Orbitsville

“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 the 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