The Reaches

'All right,' Pengelley said. She looked around the human members of her command to make it clear that she was speaking for all of them. 'But you have to come back to Winnipeg with us to get paid. We'll be off duty in ten minutes. You can ride in with us on the truck. Understood?'

Stephen looked at Piet. 'Understood,' Piet said coolly.

The risk was obvious, but it was probably the only way the two of them were going to get out of the gunpit alive. Later. . Well, somebody would become careless later.

And a close-up view of the gun installation had showed Stephen what he'd needed to know. The gunhouses were virtually impregnable if the hatches were closed, as they surely would be in event of an attack. But the turntables, though armored against fire from above, could very easily be jammed by troops who'd shot their way into the pit.

WINNIPEG, EARTH

April 6, Year 27

0701 hours, Venus time

Dan Lasky was a red-haired man in his fifties: overweight, as many spacers became in the narrow tedium of voyages; flushed and defensive, even though he thought the Gallant Sallie's crew was in the same disreputable trade as he was. He pinged a fingernail against the creamy ceramic muzzle of the 15-cm gun unswathed for inspection in the hold and said, 'Well, that's the goods, all right.'

He gave Sal a knowing glance. 'Bet you had to give 'em your left leg for tubes like these, though, huh?'

'Bet you don't think I'm stupid enough to tell you my business so you can undercut me,' she answered coldly.

Sal felt dirty every time Lasky looked at her. It was as though he'd found her working in a brothel. It was all very well to tell herself that she was doing it for the Free State of Venus. The feeling of degradation was still far worse than the undoubted danger.

Lasky chuckled breathily. 'Let's go forward and open this,' he said, waving the half-liter bottle he'd brought. It held some variety of amber Terran liquor. He looked at the grim-faced men in the hold with him and said, 'Harrigan, you want a swig too? Guess it'll stretch that far.'

'Don't lower yourself, Lasky,' Harrigan said. 'I'll make do with slash, I guess, and I'll do it in the company I choose.'

The common sailors were Betaport men whom Lasky didn't recognize. Sal and her mate were familiar to him, and he was delighted to see their moral comedown.

'I'll have a drink with you,' Sal said, leading the way to the cabin, 'and then you can take the rest of the bottle away. The quicker I get this cargo unloaded and me off-planet, the better I'll like it.'

She was sure that the liquor was expensive. The mechanical uniformity of mass distillation wasn't a taste one learned on Venus, where most taverns brewed their own beer and every outlying hold distilled its own liquors.

She thought of herself and Stephen drinking slash at the first meeting a lifetime ago. It was hard to recognize the people they'd been as anyone she now knew.

'Christ's blood, I wish I was lifting soon,' Lasky said. 'I got people from the Navy, the Treasury, and the Bureau of the fucking Presidency and they're all arguing about whether they're going to pay my price.'

Sal sat at the navigation console, rotating her chair to face her visitor on the end of the nearest bunk. Several of the crew were in the cabin-there was no privacy on a ship this size. Lightbody, seated in the airlock, glowered at Lasky as if considering whether to pull off his limbs one by one.

'You go where money takes you, boyo,' Lasky said to him harshly. 'You're no better than me!'

'Lightbody, go check nozzle wear,' Sal ordered. 'They should've cooled enough by now.'

She'd been around Lightbody long enough to know that the man was in a way more dangerous than Stephen Gregg, because he didn't have Stephen's control. Lightbody's religion was as deep as that of Captain Ricimer, but the sailor's faith was a stark, gloomy thing instead of being the transfiguring love of God.

Lightbody viewed what they were doing as selling guns to Satan incarnate. Loathing at his own part in the transaction made him more, not less, prone to murderous violence against someone else in the same trade.

'What are you trying to pass off?' Sal asked Lasky. She took the bottle and drank. The liquor tasted thin with an undertone of smoke. 'There's supposed to be a Navy agent here in an hour. If he takes our tubes at the customs evaluation, I won't have any complaint.'

She'd been drinking a lot lately. Since Arles.

Lasky drank in turn without bothering to wipe the mouth of the bottle. 'I'm not asking more than fair,' he complained. 'Standard stellite poundage value with discounts for wear. Trouble is, the Treasury whoreson claims the Feds already own four of the ten tubes.'

He took another, even longer, swallow. 'Owns them all, by his lights, but he can't prove that.'

'Where did you get stellite guns?' Sal asked sharply.

Venerian plasma cannon were invariably ceramic. After the Collapse, metal-poor Venus had been cut off from off-planet sources of metal. The ceramics technology developing from that necessity was now one of Venus' greatest industries. Other human cultures used tungsten and alloys like stellite from the heavy platinum triad for thruster nozzles and plasma cannon. Venerians were certain their ceramic equivalents wore longer as well as being appreciably lighter.

'Where the hell do you think I got them, lady?' Lasky sneered. He offered Sal the bottle again; the level was already below half. She waved it away curtly. 'I bought in a lot of forty-seven tubes that came back from the Reaches with I-Walk-On-Water Ricimer, that's where I got them. For a song, too. Nobody on Venus thinks stellite guns are worth houseroom. But hell, the Feds don't know any better.'

'And some of the guns come with Federation markings already,' Sal said, understanding at last. 'Well, I guess that's your problem, Lasky.'

Lasky drank again morosely. 'Oh, they'll come around,' he muttered. 'They will if they want the other thirty- seven tubes, they will. Only it may take a month before we get it all clear.'

He thrust the bottle toward Sal. 'Here,' he said. 'Go ahead and kill it. Good stuff, huh?'

Sal shook her head. 'I've got paperwork to do even if the Navy assessor doesn't show up soon,' she said. 'Best you get off to your own people and leave me to it, Lasky.'

Lasky stood up slowly, obviously unwilling to go back to the Moll Dane and a crew of the sort that would work for captains like him. He paused in the airlock. 'Maybe I'll see you again in Winnipeg,' he said.

Sal looked at the fat man. Wrapped in red tape, the Moll Dane could very well be on the ground in ten days when Piet Ricimer and his squadron called on Winnipeg.

'I hope so, Lasky,' Sal said. 'I really hope you do.'

WINNIPEG, EARTH

April 6, Year 27

1257 hours, Venus time

Stephen stared through the tavern's dingy window toward the twilit city beyond. The drink in his hand was fresh, so he tongued it carefully before he took a sip.

No drugs, no poisons; just cheap white liquor, served straight and warm. The Fed soldiers were buying. The bartender had offered mixers, but Stephen had waved them away. He doubted the Feds would add a Mickey Finn to his drink so long as he kept putting the liquor down at a rate they'd be sure would have him under the table in a few more hours, but there was no point in increasing their chances.

'And then he says, 'I don't know why you're complaining, we're on the ground, ain't we?'' Piet said, 'like he couldn't see he was standing on the bulkhead because the ship was lying on her side!'

The Feds laughed heartily. Piet's stories of incompetent Venerian officers were all true, and they made him the life of the party. He never pumped the Feds for information, but his stories bred stories, and Piet listened.

Stephen Gregg listened too, as he sat halfway down the bar drinking morosely. The liquor wouldn't make him drunk. It just permitted him to view his life through thick windows that blocked the sharper pains and left him with only a dull, murderous ache.