Ricimer murmured something to Guillermo and climbed into the bridge. He extended a hand that Gregg refused. An upward pull would stress his guts the wrong way.
A crewman pushed from behind, welcome help.
The two men walked along the slightly resilient surface of the personnel bridge. With their faceshields up they could talk without using radio intercom, but at first neither of them spoke.
'I don't suppose they understand,' Ricimer said. 'Do you think they do, Stephen?'
'That Governor Halys could find her life a lot simpler if she handed a couple of high-ranking scapegoats to the Federation for trial?' Gregg said. 'No, I doubt it.'
He snorted. 'As Stampfer implied, sailors don't think the way gentlemen do. And rulers. But I don't think she'd bother throwing the men to Pleyal as well.'
'It'll go on, what we've started,' Ricimer said. The sidewalls of the tube had a faint red glow, but there was a white light-source at the distant end. 'When they see, when all Venus sees the wealth out there, there'll be no keeping us back from the stars. This time it won't be a single empire that shatters into another Collapse. Man will
Gregg would have chuckled, but his throat caught in the harsh atmosphere. 'You don't have to preach to me, Piet,' he said when he'd hacked his voice clear again.
Ricimer looked at him. 'What do you believe in, Stephen?' he asked.
Gregg looked back. He lifted a hand to wipe his eyes and remembered that he wore armored gauntlets. 'I believe,' he said, 'that when I'm-the way I get. That I can hit anything I aim at. Anything.'
Ricimer nodded, sad-eyed. 'And God?' he asked. 'Do you believe in God?'
'Not the way you do, Piet,' Gregg said flatly. Time was too short to spend it in lies.
'Yes,' Ricimer said. 'But almost as much as I believe in God, Stephen, I believe in the stars. And I believe He means mankind to have the stars.'
Gregg laughed and broke into wheezing coughs again. He bent to lessen the strain on his wound.
His friend put out an arm to steady him. Their armored hands locked. 'I believe in you, Piet,' Gregg said at last. 'That's been enough this far.'
They'd reached the personnel lock set into one panel of the huge cargo doors. Ricimer pushed the latchplate.
The portal slid sideways. The men waiting for them within the main lock wore hard suits of black ceramic: members of the Governor's Guard. Their visors were down. They weren't armed, but there were six of them.
'This way, please, gentlemen,' said a voice on the intercom. A guard gestured to the inner lock as the other portal sealed again. 'Precede us, if you will.'
The guards were anonymous in their armor. They weren't normally stationed in Betaport, but there'd been plenty of time since the
Piet Ricimer straightened. 'It was really worth it, Stephen,' he said. 'Please believe that.'
'It was worth it for me,' Gregg said. His eyes were still watering from the sulphur in the boarding tube.
A guard touched the door latch. The portal slid open. Gregg stepped through behind Ricimer.
Three more guards stood to either side of the lock. Beyond them, Dock Street was full of people: citizens of Betaport, factors from Beta Regio and even farther, and a large contingent of brilliantly-garbed court officials.
In the midst of the court officials was a small woman. Stephen Gregg could barely make her out because of his tears and the bodies of twelve more of her black-armored guards.
They were cheering. The whole crowd was cheering, every soul of them.
Through the Breach
BETAPORT, VENUS
7 Days Before Sailing
'Mister Jeremy Moore,' announced the alien slave as he ushered me into the private chamber of the Blue Rose Tavern. The public bar served as a waiting room and hiring hall for the Venus Asteroid Expedition, while General Commander Piet Ricimer used the back room as an office.
I'd heard that the aide now with Ricimer, Stephen Gregg, was a conscienceless killer. My first glimpse of the man was both a relief and a disappointment. Gregg was big, true; but he looked empty, no more dangerous than a suit of ceramic armor waiting for someone to put it on. Blond and pale, Gregg could have been handsome if his features were more animated.
Whereas General Commander Ricimer wasn't. .
Maybe Stephen Gregg wasn't as empty as I'd first thought.
'Thank you, Guillermo,' said Ricimer. 'Has Captain Macquerie arrived?'
'Not yet,' the slave replied. 'I'll alert you when he does.' Guillermo's diction was excellent, though his tongueless mouth clipped the sibilant. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the bustle of the public bar.
Guillermo was a chitinous biped with a triangular face and a pink sash-of-office worn bandolier fashion over one shoulder. I'd never been so close to a Molt slave before. There weren't many in the Solar System and fewer still on Venus. Their planet of origin was unknown, but their present province was the entire region of space mankind had colonized before the Collapse.
Molts remained and prospered on worlds from which men had vanished. Now, with man's return to the stars, the aliens' racial memory made them additionally valuable: Molts could operate the pre-Collapse machinery which survived on some outworlds.
'Well, Mister Moore,' Ricimer said. 'What are your qualifications for the Asteroid Expedition?'
'Well, I've not myself been involved in off-planet trade, sir,' I said, trying to look earnest and superior, 'but I'm a gentleman, you see, and thus an asset to any proposal. My father-may he continue well-is Moore of Rhadicund. Ah-'
The two spacemen watched me: Ricimer with amusement, Gregg with no amusement at all. I didn't understand their coolness. I'd thought this was the way to build rapport, since Gregg was a gentleman also, member of a factorial family, and Ricimer at least claimed the status.
'Ah. .' I repeated. Carefully, because the subject could easily become a can of worms, I went on, 'I've been a member of the household of Councilor Duneen-chief advisor to the Governor of the Free State of Venus.'
'We know who Councilor Duneen is, Mister Moore,' Ricimer said dryly. 'We'd probably know of him even if he weren't a major backer of the expedition.'
The walls of the room were covered to shoulder height in tilework. The color blurred upward from near black at floor level to smoky gray shot with wisps of silver. The ceiling and upper walls were coated with beige sealant that might well date from the tavern's construction.
The table behind which Ricimer and Gregg sat-they hadn't offered me a chair-was probably part of the tavern furnishings. The communications console in a back corner was brand-new. The ceramic chassis marked the console as of Venerian manufacture, since an off-planet unit would have been made of metal or organic resin instead, but its electronics were built from chips stockpiled on distant worlds where automated factories continued to produce even after the human colonies perished.
Very probably, Piet Ricimer himself had brought those chips to Venus on an earlier voyage. Earth, with a population of twenty millions after the Collapse, had returned to space earlier than tiny Venus. Now that all planets outside the Solar System were claimed by the largest pair of ramshackle Terran states, the North American Federation and the Southern Cross, other men traded beyond Pluto only with one hand on their guns.
Piet Ricimer and his cohorts had kept both hands on their guns, and they traded very well indeed. Whatever the cover story-Venus and the Federation weren't technically at war-the present expedition wasn't headed for the Asteroid Belt to bring back metals that Venus had learned to do without during the Collapse.
I changed tack. I'd prepared for this interview by trading my floridly expensive best suit for clothing of more sober cut and material, though I'd have stayed with the former's purple silk plush and gold lace if the garments had
