When at length she could start the boat, she must keep its engine throttled back lest she outrun her escort. They traveled fast, though, silvery torpedoes vaguely seen through foam and streaming water, now and then an exultant leap or a toboggan run down a wave. The patrol craft spied theirs, drew near, saw that they were outbound, and veered off, its robotic pilot finding no reason to summon a police flitter.
“Lemme out of here,” Guthrie demanded on her back. She gave Valencia the wheel and obeyed, setting him on deck behind the cockpit. His eyestalks roved. Did he too devour the sight, knowing it could be his last?
The boat purred smoothly over low swells. Forward they heaved, a burnished blackness, to the edge of heaven. A ship was passing yonder, brightly lighted, toylike at its distance. Somehow it deepened Kyra’s sense of isolation. Aft the land gloomed lofty. Kamehameha was a star cluster on it, outshining the wan points overhead. Wind and sea lulled. Kyra lost herself in the night.
“I think we’re far enough out,” Valencia said. He brought them parallel to shore. His hair mingled with the mountainous dark, his profile stood sculptured against it. Kyra laid a hand on his thigh.
Not that she’d fallen in love or anything, no, no, but she mightily wished they’d had time of their own this afternoon, and when she came back after victory—
She gasped. The horizon ahead was lightening. “Moonrise already?” she exclaimed. “Have we taken this long?”
Valencia glanced at his informant. “Yes,” he replied as if she had asked him for the time or the square root of a number. “Bueno, we can try to make it an advantage, not an extra danger. When we arrive, keep low in the water, go onto the beach on all fours, lie prone till I signal you.”
“You’ll go ahead alone? No!”
“He’s the pro, Kyra,” Guthrie reminded her. “You wouldn’t let him at the console of a spaceship, would you?”
“Right.” Valencia turned his head to meet her eyes. His smile flashed like a wave crest. “We’ll proceed together, never fear.”
She tautened. “We will.”
Kamehameha blazed ahead. He cut the engine. The boat whispered to a stop and rocked in the swing of the sea. Kyra forgot her fears. In and at them!
Standing up in the cockpit, she and Valencia took off their clothes. The Moon entered the sky. That low, it did not yet cast a glade. A million tiny wires of light quivered on the water. The Keiki turned luminous. For an instant, man and woman regarded one another, palely aglow amidst shadows. He had lidded his biojewel, but she remembered last night’s red-gold. She saw the rising, grinned, and found voice. “It’s mutual, amigo.” Look at her nipples. “But c’mon.” He grinned back, then they both got busy.
Guthrie went into her carryall again and it into the nearer of the sealable plastic bags Valencia had acquired with his burglary kit. Shoes, garments, towels, tools went into the second. He kept the shoulder-holstered pistol he had taken from beneath his jacket. She didn’t know much about firearms, had only done occasional target shooting, but obviously this piece didn’t mind being wet. Bundles in hand, they lowered themselves over the side.
The sea was cool, embracing, a caress over her entire body. She tasted salt on her lips like a kiss. Nonetheless, she realized that in a few hours she’d die of exposure. She could swim to shore before then, of course, but she’d land exhausted. Therefore the guards shouldn’t be watching for intruders from this direction.
The half-dozen Keiki crowded around. She gave her bag to one to hold by his (her?) teeth. Charlie pulled alongside. He must want to be her steed. Fine; that too was mutual. He submerged for her to stretch along his back and lay arms around his neck. Careful to keep her head in the air, he began to move. Valencia got the same service. The deserted boat fell behind.
Muscles flexed powerfully beneath her. Water streamed, stroked, purled by. The Moon climbed higher, bow waves shone white, wakes swirled radiant. Surf, whispering at first, boomed ever louder and deeper. She kept her eyes from the spaceport glare and let herself go free into ocean and Moonlight while still she could.
The beach curved in an arc, shielded by another breakwater against which the sea crashed and spouted. When they had rounded it, the Keiki slowed. They knew how to sneak up on quarry. The minutes stretched till the magic snapped across.
Like a brusque arousing, Charlie grated to a halt. Kyra slipped off him and felt sand beneath her soles. They were in the shallows.
She squatted low, head barely above the lapping water. A last time she hugged Charlie, cheek against sleek pelt. “Gracias, gracias,” she breathed. “Mahalo nui loa. Now go. Right away. Hele aku.” Don’t linger, don’t get killed.
He uttered a soft grunt, nuzzled her in the hollow between neck and shoulder, and slipped off. For a few seconds she glimpsed the hasty shapes. They vanished. She and Nero were alone.
They’d better be.
As instructed, she crept ashore and flattened herself. The sand was black and scratchy. Crouched, he glided from her. Above the strand was a strip of grass and shrubs, then the chain link fence and its locked gate, silhouetted against the whiteness from lamps that in her position she could not see. Valencia disappeared. She lay with her heartbeat. A breeze fluttered across wet skin and into drenched hair. She shivered.
Valencia returned, wolf-gaited. “All right, I’ve found a spot,” he said in her ear. “Keep low and be quick.”
A man-tall hibiscus bush close to the fence, several meters from the gate, offered concealment. Its flowers hung startlingly bright in the patch of speckled night that it made. The pair could see well enough to towel themselves dry and resume their clothes. Kyra slung the carryall on her back. Guthrie felt weightless. She must be charged to megavolt potential, though consciousness had gone hyalon-clear.
“Your hair’s a mess,” Valencia said low. “We forgot a comb. Let me see if I can straighten it some.”
“Same to you.”
Two monkeys finger-grooming! Kyra silenced laughter and lust.
They puffed away when Valencia stepped from her, took his kit off the ground, and moved to the fence. His cutter buzzed—louder than Niagara? No, no—and links fell apart, each by each by each. He was so brightly illuminated too, a beacon where he stood against the barrier. No, really, the light was dim and tricky. Rip, rip, rip. Severed coils clicked on their neighbors.
He dropped the tool, laid hold of the metal, tugged. It sagged around a narrow gap. He beckoned and eased through. Kyra came after. A raw edge scratched her hand.
“You! Stop!”
Valencia whirled. Motion blurred his right arm. The pistol spat. The bullet trailed a tiny thunderclap.
Valencia was already running. Kyra had barely started when he reached the guard. Did the fallen man stir? Valencia put the pistol to the head. Brain geysered.
Valencia stepped back from the spreading, shimmery pool. “Let’s go,” he said, reholstering his weapon beneath his jacket.
Kyra jerked to a halt and stared. Beyond a narrow lawn, a warehouse loomed sheer, every window lightless. It blocked their view of whatever was behind. That must be a reason Valencia had picked the entry point he did. Lamplight diffused over and around it, harshening the Moonglow but not adding very much. It sufficed to show her the dead man’s face. His half a face. He had been young.
Valencia’s grip closed bruisingly on Kyra’s arm. “Vamos!” he snapped. “I don’t know when he’d have met the next guard, or whether that one will come searching or call in an alarm straightaway. We can just try to haul clear before then.”
She could not pull her look from the single empty eye. “You killed him,” she heard. The words fell dulled off a dry tongue. “He was wounded, and you killed him.”
“What else?” She sensed how he reined in impatience, to speak hurriedly but soothingly: “Kyra, it was necessary. This meeting was happenstance, his bad luck and ours. Let’s not make it Fireball’s.”
She gagged down acid. No, God damn it, she would not puke. She turned and strode from th
e corpse. Her heels hit the sidewalk in perfect cadence.
Valencia joined her. “That’s better,” he said. She guessed that he smiled, though she didn’t care to see. “You’re a brave muchacha, Kyra.”
She ought to reply, “I am Pilot Davis,” but didn’t.
“Shouldn’t you have the carryall in your hand?” he asked. “That’s how the multi shows spacers taking their personal gear aboard.”
He was right. He stayed cool and thought of everything. She followed the suggestion without comment. What she must concentrate on was steadiness.
They went around several outer buildings so as to appear in the more public areas as if coming from the main gate. It took a while. She wondered indifferently whether tension increased in him pace by pace, listening for the doomsday siren. No matter. If so, he’d conceal it well. He was expert at such things. For her, stolidity must serve. That didn’t seem hard to maintain, after sickness had congealed to numbness.
They emerged in the open and walked under lampposts, between more buildings, miniature gardens, benches and tables where employees liked to eat lunch. Afar they saw the field. The spacecraft poised floodlighted, a dart aimed at heaven, against the gaunt array of laser launchers. Maui Maru was her name, returned to Kyra. An ordinary small freighter, not meant for deep space, plying the lanes between Earth, Luna, and L-5. Having boosted, she traveled mostly on trajectory till she reached her destination. Kyra’s Kestrel was docked at L-5. It would be healing to take those dear controls again, to ride a torch again out to the haunts of the comets.
Two uniformed Sepo confronted her. “Your identity, por favor,” said the larger.
“Pilot Davis, reporting to Director Packer for tonight’s mission.” She gave him her card to examine.
“Mario Conroy, reporting with information.” Valencia’s tone was as pleasant as his smile. He didn’t yank out his ident, he eased it out.
The officer spoke into a miniphone. “Ah, yes,” he said. “In order. If you’ll wait a minute, a vehicle will come for you.”
“Why wasn’t there one for them at the gate?” wondered his partner.
The first man shrugged. “This business popped up with no notice. Nobody’s sure what it is. Nobody was prepared. Nobody knows his tail from his butt.”
Except Fireball’s folk, Kyra thought. They were puzzled too, of course, but they’d swing right into action. Besides, though the circumstances were peculiar, this launch in itself was the nadir of routineness.
A bug car brought her and Valencia to headquarters. “Wait, if you can,” he told the driver. “We may be back soon.” The scene inside was blessedly familiar, known faces, known voices and mannerisms welcoming her—if she ignored the militiamen at their stations and the wary-eyed plainclothes operatives. She and Valencia were ushered directly to Packer’s office.
He rose to his feet behind the desk. “Buenas tardes.” The greeting sounded raw. He could never go pale, but was there a grayness underneath the brown? “Have a seat. Care for some refreshment?”
“I’m afraid we haven’t time,” Valencia replied. “New word has come in. Pilot Davis has to scramble immediately.”
Packer blinked, swallowed, recovered. His body actually loosened. Now he wasn’t chewing on the hours till the 2300 set for liftoff, Kyra realized. Instead, he was challenged to stage an act for the electronics planted here. “Oh? I haven’t been told.”
“Nor will you be, sir, till we can brief you in a more secure place.” The “we” implied an outfit overriding the Sepo: which meant direct agents of the Advisory Synod. In his orders, Guthrie had not explicitly said anything like that about Mario Conroy, because it was never done for such persons, but he had made the implication clear.
“If I have to go off with you, I’d like to stop by my home and notify my family,” Packer said.
“Certainly,” Valencia replied. “I’ll ride along, if I may.” Unspoken: And we’ll pack them into your car and make for the first of the limbos I have chosen. Kyra decided it was best she couldn’t tell Packer what had happened to the guard. “But how much can you advance the countdown?”
“That depends on where the ship is bound, which I haven’t been told either,” Packer said.
Kyra stirred. “No worry about a launch window,” she said. “If the tanks are full, I’ll have reaction mass to waste, and there won’t be any call afterward to justify it.”
“So it’s a matter of a new clearance to lift,” Packer said needlessly. “I’ll call Captain Ueland”—evidently the chief of the occupying force, whose authorization he must get in any case—”and ask him to put in for crash priority.” Federation Astro Control normally granted such requests, which were not frequent, when they came from a government official. “I’d guess we can raise you in half an hour, Pilot Davis.”
How long since the murder—the liquidation—the unfortunate necessity? How long till it was discovered? “Then I’d better board at once,” Kyra said.
“Buen viaje.” Packer kept the farewell conventional, unemotional. She caught the slightest tremor in it, which said, Oh, good voyage to you, good voyage to our hopes that you bear!
Guthrie had once more gone heavy, as if Earth dragged at them both. She saluted and started out. Valencia flowed in front of her. “Buena suerte, amiga, y hasta la vista,” he said low. His hand swung behind her waist. He kissed her. It was light and brief, nothing to make anybody speculate, only what two people who’d become friendly might exchange; but she felt his lips tremble.
She had all she could do not to shudder. “Adios,” she said, and went out the door.
* * * *
24
— Z
ero.”
The ship lifted. Acceleration pressed Kyra deep into her couch. She gave herself to the task of breathing. Before her eyes, lights blinked, needles turned across dials, the hieroglyphs in display screens shifted from shape to shape. The drive pulse throbbed in her ears and bones, it took her, she became one with it.
Upward and eastward the ship rose, until the lasers could no longer reach her. At that height, scant air remained for them to energize into thrust. For a short span she moved on momentum and Kyra floated free, held just by her safety web, in an enormous quiet.
When the ship reached vacuum of the required hardness, her drive kicked in. The force was less than before and the only sounds Kyra heard were the breath in ventilators and her nostrils, the blood in her veins.
“Orbit achieved,” said a synthetic voice and various instruments. Again she was weightless. Her body reveled in the freedom. Null-g had its nuisances and over any real length of time it was bad for her, she’d have to spend hours daily exercising and in the centrifuge to counteract, but these first moments were always joy.
Or they had been. She and Guthrie were aloft, they had escaped alive, yet muscles alone took pleasure. Inside, she felt frozen.
She unsnapped her harness, floated off the couch, looked out the viewport. A segment of Earth’s vast curve filled half of it, clouds white swirls, cities constellated across the night beneath. She was above Mexico, she judged—yes, the locator positioned Maui’s symbol there on its map. The rest of the scene was stars. She’d dimmed the cabin before liftoff, as was her wont, so that now they crowded vision, a frosty glory.
She pushed with a foot, flew to the rack behind the couch, caught a bracket to stop herself—a maneuver as gratifyingly graceful as a pass in a water dance among the Keiki—and hung by Guthrie. “How’re you doing?” she asked.
“Fine,” he replied from the web. His eyestalks extended toward her face. “I can’t say the same of you, though, can I?”
Kyra glanced away. “I’m all right,” she mumbled.
“The hell you are. It’s about Valencia, isn’t it?”
She set her teeth. “Yes. What he did. Do you know?” She hadn’t quite dared talk to him after they were aboard. There might have been a bug of some kind. Anyway, she’d been busy, stowing things, readying herself, ordering a flight pla
n for the Moon and studying it.
“I have a fair idea from what I heard in your pack. A sentry surprised you. Valencia got the drop on him and killed him.”
Kyra’s knuckles whitened on the bracket. “Not simply that,” she forced out. “I don’t know if the man died at once. It makes ... no difference . . . Valencia shot him again, point blank, in the head.”
“Yeah, I had that impression.”
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