The Reaches

The Night Before Sailing

Three sailors guarded the city side of Dock 22. Two of the men carried powered cutting bars. The third had stuck forty centimeters of high-pressure tubing under his belt, and a double-barreled shotgun leaned against the wall behind him.

On the other side of the airlock, a tubular personnel bridge stretched to the Porcelain's hatch. Though Dock 22 was closed and the interior had been purged, too much of the hellish Venerian atmosphere leaked past the domed clamshell doors for the dock to be open onto the city proper.

Traffic on Dock Street was sparse at this hour. The airlock guards watched me with mild interest. That turned to sharp concern when they realized that I was guiding directly toward them the drunk I supported. The sailor with the length of tubing closed the pocket Bible he'd been reading and threw his shoulders back twice to loosen the muscles.

'My name doesn't matter,' I said. 'But I've an important message for Mister Gregg. I need to see him in person.'

'Piss off,' said one of the sailors. He touched the trigger of his cutting bar. The ceramic teeth whined a bitter sneer.

'This the Bahia?' mumbled the drunk.

I held a flask to the lips of the man draped against me. 'Here you go, my friend,' I said reassuringly. 'We'll be aboard shortly.'

'Gotta lift ship. .' the drunk said. He began to cough rackingly.

'I wouldn't mind a sip of that,' said one of the guards.

'Shut up, Pinter,' said the man with the tubing. 'You know better than that.'

He turned his attention to me and my charge. 'No one boards the Porcelain now, sir,' he said. 'Why don't you and your friend go about your business?'

'This is our business,' I said. 'Call Mister Gregg. Tell him there's a man here with information necessary to the success of the expedition.'

Pinter frowned, leaned forward, and sniffed at the neck of the open flask. 'Hey, buddy,' he said. 'What d'ye have in that bottle, anyhow?'

'You wouldn't like the vintage,' I said. 'Call Mister Gregg now. We need to get this gentleman in a bunk as soon as possible.'

The sailor who'd initially ordered me away looked uncertain. 'What's going on, Lightbody?' he asked the man with the tubing. 'He's a gentleman, isn't he?'

'All right, Pinter,' Lightbody said in sudden decision. He gestured to the wired communicator which was built into the personnel bridge. 'Call him.'

He smiled with a grim sort of humor. 'Nobody asks for Mister Gregg because they want to waste his time.'

Gregg arrived less than two minutes after the summons. His blue trousers and blue-gray tunic were old and worn. Both garments were of heavy cloth and fitted with many pockets.

Gregg didn't wear a protective suit, though the air that puffed out when he opened the lock was hot and stank of hellfire. He didn't carry a weapon, either; but Stephen Gregg was a weapon.

Sulphurous gases leaking into the personnel bridge had brought tears to Gregg's eyes. He blinked to control them. 'Mister Jeremy Moore,' he said softly. The catch in his voice might also have been a result of the corrosive atmosphere.

I lifted the face of the man I supported so that the light fell fully on it. 'I'm bringing Captain Macquerie aboard,' I said. 'We're together. I, ah, thought it would be wise not to trouble the general commander.'

'Where's 'a Bahia?' Macquerie mumbled. 'Gotta lift tonight. .'

'Ah,' said Gregg. I couldn't see any change in his expression; the three common sailors, who knew Gregg better, visibly relaxed. 'Yes, that was good of you. Piet's resting now. The two of us can get our pilot aboard quietly, I think.'

He lifted the shanghaied captain out of my grip. 'Piet's too good a man for this existence, I sometimes think. But he's got friends.'

Gregg cycled the airlock open. The inner chamber was large enough to hold six men in hard suits. He paused. 'Lightbody? Pinter and Davies, all of you. You did well here, but don't report the-arrival-until after we've lifted in the morning. Do you understand?'

'Whatever you say, Mister Gregg,' Lightbody replied; the other two sailors nodded agreement. The men treated Gregg with respect due to affection, but they were also quite clearly afraid of him.

As the airlock's outer door closed behind us, Gregg looked over the head of the slumping Macquerie and said, 'You say you want to come with us, Moore. I'd rather pay you. I've got more money than I know what to do with, now.'

The inner door undogged and began to open even as the outer panel latched. The atmosphere of the personnel bridge struck me like the heart of a furnace.

The bridge was a 3-meter tube of flexible material, stiffened by a helix of glass fiber which also acted as a light guide. The reinforcement was a green spiral spinning dizzily outward until the arc of the sagging bridge began to rise again. A meter-wide floor provided a flat walkway.

I sneezed violently. My nose began to run. I rubbed it angrily with the back of my hand.

'I'll come, thank you,' I said. My voice was already hoarse from the harshness of the air. 'I'll find my own wealth in the Reaches, where you found yours.'

'Oh, you're a smart one, aren't you?' Gregg said harshly. 'You think you know where we're really going. . and perhaps you do, Mister Moore, perhaps you do. But you don't know what it is that the Reaches cost. Take the money. I'll give you three hundred Mapleleaf dollars for this night's work.'

The big man paced himself to walk along the bridge beside me. The walkway was barely wide enough for two, but Gregg held Macquerie out to the side where the tube's bulge provided room.

'I'm not afraid,' I said. I was terribly afraid. The personnel bridge quivered sickeningly underfoot, and the air that filled it was a foretaste of Hell. 'I'm a gentleman of Venus. I'll willing to take risks to liberate the outworlds from President Pleyal's tyranny!'

The effect of my words was like triggering a detonator. Stephen Gregg turned fast and gripped me by the throat with his free left hand. He lifted me and slammed me against the side of the bridge.

'I wasn't much for social graces even before I shipped out to the Reaches for the first time,' Gregg said softly. 'And I never liked worms taking me for a fool.'

The wall of the bridge seared my back through the clothing. The spiral of reinforcing fiber felt like a white slash against the general scarlet pain.

Macquerie, somnolent from the drugged liquor, dangled limply from Gregg's right arm. 'Now,' Gregg said in the same quiet, terrible voice. 'This expedition is important to my friend Piet, do you understand? Perhaps to Venus, perhaps to mankind, perhaps to God-but certainly to my friend.'

I nodded. I wasn't sure I could speak. Gregg wasn't deliberately choking me, but the grip required to keep my feet above the walkway also cut off most of my air.

'I don't especially want to kill you right now,' Gregg continued. 'But I certainly feel no need to let you live. Why do you insist on coming with us, Mister Moore?'

'You can let me down now,' I croaked.

The words were an inaudible rasp. Gregg either read my lips or took the meaning from my expression. He lowered me to the walkway and released me.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't reach up to rub my throat. I am a gentleman!

'I-' I said. I paused, not because I was afraid to go on, but because I'd never articulated the reason driving me. Not even to myself, in the dead of night.

'I have a talent for electronics,' I continued. I fought the need to blink, lest Gregg think I was afraid to meet his gaze. 'I couldn't work at that, of course. Only artisans work with their hands. And there was no money; the Moores have never really had money.'