Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Seventeen

IT TOOK ABOUT half an hour to get everything squared away. Sunshine was tucked into a cave just big enough to take her, and the cave's opening was sealed over with such care that Gabriel might have thought the locals were expecting a police search. Then he and Enda were led through caves and tunnels into a large dim space. The heat they had detected from orbit and assumed to be a dome was actually a substantial network of caves that the sesheyans had very carefully joined and sealed off over the years. The interior was carefully and sparingly lit by powered lights and much subdivided into "apartments" and private areas. The main area, under the highest arch of a huge natural dome of stone, was left open with many wildly assorted pads and blankets and coverings scattered around. Gabriel thought of the encampment on Grith, the floor of the main clearing having been carefully scattered with branches and plant needles gathered for the purpose, and saw here a faint sad echo of the forest. Food was served out to them with the great care of people who have not been expecting visitors and have little to spare, but are pleased to give them the best they can manage. There were no questions while they were eating. But when the bowls were taken away and the drink was brought out-mostly chai of a vile Phorcyn kind that Gabriel had had too much of while awaiting trial-many sesheyans gathered around them in a circle, and Gabriel got the sense that there would be grilling now. There was some, conducted politely enough in human idiom. Names and ship registries were demanded, along with details about how Gabriel and Enda had come to meet Ondway and what had happened afterwards. The sesheyans sitting closest to them, many with guns nearby, listened to every word intently. Gabriel got the very strong feeling that had their story diverged at all significantly from what the sesheyans' own sources must have told them, Helm would have had to make his way home alone.

When they were finished, and Gabriel and Enda had detailed what they had brought in the ship and why, the adult sesheyans in the circle began visibly to relax. Gabriel seized the moment and said, "All I want to know is: what are you doing here? How did you get here? And how is it that no one knows?" The colony leader, Kaiste, replied a little wearily, "I would not say that no one knows, alas for that. Since you have been kind enough to have come all this way, we will gladly tell you our history, or as much of it that matters. We cannot tell you all of it. That might be an unnecessary burden on you some day."

If VoidCorp got to hear about it, yes, I just bet, Gabriel thought.

"Obviously we have not been here for very long," said Kaiste, "about twenty standard years. We were originally a large subcontracted work crew who were transshipped here as what we think must have been a very early venture of the Company to investigate or perhaps even colonize this part of space. Certainly they sent us out with full colonial packs, though we were told that we would be executing a subcontract, doing subcontracted non-suited mining work." " 'Ditchdigging,' " Enda said.

"Yes, but something happened. There was an accident in transit. We came a long way-many starfalls- and after perhaps twenty of them, the ship in which we were being transported suffered an explosion that either caused or was the result of some kind of stardrive failure. The explosion may even have been sabotage. The Company"-again he would not say its name-"was not popular on the world from which we had just been removed. I am not an expert and cannot describe the nature of the failure accurately, but the ship came out of drivespace after the failure and could not locate itself. There was a problem with its navigational systems as well, probably due to the explosion-one of the computers involved in the control of both systems was affected."

Kaiste looked a little bleak. "There is no way to put a good face on this, but we took our chance and rose up, killing almost all the Company people on the ship. Even with the chance that we might do nothing more after that than drift and die slowly in space, we could not let the possibility slip past and know for the rest of our lives that, if we had acted, we might be free. Indeed for some weeks there was confusion. Even among our own people there were killings until we established leadership and some kind of plan. Finally though, among the two thousand aboard, including some of the surviving humans, some of us were found who had a very little experience with stardrives and system drives. After many false starts we set course, as we thought, for Corrivale, hoping that surprise would allow us to reach Grith before the Company could do anything. Perhaps it was a feeble hope, but it was the only course that we could get all the people involved to agree to."

"So you set coordinates," Gabriel said, "and made starfall again."

"That we did. But there was either a fault in the coordinates, or another fault in the stardrive, or perhaps the same one. After five days we came out here. We knew where we were in a general way, but everyone was very afraid that if we tried another starfall, we would rise somewhere even less predictable-inside a sun, say. No one wanted to take another chance. So at last we stripped the ship of supplies and spent a month establishing a sealed colony down here. We used the ship's emergency supplies and shelters to seal and connect the natural caves we found here, which hold air nearly as well as they might water. Then we took our last few people off the ship in a shuttle and sent the ship out on her last starfall. No one knows where she made starrise, though as far as we know, the Company never found her again."

"And you've been here for twenty years," Gabriel said, "scratching out an existence."

"It has not been a proud life," said Kaiste, "but it has at least been a free one. A while after we came, we were finally able to make contact with the traders from Phorcys and Ino, and we traded them what few goods we had and were able to mine-we are good at that at least. We did a good business in the carboniferous stones-our rubies and sapphires are particularly fine."

"Surely you don't think to stay here forever?" Enda said.

Kaiste gazed across the room to where some small sesheyans were playing. An older child was scolding a younger one, who was pulling on his wings and rolling around on the floor. "Our children dream of the forests," Kaiste said. "We very much hope they will see them again. Or rather, for the first time." "But why are you still here?" Gabriel said. "You're not that far from Grith. You could have arranged something-not with the traders maybe, but with some freighter firm based on Grith. Ondway would have helped you, or the people who worked with him."

Kaiste's head was bowed in what Gabriel was learning to recognize as the sesheyan version of shaking one's head "no." When he looked at Gabriel again, that distress was back in his eyes, and a chill ran down Gabriel's back, irrational but impossible to ignore.

Very softly, after a moment, Kaiste said, "We have been betrayed once before. I should say, almost betrayed. Ondway had contacted a trader, a freighter captain whom he trusted. He intended to bring us away from here to Grith on this human's ship in two or three quiet runs. The captain came to look the situation over. We made her welcome, ate fruit with her, did our best to keep her safe here in our home. Then we caught her in the very act of attempting to call VoidCorp to tell them of our presence here. So we killed her." A helpless shrug of the wings. "There was nothing else we could do to protect ourselves. Some among us thought to use her ship ourselves, but when we tried to power up the craft, the entire drive and computer system overloaded, frying the equipment. Apparently the captain had installed some sort of fail-safe device to prevent exactly what we were intending."

Kaiste took a small sip from the metal cup he held. "After that we decided that we would have no more such cases of self-defense on our consciences. Ondway tried to convince us otherwise, wanted to keep trying to organize a way out of here for us, but there would have been no way to be sure that, no matter how much he trusted those who offered him help, they might nevertheless have betrayed him and us. The Company is too powerful. The temptation of what they could offer another betrayer would always be too great. We had come too close to being recaptured or killed, and we would not take that chance again-or the chance of again causing Ondway such guilt and pain as he had suffered because of the captain's betrayal. We made him swear by the Three that he would never reveal our presence here to anyone or try to bring about our rescue, though he was sure he had other friends who would not betray him, humans and others who would have helped. Ondway's movements are simply watched too closely for him to retrieve us himself. Since the incident we have worked to find our own way away from here, no matter how long it takes."

Gabriel sat there in silence, thinking that the time involved might be generations if they kept thinking this way.

"You are very welcome for the supplies you bring and the concern you show," said Kaiste, "but we do not think you should stay longer than the night."

"We appreciate your concern for us," Gabriel said, "but-"

"No, you don't understand," said Kaiste. "This is not a safe place. It has never been a safe place, but now it is even less so."

Gabriel glanced around him at the other sesheyans who sat with them. Their eyes were full of a fear less controlled than Kaiste's.

"What is it?" Gabriel asked. "Let us help."

Kaiste hunched up his wings.

After a few moments one of the other sesheyans said, "The attacks started a year or so ago. It was particularly cruel, in a way, for things on this world were finally beginning to work correctly. We had enough food, the atmosphere was finally showing a little change, the heat was increasing-" "Heat," Kaiste added. "That has been our main problem out this far in the system. But we had been working on it, and we were succeeding. We had enough technical expertise to begin tailoring gases that would increase the heat held in our atmosphere much more swiftly than might otherwise happen." "Greenhousing," Enda said. "Terraforming worlds do that. Heat the atmosphere up first with a lot of noble gases, that kind of thing."

Kaiste bowed his wings in assent. "There is much activity below the planet's crust here, and we have been using the volcanism to help us. We mine for the gases that are of most help in heating up the atmosphere. Progress has been made even more quickly than we dared to hope, since we also found light oxides that we could 'crack' for free oxygen."

"It was always a temporary measure," said the other seshey-an, the female who had spoken. "There had always been two hopes for us before we were nearly betrayed. We would get away from here somehow- hire ships, or if we had to, build them- and smuggle ourselves that way to Grith. We know the difficulties," she said, lifting one claw before Gabriel could speak, "better than you believe, but we were willing enough to try. Otherwise-we would make this world marginally liveable and then eventually call on the Concord for aid. The people on Phorcys and Ino with whom we had been dealing said they would not interfere, but they would not help either. We would have to do it ourselves." Gabriel thought of the plump, comfortable negotiators sitting around the table with the ambassador, sitting on this chilly little secret, and he had to immediately start disabling his own fury before it made him get up and start smashing things.

"Ships seemed impossible to come by," said Kaiste, "so for the time being we concentrated on making air that we could breathe, turning this world into somewhere we could stay while we made the tools to build the tools to construct the ships. We knew that sooner or later we would be noticed, but we kept very quiet and worked to keep that notice from happening for as long as possible. And life actually became settled. We had enough food for the first time, enough water, enough hope-just enough." Kaiste shook his head. "Then came the near-betrayal-and after that the attacks started to come. Our people go out suited, to mine the various metals available here, to tend the various thermal caves where we have been providing light for crops and from which we release the greenhousing gases. What became plain was that someone was watching our comings and goings. Small ships began to come down from space and take our people. There is no time when we are safe from them. They come in gloom or dark; it's all one to them."

"Are these little round ships?" Gabriel asked, making the shape with his hands.

All the sesheyans around him froze. Kaiste looked at him with great suspicion, his foremost eyes narrowing.

"Some have reported such," he answered, "but it is very unusual to see them and live afterward. For a long time they were simply another kind of unhewoi, something that came and vanished, taking one of us with it."

"Unhewoi?" Gabriel asked.

Enda tilted her head to one side as if shaking her head in regret. "It is a word for the Taker," she said, "the Beast that waits in the shadow of the woods and snatches you away. Bad sesheyan children are threatened with the Unhewoi if they don't behave. Many species have such a figure," Enda shivered, "But none expect it to become real."

"For months now we have scarcely dared to go out," said Kaiste. "Our situation was bad enough when the traders stopped coming. We thought perhaps the Company had somehow gotten wind of us, even though the freighter captain had not been able to complete her message to them. Our fear was great, and our privation has slowly been growing. We were depending too much, perhaps, on what the traders brought us. Then this worse danger came upon us, and though we need trade, we dare not expose others to the danger. Others have tried to come, even from Grith, but we have warned them to stop lest they too be taken. We live in a prison now, and we do not know for sure how we will ever escape." Gabriel's heart turned over in him. It would be a long time before he forgot his own taste of prison and the possibility of living in it forever. "There must be something we can do for you." "The kindest thing is to leave," said Kaiste. "The attacks are always worse after people from Outside are here. We are resigned to our fate. We made it ourselves; we must bear it ourselves." He shuddered. "Worse yet, we would not be able to bear it if they came and took you."

That image of Enda, dead in a gel-filled suit, the blue eyes quenched, her face stretched and distorted with rage and pain, hit Gabriel again-hit him so hard that it was all he could do to keep from jumping to his feet and heading back to Sunshine.

He looked up after a moment. "We'll go tomorrow," Gabriel said, "but I don't promise not to come back." Kaiste shook his head. "Your courage does you credit, but you only endanger us as well as yourselves. Please go with our good will. You will keep our secret from the Company, I know. But beware to whom you speak of us. They do not forget."

No one had much heart for conversation after that. The sesheyans showed Gabriel and Enda to a screened-off cubicle where they could have some privacy until the morning. There was no problem regarding warmth-the stone wall to one side of them was hot, and a pool of hot water bubbled up in the corner of their cubicle. But Gabriel had no joy of it, though at any other time he would have stood on his head in a pool half the size and praised it all out of proportion.

"We have to do something to help them," he said for about the twentieth time, some hours after they had been left there. Sleep would not come anywhere near him, and Enda had given up on it too since Gabriel plainly could neither lie still nor be quiet.

"I wait to hear a plan from you," Enda said rather wearily, "but I have yet to hear anything coherent." "It's hard to plan coherently when there's still the matter of those VoidCorp fighters to think about." "They are no longer a problem, I would have thought."

"That's not what I mean. Where did they come from? It's not that they couldn't have had stardrive, but it's not all that usual. It would make more sense for their base carrier to be around here somewhere, yet there's been no sign of it."

"Possibly they're afraid of attracting as much attention as such a large VoidCorp ship would produce should it appear in Thalaassa system without warning," Enda replied, "especially if they thought Schmetterling was going to be here to take official notice."

"I don't believe they wouldn't be pretty well informed of the comings and goings of Concord ships," Gabriel said. Still Enda might have a point. Or there might be some other reason entirely. He sighed and sat down. "I just don't know," he said. "If I could only-"

Both their handheld comm receivers, tucked in their pockets, beeped softly. Gabriel looked at Enda, who shook her head and reached into her pocket to turn hers off.

The air whispered in Gabriel's ear that this was a mistake. He swallowed, then shook his head and took his comm out, thumbing it open for reception.

"You two still awake down there?" said Helm's voice from both their handhelds.

Enda gave Gabriel a rather dire look, for all around them the cavern had suddenly gone very quiet.

Gabriel swallowed again, very certain that this was not because everyone had suddenly gone to bed.

"Helm," Enda said, "I fear dawn will have no secrets from either of us. Why are you still awake?"

"Not my night yet. I was talking to Delde Sola."

"Statement: still is," came the doctor's voice down the comms.

"Delde Sola," Gabriel said immediately, "you are an angel with a wire hairdo. I will change your batteries any time, but what are you doing in this system?"

Delde Sola snickered. "Conjecture: thought gallantry was dead. Objective statement: Helm called me earlier, suggested presence here might be useful. Made excuse to Iphus authorities, called in favor, found outgoing transport. Location: Ino at moment, completing 'supply run.' Needed to do some shopping anyway."

"An angel," Gabriel repeated, "but the analysis-can you do that from this distance?"

"Affirm," Delde Sota said. "I am on the Grid. Helm is on the Grid. Longshot's computer is on the Grid and connects to my sensor extension-my braid-in his weapons bay. Object is in his weapons bay. Preparing now."

"The braid has one of those atomic-level microporous tendril attachments," Helm said. "All she has to do is touch it to something and it goes right through-" "I've seen it," Gabriel said. "Slick."

"Request: quiet for a moment please," Delde Sota said. "Interfacing."

Gabriel and Enda looked at each other. The silence in the cavern was even greater than it had been. Kaiste was standing in the opening between their private space and the main hall, looking at them grimly with a sabot pistol in his claw.

Gabriel looked up at him, wondering whether this was something that would have happened whether he and Enda had suddenly started to communicate with someone on the outside or not. Did they ever intend to let us leave, really? Have we been under a death sentence since we got here, no matter how good our intentions were? Not that it mattered now.

"Kaiste, it's Ondway's friends we're talking to," Gabriel explained and surprised himself somewhat with his own anger. "They know you're here, and they haven't betrayed you any more than we intend to. If you're going to shoot us, at least wait until the doctor finds out what you need to know. Then do what you like." He turned his back on Kaiste, rude though it was. His back itched at the feeling of the pistol leveled at it.

And itched, and itched, but he would not turn around again.

"Initial result," Delde Sola said then. "It is a chemical/enzymatic device. Catalytic compounds .. ." She trailed off.

There was something peculiar about her silence, and apparently Enda heard it too. "Doctor, are you all right?"

"Analyzing." A long silence.

"Conjecture:" Delde Sola said then, "device is intended to promote a catalytic reaction in atmosphere. Catalyzation starts high up, near space altitudes. All free or atmospheric oxygen is catalyzed into 'locked' forms, clathrates and other similar structures, using nitrogen and other gaseous atoms to construct the clathrates. Such structures bind the atoms into 'cages' in which they are inaccessible and from which they cannot escape. Over only very long periods the clathrate 'cages' would disintegrate." "What would happen if you dropped this into a planet's atmosphere?" Gabriel asked. "All oxygen in it would become sequestered in clathrate form." Delde Sola's voice was getting angry. Gabriel could just see those dark eyes and the anger in them. "Such oxygen is not respirable. It enters the lungs, but oxygen is not able to bond with hemoglobin in human blood cells, cyanoglobin in sesheyan blood, and so forth. It passes out of the lungs again unused and unusable. Breathing does no good. You breathe freely yet die of suffocation within minutes." "And then the clathrates disintegrate," Enda said softly.

"Leaving the oxygen slowly freeing itself for use again. Months, perhaps. Weeks, more likely." "So that after everything that breathed oxygen on a given planet was dead," Gabriel said softly, "the planet itself would be usable again after a while."

"Why waste perfectly good infrastructure investment?" said Doctor Delde Sola, almost in a growl. "Plants remain unhurt since plants use nitrogen, and plenty of free nitrogen is left. Planet surface is cleansed of undesirable organisms- non-Employee sesheyans, for example."

Suddenly Gabriel thought of that VoidCorp cruiser he had seen heading nonchalantly toward Grith in a maneuver that looked like it was simply using Hydrocus's gravity to slingshot around the two worlds. But something else was going on. Such a maneuver might look like an energy saving move at first. For a cruiser like that, though, it had to cost more energy to set up than it would or could possibly save. What was it practicing for? Gabriel thought. Insertion of something into the high atmosphere . . . Now, only now, he turned to look at Kaiste again. The sesheyan was standing there, the pistol lowered, looking stricken. "Yes," Gabriel said. "Non-Employee sesheyans, and not just these, either." Enda was staring at him "What?" Helm said. "Who?" "The ones on Grith" Gabriel said.

Enda's mouth fell open. "But there are thousands of humans there as well, and fraal, and other species. All the Hatire settlers at Diamond Point, and the people scattered through the jungles, and ..." She trailed off.

"Not VoidCorp employees, though," said Gabriel. "Not real people." He was thinking again about Delvecchio's rueful remarks about how long it took to turn other beings into people, or at least the kind of people worthy of being treated like Us.

"They would destabilize the whole system," Enda said slowly. "They would start a war here, and it would spread. They might have wiped out a Hatire colony once, but they would not get away with it twice."

"Wouldn't they? Since when have they cared about a war or two?" Gabriel said. "This is VoidCorp we're discussing. Their business, long term and short term, is to win, and they can't win as long as there's a colony of renegade sesheyans sitting right out under their noses on Grith, flaunting 'their' contract with the Company! So they'll kill them, but they'll make sure their little gadget works here and kill these sesheyans first, because two colonies of free sesheyans are even worse than just one." "The Concord," said Enda slowly, "cannot allow them to get away with this."

Gabriel did not share his immediate thought. Perhaps the Concord did not intend to let them get away with this, and he- and to a lesser extent Enda-were the tools that the Concord were employing to this purpose. The issue had come up for consideration before. Isn't a willing tool still a tool? Gabriel was now finding aspects of the question that he had not considered before. He had occasionally spent some time wondering what good he might be doing Lorand Kharls. Now he found himself wondering what good Lorand Kharls might do him, and whether the tool might not turn in the hand of its user in ways that even the user might find surprising.

More-and in a more shadowy manner-the idea was beginning to creep up on Gabriel that there were other kinds of service to the Concord than the strictly military ones and that willing service might change the nature of everything that had gone before it.

Enda's getting to me, he thought, putting that thought aside for the moment. "So that's why that thing was signaling," Gabriel said. "It was waiting for the sesheyans in the attack force to lock onto it and give it the signal to go active. Their bosses didn't want to leave it on automatic. There might have been some reason to abort the attack suddenly."

"Like if a Concord ship turned up suddenly," said Enda.

"Yes."

"And when we turned up, some of them went to go ahead with the delivery, thinking there would be no witnesses, until we started to get a little the better of the situation," Enda said, "at which point the insertion must have been called off. The ships detailed to it came back to finish us off."

"With the results we saw." Gabriel sighed. "Did they make that decision themselves, though? Or did someone order them to? Did they have a chance to report to whoever was in charge of the attack?"

"For all we know, the whole thing was being watched remotely by their masters elsewhere," Enda said.

"In fact it seems all too likely. I think we must expect them to return, and in short order."

"On top of everything else, they were using Employee sesheyans to deliver this thing." Gabriel grimaced.

"Probably from VoidCorp's point of view, that just made it even more fun," Helm said.

Gabriel put his head down in his hands-then looked up again, looked over at Kaiste. "Kaiste, you've got to leave," he said. "You've got to get out of here. There's no way VoidCorp can have intended to try something like this and fail to carry it through eventually. You have to come with us."

"In two ships?" Enda said, very softly. 'There are at least three thousand sesheyans here."

Gabriel shook his head. "Delde Sola, thanks for the analysis. We may need some more help from you before this is over."

"Call when ready," she said, and the line clicked. "Helm," Gabriel said. "I'll be up a while yet."

"Stay ready. We may have to do something in a hurry." "Like what?" I have no idea!

"I'll let you know before morning," Gabriel said.

He turned again, but Kaiste had vanished from the doorway out into the silence and the dimness of the cavern.

Earlier, the time seemed to be dragging, but now it seemed to be fleeing by, unfairly swiftly, and Gabriel snatched at every moment of it, hoping that the next moment might give him the idea he needed. But every moment that went by without an answer said in his ear, You blew it.

Enda sat by the little hot pool with her eyes closed, listening to him. This was something Gabriel had seen her do on Sunshine. She often looked as if she were sleeping, but she never missed a word. Now he paced and talked as he might have done with Delvecchio in those far lost days on Falada. "The Concord ought to be here," he kept saying. "Why aren't they here?"

"Indeed," Enda said after a moment, her eyes still closed, "I would have thought that because of the treaty, the Concord's attention would have been turned much more intently toward this system." "I think that may be why things have heated up here." Gabriel said. For a moment it was as if it was not Enda sitting there but Delvecchio. Odd how he could almost feel that prickly, amused presence nearby. "Enda, think about the situation as it was. Phorcys and Ino hate each other, but neither is averse to doing a little trading on the side with a tiny colony of sesheyans well out in the middle of nowhere. No one else is interested in that colony. It remains the Thalaassan worlds' little secret, though they understand perfectly well what VoidCorp's response will be if it ever finds out about this place. The Company moves in and deals with this little colony, probably terminally. Then, understanding that Phorcys and Ino will have known about this place but never informed VoidCorp about it, the Company moves into the Thalaassa system with intent. Oh, outwardly it's all very much on the up and up. Development, progress, sell us a few of your outer planets-you don't need them. Sell us some of the bigger companies on your worlds, we'll make them work better. Economies of scale, all the usual excuses. So that would happen too. Soon enough VoidCorp would have a major hold on this system, and once it controlled most things, that's when the revenge would start. The Company has a long memory.

"Then all of a sudden the Concord shows up and starts insisting that Phorcys and Ino stop fighting one another, make peace, lay everything out on the table where it can all be seen. Well, on the one hand, the governments on Phorcys and Ino are absolutely delighted. Here's possibly the only force that can keep the Corpses from eating the whole Thalaassa system alive. At the same time, they don't really want to stop fighting, and they also know that if the Concord finds out about this little colony of sesheyans on Rhynchus, there'll be trouble.

"So it's never mentioned, at first. Then the treaty comes close to being ready to sign. Now, both governments know they can't make a treaty 'disposition' of their system without mentioning it. Yet if they do mention Rhynchus, one way or the other, they're straight down the hole. VoidCorp will never forgive them if the Concord makes an issue of this the way they did of Grith... and they will. There will be two Griths, one of them in the Thalaassa system, a much less well protected system than Corrivale is, and sooner or later the wrath of VoidCorp will fall on Rhynchus-and on Phorcys and Ino as well. Yet if they don't mention the colony on Rhynchus, there's trouble as well. The language of the treaty they signed requires both planets to help to 'protect and defend the sovereignty of all inhabited worlds in the system.' That will have to include Rhynchus, even though no one has mentioned it. When the Concord finds out what's going on there, and what's been going on, they'll be furious, and they'll probably withdraw their protection, leaving Phorcys and Ino in just as bad a spot."

Gabriel sat down and thought for a moment, reaching for a cup of chai the sesheyans had left him. "So. Here it starts to get iffy. But I would lay money that at this point, VoidCorp suddenly switched roles and offered to be the 'good cop.' Some soft-voiced, well-dressed type at level Q or better turns up in the offices of the lord president of Phorcys and the delegate of Ino and says, 'Don't get all concerned now. We can do you a little favor, solve your problems, solve our problems. Then everybody will be happy.' What they suggest is that they're going to get rid of the colony on Rhynchus. Sterilize it." The anger was building in him again, but he didn't care. "That way, there will be no dirty little secret for the Concord to discover when they come in after the treaty and start doing detailed scans and assessments on all the planets in the system to determine where the assistance programs and so forth will go. Naturally VoidCorp will be very grateful. Probably the gratitude would at first take the form of them not moving to take over the system wholesale." Gabriel grinned. "My guess is that they'd wait for the Concord to finish the assay sweeps, let them spend the money to find out whether there's any reason to stay in the place. Resources, whatever. Then move in. Or, if there's nothing worth the taking, leave the place alone. Otherwise . .. until there's enough other infrastructure in place in this part of the Verge to come back inexpensively and take over the system." "The Company," Enda said softly, "has a long memory." Gabriel nodded. "Revenge." He put his chai down. "There are other problems." "Yes," Enda said. "Silver Bell."

Oleg's dead face came up before Gabriel's eyes again. Who's doing this? he thought. These-people-well, they were people once. Now they move, they act, but are they alive?

Who takes a dead person and brings him "alive" again, then sends him out to fight and kill?

He shook his head.

"What will we do?" Enda asked.

Gabriel sighed. "I need more time."

"I think there is no more time," Enda said. "It is dawn."

He and Enda stepped out of the caves for a breath of fresh air and to see the new light. Dawn did not make that much difference here. At this distance Thalaassa was only a small disk, just a step up from a super bright star, its light at noon not much brighter than a misty morning or a very bright moonlit night on Bluefall in Gabriel's childhood. Still it was a change from the blackness of night or the closeness inside the caves.

Gabriel stood out at the edge of the landing field, looking up. The sky here was dark, partly because of the distance from Thalaassa, partly because there was still not that much oxygen or nitrogen to refract the sunlight. The early morning was cloudless-no surprise, the planet had shown little weather when they arrived yesterday. High up, though, there was one long streak of cloud, catching the pale sun, burning surprisingly bright.

Gabriel looked at it. "Has Helm been dipping down into atmosphere?" he said to Enda. "Why would he do that?"

"Well, that almost looks like a contrail-" They both stared at it, pausing to nod at Kaiste as he came out behind them and looked up to see the contrail as well. Gabriel glanced at Kaiste and got out his handheld. "Helm?"

A pause. "What?"

"Have you been in atmosphere?"

"Me? Hardly."

"Then what's that contrail up there?"

A long silence. Then, slowly, eloquently, Helm began to swear. "What? What?" Gabriel asked frantically, but he already knew. "The sensors say," said Helm, "that it's clathrates. Clathrates of nitrogen."

Gabriel's heart seized up inside him. Something up there was changing the way the air reflected the little sunlight it got from Thalaassa, changing the atmosphere's constitution. "Aiai," Enda said softly. "They had another one."

"Of course they did," Gabriel said, groaning. "No one ever makes just one weapon. And they had to use it quickly because their attack force was seen or because their first bomb was found. Helm, how did they get past you ? "

He was swearing again, but he stopped long enough to answer. "Not impossible, if there's just one ship in orbit and you stay on the far side of the planet from it at all times. If the ship is small enough-" What fourteen didn't do, one did, Gabriel thought bitterly. "How fast will the change come?"

"From what Delde Sola said, pretty fast. It's a catalytic process. Maybe only a few hours to sweep around the planet. Another couple of hours to work right down into the lower atmosphere. After that-"

"After that we will start to die," said Kaiste softly. "We do not have machines to make air from stone the way the satellite colonies do. We take our air from outside, concentrate it, filter it, and process it. If within a few hours there will be no more-then a few hours after that, we will start to die."

They all looked at one another in horror.

"We've got to get everyone out of here," Gabriel said. "Now!"

"There is no way!" protested Kaiste. "There are three thousand of us! We have no ships!" "We have two," Gabriel said.

"Are you crazy?" Helm said over the handheld. "How many people can we fit in our two little ships?

What's the use of saving a few when all the rest are going to be left behind?"

"We can't just give it up. We have to save as many as we can. We can't just leave them here!" Gabriel's mind was going in furious circles. They had to have help, but there was no help. Even if he called for help right now and it agreed to come, it would take five days to get here.

Above him, the contrail from the weapon's insertion into atmosphere burned bright. The refraction effect from it was fading somewhat, but spreading. Only a few hours. He looked around him at what was about to become a graveyard for three thousand sesheyans. This desperate little colony of caves and tunnels, everything kept so tidy and neat, even the discarded shipping containers and other rubbish from Phorcys and Ino all carefully stacked and stored out of the way and out of sight, because they must not be destroyed since you could never tell when you might find a way to recycle something. Nothing was wasted. Everything used carefully, cleverly, everything- Gabriel stopped.

"A few hours," he said to himself. "It just might be time enough."

He turned and ran off in the direction of the cave where Sunshine was hidden. "Gabriel," Enda cried, "where are you going?"

"I need my imager," he shouted, "then I have a few comm-calls to make."