The Reaches

Lady Melinda was an attractive widow of 29 who lived with her brother-Councilor Duneen. Hawtry'd thought to use me as his go-between in the lady's seduction. I, on the other hand-

I would never have claimed I was perfect, but I liked women too much to lure one into the clutches of Thomas Hawtry. And as it turned out, I liked the Lady Melinda a great deal more than was sensible for a destitute member of the lesser gentry.

'Regrettably, I didn't hear from your steward, Thom,' I said. No point in missing a target of opportunity. 'And you know, I'm feeling a bit of a pinch right now. If-'

Not much of a target. 'Aren't we all, Jeremy, aren't we all!' Hawtry boomed. 'After I bring my expedition back, though, all my friends will live like kings! Say, you know about the so-called 'asteroids expedition,' don't you?'

He waved an arm toward the docked ships. A hydraulic pump began to squeal as it shifted the Absalom 231 in its cradle.

'Captain Ricimer's. .' I said, hiding my puzzlement.

'And mine,' said Hawtry, tapping himself on the breast significantly. 'I'm co-leader, though we're keeping it quiet for the time being. A very political matter, someone of my stature in charge of a voyage like this.'

Hawtry linked his arm familiarly with mine and began pacing back along the line of expedition vessels. His friendliness wasn't sincere. In the ten months I knew Hawtry intimately in the Duneen household, the man had never been sincere about anything except his ambition and his self-love.

But neither did Hawtry seem to be dissembling the hatred I'd expected. Irritated at his go-between's lack of progress and very drunk, Hawtry had forced the Lady Melinda's door on a night when her brother was out of the house. The racket brought the servants to the scene in numbers.

I, the gentleman who was sharing the lady's bed that night, escaped in the confusion-but my presence hadn't gone unremarked. The greater scandal saved Hawtry from the consequences of his brutal folly, but I scarcely expected the fellow to feel grateful. Apparently Hawtry's embarrassment was so great that he'd recast the incident completely in his own mind.

'I'm going to take the war to the Federation,' Hawtry said, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise in the storage dock. He accompanied the words with broad gestures of his free hand. 'And it is a war, you know. Nothing less than that!'

A dozen common sailors examined the Porcelain's hull and thruster nozzles, shouting comments to one another. The men weren't on duty; several of them carried liquor bottles in pockets of their loose garments. They might simply be spectators. Ricimer's flagship was an unusual vessel, and the expedition had been the only subject of conversation in Betaport for a standard month.

'Asteroids!' Hawtry snorted. 'The Feds bring their microchips and pre-Collapse artifacts into the system in powerful convoys, Jeremy. . but I'm going to hit them where they aren't prepared for it. They don't defend the ports on the other side of the Mirror where the wealth is gathered. I'll go through the Breach and take them unawares!'

Hawtry wasn't drunk, and he didn't have a hidden reason to blurt this secret plan. Because I was a gentleman of sorts and an acquaintance, I was someone for Hawtry to brag to; it was as simple as that.

Of course, the proposal was so unlikely that I would have discounted it completely if I hadn't heard Ricimer and Gregg discussing the same thing.

'I didn't think it was practical to transit the Breach,' I said truthfully. 'Landolph got through with only one ship of seven, and nobody has succeeded again in the past eighty years. It's simpler to voyage the long way, even though that's a year and a half either way.'

Interstellar travel involved slipping from the sidereal universe into other bubbles of sponge space where the constants for matter and energy differed. Because a vessel which crossed a dimensional membrane retained its relative motion, acceleration under varied constants translated into great changes in speed and distance when the vessel returned to the human universe.

No other bubble universe was habitable or even contained matter as humans understood the term. The sidereal universe itself had partially mitosed during the process of creation, however, and it was along that boundary-the Mirror-that the most valuable pre-Collapse remains were to be found.

Populations across the Mirror had still been small when the Revolt smashed the delicate fabric of civilization. Often a colony's death throes weren't massive enough to complete the destruction of the automated factories, as had happened on the larger outworlds and in the Solar System itself.

For the most part the Mirror was permeable only to objects of less than about a hundred kilograms. Three generations before, Landolph had found a point at which it was possible to transit the Mirror through sponge space.

Landolph's Breach wasn't of practical value, since energy gradients between the bubble universes were higher than ships could easily withstand. Perhaps it had been different for navigators of the civilization before the Collapse.

'Oh, the Breach,' Hawtry said dismissively. 'Say, that's a matter for sailors. Our Venus lads can do things that cowards from Earth never dreamed of. If they were real men, they wouldn't kiss the feet of a tyrant like Pleyal!'

'I see,' I said in a neutral voice.

I supposed there was truth in what Hawtry said. The ships of today were more rugged than Landolph's, and if half of Captain Ricimer's reputation was founded on fact, he was a sailor like no one born to woman before him. But the notion that a snap of the fingers would send a squadron through the Breach was-

Well, Hawtry's reality testing had always been notable for its absence. His notion of using the Lady Melinda as a shortcut to power, for example. .

The Porcelain's crew was shifting the first of the plasma cannon from the lowboy. A crane lifted the gun tube onto a trolley in the hold, but from there on the weapon would be manhandled into position.

The Porcelain's ceramic hull was pierced with more than a score of shuttered gunports, but like most vessels she carried only one gun for every four or more ports. The crew would shift the weapons according to need.

'They'll get their use soon!' Hawtry said, eyeing the guns with smirking enthusiasm. 'And when I come back, well-it'll be Councilor Hawtry, see if it isn't, Moore. Say, there'll be nothing too good for the leader of the Breach Expedition!'

I felt the way I had the night I let the spacers inveigle me into the crooked card game, where there was a great deal to gain and my life to lose. I said, 'I can see that you and Captain Ricimer-'

'Ricimer!' Hawtry snorted. 'That man, that artisan's son? Surely you don't think that a project of this magnitude wouldn't have a gentleman as its real head!'

'There's Mister Stephen Gregg, of course,' I said judiciously.

'The younger son of a smallholder in the Atalanta Plains!' Hawtry said. 'Good God, man! As well have you commander of the expedition as that yokel!'

'I take your point,' I said. 'Well, I have to get back now, Thom. Need to dress for dinner, you see.'

'Yes, say, look me up when I return, Moore,' Hawtry said. 'I'll be expanding my household, and I shouldn't wonder that I'd have a place for a clever bugger like you.'

Hawtry turned and stared at the ships which he claimed to command. He stood arms akimbo and with his feet spread wide, a bold and possessive posture.

I walked on quickly, more to escape Hawtry than for any need of haste. Dinner was part of Eloise's agenda, though dressing was not. Quite the contrary.

In an odd way, the conversation had helped settle my mind. I wasn't a spacer: I couldn't judge the risks of this expedition.

But I could judge men.

Hawtry was a fool if he thought he could brush aside Piet Ricimer. And if Hawtry thought he could ride roughshod over Stephen Gregg, he was a dead man.

BETAPORT, VENUS