in your weaponry, or your deity, or whatever! Gabriel thought. "These guys with the plasma cannon," Gabriel said, "I would dearly love to get rid of them."

"We'll just get to work on that right now," said the voice.

The ship executed an astonishingly tight turn, throwing itself back toward the main cluster of the remaining fighters. Gabriel could only stare at the maneuver in astonishment. Even with artificial gravity, there were limits to the stresses a ship and pilot could take. At the highest accelerations, even the artifical gravity would start to fail out, leaving a pilot with the acceleration-associated blackouts and other problems that had beset atmosphere pilots for hundreds of years. This pilot though, seemed not to care about such things, or else he had an iron vascular system. His ship twisted, aligned itself, and something shot away from him.

Wham! Wham!-and two spectacular plasma bolts lanced out of the ship and took the two VoidCorp ships with the plasma cannon out, neat as could be. The ship arced away and "downward," heading toward the oncoming ships.

"By the way, sorry I was late," said the gravelly voice on the other end, "but I'm always late. I was born that way."

Gabriel shook his head, uncertain what to make of that. "You're on time enough for us." "Just," said Helm. "Looks like you have some more incoming."

Gabriel checked his tactical. Sure enough, there were the remaining VoidCorp fighters coming back fast. "They passed us by earlier," Gabriel said, "possibly on the way to do something else." "Looks like maybe they don't want witnesses to their embarrassment," Helm said. "All right, we can do a little something about that. Look at that, so nice and tight."

He nudged his ship toward them. It was so unlike the quicker acceleration of a moment before that Gabriel stared. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, no problem," Helm said. "Just waiting for them to fall into the right configuration. Computer wanted a read on their pattern, since the egg I'm about to lay is a little expensive. Saves time, though. They keep trying to englobe. Good."

He was right. They were englobing again. "Too bad for them," Helm said very cheerfully. "Don't get close, now. Mind your eyes."

Something leaped away from his ship too fast to see, mass-driven, possibly. It shot into the center of the approaching globe formation-

Space whited out from the detonation there. Gabriel was blinded. Enda cried out. " 'Cherry bomb,' " Helm said. "Squeezed nuke. Don't have many of those, but they sure lend a little excitement to a large party. Would use more of 'em, but the damned cost-accounting program screams too much."

Gabriel, gazing into the field and calling for detailed tactical, could only agree. There seemed to be nothing left of the ships that had been attempting that new englobement except drifting wreckage, much of it white hot or molten. "Uh oh," Helm said.

Gabriel saw what he saw: the last two of the ships fleeing in opposite directions, one of them vaguely toward Rhynchus, one of them away. "He's mine," Gabriel said, indicating the one heading toward Rhynchus.

"Take him. I'll have this boy."

The two of them arced away in different directions. Gabriel threw Sunshine after his quarry at high speed. It was necessary. His quarry was running as if gone wild and blind, not even evading, just shooting away like an arrow. Gabriel curved down under him, caught him as he finally tried to change direction, and put a plasma cartridge right into his belly. The ship blew up most satisfactorily. Panic, he said to Enda, as he brought the ship around and headed back to the scene of the main combat. I wonder, Enda said.

A blast of light from up ahead suggested to Gabriel that Helm had caught up with his own target. "You all right?"

"No problem," said the gravelly voice.

"That's a relief," Enda said as she let the fighting field up from around her, unclasped her helmet, and took it off. "Perhaps we have time for introductions now?"

The tank lit. "Helm Ragnarsson."

"Gabriel Connor."

"Enda," the fraal said.

"A pleasure."

They all studied each other for a moment. Though it was hard to tell when someone was sitting down, Helm looked short. He was dark-skinned and amazingly heavy-boned. His shoulders were huge, and his waist might have looked narrow enough for his own build, but it was bigger across than Gabriel's shoulders. A build, in all, much too heavy to have grown that way normally.

"Yes, I'm a mutant," Helm said, in a voice that was just faintly weary. "My 'family' went in for heavy planet work. Generation before last, they started working on engineering some specialty genes into our line. Some people don't like it." He shrugged. "We don't care. We take ourselves where the work is, together or singly."

He was casual enough about it, but Gabriel wondered how long that shell of nonchalance had taken to grow. Mutants were very much a minority among the Concord worlds and were routinely seen as dangerously different-peculiar and dangerous creatures at best, outcasts at worst. For his own part, this man had just saved his life, and Gabriel was not prepared to be sticky about it.

"So that's how you managed those high-g turns," Gabriel said. "What an advantage."

The mutant looked at him for a moment, then grinned. "I like you, Connor. First human I've met in a while who looked at the plus side of it first. Pretty rare."

Gabriel shrugged. "Anyway, believe me, you could have eyes at all corners and legs on all surfaces, and I'd still be glad to see you. You saved our butts."

"My fundament too," Enda said, "would no doubt state its gratitude, were it capable. But, Helm, how did you know where to find us? It has been some while since we saw Delde Sota, and we did not even know our own plans clearly when we last saw her." "Maybe not," said Helm, "but someone else did." "Ondway," said Gabriel.

"That her fella on Grith? He'd be the one, then. They keep in pretty close touch, it seems." "There is a great deal going on in Corrivale space," said Enda, ''that seems not to show above the surface."

"You'd be right there, lady. Place is getting complicated in its old age. I don't stay around there much any more. It's getting too civilized. Too crowded."

Gabriel was tempted to laugh. "Grith doesn't strike me as overpopulated, exactly." "No, but 'crowded' can mean people looking over your shoulder, too," said Helm. "Too much bureaucracy, too many people noticing when you turn up, when you leave, wanting to know how much money you make, what you spend it on." He shrugged. "I spend as little time as I can in places like that."

Gabriel thought that he might have a point there. At the same time, his attention was now attracted somewhat by the wreckage beginning to float around them. He reached into the tank and tweaked a control, bringing up a routine he had programmed in earlier.

"You using beams out there, brother?"

"Scanning," said Gabriel.

"Looking for something in particular?"

"Bodies," Gabriel said.

"Should be plenty of those," said Helm. "Sesheyan mostly, far as I can tell. Company types. This a personal kink, or is there a reason?" "I don't want to get into it right now." "Oh," said the friendly voice, "a kink."

Enda was chuckling. "Not the one you think, perhaps," she said.

"Well, that's all right then," Helm said. "Those bodies you looking for usually carry ID beacons?" "What?" Gabriel asked.

"Something out there's got a beacon on it. Squawk four-four-five-oh. Take a listen."

Gabriel spoke to Sunshine's comm settings. A moment later they heard the soft repetitive cheeping of the beacon.

"Black box?" Gabriel said.

"On these ships?" said Helm. "Not likely."

"Someone signaling for help?" Enda asked.

Gabriel shook his head. "It could be, but it's hard to tell."

"Signal's attenuating," Helm said. "Not meant to play for long, I think."

"Hurry up, we've got to find it!"

The signal ceased.

"I don't believe it," Gabriel said.

"Look," Enda said. "No, not there. Gabriel, look. There is a light."

He peered out the cockpit windows, then doused the interior lights to help him see. "I see it," he said. "Enda, what eyes you have!"

"There is definitely something attached," she said as Gabriel directed the tactical scanners' attention to that one spot. "A small container, perhaps?"

"Not that small," said Helm. "Looks about two meters by three?"

"Nice call," Gabriel said, for that was almost exactly its size, as the tactical display confirmed. "Some kind of escape capsule?"

"No sign of such," said Helm. "No heat sources at the right frequency, anyway."

"How much stuff have you got installed in that ship?" Gabriel said in naked envy. "The weaponry is bad enough. But infrared scanners are-"

"Not cheap, but I have a friend in the business." Helm chuckled. "Delde Sota got me a discount." Gabriel moaned softly. "Please. Her and her discounts."

"Oh, it didn't come that cheap. She made me install some of her hardware in here as a swap. She likes to watch, does Delde Sota." " 'Watch'?"

"Not that, but just about everything else. You couldn't build a nose big enough to match her nosiness. Sensors, an extension of her little braid, you name it. Comes in handy sometimes, but she charges me to use it, the cheap little metal-head," Helm snickered.

Gabriel had to chuckle at that. "Now then," he said as Sunshine came up to the object that had the beacon attached. It was a dark egglike ovoid of black metal. Its strobe was still flashing, but the flashes were getting further apart.

"Another five minutes and we wouldn't have found it," Helm said as his ship nosed up to the object too.

Gabriel looked at the name, Longshot, fused neatly on near the nose. He then looked down the length of the ship in Sunshine's spotlights. The thing was fairly bristling with weapons that it would take him and Enda years to afford. Gabriel became very glad that Helm had come in on their side and not against them. It would have been a wry short fight.

"Now what do you make of this?" Helm was saying.

"It might be a bomb," Gabriel answered.

"It might be nearly anything," said Enda, "but why put a homing device on a bomb? Unless it is so rare a one that you want it back if it does not explode. But what kind of bomb wouldn't explode?" "That logic suggests by itself that it's not a bomb," said Helm. "Do you want to take it on board, or should I?"

Gabriel looked at it, and the words "bomb" and "on board" jarred together uncomfortably in his head.

Still, it had been through an explosion already and hadn't exploded.

"We've got X-ray gear in the hold," Gabriel said, "for mining work, usually."

Helm chuckled. "Hunting the Glory Rock, huh? Will this thing fit in?"

"It should."

Gabriel spent about ten minutes with the remote manipulators, fitting the black egg into the cargo bay against the X-ray apparatus. The metal of the egg's casing was magnetizable, but Gabriel was reluctant to use the electromagnet grapples on the egg in case something inside that casing should react unkindly to a strong magnetic field.

He activated the X-ray projector and aimed it at the egg. where it sat in front of the imaging screen. He then transferred the image to the tank. "Can you see this?" Gabriel asked Helm. "Yeah, getting it through comms."

The now-translucent image of the egg appeared in the tank. "Well, at least it is not opaque," Enda said, leaning in and looking at it curiously. "But what is that in there?"

It was hard to tell. There were two fairly large compartments, each packed full of some solid substance with what appeared to be minor cavities in it, then a smaller cavity full of a liquid. Down at the "small" end of the egg was a smaller cavity still that seemed empty but might just as well have had something gaseous in it. Finally, there appeared a small black object with circuitry spun through it-a data solid of some kind.

"If it is a bomb," said Helm, "I've never seen or heard of anything like it."

Enda was shaking her head. She reached into the tank and brought up the controls for one of the secondary sensor arrays in the cargo hold. "Only residual radioactivity," she said. "There is nothing fissionable in there."

"Do you want to open it?" Helm asked.

"Not a chance," Gabriel said forcefully. "Leave it right where it is."

They all looked at it for a few moments more, and then Enda leaned back and sighed. "Helm," she said, "you have our great thanks. Did Delde Sola suggest to you where we were intending to go?"

"She said you might be heading out into the system," Helm said, sitting back in his own pilot's seat with his arms folded. "She didn't go into detail, but she suggested that you might need someone to watch your backs."

"I confess I would be glad of that," Enda said. "If you require reimbursement for your time-" For some reason, Helm looked genuinely alarmed. "Oh, no, no," he said. "This is payback for a favor Delde Sota did me once upon a time. She does these things for people, with the understanding that she'll call the favor in eventually. My dance card's empty for the next couple of weeks. You just tell me what you need."

"Well," Gabriel said, "we're heading to Rhynchus."

Helm looked bemused. "Rhynchus? There's nothing on Rhynchus."

'That's what we hear," Gabriel said. "Let's have our computers cut a course and head on over there." Helm shook his head, mystified, and bent to his own console to comply. "Strangers well met," they heard him mutter, "with the emphasis on strange." Gabriel grinned a little and started working in the tank.

Three hours later, without sighting or hearing from any other craft, they were in orbit over Rhynchus. Moving in silent tandem, using visuals and sensors, Sunshine and Longshot looked down upon the forlorn world.

The planet was mostly barren-looking. It had little surface water-a few lakes-and any water that appeared within thirty degrees of the poles was well frozen. At the equator, matters were slightly better.

Here and there were some small patches of some stubborn native vegetation, even a small forest or two, but they were few. Mostly the surface was rocky and uninviting, and the color of the exposed parts of the crust was not such as to suggest much in the way of mineral or metallic wealth.

There was no sign of anything else, nothing built, no city, no habitation. The two ships were in ball-of-yarn orbit, the processing orbit that covers a planet's whole surface in a matter of a few hours. They had done one whole pattern for mapping purposes, and the computer was working with the maps. But by eye, there was nothing at all visible, and it was getting frustrating.

'They have to be here," Gabriel muttered.

"Who would 'they' be?" Helm inquired from over on his ship.

"There's a colony," Gabriel said after a moment. "It's been, oh, misplaced." Enda gave him a wry look, but said nothing.

"Well," said Helm, "my sensors are pretty good. Any idea what we're looking for, specifically?" "Not at all," Enda said, sounding more cheerful than Gabriel thought was appropriate. Helm laughed. "Heat be a fair bet, you think?"

"Sesheyans like it between five and forty C, so, yeah, heat seems smart," Gabriel said. "Setting up now."

Gabriel sat back "What I don't understand is the atmospheric situation," he mused. "There's much more air here than was mentioned in any survey the Concord did. None of the briefings mentioned anything significant in the way of atmosphere-otherwise everyone in the system would have been a lot more interested in the planet."

"Well," Enda said. "I suppose one might be able to understand it. Say the Concord comes into the system a few years ago, and the people on Phorcys and Ino say there's nothing on that planet. It's just a cold rock with very little atmosphere, too far out to do us any good, no resources, not worth terraforming."

She shrugged. "At that early date, why would anyone disbelieve them? Then a survey ship takes a quick pass by, finds it as they described it, then goes away again. No one bothers to go back because surveys cost money, and they had already done one and found nothing."

And one small colony is easily hidden, Gabriel thought, especially if it's vital that it stay hidden. "You're probably right," he said, "but what I don't understand is how anyone is surviving there at all, if the place is so cold."

"Domes?" Enda said. "Or some other form of protection?"

"Domes cost a lot of money to build and more to maintain." Gabriel shook his head. "Looking at temperature now," said Helm. "One pass in three axes?" "Sounds about right," Gabriel said. "Let's go."

It took them forty-five minutes. When the pass was finished, Helm spent a few moments working with his computer, then transferred the results to their tank where the data displayed on the surface of a "false- colored" rotating globe.

"It's a lot warmer than it should be," said Helm.

There was no arguing that. The first Concord survey, done twelve years ago, suggested an average planetary temperature of no better than 4° C. This map showed it as being more like 12° C. "Now how did they miss that?" Gabriel asked.

"On the second survey? I think it more than likely that they were just looking to see if the planet was in fact there," Enda replied. "Even if they got a record of the second temperature, who knows who was given the information for analysis, or whether it seemed particularly germane to them? They may have thought that the initial survey was in error." She shrugged.

They coasted around the planet one more time, this time with both Longshots and Sunshine's sensing equipment listening for communications traces of any kind-drivespace relay traffic, even radio. There was nothing.

"Not that I would have really expected drivespace relay," Gabriel said. "There's no surer way to give yourself away."

"There is one thing, though," Helm said. "Oh?"

"Had the machine do a little more fine analysis on that last map, narrowing down the temperature bands a little. Got a little tiny hot spot down there in the northern hemisphere," said Helm. "Almost lost it. There are little pinpricks of volcanism all over the place. You see 'em. But those are diffuse. This one is clear and sharp." "A dome." Enda said.

"A dome. You were right," Gabriel said. "I was wrong."

Enda waved one hand. "As if such things matter. That is what we seek, I think. Helm, we must go down there. We have some slight introduction to them, if a shaky one, but you have none such. I would be afraid you might be fired upon."

"Might be fun," Helm drawled, "but never mind, I'll stay up here." " 'Riding shotgun,' " Gabriel said.

"A good enough name for it. I'll be here. Better off-load your little egg to me. No point in taking it down there with you; you may need the room to bring something back up. Meanwhile, shout if you need me. I'll keep comms open."

"Believe it," Gabriel said. "We'll take handhelds with us if we leave the ship. Any sign of anyone else around here?"

"Neither hide nor hair. Go on." They made their way down.

The atmosphere proved not to be as thin as had been reported. There was much more oxygen in it than Gabriel expected, and Sunshine reported wing bite more quickly than she should have. Gabriel spoke to the computer, directed it toward that one source of even heat, and told her to take them down. He would hold himself ready to take over if necessary.

But it was a standard landing, as straightforward and uncomplicated as if they were landing on a paved field. Rhynchus's surface here was actually pumice or some other kind of light, porous stone. When Gabriel got up and headed into the lift and the door opened, he saw that Sunshine's landing skids had scraped the stone about an inch deep where she had sideslipped a little on landing. Then, even in the dimness, he saw the other, much older skid-marks there too. Around them were scorchmarks from landing jets-various people's landing jets-and he understood that this was indeed a landing field, of sorts.

And then, hearing a faint humming in the air, he looked up- very slowly, not wanting to alarm anyone- and saw the sesheyans with the guns. All of them held the guns rock steady with sights trained on him. "The Wanderer walks strange ways," he said, "and company finds, unlooked-for: but hospitality's laws say feed the guest ere you kill him."

The guns did not lower. But the sesheyan holding the biggest of them, the one who had appeared atop a boulder not far from the edge of the landing field, looked at Gabriel with a long, cold, thoughtful look. "You are not from VoidCorp," he said in perfectly serviceable human idiom.

The lift activated again. Guns lifted all around. "Just my friend," said Gabriel, "a fraal. She isn't armed and she's pushing three hundred, so please don't frighten her. No, we're not from VoidCorp." "Not at all," said Enda as she came out of the lift to stand beside Gabriel.

"Prove it," said the sesheyan on the boulder, in a tone of voice that clearly said to Gabriel, "leader." Gabriel started to become exasperated. "That's going to be a little tough to prove, don't you think? Look, it was Ondway who sent us-or rather, he didn't send us. He tried every way he could think of not to send us, including not telling us anything about you, or even that you were here. He was very careful about it." "That is possibly what we call a 'negative proof,' " Enda said demurely. The leader's eyes pinched down narrow at her.

''We've brought you everything we could think of that might be of help to you, considering that no one would tell us anything outright," Gabriel said. "Electronics supplies, mostly. What I don't understand is what you're doing here! This is not supposed to be an inhabited planet."

"Not supposed to be," said the leader, and dropped his jaw in that sesheyan grin, possibly responding to Gabriel's aggrieved one, similar to that of a tourist complaining that the colorful native dancers were not going to perform today, even though the brochure had said that they would. "No. You have come a long way, and we thank you for it, even though you should not have come. But we must get your ship out of sight very quickly. Things happen here at night."

Gabriel looked around him at the scared looks on the faces of some of the sesheyans, at the way they looked up at the sky as if it might suddenly rain knives. "Tell us where to put it," he said, "then we need to talk."