by Ben Bova
"I'm afraid your father is correct, Your Highness," said Glenney, now also on his feet. "The two of you, together, may have been enough of a lure to draw out whoever has been in place for all these years."
Javas reached for his jacket, buttoning it as he demanded, "I want those responsible for this, do you understand me?" Eric watched his father as he spoke, saw how his brow wrinkled and his eyes blinked occasionally as he talked. Even now, as he dealt with this new situation, Eric knew he was mentally issuing dozens of orders, setting perhaps hundreds of things in motion. "What are your recommendations?"
Glenney stood aside and indicated the door. "Sire, there is no proof yet to tie what has happened to a direct threat against yourself or your son, but the timing of this—occurring during Prince Eric's first visit to Luna in nearly ten years—bothers me considerably. I want you out of here. Immediately. I can have anything you need brought down to you later, but I want you off Luna within the hour."
His father, already on his feet, nodded in understanding and fastened the collar of his coat. "I agree."
Fifteen minutes later Eric stood on the apron of the huge landing grid. His father beside him, they stood surrounded by armed Imperial guards as the shuttle Azalea Dream went through final preparation for launch.
Eric looked up and allowed his eyes to scan the vast chamber, trying unsuccessfully to pinpoint the spot where they had stood barely more than an hour earlier over the body of the slain Port Director. There were hundreds of personnel moving about the upper reaches of the dome, engaged in jobs Eric could only guess at. He returned his attention to the shuttle, now being prepared for lift-off by Glenney and the port authority staff. Unlike the huge, spherical Imperial fleet shuttles that could ferry a hundred people, the Azalea Dream was one of a class of smaller ships, with a capacity of no more than a dozen passengers, that regularly made the quick Earth-Moon run on various Imperial errands. Even so, the small ship was circled by three times the normal amount of technicians and security people as final prep was completed.
"Will you be safe at Woodsgate, Father?" Javas turned to him, the pleased expression on his face confusing Eric. "What is it?" he asked.
"You've just been shown that your life has been threatened, and you ask about my welfare." He shook his head and looked away, but not fast enough that Eric didn't catch a brief glimpse of the shame and regret in his eyes. "When I was your age, I would never have thought in the same terms about my own father if he had been—"
He had been about to say something more but stopped as a single figure broke suddenly away from the group standing at the shuttle ramp and trotted over to where they waited.
"Sire, Young Prince," Glenney said hurriedly, "we're ready to depart. This way, please." He spun about immediately and quickly led the way to the ramp, with Eric and his father, and the accompanying guards, right behind him.
The escort parted when they reached the shuttle, and the ramp extended fully. The two landing techs clattered quickly down from the shuttle and secured the bottom of the ramp, standing immediately aside when finished.
Two of the guards went up the ramp first, and when Glenney indicated that the Emperor should follow, they ascended the ramp quickly, causing the ramp to bounce slightly. Eric started up the ramp next but lost his balance momentarily on the unsteady footing and pitched forward, throwing his hands out before him to brace himself as he fell.
A strong hand grasped his arm, catching him easily before he could complete his fall. Glenney and the nearest guards bristled, but Eric hastily assured them that he was all right, thanks to the quick reflexes of the shuttle landing tech who had broken his fall.
He turned to the tech, a tall, bearded man with dark, feral eyes that flashed when he smiled. "Watch your step, Young Prince."
"Thank you," said Eric. "I will." He scrambled up the ramp and into the shuttle, followed by Glenney and another pair of guards.
The landing techs unsecured the ramp, and followed them inside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Considering the Azalea Dream a small shuttle had been a relative observation on Eric's part. Sitting on the landing grid of the huge dome as they waited to board during final prep, the ship had been positively dwarfed by the cavernous facility.
And while the Dream's passenger capacity amounted to only a fraction that of the Imperial shuttle that had ferried him to the Moon three days earlier, this so-called hopper shuttle contained a passenger cabin that was both spacious and comfortably appointed with everything from a self-contained entertainment system to a small galley.
There were two rows of plush seats running the length of the cabin, five in each row, and Eric sat across a surprisingly wide aisle from the seat occupied by his father. Each seat had a viewport screen that simulated a window, as well as a program screen recessed into the back of the seat in front of it. The craft had been designed for passenger comfort and it was no surprise that, while there were many hundreds of this class in Imperial use in Sol system, there were many thousands in private service.
Glenney sat in one of the forwardmost seats. He wore a small headset and had swung the seat's program screen from its wall position, and was engaged in busy, quiet conversation, although Eric couldn't tell if he was in contact with the two pilots on the shuttle bridge or the two guards riding with the landing techs in the lower aft deck navigation and landing station. He could have been talking to both or, for that matter, neither. After several minutes of conversation he swung around in his seat, headset still in place, and faced the Emperor.
"We'll depart in a few moments, Sire. Everything has been set up. Other than the Woodsgate staff, few others know that you'll be leaving Armelin City. I've canceled everything that requires your immediate attention, explaining that you'll be spending time with the visiting Prince." His attention was drawn away momentarily as he listened to something in his headset. "A level one quarantine will be instituted on the Imperial section that will begin as soon as we're away."
"Quarantine?" Eric asked, addressing Glenney directly.
The man looked briefly to the Emperor, who nodded.
"Two things occurred the moment Director Kaselin's body was discovered. First, the Imperial section of Armelin City was closed. That is, all vehicular and pedestrian traffic into and out of the section was stopped. Second, a priority computer search going back forty-eight hours was initiated on every door, corridor, workstation or terminal requiring an access code, holocard or thumbprint. That information is correlated with personnel, both on and off duty—" Glenney touched a hand to the earpiece of his headset and turned away a moment to check the program screen.
There was a soft murmuring as the engines went through the start-up cycle, then the slight shudder of the gravity harness engaging, lifting the shuttle off the landing grid. In the viewport Eric saw the grid shrinking below the small ship as it rose; he could have ordered the screen to show an upward vertical perspective, but preferred the view of the landing facility as he waited for the Security Chief to finish.
"We're away, Sire; the harness has been released and we're proceeding under our own power."
"Very good." Javas settled into the comfortable seat and leaned back fully on the headrest, eyes closed. Eric and Glenney both knew that despite appearances, he was far from napping.
Eric paid little attention now to the view as the shuttle entered its transit pattern for Earth, and considered what Glenney had said just before departure.
"So, what the computer's looking for," he began, "is a specific person—or group of people—at a specific place or time. But the level one quarantine?"
"A physical search, Young Prince. In the last hour, every member of security has been stationed throughout the Imperial section. They'll sweep inward, toward the landing bay, physically checking every security checkpoint, every ID, every terminal."
Eric held up a hand, interrupting him. "To what purpose?"
"To what—?" Glenney was startled by the question. "Why, to apprehend whoever
is—"
"Don't you think the time has come to stop talking down to me?" Eric demanded, his face set in a look of grim determination. From the corner of his eye, he saw his father raise an eyebrow, silently observing both himself and Glenney. The Chief's mouth opened and closed several times and he looked to his father, who nodded agreement with his son.
"I know you wish to catch those responsible for the Director's murder," Eric went on. "Only a fool or a child would think otherwise. I am neither. What I want to know is who you're looking for." He turned to Javas, now sitting upright in rapt attention to the conversation. "Father, if you have no objections I'd like to see the complete file on what happened today, as well as access to the background files on previous attempts on our family; including those relating to my grandfather's death."
"See that Prince Eric receives access to all the files he's requested," Javas said without hesitation. Glenney was about to protest, but before he could speak the Emperor added, "If it makes you feel better you may enter the necessary codes yourself, then transfer control to him." Glenney turned away, speaking in hushed tones and tapping swiftly at the keys on his program screen. Javas leaned across the aisle, a bemused expression plainly visible on his face. "Oh, and son," he said softly, "thank you for asking for permission this time."
Eric grinned guiltily, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, and Javas laughed for the first time since they had been interrupted at dinner by Glenney's report. The sound of his father's laughter lifted his spirits, and he wondered if he, too, would find rare times of good humor when he became Emperor.
The Chief stopped in mid-sentence and turned around, obviously bewildered by what was going on behind him. One glance at the expression on the befuddled man's face, however, and Eric couldn't help but join his father in the laughter.
"How soon till we're home?" Eric asked, stretching his cramped legs beneath the seat in front of him.
"Not long, Your Highness," the copilot responded. The communications channel between the bridge and the passenger cabin had been left open during de-orbit so they could hear the progress and description of the landing procedure.
Like most of the hopper shuttles, Azalea Dream was fast.
There was no way for Eric to have read all the files during the ride to Earth, and when the pilot announced that they were now on final approach to Woodsgate he reluctantly closed the access channel and blanked the program screen. He had learned much from the files. Most of it was as disturbing as it was revealing, but nothing of what he'd read disturbed him as much as the identity of the horseman who had helped him that day in the backwoods. He seemed so different, Eric noted, comparing the memory of that afternoon with what he'd just learned from the files. Was it really possible that the same man who'd shown him kindness that day could really have been responsible for his grandfather's death?
He turned to the viewport and scanned the Kentucky countryside, awash in the deep greens of early July, passing below them. The shuttle made a wide circle, and he saw the town of Somerville pass a few kilometers to the east as they kept the ship over unpopulated forestland until they entered the restricted airspace extending in a five-kilometer radius around the estate. The craft continued its arc, and finally the estate came into view, nestled in the hills west of town. The Sun was still high in the sky, and here and there a sudden flash reached his eyes as their steady movement caused the angle to be just right to reflect off the surface of an occasional stream or pond.
"Mr. Glenney, would you please see that everyone is secure for pad-down?"
Glenney came down the short aisle, personally inspecting his seat belt as well as his father's, then returned to his own seat and buckled in before turning to the Emperor. "Sire?"
"Anytime."
"We're secure," Glenney said to the copilot. "Proceed with your final approach and landing."
There was only the slightest sensation of movement as the craft came around and began descending at an angle toward the estate. Eric watched the descent without comment, listening to the odd one-sided conversation the pilot and copilot were having with ground control:
"Angle now at sixty-five degrees… Thank you, control, will do… No, the wind's not a problem at all." There was a pause, and the sound of laughter. "Right, I'll tell him you said so. If you have us locked in, please confirm our distance… Roger that; we 're at six hundred meters, descending now at a steady five meters per second. Open a gate in the skin at four-sixty."
Eric watched as Woodsgate drew closer in the viewport, and noticed that a large, perfect circle nearly fifty meters in diameter had appeared in the hazy air as they descended. Glenney had mentioned before they left Luna that the estate shielding had been increased to maximum even before the decision to remove them to Earth had been made, but Eric hadn't noticed the fuzzy outline of the dome-shaped shielding until the landing gate had been opened.
"Looking good from our end, control… We copy that the skin's open and clear; we'll be inside in ten seconds. Give us a full ten meters clearance, though, before you reclose—" The copilot broke in suddenly, cutting the captain off. "I'm reading the skin coming back up! Abort landing pro—"
The entire cabin shook violently and tilted at a crazy angle, throwing Eric against the viewport screen. There was another shudder as what felt like a small detonation came from below, sending the bridge into confused turmoil.
"I don't know, I don't know! A second skin, I think, about a meter above the House shielding… What? I'm trying to! What's happening to the harness?"
All movement stopped, and the shuttle hung motionless in the sky as both pilot and copilot jabbered constantly about the ship's condition with ground control. Glenney had unstrapped and was on his hands and knees, climbing the now-sloping floor to the door leading to the bridge, but had no luck pulling it open. Grasping the handle firmly, he ran a hand along a smooth wrinkle in the surface of the bulkhead around the door, realizing that the metal itself had buckled slightly, effectively jamming the door. The internal lights flickered once, then came on and remained steady, but only static came now from the communications speaker.
"Captain!" Glenney called, but there was no answer from the bridge. He tapped at the headset with his fingers, then switched to another channel. "Navigation, are you there?" He waited a moment, then pulled off the useless headset, letting it slide skittering to the back of the cabin. "Damn!" he spat, then released his grip and slid down the floor to the seats. Using them for support, he leaned between Eric and his father. "Sire, are you both all right?"
"I'm fine," he replied, shaking his dazed head to clear it. "Eric!"
"I'm all right, Father." He dabbed at a trickle of blood at his nose from where he'd banged into the viewport and turned to Glenney. "What happened?"
"I don't know." He looked past Eric at the viewport. Eric and his father both followed his gaze and saw that the outside view was unchanged: They seemed to be motionless, hanging some 450 meters above the estate, with the landing pad plainly visible beneath them. House personnel, Imperial guards and members of the ground landing crew could be seen running on the ground below. "But judging from what the captain was saying before the speaker went out, we seem to be embedded in a second shield of some kind, projected just above the estate's own."
The lights flickered again, and the background hum of the shuttle's systems steadily decreased, then died, leaving the cabin in silence. A red emergency light came on, bathing the three of them in eerie shadows for several tense moments before the main lights returned.
They sat in silence, listening as carefully as they could to several sounds, clearly audible now that the shuttle's main engine had powered down. There was an irregular but steady hammering from aft, in what Eric assumed was the navigation and landing station where the guards and landing techs were. An occasional shouting could be heard from the direction of the bridge, although the words were unintelligible through the thickness of the flooring and bulkheads that separated them. Other sounds assailed them now,
the most disconcerting of them being the metallic clangs and pops from the stressed structure of the craft itself.
"I don't like the sound of that," Eric said.
"We may have a worse problem." The tone of his father's, words caught his attention immediately and he stared at him. He was sweating, his brow furrowed and eyes squinting in deep concentration. "Glenney, I'm being blocked."
Glenney's eyes widened. "The implants?" he snapped. "Were they damaged in the collision with the shielding?"
"No! They're fine, but they're being blocked or jammed by something."
Eric felt the floor tilt suddenly beneath them. There was a pause, then another lurch and a horrible sound of metal tearing somewhere in the shuttle. The movement stopped with a bone-grinding jerk, the angle of the cabin even steeper than before. Eric glanced at his hands, his fingers white-knuckled on the armrest of the seat, and realized that the ship seemed to be vibrating slightly. He touched the wall above the viewport then, sliding his palm slowly up the surface as it curved into the ceiling, and reached as high as he could without unbuckling his restraints.
It felt like… He looked quickly into the viewport, but it seemed the same as before until he picked out an object on the ground and stared at it for several seconds. "We're sliding!"
There was another grinding lurch, then another as the shuttle's weight tore it loose from the shielding, sending it sliding freely down the curving outside surface of the shielding. Eric had just enough time to reflect that the craft slid in a smooth arc, like a snowball would if thrown onto the sun-warmed metal roof of the stables. The sensation of falling was gradual, at first—the Azalea Dream had impacted the shielding near its top, where the angle was not as steep—but as it traveled frictionlessly down the side, the angle steepened and they fell faster and faster. A second before impact, at a point where the shielding was nearly vertical to the ground, Eric felt a brief sensation of weightlessness.
