The Reaches

records, they were lost then.'

'My family does,' Gregg said. 'The histories say it was the atmosphere that protected Venus during the Revolt, you know. Outworld raiders knew that our defenses wouldn't stop them, but they couldn't escape our winds. The Hadley Cells take control from any unfamiliar pilot and fling his ship as apt as not into the ground. The raiders learned to hit softer targets that only men protected.'

'Isn't it true, then?' I said, responding to the bitterness in Gregg's voice. 'That's how I'd already heard it.'

'Oh, the atmosphere saved us from the rebels, that much was true,' Gregg said. 'But when the histories go on, 'Many died because off-planet trade was disrupted. .' That's not the same as reading your own ancestors' chronicle of those days. Venus produced twenty percent of its own food before the Collapse. Afterwards, well, the food supply couldn't expand that fast, so the population dropped. Since the distribution system was disrupted also, the drop was closer to nine in ten than eight in ten.'

'We're past that now,' I said. 'That was a thousand years ago. A thousand Earth years.'

A third spark in a blue highlight snapped into place on the star chart. 'The Kinsolving,' said Dole, ostensibly to the sailors to either side of him at the console. 'And about fucking time.'

Lightbody sniffed.

Piet Ricimer raised a handset and began speaking into it, his eyes fixed on a separate navigational tank beneath the viewscreen.

'Bet they just now got around to turning on their locator beacon,' Jeude said. 'Though they'll claim it was equipment failure.'

'Right,' said Gregg, his eyes so fixedly on the pearly orb of Venus that they drew my gaze with them. 'At Eryx, that's the family seat, there was a pilot hydroponics farm. They figured what the yield would support and drew lots for those who could enter the section of the factory where the farm was.'

Gregg's face lost all expression. 'The others. .' he continued. 'Some of the others tried to break into the farm and get their share of the food. My ancestor's younger brother led a team of volunteers that held off the mob as long as they could. When they were out of ammunition, they checked the door seals and then blew the roof of their own tunnel open to the surface. That's what the atmosphere of Venus means to me.'

'It was worse on Earth,' I said. 'When the centralized production plants were disrupted, only one person in a thousand survived. There were billions of people on Earth before the Revolt, but they almost all died.'

Gregg rubbed his face hard with both hands, as if he were massaging life back into his features. He looked at me and smiled. 'As you say, a thousand years,' he said. 'But in all that time, the Greggs of Eryx have always named the second son Stephen. In memory of the brother who didn't leave descendants.'

'That was the past,' I said. 'There's enough in the future to worry about.'

'You'll get along well with Piet,' Gregg said. His voice was half-mocking, but only half. 'You're right, of course. I shouldn't think about the past the way I do.'

It occurred to me that Gregg wasn't only referring to the early history of Eryx Hold.

The bisected viewscreen above Ricimer shivered into three parts, each the face of a ship's captain: Blakey of the Mizpah; Winter of the Kinsolving; and Moschelitz, the bovine man who oversaw Absalom 231's six crewmen and automated systems.

Blakey's features had a glassy, simplified sheen which I diagnosed as a result of the Mizpah's transmission being static-laden to the point of unintelligibility. The AI controlling the Porcelain's first-rate electronics processed both the audio and visual portions of the signal into a false clarity. The image of Blakey's black-mustached face was in effect the icon of a virtual reality.

Ricimer raised the handset again. Guillermo switched a setting on the control console. The Molt's wrists couldn't rotate, but each limb had two more offset joints than a human's, permitting the alien the same range of movement.

'Gentlemen,' Ricimer said. 'Fellow venturers. You're all brave men, or you wouldn't have joined me, and all God-fearing and patriots or I wouldn't have chosen you.'

The general commander's words boomed through the tannoy in the ceiling above the attitude-control console; muted echoes rustled through the open hatchways to compartments farther aft. No doubt the transmission was being piped through the other vessels as well, though I wondered whether anybody aboard the Mizpah would be able to understand the words over the static.

'I regret,' Ricimer continued, 'that I could not tell you all our real destination before we lifted off, though I don't suppose many of you-or many of President Pleyal's spies-will have thought we were setting out for the asteroids. The first stop on our mission to free Venus and mankind from Federation tyranny will be Decades.'

'We'll make men out of you there!' Hawtry said in guttural glee. The pickup on Ricimer's handset was either highly directional or keyed to his voice alone. Not a whisper of Hawtry's words was broadcast.

'A Fed watering station six days out,' Jeude said, speaking to me. As an obvious landsman, I was a perfect recipient for the sort of information that every specialist loves to retail.

'They wouldn't need a landfall so close if their ships were better found,' Dole put in. 'Fed ships leak like sieves.'

On the screen, Captain Winter's lips formed an angry protest which I thought contained the word'. . piracy?'

This was Ricimer's moment; the equipment Guillermo controlled brooked no interruption. Blakey tugged at his mustache worriedly-he looked to be a man who would worry about the color of his socks in the morning-while Moschelitz couldn't have been more stolid in his sleep.

'Our endeavors, with the help of the Lord,' Ricimer continued, 'will decide the fate of Venus and of mankind.' He seemed to grow as he spoke, or-it was as if Piet Ricimer were the only spot of color in existence. His enthusiasm, his belief, turned everything around him gray.

'We must be resolute,' he said. His eyes swept those of us watching him in the flagship's bow compartment, but the faces on the viewscreen also stiffened. Though his back was toward the images, Ricimer was looking straight into the camera feeding his transmission.

'I expect the company of every vessel in the expedition to serve God once a day with its prayers,' Ricimer said. 'Love one another: we are few against the might of tyranny. Preserve your supplies, and make all efforts to keep the squadron together throughout the voyage.'

The general commander stared out at his dream for a future in which mankind populated all the universe under God. Even Thomas Hawtry looked muted by the blazing personality of the man beside whom he stood.

'In the name of God, sirs, do your duty!'

ABOVE DECADES

Day 7

The Porcelain made nineteen individual transits in the final approach series; that is, she slipped nineteen times in rapid succession from the sidereal universe to another bubble of sponge space and back.

At each transit, as during every transit of the past seven days, my stomach knotted and flapped inside out. I clung to the staple in the attitude-control station, holding a sponge across my open mouth and wishing I were dead. Or perhaps I was dead, and this was the Hell to which so many people over the years had consigned me. .

'Oh, God,' I moaned into the sponge. My eyes were shut. 'Oh, God, please save me.' I hadn't prayed in real earnest since the night I found myself trapped in Melinda's room.

The transit series ended. Only the vibration of the vessel's plasma motors maintaining a normal 1-g acceleration indicated that I wasn't standing on solid ground. I opened my eyes.

A planet, gray beneath a cloud-streaked atmosphere, filled the forward viewscreen. 'Most times the Feds've got women on the staff,' Jeude was saying as he and his fellows at the console eyed Decades for the first time. 'And they aren't all of them that hostile.'

I released the staple I was holding and rose to my feet. I smiled ruefully at Gregg and said, 'I'll get used to it, I suppose.'