Storm at Eldala

between them in most of the valleys, hiding greater depths. 'Forbidding' was one word that immediately occurred to Gabriel at the sight of the place. Too much vertical and not enough horizontal!

It was a beautiful place as well. Gabriel liked mountains and mountainous worlds. He liked to stand and look up at a landscape that was far too big to be conquered, a kind of reminder that humans might be a great power among the worlds, but single beings still had to fight their own battles with the physical universe. And the physical universe sometimes had them completely outclassed. FromLongshot, Helm grunted and said, 'Deep valleys down there. Full of those. . what did they call them. . Rigla?'

'Riglia,' Gabriel replied. 'Very annoyed people, if I got the right impression. I wouldn't waste my time trying to have a friendly chat with the natives.'

'Wouldn't normally have been on my list anyway,' Helm said. 'All they've got are little cilia, if I remember what you told me before we left Grith. Can't pick things up, except with their minds. . Don't think they'd go in big for arms sales.'

Gabriel gave Enda a sideways look as they dropped deeper into the atmosphere. 'Think you might make some sales down here?' he said.

Helm chuckled deep. 'There are humans here,' he said. 'No matter where they live, these days, what human ever feels really secure?' Gabriel had no quick answer to that one.

'There's our port,' Helm said. 'About ten degrees to starboard. Watch your approach as you come in. We've got to follow this valley, and it twists.'

He dropped into a broad valley that wound between two huge mountain walls. Gabriel nosedSunshine down after him. There was less striation among the mountains here and more volcanic rock. Here and there, you could pick out a peak that had clearly once been a volcano, now shattered or undermined by the pressures of other local formations against it. The colors were darker — browns and blacks, mostly, old basalt, faulted in massive square or hexagonal blocks, or shattered to pinnacles by millions of years' worth of lateral pressure.

Away ahead of them two great peaks soared up, high and narrow, angling away from each other like the horns of a bull. There was a pale patch on the yoke of stone that connected them. 'That's it?' Gabriel asked.

'That's the spot. Five degrees to the right at the back of the settlement—'

'I see it,' Gabriel said. His 3D display crosshaired the spot for him. As spaceports went, Sunbreak's was nearly nonexistent— you could have dropped the whole of it into one of the service yards that surrounded the port at Diamond Point.

Helm led them down, the golden light of Terivine onLongshot's hull going out like a snuffed flame as he dropped between the mountains and descended toward the spaceport. It was still warmweek, but not for long. There would be no direct sunlight on the city for another ten days, until coldweek was past and the new warmweek was coming.

If city is the word I'm looking for, Gabriel thought. The pale patch had resolved itself into a scatter of buildings, some large, some small, a jumble of locally quarried stone and caststone edifices. The place certainly could not house more than a couple thousand people.

In front of them, Gabriel saw Helm skirt around the high back of the yoke between the two mountains, coming at the port beacon from the back side. He came to a halt in midair, hanging on his system drivers, not even engaging his attitudinals as yet. Showoff, Gabriel thought, getting ready to cut in his own landing systems, but he had to admire the featherlike way Helm settled himself down on exactly the tiny scrap of light-bounded tarmac. He came down so slowly that there was no way that anyone could have missed the size, orientation or number of his gun ports.

Enda's smile was small and prim. 'Art comes in strange forms,' she said, looking down atLongshot half a kilometer beneath them. 'Helm? Shall we follow?'

They saw a tiny figure exit and walk aroundLongshot, looking carefully at the surroundings. The shape was carrying something that looked like a twig at this altitude and was probably capable of making a hole in a Concord cruiser.

'Yeah,' Helm said, 'you might as well. The locals are all looking out the windows now.' Gabriel broughtSunshine in and down — perhaps not with the same expertise, but in the manner of someone unconcerned with the locals' opinions. He grounded her about three meters fromLongshot, where the smaller ship's main guns covered her, and powered the drives down.

'Sunbreak control, good afternoon,' Gabriel said, reckoning that it would safely be afternoon for another day and a half yet. 'We have an infotrade cargo for you. Can we conclude port formalities and get the material away?'

'Formalities have already been concluded,Sunshine,' said a man's voice down station comms. 'We're not big enough to need much in the way of paperwork here: the detectors told us you were coming.' Did his voice sound uneasy? Gabriel glanced at Enda. She reached into the 3D display between them and touched the 'privacy' light.

'It is to be expected,' she said. 'Any world so isolated would normally have the best starfall detection hardware it could afford. They would have known the time and location of our arrival nearly as soon as we departed.'

She slipped her finger away from the control-light, which dulled. 'Thanks, Sunbreak,' Gabriel said. 'Then we'd like to dump, if you would pass us your authentication protocols. The dump addresses we have already.'

Enda shifted the infotrade control systems into the front display. It filled with lines of code, as the two Grid systems— Rivendale's planetary-level one andSunshine's local portable Grid — acknowledged one another's bona fides. The code display dissolved, leaving them with the messageDischarging cargo. They watched the words blink. This was the part of the process that Gabriel dreaded — when the machines were in control, and being built by mortal beings in a universe where entropy was in force, could conceivably fail. If that happened, no one would blame the machines. It would be Gabriel and Enda who would be responsible. They could sue the people who installed the machinery and might someday recoup some of the losses they would have had to pay out of their own pockets for the lost data.

The display went black. Gabriel swallowed.

Darkness followed, for several seconds. Then,Discharge complete, said the display.Receiving facility backup complete and confirmed. Cleaning cycle begins. Gabriel sat back in his seat and said, 'Look at me. I'm wringing wet.'

He had never been clear about whether fraal sweated. Enda breathed out one long breath, and said, 'Itis nice when things work. Shall we go out and see about a meal?'

'Not until I shower,' Gabriel said, unstrapped himself and went down the hall.

Some while later, Helm was coming up in the lift, and Gabriel was stretched out in one of the chairs in the sitting room in a clean singlesuit, while Enda looked over the local Grid access channels. They were spare — a few music channels, some solid or 3D entertainment, most of it stale.

'You could make some money,' Gabriel said, 'just bringing entertainment material in here.'

'If we had cargo space to spare,' Enda said, distracted by the list of local amenities, which was also brief. The lift door opened. 'Look, there is a fraal restaurant here.'

'Feeling the need for home cooking?' Helm said.

'Sweet heaven,' Gabriel said. Helm was in a costume that could only be described as full battle armor — tunic and breeches and boots and armlets and greaves of dull refractory materials, shiny in places but mostly scarred with use, and huge pistols on both hips. 'Helm, you look like a tank, but better armed.'

'I always wear the armor on my first night out on a new planet,' said Helm, grinning that innocent grin. 'Saves me having to wear it later.'

Enda laughed. 'As for home cooking, I eat that every day;Sunshine is my home. I would simply be interested in seeing exactlyhow 'fraal' the cooking here is. Such a tiny settlement is not the kind of place you would expect to find cosmopolitan ingredients. For real fraal cooking, you would need such. We never saw a cuisine we did not borrow from.'

She and Gabriel got up. 'What is it like out, Helm?' Enda said. She too had chosen to wear a singlesuit, a plasma-blue number in which Gabriel had first seen her long ago, and which picked up the vivid blue of her eyes startlingly well.

'About nineteen. A little breeze.'