Heaven Chronicles

help maintain an even interior temperature. He noticed that one wall of the passage was oddly serrated. He backed slowly toward it, filming, as the others entered the hall; stared, through the lens, as Sekka-Olefin suddenly lunged toward him. “Look out—!” Olefin's voice rattled in his helmet. Olefin's glove caught at his arm, missed, as Dartagnan stepped out onto the air.

The air let him down, and with a yelp of surprise he fell backwards down the stairs. The camera landed on his stomach. He lay dazed and battered, gasping for breath, seeing stars without trying. The others reached him, somehow managing not to land on top of him. They lifted the camera off of him, hauled him to his feet.

“You all right, Red?”

“Say, didn't you see the steps there—?”

“Steps?” he mumbled. “What do you mean—uh!” His right ankle buckled under a fraction of his mass, pain shot up his leg, on up his spine like an electric shock. “My leg …” He pressed back against the corridor wall, balancing on one foot. “Hurts like hell.”

“Hell's what this place is,” Siamang muttered, disgusted. “How about your camera?” He dropped it into Dartagnan's arms.

Dartagnan lost his balance; Olefin reached out and caught him. He shook the sealed case, probed it, turned it over, and peered through the lens. His chest hurt. He replugged the recording jack. “Looks okay … Ought to be a great shot of the ceiling as I went over backwards.” He tasted blood from his split lip. “I think the damned thing landed on top of me on purpose.”

“Good thing it's tougher than you are,” Siamang said, “or you might be out of a job, Red.”

Dartagnan laughed, weakly. He looked back up the passageway. The purpose of the serrated wall was appallingly obvious to him, in hindsight; steps, a series of plateaus for breaking downward momentum under high gravity. That's adding insult to injury.… He grimaced.

The prospector offered him a shoulder to lean on, and they went on along the hall.

“How about a drink to celebrate the occasion? To celebrate my not having to drink alone—” Olefin picked a bottle up off of the floor in the littered cubicle that had been his home for the past ten megaseconds. Dartagnan noticed a pile of other bottles, mostly empty.

“Sounds good. I could use some antifreeze; this place is instant death. How cold does it get here, anyway? It must be zero degrees Kelvin.…” Siamang rubbed circulation back into his fingers. They had taken off their suits, at Olefin's urging; the air would have been uncomfortably cool under other circumstances.

“No … no, it only gets down to about 230 degrees Kelvin after the sun sets. Of course, that's not counting the wind chill factor.” Olefin grinned.

Dartagnan sat on the bare cot, his leg up, his ankle swelling inside his boot. Olefin glanced back at him, questioning. Chaim noticed that the eyes were green, freckled with brown, under the heavy brows, brow-ridges. Olefin was in his fifties and well preserved for a man who had spent most of his life in space. His unkempt, uncut hair was receding, silvering at the temples, a startling brightness against his brown skin. Distinguished Scion of Old Money … didn't know any of 'em were real people. Dartagnan shook his head. “No, thanks … I'm a teetotaler.”

Siamang looked surprised.

“Medicinal purposes?” Olefin asked, gestured with the bottle.

“That's why I don't.” He shook his head again, sincerely remorseful. “I can't drink. Got an ulcer.” He wiped his bloody lip.

Siamang's surprise burst out in laughter. “An ulcer? What've you got to worry about, Red?”

Dartagnan sighed. “I worry about having to refuse a free drink. I could sure use one.”

Olefin poured vodka into hemispherical cups; the clear liquid stayed level and didn't ooze back up the sides as he poured. Afraid to start feeling sorry for himself, Dartagnan reached for his camera. “Would you say you were lucky in finding so much intact here, Demarch Sekka-Olefin? It looks like all the life-support systems are still functional. Did that save your life? What happened to the researchers stationed here, after the war?” It almost felt good to him, after seven megaseconds of enforced silence.

Olefin leaned forward on his stool, sharing the eagerness for the sound of his own voice. “Yes, I sure as hell was lucky. Would've been damned fatal on board the Esso Bee. But nothing actually happened to damage this station during the Civil War; nobody knew it was here except Esso. After the war nobody was in a position to come here at all.… From the looks of things, the crew must have starved to death.”

Dartagnan swallowed. God, the public will love this.… “But … uh, the valuable salvage finds you made will mean that they didn't die in vain? Their discoveries will go to help the living—?”

“Yes … yes! In ways I never expected.” Olefin's voice took on a vaguely fanatical note. “Did you know that —”

Siamang shifted impatiently, set down his cup. “Demarch Sekka-Olefin; Red. If I'm not imposing—” there was no trace of sarcasm “—I'd like to ask that the interviewing be postponed until we've had the chance to discuss more important matters.”

“Oh. Certainly …” Olefin broke off, seemed suddenly almost glad of the interruption. “Anything I can do, considering what you've done for me.”

Siamang composed his face as Dartagnan turned the camera on him. “Of course, the most important matter, the basic reason I've come four hundred million kilometers, is—”

—more money, Dartagnan thought.

“—to see that you get safely off this miserable hell-world of a planet.” He produced something packaged in foam from his thin folder. “This is the replacement unit, complete with the instructions, for the component that was damaged when your ship landed here on Planet Two.”

Olefin beamed like a child with a birthday present; but Chaim noted the dark flash of another sort of humor that moved behind the hazel eyes. “‘For want of a chip, the ship was lost!’ To think of all the time and money I put in, perfecting the Esso Bee and a nuke-electric that could drag home half a planet; the best design possible—to have it all go for nothing, because one single piece of electronics was put on the outside, when it should have been on the inside.… Thank you—I literally can't thank you enough, Demarch Siamang; but I'll do my best.” He stood, reached out to shake Siamang's hand heartily. Seated again, he poured himself another drink, raised it in salute, drank it down.

“Well, you can repay us, in a sense …” Siamang paused, poised, disarmingly reticent, “… by giving Siamang and Sons the opportunity to be the first corporation to make an offer on the computer software that you reported finding.”

Olefin gave a quick nod, barely visible, that was not meant to be agreement.

Siamang went on, oblivious. “As you obviously know, it would be vital in streamlining our distilling processes—”

“And in streamlining the processing of a lot of other distilleries.” Olefin interrupted with unexpected smoothness. “What I had in mind, Demarch Siamang, was to call a public auction on the media for all the salvage, when I return to the Demarchy. I planned to offer to you, or whomever came after me, a substantial percentage of the take as a reward—”

Siamang's expression tightened imperceptibly. “What we had in mind, Demarch Sekka-Olefin, was more on the order of a flat fee offer on the software. We're not interested in any of the rest, you could bargain however you wanted on that. But it's very important to us—naturally—that Siamang and Sons is the firm to get those programs.”

And a general auction wouldn't guarantee you did. Dartagnan hid a smile behind his camera. He realized suddenly why Siamang and Sons had wanted an edited tape, and not live transmission, on this rescue mission: business transactions were never meant to be public affairs.

“I understand your feelings, Siamang; come from a distillery family myself. But I feel a covert agreement with one firm is too monopolistic, not in keeping with the Demarchy's traditions of free enterprise.… And besides, to be blunt, I've got important plans for the profit I'll be making on this salvage, and I want to get as good a deal on it as possible. That software is by far the most valuable part of it.”

“I see.” Siamang's eyes flickered to the replacement part safely settled on Olefin's knees. Chaim guessed, without trying, what wish he made. “Well, then, if you don't mind, I'll make that pleasant trek to our ship one more