Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  “He was insane!” Lucas repeated, as if the statement had any relevance to the subject under discussion.

  Lissea smiled speculatively at Ned. “Do you think we should be going to Pancahte, Slade?” she asked.

  “You should, sir,” he replied. “Because that’s how you’ll get the place here that you ought to have.”

  He smiled back. Something in his expression surprised both his companions. “And I should,” he continued, “because I volunteered to do just that.”

  Lissea barked a laugh. “Let’s get back to the office,” she said as she strode toward Ned and the doorway. “I’ll tell Warson to run you through our tests.”

  Because of the omnidirectional lighting, she seemed a beautiful hologram rather than flesh as she approached. “If you pass them, Slade,” she said, “you can call me Lissea.”

  Male twins in gray battledress walked toward the warehouse converted into a gym and target range as Ned and Toll Warson left it. The strangers were in their thirties, but Ned had first guessed they were considerably younger. They were slightly built, with fine blond hair and complexions of pinkish good health.

  “Got a newbie there, Toll?” one of them called cheerfully. There was a scar across his temple, barely visible through the pale hair. Close up, neither of the men was quite as boyishly open as the image he obviously chose to project.

  “He’s passed the physical, anyway,” Warson said. “Not a terrible score, either.” He grinned and added, “He could give points to Cuh’nel Lordling, for one.”

  “I’m not long out of the Academy,” Ned said, not sorry for the implied praise. “And, ah, Master Lordling has a few years on me as well.”

  “Captain Doormann seems to be going for experience,” said one of the twins. Ned didn’t know enough to guess whether or not there was a comment beneath the surface of the words.

  Ned was taking deep but controlled breaths. Warson’s run-through had been brutally complete. It was nothing Ned wasn’t used to, though when the veteran had activated a series of pop-up targets while Ned rappelled, Ned had almost broken his neck.

  He’d gotten two of the four targets with his submachine gun. “Them others would’ve toasted your ass, kid,” Warson said with a chuckle. “Either get better, or don’t get into a spot like that without backup. Right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Louis”—said Warson, gesturing to the twin with the hidden scar—“and Eugene Boxall. They’re from Wimbledon.”

  “Ah,” Ned said, giving the Boxalls his sharper attention.

  “Yep,” said Louis, “that’s us.”

  Except that it wasn’t Louis who finished the statement; it was his brother Eugene. The twins had traded places instantaneously and without any motion Ned could observe. Alternatively, the keloid on Louis’ scalp had vanished and an identical scar had appeared across his brother’s temple.

  “Wimbledon teleports,” Eugene said. “The future of the human race in two extraordinarily handsome packages.”

  “Well, on a good day, two,” Louis said. And they’d switched back again. “Though I think my profile is a little more regally superior.”

  The twins were flushed and sweating beneath their grins, though they kept the strain out of their voices.

  “They’re the best,” Toll Warson said with personal pride.

  “So we are,” Eugene agreed, his tone still light but with a dead-serious under layer to the words. “The best teleports on Wimbledon, the best in the universe.”

  Wimbledon was a perfectly normal world, lighted by a K-type sun through a moderately dense atmosphere. Ambient radiation on the surface was lower than that of Earth and well beneath the norm of the planets humans had settled during the expansion.

  For no reason anyone could explain, a significant proportion of children born in the Wimbledon Colony were able to teleport. The talent wouldn’t make buses obsolete: thirty centimeters was a good jump, and fifteen meters was a remarkable one; but very few walls are more than thirty centimeters thick. Teleportation had its uses in military as well as civilian life

  “They tested out all right, too,” Warson said. “Most ways. If one of them starts shooting, though, I suggest you stand in front of the target.”

  “We’re lulling you into a false sense of security,” Louis scoffed.

  He fingered the fabric of Ned’s khaki coveralls, a pair he’d left the patches on. “Hammer’s Slammers, eh?” Louis said.

  “I’m a reserve ensign in the Frisian Defense Forces,” Ned said. “The Slammers were formally dissolved after Colonel Hammer returned home and became president. They, ah . . . There’s still a social organization of that name.”

  “And your name?” asked Eugene.

  “Sorry,” Ned said. He offered his hand. He was embarrassed. He hadn’t wanted to butt into a discussion among veterans. “I’m Edward Slade. Ned.”

  “Slade?” said Louis, shaking Ned’s hand in turn. “You wouldn’t have been on Crater?”

  “That was my Uncle Don,” Ned said.

  “There was a Slade got across the Kingston Gorge,” Eugene explained to Toll Warson, “to call in fire missions on the Corwinite positions. They’d wanted a cousin of ours to jump it, but it was twelve klicks.”

  “Even the highlands of Crater are muggy,” Louis said. “You can’t live down in the valleys without an environmental suit, and that would have showed up like a turd on the breakfast table to Corwin’s sensors.”

  “Uncle Don said that he’d have sweat his bones out on Crater,” Ned said, “except the air was so saturated that just breathing replaced your fluid loss.”

  Don Slade talked frequently about the things he’d seen—climates, geography, life forms. He didn’t talk about the things he’d been doing against those exotic backgrounds, though. At least not to his nephew.

  “Let’s get you back to the office, kid,” Warson said. “I got a date in town in an hour, if I can get somebody to advance me a little money.”

  “Glad to have you aboard, Slade,” Eugene said as the brothers entered the gym.

  “I’m not aboard yet,” Ned called over his shoulder.

  “Tsk,” said Warson. “Worried ’cause Lordling doesn’t like you? Don’t be. Tadziki’s worth two of him.”

  “Well, it’s the captain’s decision,” Ned murmured, trying to avoid getting his hopes up.

  The road between the converted warehouse and the expedition office was concrete, but the expansion joints and cracks in the slabs sprouted clumps of dense vegetation. The foliage was dark green with brownish veins. It seemed lusher than that of plants growing in the unkempt grounds to either side.

  “To tell the truth,” Warson said, “I sometimes think Tadziki’s worth two of most folks. He doesn’t know the same stuff as the rest of us. But he knows his stuff.”

  Ned glanced at his companion. It would be very easy to discount Toll Warson as being an extremely competent thug. Ned wondered how many people had died over the years because they made that misestimate.

  They entered the office. Tadziki sat at his desk, saying to the big man bent over a document, “You may have to wait more than an hour for the captain, Master Jones.”

  “Blood and martyrs!” Toll Warson shouted. “What in hell are you doing here?”

  “Signing up,” said the stranger as he turned. “Via, I should’ve known you’d be here, squirmed into some cushy wormhole, I suppose.”

  He grinned at Tadziki. “I don’t guess I can be Jones anymore, huh?” he said. Despite the nonchalant tone, there was an edge of concern in his voice.

  “You can be anybody you please, Master Warson,” the adjutant replied. “But the authorities on Telaria aren’t looking for you.”

  Ned backed into a corner, staying out of the way. Toll Warson turned to him and said, “This is my brother Deke, kid. Haven’t seen him in—Via, we’re both getting old, Deke.”

  “Edward Slade, sir,” Ned said. He held himself at attention. “Ned.”

  “Don’t ‘sir
’ me, Slade,” Deke Warson grumbled. He was a centimeter shorter than Toll and perhaps a year or two younger. Kinship showed in the brothers’ eyes rather than in their faces.

  Deke looked at Toll and raised an eyebrow.

  “His uncle,” Toll said. “Remember Sangre Christi?”

  “I remember being glad I got out with my ass in one piece,” Deke replied. “I still think that was doing pretty good.”

  “Tadziki?” Toll said. “There’s going to be a problem if I take Deke off for a drink and to catch up with things?”

  “No problem with his application,” Tadziki said. “He was an invitee, though I don’t think the courier ever caught up with him.”

  “I been keeping a low profile,” Deke muttered. “There was a little trouble after Stanway, too.”

  “If the two of you get drunk and tear up the center of Landfall City,” the adjutant continued, “then you better hope they don’t jug you for longer than three days. That’s when we do the test lift—”

  He nodded out the open door toward the Swift. Workmen were beginning to dismantle the external supports.

  “—and if that goes right, it’s off to Pancahte twelve hours later.”

  The brothers left the office arm in arm. Ned expected them to collide with both jambs of the narrow doorway, but they separated like a dance team, with Toll preceding.

  Deke turned and offered Tadziki a loose salute. It could have been read as mocking, but Ned didn’t think it was. There were soldiers—warriors, really—whose distaste for authority was so ingrained that it was difficult for them to offer respect even when they knew it was due.

  “I, ah . . .” Ned said. “Ah, should I wait for the captain, sir?”

  “Tadziki’ll do fine, Ned,” the adjutant said, leaning back in his chair to stretch. “And you don’t have to wait unless you want to.”

  “I suppose she won’t make a decision about a place for me until Toll gives her a formal report that I passed?” Ned said. He hadn’t been able to relax more than to an at-ease posture even now that he was alone with Tadziki in the office.

  Tadziki laughed. “Sit down, curse it, you make me tired to watch you!” he said. “And as for a report—if Toll Warson didn’t think you were safe backing him up, he’d have told you to get your ass off-planet in the next sixty minutes. If you were smart, you’d have known he meant it.”

  “Oh, I’m smart enough not to think Toll’s bluffing if he says something . . .” Ned said as he lowered himself into the visitors’ chair. “I, ah—”

  He met Tadziki’s eyes. “It’s down to her decision, then?” he said.

  Tadziki smiled. “She made her decision when she sent you off with Toll. Via, kid, nobody thought one of Hammer’s boys couldn’t handle the gym. Ned.”

  Ned relaxed. His body was cold. He’d sweated like a pig as Toll put him through his paces, and the air temperature was cool enough to bite as it dried him. Only now did he notice.

  “I, ah . . .” he said, “I wasn’t sure.”

  “That’s good,” Tadziki said with a nod. “But everybody else was. Go clean up and—well, there’s nothing on till the official banquet two nights forward. Let off some steam in town if you like. Do you need an advance on your pay?”

  “Huh?” Ned said. “Oh, no thank you, I’m fine.” His personal fortune would suffice to purchase a starship larger than the Swift, if it came to that. Tethys was a prosperous world, and generations of Slades had displayed businesslike competence in whatever they were doing.

  He started to rise, but then settled back onto the edge of the chair. “I want to thank you for going to bat for me the way you did, sir,” he said. “But I’d like to know why you did.”

  Tadziki shrugged. “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “It might,” Ned said.

  “It hadn’t anything to do with your uncle,” Tadziki said. When Ned heard the words, he felt himself relax again.

  “Although,” Tadziki continued, “I don’t suppose Don Slade would have let you come if he hadn’t thought you could stand the gaff. That counts for a certain amount. But mostly it was your background.”

  “My background?” Ned said in amazement. He slid against the back of the chair.

  “Yeah, I figured that’d surprise you,” the adjutant said with a laugh. “Look, Ned. You’ve met some of the crew and I’ll tell you, the rest are pretty much the same. What do they all have in common?”

  “They’re the best there are,” Ned said. “They’re—professionals that other professionals talk about. They’re—”

  He shrugged. There was nothing more to say.

  “They’re people who’ve been in just about every tight spot there is,” Tadziki said, “and got out of it alive. There’ll be more combat experience lifting in the Swift than there is in most battalions.”

  “Sir,” Ned said, “I’ve got the Academy, but that’s nothing compared to what any of the others has done. And a year of pacification.”

  Tadziki nodded. “Don’t knock a formal education, Ned,” he said. “There are things you take for granted that Toll Warson wouldn’t understand if they bit him on the ass. Or Colonel Lordling. But that’s . . . It’s not that simple.”

  He opened his hands on the desk and stared at them. Ned noticed there were pads of yellowish callus at the bases of the fingers.

  “I guess,” Tadziki said, “I thought it might be useful to have somebody along who didn’t know the answers already, so maybe he could look at the problem instead. Somebody besides me, I mean.”

  He grinned ruefully at Ned. “And maybe it could be handy if somebody else’s idea of an answer wasn’t necessarily to blow the problem away.”

  Ned laughed and stood up. He reached across the desk to shake the adjutant’s hand. “I’ll go shower and change into civvies,” he said. “Hey, do you ever get some time off, Tadziki?”

  “A little, I guess,” Tadziki said.

  “When I’m fit to associate with something besides a billy goat,” Ned called from the door, “I’ll drop back by. Maybe you can show me a bit of the town tonight.”

  The banquet was held in the Acme, the finest hotel in Landfall City. It was scheduled for 1700 hours the day before launch. Ned arrived fifteen minutes early.

  He wasn’t afraid of the expedition’s dangers. Socially, though, he felt as empty as if he were leaping into a pit with no lights and no bottom.

  “Yes sir?” said a bellhop, blinking at the formal suit Ned wore for the occasion.

  Nobles on Tethys went for florid effects. In this case, gold lace overlay fabric which fluoresced red or blue depending on the direction of the light. Whatever the bellhop thought about Ned’s taste, the range of his net worth wasn’t in question.

  “The Pancahte Expedition banquet,” Ned said. “Mistress Doormann’s party.”

  “Of course, sir,” the bellhop said, even more surprised than he’d been by the suit. “The penthouse that will be. Ah—would you like me to guide you?”

  “No problem,” Ned said, striding toward the elevators. Tadziki had muttered that Ned could wear “any curst thing” to the banquet as he typed with both hands and the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. From the bellhop’s reaction, formal wear hadn’t been the overwhelming choice among the crewmen.

  In the past two days Ned had met more than half the expedition members and had at least seen most of the others. He hadn’t noticed any hostility toward him—but he’d effectively been ignored.

  The rest of the crew pretty much knew, or at least knew of, one another. There were cliques and in some cases mutual antipathies, but members of the Swift’s complement didn’t disregard their companions—with the exception of Ned Slade, who might have been a plank of the barracks’ flooring.

  Ned had better sense than to force his company on the adjutant this close to launch. When they found a good restaurant two nights before, Ned had pumped Tadziki for details about the expedition. The exchange was a mutual pleasure, since Tadziki was glad to offer in
formation which he had to know and most of the crew didn’t care about.

  Since then, however, the adjutant was swamped with work. Ned didn’t know the system or personalities well enough to be more help than hindrance, so he’d kept clear.

  Under other circumstances, Toll Warson might have taken Ned under his wing, but he and Deke had vanished completely when they left the expedition office the morning they’d met. No news wasn’t the worst possible news: there hadn’t been any calls from the Telarian police regarding the pair.

  “Room for one more?” Tadziki called from the lobby as the elevator door closed behind Ned.

  Ned hit the door open button rather than grabbing the leading edge with his hand. Elevators at the Academy were built like firedoors and airlocks, without safety switches. It was a case where the wrong civilian reflex could get you killed in combat, so the Academy made sure the reflex was modified before cadets graduated.

  Tadziki slipped into the cage and whistled. “My lord,” he said, “you’re beautiful! What’re you doing after dinner tonight, gorgeous?”

  Ned laughed. “Thought I’d cruise some navy bars and get pin money for the expedition,” he said. “Via, Tadziki, you told me to wear anything, and I’ve always been told you can’t overdress.”

  Tadziki wore a fawn-colored dress uniform with a white ascot. Ned didn’t recognize either the uniform nor the epaulet insignia. He did note that there were four rows of medal ribbons, and that the ribbons were of slightly different heights—implying service under several flags.

  The adjutant followed the flick of Ned’s eyes. “I kept busy,” he said, “but back where I was, it only got exciting when somebody screwed up.”

  “Sure,” said Ned. He’d had a logistics instructor who’d used almost the same phrase; Major Kline. Besides the stories going around the Academy to make the statement a lie, there was the fact that Major Kline’s legs had been burned off just above the knees.