Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Eight

THE NEXT MORNING when they went out in search of breakfast, Gabriel found the package waiting for him at the front desk of their hotel. It was pitifully small, considering what had once been in his closet aboard Falada, but much of that had been various versions of uniform, to none of which he was now entitled. Gabriel stood there on the doorstep, unwrapping the package: some paperwork, notes-not the ones he thought he had kept from the ambassador. Some security-conscious person had probably confiscated them; a couple of plastic books, quite old, that had been presents from his father; a couple of laminated solids of his old home on Bluefall, that particular shot of the way the lake looked in the afternoon; and the little, dark, matte-finished stone.

He dumped it out of the wrappings into his hand, and it glowed only very dully. "Too much light out here, I suppose," Enda said, glancing at it incuriously. "By night it must be fine. Will you want to leave the rest of that here?"

Gabriel nodded and dropped the stone into his pocket. He then went back into the hotel, paid an extra couple of dollars for access to his "room" out of hours, and locked the bundle up. After he came out again, he and Enda found their way up to the main boulevard of the capital city, hailed a flycab, and made their way to the first of several used ship foundries.

As with many other planetary capitals where physical registration of a ship would normally be handled, there were at least ten or eleven of these facilities, doing everything from part-time salvage to breaking to "almost new"-basically, just relicensing work for pilots who had one reason or another to want to swap a ship for another of nearly equal age and quality. Usually this had to do with trouble with the law, and the quality of the ships was more than offset, for Gabriel, by the almost unavoidable suggestion that a ship bought under these circumstances was almost certainly somehow tainted, and that possibly you were as well.

The first shop was one of these, not much more than a "swap shop," and the salesman who came out to show them around the yard-a huge space of stained concrete, blindwall force-reinforced fencing, and rolled back no-fly nets-looked as if he had just been unwound from around a driveshaft. He was covered with grease that smelled faintly of electrical equipment, and he wore an expression that suggested he didn't think either Gabriel or Enda could afford anything in his place. "Whatchalookinfor?"

"Something in the line of a Lanierin Four Forty or a Delgakis," Gabriel said, this being the opening line on which he and Enda had agreed. Their whole "script" went through many permutations and could go on for hours if necessary, depending on whether one or the other of them thought that something suitable might be hidden in the "back room."

The man shook his head immediately and almost with pleasure. "Nothing that new here," he said. "We got Orneries, Altids, some StarMech stuff pretty used."

Those would have been the best of the lot, but they were plainly the exceptions. Gabriel looked around and could see nothing standing on the landing pans but ships mostly less than three years old, bigger than they needed, more expensive than they needed. He would have shaken his head and walked out right then, but Enda said, "Show us what you have. Some of these look big for our needs, but if the other equipment is right, we might be convinced."

They let the man take them around the various ships. He was a little reluctant at first but he soon gained energy and interest as he got the sense from both of them that they were both actually interested in buying and were not simply "timewasters." When the two of them had a thorough poke around and in and through the twelve or so ships that were remotely of interest, Enda thanked the man politely and headed for the gates, making for the street that led to yet another shipfounders' yard perhaps a kilometer away.

They walked on down the grimy road, Gabriel looking with some slight weariness at the relentlessly industrial quality of the land all around them. Weed-patched vacant lots, scarred concrete, bare fences and walls, and many many junked ships seemed to stretch for some miles away from them, toward the horizon where (it being clear for a change) the dim shapes of distant mountains were visible.

"This is going to take us a while, isn't it?" Gabriel asked.

"At least twenty minutes to walk to the next place," Enda answered.

"No, I mean to get off here."

She looked at him wryly but with understanding. "Your life has been lived very fast, I think," Enda said. "Now you feel a different pace and are uncertain whether you like it." "No, I'm certain," Gabriel said. "I don't like it."

Enda chuckled. "We will see how long that lasts. Meantime, there will be time for the people back at Joris's Used Ship Heaven to make some commcalls."

"Warning every other founder's in the area that there are a couple of hot ones coming."

"And what we are looking for. We have just saved ourselves some time, I think."

At first Gabriel was not so sure. The next lot was almost identical to the first one except that its ships were older, and the woman who came out to meet them was in a slightly tidier coverall. The main problem from Gabriel's point of view was that almost all those ships were too small. Some of them had been runabouts, just pleasure craft, and while they were drive-capable, they either weren't roomy enough or well enough shielded. It was much on Gabriel's mind that stars with good asteroid belts had a tendency to flare. The nearest good mining system, Corrivale, had problems of this kind. A ship without enough shielding would cook all its contents during a flare. Your remains would be sterile, but that would be all that could be said for them.

Enda noticed the lack of shielding and the size problem, and once again they thanked the woman and moved on down the road to the next founder's yard. Rather to Gabriel's astonishment, the sun actually came out as they reached its gates. He looked up, half tantalized and half saddened by the memory of the first sight of that pale sunlight through the tall windows of the courtroom, then he shook his head and went in after Enda.

This founder's was, if anything, dirtier and more chaotic than the first two had been. But the man who came out to meet them, rather to Gabriel's surprise, was clean or cleanish. At least his coverall seemed to have been in contact with some washing surfactant in the recent past. He actually took Enda's hand, which neither of the other founders' people had when it was offered, and shook Gabriel's as well. "Heard about you," the man said. "I'm Gol Leiysin. Come in and see if we have something that fits you." They followed him into the big yard, weaving their way around the piles of conduits and scrap metal that seemed to be piled every which way with no sense or solution to it. "Spring cleaning," Leiysin said. "Don't let it frighten you."

"You do this every spring?" Gabriel said, just avoiding tripping over some more conduit.

"Spring on Lecterion, sure," Leiysin said and laughed between his teeth. "We're not fanatics. What are you looking for?"

This time Enda began the recital while Gabriel tried to remember how long Lecterion's year was. It was a gas giant in orbit around Corrivale, that much he remembered, and that Omega Station, a Concord base, orbited one of the planet's moons. If he and Enda were indeed going to Corrivale in search of work, they would have to steer clear of Lecterion simply to prevent him from being arrested. But the planet's gas-giant status suggested that it was a good way out in its system and should therefore be easily avoidable.

"Got some older Delgakises," said Leiysin. "We don't get much call for the Lanierins; parts are too hard to get out here. There's no source for them much closer than Aegis system. Delgakis has a service depot on Grith, though. Handy. Take a look here."

The ships he showed them were old workhorses, not one of them much less than a decade in age, some pushing two. The age itself was not that much an issue. Delgakis was one of those makes of ship known to be "long runners," with thousands of starfalls in them if their service history was good. These, though, were far enough along in their lives to make you think. Gabriel put that matter aside and just examined the ships for a few minutes. They were all the right size for mining work-about sixty meters long, ample space for crew quarters-meaning room for the crew to get away from each other. All of them had good hold space. One of them even had clamps for an extra hold. It was the oldest of the lot, a D80. It amazed Gabriel that they had even been building this ship that long ago. Its lines were surprisingly clean looking, its hull was in fair shape, and the drive bay had held a good-sized stardrive in its time. "Family ship," said Leiysin when he saw Gabriel looking at it. Enda was busy with one of the others.

"They had it from new, apparently, to go by the service record. They did cargo at first, then went for mining afterward. Then they changed again and used the augmented hold for data. A lot of hauls out by Aegis and back into the Verge just after the new drivecomm relay went in to replace the old one lost during the war. By then half the planets in the Corrivale neighborhood were setting up their new Grids now that there was something to link through. Finally the owners did something unusual: they retired. Sold out, went somewhere in-world, found themselves a little cottage up a mountain, and didn't go to space no more."

Gabriel nodded. "They retired the drive too, though."

Leiysin shrugged. "No matter how kindly you treat a drive, twenty years is too long. We've got some here that will fit this module. A Speramundi, a Bricht. The Bricht wouldn't be a perfect fit, though." Gabriel shook his head. The Bricht would be less expensive, but a jury-rigged stardrive was nightmarish to maintain. That much he knew from many late-night horror stories from Hal. "Let's see the inside," he said.

Leiysin took him through. It was a surprisingly roomy ship, especially as regarded the sanitary fittings. This occurred to him as a possible reason why a family who had blasted in this ship for twenty years were able to retire, all alive, rather than having murdered one another for reasons having to do with hygiene. Gabriel knew a lot of people joked about such things, but marines knew better than most how important it was to successful human function when cooped up in a small tin can to be scrupulously clean about it. There was a tiny "sitting room" with a couple of surprisingly comfortable-looking fold- down chairs. Next to the chairs was a modular built-in Grid and entertainment access, possibly another reason the family had not killed one another. The living quarters consisted of three quarters-cubbies, two convertible for storage, and a well-equipped pilot's cabin with room for two to be there without having to be stuffed down one another's jumpsuits.

He came out of the ship to find Enda peering into the main hold. "Commodious," she said. "Should I look inside?"

"Do," Gabriel said, and Enda slipped up the steps and vanished. Gabriel walked around the ship, trying to do the kind of walk-about that Hal used to tell him about, looking for scratches, strange welds, riveted patches that changed color within the patch, other peculiarities. The problem is that I'm not absolutely sure what I'm looking for yet, he thought. I know the symptoms, but not what they mean. But he kept at it anyway.

The ship was shaped like a long, moderately wide box with various sensor relays and system drive equipment extending out of the main hull. Triangular wings jutted out from the rear of the craft. They were obviously intended to stabilize the craft in atmospheric flight, but they also seemed thick enough to be able to accommodate at least one weapons bay in each wing. The command compartment that housed the cockpit was a ten-meter-long cylinder that extended from the front of the ship and tapered into a round nose. Two rectangular bays jutted out from each side of the command compartment. Both of them had been gutted for salvage but could easily be refitted to house either a sensor bay or even a small weapons compartment. The ship's escape pod had also been salvaged, but its housing bay seemed in good shape. Like all of the ships in the yard, the craft's dusky cerametal skin was in desperate need of a good cleaning, but Gabriel could find no exterior damage or unexplained patch work. By the rime he had come all the way around the ship, Enda was coming down the stairs and looking severely at Leiysin, who was watching this whole performance with interest.

"It badly needs a cleaning," she said. "I wonder that with so much attention to the technical end, you had not seen to that by now."

"Detailing," Leiysin said and shrugged, "usually comes last." He gave Enda a thoughtful look. "Well," Enda said after a look of her own at Gabriel, "your decision."

He stood there with his mouth hanging open. Marines were not used to being given decisions of such stature, at least not marines of his rank.

Then Gabriel realized that he was not a marine any more, of any rank, and that other people, normal people, did get to make such decisions ... and maybe it was time he started. Both Enda and Leiysin were standing there staring at him, awaiting his decision. "What the drik," he said. "Let's do it."

They turned together to Leiysin, who nodded, looking satisfied. "Then let's go into the office and start the process. Sir, honored madam, will that be cash, or shall we investigate other payment options?" "That depends," Enda said mildly. "How much of a discount do you offer for cash?" Cash? Gabriel was thinking while concentrating on not allowing his eyes to bug out. Leiysin shook his head regretfully.

"Unfortunately the traffic in the system is light enough that it is not cost-effective to give cash discounts. No business here could-"

"Spare me your tales of woe," said Enda. "May the time come soon when you find yourself enough closer to civilization that you are dealing a little less close to the edge." Gabriel blinked, wondering what that meant. "Are you offering contract work for mortgagees?"

This time it was the dealer's turn to blink. "Phorcyn law forbids that kind of transaction-" Gabriel's ears perked up at that. The man had not quite said that he didn't offer contract work. But he finally said, "No, I don't want anything to do with that at this stage." Enda nodded to him. "Then we will examine the competing interest rates."

"Competing?" The dealer looked at her in surprise. "Honored, unfortunately the only bank offering ship escrow on Phorcys is-"

"You must think I was born only a hundred years ago," Enda said, and Gabriel grinned. "Flattery. Of course there are more banks available than just the one. I can arrange finance clear back in the Solar Union if I so please, and perhaps we should. Gabriel?" He nodded to her and turned to go.

"No! No, honored, wait, I'm sure we can come to some agreement-"

Gabriel paused, and after a moment nodded again. The remainder of the financial discussion went by with merciful speed; apparently Leiysin was so terrified of the possibility that this particular transaction might walk away from him that his spirit was nearly broken, and he sat there nodding and agreeing to everything Enda said. It was an interesting development, but as with so many others lately, Gabriel found himself wondering what it meant.

Other details took rather longer to sort out. Verifying the ship's condition came first. One of the independent examination companies had to come out and certify the ship's spaceworthiness-that could be done tonight. Then there was the matter of fittings. A mining ship, even the smallest, required better than usual shielding (since ores are likely to be radioactive), specialized assay equipment, and a fair amount of weaponry-since the work was lonely and the space in which it took place were not much frequented by others except asteroid miners, there are plenty of people willing to take advantage of you. There was also the matter of the installation of the new Speramundi drive. Also, the kind of modular shielding that the ship had once borne and that had been removed for data haulage would now need to be reinstalled. Enda also seemed unusually concerned about the type and quality of the weaponry Leiysin had to offer them. Gabriel supported his end of things by making it a point to be unusually picky and difficult about the mining equipment. What poor Leiysin was making of the whole transaction, Gabriel had no idea.

They signed the initial "commitment" chip after about an hour of detail work. Enda put down the deposit, five percent of the vehicle's full price with the rest scheduled to follow according to the loan repayment schedule that would be arranged with one of several banks tonight or tomorrow. They walked out of there well into the beginning stages of ownership of a Delgakis D-80 "Orindren" driveship, with only a few hundred things like system registration and victualling and drive fueling to handle. For Gabriel it was an exhilarating feeling, the only one he could remember having in some time: the beginning of a new life or rather, the beginning of the long process of finding out what had gone wrong with the last one and fixing it.

Later he started having second thoughts. "Do you ever have first ones?" Enda asked, teasing somewhat. They were back in the Dive for this discussion, the noise level there at this time of night so horrific that no one not standing directly between them could have managed to overhear them. As for the mere fact of the sale, probably everyone here knew about it already, but anyone wanting to get close enough to hear the details would have to come to grief first. Gabriel ate his soup, which was only marginally better than it had been the other night, and shook his head. "I'm not sure I like it," he said. "Well, would you rather go out without weapons?"

"Hardly! But the level of stuff we bought. Look at the numbers! Whoever installs those is going to talk. Word is going to get out. It always does. And someone's going to come after us, wondering why we need such big guns and thinking that we must have something really worth stealing-" "On the contrary, we will have better weapons yet," Enda said, "but we will not install them here, nor anywhere without posting the customary bribes. Even here, it is possible to make various arrangements in the documentation associated with the weaponry."

"You mean you're going to try to get them to forge the end-use certificates? Do you know what the penalty for-"

"Yes," said Enda, "probably better than you do. It's done all the time, Gabriel, as you know. Or you should know. I sometimes wonder whether the great concentration on producing spotless young entities for the Service does not shelter you too much from the ..." she trailed off. "Well, let that pass for the moment. In any case, our gunnery will seem ordinary enough by the time we are through fitting the ship, and there are ways to buy off the actual installers as well, ways to ensure that they stay bought. Other matters .. ."

" 'Other matters'?" Gabriel said. "I noticed something about the final bill."

"Yes?"

"It was larger than what the total should have been by about five percent."

Enda blinked. Gabriel gave her a look and said, "Just because I'm a marine doesn't mean I can't count." "Well, you are certainly right to notice. It is after all your money too, some of it. Quite a bit of it, in fact." She reached around her back and for a moment toyed with that silken fall of pearly hair that normally she kept bound out of the way. "It occurred to me that some slight extra speed might be desired." "Speed?"

"In departing."

Gabriel put the spoon down in the soup bowl again. "Are you telling me that the delivery date on the manifest is-"

"Inaccurate?" she said. "By some days." "When will it be-" Then he stopped himself.

"There are those who can read the lips of even fraal," Enda said and smiled that slight smile. "Perhaps we will let that wait."

Gabriel nodded and finished the last couple of spoonfuls of his soup. He thought Enda probably meant "tomorrow," but she was not going to say it. Probably with reason, he thought as he glanced around him. All around was a darkness full of smoke, drink fumes, and oblivious people shouting or singing at each other. Yet who knew what technology was hidden away in quiet corners, recording chance words that might be sold to a willing bidder?

He sighed, pushed back in his seat, pulled out the little pocket-stone, and began fiddling with it while letting the food settle.

"One thing we must settle by tomorrow morning," Enda said after a moment, glancing up from the wineglass that she had been refilling, "is the matter of the ship's name. They will not let us lift without something." She saw Gabriel pause and added, "You could always simply let them generate a letter and number combination, if you prefer. Something meaningless and non-connoted. Certainly there are species that are suspicious about such things."

Abruptly, Gabriel got the shudder. It had been some time since he had felt that: what his mother, when he was very young, had called "somebody walking over my grave," and then laughed and shrugged it off. It never seemed to have anything specific to do with something bad happening, but the two sometimes came together.

He raised his eyebrows, put the feeling aside for the moment, and said, "No, it can have a name, there's no problem with that."

"What, then? I have no gift for this kind of thing," Enda said. "You will have to choose." Gabriel leaned forward on his elbows and thought, twiddling the stone idly as he did so. The image came to him, abruptly, of that thin patch of sunshine that had shone down on them as they walked through the gates of Gol Leiysin's place. "Sunshine," he said.

Enda tilted her head at him. "Simple, perhaps childlike. No matter. Naming the light is always a good thing. It attracts its attention. 'Sunshine' let it be. We will both have to sign title, but you may as well take care of making the actual registry application, or rather completing it, at the spaceport in the morning. I will take care of the last of the victualling, and when I get back I will go over the final parts manifest with the people from Leiysin's to make sure the inventory is complete. Can you think of anything else that needs doing?"

Gabriel tried to think but couldn't. It was possibly understandable. This h ad been one of the fullest days he'd had in ages, and he felt much more tired than he should have. He began to wonder whether the trial had taken more out of him than he would have otherwise suspected.

"Not a thing," he said at last. "Though as a second thought, sleeping would be nice."

Enda chuckled. "I thought you might come up with that one eventually. All right. Let me finish this, and then we'll go."

She drank her wine, and Gabriel gestured through the singing for the bartender to send someone over to collect what they owed. Drink was cheap enough here, and Gabriel was glad to get rid of his last few pieces of Phorcyn hard currency. Only bills were left, and the people at the spaceport would readily enough put credit on his chip in exchange while they left. When the bill was paid, Enda got up and headed for the door, Gabriel coming after her through the noise and the smoke. "Here," he said, "let me get that for you." It was an old habit, but one he should begin to rediscover, he thought. Enda gave him a dry look as Gabriel opened the door for her, then she started past him. The sound was what hit him first, that low buzz.

His hand shot out almost before he knew what he was doing. He grabbed Enda by the shoulder and snatched her violently back. As she staggered backwards into him, a slug trailing superheated plasma went by directly in front of her, not more than a few centimeters in front of her nose. The slug slammed into the door frame, spraying splinters of wood and stone into their skin.

Gabriel pulled Enda past him, thrust her behind him back into the Dive, and dove out of the doorway. He hit the concrete in the dark. Good thing we've been this way a couple of times before, he thought as he rolled and broke out of the roll sideways. As the charge pistol's fire stitched the concrete behind him, he heard the shuffle of footsteps made brighter than normal by their echo against the nearby wall. He targeted that sound, rolled again, came up and dove straight at the dim shape he saw heading just a little to the left of the dim pink light of the weapon's aiming eye. Wham! His head hit something that should have been softer than it was. A battle vest maybe but not full attack armor. Too bad for you, buddy, Gabriel thought as he came down on top of the man, grabbed his head, and banged it on the ground with one hand while feeling with the other for the outstretched arm. Just out of reach, yes, there it was, an M12 charge pistol, full clip. Nasty. Didn't plan to leave much of her, did you? He pushed up and away from the momentarily inert body, grabbed the pistol, twisted the lanth cell's safety out of its socket, and paused as he heard something. A rustling sound came from the other side of the wall. Oh really, he thought. He immediately selected for "overcharge," then chucked the pistol over the wall after its safety, hard.

Motion underneath him, then a groan. The man probably had some internal injuries and certainly was bleeding badly from the back of his head. This briefly became much clearer in the flare of sudden light from inside the wall. The exploding charge pistol lit everything like a sheet of lightning for a few seconds and rocked the ground. There was a scream from not far away, and the wall shook as something, several somethings, impacted into it with a slightly wet sound.

Gabriel stood up. Enda was standing just outside the doorway, looking with some bemusement into the Dive, from which not so much as a nose had so far put itself out, nor seemed likely to in the near future. "Somebody here doesn't like you much, I think," Gabriel said as he dusted himself off and stood up. "Any thoughts as to who?"

Enda shook her head, looking around. The street in which the Dive was located was very dark, very quiet, and to Gabriel's senses getting darker and quieter by the moment. Even the barroom was deathly silent. He felt oddly elated. That was it, then. Marines had a sense of when trouble, physical trouble anyway, was going to break out. They might take his uniform and throw him off the ship and out of the Corps, but the instinct was still there. Gabriel produced a rather wolfish grin as he looked at the former attacker lying on the ground. "Should we call the police?" he asked.

Enda gave him a wide-eyed look, and Gabriel thought to himself once more that the illusion really was amazing. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that those eyes glowed in the dark.

"Gabriel," she said with some humor, "you are an optimist indeed if you think the police would come here at this time of night! Let us be away swiftly before the acquaintances of these miscreants come for them. For tonight the hotel will be secure enough. In the morning, swiftly with us to the spaceport where the ship will by now be lying in bond. We have business to finish, perhaps a whole day's worth-but I for one want to do every bit of it under official eyes, even the last of the shopping, even at field prices. Then we lift."

"But what if the ship's not ready?"

"Then we sleep in her, in bond. We could not get much more secure-and we are paying so much at the hotel that there would not be much difference!" There was a faint sound of footsteps in the distance.

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. Their fighting instructor at Academy had always said, "Gentlemen, after dealing with the baddies, do not depend on the local constabulary or anyone else to understand that you were only defending yourself. Have it away on your heels, and live to fight another day." He grinned at Enda. Together they ran, and the shadows swallowed them.

The next morning they called a flycab to come and get them. Gabriel was in reaction and knew it, but he was unable to do much about it. He felt almost uncontrollably jumpy and couldn't understand why. "I can think of a couple of reasons," Enda said to him in the cab. "One having to do with where I found you. The other . . ." She shrugged a little and plucked at the sleeve of the pilot's smartsuit that she had insisted on buying him after the sale was initiated yesterday. "Your uniform has changed." "Oh." He nodded. "Yes, the old one was protection of a kind, I guess."

"But the talents cannot be taken away as the uniform was," Enda said as the craft leveled out over the public access pad to Phorcys's main spaceport and began to sink toward it. "About that at least you may now rest assured." "I just wish I knew why-"

"So do I," Enda said, "but I would wait for somewhere quieter to discuss it." She gestured with her eyes at the roof of the cab and above. Space, Gabriel thought, and his heart jumped a little in him. He was going to be so glad to get off this planet.

They landed just outside the port's land-access gates, paid the cabbie, went through the spaceport's standard security screening, showed their initial ship-owner's "papers," and then caught a little open tug to take them the three kilometers or so over to the bond yards where ships and goods in transit were laid up. There, off to one side by itself with the port seal obvious on its doors, lay the little ship that would be Sunshine. Gabriel looked at her with some satisfaction, for she had been given a last polish by Leiysin's people. Even in the early morning clouded sunlight that was typical of this part of Phorcys during this time of year, she gleamed. Whether she would be clean enough inside was another story, but Gabriel would have plenty of time to take care of that once they were off-planet.

They showed their papers to the port official who showed up as soon as the tug left. This worthy, a sesheyan in coveralls who wore heavily tinted gailghe even against this early light, broke the seal and opened the ship for them. After giving them the two flat electronic keys that controlled the cargo lift and the doors, he took himself away without much more conversation. Gabriel and Enda got into the lift together, rode up, and came into the utility room that lay directly behind the pilot's cabin . . . and immediately the signal chimed to tell them someone was outside.

"Now there is terrible timing," Enda said, slipping forward to look out the cockpit window. "It is the supplies delivery already."

"I'll start cleaning," Gabriel said, looking around him. Enda gave him a bemused look, then went off.

He had just started on a really good scrub of Enda's quarters when she came back, looking somehow somber as she shut the outer air lock door behind her and opened the inner one. Gabriel looked at her with some concern. "Problems?"

"No, by no means," she said and slapped the control to bring the small in-hold lift chugging up into the ship's body. She and Gabriel both stopped for a moment to listen to the sound of it. The lift wheezed and hiccuped as if something was wrong with its hydraulics-yet on examination neither they nor the "evaluation" mechanic sent over from the field had been able to find anything the matter. "No," Enda said and reached into her satchel, coming up with a small cube-shaped data solid. "The logbook and revised service history, and the licensing paperwork, will be along in a couple of hours, they told me up front. We could leave bond as early as this evening. And all the groceries are here." The lift snugged into place, and Enda made her way down toward the cargo hold. "Did you get everything on the list?" Gabriel called after her.

"No," Enda's voice came floating back, "and if I had, we would have had to pay for another float to get it all over here, and at port prices!" She sounded exasperated. "Most things I got. The useful bulk foods, certainly, and the concentrates. But Gabriel, you are going to have to stop eating like a marine, I fear. We simply do not have cargo space for that much food."

That annoyed him slightly. And I thought I was being so frugal when I made up that list. "Did you get the sugar, anyway?" he said.

"Of course I got the sugar," Enda said. "Am I an alien, to drink my chai black?"

He grinned, then stood up and looked out the cockpit window. Down on the field, someone was walking toward them from the direction of the tower. "Company," he said. "Possibly the papers-" Enda said. "Go see to it."

It was the papers. A man in a coverall that was still in the process of ridding itself of a splash of lubricant strolled up to the passenger lift as it came down. He offered Gabriel a package studded with an impressive number of official seals, ties and fastenings.

"Your partner must sign as well," the man said as Gabriel took the stylus from him. Partner. He found that he liked the sound of that. "Fine. Enda?"

Gabriel scribbled his signature, came up with his ID chip and held it against the authenticating seal. The seal blinked and chirped once to verify that the chip's information had been internalized. After a moment the lift ascended again and came down bearing Enda. She too signed and produced her chip, touching it to the other affixed seal. The man snapped off half of each seal, then handed them back the completed registry package.

"Thank you, sir, honored," said the man. "Please file a flight plan as soon as possible, since Phorcyn law forbids unscheduled or unfiled craft to sit afield for more than three standard hours-" "Thank you. We will be filing directly, won't we, Gabriel?" she said as they both stepped into the lift. "Uh," Gabriel said, "I should be ready in about half an hour." The man nodded and walked away. "Good," Enda continued as they began to ascend back into the ship, "because the timer is running now. Every minute we sit here, we pay nearly six Concord dollars' worth of landing tax. If we take off in prime time, which starts in an hour, it costs us three times as much as if we do it when you said." "Everything costs, doesn't it?" Gabriel muttered. The lift ground to a halt and they stepped out. "Leaving, arriving, sitting still . . ."

"Everything costs," Enda said as she shut the airlock behind them, "some things more than others." She looked around them. "My, you have been busy." "Doing what I know best."

"Well, what you know less well is needed now. Normally, I would have told you what those who knew about such things once told me," Enda said. "Never lift without work or the promise of work and make sure the promise includes refund of your fuel costs." She made that small smile and added, "But these circumstances are not normal, and for a while, where we're concerned, I wonder whether there are likely to be any. No matter." She shrugged. "Let us file that plan and lift right away. The sooner we lift, then the sooner you can also learn to manage the ship in both drivespace and normal space. Where will we go? You will have been thinking about that."

Gabriel nodded. "Eraklion," he said. "The mining cooperative there doesn't have enough of its own ships to move everything they produce, and also, they're a fairly small outfit. You don't have VoidCorp all over the system, apparently, the way they do in Corrivale. No heavy cruisers hanging over your head here."

Enda tilted her head "yes."

"It seems sane enough," she said, "though much of our gear is arranged for nickel-iron work instead of ore. We will have to do some rearranging in the processing area. When do you want to start collecting and on what kind of contract?" "Whoa," Gabriel said, "I hadn't worked that out yet."

"But you had worked out," Enda insisted, "that one of the actions about which your ambassador had intelligence, one of the actions involved marginally with her death, took place there at Eraklion." Gabriel looked at Enda. "Are you sure you're not a mind-walker?" he asked.

Enda pulled her upper lip down in that droll smile. "I don't read minds," she replied. "The news is quite sufficient most of the time, and the rest of the time faces are usually plenty to go on. Well, at average system speeds you will have a day or so to consider the details. Let us get busy and see if she does what we bought her to do."

She went forward and sat down in the pilot's seat. Gabriel made one last turn through the ship to make sure that everything was secure, pausing briefly to look in at the empty cargo hold through its little fish tank window. If everything goes well, in a couple weeks that'll be full. And if it's not, we'll be broke. ''Gabriel, I cannot lift while you are not strapped down!"

He went forward and strapped himself in. I still don't get it, he thought, while under and behind him the engines hummed softly into life. I should feel great right now. We have a ship. We're going to find out what happened to me. At the very least, we're going to make some kind of living for ourselves . . . and begin an adventure. But he felt much less than elated at the moment. Maybe it's just that I've been through a lot lately.

Enda eased the controls forward, and the ship slipped gently upward, the stained concrete of the Phorcys landing ground dropping away beneath her. As if in salute, or just an accident of their rise toward the cloud cover, a final ray of sun broke through, stabbing down onto another part of the spaceport a kilometer or so away. Gabriel looked at it and smiled. A few seconds later they were through the cloud, and all that dismal landscape vanished beneath them, not a second too late for Gabriel. He slipped his hand into his pocket, felt the luck stone warm slightly under his touch as he lifted his eyes to the view above the cockpit and saw, amazingly, the sky already going black. Oh, the stars, he thought in a sudden flood of near-impossible relief, the stars.

And he shuddered at the memory of screams.