Hot Sky at Midnight

27

carpenter dreamed that night that he was out at sea, sailing a yacht of some sort in a solo voyage across the Pacific from California to Hawaii. But it was in a better time, a better world, because the sky was clean and blue and the sea breeze came fresh to his nostrils, with the exhilarating tang of salt in it instead of the musty tang of nitrogen oxide, and the surface of the water was pure and clear, no drifting red globs of writhing mutant algae, no phosphorescent jellyfish clumps, no floating ribbons of fossilized twentieth-century tar.

All he wore was a pair of ragged cutoff jeans, but he went out on deck every morning in no fear of the sun, which rose unhaloed by any murk of greenhouse gases and shed a soft, gentle, almost delicate light on the sea. He listened to the wind and set his sails, and did his shipboard chores and was done with them by midmorning, and sat reading or strumming his guitar until noon. And then he tossed the safety line overboard and went overboard after it, and had himself a little swim, paddling alongside the boat through the clear, sweet, warm, unpolluted water. And in the afternoon—

In the afternoon he saw an island sitting all by itself in the sea, a small one, uncharted, three palm trees and a patch of green shrubbery and a lovely white beach. A tall voluptuous dark-haired woman was standing in the calm translucent surf waving to him. She was naked except for the merest scrap of red cloth around her loins. Lustrous bronzed skin gleamed in the bright tropical light, heavy breasts, strong thighs—

“Paul?” she was calling. “Paul, it’s me, Jolanda—come ashore and play with me, Paul—”

“I’m coming,” he called, putting his hand to the tiller. And went to her, and tossed down his anchor in the shallows, and swam toward her waiting arms—and—and—

And the telephone was chiming.

Wrong number. Leave me alone.

Wouldn’t stop, either.

Fuck off. Can’t you see I’m busy?

On and on, relentless, remorseless. Finally Carpenter reached out with his toe and activated it.

“Yeah?”

“Time to get up, Carpenter.”

Victor Farkas’s nightmare face was looking at him out of the visor.

“What for?” Carpenter said. “It’s—what, not even six in the morning, right? I don’t have to get down to the terminal for hours yet.”

“I need you now.”

What the hell was this? A change in the plan? Carpenter was fully awake in an instant.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“Everything’s smooth,” said Farkas. “But I need you. Get your clothes on and meet me in half an hour. The town of El Mirador, on Spoke D, at a cafe called La Paloma, which is in the middle of everything, right on the plaza.”

I would be careful of him, if I were you. Watch him like a hawk.

“Do you mind telling me why?”

“Olmo is going to meet me there. We’ll be discussing important things, as you know. I want a witness to our conversation.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask the Israeli to be your with—”

“No. He’s the last person I’d want to be there. You’re the one I want. Hurry it up, Carpenter. El Mirador, Spoke D. Half past six at the latest. It’s about halfway from the hub to the rim.”

“Right,” Carpenter said.

There was no way of refusing. The sudden alteration of the program was strange, yes. If Farkas wanted him along with him for his chat with Olmo, he should have told him that last night. But they were a team; this morning was the critical time; aside from Jolanda’s uneasiness, Carpenter had no reason to believe that the man who had recruited him for this enterprise was summoning him now to some sort of betrayal. Farkas said he was needed; Carpenter had no option but to go.

Still—even so—

He has no morals at all, and he’s terribly quick and strong, and he can see in every direction at once. He can be dangerous.

Carpenter showered and dressed quickly. He felt alert and keyed up, now, but before he left the room he swallowed one of Jolanda’s hyperdexes. The stimulant would make him that much sharper: give him a little extra edge, if anything unusual began to happen. Carpenter tucked the other two pills into his shirt pocket. He had brought a light sleeveless woolen vest along on the trip, because he had heard that the air on a space habitat was kept at a temperature cooler than he was accustomed to; he pulled the vest on now, not so much because he was chilly as to keep the pills from falling out of his pocket if he leaned forward.

The only way he knew of getting to Spoke D was to go down to the hub, change spokes, and ride the elevator back up. It seemed to him that there were connectors in midspoke, but no one had told him anything about how to use them.

At this hour the Valparaiso Nuevo day was already in full swing. People were bustling around everywhere. The place was like a gigantic airline terminal, Carpenter thought, that knew neither day nor night, and functioned under artificial illumination twenty-four hours a day. Except the main source of illumination here wasn’t artificial. It was supplied by the adjacent solar body, which also functioned twenty-four hours a day, hanging right up there in the sky available for use at all times.

The up-spoke elevator was marked with exits. When the one labeled EL MIRADOR came up, Carpenter stepped off and looked around for the central plaza. Signs directed him. He came in a few minutes to a curiously quaint cobblestoned expanse, with open-air cafes lining its border. It was all like fairyland, this place, an unreal world. But of course it was an unreal world. Or an artificial one, at least.

Carpenter caught sight of Farkas at once, across the way, standing out from the others in the plaza like an elephant in a herd of sheep. He went to him.

Farkas was alone.

“Olmo not here yet?” Carpenter asked.

“We are having our discussion with him in the outer shell of the satellite,” said Farkas. “It is the only safe place to talk of such things: entirely outside the pickups of the Generalissimo’s sonic detection system.”

That sounded very odd to Carpenter, a conference in the outer shell. He began to worry again. Perhaps an even finer edge would be a good idea. As Farkas led him toward a doorway in the wall behind the cafe, Carpenter reached under his sweater, pulled out another of the hyperdex pills, and popped it into his mouth.

He crunched it between his teeth and forced himself to swallow it. Carpenter had never taken a hyperdex that way before, straight, no water: the taste was amazingly bitter. He had never taken one hyperdex right on top of another before, either, and he felt himself lighting up almost immediately, entering into an almost manic mode. He wanted to run, to leap, to swing from treetops. That was a little frightening, that sense of becoming unhinged; but he felt, along with it, a potent sensation of heightened awareness, of quickened reflex, such as was completely new to him. Whatever surprises Farkas might be planning for him in the space satellite’s outer shell, Carpenter was confident he would be ready to deal with them.

“In here,” Farkas said.

He opened the door in the wall, and beckoned Carpenter to go ahead of him.

Carpenter peered through the door into a realm of darkness.

“I won’t know what I’m bumping into in there,” he said. “You’re the one with the trick vision, Farkas. You go first.”

“As you wish. Follow me, then.”

They entered the shell. The bright and cheery plaza of El Mirador vanished behind them. They were in the dreary behind-the-scenes carapace of Valparaiso Nuevo now, the dark, secret skin of the satellite.

Once inside, Carpenter realized that the place wasn’t entirely dark: there was a narrow catwalk just to his left, illuminated in a sparse way by a row of antique-looking incandescent bulbs set into the low ceiling, giving the merest possible glimmer of yellow light. As his hyperdex-augmented vision adjusted to the dimness, Carpenter saw piles of black slag, ballast of some sort for the satellite, he supposed, heaped here and there, and what looked like golf carts, probably for the use of maintenance people. Beyond was a zone of complete blackness, dark as space itself.

There was barely room for Carpenter to stand upright. Farkas appeared to be maintaining a half-crouching posture. Deeper in, the ceiling seemed even lower.

He and Farkas were all alone in here.

“Where’s your friend Olmo?” Carpenter asked. “Late for our little appointment?”

“He is just ahead,” said Farkas. “You don’t see him? No. But with my trick vision, as you put it, I have no difficulty making him out, standing right over there.”

There was no one in here but the two of them. Carpenter was totally certain of that.

So there was going to be trouble. He took the third hyperdex from his shirt pocket, conveyed it to his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it.

It was like a bomb going off in his head.

Farkas said, “What are you doing?”

“I don’t see Olmo,” said Carpenter. “Or anybody else.” His words came out slurred. His voice sounded to him as though he were speaking in an echo chamber.

“No. In fact Olmo isn’t here.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Indeed,” Farkas said. “It is just you and me, here. Tell me something, now. You are still in the pay of Samurai Industries, are you not, Carpenter?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Answer me. You are spying on us for Samurai, yes or no.”

“No. What kind of bullshit is this?”

“I think you are lying,” Farkas said.

“If I were still working for Samurai,” said Carpenter, speaking terribly slowly, sounding as slow as a robot whose charge was running down, making an effort to keep his voice intelligible as the third hyperdex unloaded its full impact on his nervous system, “would I be mixed up in a wild scheme like this one?”

Instead of replying, Farkas pivoted, knelt, came up with something from the ground in his hand—a jagged lump of slag, maybe?—and swung it in a level arc toward Carpenter’s head. But the hyperdex was doing its work. Carpenter was prepared for some sort of attack; and, the moment it came, he moved back and to one side, easily outpacing Farkas’s movements, so that Farkas’s arm moved futilely through empty air. Carpenter heard the bigger man’s grunt of surprise and displeasure.

He jumped forward, trying to get around Farkas and return to the daylight of El Mirador. But Farkas blocked the door; and when Carpenter attempted to feint past him, Farkas simply spread his enormous arms and waited for Carpenter to run into them. Carpenter backed off. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw nothing but stygian gloom behind him, and backpedaled into it even though he had no idea of where he was going.

Farkas came after him.

“Keep heading that way,” Farkas said. “You’ll fall off the edge. There’s a shelf there, just before the layer of protective tailings, and then there’s a drop, and you’ll go right into the gravity well. It’s a long floating fall, but by the time you hit bottom at the rim, it’ll be Earth-one gravitation. Very messy for you.”

Was he bluffing? Carpenter had no clear idea of the geography in here. He hesitated just a moment, and Farkas lunged. The man was quick, and he was huge; but once again the triple hyperdex dose made the difference. To Carpenter, Farkas’s movements seemed ponderous, almost glacial. It was easy to avoid them. Carpenter stepped aside, catching no more than a glancing blow on his left shoulder. He heard Farkas, puzzled and angry, muttering to himself.

But Farkas was still standing between him and the exit from the shell. And Carpenter had no idea of what lay behind him, closer to the satellite world’s skin.

Further retreat might be just as unwise as Farkas had told him it was. Ahead of him was Farkas. He’s terribly quick and strong, Jolanda had said, and he can see in every direction at once. Yes. But there wasn’t much choice. Carpenter pulled his head down, getting his center of gravity as low as he could, and went running straight at Farkas. As Carpenter came within reach, Farkas caught hold of him, and they grappled furiously for a couple of moments. Carpenter was altogether unable to budge him. Farkas was huge and immensely strong, and Farkas was braced. His hands had found Carpenter’s throat and he was squeezing.

Carpenter went into manic overdrive, jigging about wildly, writhing, going limp and suddenly tightening up again. Somehow he twisted himself about and wriggled free of Farkas’s grip and danced away. A lucky shift of his weight: it was, he knew, probably not a trick he could manage a second time.

Farkas came after him, moving unerringly as they passed into a zone of deeper darkness where Carpenter had almost no notion of what lay around him. Vaguely he saw Farkas’s long arms stretching toward him, dark lines against the darkness. Carpenter probed cautiously backward with the tip of his foot, trying to find out whether he was approaching the abyss of which Farkas had spoken, or, conversely, whether Farkas was backing him into a dead end. But he was able to learn nothing. He was practically unable to see, now.

Farkas could see, though.

In front of him and behind, too. The blindsight gave him 360-degree vision, Jolanda had said.

Carpenter heard Farkas’s rough breathing. He sensed but did not see the massive form approaching him. Carpenter had superhuman speed on his side, but Farkas could see, and he was bigger and stronger. Here in the dark it was an unequal match.

In one smooth rapid motion Carpenter pulled his woolen vest off and held it lightly, by the tips of two fingers. Farkas came barreling forward. Carpenter waited for him, bracing himself as solidly as he could.

Their bodies collided. Carpenter felt a tremendous blow against his chest and he thought that all the air would leave his lungs in a single gust. His whole rib cage seemed to be collapsing.

But he was able to put the pain away and stay upright. He brought the sweater up, holding it like a noose, and as Farkas leaned down toward him for the coup de grace Carpenter drew it quickly down over the dome of Farkas’s head, twisting it around Farkas’s neck at the bottom end, pulling its hem up and tucking it through, tangling and knotting it, fastening it like a hood over Farkas’s head. He seemed to have plenty of time to do what needed to be done. Actually it took probably no more than a tenth of a second.

Farkas howled. He bellowed. He stamped his feet and uttered muffled roars of fury.

There, Carpenter thought. Does your blindsight work through a layer of wool?

Evidently not. Farkas raged and blundered in the dark like a blinded Cyclops, and Carpenter, a lithe, frantic Odysseus, moved quickly around him, giving Farkas a powerful shove as he went past, spinning him completely around. Farkas stumbled, regained his balance, came charging toward Carpenter with enormous velocity.

He was fast, but Carpenter was faster. Once more Carpenter stepped aside. In the blackness he could make out almost nothing, but he was aware of a breeze as Farkas, arms pinwheeling, went rushing past, growling angrily, taking huge clattering steps.

Then a sudden shriek of—astonishment? Rage? Horror?

A long outcry, dopplering off into silence.

And then what sounded like an impact, a dull sound far away.

“Farkas?” Carpenter called.

No reply.

“You fall down the hole, Farkas? You dead down there?”

All quiet. Silence. Silence.

Farkas was gone, then. Really gone. It was hard to believe, all that dark force snuffed out. That strange man. Carpenter stared into the darkness.

But he felt no sense of triumph in the moment of victory, only disorientation and fatigue. He knew that at just this moment he had reached the hyperdex high and was beginning the journey down the other side. The high had been very high; the descent was going to be awful.

He was assailed by a dizziness of a kind he had never known before, and an almost overwhelming nausea. The whole universe was reeling about him. He dropped to his knees and clung to the rough invisible surface below him. It was swaying, pulsating, rippling. His stomach began to heave. They were dry heaves, and they went on and on, until he thought they were going to turn him inside out like a starfish, and when they were over he crawled a short distance away and lay with his cheek against the rough scraggy ground for a long while, feeling the triple dose of hyperdex blasting through him like a trio of hurricanes. No news bulletins came out of the darkness from Farkas. Farkas was gone. Farkas was dead.

It might have been hours that Carpenter lay there. He spent a good while in a kind of hallucinatory state. Then he returned to full awareness again, or something close to it.

He quivered, he shook, he moaned, he wept, as the last of the hyperdex overdose burned its way through his over-stressed nervous system.

When he tried to stand, he found that it was impossible. His legs were rubbery and his skull felt hollow and he had no physical strength at all. He lay down again, and waited, and after a time he became a little more calm. Slowly he started to crawl forward, feeling his way, making absolutely certain that no abysses were before him, and eventually Carpenter realized that he had returned to the zone where the faint light of the incandescent bulbs provided him with a little guidance.

He found the door that led back into El Mirador.

“Farkas?” he called one last time, looking behind him into the dark.

Nothing. Silence.

He staggered out into the cobblestoned plaza.

He had no idea what time it was. Somewhere during the struggle in the shell, his wristwatch had been ripped away. But the morning seemed to be well along. Most of the tables at the plaza-side cafes were full, now. Carpenter found one that wasn’t and slumped down into it. He sensed that people were looking at him curiously. He wondered how battered and bruised he was, and how filthy.

He felt drained, numb, dazed.

The hyperdex was still blazing in his brain. Its accelerative force had worn off somewhat, and he was able to move now at a normal pace, but his thoughts were driving in wild circles at the speed of light and then some.

Was a triple dose fatal? Should he get himself to a medic?

One will be enough for ordinary circumstances, Jolanda had said. Two, if very unusual. He had taken three.

He shivered and trembled. It was an effort to keep from falling face forward onto the tabletop.

An android waiter said, “Can I get you a drink, sir?”

That seemed like an incredibly funny question. Carpenter burst into wild laughter. The android stood beside the table, patiently, politely.

“Or something to eat, perhaps?”

“Nothing, thanks,” Carpenter forced himself to say. “Nothing at all.” His voice still sounded blurry and too fast. Thanking an android, too!

The android went away. Carpenter sat quietly. Breathe in, breathe out.

After a time, Carpenter remembered that Davidov’s plan had called for Farkas to get in touch with a certain Colonel Olmo of the Guardia Civil at seven this morning and tell him that bombs had been planted all over the habitat, that Generalissimo Callaghan would have to abdicate by noon or the whole place would be blown up. Had Farkas actually delivered the 0700 ultimatum to Olmo?

No. No. At 0600 hours Farkas had been chasing Carpenter around the shell of the satellite. Farkas had wanted to dispose of the Samurai Industries spy first thing, before getting on to speaking with Olmo. So the ultimatum had never been delivered, most likely, unless Farkas had jumped the schedule and spoken to Olmo in the middle of the night.

Olmo knew nothing about the deadline, then. The coup attempt had misfired.

But the bombs were still set to blow at half past one.

“Excuse me,” Carpenter said to a woman at an adjacent table. His voice was hoarse, ragged, broken, the voice of a torture victim recently released from the grasp of the Inquisition. “Can you tell me what time it is?”

“Eleven-thirty,” the woman said.

Jesus. Less than thirty minutes to go to the putative deadline for the abdication. Two hours until the time the bombs were supposed to go off.

Carpenter began to see that he must have been zonked out on the floor of the shell for hours after the fight with Farkas.

He looked around for a public communicator wand at his table and found one clipped to its left side. Its keyboard was tiny and his fingers seemed as thick as tree trunks, and when he tried to remember the call code for Davidov’s hotel room he came up with fifty thousand different eight-digit numbers in a fifty-thousandth of a second.

Calm. Calm. He threaded a path through the maze of numbers and found the right one, and punched it in.

No answer.

No hunt-and-seek, either.

Carpenter punched the “help” node and told the wand to go looking for Davidov anywhere on Valparaiso Nuevo. Why that hadn’t been done automatically, Carpenter didn’t know; but in a moment the communicator came up with a null code for the desired person.

Where was Davidov?

He tried the number of the room that Enron and Jolanda were sharing. Nothing.

Something very wrong here. Where was everybody? The bombs were ticking.

He took a deep breath and punched what he hoped was the directory code, and told the communicator wand that he wanted to talk to Colonel Olmo of the Guardia Civil. The communicator got him a line to the Guardia operations room.

“Colonel Olmo, please.”

“Who is calling?”

“My name is Paul Carpenter. I’m with—” He almost said with Samurai Industries, and caught himself. “With Kyocera-Merck, Ltd. I’m an associate of Victor Farkas. Tell him that. Victor Farkas.” It was very difficult for him to enunciate clearly.

“Wait one moment, please.”

Carpenter waited. He wondered how much to tell Olmo, whether he should spill out the whole conspiracy scheme to him. It wasn’t his responsibility to deliver the ultimatum. He was only a flunky in this thing. On the other hand, he was the one who had removed Farkas from the picture, and nobody knew that except him. Was it now his duty to take Farkas’s place in the program?

A voice said, “What is the nature of your call, Mr. Carpenter?”

Jesus. Jesus.

“It’s a confidential matter. The only one I can communicate it to is Colonel Olmo.”

“Colonel Olmo is unavailable now. Would you like to speak to the officer on duty, Captain Lopez Aguirre?”

“Olmo. Only Olmo. Please. This is very urgent.”

“Captain Lopez Aguirre will be with you in a moment.”

“Olmo,” Carpenter said. He felt like crying.

A new voice, brusque, bored, said, “Lopez Aguirre speaking. What is this in connection with, please?”

Carpenter stared at the wand in his hand as though it had turned into a serpent.

“I’m trying to reach Colonel Olmo. It’s a matter of life and death.” He struggled to make his words understandable.

“Colonel Olmo is not available.”

“I’ve already been told that. You’ve got to put me through to him all the same. I’m making this request on behalf of Victor Farkas.”

“Who?”

“Farkas. Farkas. Kyocera-Merck.”

“Who am I talking to?”

Carpenter started to give his name again. Then he said, “Who I am doesn’t matter.” He was still fighting the hyper-dex, stumbling over his own tongue. “What matters is that Mr. Farkas has very important information to give to Colonel Olmo, and—”

“Who are you? What is this all about? You are drunk, are you? You think I have time to speak with drunks?”

Christ! Lopez Aguirre sounded very annoyed. In another moment, Carpenter realized, Lopez Aguirre was likely to send someone over to the plaza to pick him up for questioning, a suspicious character, a public nuisance. Toss him in a back room somewhere, get around to him after lunch. Or maybe some time tomorrow.

He shut the communicator wand off and headed across the plaza, expecting a Guardia Civil man to step out from behind one of the palm trees and clap a set of magnetos on him before he reached the far side. But no one interfered with him. He moved jerkily, in double time, still hopped up on the hyperdex to some degree. He knew that he would be for hours more.

Into the elevator. Down-spoke to the hub, to the shuttle terminal. Most likely that was where everybody was, Enron, Jolanda, Davidov, Davidov’s people. Waiting to catch the twelve-fifteen shuttle if Olmo turned out to be unable to topple Generalissimo Callaghan from his throne.

Through the glass wall of the elevator tube Carpenter caught sight of a clock. Quarter to twelve, now. Unless Davidov had had some kind of backup scheme ready, the noon deadline was going to run out without anything being communicated to Colonel Olmo. Which was not the really serious problem. The really serious problem was that when the ninety minutes of grace expired and nothing had been heard from Olmo, the bombs were going to go.

At the terminal, the outbound shuttle was all ready to take off. Carpenter saw its gleaming shaft jutting right into the rim of the docking module, and the shuttle itself stretching upward behind it. Bright confusing signs blinked everywhere. Where the hell was the embarkation lounge? he wondered.

He found himself in some kind of waiting room. Half a dozen local kids were slouching around in there. Carpenter remembered seeing them upon his arrival: couriers, they were, sharp operators who preyed on the incoming travelers. He looked for the one who had checked them through customs— Nattathaniel, that was his name—but didn’t see him. But then another one, a hefty, pink-faced blond boy who was probably not as soft as he seemed to be, came over and said, “Help you, sir? I’m a licensed courier. My name is Kluge.”

“I’ve got a ticket on the twelve-fifteen to Earth,” Carpenter said.

“You go right through that door, sir. Shall I get your luggage from the locker?”

Carpenter’s luggage, such as it was, was still in his hotel room. To hell with it.

“I don’t have luggage,” Carpenter said. “But I’m looking for some friends who are supposed to be taking the same shuttle out with me.”

“They’d be in the embarkation lounge, then. Or on board the shuttle. Boarding time’s come and practically gone, you know.”

“Yes. I wonder, have you seen them go past?” He described Enron, Davidov, Jolanda. The courier’s eyes lit up at the description of Jolanda, particularly.

“They haven’t been through here,” Kluge said.

“You’re sure of that?”

“I know those people. Mr. Enron, of Israel, and Ms. Jolanda Bermudez. And the other one, the big one with the close-cut hair, he uses various names. I worked for Mr. Enron and Ms. Bermudez the last time they were here. I’d have seen them if they had come past here anywhere in the last hour.”

Carpenter’s eyes grew wide with dismay.

“You’d better go into the lounge, sir,” Kluge said. “They’ll be calling last call any minute now. If I see any of your friends come in, I’ll tell them you’ve already gone on board, will that be all right?”

Where were they? What the hell had happened?

Olmo had been supposed to discover some of the bombs. That was the plan, Davidov said: to have him find some of the bombs. So that he would know that the threat was no bluff. Suppose this Olmo had found the bombs, then, or several of them, at any rate, and had found the ones who had planted the bombs, too, Davidov’s men, and had used whatever cute little methods the Guardia Civil of this place usually used to extract information. And had rounded up the rest, Davidov, Jolanda, Enron—was holding them in interrogation cells somewhere, meaning to go around and talk to them later in the day, or maybe tomorrow—

“Final call for Flight 1133,” a voice said over the terminal speakers. “Passengers for San Francisco, Earth shuttle, on board now, please—”

“You’d better go on in there, sir,” Kluge said again.

“Yes. Yes. Look, when they show up, tell them I’m on board, and—listen, tell them also that Farkas didn’t deliver the message this morning. Do you have that? Farkas didn’t deliver the message.”

“Yes, sir. ‘Farkas didn’t deliver the message.’ ”

“Good. Thank you.” Carpenter rummaged in his pocket and came up with one of the local coins. Callaghanos, they called them. Not really coins: currency plaques, actually. He had no idea what this one was worth, but it was a big silvery-looking one with a twenty on it, and it would have to be enough. He handed it to Kluge.

“Final call for Flight 1133—”

Where were Enron and Jolanda? Where was Davidov? In custody: Carpenter was sure of that.

And Olmo had discovered the bombs, yes. But had he discovered all of the bombs? Did he have any idea how many had been planted? Had he thought to ask?

Carpenter entered the lounge. He half expected to be arrested the moment he showed his identity plaque, but no, they told him that everything was in order, so apparently he was in the clear, not linked in any way to the conspirators, too unimportant even to notice during his short stay on Valparaiso Nuevo.

Noon.

He was supposed to create a disturbance if the others hadn’t arrived on time—cause a delay, make them hold the shuttle until the rest showed up. At the check-in counter he said, “Some friends of mine aren’t here yet. You’ll have to wait on the departure until they arrive.”

“That’s impossible, sir. Orbital schedules—”

“I saw them last night, and they were definitely intending to be here on time!”

“Perhaps they are already on board, then.”

“No. A courier out there who knows them said—”

“May I have their names, sir?”

Carpenter rattled off the names. He was still speeding. The desk steward asked him to repeat them more slowly, and he did. A shake of the head, then.

“Those people are not on this flight, sir.”

“They aren’t?”

“Reservations canceled. All three. We have an entry here on the board that they will not be taking the flight.”

Carpenter stared.

They’ve been arrested, he thought. No doubt of it now. Olmo has them, and with any luck they’ve been telling him about the plot, unless, of course, they’ve been stashed away for interrogation later on.

And the bombs—the bombs—had Olmo found them all? Did he know?

“If you don’t mind, sir—you’ll have to take your place on board, now—”

“Yes,” Carpenter said mechanically. “Of course.”

Moving with the leaden tread of a dying robot, he went lurching onto the shuttle. Looked about for Jolanda, Enron, Davidov. Not to be seen. Of course not.

Let himself be strapped into his gravity cradle. Waited for the shuttle to push off.

Enron. Davidov. Jolanda.

A colossal bungle. He could do nothing. Nothing at all. Make them delay the flight? They wouldn’t. They would simply pull him off and stick him in restraint at the shuttle terminal. Suicide, is what that would be.

“Please sit back, enjoy the flight—”

Yes. Sure.

The shuttle was moving outward, now. Quarter past twelve, exactly. Carpenter put his hands over his eyes. He had felt a little while before that he was as tired as he had ever been, but he suspected now that he had gone beyond that, that now he was tired as he could ever possibly get. If you could die of sheer weariness, he thought, he would be dead by now.

“What time is it?” he asked a man in the opposite seat, a long while later.

“Valparaiso Nuevo time?”

“Yes.”

“One twenty-eight exactly.”

“Thank you,” Carpenter said. He turned toward his porthole and stared fixedly out, wondering which side of the shuttle was facing toward Valparaiso Nuevo, and, if it was this one, which of the many little points of light out there was the habitat he had left a little while before.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The explosion, when it came, was like the sudden distant blossoming of a scarlet flower in the sky. And a second flare of red, and a third.