'I've heard of these shrines, but I'd never seen one before with my own eyes,' Piet said.
Stephen noted the delicacy of the holographic resolution and calculated the expense. 'Rather a waste of good microchips,' he said mildly. 'But I suppose we'll find something better to do with them back on Venus.'
'Do you see the legend?' Piet said. 'That means, 'The universe is not enough!' That's what we're fighting against, Stephen!
The bodies carried from the Commandatura had been stacked like cordwood in the street outside. There were about a hundred of them, a score of humans and the rest Molts.
'I'm not fighting against anything, Piet,' Stephen said softly. 'I'm just fighting.'
They stared at the splendid, shimmering portrait of a man who confused himself with God. Piet whispered to Stephen, 'I should have taken the barge up to ram the aircar as soon as it appeared. The exhaust wash wasn't as great a danger as the gunmen. . '
SAVOY, ARLES
January 3, Year 27
1514 hours, Venus time
Sal heard the thump of an explosion from somewhere in Savoy City. She and several other officers turned around. None of them reacted more quickly than Piet Ricimer himself. There was nothing to see over the spaceport berm.
'It can't be too serious,' the general commander said with a faint smile. 'Probably somebody blowing up a statue of President Pleyal.'
Sal returned her attention to the ship the party of officers was examining. At one time the vessel had been named, perhaps
'Has the government said anything about ransoming the city, sir?' asked Jankowich. He'd probably started thinking along the same lines Sal had when she heard the explosion. 'A place that's built of rock the way this one is won't be a snap to blow up if they refuse to pay.'
'I didn't send the envoys out till this morning,' Ricimer said. 'Three Molt officials from the city administration. They'd have been shot out of sheer jumpiness by one side or the other if they'd gone while it was still dark.'
'The streets here don't seem to be paved with microchips, Ricimer,' Captain Casson said with gloomy relish. 'Let's hope they took the loot with them when they ran.'
'Yes, I hope that, Captain,' Piet Ricimer said. 'But as I warned everyone in Betaport, and again in Venus orbit: we're here for God and for Venus, not simply to line our pockets. Now, this ship would seem to me to be worth taking as a prize instead of destroying.'
'Can you trust Molts to deal straight with us?' Captain Boler asked, reverting to the previous subject. 'I mean, they were fighting us. Mostly the Feds ran, but their bugs sure didn't.'
'Yes, they can be trusted,' Guillermo said.
The group surveying the vessels captured in the port consisted of Captain Ricimer, six chosen captains (Sal attributed her inclusion among them to Stephen's influence), and Ricimer's Molt servant. According to Stephen, the alien was a quick, skillful navigator. Guillermo might lack Piet's feel for a ship, but he didn't make mistakes at the controls.
The other captains clearly thought of the Molt as furniture. They were shocked when Guillermo spoke.
'Molts form clans with a strongly hierarchical structure, Captain,' Ricimer said. He smiled faintly. 'Even more hierarchical than our own. They'll treat humans, no matter how brutal, as clan superiors until the structure is smashed.'
'Which you certainly did here, sir,' Sal said in a loud voice. Stephen was on the city perimeter, setting up defenses in case the Feds tried to retake Savoy. His presence in the survey group would have changed the tone, not entirely in a bad direction.
'The hull's heavier than ceramic and no stronger,' Captain Salomon said. 'The navigational AI is all right, but the attitude controls are as basic as a stone axe.'
'The controls can be upgraded easily enough if the hull's worth it,' Sal said. She'd seen Salomon take off and land often enough to understand why Ricimer had given the man a ship.
'A proper spacer doesn't need a machine to do his thinking for him,' Casson rumbled. He glared at Sal. 'Or her thinking either.'
Ricimer and Salomon both opened their mouths to speak. Sal, feeling suddenly cold inside, spread her left hand to silence them. She said, 'I'd think that those of us who learned our skills on older ships, Captain, would be the quickest to appreciate how much better and safer the new electronics are than what we were used to. Certainly I'd feel more comfortable in a fleet this size if I were sure that an AI was landing the ship beside me. Instead of some ham-fisted incompetent who couldn't be trusted to hit the whole of Ishtar City, let alone the dock.'
Sal had grown up respecting Willem Casson; first because her father did, then because she'd grown old enough to appreciate the old man's exploits herself. Now-
What Casson had done was still impressive. But he didn't like female captains any better than he liked youths from Betaport who'd been brilliant while Willem Casson had merely been courageous; and for all Casson's skill and experience, the expedition would be better off if he'd stayed on Venus.
Three red signal rockets shot up from the doubly baffled entrance through the berm. The gateway was designed to prevent exhaust wash from flaring beyond the port reservation. A three-axle Venerian truck negotiated it and accelerated toward the group conducting the survey.
'I believe that's Stephen driving,' Piet Ricimer said. Then he added, 'We'll take up the survey another time, gentlemen and Mistress. Stephen doesn't react at nothing.'
The vehicle pulled up beside the survey group. Lightbody, a religious sailor who glowered whenever he saw Sal, was in the open cab with Stephen. In back, three Molts kept a fourth prostrate on a blanket from sliding off the open sides.
Captain Ricimer and three of the younger captains hopped onto the truck bed. Sal stood on the cab's running board, looking into the back. Stephen turned in the seat beside her, face remote.
'These are the envoys, Piet,' Stephen said. 'I brought them directly to you because there wasn't a lot of time.'
Piet knelt by the injured Molt, then looked at Stephen in white fury. 'This man should never have been moved!' he said.
'I couldn't hurt him now, Piet,' Stephen said. 'You needed to see him while he was still alive.' Piet's anger streamed through as if Stephen's soul was transparent to it.
'Master,' said a Molt who'd earlier been working on casualties from the city's capture, humans and aliens as well. 'Kletch-han knows he is dying, but he begs to speak with you first.'
Ricimer nodded curtly. He touched the upper carapace of the injured Molt with his fingertips and said, 'Kletch-han, how did this happen?'
The Molt's chitinous exoskeleton had a pearly translucence that Sal had never before noticed. Kletch-han wore a sash-of-office with blue chevrons on white. The fabric had been driven into one of his lower belly plates and left embedded in the blunt puncture wound.
'We drove out the west road in the vehicle you provided us, Master,' Kletch-han said. Sal could understand the words, but there was more of a clicking crispness to them than was normal in the speech of Molts in high positions. The three envoys had been principal clerks in the Savoy administration.
'We met a group of soldiers three kilometers from the city,' the Molt continued. The brown stain was spreading on his sash. 'They were in a brush-filled gully beside the road. The officer wore a naval uniform. I didn't recognize him. I got out of the vehicle, holding the white flag you gave me.'
Another of the Molts from the embassy raised the flag to show it to the humans. It was a pillowcase tied to the end of a threaded steel rod a meter and a half long and about a centimeter thick. It had been assembled from what happened to be available when Ricimer sent the envoys out.
The base of the rod a handsbreadth deep was smeared with brown ichor.
'I explained that Captain Ricimer had sent us to Director Eliahu to set up a meeting regarding the ransom of
