The Reaches

send us as couriers. Molts.' He made the clucking noise Gregg had decided was laughter.

The vegetation here was nothing like that on the sidereal side of the Mirror. The trees grew in clumps from a common base, like enlarged grasses. The foliage formed a dense net overhead, but the volume beneath was divided into conical vaults rather than the cathedral aisles of a forest whose trees grew as individual vertical columns.

After a time, Gregg shifted the flashgun from his right arm to his left. The weapon was less accessible there, but he couldn't bring himself to believe they were in serious danger of ambush. He wasn't a good judge of distances, certainly not in gullied forest like this.

Everything seemed profitless: this hike, this expedition; life itself. Passage through the Mirror had blighted his mind like a field ripped by black frost. He could only pray that the effect would wear off-or that the Feds would anticipate his own sinful consideration of looking down the short, fat barrel of his laser as his thumb stroked the trigger.

'K'Jax?' Gregg called suddenly. He supposed they shouldn't make any more noise than necessary, but it was necessary for him to blast his thoughts out of their current channel. 'Does the Mirror bother you Molts? Does it make you feel as if. .'

'As if your mind had been coated in wax and sectioned for slides?' Piet Ricimer offered. It hadn't occurred to Gregg to ask his friend.

'Yes,' said the Molt leader flatly.

'Does it go away?' Gregg demanded.

'Mostly,' said K'Jax. He continued striding ahead, not bothering to look back as he spoke. The Molts took swifter, shorter strides than humans of similar height.

'Until the next time,' said another of the locals. 'We enter the Mirror only when we must, so it doesn't matter what it costs.'

'But you entered it for us,' said Ricimer.

'You are enemies of our enemies,' the Molt explained.

From the head of the line, K'Jax stopped, knelt, and announced, 'The settlement is just ahead. The humans call it Cedrao.'

Gregg eased forward in a crouch to bring himself parallel with K'Jax. He noticed that one of the local Molts turned to watch their backtrail, his projectile weapon ready.

The trees grew up to the edge of a twenty-meter drop. From that point, the ground fell away in a series of a dozen comparable steps, about as broad as they were deep. The Peaches had overflown similar country as Piet brought her in, but it didn't lie within fifty kilometers of their eventual landing point. Divergence on the mirrorside of Benison included details of tectonics as well as biology.

Below the escarpment, the tilted remains of ancient sediments, lay a broad valley. Sunrise painted into a pink squiggle half a kilometer distant the river that had cut through the rocks over ages.

On the near bank was a straggle of two or three hundred houses. The community stank of human and industrial wastes even at this distance.

'Cedrao,' K'Jax repeated.

Ricimer sighted through the hand-sized electronic magnifier which he carried. Gregg suspected that a simple optical telescope would have been nearly as effective and considerably more rugged, but Piet liked modern toys.

A steam whistle blew from a long shed at one end of the community. An autogyro was parked behind the cast-concrete building that appeared to be the Commandatura. A few pedestrians wandered the street between the river and the dwellings. All of those Gregg could see through the flashgun's sight were Molts.

Ricimer backed away from the edge of the bluff and stood up. 'How many humans live in Cedrao?' he asked.

'A few score,' K'Jax said. 'Transients when a ship lands. And a few human slaves.'

'Rabbits,' Guillermo explained.

'You could capture the town by a surprise attack,' Gregg said/suggested.

'If we attacked,' said the Molt watching their backtrail, 'the Molts down there would fight us too. They aren't Deels. They won't hunt us in the woods, but they'll resist an attempt on their clan.'

'K'Jax and his fellows ran away from humans and formed their own clan,' Guillermo said. 'Others of my folk bond to their supervisors.' He clucked as the locals had done.

Guillermo himself had bonded to his supervisor-as he knew very well.

Ricimer shook himself. 'We can go now,' he said. 'Though-Stephen, would you prefer to, ah, rest on this side before we cross the Mirror again?'

'I don't want to think about it,' Gregg said in a voice as pale as hoarfrost. 'If I thought about it for a day, I'd, I'd. . It'd be harder.'

K'Jax strode off in the lead as brusquely as he'd executed each previous decision of the human leader. The others fell into line behind him.

'Piet?' Gregg said.

'Um?' his friend said, grinning wryly back over his shoulder.

'Why did we come here at all?'

Ricimer looked front again and nodded his head. 'Because I had to see,' he said at last. 'See the Mirror, and see how President Pleyal was really developing the worlds he claims.'

He looked back at Gregg again. All the humor was gone from his face. 'They can't be allowed to continue, Stephen,' he said. 'Everything here, everything on Jewelhouse and Biruta and everywhere the Federation squats- slavery, cruelty, and no chance of survival if there's the least shock to the home government. Mankind will return to the stars. President Pleyal and his henchmen can't be allowed to stop it, no matter what it takes.'

'Oh, I know what it'll take,' Stephen Gregg said, as much to himself as to his friend. His right hand rested on the grip of his flashgun, while his left gently rubbed the weapon's barrel. 'And it can be arranged, you bet.'

32

Near Rondelet

'We ought to go down and get them,' said Adrien Ricimer. 'There's probably a dozen ships on Rondelet for the taking.'

He turned. Because everyone aboard the Peaches wore his hard suit, there was much less room than usual in the featherboat's interior. Adrien's elbow clacked against the back of Gregg's suit. For an instant, Gregg's right fist bunched. He didn't look around. After a moment, he relaxed.

'I watched the Rose come down with her thrusters shot away, boy,' Dole said from the scanner readout. 'I don't much want to watch from the inside when another drops.'

The featherboat slowly orbited Rondelet at ten light-seconds distance; the Dalriada kept station a little less than a light-second away. Piet had narrowed the viewscreen field to the image of the planet alone, since a spherical panorama was useless on this scale, but even so Rondelet was no more than a cloud-streaked blue bead.

Radar and even optical magnifiers on the planet could find the ships. There was no reason to assume that would happen so long as the Venerians kept their thrusters and transit apparatus shut down. Chances were good that an incoming Federation vessel would spend a number of close orbits trying to raise an operator on the planet's surface who could supply landing information.

'Ionization track,' said Dole.

Coye, crewing the plasma weapon with Leon, reacted by latching down his faceshield. There was no need for that yet, but the slap click startled Gregg into doing the same thing. Gregg quickly reopened his visor, embarrassed but obscurely happy to have something to do with his hands at a moment he had no duties.

'Adrien,' Piet Ricimer ordered his brother, 'get the Dalriada. We'll handle this, but they're to be ready to support us. Leon, don't run the gun out until I order. Everyone, check your suit now before we