flailing momentarily.
The featherboat separated also. The Fed pilots were terrified by the plasma cannon, whose blast at this range could turn either vessel into a fireball more gaseous than solid. No one was in the featherboat's access tube, but a uniformed human and two Molts were trapped in the dock as the valve closed,
'Sal, are you all right?' Tom Harrigan said. He launched himself to his captain's side across the blood- spattered dock.
Sal straightened, using Beck's mass to control her motion. The Fed leader was coming around. The other Fed survivors stared at Sal and the weapons in the hands of the Venerians joining her in the dock.
'Cooney, give me a hand with the captain!' Harrigan ordered, taking Sal's silence for proof she'd been incapacitated. 'Leave these other bastards here to see how well they breathe vacuum!'
'No!' Sal said. 'Bring them aboard. And fast-I want to be out of this system in five minutes!'
Harrigan took her arm anyway. He pushed off the wall of the dock, guiding her as if she was a landsman who couldn't navigate in weightlessness. 'I say leave them, Sal,' he repeated. 'They killed Josselyn, and there's a couple more might not make it home.'
'No, don't leave me!' Beck pleaded, trailing behind Sal like a heavy dufflebag. 'I'm the Fiscal of Lilymead, the President's representative. I'm an important man!'
They entered the hold. Obedient to Sal's orders, her crewmen had policed up all the Fed survivors and were following with them. She thrust the revolver down the throat of her tunic and caught a stanchion.
'You lying bastard!' Harrigan snarled in Beck's face. 'If you're Pleyal's representative, why didn't you honor the safe conduct Pleyal gave us?'
Sal kicked forward, up the passageway and into the cabin. Josselyn floated in midair with his throat cut. Bealzy was trying to stuff a loop of intestine back through the bullet wound in Kokalas' abdomen.
'We had orders from Montreal,' Beck whimpered behind her. He patted the pocket of his uniform blouse. Paper crackled. 'I'm carrying them right here with me. We're to confiscate all Venerian vessels which arrive, regardless of their safe conducts. President Pleyal needs them to help equip the fleet he's gathering to end the Venus rebellion for once and fox all!'
'Rebellion?' Harrigan said, too amazed at the term for the impact of the whole statement to register. 'Why, we're not rebels, we're citizens of the Free State of Venus!'
Sal thrust the Fiscal of Lilymead into a net that still held a day's supply of rations for the crew.
'Stay here, don't move, and you'll live even though you don't deserve to,' she ordered savagely. To Harrigan she added, 'And I mean it, Tom, I want him to stay alive all the way back. There's a lot of people on Venus who need to hear his story!'
Sal strapped herself to the navigation console. While the hard-used electronics moaned to life, she dabbed absently at the grit on her face.
The main hatch clanged shut. Crewmen called to one another as they seated the manual dogs and completed the other familiar business of liftoff.
The holographic display settled to a creamy saffron, picked out by a few strobing points where a circuit misfired. Very shortly the ready prompt would come up and Sal could initiate the first transit sequence.
She glanced at her hands. What she'd wiped from her face was bits of the skull of the Fed who'd been holding her in the dock. The chips were tacky with a slime of fresh pink brains.
Sal managed to turn her head so that her sudden rush of vomit didn't cover the navigation keyboard.
ISHTAR CITY, VENUS
August 10, Year 26
1642 hours, Venus time
The woman who entered the pantry didn't notice Stephen until she'd closed the door behind her and cut off the burr of voices from the party in the function rooms down the hallway. When she saw the big man in the corner holding a bottle of slash, liquor distilled from algae, her eyes widened in startlement. 'You're Stephen Gregg,' she said.
Stephen looked at her without expression. 'I'm not too drunk to remember my name,' he said. His eyes flicked from the woman to the bottle in his hand. The slash was vaguely gray in hue. 'In fact I'm not drunk at all, though that's not for lack of trying.'
'Do you mind if I. .' she said. She nodded toward the closed door. 'I needed to get away from that. They're all over me like lice, each one trying to get his drop of blood.'
Stephen smiled faintly. He recognized the woman as Sarah Blythe, the captain who'd brought to Venus notice of the treachery, the latest treachery, of the North American Federation. Identifying her was no great trick. Though the gathering had a social gloss in a mild attempt to mislead President Pleyal's spies, the attendees were principals and agents only; they'd left their consorts at home. Only a handful of the several score persons present were women.
'I'm not the most social of people myself,' Stephen said in smiling understatement. He found a glass on the shelf beside him, started to pour, and paused. 'Will you have a drink?' he asked. 'I only brought slash with me when I ran the servants out, I'm afraid.'
'Slash is fine with me,' she said. She wore a pale blue jacket and jumper over a ruffed blouse. The outfit was in unobtrusive good taste. Though it was inexpensive by the standards of the guests in the function rooms, Blythe didn't stand out the way a space captain in the midst of a gathering of magnates could be expected to do. 'Ah, I'm Sal Blythe. I apologize for the way I-greeted you.'
She wasn't a beautiful woman, but she was interesting in appearance as well as personality. Gregg had the impression that Blythe had started to reach for the bottle to drink from it straight, the way he'd been doing. She took a healthy swig from the tumbler he handed her, grimaced, and said, 'Paint thinner. But you know, it was what I grew up with, and nothing else seems like a drink.'
She looked at him appraisingly. Not the way a man would have done, because when strange men looked at Stephen Gregg, there was always a touch of fear or challenge in their eyes. Very few people could say honestly that they knew Stephen, but almost every adult on Venus knew
'I never thought I'd meet you,' Blythe said, drinking more of her slash. 'And Captain Ricimer's out there as well.' She grinned wryly and added, 'I'd say that it was worth being attacked by the Feds, but then there's the rest of the pack. They all want the Commission of Redress they expect I'll be issued for the damage the Feds did me on Lilymead.'
Blythe's face lost its chubby softness and became momentarily as hard as her eyes. 'They don't seem to hear the word 'no' when a woman's saying it,' she said.
'Oh, it's not a word they hear very easily from anyone, some of them,' Stephen said with a shrug. He took down another glass for himself. 'From those who don't have as much money as they do, at least, but that's most people.'
As Stephen poured, the door behind Sarah Blythe opened in a blast of sound. 'Go away!' he snarled without looking up.
'Oh!' a male voice said. 'Terribly sorry, Mister Gregg!' The last syllable was trimmed by the door's firm closure.
'Who was that?' Blythe asked in surprise. All she would have seen of the intruder was the sleeve of a gorgeous coat.
Stephen grimaced and tossed off his slash. 'I'm afraid from the voice it was Blenrott of Laodicea,' he said. 'Our host. I can't seem to get drunk, and that makes me. . even less tactful than usual. But there's no excuse for me behaving like a-'
He shook his head and smiled without humor. 'Rabid dog, I suppose. Well, I'll make it up to him.'
Stephen wondered just what it was that Blythe saw when she looked at him. He was 32 years old, taller than most men, and stronger than almost anyone he was likely to meet. His features were regular, and his short hair was a blond so pale that the long scar on his scalp showed through clearly.
At one time Stephen Gregg had been considered a handsome man, but he couldn't imagine anyone found him so today. He'd lost track of the number of people he'd killed over the past ten years. Hundreds, certainly. He knew there was nothing inside him but a lump of cold gray ice, and he was sure that others had to see through the shell of him to that emptiness as clearly as he did himself.
