The Reaches

He didn't shout, but he spoke in a tone that cut this clamor as it had that of so many battles. Everyone for twenty meters heard, and the woman melted away from his eyes.

Piet laughed. 'Stephen, Jeremy,' he said. 'I need to take my place, I suppose. See you soon.'

He arrowed through the mob, heading for the Governor's Guard.

Stephen said, 'Piet believes that God is aiding us to do His will. I don't know what God's will is. But I don't suppose what I know matters.'

He looked at me and added, 'I thought we might see your fiancee here, Jeremy.'

I shrugged with adrenaline nervousness and smiled. 'No,' I said, 'no. I asked Melinda not to come. I don't want to connect her-in my mind. With this. I'd as soon the Councilor weren't here, but he had to be, of course.'

I smiled again. The lip muscles didn't work any better the second time. I gripped Stephen's shoulder. 'Stephen, listen,' I said. 'It happened, it can't ever not have happened now. But it's over. We can go on!'

'I'm glad it's over for you, Jeremy,' Stephen said. He plucked gently at my sleeve, filling the fabric he'd crumpled when he kept me from breaking a woman's neck with my one good hand. 'I was afraid for a time that you were one of those it wouldn't be over for.'

He smiled. 'I'm responsible for you, you know.'

I blinked so that I wouldn't cry. 'Let's get aboard,' I said loudly, turning toward the ship.

The crowd cheered as it parted to let us board the Oriflamme. There in a few minutes we would watch the governor's investiture of a potter's whelp from Bahama District as Factor Ricimer of Porcelain.

Fireships

ABOVE LILYMEAD

June 1, Year 26 of Governor Halys

1000 hours, Venus time

'We can get one more aboard, Sal,' called Tom Harrigan from the hatch of the lighter across the temporary orbital dock from the Gallant Sallie.

Captain Sarah-Sal-Blythe checked her vessel's hold and said, 'No, let 'em go, Tom. We've got two turbines and the crate of spare rotors left, so there'll be a part-load anyway. Tell them to start bringing the return cargo on the next lift, though. We can have the last of this waiting in the dock and our hold clear by the time they get back up.'

The access tube connecting the lighter to the dock was three meters long. The valve at the inner end of the tube opened automatically when the air pressure on both sides was equal. The system formed a simple airlock while the outer end was attached to a ship's pressurized hold or cabin.

Technically the business of shifting cargo after a vessel docked was the responsibility of the planetary staff, but Lilymead wasn't really set up to handle cargoes in orbit. The ships that traded to Near Space colonies like Lilymead put down on the unimproved field and waited for tractors to haul lowboys full of stevedores to them over dirt blasted by the exhaust of other vessels.

The huge freighters in which the North American Federation voyaged to the Reaches touched in Near Space only when leakage and slow progress forced them to resupply their reaction mass and atmosphere. Those monsters rarely dared to land on ports without hardened pads and full facilities. Lilymead had a remotely controlled water buffalo to ferry water and air up to them.

Harrigan-Sal's mate-and the starboard watch of eight crewmen slid from the lighter's hold with the delicacy of men experienced with weightless conditions. The Federation lighter's own crew of two wasn't enough to handle cargo as massive as these turbines, even if Sal had been willing to wait while the locals did the job. The dock was processed cellulose, constructed as cheaply as possible to be abandoned after a single use. Inertia would tear a turbine that got away from its handlers right on through the fuzzily transparent walls.

'Say, what's that?' Harrigan said in astonishment as he saw the featherboat that had grappled to another of the dock's four access tubes while he and his men were striking cargo down in the lighter.

The 30-tonne vessel was too small to have an airlock of its own. As Sal and the mate watched, the dorsal hatch opened. A group of civilians caromed out with the spastic overcorrections of folk who thought of gravity, not inertia, when they moved.

'Some local merchants, they said,' Sal explained. 'Asked to come aboard. We've got a return cargo, but I didn't see any harm in talking to them.' She grimaced. 'We could use a little extra profit to cover repairs to the attitude jets.'

'Oh, Sallie,' Harrigan said uncomfortably. The mate never jibbed at her orders, but he couldn't help treating Sarah Blythe as the captain's daughter rather than as the captain in her own right. Harrigan had always assumed that when Marcus Blythe's arthritis grounded him for good, Thomas Harrigan would marry Sal and captain the Gallant Sallie himself-while his wife stayed on Venus and raised children as a woman should. 'I don't think that'll be much, just a bad connection somewhere, only. .'

The Gallant Sallie's three bands of attitude jets kept the vessel aligned with the direction her main thrusters were to drive her. On the voyage out to Lilymead, the jets occasionally failed to fire as programmed. The problem forced Sal to go through the trouble and added expense of lightering down her cargo, rather than landing in the port where two other Venerian vessels took advantage of the relaxing of the Federation's embargo on trade with its Near Space colonies. If the jets-most likely their controls-glitched during transit, the error required recomputation and lengthened the Gallant Sallie's voyage. If the problem occurred during landing, well. .

Captain Sarah Blythe was rightly proud of her reflexes and piloting ability. Since she had the choice, though, the only landing the Gallant Sallie would make this voyage would be back on Venus, where dockyard mechanics could go over the vessel and cure what the crew's repeated attempts had not.

The featherboat's passengers, five men and two women, spun in the slight turbulence as they entered the dock's main chamber. None of the seven was a spacer, though Sal was by no means sure they were all the civilians their clothing proclaimed.

Her eyes narrowed. The dark speckling on one woman's cheek was a powder burn. While the stiff leg of the group's leader could have come from any number of causes, the puckered skin of his right forearm was surely a bullet scar.

'Captain Blythe?' the leader said to Harrigan. 'I'm Walter Beck. These are my associates in the trading community here on Lilymead.'

The Gallant Sallie's working party watched the Fed delegation with the amusement of spacers for landsmen out of their element. Brantling, a senior man who'd have been bosun except for his jealousy of Harrigan, snickered loudly.

'There's our captain!' Tom Harrigan said, anger at Brantling's laughter turning the words into a snarl. 'Deal with her if you've business here.'

Beck was holding out a bottle of local liquor. He swung it from Harrigan to Sal at arm's length. The gesture set his whole body pivoting away in reaction. Sal caught Beck's cuff and said, 'You're welcome aboard the Gallant Sallie, miladies and sirs. Left up the passage from the hold, please. We'll speak in the cabin so that my crew can continue their duties.'

Sal's gentle tug sent Beck through the hatch ahead of her. Without needing direction, Harrigan and the rest of the work party caught the other Feds and pushed them after their leader like so many billiard balls into a pocket. A few of the thrusts were more enthusiastic than kindly; Sal, still gripping the coaming, braked those Feds with her free hand. The powder-burned female pinwheeled wildly because she'd swiped at the head of the sailor who pushed her off. Brantling again. .

'Brantling,' Sal ordered. 'Put a helmet on and check the nozzles of all twelve attitude jets again. Now!'

'Aye aye, Captain,' Brantling said, cheerful despite the unpleasant, dangerous, and (at this point) useless