The Reaches

'I've plotted a descent to the port,' Salomon said. 'Will you want to go in on the next orbit or wait, sir?'

Piet Ricimer's smile swept the nearest of the men who followed him. 'I think we'll go in now, Mister Salomon,' he said. 'I think now.'

We'd been down for twenty minutes.

Trusted sailors watched panoramas of the Oriflamme's surroundings on the upper half of the three bow displays. On the lower half, Guillermo planned liftoff curves while Salomon ran transit solutions. We didn't have another plotted destination, but if necessary the officers could coast the energy gradients between bubble universes until a radical change in values indicated the presence of a star in the sidereal universe.

Piet Ricimer was considering other ships in port with us. I watched him expand images one at a time, letting the AI program fill in details which were a few pixels of real data. Some of the ships were tugs and orbital ferries, obvious even to my untrained eyes. None of them seemed to be warships.

Our hull pinged as it continued to cool from the friction of its descent. I unlatched the back-and-breast armor, the last remaining portion of my hard suit. Stripping the ceramic armor had been a ten-minute job for fingers unfamiliar with the process. It would take me longer yet to put the suit back on if I had to.

Most of us had doffed only the arm and leg pieces. To me armor was crushing, psychologically crushing. I felt as though I was drowning every time I put the suit on.

Stephen grinned harshly at me. 'You'll wish you hadn't done that if we lift under fire in the next ten seconds,' he observed.

Piet Ricimer turned his head. 'If that happens,' he said, 'I'll certainly regret it, Stephen. There don't appear to be plasma cannon protecting the port, but there are at least a dozen multitube lasers on the settlement's perimeter. I suspect they'd do nearly as well against us as they would a Rabbit assault.'

'There's a car coming!' called Fahey, watching the sector northward, toward the port buildings. 'Straight to us!'

Ricimer stood up. All eyes were on him.

'I think we'll admit them by the cockpit hatch,' he said calmly, 'since the assault squad's drawn up in the hold. Remember, if we're to succeed, we'll do it without trouble.'

Stephen took a cutting bar from the forward arms locker. 'Without noise, at any rate,' he said.

The forward hatch was a chambered airlock; Ricimer cycled the inner and outer valves together. I felt heat from the plasma-cooked ground radiate through the opening in pulses.

Piet stepped to one side of the hatchway with Guillermo beside him. I hesitated a moment, but Stephen guided me to stand across from the general commander. My body was a screen of sorts for Stephen's threatening bulk.

The Federation car pulled up before the cockpit stairs. The lightly built vehicle had four open seats and rode on flotation tires; the port area flooded on a regular basis.

The driver was a Molt wearing a red sash. Two more Molts were in back, and a small man with a high forehead and a gray pencil mustache rode in the forward passenger seat.

The human got out and straightened his white uniform as if he didn't see us watching him from the ship. A Molt handed him a briefcase. He tucked the case under his arm, took three brisk strides to the steps, and climbed them with a click-whisk sound of his soles on the nonskid surface. The driver remained in the vehicle, but the other Molts followed. The aliens walked with a sway because of their cross-jointed limbs.

The little man glared from me to Ricimer. Close up, the Fed's uniform was threadbare, and the one and a half blue bars on the collar implied no high rank. 'I'm Collector Heimond,' he said, 'and I want to know why you landed without authorization! I'm the officer in charge, you know!'

'If you're in charge,' Ricimer snapped in return, 'then maybe you can tell me why our request for landing instructions was ignored for two orbits! We need to replenish our air tanks after a run from Riel, and I wasn't about to wait till tomorrow noon when some of you dirtside clowns decided to switch on your radios!'

'Oh!' said Heimond. 'Ah. From Riel. .'

We hadn't-of course-signaled the port control before braking in, but Federation standards were such that nobody on the ground was going to be sure of that. Even if the radio watch happened to be awake, the set might have failed-again-for lack of proper care.

Heimond's eyes took in the 17-cm plasma cannon which dominated the Oriflamme's forward section. 'Oh!' he said in a brighter tone. He glared at Ricimer, sure this time he held the high ground. 'You're the escort, then? Where have you been? She's already left a week ago without you!'

'She left?' Ricimer said. He sounded puzzled but nonchalant. Maybe he was.

'Our Lady of Montreal!' Heimond snapped. 'The treasure ship! You're the Parliament, aren't you? You should have been here weeks ago!'

'Yes, that's right, but we were delayed,' Ricimer agreed easily. 'We'll just catch up with her. You'll have her course plan on file at port control?'

'Yes, yes,' Heimond said, 'but I don't see why nobody's able to do anything when it's supposed to be-'

One of the Molts flanking Heimond said, 'This ship isn't made of metal.'

The cockpit stairs were four steps high. I jumped straight to the ground. Though the surface was originally gravel, repeated baths in plasma had pulverized it and glazed the silica. I felt the residual heat from our landing through my bootsoles, but the breeze off the lake was refreshingly cool.

I got into the vehicle and thumbed the power switch of my cutting bar. 'Please wait here quietly,' I said to the driver.

'Or you will kill me?' the driver asked in a rusty voice. His chitin had a dark, almost purple cast in the light above the hatchway. The Molts who'd gone aboard with Heimond were lighter and tinged with olive, complexions rather like Guillermo's.

'I think my friend aiming a laser from the hatchway will kill you,' I said. I didn't bother to look at Stephen. I knew what he would be doing. 'I'm here to warn you so that he doesn't have to do that.'

'All right,' the Molt said. His belly segments began to rub together in alternate pairs. The sound had three distinct tones, all of them gratingly unpleasant.

'What are you doing?' I snapped, raising the cutting bar.

'I am laughing, master,' the Molt said. 'Collector Heimond will not be pleased.'

My subconscious had been aware of the light of a new star. Distance-muffled thrusters began to whisper from the night sky. Another ship was on its landing approach.

The Oriflamme's main ramp shrieked and jolted its way open. Stephen swung from the hatch with Piet behind him. Following them, protesting desperately, was Collector Heimond in the arms of Jeude and Lightbody.

Stephen gestured to the Molt and ordered, 'Get aboard the ship for now. We'll release you when we lift.'

'Yes, master,' the Molt said. He got out of the vehicle and climbed the stairs. Dole watched from the hatchway with a rifle. The Molt was slowed by spasms of grating laughter.

Ricimer slid into the driver's seat. 'We're going to the port office,' he said to me. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the starship landing. 'Heimond's going to find the Montreal's course for us. She took on board six months' accumulation of chips, most of them purpose-built in the factory still working on Vaughan.'

The four others, one of them Stephen in his half armor, clambered into the back. It was really a storage compartment with a pair of jump seats. The car sagged till the frame and axles touched.

'Let me bring my kit and I can get more than the one course,' I said. I lifted my leg out of the car. 'I'll dump all the core memory!'

Stephen's big arm blocked me like an I-beam. 'I have your kit, Jeremy,' he shouted as Ricimer put the overloaded vehicle in gear. Behind us, the Oriflamme's crewmen were dragging hoses to the lake to top off our reaction mass.

The incoming ship set down at a slip on the other side of the peninsula, much closer to the buildings on the