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  “Some papers to sign in here, then we’ll take the slidewalk out to the shuttle,” he said easily as he opened the car door and got out.

  “I thought Chris and I’d be going up to the observation floor,” Aileen replied, not moving from her seat.

  “There’s no fun in that, is there, Chris?” Garamond lifted the boy off Afleen’s knee and set him down on the steps of the S.E.A. building. “What’s the point in having a Dad who’s a flickerwing captain if you can’t get a few extra privileges? You’d like to look right inside the shuttle, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, Dad.” Chris nodded, but with a curious reserve, as if he had sensed something of Aileen’s unease.

  “Of course, you would.” Garamond took Aileen’s hand, drew her out of the car and slammed the door. “That’s all, driver — we can look after ourselves from here on.” The driver glanced back once, without speaking, and accelerated away towards the transport pool.

  Aileen caught Garamond’s arm. “We’re alone now, Vance. What’s… ?”

  “Now you two stand right here on these steps and don’t move till I come out. This won’t take long.” Garamond sprinted up the steps, returned the salutes of the guards at the top, and hurried towards the S.E.A. Preflight Centre. The large square room looked unfamiliar when he entered, as though seen through the eyes of the young Vance Garamond who had been so impressed by it at the beginning of his first exploratory command. He ran to the long desk and slapped down his flight authorization documents.

  “You’re late, Captain Garamond,” commented a heavily built ex-quartermaster called Herschell, who habitually addressed outgoing captains with a note of rueful challenge which was meant to remind them he had not always held a desk job.

  “I know — I couldn’t get away from Liz.” Garamond seized a stylus and began scribbling his name on various papers as they were fed to him. “Like that, was it? She couldn’t let you go?”

  “That’s the way it was.”

  “Pity. I’d say you’ve missed the tide.” Herschell’s pink square face was sympathetic.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah — look at the map.” Herschell pointed up at the vast solid-image chart of the Solar System and surrounding volume of interstellar space which floated below the domed ceiling. The solar wind, represented by yellow radiance, was as strong as ever and Garamond saw the healthy, bow-shaped shock wave on the sunward side of Earth, where the current impacted on the planet’s geomagnetic field. Data on the inner spirals of the solar wind, however, were of interest only to interplanetary travellers — and his concern was with the ion count at the edge of the system and beyond. Garamond searched for the great arc of the shock front near the orbit of Uranus where the solar wind, attenuated by distance from Sol, built up pressure against the magnetic field of the galaxy. For a moment he saw nothing, then his eyes picked out an almost invisible amber halo, so faint that it could have represented nothing more than a tenth of an ion per cubic centimetre. He had rarely seen the front looking so feeble. It appeared that the sun was in a niggardly mood, unwilling to assist his ship far up the long gravity slope to interstellar space.

  Garamond shifted his attention to the broad straggling bands of green, blue and red which plotted the galactic tides of fast-moving corpuscles as they swept across the entire region. These vagrant sprays of energetic particles and their movements meant as much to him as wind, wave and tide had to the skipper of a transoceanic sailing ship. All spacecraft built by Starflight — which meant all spacecraft built on Earth — employed intense magnetic fields to sweep up interstellar atomic debris for use as reaction mass. The system made it possible to conduct deep-space voyages in ships weighing as little as ten thousand tons, as against the million tons which would have been the minimum for a vessel which had to transport its own reaction mass.

  Flickerwing ships had their own disadvantages in that their efficiency was subject to spatial ‘weather’. The ideal mission profile was for a ship to accelerate steadily to the midpoint of its journey and decelerate at the same rate for the remainder of the trip, but where the harvest of charged particles was poor the rate of speed-change fell off. If that occurred in the first half of a voyage it meant that the vessel took longer than planned to reach destination; if it occurred in the second half the ship was deprived of the means to discard velocity and would storm through its target system at unmanageable speed, sometimes not coming to a halt until it had overshot by light-days. It was to minimize such uncertainties that Starflight maintained chains of automatic sensor stations whose reports, transmitted by low-energy tachyon beams, were continuously fed into weather charts.

  And, as Garamond immediately saw, the conditions in which he hoped to achieve high-speed flight were freakishly, damnably bad.

  More than half the volume of space covered by the map seemed entirely void of corpuscular flux, and such fronts as were visible in the remainder were fleeing away to the galactic south. Only one wisp of useful density — possibly the result of heavy particles entangling themselves in an irregularity in the interplanetary magnetic field — reached as far back as the orbit of Mars, and even that was withdrawing at speed.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Garamond said simply.

  Herschell handed him the traditional leather briefcase containing the flight authorization documents. “Why don’t you take off out of it, Captain? The Bissendorf is ready to travel, and I can sign the rest of this stuff by proxy.” “Thanks.” Garamond took the briefcase and ran for the door.

  “Don’t let that ole bit of dust get away,” Herschell called after him, one flickerwing man to another. “Scoop it up good.”

  Garamond sprinted along the entrance hall, relieved at being able to respond openly to his growing sense of urgency. The sight of ships’ commanders running for the slidewalks was quite a common one in the S.E.A. Centre when the weather was breaking. He found Aileen and Chris on the front steps, exactly where he had left them. Aileen was looking tired and worried, and holding the boy close to her side.

  “All clear,” he said. He caught Aileen by the upper arm and urged her towards the slidewalk tunnel. She fell in step with him readily enough but he could sense her mounting unease. “Let’s go!”

  “Where to, Vance?” She spoke quietly, but he understood she was asking him the big question, communicating on a treasured personal level which neither of them would ever willingly choose to disrespect. He glanced down at Chris. They were on the slidewalk now, slanting down into the tunnel and the boy seemed fascinated by the softly tremoring ride.

  “When I was waiting to see the President this afternoon I was asked to take care of young Harold Lindstrom for an hour…” The enormity of what he had to say stilled the words in his throat.

  “What happened, Vance?”

  “I… I didn’t take care of him very well. He fell and killed himself.”

  “Oh!” The colour seeped away from beneath the tan of Aileen’s face. “But how did you get away from… ?”

  “Nobody saw him fall. I bid the body in some bushes.”

  “And now we’re running?”

  “As fast as we can go, sweet.”

  Aileen put her hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Do you think Elizabeth would… ?”

  “Automatically. Instinctively. There’d be no way for her not to do it.”

  Aileen’s chin puckered as she fought to control the muscles around her mouth. “Oh, Vance! This is terrible. Chris and I can’t go up there.”

  “You can, and you’re going to.” Garamond put his arm around Aileen and was alarmed when she sagged against him with her full weight. He put his mouth close to her ear. “I can’t do this alone. I need your help to get Chris away from here.”

  She straightened with difficulty. “I’ll try. Lots of women go to Terranova, don’t they?”

  “That’s better.” Garamond gave her arm an encouraging squeeze and wondered if she really believed they could go to the one other human-inhabited Starflight-dominated world in th
e universe. “Now, we’re almost at the end of the tunnel When we get up the ramp, pick Chris up and walk straight on to the shuttle with him as if it was a school bus. I’ll be right behind you blocking the view of anybody who happens to be watching from the tower.”

  “What will the other people say?” “There’ll be nobody else on the shuttle apart from the pilots, and I’ll talk to them.”

  “But won’t the pilots object when they see us on board?”

  “The pilots won’t say a word,” Garamond promised, slipping his hand inside his jacket.

  * * *

  At Starflight House, high on the sculpted hill, the first man had already died.

  Domestic Supervisor Arthur Kemp had been planning his evening meal when the two spaniels bounded past him and darted into the shrubbery on the long terrace. He paused, eyed them curiously, then pushed the screen of foliage aside. The light was beginning to fail, and Kemp — who came from the comparatively uncrowded, unpolluted, unravaged north of Scotland — lacked Carlos Pennario’s sure instinct concerning matters of violent and premature death. He dragged Harald’s body into the open, stared for a long moment at the black deltas of blood which ran from nostrils and ears, and began to scream into his wrist communicator.

  Elizabeth Lindstrom was on the terrace within two minutes.

  She would not allow anybody to touch her son’s remains and, as the staff could not simply walk away, there formed a dense knot of people at the centre of which Elizabeth set up her court of enquiry. Standing over the small body, satin-covered abdomen glowing like a giant pearl, she spoke in a controlled manner at first. Only the Council members who knew her well understood the implications of the steadily rising inflexions in her voice, or of the way she had begun to finger a certain ruby ring on her right hand. These men, obliged by rank to remain close to the President, nevertheless tried to alter their positions subtly so that they were shielded by the bodies of other men, who in turn sensed their peril and acted accordingly. The result was that the circle around Elizabeth grew steadily larger and its surface tension increased.

  It was into this arena of fear that Domestic Supervisor Kemp was thrust to give his testimony. He answered several of her questions with something approaching composure, but his voice faltered when — after he too had confirmed Captain Garamond’s abrupt departure from the terrace — Elizabeth began pulling out her own hair in slow, methodical handfuls. For an endless minute the soft ripping of her scalp was the only sound on the terrace.

  Kemp endured it for as long as was humanly possible, then turned to run. Elizabeth exploded him with the laser burst from her ring, and was twisting blindly to hose the others with its fading energies when her senior physician, risking his own life, fired a cloud of sedative drugs into the distended veins of her neck. The President lost consciousness almost as once, but she had time to utter three words :

  “Bring me Garamond.”

  three

  Garamond crowded on to the stubby shuttlecraft with Aileen and looked forward. The door between the crew and passenger compartments was open, revealing the environment of instrument arrays and controls in which the pilots worked. A shoulder of each man, decorated with the ubiquitous Starflight symbol, was visible on each side of the central aisle, and Garamond could hear the preflight checks being carried out. Neither of the pilots looked back.

  “Sit there,” Garamond whispered, pointing at a seat which was screened from the pilots’ view by the main bulkhead. He put his fingers to his lips and winked at Chris, making it into a game. The boy nodded tautly, undeceived. Garamond went back to the entrance door and stood in it, waving to imaginary figures in the slidewalk tunnel, then went forward to the crew compartment.

  “Take it away, Captain,” he said with the greatest joviality he could muster.

  “Yes, sir.” The dark-chinned senior pilot glanced over his shoulder. “As soon as Mrs Garamond and your son disembark.”

  Garamond looked around the flight deck and found a small television screen showing a picture of the passenger compartment, complete with miniature images of Aileen and Chris. He wondered if the pilots had been watching it closely and how much they might have deduced from his actions.

  “My wife and son are coming with us,” he said. “Just for the ride.”

  “I’m sorry, sir — their names aren’t on my list.”

  “This is a special arrangement I’ve just made with the President.”

  “I’ll have to check that with the tower.” There was a stubborn set to the pilot’s bluish jaw as he reached for the communications switch.

  “I assure you it’s all right.” Garamond slid the pistol out of his jacket and used its barrel to indicate the runway ahead. “Now, I want you to get all the normal clearances in a perfectly normal way and then do a maximum-energy ascent to my ship. I’m very familiar with the whole routine and I can fly this bug myself if necessary, so don’t do any clever stuff which would make me shoot you.”

  “I’m not going to get myself shot.” The senior pilot shrugged and his younger companion nodded vigorously. “But how far do you think you’re going to get, Captain?”

  “Far enough — now take us out of here.” Garamond remained standing between the two seats. There was a subdued thud from the passenger door as it sealed itself, and then the shuttle surged forward. While monitoring the cross talk between the pilots and the North Field tower, Garamond studied the computer screen which was displaying flight parameters. The Bissendorf was in Polar Band One, the great stream of Starflight spacecraft — mainly population transfer vessels, but with a sprinkling of Exploratory Arm ships — which girdled the Earth at a height of more than a hundred kilometres. Incoming ships were allocated parking slots in any of the thirty-degree sectors marked by twelve space stations, their exact placing being determined by the amount of maintenance or repair they needed. The Bissendorf had been scheduled for a major refitting lasting three months, and was close in to Station 8, which the computer showed to be swinging up over the Aleutian Islands. A maximum-energy rendezvous could be accomplished in about eleven minutes.

  “I take it you want to catch the Bissendorf this time round,” the senior pilot said as the shuttle’s drive tubes built up thrust and the white runway markers began to flicker under its nose like tracer fire.

  Garamond nodded. “You take it right.”

  “It’s going to be rough on your wife and boy.” There was an unspoken question in the comment.

  “Not as rough as…” Garamond decided to do the pilots a favour by telling them nothing — they too would be caught up in Elizabeth’s enquiries.

  “There’s a metallizer aerosol in the locker beside you,” the copilot volunteered, speaking for the first time.

  “Thanks.” Garamond found the aerosol container and passed it back to Aileen. “Spray your clothes with this. Do Chris as well.”

  “What’s it for?” Aileen was trying to sound unconcerned, but her voice was small and cold.

  “It won’t do your clothes any harm, but it makes them react against the restraint field inside the ship when you move. It turns them into a kind of safety net and also stops you floating about when you’re in free fall.” Garamond had forgotten how little Aileen knew about spaceflight or air travel. She had never even been in an ordinary jetliner, he recalled. The great age of air tourism was long past — if a person was lucky enough to live in an acceptable part of the Earth he tended to stay put.

  “You can use it first,” Aileen said.

  “I don’t need it — all space fliers’ uniforms are metallized when they’re made.” Garamond smiled encouragingly. The pilot didn’t know how right he was, he thought. This is going to be rough on my wife and boy. He returned his attention to the pilots as the shuttle lifted its nose and cleared the ground. As soon as the undercarriage had been retracted and the craft was aerodynamically clean the drive tubes boosted it skywards on a pink flare of recombining ions. Garamond, standing behind the pilots, was pushed against the bulkhead
and held there by the sustained acceleration. Behind him, Chris began to sob.

  “Don’t worry, son,” Garamond called. “This won’t last long. We’ll soon be…”

  “North Field to shuttlecraft Sahara Tango 4299,” a voice crackled from the radio. “This is Fleet Commodore Keegan calling. Come in, please.”

  “Don’t answer that,” Garamond ordered. The dock behind his eyes had come to an abrupt and sickening halt.

  “But that was Keegan himself. Are you mixed up in something big, Captain?”

  “Big enough.” Garamond hesitated as the radio repeated its message. “Tune that out and get me Commander Napier on my bridge.” He gave the pilot a microwave frequency which would by-pass the Bissendorf’s main communications room.

  “But…”

  “Immediately.” He raised the pistol against multiple gravities. “This is a hair trigger and there’s a lot of G-force piling up on my finger.”

  “I’m making the call now.” The pilot spun a small vernier on the armrest of his chair and in a few seconds had established contact.

  “Commander Napier here.” Garamond felt a surge of relief as he recognized the cautious tones Napier always employed when he did not know who was on the other end of a channel.

  “This is an urgent one, Cliff.” Garamond spoke steadily. “Have you had any communications about me from Starflight House?”

  “Ah… no. Was I supposed to?”

  “That doesn’t matter now. Here’s a special instruction which I’m asking you to obey immediately and without question. Do you understand?”

  “Okay, Vance,” Napier sounded puzzled, but not suspicious or alarmed.

  “I’m on the shuttle and will rendezvous with you in a few minutes, but right now I want you to throw the ultimate master switch on the external communications system. Right now, Cliff! ”