Falling Free

supposed to do in that case?”

“I have a weapon.” Silver touched the laser-solderer, lying seductively on the console before the pilot- commander’s seat in which she sprawled. “But I’d rather not shoot anybody else. Not if I can help it.”

“Anybody else?” There was a shade more respect in Madame Minchenko’s voice.

Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot. Her mouth tightened.

Then her lips parted, and she leaned forward to stare into the monitor. “Oh, oh. Here comes a ground car.”

“Not our boys already, surely,” said Madame Minchenko in some unease. “Has something gone wrong, I wonder?”

“It’s not your land rover.” Silver fiddled with the resolution. The slanting sunlight poured through the dust, turning it into a glowing red smokescreen. “I think… it’s a GalacTech Security groundcar.”

“Oh, dear.” Madame Minchenko sat up straight. “Now what?”

“We don’t open the hatches, anyway. No matter what.”

In a few minutes the groundcar pulled up about fifty meters from the shuttle. An antenna rose from its roof and quivered demandingly. Silver switched on the comm—it was so irritating, not to have the full use of her lower arms—and called up a menu of the comm channels from the computer. The shuttle seemed to have access to an inordinate number of them. Security audio was 9999. She tuned them in.

“—by God! Hey, you in there—answer!”

“Yes, what do you want?” said Silver.

There was a spluttery pause. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“I didn’t know you were calling me,” Silver answered logically.

“Yeah, well—this freight shuttle is the property of GalacTech.”

“So am I. So what?”

“Eh…? Look, lady, this is Sergeant Fors of GalacTech Security. You have to disembark and turn this shuttle over to us.”

A voice in the background, not quite sufficiently muffled, inquired, “Hey, Bern—d’you think we’ll get the ten percent bonus for recovering stolen property on this one?”

“Dream on,” growled another voice. “Nobody’s gonna give us a quarter million.”

Madame Minchenko held up a hand, and leaned forward to cut in, quavering, “Young man, this is Ivy Minchenko. My husband, Dr. Minchenko, has commandeered this craft in order to respond to an urgent medical emergency. Not only is this his right, it’s his legally compelled duty—and you are required by GalacTech regulation to assist, not hinder him.”

A somewhat baffled growl greeted this. “I’m required to take this shuttle back. Those are my orders. Nobody told me anything about any medical emergency.”

“Well, I’m telling you!”

The background voice again, “… it’s just a couple of women. Come on!”

The sergeant: “Are you going to open the hatch, lady?”

Silver did not respond. Madame Minchenko raised an inquiring eyebrow, and Silver shook her head silently. Madame Minchenko sighed and nodded.

The sergeant repeated his demands, his voice fraying—he stopped just short, Silver felt, of degenerating into obscenities. After a minute or two he broke off. After a few more minutes the doors of the ground car winged up and the three men, now wearing breath masks, clambered out to stamp over and stare up at the hatches of the shuttle high over their heads. They returned to the groundcar, got in—it circled. Going away? Silver hoped against hope. No, it came up and parked again under the forward shuttle hatch. Two of the men rummaged in the back for tools, then climbed to the car’s roof.

“They’ve got some kind of cutting things,” said Silver in alarm. “They must be going to try to cut their way in.”

Banging reverberated through the shuttle. Madame Minchenko nodded toward the laser-solderer. “Is it time for that?” she asked fearfully.

Silver shook her head unhappily. “No. Not again. Besides, I can’t let them damage the ship either—it’s got to stay spaceworthy or we can’t get home.”

She had watched Ti… She inhaled deeply and reached for the shuttle controls. The foot pedals were hopelessly awkward to grope for, she would have to get along without them. Right engine, activate; left engine, activate—a purr ran through the ship. Brakes—there, surely. She pulled the lever gently to the “release” position. Nothing happened.

Then the shuttle lurched forward. Frightened at the abrupt motion, Silver hit the brake lever again and the ship rocked to a halt. She searched the outside monitors wildly. Where—?

The shuttle’s starboard airfoil had swept over the roof of the Security groundcar, missing it by half a meter. Silver realized with a guilty shudder that she should have checked its height before she began to move. She might have torn the wing right off, with ghastly chaining consequences to them all.

The Security guards were nowhere to be seen—no, there they were, scattered out onto the dry lake bed. One picked himself up out of the dirt and started back toward the groundcar. Now what? If she parked, or even rolled some distance and parked, they would only try again. It couldn’t take too many more attempts till they got smart and shot out the shuttle’s tires or otherwise immobilized it. A dangerously unstable stand-off.

Silver sucked on her lower lip. Then, leaning forward awkwardly in a seat never designed for quaddies, she released the brakes partway and powered up the port engine. The shuttle shuddered a few meters farther forward, skidding and yawing. Behind them, the monitor showed the groundcar half obscured by orange dust kicked by the exhaust, its image wavering in the heat of it.

She set the brakes as hard as they would go and powered up the port engine yet more. Its purr became a whine—she dared not bring it to the howling pitch Ti had used during landing, who knew what would happen then?

The groundcar’s plastic canopy cracked in a crazed starburst and began to sag. If Leo had been right in his description of that hydrocarbon fuel they used downside here for their vehicles, in just a second more she ought to get…

A yellow fireball engulfed the groundcar, momentarily brighter than the setting sun. Pieces flew off in all directions, arcing and bouncing fantastically in the gravity field. A glance at her monitors showed Silver the Security men now all running in the other direction.

Silver powered down the port engine, released the brakes, and let the shuttle roll forward across the hard- baked mud. Fortunately, the old lake bed was quite uniform, so she didn’t have to worry about the fine points of shuttle operation such as steering.

One of the Security men ran after them for a minute or two, waving his arms, but he fell behind quickly. She let the shuttle roll on for a couple of kilometers, braked again, and shut the engines off.

“Well,” she sighed, “that takes care of them.”

“It certainly does,” said Madame Minchenko faintly, adjusting the monitor magnification for a last glance behind. A column of black smoke and a dying orange glow in the distant gathering dusk marked their former parking place.

“I hope all their breath masks were well filled,” Silver added.

“Oh, dear,” said Madame Minchenko. “Perhaps we ought to go back and… do something. Surely they’ll have the sense to stay with their car and wait for help, though, and not try to walk off into the desert. The company safety vids always emphasize that. ‘Stay with your vehicle and wait for Search and Rescue.’ “

“Aren’t they supposed to be Search and Rescue?” Silver studied the tiny images in the monitor. “Not much vehicle left. But they all three seem to be staying there. Well…” she shook her head. “It’s too dangerous for us to try and pick them up. But when Ti and the doctor get back with Tony, maybe the security guards could have your land rover to go home in. If, um, nobody else gets here first.”

“Oh,” said Madame Minchenko, “that’s true. Good idea. I feel much better.” She peered reflectively into the monitor. “Poor fellows.”