The Reaches

internal pressure. They were ceramic-coated and smeared with the milky, resilient sap of a mirrorside climbing vine immediately before the ship was closed for liftoff.

The square panel was wedged closed on the inside. Gregg grabbed the handle of one wedge and strained against it. It didn't move. He grunted in frustration.

'The other way, sir!' Jeude croaked. 'You're pushing it home.'

That's exactly what he was doing.

Dole had gotten cautiously to his feet, but he swayed where he stood. It was hard to imagine that in the recent past the crew had enough energy to fight.

Gregg didn't need help, now that Jeude had oriented him. The closures were paired, one on each of the four surfaces. Stampfer knocked them home with a mallet on Benison. Gregg used his left hand on the forward handle to anchor his pull on the wedge opposite. The right side gave, the top gave-

He switched the power grip to his left hand, because his right fingers were bleeding from pressure cuts. The forward closure pulled out. Gregg lost his balance with it and fell backward.

Dole, Jeude, and Lightbody reached over him, grabbed the hatch crossbar, and tugged inward with their combined strength. Though the bottom wedge was still in place, the hatch jumped from its jamb and tilted inward.

The air that blasted past it was dusty and tinged with ions from the thruster's exhaust. Its touch was as close to heaven as Gregg expected ever to know.

'Coming in!' said Piet Ricimer, his voice high-pitched and trembling with relief.

The Umber grounded in a controlled crash and immediately rolled onto her portside. She'd been launched from a cradle. Hydraulically-extended landing legs to stabilize the craft on the ground were out of the question, and fixed outriggers would have put too much strain on the hull during atmospheric braking.

The hatch was nearly overhead. Gregg stepped to a cross brace-he was still too logy to jump-and thrust his flashgun through the opening. Ricimer stroked Guillermo awake. The Molt was strapped to what now was the starboard bulkhead.

'Follow me!' Gregg cried as he crawled through the hatch. His battery satchel, slung at hip level, caught on the jamb. A crewman below gave Gregg a boost. He slid down the hull and hit Umber's mirrorside on his shoulder and chest.

He didn't care. He was breathing in deep lungfuls of air, and it would be a long time before any injuries outweighed the pleasure of that feeling.

A pair of Molts stared at the Umber from the open door of the warehouse two hundred meters away. Other Molts clustered near the tramhead, apparently intent on their own thoughts. Gregg didn't see any humans.

He glanced over his shoulder. Dole had squirmed through the hatch with a repeater held high to keep it from knocking the hull as he dropped to the ground. Gregg reached up to help control the bosun's fall.

The Umber herself was in amazingly good condition. The ceramic coating had flaked away in patches from her underside when she scraped onto the landing field, but the rest of the hull appeared intact. She could be made to fly with a little effort.

It would take much greater effort to convince any of the present complement to crew her again, though.

Piet Ricimer was the third man out. He must have used his rank to press ahead of the other men. Gregg and Dole together caught him as he slid down.

'Let's go,' Ricimer said as he unslung his rifle. He grinned. Guillermo hopped easily to the ground beside them. 'Since we don't have a battalion to back us up, I think we'd best depend on speed.'

The four of them spread into a loose skirmish line as they moved toward the tramhead. Jeude climbed through the hatch, jumped to the ground, and fell. He brushed off his rifle's receiver as he jogged to a place between Dole and Ricimer.

The warehouses were on the left, with the Molt hovels straggling against the Mirror beyond. Gregg took the right side of the Venerian formation, toward the barracks and house. None of Umber's structures seemed to have windows. The doors to the residences were on the far side.

The wind blew hard enough to sting sand against Gregg's bare hands, but it didn't raise a pall the way the storm had during the assault on realside. At least the weather was cooperating. He really wished there'd been time to don his body armor, but there wasn't. Suits for the whole crew were stored in the Umber, but removing them would mean dismantling the ship.

Lightbody joined them. Gregg looked back. Stampfer was climbing through the hatch. All the men carried rifles. Besides a cutting bar, Guillermo wore a holstered pistol, but Gregg wasn't sure how serious a weapon it was meant to be.

The Molts at the tramhead watched the Venerians. Many of them turned only their heads, giving the crowd an uncanny resemblance to an array of mechanical toys.

The line reached the buildings. The Molts in the warehouse doorway had moved only their heads to track the Venerians. Ricimer turned and gestured toward Coye, running to catch up with them. 'Coye!' he called, aided by the breeze. 'Watch that pair!'

Gregg stepped smoothly around the corner of the barracks, the nearer of the two buildings on his end, and presented his laser. The doors in the middle of both buildings were closed tightly against the windblown sand. There were no windows on this side either.

Nothing to see, and no one to impress by pomp.

'Who is in charge here?' Ricimer called to the Molts at the tramhead.

None of them reacted until Guillermo chittered something in his own speech. One of the Molts said in English, 'Our supervisors have gone across the Mirror for the celebration. Who are you?'

Guillermo continued to talk in quick, clattering vocables. The local Molts moved, slight shifts of position that relieved the Venerians' tension at the abnormal stillness of a moment before. Ricimer approached the group. His men hung back by a step or a half-step each, so that the line of humans became a shallow vee. None of the aliens was armed or appeared hostile.

Guillermo turned to Ricimer and explained, 'The Earth Convoy has arrived on the realside. There will be a party in Umber City. The humans from here have crossed the Mirror to join it.'

'Most of the humans,' said the Molt who had spoken before. He wore a sash of office, gray from a distance but grease-smeared white when Gregg saw it closer. 'Under-clerk Elkinghorn is-there she is.'

The Molt pointed. Gregg was already turning. The barracks door had opened. The woman who'd started toward the tramhead had failed to latch it properly behind her: as Gregg watched, the door blew open again, then slammed with a bang deadened by the adverse wind.

'Hey!' she called. She wore uniform trousers and tunic, but she had on house slippers rather than boots. 'Hey! Who are you?'

'Hold it right where you are!' Dole shouted as he aimed his rifle.

'Don't!' Piet Ricimer cried. 'Don't shoot!'

The woman turned and ran back toward the door from which she'd come. A bottle flew out of the pocket of her tunic and broke on the ground. It was half full of amber liquor.

Elkinghorn was ten meters away. Gregg aimed. He was coldly furious with himself for not having continued to watch the residence buildings.

'Stephen!' Ricimer called. 'Don't shoot her!'

Elkinghorn threw open the door. Gregg fired past her head, into the partition wall opposite.

Elkinghorn flung herself backward, onto the ground. The laser bolt converted paint and insulation to blazing gas. It blew the door shut and bulged the sides of the barracks.

'I think,' said Gregg as he clicked a fresh battery into his flashgun, 'that she'll be in a mood to answer our questions now.'

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