The Reaches

padded and comfortable, the only elements of substance in the room's design. Piet sat down, but Stephen balanced on the arm of the other chair. He was nervous to have his own reflection looking at him wherever he turned his eyes.

'I won't waste your time on chitchat, Factor Ricimer,' Ben said. 'You know I've invested in your previous expeditions. I didn't invest in this most recent one.'

Piet glanced at Stephen and raised an eyebrow.

Stephen smiled faintly, amused to be Piet's business spokesman again. 'We made a paper loss, Uncle Ben,' he said. 'In fact, none of the backers were really out of pocket, but certainly the expedition wouldn't have repaid the risk. I would have told you as much if you'd asked, but you're too good a businessman to have needed the warning.'

'We-Venus, myself, and my captains-gained experience in fleet operations, Factor Gregg,' Piet said with quiet intensity. 'That was more important than the wealth we brought back. Even more than the harm we did President Pleyal!'

Uncle Ben sniffed in amusement. 'You did harm there, true enough,' he said. 'While your fleet was out, no shipments of chips from the Reaches were sent back to Earth for fear of being intercepted. The Federation's credit collapsed.'

He looked at Stephen and went on with hard arrogance, 'I'm indeed a businessman, and successful enough at it that I can afford to fund my whims. My pocketbook doesn't make all my decisions. Particularly'-the old man's visage softened minusculely-'when the decision involves you, Stephen.'

Stephen sucked in his lower lip in a grimace of apology.

'What I'm afraid of, Factor Ricimer,' Uncle Ben said, fully the trading magnate again, 'is that if Venus doesn't pull back now from this confrontation, matters will go over the brink. The Federation won't make the first move toward reconciliation. Venus has-you have, sir-the initiative. If you keep pushing as in the past, the result will be the disaster of an all-out war that nobody can win.'

'Pleyal will never give anyone but those he owns the full access to the stars that all mankind needs to survive, sir,' Piet said in growing animation. 'Pleyal will die or be overthrown, certainly, but whoever replaces him will be the same sort of autocrat. If the Federation thinks Venus is weaker, they'll stifle us. If they think we're weak enough-and we would be weak without the opportunities men like your nephew and yes, myself, have wrenched from Pleyal's grip-then they'll crush us utterly. The only way the Pleyals know to live is with their boot on our neck or our boot on theirs.'

Piet stood, facing Uncle Ben stiffly. 'And with the help of God, sir, I intend that it be Pleyal's face in the dust!'

Uncle Ben stood also. Ten years dropped away from him as he leaned across the desk. 'Where will we be with the whole force of the Federation and the Southern Cross against us, Ricimer? Where will we be with hundreds of warships ringing Venus, bombing down through our clouds until every city has been ripped open to an atmosphere that corrodes and burns? During the Rebellion, Venus was a sideshow for the rebels attacking Earth. We'll be the focus the next time!'

'All the more reason to build and train a fleet so that we can not only stop Pleyal, we can forestall him!' Piet replied. The two men weren't violent; there was no risk of a slap or one spitting on the other. They were passionate men, and passionate about the subject at issue.

'A stalemate that wrecks trade, that's your answer?' Uncle Ben demanded. 'Listen, boy, it was truly said that there was never a good war or a bad peace!'

Stephen got to his feet. 'Gentlemen!' he said. He rapped hard on the glass table with his knuckles. It rang like a jade gong. 'Gentlemen.'

Piet and Uncle Ben eased back from their confrontation, breathing hard. Both of them looked embarrassed.

'Piet,' Stephen said, gesturing his friend to his seat while keeping his eyes on Gregg of Weyston. Piet sat down.

'Uncle Ben,' Stephen said, 'the war's coming. Plan for it. There's always a way for a man who keeps his head in a crisis to make money.'

Uncle Ben opened his mouth to speak. Stephen chopped his right hand in a fierce cutting motion. 'No. Let me finish. Piet will never let go till he's brought down the Federation. If he did, there'd be a hundred to take his place now that he's shown the way. Pushing until the war comes, no matter what you want or I want or Governor Halys herself wants. Depend on it.'

Uncle Ben sighed and relaxed. 'You could always see as far into a stone block as the next man, Stephen,' he said. 'And perhaps I can too. But I thought I ought to try.'

He turned to Piet and said, 'Factor Ricimer, could I prevail upon you for a moment alone with my nephew? My servants will outdo themselves getting you anything you want in the way of refreshment.'

The old man smiled. 'I directed them not to make pests of themselves, but I suppose as the most famous man on Venus you must be used to it by now.'

'Sir,' said Piet, 'you're one of the men who've made Venus great. I'm honored to know you.' He bowed low, then stepped out the door the footman peering through the crack pushed open for him.

The door closed. Uncle Ben looked at his nephew sadly. 'When you first set out on a course of what I viewed as piracy, Stephen,' he said, 'I was worried that you might lose your life. I should have worried about your soul instead.'

Stephen drew up sharply. 'We Greggs have never been Bible pounders, Uncle Ben,' he said.

The old man shook his head. 'I don't care about your faith, Stephen,' he said. 'Fifty years of trade have scrubbed away any belief in God I ever had. But I do care about your soul.'

Stephen stepped around the desk and put his arms around his uncle. Standing straight, Gregg of Weyston was the height of his nephew. They might have been father and son; as in a fashion they were.

'Somebody had to do it, Uncle Ben,' Stephen said softly. 'I'm better at it than most.'

'No one ever had to tell a Gregg his duty, boy,' Uncle Ben said. 'But I wish. .'

'What's done is done,' Stephen said. Again, barely audible, 'What's done is done.'

BETAPORT, VENUS

March 12, Year 27

0445 hours, Venus time

A rotary sander screamed as it polished a patch on the Wrath's outer hull. The yard was working three shifts to put the big vessel right after the strains of her voyage to the Reaches. Though not so much as a rifle bullet had hit the Wrath, the repeated shocks of her own 20-cm plasma cannon firing had chipped gunports and even cracked some frame members.

'She was a little too taut for her own comfort when we left Venus,' Piet said in near apology. 'You mustn't think these repairs are anything against the design or construction. The Wrath handles beautifully. If Venus had fifty like her, we'd never have to fear from the Federation.'

Captain Ricimer regularly visited the Wrath during the early hours of the morning with his friend Mister Gregg. This time they were accompanied by a middle-sized man in brown whose high collar obscured his face. None of the workmen was likely to recognize the third man as Councilor Duneen, who was having a private meeting in plain view on the bridge of the Wrath.

'We won't have fifty when Pleyal sends his fleet against us, as you well know,' Duneen said. 'Ten, I hope, but the rest of our strength in armed merchantmen as in the past.'

For all the time Stephen had spent in the Wrath on the voyage just completed, he had no feeling for the vessel. That wouldn't come until he'd fought aboard her the first time.

At present the warship's twenty big guns were landed. Half the main-deck plates had been taken up so that the yard crew could work on the scantlings. Sternward, men with a hand kiln were recoating a beam that had been ground down to remove the surface crazing. The kiln nozzle hissed like an angry cat as it sprayed ceramic at just below the temperature of vaporization.

'We could gain more time if we raided Asuncion and destroyed the Federation fleet before it's fitted out,' Piet said, with the force of a man repeating an old argument.

'Ricimer, Governor Halys won't permit the fleet to leave the Solar System,' the councilor said flatly. 'That