The Reaches

slotted. The tongue was designed to rip deep through the flesh of the creatures it struck, then to suck them dry.

'Wonder if it injects digestive fluids?' Stephen mused aloud.

Lacaille stood, then doubled up and began to vomit.

'Get him back to the ship,' Stephen suggested quietly. 'Guillermo can find some slash if you can't.'

'I can find something,' I said. 'Come on, Lacaille. I need a drink, and out here is no damned place for anybody who feels as queasy as I do right now.'

'I'm all right,' Lacaille muttered as he cautiously straightened. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before he turned to face me.

'Any one you walk away from, hey?' he said with an embarrassed smile. 'I suppose I can walk.'

He could. We could. Dole's men were raising one end of the net by the hawser Lacaille and I had drawn into the branches on Lacaille's grapnel line. We'd wired a pulley to the limb as well. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it made the lift a lot easier for the men below.

I was only half kidding about needing a drink. Since the snake stalked us, I'd trembled while we continued to work high in the tree. Seeing the creature close up made the fear worse.

We stepped over the rolled net. The bosun was arguing precedence with Salomon, whose men were laying hoses to the river. Both men paused and nodded to us. Piet, examining the tree that would anchor the other end of the camouflage, waved cheerfully.

'You saved my life,' Lacaille said in a low voice.

'That fellow might have decided I looked juicier,' I said. 'He wasn't anybody's friend.'

We had to pick our way carefully across the burned patch surrounding the Oriflamme. Dense roots withstood the gush of plasma and lurked within the ash, ready to turn an ankle or worse.

'Look,' Lacaille said. He stopped and waited for me to meet his eyes. 'I won't fight my own people.'

'Nobody asked you to,' I said. 'Christ's blood, d'ye think we can't do our own fighting?'

Lacaille grimaced and shook his head in frustration. 'Look,' he said. 'McMaster? You should have left him where he was.'

'You're not the first to think that,' I said slowly. I glanced around. I didn't know where McMaster was. I couldn't find him outside nor among the party shifting gear in the hold ten meters from where Lacaille and I stood. 'Piet's. . soft-hearted, though.'

'Tonight,' Lacaille said. 'When shortwave propagation's good, McMaster's going to signal the North Island base on the backup commo suite aft.'

Salomon's men joined Dole's on the 2-cm hawser. It would be easier to slide the hoses under the hem of the camouflage net than to lift the roll, so the teams were combining to do the jobs in sequence.

'He told you?' I asked without emphasis.

'McMaster brags about things that nobody would admit!' Lacaille said. 'Not just this, terrible things! He's a terrible man.'

Piet walked toward us, probably wondering what we were discussing.

'Yeah, I can believe that,' I said. It wasn't surprising that a man who'd been swimming for years in the filthy slough of President Pleyal's colonies would be unable to recognize that Lacaille might have feelings of gratitude toward those who'd saved his life. Far more surprising that Lacaille's personal decency had survived.

'Ah. .' I added. 'Don't say anything to Piet, though. All right?'

Lacaille nodded in relief. 'You'll tell Mister Gregg?' he asked.

'Stephen's got enough on his conscience as it is,' I said, putting on a bright smile to greet Piet. 'I'll see that this one's handled.'

We sat at trestle tables sawn from the local wood with cutting bars. The boards' surface was just as rough as you'd imagine. The afternoon's downpour had driven the ash into the clay substrate in a butter-slick amalgam. We'd spread cover sheets over us, but the rare chinks of evening sky we could see were clear.

'You know. .' said Dole with a mouth full of tree-hopper, maybe one of the trio that'd startled me. It had peeked down at the commotion, this time where Stephen could see it. 'That fellow out in the lake might not have steaked out so bad.'

'Not for me, thanks,' I said, thinking about the monster's teeth. At the other table they were eating a ragout of the local 'snake.' I didn't even look in that direction.

'Precooked, even,' Piet said with a grin. He looked as relaxed as I'd seen him in a long while. We'd have known by now if a Fed on Clapperton's far side had chanced to notice us sliding into the forest. 'Well, we had other things on our mind.'

Winger, the chief motor mechanic, said, 'I don't like the way the main engine nozzles are getting, sir. We've switched out the spares aboard, and they're getting pretty worn themself.'

'Umm,' Salomon said. 'They wouldn't pass a bottomry inspection at Betaport, but I don't think we need to worry as yet.'

An animal screamed in the near distance. It was probably harmless-and the 'snake' couldn't have made a sound if it had wanted to-but my shoulders shrank together every time I heard the thing.

The local equivalent of insects swarmed around the hooded lights we'd spiked to tree boles to show us our dinner. The creatures were four-legged. They varied in size from midges to globs with bodies the size of a baseball and wingspans to match. They didn't attack us because of our unfamiliar biochemistry, but I frequently felt a crunch of chitin as I chewed my meat.

'The nearest place that'd stock thruster nozzles is Riel,' Lacaille volunteered without looking up from his meal. 'But the port gets a lot of traffic, and it's defended.'

'Real defenses?' Dole asked, glancing over at Lacaille. 'Or a couple guns and nobody manning them?'

'I'd sure rather have warehouse stock than cannibalize a ship,' Winger said. 'It's a bitch of a job unscrewing burned-in nozzles without cracking them.'

The little receiver in my tunic pocket squawked, 'Calling North Island Command! Calling North Island Command! This is-'

Everyone in hearing jumped up. The opposite bench tilted and thumped the ground. Lacaille's mouth opened in horror.

'What in the name of Christ is that?' Stephen asked softly. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes roved the forest, and the flashgun was cradled in his arms.

'It's all right!' I said. 'Sit down, everybody. It's all right.'

'Yes, sit down,' Piet decided aloud. He bent to help raise the fallen bench, holding his carbine at the balance so that the muzzle pointed straight up. He'd jacked a round into the chamber, and it would take a moment to clear the weapon safely.

He sat again and looked at me. 'What is all right?'

'— Venusian pirate ship full of treasure,' my pocket crackled. I took the receiver out so that everyone could see it. 'Plot this signal and home on it. I don't have the coordinates, but it's somewhere in the opposite hemisphere from the base. Calling-'

I switched the unit off. Dole said, 'McMaster!' and stood up again.

'Don't!' I said.

Dole stepped over the bench, unhooking his cutting bar.

'Sit down, Mister Dole,' Piet said, his voice ringing like a drop forge.

The bosun's face scrunched up, but he obeyed.

'And the rest of you,' Piet said, waving to the men at the other table and the far end of ours. They'd noticed the commotion, though they couldn't tell what was going on.

'I fiddled the backup transmitter,' I said in a voice that the immediate circle could hear. 'No matter what the dial reads, it's transmitting a quarter-watt UHF. He could be heard farther away if he stood in the hatch and shouted.'

Stephen made a sound. I thought he was choking. It was the start of a laugh. His guffaws bellowed out into the night, arousing screamers in the trees around us. After a moment, Stephen got the sound under control, but he