Jack Williamson - Eldren 01, page 5
The Aldebaran slid down at last to her plastic landing pad. When the mail came off, Quin had letters from his mother. She was still at Zurich Down, a researcher at the Kwan Labs there.
“I’m an Earthsider now,” she wrote. “And happy about it.”
Smiling out of a new holo, she looked younger than he recalled her, so lovely he ached again to see her.
“Dear Quin, I do miss you,” the letter continued. “I used to wish you could somehow come to live with me, but I see no hope for that. Things here are bad and getting worse. Not that I want you to worry about us. I suppose you hear a lot about the Holyfolk terrorists, but the Tycoon’s beefing up Security. I think we’re safe enough here in Sun Country.”
There was only one letter for Kerry. His eyes got wet when he read it, and Quin saw his face twitch and set. He turned away to take a long breath of starmist before he let Quin see the single sheet.
“Kerry—Kerry, dear—” Her hand had been unsteady. “It’s dreadfully hard to tell you this. Because I love both so much. You and dear little Quin. It killed me to leave you. Yet it had to happen—you always told me that, and I’ve grown to see it better now. Your lives will always be starside, and mine will be here.
“Please—please help Quin understand.”
She had a new husband. His name was Olaf Thorsen. She’d met him at the labs, where he was a kwanlon chemist. His speciality was superconduction. In the holo she sent, they were standing outside a Sun Country lodge, smiling at each other. He was a big blond man with a Sunmark that shone like a yellow moon on his slick pink cheek. They looked happy. Quin wanted to say he understood, but he couldn’t trust his aching throat.
He didn’t sleep much that night. Olaf Thorsen must be okay, if his mother loved him, but he still missed her more than he let Kerry know, and the letter had rekindled all his old yearning for the satellite cities and the skywires and all the marvels he couldn’t even imagine on the strange far Earth.
The wrong of it rankled in him. Security would have a Sunmark for Mindi when she got back to Cotopaxi High, because both her parents were listed on the Sunblood register and would be there to sign for her. But he was exiled forever. Needing a father terribly, he couldn’t help feeling bitter at his mother for all she hadn’t told him, a little bitter even at Mindi.
When he came out late for breakfast, Kerry asked if he was sick.
“Okay,” he muttered. “I’ll be okay.”
Kerry must have slept no better. The red neckerchief was strong with starmist, and his lashless eyes looked dark-rimmed and sad.
Sorry for him, Quin tried hard to content himself with Janoort. Jomo was letting him stand regular shifts on the engines now, and he had learned to run the lidar gear. Kerry and Charbon were still spraying the starside dark with the lidar search beams, Charbon alert for enemies, Kerry hoping for friends.
The Aldebaran was there two weeks, unloading cargo and taking on reaction mass. When her crewmen came off to visit the station, one of them was Jason Kwan.
“The Tycoon’s son.” Kerry smiled in wry recollection. “The vicious little brat that saved my life on the discovery flight. Grown up now. Grown worse, I gather from Jensai and Charbon. The Tycoon got him on the ship as a student pilot to get him out of trouble back Sunside. Seems he’s been charged with killing a Fleet officer in a quarrel over the officer’s wife. Charbon hates him, and he warned me to stay clear of him.”
Quin was at a telescope in the dome next morning, following what was left of the Spica and plotting its positions, when Charbon brought Jason to see the search gear. Quin couldn’t help turning to stare.
Jason Kwan!
The Tycoon’s son, trim and tall in a gold-braided uniform, a lasergun worn at his hip. Handsome in a careless way even with the jutting Romanoff nose, the bronze hair long, bronze moustache flowing wide, neat bronze beard trimmed to an arrogant point. Quin had never seen a moustache, and the bright Sunmark struck him through with envy.
They ignored him, but he overheard Jason needling Charbon. A reckless glint in his bright green eyes, he was playing on Charbon’s terror of the starsiders, inquiring with elaborate irony how he meant to defend the station if they ever did attack. The little commander was pink in the face and seething inside, but trying hard not to show what he felt. Listening, expecting an explosion, Quin was relieved when Kerry came in.
“Your old stowaway!” Jason recognized him. “Off my father’s ship.” He turned to goad Charbon again. “Remember how eager you were to cycle him through the disposal lock?”
“C’est—” Charbon’s voice had risen squeakily. “C’est une bagatelle.” He gulped to swallow his rage. “We’re good friends now.”
Trying to rescue him, Kerry introduced Quin. Jason stared at him indifferently, the tawny-green eyes impersonal as a cat’s. Quin hated him instantly, for that cold stare and the arrogant slant of the jutting nose and careless malice toward Charbon.
Yet he was a Kwan, the Tycoon’s heir. He had all Quin had longed for, even to the Romanoff nose. Drawn in spite of himself, Quin offered to let him see the Spica. Still taunting Charbon, he turned from the telescope to ask if he thought the aliens were back aboard the wreck.
“Not likely, sir.” Kerry spoke quickly. “Since the starbird was caught, they’ve had three years and more to come back for anything they wanted.”
Jason asked when it would pass Janoort.
“Forty-one hours from now,” Quin told him. “Half a million kilometers out.”
“Could we take a look—”
“Impossible!” Charbon stalked away. “That has been decided.”
Jason shrugged, seeming pleased with himself. Quin saw Kerry reaching for his starmist, as eager as Charbon clearly was to be rid of Jason.
“Let ‘em go.” A shrug of casual contempt. “If they’ve no time for me—”
Jason smiled at Quin, and the smile transformed him. The arrogance turned to genial warmth. Impersonal no longer, the green eyes welcomed him into all the grace and splendor of Jason’s world. His first dislike dissolved into awed admiration.
“Quin, would you care to show me around?”
“Sunner Kwan—” Awed at this great good luck, he had to catch his breath. “I’d love to.”
Jason had a holo camera, but he didn’t want to take the gym or the gardens or the slush pit. Nothing seemed to interest him till Quin took him on the old Capella. He smirked at Jomo’s English, but when he heard that Quin was a helper in the engine room his boredom disappeared.
“How’s this, kid?” His green gaze sharpened. “You can really run fusion engines?”
“We do our best.”
He wanted to know if the Capella had a fusion-powered minishuttle.
“It’s kept out at the end of a tunnel now,” Quin told him. “Operating off an insulating pad so the jet won’t sublime too much ice. Used to service the orbital signal gear.”
“Could it get out to the wreck?”
“My stepfather wanted to take it out, to tow the hulk into orbit, but Captain Charbon—”
“Old Charbon?” A sardonic hoot. “Let’s take a look.”
“Sir, the air valve would be locked—”
“I’ll manage the lock.” He touched his black-belted lasergun. “Come along, kid.”
They swam down the tunnel. His lasergun made a blinding flash. Smoke exploded, and he pulled the valve open. Eyes stinging, Quin followed him into the shuttle.
“Odd-looking junk.” He scowled at the tiny engine. “You can really run it, kid?”
“As long as it runs. On the last trip out, Kerry had a problem with the master magnet. He did get home, and I helped Jomo rewind the magnet and the spare.”
He peered uneasily at Jason.
“Sir, I don’t want trouble—”
“Listen, kid! I’m the Tycoon’s son.” Jason chuckled. “Trouble never troubles me.”
“But, sir, I’m not anybody—”
“Maybe not yet.” Jason squinted shrewdly at him. “But I’d bet you’d like to have a Sunmark.”
“I would.” Quin couldn’t help confessing that, a quiver in his voice. “I’d give nearly anything—”
“All right, kid!” A hearty clap on his shoulder. “I’ll get you that, if you’ll go along with me. Let’s fly out to the wreck and catch ourselves a starbird.”
“But, sir—”
The promise of a Sunmark had taken his voice and set his whole world to spinning. Terribly, he wanted to escape his long confinement to Janoort, to be as bold and forceful as Jason seemed to be. Maybe even to earn some high place in the House of Kwan. If he could ever find his father—
A crazy thought.
“I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “We’d be stealing the shuttle.”
“From the Company?” Jason laughed. “The Tycoon owns enough of the Company.”
“It’s not very likely we’d find another starbird—”
“No matter.” Jason shrugged. “We can always tell ‘em how it got away. So let’s go, kid! If you know how to seal the valve and uncouple the anchor and get the engine going—”
Jason smiled, and everything seemed possible. “I—” A hoarse little whisper. “I do.” The shuttle slid off the pad and into space. Though he did get the engine going, it was cranky as the old Capella‘s. He had to stand over it, reading the magnetic flux, listening to the whine of the pumps, rechecking voltages, fine-tuning the fuel flow, watching the thrust meter.
Yet he got brief glimpses of Janoort through the aft port. A ragged gray ball, half dimly lit by the far Sun, half only a blot across the stars, already tiny when he found it and shrinking fast. Seeing it gave him a queer-feeling emptiness mixed with a strange elation. The only world he had ever known, dwindling to a speck that would soon be lost among the stars. Losing it might hurt. Yet, with Jason for a friend, all the dazzling Sunside worlds were almost in reach. Or seemed to be—
“Listen, kid.” Hearing Jason’s lazy voice on the intercom, he winced from a pang of doubt. “I’m reading thrust at only a quarter G. Eight hours out to the wreck. Can’t you do better?”
“Maybe—” He hesitated. “But with this rewound magnet—”
“Push it, kid.”
“The old coils could recrystalize. Fail again.”
“I’ll take that chance.”
He pushed the thrust to half a G, and even a little beyond, before the little light winked red to warn him of some crystal flaw, threatening superconductivity. Gingerly he eased it a little back. The warning light went out, and he began to enjoy the flight. Alert to everything, asking the engine for all it could do, yet careful not to ask too much, he began to feel a sort of kinship with the brave little craft.
He felt grateful even to Jason. The Tycoon’s dashing son, his comrade now, sharing high adventure. The unlikely chance he’d always longed for, to get out of the tunnels and back to the fabulous Sunside worlds.
An hour out, with the robot pilot set, Jason came back to rummage through the locker and share what he found, hard biscuits and fruit-flavored synthetic juice.
“To our own starsider!” Jason lifted his frost-filmed squeeze-bulb. “If we do meet him—though I rather hope we don’t.”
“If you hope that—” Quin shook his head at the bronze-bearded smile, suddenly troubled again, wondering if Jason really shared the elation he had begun to feel. If Jason had already done so much, could anything thrill him? The tall Sunner was still beyond his understanding, and it took all his courage to go on. “—why are we here?”
“An impudent question.‘
“I’m sorry, sir—”
“It’s okay, kid.” The smile flashed brighter. “I guess you’ve earned an answer.” Jason paused, greenish eyes narrowed until they looked catlike again. “Old Fernando can’t hang on forever. I’m planning on his place, but the succession’s never automatic. He got elected when he brought the starbird back. I’ll need the same sort of smash. Something to show the Seven I’m better than he ever was.
“Get it, kid?”
Quin nodded. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but he listened wistfully while Jason talked about the House of Kwan and the Seven who controlled it. The savage rivalries among its members. Bribery and blackmail and betrayal. The Revelator and the Holyfolk, now at war to break the Company. Lies and spies and assassins.
Absorbed, envious of dramas and rewards he could hardly imagine, wondering if he could ever be as intrepid as Jason seemed, he was sorry when the radio began yelping in the cockpit. Jason went back to it. He heard Charbon’s angry voice squealing out of a speaker. The words weren’t clear, but he heard the cool sarcasm of Jason’s answer.
“Starbirds, Captain? If you’re afraid of starbirds in the wreck, we’ll clear them out. If you aren’t, we’ll bring you one for a pet.”
A shriller squeak from Charbon.
“Afraid for me? In this tin bucket? I race for sport.”
The signal set clicked off, but Jason stayed in the cockpit, nosing them toward the wreck. Alone with the little engine, Quin felt his unease returning. Away from that hypnotic smile, he didn’t really like Jason. Or trust him, either. Not when he’d had time to think.
The relief ship would soon be taking off, with Jason safe on board. In spite of that casual promise of Sunmark, Quin felt sadly certain now that he would be left behind, with too much to pay for. Kerry would be hurt. Even Jomo, he thought, would be disappointed in his mtoto wangu.
He began to feel sick.
“Here she is!” Jason roused him. “Cut the power and take a look.”
They were drifting beside the wreck. It seemed smaller than he expected, much less complete. A naked metal skeleton, most of its thin shell cut away, bright where the Sun hit, the rest a black outline against the stars. He wondered if the starsiders had come back to take more of it since Caffodio caught the starbird.
“No monsters here.” Jason was aiming his camera through the ports. “No room for them to hide.”
“We do have space gear, sir,” Quin reminded him. “One suit, anyhow. There in the lock.”
“The holos will be all I need.”
Quin watched him with the camera, watched the hulk’s slow spin, watched the Sun searching every shadow out. He saw no aliens. Only scrap metal. The aliens might come back for whatever they wanted, but would be drifting on into the halo, lost to Kerry and his dream of a finer human future.
“Kid!” Jason’s shout rang hollow in the narrow hull. “I see a signal on the console that says we’re running low on oxygen. Take us back. Start your engine—and push it hard.”
They had stayed too long, and he had to push the engine too hard. That small red caution light winked and winked again. He had to cut the thrust, back to half a G, back and back again.
“Push it, kid!” Jason kept urging. “Push it harder! While we’ve still got air to breathe.”
He pushed it too much harder. In spite of all his cutting back, the master magnet kept running far too hot. At last he could see Janoort through the port, swelling from a faint gray star to a small gray snowball, but it swelled too slowly. While it still looked small enough for his hand to grasp and throw, the magnet exploded.
Hot smoke blinded him. Hauling at the manual quencher, he lurched out into the empty cabin. Gasping for his breath, he heard Jason bumping about inside the air lock.
“Too bad, kid.”
His stinging eyes couldn’t see anything, but he heard the little servos humming, cycling the lock. Before the valve clunked shut, Jason’s casual drawl came through again.
“Hard to leave you, kid, but of course you’re too small to fit the suit. A nice fit for me, and I’ve got to get back before Jensai takes off and leaves me stranded in your stinking little icebox.
“Sorry for you, kid…”
Runesong and Cyan Gem were Newlings, linguists, and sisters. Sisters, too, of Goldengene, who had chosen to serve out on the halo fringe at Point Vermillion, watching for the Black Companion.
Beginning their own careers, they had come to the corestar observatory to work with the rescued planetics. Young in the Elderhood, they felt a kinship to these striving primitives, and they hoped to help bridge the cultural gulf.
Runesong had grown discouraged with their slow progress. Restive, as well, under the authority of her elder sister, who now had the planetics in charge, she asked the director for a new assignment.
“The creatures do poorly in captivity,” she told him. “I want to get closer to them, the way they are in nature. The captives are terrified and uncooperative, but those on the inner-fringe haloid are trying to talk. We keep picking up naïve contact signals. Really, sir, shouldn’t we answer?”
“You Newlings.” His authority shone, serenely green. “You’ve still to learn the elder way. Patience, caution, peace. Our sponsors have warned us not to betray anything about who and where we are.”
“Caution!” Her wings flushed with indignation. “I think you overdo it. Their own signals are announcing their presence to the whole halo. Begging, no doubt, for our friendship.”
“Or trying to lure us into some trap, hoping to avenge the loss of that ship?”
“Without contact, we’ll never know what they are.”
“You Newlings are always too hasty.”
“Our lives are brief.”
“Too brief for reflection.” The director’s huge eyes blinked blue, reproving her. “We’ll want better evidence than any I’ve seen that these beings are fit for the Elderhood. More likely they’re sanguinary brutes who’ve blundered on more technology than they can handle.”
“I’d take that risk.”
“If you’re asking for risks—” The director scanned her, winking indigo. “Perhaps you’d like to undertake a scouting mission.”
Wings lifted, she waited.
“We’ve been hesitant to ask for volunteers,” he told her, “because the task appears forbiddingly dangerous. We’ve lost one watcher. A young engineer who risked himself to study the planetic ship—”
“Quicksmith.” A shadow of sadness. “An old friend, working with us on planetic technology.”
