Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  “Don, none of that’s true!” the Mayor gasped. “At least, I mean about the men here on—”

  “Can it, honey,” Slade said. “I’m not going to hurt you, you hear?” He glared at the woman until she subsided. “It was true ten, twelve years ago when I heard it, and it’s true now. Word was, no men were allowed to live on Erlette since that—incident. There was a sperm bank and normal reproduction to keep up the population at a viable level. . . . but male offspring got deep-sixed at birth.”

  The tanker shrugged again. “That’s your business,” he said. “I don’t interfere. But I didn’t much like the notion that the same thing happened to visiting spacers—after they’d contributed to the gene pool directly and through the sperm bank.”

  “Donald,” the Mayor whispered, “that’s all the most vicious lies. You and your men aren’t in any danger, I swear it.”

  Slade nodded. “Then there won’t be any trouble,” he said. “All I want is for all the—all my men—to be sent back to the ship unharmed. And we’ll leave. Anybody in the Sperm Bank tonight?”

  Delores’ face hardened. “Why?”

  “Because it’s solider than this place,” Slade said, “and because I figure it’s too important—” The glint in the woman’s eyes agreed with his assumption even before he finished stating it. “—for any of your, ah, friends to try and be heroes around it. They might risk you, but if somebody puts a batch of holes through that place, your whole society goes down the tubes. Right?”

  “There’s no one there,” the woman said. Her pause had stretched dangerously long. “You’re completely wrong, Mister Slade . . . but I suppose we can humor you if you want no more than you say. I’m sorry that things had to work out this way.”

  “Oh, lady,” said the tanker wearily. “I couldn’t agree with you more.” He snicked the short, keen blade of his work knife out of its nest between the scales. “Only thing is, I’d like even less for things to work out the way you and your friends planned.”

  With a single motion Slade cut the tape holding Mayor Rodrigues’ ankles to the bench. Cradling her in his left arm, and using her body to shield the pistol from possible watchers, Slade walked out of the house.

  Traffic was sparse. Slade was still concerned that the lights of another vehicle would show that he was driving the bus. The alternative risk was to tape Delores to the driver’s seat and free her hands to drive. Slade was not silly enough to do that. The pistol he carried was a deadly weapon, but the bus in hostile hands was yet more dangerous.

  There were no incidents on the way. The Sperm Bank was quiet on their arrival, save for the whine of its cooling plant. “I hope,” said Slade to the woman beside him, “that you’ve got the key to this place. I can drive into the door a couple times—” He patted the control column. The fans were spinning at idle while the bus waited in front of the squat, stone building. “But that’s likely to cause coolant leaks in your refrigeration system.”

  “The door has a key-pad lock,” Delores said sullenly. “We can get in.” Whether she would have said the same without the threat was uncertain.

  Slade worked the punched combination as directed while the bus continued to purr. There was no alarm as the door opened. By now, an alarm would have done as much good as harm anyway.

  The tanker slipped his pistol back in the pouch in order to lift Mayor Rodrigues with his left hand and the borrowed luggage with his right. As expected, the initial room was a lobby with a desk and more padded benches against the walls. The corridor beyond led to a laboratory and a series of cubicles where, presumably, the sperm could be implanted. Most of the hardware was ceramic rather than of metal or synthetics.

  The rear half of the building was a rank of refrigerated, multi-drawer files. The air held a sharp trace of ammonia. On a stanchion in the center of the room was a voice communications unit. “Can you talk to your friends on that?” Slade asked. He turned so that the woman he held could see the phone.

  “Yes.” The syllable was more guarded, now, than angry. The Mayor had had time to consider the risk to her community that a madman here posed.

  Slade taped the woman’s left ankle to the stanchion. Then he cut free her wrists. “I want you to start calling people,” the tanker said as he stepped back. “And first, I want you to tell them exactly what you see here.”

  With the care the apparatus deserved, Slade opened the case and tilted it so that Delores could see clearly what was inside. The Mayor was no demolitions expert, but the threat was utterly clear from context. Her gasp was proof enough of that.

  “And I want you to tell them,” the tanker went on as he slid his own commo unit from his belt sheath and keyed it, “that if I let up on this switch—” he pointed to the key his left thumb depressed— “the signal triggers the bomb.” His index finger tilted down toward the case. “Ten kilos of Cylobar. If that doesn’t ring a bell, tell them its propagation rate is ten kays per second.”

  The tanker sat down against the wall. He moved carefully, so that his thumb did not slip and he did not lose eye contact with the horrified woman. “When you’ve got their attention that way,” Slade concluded, “then we’ll move on to my instructions.”

  He smiled, and his face was more threatening than the way he gestured with the commo unit he held.

  “Slade!” blurted Captain Levine as female guards ran him into the refrigeration room at gunpoint.

  “Dear heaven, I’d prayed they wouldn’t have gotten you, you know about these—but why’s she tied? The Mayor?”

  Half a dozen more of GAC 59’s crew stumbled down the corridor. They were logy with the treatment they had received, but their condition seemed to be acceptable. The pair of guards fanned to either side of the doorway. Deputy Brandt followed the spacers with a bell-snouted weapon of her own. She trained the gun on the center of Slade’s chest.

  Slade remained seated. The gun muzzle looked no more angry and threatening than did the Deputy’s eyes.

  The tanker nodded to her. “Levine,” he said calmly, “you’re going back to the ship right now. The mercs are being delivered there already.” The tanker raised an eyebrow toward Brandt, who nodded curtly. “You’ll program the ship to Transit from ground—”

  “I can’t set a course alone,” Levine broke in. “And a ground Transit, the gravity well could kick us seconds, minutes off course.”

  “I’d rather be lost by five Transit minutes,” said the tanker dryly, “than be lifting off on thrusters when the Deputy here decides we’re out of range for my handset.”

  Brandt’s gun trembled.

  Levine looked warily from Slade to the weapon. Then he trotted back down the corridor, toward the vehicle that had brought him. One of the power room crew started to follow.

  “Hold it,” said Slade in a voice that made gun muzzles twitch.

  The crewman turned to Slade. “But why do we got to stay here?” he whined.

  “Because,” said the tanker, “I know Captain Levine won’t take off with no crew. And I’m not quite so certain that you all would be careful to wait for me to board.”

  More guards and another group of crewmen clattered into the building. Slade looked at Deputy Brandt, who had been surreptitiously eyeing the open case. “Take a good look,” the tanker said calmly.

  The sharp-featured woman glared at him. Her front teeth nibbled her lips. “I need to talk to Delores,” she said abruptly. Brandt took a stride toward the bound Mayor.

  “Hold it!” Slade repeated, even more sharply than before. The Deputy turned. She pointed her weapon. Everyone in the room tensed. “You can talk with her,” Slade continued, “but you do it aloud so I can hear.”

  “All right, mister!” the Deputy rasped. “I was going to tell Delores there’d been a few adverse drug reactions. What do you think of that?”

  “Cele—” said the woman strapped to the stanchion.

  “I think you’d better have the bodies brought to the ship,” replied the tanker in an even voice. “Nobody s
tays.”

  “Why?” Brandt demanded shrilly. “Bother you that we’d roll them in with sheep-cop and use them for fertilizer? That’s all they’re bloody good for! All they ever were.”

  Slade got up slowly. His face was placid, though his jaw muscles bunched momentarily. The tanker held his commo unit at his side as he walked toward Brandt. The Deputy took one step back. She locked her left hand on the fore-end of her pointed weapon. No one in the room seemed to breathe.

  “That for real?” Slade asked gently. “Or is it a toy?” He stepped forward. The bell muzzle bumped his chest. Another step. The woman tried to brace herself, but the tanker’s size and strength thrust her back.

  “Cele!” screamed Mayor Rodrigues.

  With a cry of fury, the Deputy slashed her gun down to point at the floor. Slade slapped her, knocking the woman down with his open hand and all his strength behind it.

  One of the guards almost fired at the gun-shot crack and Brandt crumpling sideways. Discipline held. The finger lifted trembling from the trigger.

  “Now,” said Slade to the dazed Brandt, “I think you and your guns had best get out of here. I’ll wait to hear from Captain Levine—” he nodded toward the phone— “that the ship’s ready and the men are aboard. Understood?”

  He looked around the room at the women and at the crewmen edging back from the violence.

  No one in the building would meet Slade’s eyes, but they all understood.

  “Touch her,” said Slade to the crewman who reached for Delores’ lacy blouse, “and we’ll lift short one man more.” The tanker did not bother to draw the pistol from his wallet.

  “Well, I don’t see—” the crewman began as he snatched his hand away.

  The phone on the stanchion purred its summons.

  The Mayor jumped as her concentration on other things broke. Before she could recover, Slade had stepped to the instrument and switched it live. “Sperm Bank,” he said. “Slade speaking.” The tall woman strapped to the post was a warmth and odor.

  “Slade, they want me to tell you that everybody’s back at the ship,” said Levine. “Except me, they wouldn’t string a line, so I’m across the creek at this curst phone.”

  “Well, is it true?” the tanker demanded. “Are all the landmen back aboard?” Slade had great experience in projecting a facade of tank-like solidity. As with tanks, his interior was complex and had a way of displaying frustration at awkward times.

  “Yes, yes,” said Levine, “but—” and the words tumbled out through the background hiss— “Slade, there’s eleven of them dead, corpses!”

  “Do you know a way to bring the dead back to life, Captain Levine?” the tanker asked. He directed a bitter grimace at Delores Rodrigues. The captive woman had shrunk back when the phone spoke of the deaths her plan had caused.

  “Of course not!” snapped Levine. “What do you mean?

  “I don’t know a way either,” Slade replied, “so let’s not worry about that. Get back aboard, and be ready to Transit the instant the hatch closes behind me.” The tanker waited a moment longer, but the phone popped with the sound of Levine switching off without further comment.

  “Time to leave, boys,” Slade said to the men and the woman who had stared at him throughout the conversation. “Let’s see what kind of transport they’ve got for us.” He waved the crewmen down the corridor ahead of him.

  As the men obeyed, Slade reached down and poised his knife over the strap holding Delores to the stanchion.

  “Don’t run,” he said to the woman softly. “It’ll be your life if you do, and I’d sooner avoid that.”

  He cut across the band of tape and stood, looping his left arm through Delores’ as if they accompanied one another formally. She stared down at the tanker’s left hand and his thumb on the switch.

  Slade was smiling as she met his eyes. Delores raised her chin proudly. “Let’s go, then, Mister Slade,” she said.

  The building’s interior had been so isolated that the drizzle outdoors was a surprise to Slade. The guards whose hooded ponchos covered their guns were no surprise at all. The crewmen were already being loaded on a small bus like the one Slade had driven the night before.

  Deputy Brandt stared at the tanker. Only her eyes moved in a face that shone white on one side, swollen red on the other.

  “Wait,” Slade said as his consort started to walk toward the bus. He shut the door of the Sperm Bank with a metallic crash. “Does it lock?” he asked and tried the door again before anyone could make a pointless reply to his question. The door was locked.

  “Careful,” Slade added, still holding Rodrigues as he dipped his pistol out of the wallet with his free hand.

  “What—” called Deputy Brandt behind him. Slade had already fired.

  The pistol was one he had chosen as being smaller and more concealable than an ordinary service weapon. It spat a light charge through a 5 mm bore. The sound it made was more unpleasant than threatening, like the squawk of a stepped-on kitten. Metal splashed from the key-pad of the lock. Three more shots, sparks in the raindrops, followed to crater the pad’s surface into uselessness.

  Slade turned. He held the pistol muzzle-up because he could not return it to the wallet until the barrel had cooled. “There,” he said to Deputy Brandt. “You can cut through that easily enough . . . but I don’t think you’re going to be inside the building before we’re the Hell off your planet—unless you’re willing to blast. Your choice, madam.”

  Brandt spat at the tanker’s feet.

  “All right, Mayor Rodrigues,” Slade said to the woman at his side. “You’ll be released at the ship. Right now, I’d as soon you rode with us. Just in case.”

  As the bus drove off, Slade could hear the harsh timbre of Deputy Brandt’s voice. The guards around her were scurrying for hand tools with which they could break into the Bank—without risking its contents.

  The driver brought her bus to a lurching halt well short of the ramp. Realizing that, she lifted the vehicle again in a blast of dust and gravel, hopping twenty meters closer.

  “Now move!” Slade snarled to the crewmen as the bus door tonged open. There were a dozen women near the ship, but only one or two of them carried weapons openly. The men obeyed with alacrity handicapped by the narrow aisle.

  “Feel like coming along yourself?” Slade added to Mayor Rodrigues in an undertone.

  “Do you think you’re that good, Mister Slade?” the Mayor answered. “You’re not, you know.” She swallowed angrily, as if she expected the big man to hit her.

  “Guess we’ll never know,” Slade said mildly as he stepped to the door behind the other men. “You’re probably making a good decision anyway.”

  The tanker did not look back as he pounded up the ramp to the bridge hatch. He held the commo unit high in his left hand. The women watched the crew scuttle aboard with only the interest an event brings, not a catastrophe. How many times had they used up and discarded the crew of a freighter? You could hate cultures, but that didn’t help you any. . . . Evil wasn’t the affair of a professional soldier.

  By the Lord, though, it was the business of Don Slade.

  The ramp was already lifting to close the hatch as the tanker threw himself aboard. “Go! Go! Go!” he bellowed down the corridor. The hatch sealed with a sigh and a shock that reflection said was Transit but clutching fear had identified as gunfire. GAC 59 was clear of Erlette; the Lord knew where, but clear.

  There was chaos on the bridge. “Stations!” the tanker shouted as he bulled his way through smaller men. “First shift to Transit stations, everybody else the hell out of the operations area!” He had briefed them in the Sperm Bank. There was no time now for yammering indiscipline.

  Crewmen scurried to their duty stations or out into the corridor again. That left Slade on the bridge with Levine, Snipes, and one of the Meeting members—Rooks. Slade wondered if Rooks’ partner, Bourgiby, had been an overdose fatality on Erlette. The tanker seated himself on the analog tub which had be
come his usual spot. He looked at the commo unit which he still held. Sighing, he replaced it in its belt sheath.

  “You should’ve taken your finger off just before we lifted,” Levine said savagely.

  “Wouldn’t have changed a thing,” said Slade. He rubbed his eyes. He had gotten no sleep for over thirty hours. “I’d cut the power lead to this thing,” he said, tapping the unit without looking down, “so they wouldn’t get a blip if my thumb slipped. Thattell them it was a fake.”

  “A fake?” Rooks repeated. “You didn’t really have a bomb like you said?”

  Slade stood up angrily. “Look,” he said, “I’m a tank officer, not a technician. Sure, I suppose you could rig a bomb and a command detonator out of even the gear available on this tub. But I couldn’t, not in a couple of hours. Via! I put something together that looked real to me. And I prayed to the Lord that our friends down there—” he gestured toward a bulkhead. Only context could indicate that he meant the Erlette authorities—“couldn’t prove it wasn’t real except by daring me to fire it.” Slade smiled past his restless irritation. “Things could’ve gotten interesting if they’d pushed.”

  “I was just about to stick it in,” said Rooks. His voice built by stages from reflection to anger. “She patted me on the back of the neck and I thought ‘The bitch ought to trim her nails.’ And then I couldn’t feel anything where she nicked me. Then my whole body. Couple hours ago I come around, my neck hurts and my butt hurts where they’d jabbed me again. And they load forty of us in a truck like cordwood, still half zonked and bare-ass naked. I wish you’d blown up every bloody one of the bitches!”

  Levine and Snipes were nodding, perhaps for different reasons. Slade said, “It’s not the people, it’s their culture. And that’s something their grandmothers locked them into. Ever been on Eutyche?”

  Blank looks greeted the question. The tanker shrugged and continued. “They lock women up there. From birth. When she’s sold into marriage, the father and brothers carry the girl to the husband under guard. Let your daughter run on the street and she’ll be stoned to death by your neighbors before they burn your house down over you. It’s not people there, and it’s not people here on Erlette. It’s just the way people live.”