The Reaches

8

Virginia

The Sultan's long cigar shape lay on its side with the landing legs properly deployed and all three cargo hatches open. The ground beneath the thrusters fizzed and snapped as heat-stressed stones cooled.

Gregg hunched in his hard suit and wondered whether he ought to drop the thick visor as well. That would mean using bottled air and seeing out through a slit, but at least it would keep the wind off him.

Virginia's breezes slapped harshly against skin used to the weatherless corridors of Venus. The Sultan's thrusters had ignited pungent fires as she roared in to land, and miniature leaves blew from the scorched trees surrounding the starship. They were hard-shelled, and their tips were as sharp as shards of glass.

More by luck than planning, Choransky had brought the Sultan down at the edge of a natural clearing. The ground was so thin-soiled that only ankle-high moss grew on it. That was fortunate, because the trees beyond the clearing were thirty or forty meters high, with trunks so thin and closely spaced that they resembled a field of giant wheat.

Starships' plasma exhaust could clear landing sites in almost any vegetation, but the blazing, shattered trunks would form an impassable barrier. The debris would have locked the crew and cargo within the Sultan as surely as hard vacuum had during the voyage.

A Molt stumbled off the ramp and bumped a guard. "God damn your crinkly soul to Hell!" shouted the spacer as he lashed out with his boot. The chitinous alien tried to back away, but one of its legs flailed spastically. It fell toward the human again.

Piet Ricimer grabbed the crewman by the collar and jerked him backward. "You!" Ricimer said. "If I hear you blaspheme that way again, you'll swab out all three holds alone! Do you think God no longer hears us because we're off Venus?"

"Sorry, sir," the sailor muttered. Gregg had expected more trouble-and was moving closer in case it occurred. Ricimer's fierce sincerity shocked the man into quiet obedience.

Navigator Bivens appeared at the edge of Cargo One. He cupped his hands before his mouth as an amplifier and shouted, "Watch out, boys. There's aircraft coming, the radar says."

"Hell take them!" Gregg snarled, meaning life in general. He was glad an instant later that he hadn't spoken loudly enough for his new friend Ricimer to hear.

And after all, the spacer was right. They were going to need the Lord's help here in the outer reaches of his universe at least as much as they did among the familiar verities of home.

Captain Choransky was on the radio, trying to raise the Sultan's consorts and whoever was in charge of the Federation settlement. Ricimer, Gregg, and about two dozen armed crewmen shepherded the cargo of Molts onto the surface so that the holds could be washed down. So far as the men aboard the starship were concerned, Ricimer's task was the more important.

They'd loaded ninety-eight Molts aboard the Sultan on Salute, a slight majority of the total, with the rest split between the smaller Venerian ships. Ninety-two had survived thus far, but many of them were on their last legs, and in a confined space they stank like death itself.

A single air system served the entire starship. The Sultan's human complement had been breathing the stench throughout a voyage of seventeen days.

Men checked their weapons. Only a few of those guarding the Molts had brought rifles: cutting bars were lighter and more effective, both for use and as threats. More riflemen and another flashgunner in a hard suit appeared at the lip of Cargo One a moment after Bivens called his warning.

"Don't shoot unless I tell you to," Ricimer shouted to the men spread in a loose perimeter around the Molts. "Remember we aren't here to fight. We're traders!"

"Hope they remember that," said Jeude as he spun his cutting bar for a test. His tone undercut the words.

Gregg thought he heard the faint pop-pop-pop-pop of motors. He glanced at the cloud-streaked sky. The sound didn't have a clear direction.

"Which way is the settlement?" he called to Ricimer.

Ricimer turned from the Molt he'd helped over the coaming at the bottom of the ramp. The alien was the last to leave the Sultan. It was either sick or very old, and the ramp's four-centimeter lip had stopped it like a slab of bedrock.

"That way," Ricimer said, pointing across the clearing toward south-southwest based on sun position. "Five klicks, a hair less. Once a ship the size of the Sultan commits to landing, you don't maneuver much."

Someone hammered within the starship's hull, freeing a stuck latch. One, then five more meter-square hatches swung open along the Sultan's hull. The muzzle of a plasma cannon poked through the nearest opening.

Ricimer looked at the Molts, milling slowly in the midst of the crewmen. Some of the aliens were rubbing their torsos with wads of moss they'd plucked. "Move them into the woods," Ricimer ordered. "Now! Nobody'd better be in the clearing if the heavy ordnance fires."

Gregg focused in the direction of the settlement. The sound of motors was very close, though nothing was visible over the trees at the edge of the clearing. He aimed his flashgun at the expected target and shouted, "Don't fire until Master Ricimer orders!" to prevent anyone from mistaking his intent.

The Sultan carried ten plasma cannon, but she was pierced with over forty gunports so that the heavy weapons could be moved to where they were needed. Even in weightlessness, the weapons' mass made them difficult to shift through the strait confines of the vessel. When the crews were working here on the ground, they'd be lucky if scrapes and bruises were the only injuries before the start of the fighting.

If there was going to be fighting.

Two aircraft crossed the edge of the clearing and banked in opposite directions. They were one- or two-place autogyros, moving at 100 kph or slower.

Nobody fired at them, but one of the crewmen screamed, "Federation dog-mothers!" and waved his cutting bar. Leon grabbed the man's arm and growled at him before Ricimer could react.

The first aircraft vanished beneath the treetops again. Three more autogyros appeared. One of them settled into the clearing. It bounced twice on the rocky soil but came to a halt within fifteen meters. Its four consorts began to circle the starship slowly at a hundred meters.

Choransky, Bivens, and several other officers stamped down the Cargo Three ramp. They were all armed. Martre wore the helmet and torso of a hard suit and carried another flashgun. He nodded as Gregg fell in step to one side of the command group and Ricimer joined on the other.

The autogyro's four-bladed support rotor slowed to a halt. The passenger getting out of the tandem seat to the rear was male, but Gregg noticed with distaste that the pilot was a woman. Gregg wasn't a religious zealot, but the way the North American Federation put women in positions of danger-women even served in the crews of Federation starships-would be offensive to any decent man.

The autogyro was powered by an air-cooled diesel. Gregg didn't realize how noisy it was until the passenger shouted an order and his pilot shut the clattering motor off.

"What do you mean shooting at us?" Captain Choransky shouted while he was still twenty meters from the aircraft. "Look at that!"

He pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of the Sultan. Through air at such long range, the plasma bolt had only scoured away a patch of yellow-brown corrosion the Venerian atmosphere had left on the starship's white hull. Even such a relatively light weapon could have been fatal if it hit the thrusters during the descent, or if the Sultan's hull was crazed by long vibration.

"You have no right to be here!" the Federation envoy said shrilly. "The Administration of Humanity has awarded exploitation of this sector to America!"

The envoy was a tall, thin man with a full beard but almost no hair above the line of his ears. He wore a gray tunic over blue trousers, perhaps a uniform, with gaudy decorations on his left breast. His holstered pistol was for show rather than use, and he looked extremely apprehensive of the heavily-armed Venerians.

"Brisbane's authority is a farce!" Choransky said. He stopped directly in front of the envoy and stood with his arms akimbo, emphasizing the breadth of his chest. "The Secretary General can't fart unless President Pleyal tells him to."

The envoy swallowed. He met Choransky's glare, but Gregg had the feeling that was to avoid having to admit the presence of the other murderous-looking Venerians surrounding him. The Fed's courage wasn't in doubt.

"Whatever President Pleyal may be to you," the envoy said, "he is my head of state. And his orders are that his domains beyond Earth shall have no dealings except with vessels of the North American Federation."

Choransky poked the envoy's chest with one powerful finger. "Balls!" he said. "Captain Mostert turned over his whole cargo on Virginia last year. I'm from Captain Mostert. Don't you recognize the damned ship?"

The Federation envoy made an angry moue with his lips. "Port Commander Finchly, who dealt with your Captain Mostert," he said, "was arrested and carried back to Earth last month to stand trial. His replacement, Port Commander Zaloga, arrived with the orders for his predecessor's arrest."

Choransky seized the grip of the cutting bar dangling from his belt. He also wore a slung rifle. The envoy shut his eyes but didn't move.

"God grind your stupid bones to meal!" the captain said, his voice low-pitched but sincere. Then he went on in a grating but nearly normal tone, "Look, you tell your Commander Zaloga this. I'm bringing my other ships down, because they stink worse 'n sewers with the Molts we're carrying. And you bastards need Molts!"

The envoy's eyelids quivered.

"Then we'll come talk to Zaloga, and talk like sensible people. If he's looking for a little something for himself to clear this, well, I guess something can be arranged. But no more shooting!"

The envoy nodded, then opened his eyes. "I'll tell the commander," he said, "and I'm sure he'll talk with you himself. But as for your business-"

For an instant there was something more than fear and formality in the Fed's voice. "Gentlemen, you know President Pleyal. It's as much as a man's life is worth to cross him."

Choransky gripped the envoy by the shoulder, gently enough, and turned the man back toward his autogyro. "Pleyal's a long way away," the Venerian captain said. "I'm here, and believe me, I'm not taking these stinking Molts back to Venus with me."

Ricimer stepped in front of the envoy. "Sir," he said. "Without trade your colony will die, and without outside resources the homeworlds-even Earth in her present condition-will die also. No orders that restrict trade can be in keeping with the will of God for mankind to survive."

The Federation officer stared as Ricimer moved out of the way again. "Does President Pleyal recognize a god beyond himself?" he asked, half a taunt. He got into the aircraft.

"And no shooting!" Choransky repeated in a loud voice as the Fed pilot restarted her motor.