Orbitsville

second.”

“You still haven’t told me what this is all about.”

“Later, later!” Garamond decided that if he were stopped before the shuttle got off the ground there might still be a faint chance for Aileen and the boy if she could truthfully swear she had no idea what had been going on. He pushed her out into the corridor, then strode back into the apartment’s general storage area which was hidden by a free-floating screen of varicoloured luminosity. It took him only a few seconds to open the box containing his old target pistol and to fill an ammunition clip.The long-barrelled, saw-handled pistol snagged the material of his uniform as he thrust it out of sight in his jacket. Acutely conscious of the weighty bulge under his left arm, he ran back through the living space. On an impulse he snatched an ornament — a solid gold snail with ruby eyes — from a shelf, and went out into the corridor. Aileen was holding the elevator door open with one hand and trying to control Chris with the other.

“Let’s go,” Garamond said cheerfully, above the deafening ratchets and escapement of the clock behind his eyes. He closed the elevator door and pressed the ‘DOWN’ button. At ground level Chris darted ahead through the long entrance hall and scrambled into the waiting vehicle. There were few people about, and none that Garamond could identify as neighbours, but he dared not risk running and the act of walking normally brought a cool sheen to his forehead. The driver gave Aileen a grudging salute and held the car door open while she got in. Garamond sat down opposite his wife in the rear of the vehicle and, when it had moved off, manufactured a smile for her.

She shook her dark head impatiently. “Now will you tell me what’s happening?”

“You’re coming to see me off, that’s all.” Garamond glanced at Chris, who was kneeling at the rear window, apparently absorbed in the receding view. “Chris should enjoy it.”

“But you said it was important.”

“It was important for me to spend a little extra time with you and Chris.”

Aileen looked baffled. “What did you bring from the apartment?”

“Nothing.” Garamond moved his left shoulder slightly to conceal the bulge made by the pistol.

“But I can see it.” She leaned forward, caught his hand and opened his fingers, revealing the gold snail. It was a gift he had bought Aileen on their honeymoon and he realized belatedly that the reason he had snatched it was that the little ornament was the symbolical cornerstone of their home. Aileen’s eyes widened briefly and she turned her head away, making an abrupt withdrawal. Garamond closed his eyes, wondering what his wife’s intuition had told her, wondering how many minutes he had left

* * *

At that moment, a minor official on the domestic staff of Starflight House was moving uncertainly through the contrived Italian Renaissance atmosphere of the carved hill. His name was Carlos Pennario and he was holding leads to which were attached two of the President’s favourite spaniels. The doubts which plagued his mind were caused by the curious behaviour of the dogs, coupled with certain facts about his conditions of employment. Both animals, their long ears flapping audibly with excitement, were pulling him towards a section of the shady terrace which ringed the hill just at the executive and Presidential levels. Pennario, who was naturally inquisitive, had never seen the spaniels behave in this way before and he was tempted to give them their heads — but, as a Grade 4 employee, he was not permitted to ascend to the executive levels. In normal circumstances such considerations would not have held him back for long, but only two days earlier he had fallen foul of his immediate boss, a gnome-like Scot called Arthur Kemp, and had been promised demotion next time he put a foot wrong.

Pennario held on to the snuffling, straining dogs while he gazed towards a group of statues which shone like red gold in the dying sunlight. A tall, hard-looking man in the black uniform of a flickerwing captain had been leaning on the stone balustrade near the statues a little earlier in the afternoon. The moody captain seemed to have departed and there was nobody else visible on the terrace, yet the spaniels were going crazy trying to get up there. It was not a world-shaking mystery, but to Pennario it represented an intriguing diversion from the utter boredom of his job.

He hesitated, scanning the slopes above, then allowed the spaniels to pull him up the broad shallow steps to the terrace, their feet scrabbling on the smooth stone. Once on the upper level, the dogs headed straight for the base on which the bronze figures stood, then with low whines burrowed into the shrubbery behind.

Pennario leaned over them, parted the dark green leaves with his free arm, and looked down into the cave- like dimness.

* * *

They needed another thirty minutes, Garamond decided. If the discovery of Harald’s body did not take place within that time he and his family would be clear of the atmosphere on one of the S.E.A. shuttles, before the alarm could be broadcast. They would not be out of immediate danger but the ship lying in polar orbit, the Bissendorf, was his own private territory, a small enclave in which the laws of the Elizabethan universe did not hold full sway. Up there she could still destroy him, and eventually would, but it would be more difficult than on Earth where at a word she could mobilize ten thousand men against him.

“I need to go to the toilet,” Chris announced, turning from the rear window with an apologetic expression on his round face. He pummelled his abdomen as if to punish it for the intervention.

“You can wait till we reach the field.” Aileen pulled him down on to her knee and enclosed him with smooth brown arms.

A sense of unreality stole over Garamond as he watched his wife and son. Both were wearing lightweight indoor clothing and, of course, had no other belongings with them. It was incredible, unthinkable that — dressed as they were and so unprepared — they should be snatched from their natural ambience of sunlight and warm breezes, sheltering walls and quiet gardens, and that they should be projected into the deadliness of the space between the stars. The air in the car seemed to thin down abruptly, forcing Garamond to take deep breaths. He gazed at the diorama of buildings and foliage beyond the car windows, trying to think about his movements for the next vital half-hour, but his mind refused to work constructively. His thoughts lapsed into a fugue, a recycling of images and shocked sensory fragments. He watched for the hundredth time as the fatal millimetres of daylight opened between Harald’s silhouette and the uncomprehending metal of the statue. And the boy’s body had been so light. Almost as light as Chris. How could a package contain all the bone and blood and muscle and organs necessary to support life, and yet be so light? So insubstantial that a fall of three or four metres…

“Look, Dad!” Chris moved within the organic basketwork of his mother’s arms. “There’s the field. Can we go on to your shuttle?”

“I’ll try to arrange it.” Garamond stared through the wavering blur of the North Field’s perimeter fence, wondering if he would see any signs of unusual activity.

* * *

Carlos Pennario allowed the shrubs to spring together again and, for the first time since his youth, he crossed himself.

He backed away from what he had seen, dragging the frantic dogs with him, and looked around for help. There was nobody in sight. He opened his mouth with the intention of shouting at the top of his voice, of unburdening his dismay on the sleepy air, then several thoughts occurred to him almost at once. Pennario had seen Elizabeth Lindstrom only a few times, and always at a distance, but he had heard many stories told in the night-time quietness of the staff dormitory. He would have given a year’s wages rather than be brought before her with the news that he had allowed one of her spaniels to choke on a chicken bone.

Now he was almost in the position of having to face Elizabeth in person and describe his part in the finding of her son’s corpse.

Pennario tried to imagine what the President might do to the bringer of such news before she regained whatever slight measure of self-control she was supposed to have…

Then there was the matter of his superior, Arthur Kemp. Pennario had no right to be on the terrace in the first place, and to a man like Kemp that one transgression would be suggestive, would be proof, of others. He had no idea what had happened to the dead boy, but he knew the way Kemp’s mind worked. Assuming that Pennario lived long enough to undergo an investigation, Kemp would swear to anything to avoid any association with guilt.

The realization that he was in mortal danger stimulated Pennario into decisive action. He knelt, gathered the spaniels into his arms and walked quickly down the steps to the lower levels. Shocked and afraid though he was, his mind retained those qualities which had lifted him successfully from near-starvation in Mexico to one of the few