The Reaches

'I do count Molts, Stephen,' Ricimer said. He crossed his wrists behind his back and looked directly into Gregg's angry gaze. 'You killed because it was necessary to save your own life and those of your friends. We all did, whoever's finger was on the trigger.'

'It was necessary because I went beyond Pluto,' Gregg said. He didn't shout, but the way his voice trembled would have frightened anyone who didn't trust Gregg's control. 'So I'm not going to do that again.'

'I can't force you, Stephen,' Ricimer said. 'But I want you to know that I don't think of you as merely an investor or even as a friend. Your abilities may be necessary to our success.'

'You know, Piet,' Gregg said, 'I don't care if you think I'm a coward. I suppose I am. . But what I'm afraid of is me.'

'Stephen, you're not a coward,' Ricimer said. He tried to take Gregg's right hand in his, but the bigger man jerked it away.

'I don't hate killing,' Gregg shouted. 'I like it, Piet. I'm good at it, and I really like it! The only problem is, that makes me hate myself.'

'Stephen-' Ricimer said, then twisted away. He clenched his fists, opened them again, and pressed his fingertips against the wall of living rock. 'The Lord won't let His purpose fail,' he whispered.

Ricimer turned around again. He gave Gregg a genuine smile, though tears glittered in the corners of his eyes. 'You'll be taking that troubleshooting job your uncle offered you?' he asked.

Gregg nodded. 'We haven't discussed it formally,' he said. 'Probably, yes.'

He hugged the smaller man to him. 'Look, Piet,' he said. 'If you needed me. . But you don't. There's plenty of gunmen out there.'

Ricimer squeezed Gregg's shoulder as they broke apart. 'There's plenty of gunmen out there,' he repeated without agreement.

An outcry from the street redoubled when the men within the tavern took it up. Feet and furniture shuffled.

Gregg opened the office door. The sailors were already gone. The gentlemen from the back room were crowding toward the street in turn, accompanied by their servants. The bartender himself rubbed his hands on his apron as if thinking of leaving himself.

'Marvin?' Ricimer asked.

'The Hawkwood's landed, Mr. Ricimer,' the bartender blurted. 'They're bringing the crew through the airlocks right now, what there's left of them.'

'The Hawkwood?' Gregg said in amazement.

'Yessir,' Marvin agreed with a furious nod. 'But the crew, they're in terrible shape! The port warden says they loaded two hundred men on Biruta and there's not but fifteen alive!'

Guillermo followed as Ricimer and Gregg pushed out onto Dock Street. Ricimer's status as a local hero cleared them a path through the gathering mob. The gentlemen who'd attended the meeting had to fight their way to the front with the help of their servants.

The airlock serving Dock Three, directly across the corridor from the tavern, rumbled open. A whiff of sulphurous fumes from the outer atmosphere dissipated across the crowd. Port personnel carrying stretchers, some of them fashioned from tarpaulin-wrapped rifles, filled the lock's interior.

'Alexi!' Siddons Mostert cried as he knelt beside his supine brother. An ambulance clanged in the near distance, trying to make its way through the people filling the corridor. 'Ricimer and I thought that avenging you was all we could offer your memory!'

Alexi Mostert lurched upright on his stretcher. He looked like a carving of hollow-cheeked Death. His skin had a grayish sheen, and all his teeth had fallen out. 'Ricimer?' he croaked. 'That traitor!'

Ricimer stood beside Siddons Mostert. It was only when Ricimer jerked at the accusation that Alexi's wild eyes actually focused on him.

'Traitor!' Alexi repeated. He tried to point at Ricimer, but the effort was too great and he fell back again.

Spectators looked from the Hawkwood's hideously wasted survivors to the man Mostert was accusing-and edged away. Ricimer drew himself up stiffly.

Gregg had lagged a step behind Ricimer. Now he moved to his friend's side.

'What's this?' Factor Wiley demanded. 'Traitor?'

'He abandoned us,' Alexi Mostert said, closing his eyes to concentrate his energy on his words. 'Half our thrusters were shot out before we could transit. We had only a week's food for as many people as we'd taken aboard, and only half the thrusters to carry us. He-'

Mostert opened his eyes. This time he managed to point a finger bony as a chicken's claw at Piet Ricimer. 'He ran off and left us to starve!'

'No!' Stephen Gregg shouted. 'No! That's not what happened!'

The crowd surged as the ambulance finally arrived. Men who'd heard Mostert bellowed the accusation to those farther back. Soon the corridor thundered with inarticulate rage.

Gregg shouted himself hoarse, though he couldn't hear his own voice over the general din. When he thought to look around for his friend, he saw no sign of either Piet Ricimer or his Molt attendant.

28

Venus

'Mr. Gregg, gentlemen,' said the servant in fawn livery. He bowed Gregg into the Mostert brothers' drawing room, then closed the door behind the visitor.

'Very good to see you again, Mr. Gregg,' Siddons Mostert said with a shade too much enthusiasm. He rose from the couch and extended his hand.

'And that in spades from me, Gregg,' said his brother. 'But I won't get up just this moment, if it's all the same with you.'

A month of food and medical care had made a considerable improvement in Alexi Mostert. If Gregg hadn't seen the survivors as they were carried into Betaport, though, he would have said the shipowner was on the point of death. Alexi sat in a wheelchair with a robe over his legs. His hands and face had filled out, but there was a degree of stiffness to all his motions.

'I'm glad to see you looking so well, sir,' Gregg said as he leaned over to shake Alexi's hand. 'And I appreciate you both giving me this audience. I know you must be very busy.'

The drawing room was spacious but furnished in a deliberately sparse fashion. Room was the ultimate luxury on Venus, where habitable volume had to be armored against elements as violent as those of any human-occupied world.

As if to underscore that fact, the room's sole decoration was the mural on the long wall facing the door. In reds and grays and oranges, a storm ripped over the sculptured basalt of the Venerian surface. In the background, a curve overlaid by yellow-brown swirls of sulphuric acid might have been either the Betaport dome which protected the Mosterts' townhouse-or the whim of an atmosphere dense enough to cut with a knife.

'Pour yourself a drink and sit down, lad,' Alexi said. He gestured toward the glasses, bottles, and carafe of water on the serving table along the short wall to his left.

Gregg nodded and stepped toward the table. When his back was turned, Alexi continued, 'I was planning to call on you, you know, as soon as I got my pins under me properly. I'm told that you were the fellow who saved my life by bringing down that Fed drone.'

'Saved the lives of everyone who was saved,' Siddons said primly. 'And saved the cargo loaded on the Hawkwood, which is quite a nice amount.'

He cleared his throat. 'Ah, the share-out on the cargo isn't quite complete yet,' he added. 'But if your uncle is concerned about the delay, I'm sure. .?'

Gregg turned to his hosts holding a shot of greenish-gray liquor in one hand and a water chaser in the other. He sipped the liquor, then water. 'Uncle Benjamin trusts you implicitly, gentlemen,' he said. 'We await the accounting with interest, but you needn't hurry such a complex matter on our part.'