Storm at Eldala

Chapter Six

TWO DAYS LATER, Sunshine made starrise in the endless black between Terivine and Mikoa. This jump made Gabriel nervous, for he still hated jumping to a location that didn't have a planet or a star associated with it. Such approximate destinations, defined by agreement rather than by some physical feature, struck him as a perfect place to be ambushed. "Paranoia," Enda said to him cheerfully after he had expressed this to her.

Nonetheless, when they were ready to come out of drivespace again, Gabriel had the fighting field down over him.

"Thirty seconds," Enda said. "Are you set?"

"As set as I'm going to be," Gabriel said, muffled in his darkness with the controls for the plasma cannons in his hands. They waited.

"Five seconds now," Enda said. Gabriel nodded. "Starrise," Enda said.

Gabriel saw it rendered in the field. Light washed into the cockpit, a pale gold, trickling away to one side. "Right," he said, tumbling the ship slowly and looking around him for another starrise, but there was none. "Where's Helm?"

"I do not know," Enda said. "The detectors do not see him anywhere."

"What happened? We dropped into drivespace at the same time. The last time we went into starfall together, we came out together, tight as you please."

"The last time we went into starfall together," said Enda, "Delde Sota had not been doing something unspecified to another ship downLongshot's comm circuits."

She reached into the 3D display, touched one of the indicators, and the whole thing wavered and jumped as if there had been a power surge. Gabriel swallowed, starting to feel twitchy in his gut. It reminded him too clearly of what had happened when the mass cannon had hit them. She couldn't be here, he thought. I shot her butt off. Impossible—

Then his nerves steadied down, though his stomach was still burning him, a surprising discomfort low down on his left side. Gas pain? Cramp?

Who needs this right now? Gabriel thought, squirming.

The display jumped again.

"We have lost the mass detectors," Enda said. "Gabriel, how could that happen?" She started touching other controls inside the display, one after another, and Gabriel watched them go ash-pale and nonfunctional.

Ow. That hurts. The pain was becoming unbearable. After this I'm not going to eat within six hours of a starrise, I don't care how hungry I am.

"I have no idea," Gabriel said, "but how could anything Delde Sota did to that woman's ship have possibly affected Helm's stardrive?"

"I don't know," Enda said. "I would prefer to wait until Delde Sota turns up and ask her myself." No one was there. Gabriel watched his in-field version of the main display flicker, waver, and then pale to nothing.Everything—ship's environmental energy levels, her fuel, all her stardrive readouts — faded and were gone.

Gabriel's stomach was churning. Without instrumentation, the ship not only couldn't fight, she could barely move. That burning was now like a coal, fierce and concentrated. That's not gas. Gas doesn't burn on the outside! What the—

Gabriel hurriedly unfastened his straps and jumped up. The pain slipped down his leg. Not the stomach. My pocket—

He started to reach into it, then hurriedly changed his mind and grabbed the fabric of the pocket so that he could dump the contents on the floor.

The luckstone fell out. It was fiery hot and blazing with light. It bounced to the floor, lay still, and began sizzling itself a little hole into the supposedly indestructible plastic decking. The smooth oval stone, normally dead black, now shone with a greenish-golden-white light. The fierce little glow slowly pulsed bright to pale to bright again.

Enda stole a glance downward, and her eyes widened as Gabriel hurriedly sat back into his chair and began refastening his straps.

"It has never done anything like that before, has it?" Enda asked.

"What, try to burn a hole in me and then succeed in doing the same to my deck?" Gabriel said. "Now that you mention it, no!" He threw the luckstone a very annoyed glance. "What if it keeps on doing this? It's going to burn straight down into the personal cargo hold!"

"It may if it pleases," Enda said, reaching into the display again. "I have other problems. Oh!"

The display lit up again with a sudden flash. Enda scowled as if she didn't trust it. Gabriel busied himself with getting back into the fighting field, which still seemed functional for the moment.

"Everything is back again," Enda said, "and the mass detectors are up and running once more. What a relief."

"I'd be a lot more relieved if we knew where Helm was." "Somewhere else, plainly."

Gabriel gave Enda a look. "Have I mentioned to you that the fraal sense of humor can be a little strange?" "Several times," Enda said. "Similar claims can be made about the human one. That joke about the wire brush, now—"

One of the warning lights, the one that said EMERGENCY, grew to an alarming size in the 3D display and began flashing on and off.

Gabriel looked frantically at all the other indicators, but nothing seemed to be wrong withSunshine. "Enda?"

"It is not our emergency," she said, reaching out to the indicator. "Someone else's." "Helm?"

"No. He is not here, but someone else is."

The display filled with data — not just text, for once, but a schematic. "Small," he said as he studied the data. "A cargo ship?" "Possibly. We have not seen this one before?" "You mean, is this the other little ship that was at Rivendale? No." "That," Enda sighed, "is a relief."

The emergency message now began to play in several different sets of characters, several different sets of colors, and one sound. "This is free ship Lalique, out of Richards, en route from Mantebron to Aegis. We have suffered stardrive failure and are near the Mikoa-Aegis transit point. Transiting vessels, please render assistance, or if passing through on emergency transit, please convey emergency message to nearest drivesat relay. This is free ship Lalique— "

"It's recorded," Gabriel said. "Still, I'm surprised we're the first ones on the scene."

"Assuming we are," Enda said, "and that they have not merely forgotten to turn off the broadcast." She studied the display. "Well, let us go see what we can do for them. This is a bad place to have a stardrive failure."

Gabriel nodded. They might have to take the passengers aboard and leave the ship here, then go for help. Aegis would be the logical place to take them, so Gabriel and Enda's own plans would not suffer much, but he didn't much like the thought of having strangers aboardSunshine. He looked down at the luckstone, which was still glowing in the little socket it had melted for itself in the floor, though it no longer seemed to be working its way any further in. "Have you got a fix on them?" he asked.

"Yes, no problem. They're no more than forty or fifty thousand kilometers away. They were probably using the same arbitrary starfall figures for the system that we were."

Gabriel nodded.Sunshine's system drive kicked in, and the two of them sat there looking outside for any sign of the ship and stealing glances at the floor between them.

"It seems to be quieting down," Enda said. "Are you all right, Gabriel?"

He touched the seam of the top of his shipsuit open and stared down inside, then frowned. "I got scorched. It burned right through the pocket material."

Enda blinked at that. "The material is supposed to be fireproof, I thought."

"Then that wasn't fire," Gabriel said. "I thought the decking was indestructible, too. Can we claim for repairs on the guarantee?"

"You would probably have to explain to them how you did it," Enda said, "and then they might ask you to reproduce the effect. First you will have to work out just why the stone behaved that way."

Gabriel shook his head. "Never mind. I'll just use some hull patching on the hole. It's just a shame. That's the first real scratch or damage thatSunshine has had. She was perfect until now."

"Ah. You mean, except for when the hold came apart and nearly fell off when you landed on Grith that time."

"Oh,that," Gabriel said with a smile.

Enda laughed softly. "Take a look in the field and tell me if that is the ship we're looking for."

Gabriel could see the gravity "dimple" of the vessel, drifting intact. At least the stardrive hadn't caused any structural damage to the vessel.

There was a long pause."Sunshine?" said a woman's voice after a moment. "Oh, what a relief! Thank you so much! There are just two of us. No medical problems, thanks. Can you manage airlock-to-airlock?"

"We have a collapsible tube, yes," Enda said. "I will squirt the tube specs and coordinates to your computer when you're ready." "Ready now."

They closed in slowly and caught their first glimpse of the ship just a kilometer away. Lalique was obviously an old family-style ship. She was big, nearly twice Sunshine's length, and broad in the beam. Two pair of short wings, a little bigger than canards, just out from the cigar-shaped main hull. Four big cargo pods slung high, two and two, sat snug against the hull near the back. "Nice," Gabriel said as they closed in. "Plenty of room in there."

Enda maneuvered Sunshine in close to Lalique until the two vessels were drifting at the same speed and in the same direction. The computer confirmed the match. Enda then triggered the flexible airlock tube so that its counterpart program on the other ship could lock the ships together.

This took several minutes. Gabriel stayed in the fighting field, looking everywhere for Helm. "Where the frikes is he?" Gabriel muttered.

Enda sighed and said, "He has probably popped out further out in the system where the mass detector cannot see him. Let us wait and see what happens."

There came a soft chime from the display. "This is working, at least," Enda said."Lalique, our computer is showing the mating as complete and secure. Are you showing the same?" "Yes, we are. Please come aboard," said the woman's voice.

"Five minutes," said Enda and cut the channel. "Gabriel, I think you can safely come out of that for the moment."

He nodded and collapsed the field, blinking in the normal ship's light. "I'll leave it on automatic announce, though," Gabriel said, unstrapping himself and heading down the hall to the arms and equipment locker. "I want to know when Helm turns up."

Enda nodded as they both paused by the locker to pick up hand comms and a sidearm each. "It's not like I don't trust them," Gabriel said, "but—"

"You don't trust them" said Enda approvingly. "Why should you? At any rate, this far out from anywhere, no one is going to be offended by anyone carrying defensive weaponry."

"Right" he said as he checked the charge and the safety of his pistol. He holstered it at his hip, and then reached down into the bottom of the locker for his roll of general access tools, the ones used to get into panels and under deckplates. The other ship probably had tools of its own that were suited to the fastenings its own hardware used, but Gabriel liked to have his tools with him.

I just hope I don't have to try to do anything really technical, he thought as they made their way through the hold to the airlock. IfLalique's stardrive was anything likeSunshine's, it was covered with alarming labels saying things likeNo user-serviceable parts inside andOpening casing invalidates warranty. Sometimes such warnings were just clever ways of making sure that the drive manufacturer and its licensees were not cheated out of the price of service calls, but sometimes they were genuine indicators that anything you did to the drive might cause you, it, and everything around you to suddenly become collapsed matter. The trouble lay in telling which was which.

They paused by the airlock port, and Enda touched the opening combination into the locking pad. The door hissed open, and the two of them slipped into the tube and pulled themselves along the cables down the orange-walled corridor.

Another hiss of air heralded the opening of the door at the far end. "Come in," said that female voice, sounding more cheery this time.

Gabriel was concentrating on keeping his stomach under control. He had never liked going rapidly back and forth from gravity to non-gravity areas, though it was something every marine learned to handle, if not enjoy. Mostly it involved keeping your cardiac sphincter shut by muscle pressure, and this meant single-minded concentration until you got back to gravity again.

Shortly he saw floor in front of him, or what would be floor in a moment. He braced himself against the cables and put his feet through.

A moment later he was upright and looking around at a kind of entrance hall with several doors and a corridor leading out of it. A hand seized his upper arm, steadying him. "Welcome aboard," said the hand's owner, "I'm Angela Valiz." Gabriel looked up and replied, "Gabriel Connor."

He looked at her closely as he said it, watching for any reaction, but there was no flicker of recognition in her face. She was a tall, strongly-built young woman, maybe Gabriel's age. Her fair hair tailed down the back of her neck rather the way Enda did her own. She was dressed in the baggy trousers, tunic, and soft boots popular for casual wear in most places of the Aegis system. She looked at him curiously and asked, "Bluefall?" "Uh, yes."

She nodded and said, "I recognized the accent." She turned to Enda, who had come in behind Gabriel. "Respected, welcome."

"Thank you indeed. Enda, they call me." She made a graceful gesture with her left hand, a variant on the human handshake. Most fraal were left-handed, and this gesture showed that the hand was empty of weapons.

"You're very welcome, Enda."

Gabriel looked around him. What he could see ofLalique was handsome-looking. The ship's walls and ceiling panels were soft pastel beiges and blues. High ceilings and broad doorways gave the interior an unusually open and airy look. "Nice place you've got here," Gabriel said.

"Thanks. It's been in the family for the last fifty years, but right now I just want to get it home safe." She looked down the hallway with a concerned expression. "What happened, exactly?" Gabriel said.

"Come on down to the control room," Angela said. "You can look at the drive controls there. We made starrise here five days ago, recharged, and got ready to drop into starfall again, but the drive wouldn't engage. Everything else seems fine. The drive diagnostics report it ready to go, but when you hit the go button. . nothing."

They came into the control room. It was genuinely a room, not just a large cockpit as inSunshine. Several people could crew the bridge at five stations arranged around a small circular array of panels.

The viewport ran three-quarters of the way around the circle above the panel array. "Over here," Angela said and indicated one panel.

Gabriel sat down and studied the control configuration of the keypad for a moment. Fortunately it was one of the configurable control pads that the major manufacturers had been using for the last couple of decades, having finally realized that no one had to relearn the system every time it needed to be checked out.

"Right," Gabriel said, and started working his way down through the diagnostics tree to where the stardrive's inboard routines could be accessed.

The drive itself was a RoanTech, one of the ten or fifteen main manufacturers. Stardrive manufacturers too had begun to produce drives along broadly similar lines, partly so they could start dealing in replacement parts for one another's drives, and partly because it made sense — there were only so many ways you could put a gravity induction engine and a mass reactor together. Their diagnostic routines tended to look much the same these days for the same reasons as the control pads did. Enda leaned over Gabriel's shoulder, watching him examine the drive's controlling software, and then looked at Angela.

"By the way," Enda asked, "have you been suffering any irregularities in the way your instrumentation works?"

"Yes we have," Angela said. "Right after we got here, all our displays and readouts started to act up. I was wondering if it had something to do with the stardrive. When that went, the instrumentation kept misbehaving, but don't ask me why."

"Well, at least it wasn't just us," Gabriel said, "but I can't think what might be causing it." There was a noise from down the hallway through which they'd just come. Angela glanced in that direction. "Oh, here's my partner."

Down the central hallway was a door belonging to a lift that apparently serviced the lower level of the ship. The lift door opened, and he could hear footsteps in the hall. There was something odd about the rhythm. A second later, through the control room door, came the largest weren that Gabriel had ever seen in his life.

"Grawl, these are the people who answered our distress call," Angela said. "Gabriel, Enda, this is Grawl." Weren could be twice the height of a small human, and this one was. They also could be twice the breadth, and this one was. She was absolutely massive, with fur much more silver than was usual for weren. It had light striping that made Gabriel think of a pale gray tabby that one of his family's neighbors on Bluefall had owned. The neighbor's tabby, fierce as it had been on occasion, did not have ten-centimeter claws, three-centimeter tusks, or a very large gun slung on a baldric over its shoulder. This weren had all of these, and she looked at Gabriel and Enda with an expression of which Gabriel could make absolutely nothing.

Gabriel did not have much experience with the species. The marine contingent he had served with had not spent much time in the worlds where the weren had much of a presence. He knew enough about them to understand that politeness was much valued in their culture and likely to keep one's own head from being torn off in an excitable moment. "I greet you," he said, "and hope that we are not intruding."

The dark eyes looked at him. "Welcome enough you are," the weren said in a soft rumbling voice, "here where any visitor is likely enough to be welcome, were he half your size." Gabriel nodded noncommittally. He wasn't sure if she had complimented or insulted him. "Cousin," said Enda, "well met on the journey."

The weren swept an arm low before her body. "Respected, starlight shine on your road as well."

Enda smiled. "A long road — nearly as long as yours. Kurg is far away indeed."

"Distance," said the weren, "is an artifact of the mind."

Angela chuckled and said, "Grawl and I ran into each other in Alaundril about a year ago. We've been together since. She was traveling. ."

"I was outcast," Grawl corrected.

Gabriel looked at her with surprise. "I can't imagine who would have had the nerve to throw you out of anywhere."

She gave him a look that he hoped was a smile. "I was the daughter of warriors, the granddaughter of warriors," Grawl rumbled, "but I was a disgrace among my family." "In what manner?" Enda said.

Gabriel looked at Enda in shock, but Grawl lowered her head to Enda's level — a good way down — and said, softly, "I was the smallest of my kindred, the weakest, the poorest fighter, last-born, last in regard, but there was worse than that to come."

Gabriel looked up at her, easily two hundred kilograms of muscle and claws, and could do little but shake his head. She saw the movement and turned toward him. Hot breath blew about him with a peculiar cinnamony scent, ruffling his hair. "I am a poetess," Grawl whispered.

"Poetry is hardly an art scorned among the weren," Enda said. "What was your clan's objection with this?"

"There have been no artists of any note in my family for some generations," Grawl said. "My clan-sire felt that mine was an unsuitable calling for the daughter and granddaughter of warriors, and though the rest of the clan did not agree with him, heis our sire. When he said I had gotten the best of my brothers by skill and stealth and craft when I could not do so by force and fight, the other clan members dared not argue with him."

Then a sound came out of her the likes of which Gabriel had never heard. Weren laughter, the sound of a pot boiling, but a pot full of lava. "Get the best of them I did. None of them can wind words as I do. None of them could stand before me when I made satires upon them! I caused my eldest brother to go den-living from embarrassment, and my eldest sister to snatch her mate half bald, all by merely telling the truth about them in public, in meter, in the meeting-place of our people. Furious my family was, and they raged and shrieked in housemoot! They sought to tear me with their claws, but the claws of my words were sharper. They sought to blast me with their flintlocks, but the bullets of my scorn flew truer. Finally they gathered together outlawed me, and paid my way off planet." She smiled. The expression, even with those tusks, was surprisingly benign from such a massive creature. "Having received what I desired from them, I went out into the Old Night with a good heart and sought my hire in ships, doing security work. So we met, Angela and I, and we have done well together."

Gabriel glanced over at Angela during this. She had the expression of someone hearing a very familiar story.

'The meter is reminiscent of the sesheyan double-stave," Enda said, "though not as telegraphic." Grawl's eyes went wide. "You too are an artist!" she cried. "Always and far and wide the fraal are known for their sensitivity and craft."

And flattery, Gabriel thought, keeping his face straight. "About your stardrive. ." he said. Angela looked at him. "Don't tell me you know what's the matter with it already!" Gabriel laughed. "I wish. Does the drive have its own display panel?" "Yes," Angela said, "though I would think that it would display everything necessary up here." "So would I," Gabriel said, "but it doesn't. Can we go down and have a look at it?" "Certainly," Angela said. "Come on."

She led him down the hall and to the lift again, while behind them Enda and Grawl began to discuss poetry. "How long have you been out with this ship?" Gabriel asked Angela as the lift door slid open. "About a year and a half now," she replied. "I have a five year lease from the family. After that, if I can demonstrate a profit when I get back, I get another five years. Otherwise my little brother gets a turn." They stood in the lift, and it sank toward the hold level. "Have you been back home since?" Gabriel said. Angela shook her head. "Not a chance. I wanted to get the family out of my hair for a while. . find out what life without constant commitments hanging over your head looks like." She sighed as the lift door opened. "It's been refreshing. A little hectic, sometimes, but I wouldn't give it up. One way or the other I'm going to make the best of these five years, not get tied down, and roam around a good ways." Gabriel raised his eyebrows at that as she led him down a hallway that was twin to the one above them. "So how was Eldala?" he asked.

She stopped and stared at Gabriel in complete disbelief.

"Eldala," Gabriel said. "Did you get there, eventually?"

"Where did you hear about that?" she asked, more surprised than suspicious.

"We were in the Terivine system the other day. On Rivendale."

She looked at Gabriel uncomprehendingly. "So?"

"So were you, apparently. One of the locals mentioned you and where you were going."

"Well, yes, we were there, but—" Angela shook her head, started walking down the hall again. "I don't remember telling anyone about Eldala."

"Little guy named Rov something," Gabriel said. "He remembered that moderately well, and he rememberedyou well enough to wonder where you were. They're worried about you."

Now, as Angela paused by a sliding door and touched a combination onto the face of it, she looked completely confused. "Why would they be worried?"

The door opened, and they went in.

"You're kidding, right?" Gabriel said, pausing to look around the room. "It's just a small town, that settlement. They gossip about everything there. You told someone you were coming back through, and then you never came back. They think you're lying dead in a ditch somewhere."

The room was small, square and empty. The sealed main drive array took up the entire back wall, and a black metal panel with sealed the main access panel. Faired into the black metal was a big square panel of glass with a keypad at the top of it. Gabriel reached up, typed in the access command, and the entire diagnostic and drive system management directory rosette fanned out across the glass panel.

Angela leaned against the nearby wall. "It's so strange. I don't remember mentioning where I was going to anybody on Rivendale, although," she added, "wewere partying a lot while we were there…" "Ah," Gabriel said as he studied the directory rosette. They got blitzed, told everybody where they were going, what they were going to do…

Gabriel was beginning to form some opinions about this girl, and they were not flattering. Rich, probably. Careless. Mouth like a ramscoop.

"Aha," he said, finding the spot he wanted on the rosette. Gabriel touched that petal, and it became the core of another "flower" of options, one of which was log play. He selected that one. His old friend Hal had been an e-suit engineer onFalada, and Hal's second rule — after the one about reading the dumb-ass documentation — was to read the dumber-ass logs as well. "If nothing else," Hal had said, "it makes you look like you know what you're doing, however spurious this impression may be." Gabriel began working his way through the stardrive's logs. It had a diagnostic program to help him with this. The program looked at the logs, then at what they should look like, and then it finally showed any major differences it found.

Gabriel quickly scanned through the last several starfalls and starrises, and then started to read them with more care while the program was doing the same for the entire log. To Angela he said, "When they told me about this place you were going. I got curious. I'd never heard of it before. What caused your interest in it?"

"Well, it was a blank in the gazetteer," Angela said. "There had been some kind of accident when the original survey came through. Said they were having mechanical trouble. Anyway, they reported the planet as too cold and went on to their next stop." "Too cold?"

"Bad ambient temperature," said Angela. "Eight C below zero, apparently." Gabriel nodded. That would have been reason enough to pass on when there were hopes of finding something better in the next system along. Eight was a very low ambient, if he remembered the planetary climatic information he'd been taught as a marine. It suggested that even summer highs might not be much better than twelve C, which was bad for crops, even those that had been genetically tailored for chilly conditions. There was little point in settling a planet that was both far away and where food could not be successfully grown. You wound up having to bring everything in, and if there was no other resource there to make the trip worthwhile, no stellar nation or company would bother investigating settlement any further.

He paused, looking at something the diagnostic program had flagged. "Let me look at that," he told the computer. "So you gave up on it?" Gabriel asked Angela.

She shrugged and said, "It wasn't what we had in mind. We got tired of being far away from everything.. starfall after starfall, never seeing anyone, watching the same old entertainment over and over on the ship's channels. ."

"You have Grawl to make poetry for you," Gabriel said with an absolutely straight face. Angela punched him in the shoulder, more fiercely than Gabriel had braced himself to withstand. He rocked and barely kept from falling over sideways. "Don't mock her," Angela said. "She's had a hard time."

"She looks like she's survived it," Gabriel said, touching the panel again to focus the diagnostic's attention on what he thought he had found.

Angela folded her arms and stared down at the toes of her boots. "Survival isn't joy," she said. Gabriel paused, glancing at her. "I wouldn't know a lot about what constitutes joy for a weren." Angela gave him a resigned look. "How clear can any of us be about what goes on in an alien's mind? Any more than any of them can be clear about whatwe're thinking? I just worry about her, that's all. I think she'd really rather be home on Kurg, getting involved in tribal politics and ripping out the occasional suitor's throat, but she's made the best she can out of her life." She scratched at a worn place on the decking. "It must have been awful," Angela said softly, "always being beaten up and sat on, having the food stolen out from under your nose and everything else worthwhile being taken away from you by the stronger ones, the faster ones. Grawl found another way."

Angela looked up again and said, "But is she happy?" A touch of familiarity there? Gabriel thought. "And you," he said, "you got beaten up and sat on as well?"

She gave him a look both indignant and amused. "Ah, an amateur thought-wrangler," she said. "For your information, I was one of two and bigger than my brother. As a matter of factI beathim up whenever he needed it, which was most of the time. Brothers are always getting out of hand. If you don't show them the error of their ways early on, they run around making messes forever after."

Gabriel smiled at that. "I'll take your word for it. Meanwhile, look at this." He pointed at the log display in the glass and at the diagnostic program's suggestion of what should be present there. "I'm no expert, but this might be the trouble. I know our drive has routines to keep this from happening. Yours is enough like ours to suggest this is the problem. I think the synch between the two atomic clocks that handle the drive has been failing. See." He pointed. "The logs show them having gotten progressively more out of synch over the past few weeks. This one in particular, the gravity induction apparatus, looks like its clock has been speeding up. Not by huge amounts, but enough for it to start interfering now. Has this started acting strangely over the last couple of starfalls?"

Angela nodded. "Just after we left Mantebron." Gabriel stared at the diagnostics showing in the panel. "All right. I'm going to try to reset it. You willing to have me do that?" "Yes. I don't see that it can do that much harm."

I hope you're right, Gabriel thought. He backed up through the diagnostic program again and went down the tree to where the clock routines were. Touching a spot labeled Synchrony, he was rewarded by a message that asked,Reset clocks to match?" Aha," he said. "That they have this particular routine makes it sound like this problem might come up more than infrequently." Gabriel looked sideways at her. "Have you missed a scheduled service, by any chance?"

"Uh. ." She looked embarrassed. "Possibly."

"This may be one of the things they do on those routine services," Gabriel said, and touched the fork of the choice-tree that said YES. DONE, it said a second later.

"All right," he said. "When we're off the ship, punch it and see what happens. We won't leave until we see you safely away. If you can't get out, you and Grawl come aboardSunshine with us, and we'll get you to Aegis so you can arrange a return-and-tow with somebody there."

"Seems fair enough," Angela said as she went out. Gabriel closed down the panel routines and went after her.

As they were walking back to the lift, Angela looked at him curiously. "Something leak in your pocket?" "Huh? Oh." Gabriel glanced down at the pocket where the luckstone had been. "No, just a burn. I got careless with some equipment."

"Must have been some equipment. I thought those things were burn-proof."

"So did I," Gabriel said, thinking morosely of that spot on the decking. "Another of life's little surprises." In the lift, Angela leaned against its wall, looking thoughtful. She glanced up at him then, and Gabriel thought, Oh, please, don't invite me to dinner; I just want to get out of here and get on with what we were doing.

"Eldala," Angela said. "Are you interested in it?" Gabriel blinked. "Uh. . why?"

"You mentioned it first. Plainly it must have stuck in your mind when you heard about it."

"Well," Gabriel said, "yes." He shrugged. "It hardly matters, though. You've got the exploration contract."

"I'll sell it to you," Angela said.

Gabriel stared at her as the lift door opened.

"Why?"

"It's no good to me now," said Angela. "If you're right about the drive clocks, I'll be glad, but I'm not going anywhere again without having this drive serviced. That may take me a while. By then. ." She shrugged.

By then you may have found something more interesting to do with your money, Gabriel thought. Hmf. She looked at him as they walked back into the control room. "Are you interested?" Gabriel looked over at Enda, who was seated next to Grawl. Enda, looking from him to Angela to him again, gave Gabriel a look that said, Should I ask?

"Angela's interested in selling the exploration contract for Eldala," Gabriel said.

At this, Grawl screwed her face down into what looked like a frown. Enda looked more than usually thoughtful. "The price?"

"Is negotiable, believe me," Angela said. "I just don't feel prepared to carry on with that contract at this point."

"You were there, I take it?" said Enda.

Angela nodded and Enda continued, "Not for long, though. Is the world habitable for humans?" "Not without a lot of support, I think," Angela said. "Low ambient, supposedly," said Gabriel.

"We landed, looked around the place, picked up some mineral samples and things like that," Angela said. "Rocks, mostly. We ran assay on some soil samples for ore artifact but didn't find anything terribly useful."

"There was much snow," said Grawl. "Great white peaks that towered to the blue heavens. Snow bannered from them in the sun, and the winds blew the snow about—" "Wait a minute," Gabriel said. "How glaciated was this planet?"

"A mighty polar cap straddled the world's nadir," Grawl said, "and a lesser one the pole which pointed toward the sun. Seasonal, we reckoned the difference, for the ambient temperature—" "It was cold," Angela cut her off. Gabriel looked at Enda.

"Well, cold is not sufficient to disallow colonization, as we have seen elsewhere," Enda suggested. "Distance is likely to be more of a preventative factor. Still. ."

The back of Gabriel's mind was caught in a noisy argument. One part of it was claiming that this rich girl was just trying to cut her losses and make some money off a wasted investment. . possibly adding to this the amusement of selling someone something worthless. Another part of his mind was sure that she had missed something and that this might be a good idea… a very good idea. "By the way," Enda said, "I did not have a chance to mention that Helm is in the system. He just got within detection range." "What kept him?"

Enda shrugged. " 'Standard error,' he said. You know as well as I that there can be a considerable difference in arrival distance between vessels departing at the same time and from the same area."

"He's just got me spoiled," Gabriel said. "He's such a hot pilot. That's a relief, though."

He looked back at Angela, then. "How much money are we discussing here?"

"I'll give you a flat price for the whole thing," Angela said. "Half what we paid: contracts, exploration pack, the support software, all that."

" 'Support software'?" Enda asked.

Angela laughed and said, "It's just a big reference library on survival in hostile environments, a translator, and some other stuff. I never even configured some parts of it. The manuals are terrible, and when we got there and realized the environment wasn't anything we couldn't handle with overcoats and common sense, and there wasn't anything to use the translator on…" She shrugged. "And you paid. .?" Gabriel asked. "Seven thousand Concord."

Gabriel thought about that. "Refund guarantee? If we go to these coordinates and don't find a planet—" Rather suddenly, Grawl loomed over him. "Thereis," she growled, "a planet."

"Grawl, I think he was making a joke," Enda said hurriedly. "It can be a strange thing, the human sense of humor. There is this story about a wire brush—"

"Contract becomes effective immediately on sale?" Gabriel said, refusing to move, no matter how Grawl tried to intimidate him.

Angela nodded. "The only thing that would affect the contract would be transmission time to a Concord Survey facility."

"Well," Gabriel said, "we're infotraders. We can carry the contract transfer ourselves, if you're comfortable with that."

"It's going encrypted, so it's fine with me," Angela said with a shrug. "A deal, then," Gabriel said. They struck hands on it.

The remainder of the deal took little time. Gabriel had to go back over toSunshine for his accounting chip. He brought it back aboardLalique, and they recorded the sale in both ship's computers at the same time, passing the software and other files intoSunshine's databanks. Gabriel took possession of the "hard" documentation and software copies on solids, and then looked around one last time.

"Well, a pleasure doing business with you," he said. "I hope all this works out well for you."

"So do I," Angela said, "because otherwise we're going to need a ride to Aegis."

"Well," Gabriel said, hoping this wouldn't happen, "let's see what happens first. We'll break the ships' connection and stand away the usual safe distance—"

"Right," Angela said. Suddenly she looked anxious to be gone, as well. "Come on, Grawl, let's get her hot."

At least she walked them down to the airlock first. "Listen, Gabriel, Enda," she said, "if this does work out all right, our comms info is in the solids and the contracts. Get in touch when you make Aegis. We can get together."

"Certainly," Enda said, They slipped into the tube again, and the door closed behind them.

When they were on their side again, Enda asked Gabriel, "Is that what humans call 'impulse buying'?"

"Probably," Gabriel said. He looked down at the solids in his hands. "It was kind of a hunch."

"I think it was stress," Enda said. "Having things burn holes in your pocket seems to make money do the same."

Gabriel smiled, though weakly, and they made their way back up to the pilot's cabin. Gabriel paused by the door and reached down to gingerly touch the stone. It was as cool as it had ever been. "Weird." "You do not seem terribly eager to put it in your pocket at the moment," Enda said as Gabriel stowed the manual and contract solids.

"No, and you won't see me acting eager until we're out of this system. Let it just sit there until I'm sure it wants to behave." Gabriel sat down in the right-hand chair and opened a comms channel. "Helm?"

"Hey, you're back. How bad was her drive busted?"

"Maybe not at all. We'll find out." He changed channels."Lalique?"

"Here," said Angela's voice. "We'll be ready to test in thirty seconds. Hey, Gabriel, I meant it about dinner."

"Uh, thanks," Gabriel said. "Half a moment while we move out of range."

He backedSunshine well away, then gave the system drive a two-second pulse, pushing them some kilometers away fromLalique. "Good luck," Gabriel said. "Thanks"

The seconds ticked by as they watched out the viewport. "Please," Gabriel muttered, "please let it work." Enda threw him an amused glance. "Here we go," said Angela. "Five, four, three—"

She broke off. Gabriel swallowed, hoping desperately that their drive had not failed again. Starfall light sheeted in brilliant gold all overLalique s shape, and she vanished. Gabriel breathed out.

From Longshot, Helm said, "Are they gone now? Can we talk?"

"There's plenty of time for that," Gabriel said. "A few days to recharge, then we'll get out of here. Come on over and we'll have dinner." "Bring the autolaser," Enda said.