The Reaches

Stephen didn't move from the rear bulkhead, but Sal saw his mouth quirk in a smile. Piet wore his half armor for show, though the gold finish was pitted from when he and Stampfer alone crewed a 20-cm gun whose hydraulics had failed. At least the back-and-breast would keep him from being crushed by well-wishers.

Sal stayed beside Stephen. Betaport wasn't her town. Harrigan and Brantling had transferred to the Freedom and were probably in Ishtar City now. Sal would see her father and childhood friends in three days, at the formal service.

Floral wreaths and bottles of liquor greeted the crewmen. The marshals had given wives and girlfriends places near the front, though there was no lack of freelances to cherish men who'd returned unattached.

Twice Sal saw both a wife and a girlfriend greet the same sailor. Those weren't the only tears shed in the general joy. Piet had listed the butcher's bill and the Wrath's remaining complement in the same couriered dispatch that announced the victory. There were women, one of them with a newborn infant at her breast, who'd refused to believe until the hatch opened and they saw the pitiful few within the Wrath's hold.

Not all those missing were dead. Many were in prize crews, and there were a dozen wounded who ought to survive (though not always with the original number of limbs).

But there were also the men listed as missing. In a spaceman's town like Betaport, everyone knew 'missing' generally meant drifting in vacuum somewhere more distant than light could reach in a million years.

As the crowd milled beside the Wrath in the greatest festival the port would ever see, Stephen turned to Sal with an expression she didn't recognize and said, 'I almost killed you on the St. Lawrence. I wasn't sure I was going to tell you that.'

He had to speak loudly to be heard, even though they stood together.

Sal put her arm around his waist, shrugged, and smiled. His muscles were as taut as a starship's tow cable. 'Well, there's risk in anything,' she said, 'but I agreed with King that I should take the surrender offer instead of him sending one of his officers. You'd have thought that was a trick.'

'Not that,' Stephen said. 'We were about to dump the main oxygen supply, but I didn't. I-we, I didn't know which pipe was which. We cut off reaction mass to the thrusters instead. Because I decided I didn't want to kill a thousand people.'

His voice was trembling. Sal tried to hug herself against his chest, but Stephen held her apart and tilted her face so that she met his eyes.

'Another thousand people,' he said. Only then did he draw her close.

The expression Sal hadn't been able to recognize was hope.

'Stephen,' she said. 'Let me stay with you. All night.'

'No,' he murmured gently. 'That-'

'Please, Stephen, for God's sake!' she said.

'Sal, it's not you, it's me,' he said with his lips to her ear. 'On the ground, I don't sleep well. I don't really sleep. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I don't want anybody around me when. . Not even servants. Especially not somebody I care about.'

Sal drew away and looked into his eyes again. 'You don't understand, Stephen. If it's not you, it'll be the man I killed on Arles. The liquor helped for a while, but I can't drink enough anymore. If you won't hold me, I. .'

She flung her head forward and blotted her tears on Stephen's worn brown doublet. 'I don't know what I'll do. I don't know what I'll do.'

He stroked her back with fingers that could bend steel of their own thickness. 'You need me, Sal?' he said. 'You need me?'

'On my life I do, Stephen,' she said. She choked; she didn't know if he could hear her words or not. 'On my very life.'

'Christ's blood, what a pair of cripples we are!' he said.

Stephen lifted Sal into the air so that her short blond hair brushed the ceiling plates. 'But you ought to see the other guy,' he added with a wry smile. 'And after all, I didn't kill you, did I?'

Stephen swung her in a circle around him as though she were a child rather than a solidly built adult. Piet Ricimer looked up from the crowd pressing him. Sal caught a glimpse of a beaming smile replacing the amazement that had flashed across Piet's face.

'I warn you,' Stephen said, suddenly serious as he put her down. 'I've got two rooms with nothing but a bed, a wardrobe, and a lot of slash bottles. There won't be anything else available with this crowd in town.'

'We'll manage,' Sal said. She hugged him close again. 'We've managed everything so far.'

BETAPORT, VENUS

March 15, Year 28

1455 hours, Venus time

'I am pleased to see you again, Colonel,' Guillermo said as he bowed Stephen into Piet's private office.

The Molt was the only one authorized to open the door nowadays. The door keeper, on the other hand, was Dole or another trusted sailor who'd been with Captain Ricimer too long to care who a would-be intruder might be. If somebody tried to push into the captain's office, he got knocked down- and lucky if he didn't get a boot in the ribs besides.

Of course, Mister Gregg wanting to see the captain-that was something else again. There weren't appointments between old shipmates.

Piet was hunched over a desk covered with shiny glassine printouts, trying to find a datum as he talked on the phone. He raised three fingers when he heard the door open, but he didn't look up from his search. Stephen moved a stack of flimsies and a sample case-microchips, of recent European manufacture from the look of them-off the chair and sat down.

Piet caught the motion from the corner of his eye. He glanced at Stephen, grinned with enthusiasm, and said, 'I'm very sorry, Factor, but something's come up. I'll get back to you.'

He hung up the phone and switched it mute. 'Stephen!' he said, rising from his chair. 'My goodness, I'm afraid I've been as busy as I hear you are yourself!'

'I came by with a business proposition, Piet,' Stephen said as they shook hands above the cluttered desk. Piet looked like he'd gained five kilos in the months since the Wrath came home, but the fire of his countenance burned just as bright as it ever had.

'I've got something I'd like you to look at too, Stephen,' Piet said as they both sat down. 'But you first, please. After all, you came to me when I haven't managed to get out to see anybody in far too long.'

'Blythe Spirits Limited has six ships, now, Piet,' Stephen said, leaning back deliberately in the chair. He'd learned that by feigning ease he could sometimes induce the actual feeling. 'They're all of them ships taken in the sweep of Fed shipping we made after the Grand Fleet of Retribution came apart.'

He made a face at Pleyal's grandiose title. 'They can be had for a song, though the navigational upgrades are a significant factor.'

Piet chuckled, then sobered. 'Metal hulls aren't as strong as good ceramic, Stephen,' he said. 'Not that I'm trying to tell you or Captain Blythe your business, but. .'

Stephen nodded. 'Right, but metal degrades instead of failing abruptly the way overstressed ceramic's been known to do.'

He smiled grimly. They'd seen it happen to a consort of their own vessel: what had been a ship after one transit disintegrated to a sleet of gravel during the next. There'd been no survivors, and no chance of survivors.

'At the point Sal no longer thinks the hulls are safe,' Stephen continued, 'we'll strip the electronics and scrap the rest. They're very cheap, Piet.'

'I wouldn't venture to make business decisions for you, Stephen,' Piet said with a reminiscent smile. They'd seen a lot of things together, Piet and he.

Outside the door a cultured, angry voice said, 'I have an appointment with the factor, my good man, an appointment!'

Lightbody was on duty with Guillermo. Stephen heard the sailor's reply only as a truculent rumble, but he was willing to bet Lightbody slapped his truncheon of high-pressure tubing into his palm as he spoke.