The Reaches

were half a dozen troops in Fed uniform on each vehicle. Not all of them had firearms, and only two wore head and torso armor.

'Huh!' said Jeude, scratching his neck with the edge of his cutting bar. 'Those trucks're slower than glass flowing. I could walk as fast as that.'

'They haul mats of timber processed at field stations,' Ricimer explained. 'They don't need to be fast.'

'They're riding,' Gregg guessed aloud, 'because they want to show they've got vehicles and we're on foot.'

'They got plasma guns in the fort,' Leon said, eyeing the berm opposite the party of spacers. Metal glinted there without being raised quite high enough to make identification certain. 'Them I'm willing to worry about.'

Gregg spread and raised his flashgun's parasol. The meter-square solar cell swayed awkwardly in the breeze, making the weapon harder to control.

He didn't need to deploy the charger for any practical reason. He was carrying six extra batteries, and it was much faster to replace than recharge them in a firefight. The Feds weren't the only ones who could make silent threats, however.

Ten meters from the spacers, the tractor-trailers swung broadside and halted. A man wearing a white uniform and a number of medals got out of the cab of the leading tractor. He waited for two more officers, one of them female, and a pair of guards armed with rifles to get off the trailer behind him. With them in tow, he strode toward the spacers.

The whole party of Venerians and Germans surged forward across the wheat.

'Not so many!' the Fed leader cried, waggling his hand. He wore a pair of pistols completely swallowed by their cross-draw holsters. At careful inspection his uniform, though fancy enough, was frayed at the cuffs and noticeably dingy.

Choransky and Schremp muttered to one another for a moment. Choransky looked around. 'You lot stay where you are!' he ordered. The two captains, accompanied by Platt and two Germans-as choice a pair of cutthroats as Gregg remembered seeing in his life-met the Feds between the waiting lines.

Choransky seized the initiative by blustering, 'I want to know who you think you are, shooting at peaceful traders?'

'I am Port Commander Zaloga,' the Fed leader blustered back, 'and there'll be no trade with illegal interlopers like yourself on this planet or any planet of the North American Federation.'

'North America is a thousand light-years away,' said Captain Schremp in a surprisingly calm voice. 'We are here with cargo your people need, slaves from my Venerian fellows there and the highest quality sauces and dairy solids aboard my Adler. Surely you must be tired of eating the bland mush you grow here, not so?'

'Your predecessor gave Captain Mostert a want list when he landed on Virginia last year,' Choransky put in. 'We brought our Molts here at your orders.'

'My predecessor,' Zaloga said, 'was arrested for his treasonous dealings with interlopers like your Captain Mostert. You're not here at my orders. My orders are that you leave the planet at once. And as you see-'

He pointed toward the settlement. Half a dozen soldiers had lifted a small plasma cannon onto the top of the berm. The crew wore helmets, gauntlets, and padded coveralls against the effects of their own weapon.

'— I can enforce those orders!'

'Can you?' Schremp said with a sneer in his voice. 'Take them,' he added flatly.

Each of the Germans with him grabbed a Fed officer. Schremp himself caught Zaloga by the throat with his scarred left hand and squeezed hard enough to choke the port commander's protests into a startled bleat.

Choransky grasped the rifle of a Fed guard and prevented the man from lowering his weapon. Platt tried to do the same with the remaining guard, but he wasn't strong enough to overpower the fellow. They struggled for a moment.

Schremp, holding his repeater in one hand like a huge pistol, socketed the muzzle in the guard's ear and blew his brains out. The Fed's skull sagged sideways like a fruit dropped against concrete. Bits of colloid sprayed the female officer and the German who held her. She began to scream and kick hysterically.

'Stephen!' Ricimer shouted. His grip on Gregg's shoulder was as firm as a C-clamp. He pointed toward the plasma cannon with his rifle. He didn't bother to shoot because it was hopelessly out of his range. 'Stop them!'

The half-armed militia on the trailers were too shocked by the violence to react, but the crew of the plasma gun were traversing their weapon squarely onto what had been the negotiating party. A bolt from that weapon- three or four centimeters in bore-would incinerate both command groups and probably a score of other spacers besides. The gunners might or might not fire-

But Piet Ricimer was right. The choice couldn't be left to them.

Gregg clashed his visor down and swore as the world blurred amber. The flashgun had a simple, four-post optical sight. He could only wish now that he'd checked the collimation, made sure that the point of aim was aligned with the point of impact, because at five-hundred meters you didn't have to be out by much to miss by a country klick.

The parasol swayed, twisting against the stock to which it was connected. One of the Feds on the berm raised his arm.

Gregg fired. The air snapped like the string of a powerful crossbow letting go. The line of the bolt was too sudden to see, but it left dazzling purple afterimages despite the filtering visor.

Light haloed the plasma cannon. Metal sublimed from the trunnion Gregg hit, flashing outward in a shockwave that ignited as it expanded. The ball of fire threw down the four crewmen on that side and behind the weapon. They lay where they fell. The remaining pair, untouched, vanished behind the berm.

Gregg lifted his visor. The air smelled burned. Half the members of the Fed militia had jumped behind the trailers. Those still visible had thrown down their weapons.

Gregg's flashgun whined as it started to recharge. The sound cut off when he opened the compartment in the stock and removed the discharged battery.

He thought he was fine, but his fingers fumbled and dropped the battery. He took a fresh charge from his side pocket and snapped it into the gun.

'That was necessary,' Piet Ricimer murmured beside him. 'Not this, what these folk are doing. But what you did, if we were to survive.'

'Right!' said Captain Choransky. 'Now, we're all going to trade like reasonable people. Isn't that right, Zaloga?'

Schremp transferred his grip to the port commander's shoulder. Zaloga was white-faced. He didn't attempt to speak, but he nodded agreement.

'That was easy, not so?' Schremp said cheerfully.

With the visor raised, Gregg could see a haze lift from the crew of the plasma cannon. Blazing metal vapor had ignited their clothing.

11

Venus

The probe dangling a hundred meters below the Sultan recorded the change in wind direction as it dipped into the third and final set of Hadley Cells layering the Venerian atmosphere. Warning bells clanged on the forward attitude-control workstations and, slightly distorted, from the stations in the next compartment.

'Oh, put a sock in it,' Jeude muttered to his alarm.

'Think of it as welcoming us home, Jeude,' Piet Ricimer said cheerfully. 'This old girl could pretty well con herself into dock from here.'

The Sultan twisted like a leaping fish when her hull passed through the discontinuity. Gregg felt a vague mushiness through his boots as the vessel continued her descent. Atmospheric density at this level was itself enough to slow a falling object appreciably.