GALAXY BLUES:

PART ONE OF FOUR:

DOWN AND OUT ON COYOTE

by Allen M. Steele

Galaxy Blues is set in Allen M. Steele’s popular Coyote series. The author tells us that “while not a direct sequel to my last novel, Spindrift, it follows the events of the earlier book and shares a couple of its major characters. In the timeline of the Coyote series, it takes place after the original Coyote trilogy—Coyote, Coyote Rising, and Coyote Frontier—but can also be read independently.” Allen’s last Coyote story for Asimov’s, “The River Horses” (April/May 2006), will soon be published in hardcover by Subterranean Press.

* * * *

ONE

The narrative begins ... our protagonist leaves Earth, in a rather illicit manner ... subterfuge and the art of baseball ... fashion tips for stowaways ... suspicious minds.

* * * *

I

My name is Jules Truffaut, and this is the story of how I redeemed the human race.

It pretty much happened by accident. At the very least, it wasn’t something I intended to do. But life is that way sometimes. We make our own luck, really, even when we don’t mean to.

* * * *

II

Perhaps it’s best that we start at the beginning, the day I came aboard the CFSS Robert E. Lee. Not as a crew member, despite the fact that I was qualified to serve as a junior officer, nor as a passenger, although I’d gone to the considerable trouble and expense of acquiring a first-class ticket. Instead, circumstances forced me to become a stowaway ... but we’ll get to that later.

Hitching a ride aboard a starship isn’t easy. Takes a lot of advance preparation. I’d been on Highgate for nearly ten months, working as a longshoreman, before I managed to get myself assigned to the section of Alpha Dock where ships bound for Coyote were berthed. I’d taken the job under a false identity, just the same way I got on the station in the first place. According to my phony I.D., purchased on the black market back home in the Western Hemisphere Union, my name was Lucius Guthrie, and I was just one more guy who’d left Earth in hopes of getting a decent job in space. So I schlepped freight for six months before the foreman—with whom I’d spent a lot of time in the bar, with yours truly picking up the tab—determined that I was capable of operating one of the pods that loaded cargo containers aboard ships bound for Mars and the Jovian moons. I did my job well enough that, two months later, he reassigned me to take care of the Lee when it returned from 47 Ursae Majoris.

Which was exactly what I wanted, but even then I was careful not to make my move before I was good and ready. I only had one shot at this. If I screwed up, my true identity would doubtless be revealed and I would be deported to the WHU, after which I’d spend the rest of my life in a lunar penal colony. I couldn’t let that happen, so my next step was to cultivate a friendship with a member of the Lee’s crew while he was on shore leave. Like my boss, I plied him with drinks and massaged his ego until he agreed to satisfy my curiosity by sneaking me aboard for an unauthorized tour. Pretending to be nothing more than a wide-eyed yokel (“Gee, this ain’t nuthin’ like one of ‘em Mars ships!”), I memorized every detail of its interior, comparing what I saw against what I’d gleaned from engineering docs.

Two days later, the Robert E. Lee left port, heading out once more for Coyote. Two weeks after that, it returned again, right on schedule. Another two weeks went by, and then it was ready to make the trip again. That was when I put my plan into motion.

So there I was, seated within the cockpit of a cargo pod, gloved hands wrapped around the joysticks of its forward manipulators. I couldn’t see much through the wraparound portholes—my view was restricted by the massive container I was loading aboard the Lee—yet my radar and side-mounted cams told me that the vessel lay directly below me, its cargo hold yawning open like a small canyon. All I had to do was slide this last container into place, and...

“X-Ray Juliet Two-Four, how are we looking?” The voice of Alpha Dock’s traffic controller came through my headset. “Launch in T-minus twenty-two and counting. You got a problem there?”

Nag, nag, nag. That’s all traffic controllers ever did. Sure, they had their own schedule to keep, but still ... well, one of the things I liked the most about my scheme was that it gave me a chance to use their insufferance against themselves. A bit of revenge for ten months of henpecking.

“Negatory, Trafco. Putting the last container to bed now.” I tapped the sole of my right boot ever so slightly against the starboard RCS pedal. This caused the reaction control system to roll the pod a few degrees to the left. “Aw, hell,” I said, even as I compensated by nudging the left pedal. “Damn thing’s getting flakey on me again.”

The thrusters worked fine, but no one would know this until the maintenance crew took them apart. I’d been playing this game for the last couple of hours, though, complaining that something was wrong with the pod, thereby establishing an alibi for the precious few moments I would need.

“Bring it in when your shift’s over.” The traffic controller was impatient. “Just load the can and get out of there. Lee’s on final countdown.”

“Roger that.” The truth of the matter was that I had perfect control of my craft. Handling a cargo pod was child’s play for someone who’d been trained by the Union Astronautica to fly Athena-class shuttles. But in my role as Lucius Guthrie, I had to make this job seem more difficult than it actually was. “I’m on it. Tell Lee not to hold the count for me.”

A short pause. The controller was doubtless on another channel, discussing the situation with Lee’s bridge crew. Just a small problem with one of our pods. Pilot says he’s getting it worked out. Meanwhile, I continued to slowly descend toward the starship. A few seconds later, I heard Trafco again. “We copy, X-Ray Juliet Two-Four. Don’t stop for a coffee break.”

“Wilco.” I smiled. Fly ball to center, outfielder caught napping. All I had to do was make it to first base.

I carefully guided the container into Lee’s hold, where it would join the nine others already aboard. Keeping an eye on the comp, I took a quick look around. As I expected, the hold was deserted. The two other pods that had assisted me earlier were gone, and with the countdown this close to zero, the crew member assigned to overseeing the load-in—who just happened to be the fellow who’d showed me around the ship—would have already cycled through the airlock so that he could get out of his suit before the captain sounded general quarters. Just as he’d told me he usually did.

So I was alone. My suit was sealed, the cockpit depressurized. I felt a slight bump as latches on either side of the hold seized the container and locked it into place. A double-beep from my console confirmed this. Safe on first, and the ball still in the outfield.

“All right, it’s in.” I reached forward, typed a command into the navigation subsystem. “Gimme a sec and I’m outta here.”

I grabbed the horseshoe bar of my chest restraint, pushed it upward. A stab of the thumb against the buckle of my waist strap released me from my seat. Floating free within the cockpit, my own private countdown underway. Four ... three ... two ... one...

Obeying the preset program I’d surreptitiously entered into the comp, the pod’s manipulators released the canister. A second later, the RCS fired a brief burst lasting only a second. Through the forward porthole, I saw the canister slowly receding as the pod moved away.

“Roger that, X-Ray Juliet Two-Four,” Trafco said. “You’re looking good.”

No doubt I was. A camera within the forward bulkhead monitored everything I was doing, its image relayed to both the traffic controller and a junior officer aboard Lee’s flight deck. Everyone was ready to relax; the last container was loaded, and once my pod was clear of the hold the crew would shut the hatch.

“Copy, Trafco,” I replied. “I’m ... aw, damn!”

Right on the dot, the pesky starboard RCS thruster misfired again, once more rolling the pod around. This time, though, the accident caused my pod to pitch forward so that the bottom of its hull faced the camera.

And that was when I popped the canopy hatch and bailed out.

* * * *

III

I love baseball. It’s a game that seems relaxed, almost effortless, yet as with any great performance art, timing is everything. When a player steals second, for instance, he has to pick that moment when the pitcher is looking the other way. Sometimes that occurs in the split-second after the ball has left the mound. That’s when the guy on first makes his move.

Although I’d worked over this part of my plan to the last detail, a dress rehearsal was impossible. So my heart was pumping as I pulled myself free of the cockpit. Grabbing hold of a fuselage rung, I twisted myself around until I was able to slam the hatch shut with my free hand.

“X-Ray Juliet! What’s going on out there?”

I kept my mouth shut, and a moment later I heard my own voice through the headset. “Hang on, it’s just that damn thing again. I’m ... okay, here it goes...”

That was my cue. I kicked myself away from the pod, careful to keep it between myself and the camera. Perhaps there would be a minor, tell-tale perturbation caused by my kick-off, but I was counting on it being corrected by the pod’s thrusters. I didn’t look back to check as I sailed toward the containers neatly arranged in triple-stacked rows just below me. They were less than twenty-five feet away, yet I knew that I was exposed, if only for a few seconds. With any luck, though, anyone watching the screens would be too distracted by the runaway pod to notice what was going on in the background.

I just managed to insert myself into a four-foot gap between two of the topmost containers when I heard Trafco again. “All right, roger that, Two-Four. Get out of there and bring it home. We’ll have someone...”

“Thanks. Sorry about that.” My prerecorded voice cut off the controller before he was finished. “Need to take a breather here. X-Ray Juliet two-four out.”

I let out my breath. From my hiding place between the containers, I looked up to see the pod rising from the hold. The autopilot would safely guide it back to its port within Alpha Dock; in the meantime, any further queries from Trafco would be met with my own voice, saying noncommittal things like we copy or roger that. The pod’s polarized windows wouldn’t reveal that its cockpit was vacant, and if Lady Fortune continued to stay on my side, no one in the maintenance crew would check out XJR-24 for at least ten or fifteen minutes after it docked. Even then, it was a safe bet that that it would be a while before anyone put two and two together as to why Lucius Guthrie was AWOL. At least not until they checked the bar where I hung out, and that might take some time. The foreman was a nice guy, but he wasn’t all that swift.

Wedging myself between the containers, I used my wrist unit to access the primary com channel. For the next couple of minutes, I eavesdropped on the chatter between the Lee and Highgate controllers. No sign that my trick had been detected. Cool beans. I was safe on second.

Exactly two minutes after I made my escape, I felt a vibration against my back and the soles of my boots. Looking up through my helmet faceplate, I watched the enormous doors slowly lower into place. The moment they shut, the interior floodlights shut down, and the hold was plunged into darkness.

I was still wary of the camera, though, so I didn’t switch on the suit lights. Instead, I opened a pocket on my left thigh and pulled out a small UV penlight. Lowering my helmet visor, I activated its ultraviolet filter, then used the light to guide myself, hand over hand, between the containers until I reached the airlock in the forward bulkhead.

The airlock was already depressurized, just as I expected. Climbing into the tiny compartment, I shut the hatch behind me. A glance at the heads-up display on my faceplate: less than twenty seconds to spare. Grasping elastic loops on the walls and tucking the toes of my boots within the foot restraints, I braced himself for MCFA.

I couldn’t hear the warning bells, but the Millis-Clement field activated on schedule. Gravity returned as an abrupt sensation of weight, welcome after two and a half hours of zero-gee. Even as my boots settled against the floor, though, I detected a faint rumble through the deck plates. The Lee was being released from its berth; in another moment, tugs would begin hauling the starship through the mammoth sphere of Alpha Dock, guiding it toward the giant hangar doors that had confined the vessel until then.

Time to make a run for third. Unsnapping a shoulder pocket, I pulled out a miniature tool kit. Within it was a small flat-head screwdriver that I used to pry open the service panel beneath the airlock controls. Part of my preparation included learning how to circumvent the internal sensors; it took less than a minute to locate the proper wire, which I cut with a pen knife. Now I’d be able to pressurize the airlock without anyone on the bridge taking notice.

The tugs had detached their cables and peeled away from the Lee when a green lamp on the airlock panel lit, telling me that the compartment was fully pressurized. I released my suit’s collar latch and pulled off my helmet, then went about removing the rest of my suit. Beneath it were ordinary clothes: dress shirt and cravat, travel jacket, trousers and a thick pair of socks. All woven from cotton microfiber, they provided almost as much warmth as the single-piece undergarment I normally wore inside my suit, albeit without the luxury of internal waste-removal systems; for that, I’d taken the precaution of not eating or drinking for two hours before I went on duty.

From the thigh pocket of my discarded suit, I pulled out a pair of faux-leather boots. I put them on, then stood erect and checked my appearance in the glass window of the inner hatch. What I saw pleased me: a young guy in his early twenties, well dressed and obviously wealthy, but otherwise inconspicuous. Not an immigrant nor a tradesman, but rather the sort of person who’d have enough money to spend on a vacation to the new world. No one would guess that I was a former Union Astronautica officer desperate enough to escape from Earth to stow away aboard a starship with little more than the clothes on his back.

Yet I was more than what I wore. Once again, I patted the inside pocket of my jacket. The documents I’d need to prove my identity were there, along with L2,000 that I had converted into Colonial dollars—C1,200 at the current rate of exchange—at the BanqueAmericano branch on Highgate just two days ago. These things would come in handy once I reached my destination.

For now, I was a stowaway. Very soon, though, I’d play the role of a passenger ... and once I set foot on Coyote, I’d become a defector.

* * * *

IV

Four bells through the loudspeaker, followed sixty seconds later by a vibration passing through the floor, told me that the Lee had activated its differential drive. The ship was now on the way to rendezvous with Starbridge Earth.

A quick glance through the hatch window to make sure I was alone, then I turned the wheel counter-clockwise. Beyond the airlock lay an EVA ready-room, its walls lined with suit lockers. I found one that was empty and shoved my suit inside, then eased open the door and peered out.

I was on Deck 1, the ship’s lowest level, about one-third of the way back from the bow. The central passageway was deserted, yet I knew that it was only a matter of minutes before the captain called an end to GQ and the crew would be able to move about freely. Closing the hatch behind me, I moved quickly down the narrow corridor, heading toward the bow.

From either side of me, I heard voices from behind the closed doors of various compartments. If an encounter was unavoidable, I was prepared to play stupid: whoops, silly me ... you mean this isn’t the way to the lounge? Yet I didn’t run into any crew members before I found the ladder leading to Deck 2. A quick jog up the steps, and from there it was a short walk down another passageway until I reached the hatch to the passenger section.

I peeked through the window. No one in sight. I took a moment to straighten my cravat and run my fingers through my hair, then I grasped the wheel. The hatch opened with a faint sigh as I stepped out into the narrow alcove leading to the restrooms. The signs above the doors showed that they were all unoccupied. I quietly opened the door of the nearest one, shut it just loud enough to be heard, and then commenced down the center aisle.

Before it was seized by the Coyote Federation during Parson’s Rebellion—an incident that was something of a coda to the Revolution—the Robert E. Lee belonged to the European Alliance, where it’d been known as the EASS Francis Drake. Once it was rechristened and became the flagship of Coyote’s fledgling navy, the vessel had undergone a major refit. It now served as the principal means of transportation from Earth to the new world. Although most of Earth’s major governments had signed trade and immigration agreements with the Coyote Federation, the easiest way to get to 47 Ursae Majoris was to buy passage aboard the Lee. Tickets were cheaper, tariffs were lower, and—provided that one possessed the proper credentials—the customs hassles were fewer.

When I arrived on Highgate ten months ago, I didn’t have a ticket, nor did I possess a tourist visa. Circumstances made it impossible for me to obtain either one, at least not by legal means. Over the course of the last ten months, though, I’d scraped up enough money to buy first-class passage aboard the Lee, and the same sources who’d provided me with Lucius Guthrie’s identity were happy to do the same again, this time with fake documents proving that I was a gent by the name of Geoffrey Carr. The real Geoffrey Carr was a naive young lad from England who’d become stranded on Highgate after failing to make a living as a nightclub comedian. As luck would have it, he’d run into Lucius Guthrie, who’d been willing to provide him with a ticket home for a little subterfuge on his part, with no questions asked.

So it was Geoffrey Carr who had a private cabin reserved for him aboard the Lee, along with the visa that would allow him to pass through customs once he reached Coyote. All he had to do was show up at the right gate at the right time, present his credentials and ticket ... and once they were scanned, disappear into the loo just before the passengers were allowed to board ship. If Geoff did all that, he’d find a third-class ticket back to Earth waiting for him in my abandoned quarters, along with forged documents that he’d use to establish his identity as Lucius Guthrie.

This was the only part of my plan that depended upon me trusting someone else. I was confident that Geoff wouldn’t let me down—in his own way, he was just as desperate as I was—but nonetheless I couldn’t help but feel a certain twinge of anxiety as I strolled through the second-class cabin. I distracted myself by sizing up my fellow travelers. Seated four abreast on either side of the aisle, some were immigrants heading for a new life on another world; mothers and fathers held their childrens’ hands as they gazed through the portholes, taking one last look at the planet they’d called home. A pair of clergymen in black suits, both wearing the helix-backed crucifixes of Dominionist missionaries. A couple of rich tourists, dressed in expensive clothes, speaking to each other in German. Business people in business suits, studying business notes for business meetings in hopes of making business deals on the new world. And dozens of others, of all nationalities—except, of course, citizens of the Western Hemisphere Union, who were forbidden under law to use space transportation not chartered by the WHU—whose reasons for being aboard I could only speculate.

I’d almost reached the front of the cabin when a uniformed steward stepped out of the galley. Surprised to see a passenger up and about, her eyes widened when she spotted me. “Sir, what are you doing out of your seat?”

“Very sorry. I had to use the ... um, facilities.” I feigned embarrassment. “Just a little nauseous, I’m afraid,” I added, clutching my stomach. “Shouldn’t have eaten before coming aboard.”

A sympathetic nod, yet her eyes remained suspicious. A quick glance past my shoulder told her that all the second-class seats were occupied. “Where are you supposed to be?”

“That way.” I nodded toward the bow. “Cabin...”

All of a sudden, I realized that I’d forgotten its number. After everything I’d just been through, that one small detail had slipped my mind. “Sorry, can’t recall,” I mumbled. “But it’s just over here....”

I started to step around her, but the steward moved to block my way. “Let me help you. May I see your ticket, please?”

“Of course.” I reached into my jacket, pulled out the plastic wafer. There was a scanner attached to her belt. If she used it to examine my ticket, she’d see that, although Geoffrey Carr had passed through the passenger gate, for some reason his ticket hadn’t been processed before he entered the pressurized gangway leading to the ship. If that happened, I’d have to hope that my only possible excuse—someone at the gate neglected to process my ticket; why, is that a problem?—would be enough to convince her.

Yet the steward didn’t unclip her scanner. Instead, she glanced at the name and number printed on the card. “Cabin 4, Mr. Carr,” she murmured, then glanced up at me. “Wonder why I didn’t see you earlier.”

“My mistake.” I essayed a weak smile. “Haven’t been to my cabin yet. Went straight to the head soon as I came aboard.” I hesitated, then moved a little closer. “You may want to have the other passengers avoid using it for awhile. I switched on the fan, but still...”

“Yes, right.” The steward hastily turned toward the passageway leading to the first-class cabins. “This way, please....”

My accommodations were no larger than the airlock I’d cycled through, with barely enough room for two persons. Two seats facing each other across a small table, all of which could be collapsed into the bulkheads to make room for a pair of fold-down bunks. It’s questionable whether being able to stretch out and sleep during the sixteen-hour voyage was worth two months’ salary as a longshoreman, but the added measure of privacy was priceless. However remote the possibility that I would encounter someone who’d met either (the fake) Lucius Guthrie or (the real) Geoffrey Carr, that was a risk I didn’t want to take. Hence the private cabin.

The steward showed me how everything worked, then inquired whether I would like anything from the galley. My throat was dry, so I asked for orange juice. She left, returning a few minutes later with my drink. Another admonishment for not being where I should’ve been during launch, but this time it was only a mild rebuke, like that given to a mischievous child. I accepted the scolding with good grace, and then she left me in peace, sliding shut the door behind her.

Alone again, I settled back in the forward-facing seat, sipping my O.J. as I watched the Moon drift past the starboard window. Too bad I wasn’t seated on the other side of the ship, or I could have bid Earth a fond farewell. Perhaps it was just as well, though, and maybe even appropriate. I’d turned my back on home a long time ago....

Considering this, I chuckled under my breath. No, that wasn’t quite right. I had covered the bases. Now I was about to steal home.

* * * *

V

It took nearly six hours for the Lee to reach Starbridge Earth. I passed the time by playing solitaire on the table comp, now and then glancing up at the small wallscreen on the bulkhead. It displayed the ship’s trajectory as it traveled from Highgate toward the starbridge, with occasional departure-angle views of Earth and the Moon. The steward stopped by to offer the lunch menu. I ordered Swedish meatballs with spinach pasta, and after I ate, I switched on the DO NOT DISTURB light, put my legs up, and took a nap.

A bird-like chirp woke me. I opened my eyes just as a woman’s voice came through the wallscreen speaker. “This is Commodore Tereshkova from the flight deck. We’re now on primary approach to the starbridge, with final approach to hyperspace insertion in about ten minutes....”

I sat up a little straighter. I wondered how many of my fellow travelers recognized the captain’s name. Anastasia Tereshkova, former commanding officer of the Drake and, before that, the EASS Columbus, the first European starship to reach 47 Ursae Majoris. After she’d led the Drake’s crew in mutiny against the European Alliance, Captain Tereshkova had defected to the Coyote Federation, where President Gunther had subsequently appointed her commodore of its navy. To be sure, her fleet consisted of one starship and small collection of shuttles and skiffs, but nonetheless I was surprised that she was still on active duty. Apparently the commodore wasn’t ready to hang up her astronaut wings quite yet.

“As a necessary part of our maneuvers, we will soon deactivate both the main drive and the Millis-Clement field,” Tereshkova continued. “This means that we will lose artificial gravity within the ship. For your safety and comfort, we ask that you return immediately to your seats. Put away all loose items, then fasten your seat straps and make sure that they are secure....”

I located my waist and shoulder straps and buckled them into place. Outside the door, I could hear stewards moving past my cabin. “Once we enter the starbridge, the transition through hyperspace will take only a few seconds. The entire event will be displayed on your screens. However, if you are prone to vertigo or motion sickness, we strongly recommend that you switch off your screens, lean back in your seats, and close your eyes. Stewards will provide you with eyeshades if you so desire....”

The last thing I wanted to miss was going through hyperspace. Yet I could already imagine some of the passengers making sure that vomit bags were within reach, while perhaps regretting that they’d ordered lunch only a few hours ago.

“Once we’re through the starbridge, our flight to Coyote will take another ten hours, at which point you will board shuttles for transfer to the New Brighton spaceport. In the unlikely event of an emergency, please be reminded that this ship is also equipped with lifeboats, which may be boarded from Deck 1 below you. Stewards will escort you to those lifeboats, which in turn will be operated by a crew member....”

I couldn’t help but snort at this. Although the Lee could still serve as a military vessel in a pinch, insurance underwriters on Earth had insisted that, once it was refitted as a civilian transport, certain accommodations had to be provided to insure the safety of her passengers just in case there was a catastrophic accident. I doubted that the lifeboats had been jettisoned since their test flights.

“We will have engine shut-down in four minutes, and commence final approach to starbridge five minutes after that. For now, though, just relax and enjoy the rest of the ride. Thank you very much.”

Tereshkova’s voice was replaced by classic jazz—Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain—and the image on the screen changed to a forward view: the starbridge, seen as a small silver ring illuminated by moonlight, with red and blue beacons flashing along its outer rim. It had grown to twice its original size when there was a knock on the door.

Before I had a chance to respond, it slid open. Instead of the steward, though, a man about my own age stepped in. He wore the dark blue uniform of a Coyote Federation spacer, the insignia on his shoulder boards telling me that he was the chief petty officer.

“Mr. Carr?” he asked. “Mr. Geoffrey Carr?”

“Yes?” Pretending nonchalance, I gazed back at him. “May I help you?”

“Just want to make sure that you’re secure.” His gaze flitted about the cabin, as if he was searching for something. “Your belongings all stowed away?”

“Yes, of course.” I forced a smile. “Thank you. The service has been excellent.”

“Glad to hear it, sir.” Another quick glance around the compartment, then he gave me a perfunctory nod. “Be seeing you.”

I waited until he shut the door, then I unsnapped my harness and stood up. Moving to the door, I rested an ear against the panel. I heard a voice just outside—the petty officer, speaking to someone else—but the constant thrum of the engines rendered his words unintelligible.

I returned to my seat, fastened my harness again. Perhaps it was only a courtesy call by a senior crew member to a first-class passenger, but I didn’t think so. The way he’d studied my cabin...

Laying my head against the back of my seat, I stared out the porthole. Safe on third ... but the catcher had become wise to the play.

Stealing home might be trickier than I thought.

* * * *

TWO

Forty-six light-years in five seconds ... trouble comes knocking ... a chat with the Commodore ... truth and consequences.

* * * *

VI

I watched through my cabin porthole as Starbridge Earth grew steadily larger, its gatehouse passing by so quickly that I caught little more than a glimpse of the small station that controlled access to the ring. I wasn’t able to eavesdrop on communications between the gatehouse and the Lee’sbridge, but I knew that, at the five-minute mark, our AI would be slaved to the one aboard the station, ensuring that the Lee wouldn’t enter the ring until, at T-minus-sixty seconds, the wormhole was formed.

Once again, I wondered if many of the passengers appreciated the delicate yet infinitely complex ballet of quantum physics that made this miracle possible, or just how much their lives depended upon split-second calculations that only a pair of AIs could make. If everything worked right, the Lee would be transported across forty-six light-years in little more than the blink of an eye ... well, fifteen blinks of an eye, if you really want to nitpick. If anything went wrong, the ship and everyone aboard would be sucked into a singularity and reduced to a stream of subatomic particles ... at which point, the notion of using lifeboats would be too absurd to even deserve a laugh.

I tried not to think about this, and instead sought solace in the fact that no ship had yet suffered such a fate. Even if I was in the command center—which is the place where I really belonged, not sitting in first class—there would have been little that I could’ve done. So I grasped my chair armrests and took slow, deep breaths as I continued to watch the monitor.

The chronometer at the bottom of the screen had just reached the sixty-second mark when, from within the center of the ring, there was a brilliant flash of defocused light. I winced and involuntarily raised a hand to my eyes, but not before I had a retinal afterimage of every color of the visible spectrum swirling around each other as if caught in the cosmic whirlpool of the wormhole’s event horizon.

And then the remorseless hand of gravity shoved me back in my seat, and the Robert E. Lee plunged into the maelstrom.

* * * *

VII

The transition through hyperspace was as violent as it was swift. I tried to keep my eyes open. Really. I wanted to see what it was like, to be shot through a wormhole like a bullet down the barrel of God’s own gun, but maybe there’re some things that the Great Spirit just doesn’t want us to see. In any event, my eyes squeezed shut as, for the next few seconds, reality itself seemed to twist inside-out. The ship shook so hard, I thought I’d lose a molar or two, and when it turned upside-down, I opened my mouth to scream only to find myself unable to breathe. Only the pulse hammering in my ears told me that I was still alive. So I clutched the armrests and gritted my teeth, and then...

It was over. As suddenly as it had begun, the violence ceased.

I opened my eyes, let out my breath. On the screen, all I saw at first were stars, yet even then I noticed that their patterns weren’t the same as those I’d seen only a few seconds earlier. I had an urge to retch, but managed to fight it down. Sure, I knew how to keep from throwing up, yet despite years of training and hundreds of flight-hours, hyperspace was the most grueling experience I’d ever endured.

The screen changed a few seconds later, this time to depict a schematic diagram of the Lee moving away from a different starbridge. Tereshkova’s voice came over the speaker: “We’ve successfully made hyperspace transition. Many apologies for any discomfort you may have experienced. We will soon restore internal gravity, and then we’ll reactivate the main drive and commence the final leg of our journey. If you require assistance, please alert the nearest steward and they will help you as soon as...”

I ignored the rest. Unfastening my harness, I pushed myself out of my seat and, grabbing hold of a ceiling rung, pulled myself closer to the porthole. The hell with what was on the screen. This was something I had to see for myself.

For a minute or so, I saw nothing but stars, with a white sun shining just beyond my range of vision. Then the Lee rolled to port and an immense planet hove into view. Swathed by wide bands of pale blue, violet, and purple upon which nearby moons cast small black shadows, the gas giant was encircled by silver-blue rings, so close that it almost seemed as if I could reach out and touch them.

47 Ursae Majoris-B, the jovian locally known as Bear. And nearby, illuminated by the sunlight reflected from its outer atmosphere, its inner system of satellites. Dog was the closest, shepherding the rings. Hawk was a little farther out; Eagle was on the other side of the planet, so I couldn’t see it. Yet in the far distance, little more than a small green orb, lay the fourth and most significant of Bear’s companions.

Coyote.

Something moist touched the corners of my eyes. I tried to tell myself that they weren’t tears, but when I blinked and rubbed at my eyelids, tiny bubbles rose from my face. Yeah, okay, so I’m a big wuss at heart. Perhaps tears were appropriate at that moment, though, just as they’d been for the first person who’d laid eyes upon the new world.

I was here. After all that I’d gone through, all that I’d sacrificed ... I was here.

The ship’s bell rang four times, signaling the reactivation of the Millis-Clement field. I grasped the brass rail above the porthole and tucked the toes of my boots within the foot restraint. A minute later, there was a brief sensation of falling as weight returned, then my feet gently settled against the carpeted floor. I released the bar, but remained by the window.

If my identity had been discovered, as I suspected, then it wouldn’t be long before I knew for sure.

I was right. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

* * * *

VIII

My first impulse was to open it. But that’s something Jules Truffaut would’ve done. Geoffrey Carr, on the other hand, was a spoiled young turk with little zero-gee experience; I had to pretend to be him, if only for a little while longer.

“Just a sec!” Pushing myself back to my seat, I buckled the lap strap, then took hold of the shoulder straps and gave them a quick twist and pull that tangled them together around my chest. A few loud obscenities for good effect, then I called out again. “Come on in!”

The door slid open, and I wasn’t surprised to see the chief petty officer who’d visited me earlier. “Thank heavens you’re here!” I exclaimed, making a show of fighting with the straps. “Why these damn things couldn’t be designed better, I have no idea. Could you please...?”

He coldly regarded me for a moment, then silently nodded to someone in the passageway. Another crewman appeared; my heart sank when I saw that it was the same one whom I’d befriended on Highgate a few weeks earlier. He gazed at me, and I watched as his expression changed from astonishment to anger.

“That’s him, Mr. Heflin,” he said quietly. “Same guy.”

“Thank you, Mr. Marcuse. If you’ll wait outside, please.” Mr. Heflin stepped into the cabin. “I think you know how to release your harness, Mr. Guthrie. Please don’t embarrass yourself by pretending you don’t.”

I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear this. Not that I wasn’t dismayed that I’d been caught—I knew that was coming—but that Mr. Heflin had addressed me by my alias. My other alias, that is. This meant that no one had yet matched Lucius Guthrie’s biometric profile to that of Jules Truffaut ... and that meant there was hope for me yet.

“Certainly. Of course.” I deftly unsnarled the shoulder harness, then unbuckled the lap strap. “Yes?” I asked, looking back at him again. “May I help you?”

“Commodore wants to see you.” He cocked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

I could have made a fuss about this—I’d purchased a ticket, after all, so I was technically a first-class passenger—but I had little doubt that the chief petty officer could’ve called in a couple more crewmen and had me frog-marched to the bridge. And just then, I wanted to show that I was willing to cooperate. So I stood up and left the cabin without protest. The steward stood in her alcove, her face set in prim disapproval; past her, I caught a glimpse of second-class passengers craning their necks to see what the commotion was all about. Mr. Marcuse had the sullen expression of someone who’d been betrayed; I gave him an apologetic shrug, but he just looked away. I felt sorry for him; it would be a long time before he’d trust anyone during shore leave again.

I was heading down the passageway, with Mr. Heflin behind me and a warrant officer waiting at the hatch, when I spotted another passenger standing in the open door of his cabin. A short, middle-aged man, with a shaved scalp and sharp eyes. He studied me as I walked past, and I was about to dismiss him as another curious bystander when he favored me with a sly wink. Almost as if he knew something that I didn’t.

This was the wrong place and time to strike up a conversation, though, and the warrant officer wasn’t interested in letting me make new friends. An unnecessary shove against my shoulder, and I ducked my head slightly to exit the hatch leading from the first-class section. Now I was back in the utilitarian confines of the rest of the ship. Mr. Heflin slammed the hatch shut behind us, then the warrant officer beckoned toward an access shaft. As I began to climb the stairs, I noticed that they went downward as well, leading to Deck One.

A useful bit of knowledge. I tried to keep it in mind.

* * * *

IX

The bridge was located on Deck Three, within the superstructure that rose above the ship’s bow. Although I’d seen photos of the command center during UA intelligence briefings, nonetheless I was surprised by just how small it actually was. A narrow compartment, with major flight stations on either side of a long aisle: very tight, without an inch of wasted space. Nothing like those of the Western Hemisphere Union starships that once journeyed to Coyote at sublight speeds ... but then again, the Union Astronautica weren’t building them anymore, were they?

The captain’s chair was located at the opposite end of the bridge, overlooking a split-level sub-deck where the helm and navigation stations were located. Commodore Tereshkova was waiting for me; when she stood up, I almost had an urge to ask for an autograph. Or even a date. Sure, she was nearly old enough to be my mother as well, but no command-rank officer in the Union Astronautica ever wore a uniform so well.

Then she turned glacial eyes upon me, and my sophomoric fantasies were forgotten. “Is this our stowaway, Mr. Heflin?”

Before he could respond, I cleared my throat. “Pardon me, but...”

“When I want to hear from you, I’ll let you know.” She looked at her chief petty officer. “Mr. Heflin?”

“Yes, ma’am. Cabin 4, first-class section, just where the passenger manifest said he would be.” He paused. “He came quietly, without any resistance.”

“And you have no idea how he got aboard?”

“No, ma’am. When Ms. Fawcett double-checked the manifest, she discovered that his ticket hadn’t been scanned at the gangway. It was processed at the gate, but not...”

“Let me save you a little time,” I said. “I slipped aboard through the cargo airlock, right after I ejected from the pod I was driving. If you send a man down to check, he’ll find my suit in the ready room. Second locker from the left, if I...”

“We already know you’re a longshoreman.” Perturbed by the interruption, Tereshkova glared at me. “That we learned when we matched your ticket against Highgate’s employment records. In fact, we had you pegged as a stowaway even before we went through the starbridge.” She returned to Mr. Heflin. “Have someone go down to Airlock Five and see if he’s telling the truth.”

The chief petty officer nodded, then touched his headset mike and murmured something. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said, “but if you knew I was a stowaway, then...”

“It took some time.” A faint smile. “Your steward became suspicious after she noticed that there were no carry-on bags in your cabin. This was, of course, after she found you wandering around the passenger section. She checked the cargo records, and when she discovered that you hadn’t checked any baggage, she alerted the chief petty officer. The two of them accessed the passenger database, and that’s when they realized that you weren’t the same person who’d checked in at Highgate. So Mr. Heflin pulled up the IDs of everyone who works at the station, and when your face came up, he put it on the crew data screens. Mr. Marcuse recognized you as someone he’d met while on shore leave, and that was when Mr. Heflin decided to pay you a visit.”

“But by then,” I said, “the ship was already on final approach for the starbridge. Too late to turn back then, right?” She blinked, but said nothing. “Well, at least I got that far...”

“Too far, so far as I’m concerned. We’ll have to review our security procedures.” Tereshkova sighed, then resumed her seat. “Good work, Mr. Heflin,” she said as she picked up a datapad. “Please extend my compliments to Ms. Fawcett and Mr. Marcuse as well. Now, if you’ll summon the warrant officer back to the bridge, I think Mr. Guthrie would like to see his new quarters.”

“And you don’t want to know why I’d go through so much trouble?” I tried to remain calm, even as I heard Heflin mutter something else into his headset. “After all, I purchased a ticket. That means I’m not a...”

“Without bona fide ID or a valid visa, you’re whatever I say you are.” Tereshkova was quickly losing interest in me. So far as she was concerned, I was little more than a nuisance. “Hope you enjoyed our first-class accommodations. I regret to say that the brig isn’t nearly as comfortable.”

“My name isn’t Lucius Guthrie.” Straightening my shoulders, I stood at attention. “I’m Ensign First Class Jules Truffaut, formerly of the Union Astronautica, Western Hemisphere Union. I hereby request political asylum from the Coyote Federation.”

Tereshkova’s gaze rose from her pad, and the navigator and helmsman darted curious glances at me from over their shoulders. I couldn’t see Mr. Heflin, but I could feel his presence as he took a step closer. All at once, the bridge had gone silent, save for the random boops and beeps of the instrument panels.

“Come again?” Heflin asked.

I didn’t look back at him. “As I said, sir ... my name is Jules Truffaut, and I’m a former ensign in the Union Astronautica. My reason for being aboard your ship is that I wish to defect from the Western Hemisphere Union to the...”

“Is this true?” Tereshkova’s eyes bored into my own. “If you’re lying, so help me, I’ll put you out the nearest airlock.”

“Yes, ma’am. I can prove it.” Raising my right hand as slowly as possible, I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket, pulled out my papers. “Copies of my birth certificate, citizen’s ID, Union Astronautica service record ... all here, Commodore.” I handed them to her, and went on. “If you check my ... excuse me, Lucius Guthrie’s ... biometric profile against whatever recent intelligence you have on the Union Astronautica, you’ll find that it matches that of Jules Truffaut, who was expelled from the corps a little more than eleven months ago.” An ironic smile came to me before I could stop myself. “I prefer to think of it as a forced resignation. Didn’t have much choice.”

“Uh-huh.” Tereshkova unfolded my papers, gave them a brief inspection. “And what led you to make that decision, Mr. Guthrie?”

“Not Guthrie, ma’am ... Jules Truffaut, as I told you.” I hesitated. “It’s a long story. I’d prefer not to get into details just now.”

“I’m sure you would.” She studied me with cool skepticism, her hands refolding my papers. “Of course, you realize that your allegation will take some time to investigate. Until then, we’ll have to hold you in custody.”

“Aboard ship?”

“Of course.” A shrug that was almost patronizing. “It’s an extraordinary ... well, an unusual ... claim you’ve made, and naturally we will have to look into it further. So until then...”

“So you’re not willing to take me to Coyote.” A chill ran down my back. “Commodore, please...”

“I’m sure my government will be willing to consider a petition for amnesty pending a thorough investigation. Until then, you’re a stowaway, and will be treated as such.” She glanced at her chief petty officer. “If you will...”

Mr. Heflin grasped my arm. Looking around, I saw that the warrant officer had returned, his right hand resting upon a stunner holstered in his belt. No doubt about it, my next stop was the brig.

There was nothing more to be said. I meekly allowed myself to be taken below.

* * * *

X

So there it was. I’d managed to cover the bases, but when I’d tried to steal home, the catcher tagged me before I could cross the plate. No sympathy from the ump. And now it was off to the showers for the rookie.

As Mr. Heflin and the warrant officer escorted me from the bridge, I contemplated my prospects. They didn’t look promising. These two men would take me below and lock me in the brig, and there I’d remain for the next couple of weeks, until the Lee made the trip back through hyperspace to Earth. If I was lucky, my cell would have a porthole ... well, no, maybe that wouldn’t be so lucky after all. Because the most that I’d see of Coyote would be the distant view of a place that I’d never visit.

I had little doubt of what would happen next. Once we returned to Highgate, the Western Hemisphere Union would be informed that a stowaway had been caught aboard a Coyote Federation starship, and that this person claimed to be a former Union Astronautica officer. A Patriarch would quickly verify this, and make a formal claim of extradition. Under the articles of the U.N. treaty the Coyote Federation had signed with the WHU, there would be no way for this to be legally contested, because although I’d been nabbed aboard a Coyote vessel, I hadn’t yet set foot upon Coyote itself.

That small fact made all the difference in the world. The Coyote Federation was considered to be a sovereign nation, true, but you can only defect to another country if you’re already there. And although the Lee was under the flag of the Coyote Federation, it wasn’t Coyote soil. At least not for someone who wasn’t a citizen.

Nor had I given anyone aboard good and sufficient reason to break an international treaty. Like it or not, I was little more than an illegal immigrant who’d managed to con my way aboard the Lee, my former rank as a UA officer notwithstanding. If I’d been carrying top-secret documents, the situation might have been different; Tereshkova might then have been willing to go to bat for me. But I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a sunny smile, and neither of them cut much ice with her. Nor could I blame her. She had rules by which she had to play, and I was just some schmuck lucky enough to get to third base on a bunt.

But this was just the end of an inning. The game wasn’t over.

We left the bridge and started down the ladder to the lower decks, Mr. Heflin in front of me and the warrant officer bringing up the rear. The steps were narrow; Heflin had his right hand on the railing, and I was willing to bet that the warrant officer was doing the same. And both of them were relaxed. After all, I’d been a perfect gentleman about this whole thing, giving no one any trouble at all.

I waited until we were about three steps from Deck 2, then I quickened my pace just a little bit. Not enough to alarm the warrant officer, but enough to put me within range of Mr. Heflin. Hearing me come closer, he started to turn to see what I was doing ... and then I gripped the rail with my right hand and shoved my right foot against the ankle of his left foot.

Heflin tripped and sprawled forward, falling the rest of the way down the ladder. He hadn’t yet hit the deck when, still holding the rail tight with my right hand, I threw my left elbow back as hard as I could.

Just as I hoped, I caught the warrant officer square in the chest. He grunted and doubled over, and I twisted around, grabbed hold of his collar, and slammed him against the railing hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. Gasping for air, he started to fall against me. I let him go and jumped forward, landing on the deck next to Heflin.

By then, the chief petty officer realized what was happening. Raising himself on one elbow, he started to make a grab for me. I hated to do it—he seemed like a pretty decent chap, really—but I kicked him in the head, and down he went.

The warrant officer was beginning to recover. Still on the ladder, he clutched the rail as he sought to regain his feet. I snatched the stunner from his holster before he could get to it, though, and there was the awful look of someone who’d just screwed up when I shot him with his own weapon. He tumbled the rest of the way down the steps, landing almost on top of Heflin.

Hearing a gasp behind me, I looked around to see Ms. Fawcett standing in the hatch leading to the passenger section. For some reason, I didn’t have the heart to shoot her, even though she posed a threat to my getaway.

“Thanks for the drinks,” I said, and then I dove down the ladder to Deck 1.

Just as I figured, the lifeboat bays were located directly beneath the passenger section, where they would be easily accessible in case of an emergency. The hatches were on either side of a narrow passageway, tilted downward at a forty-five degree angle. I was halfway to the nearest when someone—Ms. Fawcett, no doubt—hit the panic button.

Red lights along the ceiling began to flash as a loud barrruuggah-barruuuggah came over speakers. A crewman darted through a hatch at the opposite end of the corridor. He saw me, and his mouth dropped open, but by then I’d grabbed the panel above the lifeboat hatch, wrenched it open, tossed it aside, and found the lock-lever within. A quick yank to the left, and the hatch opened with a hiss of escaping pressure. I jumped into the boat, then turned around and shut the hatch behind me.

No time for the niceties of strapping myself down or making sure that all systems were active. Any second now, either Ms. Fawcett or the crewman who’d seen me would be telling the bridge that their stowaway had made his way to the lifeboats. If I was going to make a clean escape, I’d have to do it before someone in the command center locked them down.

Hauling myself over to the control panel, I jabbed the red JET. button with my thumb, then grabbed a ceiling rail and held on for dear life. A loud whoosh of escaping pressure, the hollow clang of clamps being released, the solid thump of pyros being ignited. Through the round window of the hatch, I saw the cone-shaped cowling of the lifeboat port fall away amid a fine spray of crystallized oxygen and small debris.

A moment later, I caught a last glimpse of the lower hull of the Robert E. Lee. Then I began to fall to Coyote.

* * * *

THREE

Aboard the good ship Lou Brock ... no coffee for the wicked ... coming in on a heat shield and a prayer ... wherever it is you think are, you’re not there.

* * * *

XI

Forget everything you think you know about lifeboats; whatever it is, it’s probably wrong. The one I stole from the Lee didn’t have wings or landing gear, nor did it have particle-beam lasers for fending off space pirates; the first kind are rare, and the latter exist only in fantasy fics. Mine was a gumdrop-shaped capsule, about twenty feet in diameter at its heat shield, that bore a faint resemblance to the moonships of historic times. All it was meant to do was carry six passengers to a more or less safe touchdown on a planetary surface, preferably one that had an atmosphere. Other than that, it was useless.

But it was a spacecraft, with a liquid-fuel engine and four sets of maneuvering thrusters, which meant I had nominal control over its guidance and trajectory. And although the Lee was still eighty thousand miles from Coyote when I took my unauthorized departure, the boat also had a life-support system sufficient to sustain a half-dozen people for up to twelve hours. Therefore, I had enough air, water, heat, and food to keep me alive for three or four days.

So as soon as I was sure that I’d made my getaway, I grabbed hold of the hand rungs on the ceiling and pulled myself across the cabin. The lifeboat was tumbling end over end by then, but so long as I was careful not to look through the portholes, there was no real sense of vertigo. I reached the pilot’s seat and pulled it down from the bulkhead. It was little more than a well-padded hammock suspended within a titanium-alloy frame, but it had a harness and a headrest, and once I strapped myself in, it was much as if I was in a simulator back at the Academy.

The next step was to gain control of my craft. I unfolded the flat-panel console and activated it. The board lit up just as it was supposed to, and I spent the next couple of minutes assessing the status of my vehicle. Once I was sure it was fit to fly, I pulled down the yoke and went about firing reaction control thrusters, manually adjusting the pitch, roll, and yaw until the lifeboat was no longer in a tumble. The lidar array helped me get a firm fix on Coyote, and the navigation subsystem gave me a precise estimate of where it would be x-times-y-times-z-divided by-t minus so many hours from now. Once I had all that lined up, I entered the data into the autopilot, then pushed a little green button marked EXECUTE.

A hard thump against my back as the main engine ignited. Gazing at the porthole above my head, I watched the starscape swerve to the left. Coyote, still little more than a green orb capped with white blotches at either end, drifted past my range of vision until it finally disappeared altogether. I wasn’t heading toward where it was now, though, but where it would be. That is, if I hadn’t screwed up in programming the comp. And if the comp was in error, then I would be taking a tour of the 47 Ursae Majoris system that would last until the air ran out.

The engine fired for four and a half minutes, giving me a brief taste of gravity, then shut down, causing my body to rise within my harness. I checked the fuel reserves and muttered a curse under my breath. That maneuver had cost me 42 percent of what was in the tanks; I’d have enough for braking, final course corrections, and atmospheric entry, but practically zero for fudge-factor. Like I said, the lifeboat was little more than an uprated version of the cargo pod I’d flown on Highgate. Even the training craft I had piloted at the Academia del Espacio was more sophisticated.

At the bottom of the ninth, I’d earned myself another chance at bat. Yet there was no room for strike-outs, and my next foul ball would be my last.

I let out my breath, closed my eyes for a second. Eighteen hours until I reached Coyote. Might as well offer my apologies to the home team. Groping beneath the couch, I found a small packet. I ripped it open and pulled out a cheap headset. Slipping it on, I inserted the prong into the left side of the console, then activated the com system.

“Hello?” I said, tapping the mike wand with my thumb. “Anyone there? Yoo-hoo, do you read?”

Several long moments passed in which I heard nothing, then a male voice came over: “CFSS Robert E. Lee to CFL-101, we acknowledge. Do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, Lee. This is—” I thought about it for a moment “—the Lou Brock. We copy.”

A few seconds went by. I imagined bridge officers glancing at each other in bewilderment. Then a more familiar voice came online. “CFL-101, this is Commodore Tereshkova. Please use the appropriate call-sign.”

“I am using an appropriate call-sign.” I couldn’t help but smile. “Lou Brock. Outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. One of the greatest base-stealers of all time.”

While she was trying to figure that one out, I checked the radar. The Lee was near the edge of my screen, about eight hundred miles away. So far as I could tell, it was keeping pace with me; I had little doubt that, if Tereshkova ordered her helmsman to do so, the ship could intercept my lifeboat within minutes.

“All right, so you’re a baseball fan.” When Tereshkova’s voice returned, she sounded a little less formal. “You’re very clever, Mr. Truffaut. I’ll give you that. If you’ll heave to and allow yourself to be boarded, I’ll see what I can do about getting you tickets to a game.”

I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “Thanks for the date, Commodore, but I’m going to have to take a rain check. Maybe next time you’re in town?”

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter in the background. In the meantime, I was sizing up my fuel situation. If the Lee started to close in, I could always fire the main engine again. But I needed to conserve fuel as much as possible for retrofire and atmospheric entry; as things stood, I had barely enough in reserve to do that. The Lou Brock was no shuttle, and my margin for error was thin as a razor.

“Ensign, you know as well as I do that this is pointless.” The commodore no longer sounded quite so affable. “My ship is...”

“Faster, sure. No question about it.” I switched back to manual override, then raised a forefinger and let it hover aboard the engine ignition switch. “And you know as well as I do that there’s no way in hell you can board me if I don’t want you to do so. Allow me to demonstrate.”

I touched the red button, held it down. A quick surge as the engine fired. I counted to three, barely enough time for the lifeboat’s velocity to rise a quarter-g, then I released the button. On the screen, the Lee had drifted a few millimeters farther away. “See what I mean? Get too close, and I’ll do that again.”

No answer. If she had any remaining doubts whether I was an experienced spacer, that little display settled them. The Lee was capable of overtaking my lifeboat, sure, but her ship didn’t have the equipment necessary to latch onto a craft whose pilot was willing to alter delta-V at whim. Not unless she wanted to position her craft directly in front of mine ... but even if she were foolish enough to do so, my lifeboat would collide with her vessel like a coupe ramming a maglev train.

I’d never do anything like that. For one thing, it would be suicidal; I would die a quick but horrible death. For another, there were also passengers aboard, and the last thing I wanted to do was put their lives in danger. But Commodore Tereshkova didn’t know I was bluffing; perhaps she’d realized that I’d just trimmed my fuel reserves by three-quarters of a percent, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t pull silly crap like that again. And no one but a fool would play chicken with a madman.

The comlink went silent, doubtless while she talked it over with her bridge team and tried to determine if I was the lunatic I seemed to be. While they did that, I took the opportunity to get a new flight profile from the nav subsystem and feed the updated info into autopilot. To my relief, I discovered that all I’d done was shave twenty minutes from my ETA. I’d just let out my breath when Tereshkova’s voice returned.

“All right, ensign. Have it your way, if you must.” There was an undercurrent of resignation in her voice. “You may proceed with your present course.”

“Thank you, Commodore. Glad you see it my way.” Another thought came to me. “I meant it when I said that all I want is amnesty. You’ll communicate that to your people, won’t you?”

“I’ll ...” A brief pause. “I’ll ask them to take that into consideration. Lee over.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Lou Brock, over.” I waited for another moment, but when I heard nothing more, I switched off the comlink.

All right, then. For better or for worse, I was on my own.

* * * *

XII

The Robert E. Lee remained on my scope for another hour or so, but gradually it veered away, its course taking it away from my lifeboat. Although I had little doubt that its crew continued to track me, the fact remained that it was a faster ship, and it had its own schedule to keep. Through my porthole, I caught a brief glimpse of its formation lights as it peeled away, its passengers probably enjoying dinner and drinks as they chatted about the minor incident that had occurred shortly after the ship had come out of hyperspace. Sweetheart, did you hear about the man in Cabin 4 who lost his mind? Don’t worry, I’m sure he’s been properly dealt with ... oh, steward? Another glass of wine, please?

It took another eighteen hours for me to reach Coyote. I didn’t have table service; my sustenance was the ration bars I found in the emergency locker, which tasted like stale peanut butter, and tepid water that I sipped from a squeeze-bulb. I caught catnaps now and then, only to wake up an hour or so later to find my hands floating in front of my face.

Little sleep, then, and no coffee. Not much in the way of entertainment, either, save for a brief skim of the emergency tutorials on the comp, which told me little that I hadn’t known before. I sang songs to myself, mentally revisited great ball games and tried to figure out where critical errors had been made—the World Series of ‘44 between Havana and Seoul was one that I studied several times—and reviewed my life history in case I ever wanted to write my memoirs.

The rest of the time, I stared out the window, watching Coyote as it gradually came back into view, growing larger with each passing hour. My flight was long enough that I witnessed most of a complete day as it rotated on its axis; what I saw was a planet-size moon a little larger than Mars, lacking oceans but criss-crossed by complex patterns of channels, rivers, estuaries, and streams, with a broad river circumscribing its equator. By the time I was scratching at my face and wishing the emergency kit contained a shaver, I was able to make out geographic features: mountain ranges, volcanoes, tropical savannahs, and rain forests, scattered across subcontinents and islands of all shapes and sizes.

A beautiful world, as close to Earth as anything yet discovered in our little corner of the galaxy. Worth the effort to get there ... provided, of course, that I didn’t end my trip as a trail of vaporized ash following the slipstream of a man-made meteor.

When the lifeboat was about three hundred nautical miles away, the autopilot buzzed, telling me that the time had come for me to take over. By then I was strapped into my couch again. I took a deep breath, murmured the Astronaut’s Prayer—”Lord, please don’t let me screw up”—then I switched off the autopilot, grasped the yoke, and did my best to put my little craft safely on the ground.

While I was earning my wings in the Academia del Espacio, I logged over two hundred hours in simulators and four hundred more in training skiffs. Before I was thrown out of the UA, I’d also flown Athena shuttles, including one landing on Mars. But those were winged spacecraft, complete with all sorts of stuff like elevators and flaps and vertical stabilizers. As I said, though, the Lou Brock was only a lifeboat, and for this sort of thing I’d completed only as much training as I needed to graduate from cadet to ensign: four hours in a simulator, and my flight instructor had forgiven me for a crash landing that would have killed everyone aboard.

Now I was getting a second chance to show that I’d learned something from the part of my education that few spacers thought they’d ever use in real life. Watching through the windows, I carefully adjusted the lifeboat’s attitude until it assumed a trajectory that would bring it over Coyote’s northern hemisphere. I’d studied maps of the world, so I had a pretty good guess of what was where. Once I determined that I was somewhere above Great Dakota, I initiated entry sequence.

Keeping an eye on the eightball, I maneuvered the RCS thrusters until the lifeboat made a 180-degree turn, then I ignited the main engine. My body was pushed against the straps as the engine burned most of what remained of my fuel reserves. This lasted several minutes, and once my instruments told me I’d shed most of my velocity, I shut down the engine and fired the thrusters again, delicately coaxing the lifeboat until it had assumed the proper attitude for atmospheric entry. Then I revved up the main once more, this time to make sure that I didn’t hit the troposphere too fast. When everything looked copasetic, I goosed the yaw and pitch a bit, fine-tuning my angle of attack.

This went on for about fifteen or twenty minutes, during which I barely had time to look out the porthole, let alone give the lidar more than a passing glance. Since I was coming in backward, I didn’t have the luxury of selecting a precise landing site. At that point, though, all I wanted to do was make it through the upper atmosphere in one piece. So by the time a white-hot corona began to form around the heat shield, I couldn’t tell where the hell I was going. Except down.

Gravity took over like a baby elephant that had decided to sit on my chest. Gasping for air, I struggled to remain conscious ... and when my vision began to blur and I thought I was about to lose it, I hit the button that would activate the automatic landing sequence. It was a good thing that I did so, because I wasn’t totally myself when the Lou Brock entered Coyote’s stratosphere.

I was jerked out of my daze by the sudden snap of the drogue chutes being released. The altimeter told me that I was twenty-seven thousand feet above the ground. Through the porthole, I could see dark blue sky above a cotton-gauze layer of clouds. So far, so good, but I was still falling fast ... but then there was another jolt as the drogues were released, and one more as the three main chutes were deployed. I sucked in a lungful of air. All right, so I wasn’t going to become toast. Thank you, St. Buzz, and all other patron saints of dumb-luck spacers.

But that didn’t mean that I was out of danger yet. Although the fuel gauge told me I still had .03 percent in reserves, that was practically worthless so far as controlling my angle of descent. Firing thrusters now might cause the parachute lines to tangle, and then I’d be dead meat. So my fate was cast to the wind. Although I’d done my best to pick my landing site, so far as I knew I might splash-down in a channel. Or descend into the caldera of an active volcano. Or land on top of the Wicked Witch of the East and be greeted by the Lollipop Guild.

In any event, I had no vote in the outcome. So I simply hung on tight and clenched my teeth as I watched the altimeter roll back. At a thousand feet, there was the thump of the heat shield being jettisoned, followed by the loud whoosh of the landing bags inflated.

By then my rate of descent was thirty-two feet per second, according to the altimeter. I began a mental countdown from the half-minute mark. Thirty ... twenty-nine ... twenty-eight ... twenty-seven ... At the count of twenty, I decided that this was pointless, and simply waited.

Touchdown was hard, but not so violent that I did something foolish like bite my tongue. To my relief, I didn’t come down in water; there was no rocking back and forth that would have indicated I’d landed in a channel or a river, just the tooth-rattling whomp of hitting solid ground. A few seconds later, there was the prolonged hiss of the airbags deflating; when I felt the bottom of the lifeboat settle beneath me, I knew that I was safe.

Welcome to Coyote. Now where the hell was I?

* * * *

XIII

I waited until the bags collapsed, then unbuckled the harness and rose from my couch. After eighteen hours of zero-gee, my legs felt like warm rubber, but otherwise I had no trouble getting on my feet. The deck seemed stable enough, but nonetheless the first thing I did was look out the window to make sure the lifeboat hadn’t come down in a treetop. I saw nothing but what appeared to be a vast savannah of tall grass.

I already knew the air was breathable, so I went to the side hatch, removed the panel covering the lock-lever, and twisted it clockwise. The hatch opened with a faint gasp of overpressurized air. A moment later my ears popped. Coyote’s atmosphere was thinner than Earth’s, so I swallowed a couple of times to equalize the pressure in my inner ears, then I climbed through the hatch and dropped to the ground, landing on top of one of the deflated bags.

It was early afternoon wherever it was that I’d landed, the alien sun just past zenith in a pale blue sky streaked here and there with thin clouds. Although the air was a little cooler than I’d expected, the day was warm; it was midsummer on Coyote, if I correctly recalled recent reports of this world, which meant that it wouldn’t get cold until after Uma went down. About two or three miles away, beyond the edge of the field, was a line of trees; when I stepped away from the lifeboat and turned to look the other way, I saw more forest, with low mountains rising in the far distance.

The lifeboat had a survival kit; I’d already found it during my long trip here. Yet although it included a map of Coyote and a magnetic compass, a fat lot of good they’d do me now. The mountains represented no landmark that I recognized from ground level, and although the compass would help me tell north from south and east from west, a sense of direction was all but useless when I was ignorant of exactly where I had landed. So far as I knew, I was on the outskirts of Munchkin Land, about a hundred miles from the Emerald City.

But the kit also included food sticks, six liters of water, a firestarter, a survival knife, and a satphone. I could always use the satphone to call for help ... but only as a last resort. I’d arrived aboard a stolen lifeboat, after having made a somewhat violent escape from a Coyote Federation starship. Therefore, it made little sense to yell for help when it was all but certain my rescuers would take me to the nearest jail. And although my two feet were safely planted on Coyote soil, these weren’t exactly the right circumstances in which to beg for political asylum.

So ... first things first. Gather as much stuff as I could carry, pick a direction, and slog it out of there, with the hope that I wasn’t too far from civilization. I climbed back into the Lou Brock and used the survival knife to cut away the lining of my seat, with the intent of using it as a makeshift pack for everything I’d take with me, and perhaps also as a bedroll. Once I had a nice, long strip of fabric, I laid it flat on the deck, then placed within it water bottles and food sticks. I wrapped the strip tightly around my belongings and lashed it across my chest and back, where it made an acceptable sling. The satphone and firestarter went into my jacket pocket along with the map and compass, and the knife was attached to my belt. As an afterthought, I removed my ascot and tied it around my forehead as a sweatband.

So now I was good to go. Ready to tackle the Coyote wilderness, wherever it might lead me. Despite my trepidation, I found myself eager to discover whatever lay out there. This was why I’d joined the Union Astronautica in the first place: to explore new worlds, to go places where no one had ever gone before. Well, now I’d have my chance....

One last look to see if I’d forgotten anything, then once again I dropped out of the lifeboat. Farewell, Lou Brock. You’ve stolen one more base, and this time slid home farther than you ever have before. Making sure that my sling was tightly knotted, I began to walk away from the lifeboat...

And straight into the muzzle of a Union Guard carbine, pointed straight at me from less than six feet away.

“Stop right there!” The kid holding the gun wore a blue vest over a short-sleeve uniform of the same color, and looked barely old enough to shave. “Don’t move!”

“Not moving.” Nonetheless, I started to raise my hands. The customary gesture of surrender wasn’t appreciated, because the kid’s trigger finger twitched ever so slightly. “Easy, soldier,” I added, making like a statue. “Harmless. Unarmed. See?”

“Keep it that way.” Still keeping his hands on his weapon, the boy spoke into his headset mike. “Charlie two, this is Bravo leader. We’ve got him. Repeat, we’ve got him.”

We? Keeping my hands half-raised, I turned my head as much as I dared. To my left, another trooper was emerging from the high grass only a few yards away. I looked to my right, and caught a glimpse of a third soldier coming into view from behind the lifeboat. Like the squad leader, both carried Union Guard rifles, probably leftovers from the Revolution. Unless my guess was wrong, they belonged to the Colonial Militia, second-generation members of the Rigil Kent Brigade that had kicked the Western Hemisphere Union off Coyote nearly twenty-five years before. These were the descendants of guerrilla fighters, and therefore wouldn’t care much for the son of the son of their enemy.

I may have been surprised to find them, but they sure as hell weren’t surprised to find me. Within minutes, a gyro roared down out of the sky, its twin-prop rotors flattening the grass around us as it touched down only thirty feet away. By then Bravo Company had forced me to my knees, ripped my sling from my shoulders, patted me down and removed everything from my pockets, then used a plastic strap to tie my hands behind my back. They marched me to the gyro at gunpoint, and offered little assistance as I struggled aboard.

And that’s how I came to Coyote.

* * * *

FOUR

Busted on Coyote ... the discreet charm of the Colonial Militia ... weird incident in the stockade ... and a business proposition from Mr. Morgan Goldstein.

* * * *

XIV

A couple of hours later, I was in a jail cell in Liberty. We will now have a brief pause to relish the irony of that statement.

As it turned out, my lifeboat landed in a savannah on the southern half of Midland, a large subcontinent just across the East Channel from New Florida. Indeed, if the Lee hadn’t tracked the Lou Brock on its way down and informed the Colonial Militia of its touchdown point, I could have hiked east to Goat Kill River, then followed it north to Defiance, a settlement near the mountains I’d seen from my landing site. If I’d headed south, I would have found a fishing village called—so help me, I’m not lying—Carlos’s Pizza, located on the banks of the Great Equatorial River. And if I’d gone west, I would have eventually reached the East Channel, where one of any number of pirogues, catamarans, tugboats, or yachts that plied the river could have picked me up.

In any case, I was never more than a day or two away from civilization. All the same, though, perhaps it was just as fortunate that the Colonial Militia found me when they did. Although I was close enough to a couple of towns to reach them on foot, the grasslands were rife with boids ... and considering that I was unarmed save for my survival knife, an encounter with one of those man-eating avians would have been fatal. But the blueshirts got to me before that could happen, and so...

Well, to make a long story short, I wound up in what was colloquially referred to as the stockade, even though it was an adobe structure larger than some of the homes in town. Liberty, of course, was the first colony on Coyote, established almost a half-century ago by the original colonists from the URSS Alabama. It had since grown into what might pass as a city if you squinted hard enough. I didn’t get to see much of it, though; once the gyro landed just outside the stockade, the blueshirts marched me straight in.

The crime rate on Coyote must be really low, because the six cells on the ground floor were unoccupied save for a drunk passed out in the first one. The blueshirts handed me over to a proctor, a not-unkindly old guy they called Chief Levin. He walked me down to the end of the cell block, where he unsnapped my handcuffs before sliding open the iron-bar door. Dinner would be at sundown, the chief told me, and my arraignment was scheduled for tomorrow morning. If I needed anything before then, just yell. Then he slammed the door shut and walked off. I heard him return a little while later to rouse the drunk and usher him out, and after that I was pretty much left alone.

My cell was primitive but comfortable, or at least as comfortable as these things go. A foam-stuffed pad on a wrought-iron frame, complete with a blanket woven from some coarse fabric that I’d later learn was called shagswool. A pitcher of water and a ceramic cup. A commode that didn’t flush, but instead was ... well, call it a porcelain throne above a foul-smelling netherworld eight feet below; one whiff, and I resolved to keep the lid shut. Baked clay walls upon which previous guests had scratched their initials, along with some fairly interesting, if sometimes rude, graffiti. A ceiling light panel that looked as if it had been recently installed, evidence that modern technology had lately been imported from Earth.

It was the window that I enjoyed the most. Ribbed with four iron bars sunk deep within the adobe, with hinged wooden shutters on the outside, it wasn’t glazed, but instead was open to the air outside. As I sat on the cot, back propped against the wall and legs dangling over the side, I savored the warm breeze of a late summer afternoon. Sure, I was a prisoner, and it was very possible that I would soon be aboard the Robert E. Lee again, this time as a deportee bound for whatever punishment the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Union Astronautica had in store for me. But for a short while, I’d get a chance to...

Something itched at my mind.

There’s no other way to describe it. Imagine a mosquito bite, perhaps at your ankle. Annoying, but not painful. But when a mosquito tags you, it’s just a flesh wound; you can scratch it until it goes away.

What I felt was a little like that, but instead deep within my head. Like something had crawled into my cerebrum and given me a tiny yet distracting little sting. Sitting up on my bunk, I reached up to rub the back of my neck. For a moment, the sensation went away, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Evening was closing in, with light fading through the window. I hoped that someone would close the outside shutters before it got too cold. And perhaps bring me something to eat, too. I hadn’t...

Then I glanced at the window, and saw someone standing just outside.

In the waning light of day, it was difficult to make out his features. I stood up, stepped closer to the window. “Hey there,” I said. “Who are you?”

He said nothing, but continued to stare in at me. He wore a dark brown robe, its hood pulled up around his face. A fairly young man, a little older than myself, or at least that was my first impression.

Again, there was the itch in my mind ... and suddenly, I tasted chicken. Roast chicken, warm, perfectly seasoned with just the right amount of paprika, garlic, saffron, sea salt, and black pepper. The chicken of the gods. Chicken the way Mama used to make it, back when I was...

Then my mind fell open.

Again, I have no other way to describe it. Imagine that there’s a little trap door at the back of your skull, one that’s been closed for so long, you’ve forgotten that it even exists. Then, one day, someone who has the key inserts it into the lock, turns it ... and whomp, everything that is you rushes out. All your memories, all your knowledge, all your fantasies, all your little loves and hates, everything that comprises what you may call your soul gushes out as a stream of viscous black sludge.

As swiftly as it had opened, the door of my mind slammed shut. And as it did, the taste of chicken faded from my palate. Staggering away from the window, I managed to make it to the bunk before I keeled over.

I slept for only a little while before I woke up again. Feeling strangely hungover, I stumbled back to the window. Twilight was fading, and the stranger was nowhere to be seen. Once again, I was alone.

Something within my mind insisted that this was an illusion—you dozed off, a small voice said, and had a vivid dream—yet I couldn’t quite believe this explanation. I’d just received a visitor. Of that, I had little doubt.

* * * *

XV

Dinner arrived about an hour later, on a tray carried in by Chief Levin, who slipped it through a rectangular opening in the door. By coincidence, it was roast chicken. Nowhere near as tasty as the mental impression I’d received just a little while earlier, but I was in no position to complain. Besides, I was starving. So I wolfed it down, cleaning the plate of the green beans and sweet potatoes that came with it. A small surprise to find that I’d been given a knife and fork; apparently no one seriously believed that I might try to make use of them as weapons. But the chief wasn’t dumb; when he came for my tray, he made sure the utensils were in plain sight before he took it back from me.

Once again, I wondered why I hadn’t yet seen the magistrates, let alone been charged with anything. I’d arrived late in the day, of course, but surely the legal system must have some means of processing those who’d just been arrested. Perhaps the magistrates were trying to find a lawyer who would represent me pro bono. Come to think of it, did they even have lawyers on Coyote? A few days ago, I would’ve hoped not—at least not by the standards of the Western Hemisphere Union, where one is guilty until proven innocent—but now that I was cooling my heels in a jail cell, I found myself praying for someone who had a better grasp of colonial law than I did.

I was still trying to figure out whether or not to plead guilty to whatever I would be charged with when I heard the cell-block door swing open. Two pairs of footsteps came down the corridor, and I sat up on my bunk. Okay, this would be my solicitor. I hoped that his sheepskin hadn’t been mail-ordered from Earth.

Then the chief stopped in front of my cell. With him was a short, rather pudgy middle-aged man with a shaved head. He looked familiar, yet I couldn’t quite place him.

“Here he is, Mr. Goldstein.” Chief Levin nodded in my direction. “Sorry, but I can’t let you in. Rules...”

“Quite all right, Chris. So long as we can talk.” Goldstein looked around. “Of course, if I could have a place to sit...”

He cast a look at the chief, and Levin turned and walked away. Goldstein waited patiently, the fingers of his left hand absently playing with the crease of his tailored trousers. Wearing a tan linen suit, a red silk scarf hanging loose around his thick neck, he was easily the best-dressed man I had yet seen on Coyote. Which wasn’t saying much, because everyone I’d met so far was a blueshirt, but nonetheless this person practically smelled like money. Had to be a lawyer ... and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had seen him before.

Chief Levin returned with a straight-back wood chair that he’d found somewhere. “You’re too kind,” Goldstein said as the proctor placed it in front of my cell. “That will be all for now, thanks.” He raised his right hand to the blueshirt, and I caught a brief glimpse of green paper neatly folded within his middle and ring fingers. The chief shook Goldstein’s hand, deftly causing the Colonial to disappear, and then he vanished as well.

Goldstein waited until the cell block door slammed shut, then he turned to look at me. “Ensign Truffaut,” he said, favoring me with a broad smile. “So good to see you again.”

“I’m sorry, but...”

“Of course we have.” Smoothing the back of his trousers with his hand, he sat down in the chair the Chief had brought him. “Can’t blame you if you don’t remember me, being rather preoccupied at the time. Mr. Heflin is very efficient in his duties, don’t you think?” A sly grin. “But perhaps that lump you delivered to the back of his head will teach him not to mistake efficiency for attention to detail.”

It was then that I recognized him. The passenger who’d emerged from his first-class cabin aboard the Lee just in time to see the chief petty officer escort me to the bridge. Goldstein nodded, his grin growing wider as I gaped at him.

“Ah, so ... now you know.” Goldstein reached into a pocket of his jacket, produced a pair of thick brown cigars. He offered one to me; when I shook my head, he shrugged and put it away. “If you hadn’t been exposed,” he continued, “I might have come over to ask if you wanted a poker game to pass the time.” He used a pocket guillotine to clip the end of his stogie. “Then again, if I’d done that, I might have taken your cover story at face value ... that you were a gentleman by the name of Geoffrey Carr, and nothing more interesting than that.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Disappoint me?” An eyebrow was raised as a gold-plated lighter was produced. “Far from it. In fact, you may be the answer to a problem I have. And I may be the answer to yours.”

* * * *

XVI

I didn’t know quite what to say to that, so I simply waited as he flicked his lighter and used it to gently char the end of his cigar. Blue-grey fumes rose toward the ceiling; I don’t smoke, but it was fragrant enough that I almost regretted not accepting the one he’d offered.

“Name’s Goldstein. Morgan Goldstein.” He settled back and stretched out his legs, so self-assured that you could have sworn he owned the stockade. “Ever heard of me?”

“No, I...” Then I stopped myself. “There’s a Morgan Goldstein who’s in charge of Janus, but...”

“But what?” He rolled his cigar between his fingertips, not quite looking at me. “Please. Speak your mind.”

What was on my mind was the improbability of a billionaire sitting in a cell block, having a smoke and a chat with someone about to be convicted on felony charges. Sure, I knew who Morgan Goldstein was. Founder and CEO of Janus, Ltd., the largest private space firm in the solar system. Earth’s, that is, or at least until just a few years ago, when he’d abruptly uprooted his corporation from the Western Hemisphere Union and relocated it to Coyote. There, he re-established it as the richest company in the new world, with himself as its wealthiest citizen. Although most of Janus’s shipping interests still remained forty-six light-years away, the corporate headquarters were now located in Albion, not far from the New Brighton spaceport where, if things had worked out better, Geoffrey Carr would have peacefully disembarked.

“Yeah ... sure, you’re that same guy.” I waved my hand back and forth to clear the air in front of my face. “And I’m Dorothy Gale, from Kansas.”

His face darkened for a moment, as if nonplussed to find someone who wouldn’t instantly take him at his word. Then he relaxed, and tilted back his head to exhale smoke at the ceiling. “Then I’d have to ask where you left your little dog, and why you couldn’t have found a better place to park your farmhouse.” He shook his head. “I’m not normally accustomed to proving my identity, but if you insist...”

Reaching into a coat pocket, he produced a data pad. I couldn’t help but notice it was a SonAp Executive: state of the art, top of the line, in what appeared to be a platinum casing. He pressed his thumb against the ID plate, then raised the pad to his face so that the retinal scanner could check his eyes. A soft click and the pad opened. He tapped a couple of commands into the keypad, waited a moment, entered yet another set, then leaned forward to pass the unit through the cell bars.

“I’d prefer that you keep this information to yourself,” he said quietly. “I’d rather not have it become common knowledge.”

I took the pad from him and read the screen. Displayed at the top was the logo of Lloyd’s of London. Beneath it was an account statement for Mr. Morgan Goldstein, along with a routing number that had been carefully blacked out. And under that was a figure in Euros that stretched into ten figures. Ten high figures.

“That’s my net holdings in this one particular establishment,” Goldstein said, his voice low. “At least as of yesterday morning, the last time I was able to update my portfolio via hyperlink. Sorry, but I’d rather not reveal my holdings in Zurich or the Bank of Coyote. They’re considerably larger.”

The data pad trembled in my hand. I wasn’t completely convinced, though, so I used my fingertip to move the cursor to the BIO tab within the menu bar. Goldstein waited patiently while the screen changed again ... and suddenly, I saw a portrait photo of the man seated on the other side of the bars. About ten years younger, with nearly as many hairs remaining on top of his head, but unmistakably the same individual.

“It’s okay to breathe,” Goldstein said after a moment. “I do it all the time. Good for the lungs.”

I managed to give the pad back to him without dropping it. He was grinning like a fox as he closed it. “Now then, Dorothy ... or may I call you Ensign Truffaut?”

“Ensign Truffaut is fine.” I swallowed, tried to get us back to the informal level. “Jules is good, too.”

“Jules, then ... and you may call me Mr. Goldstein.” The grin faded as he slipped the pad back into his pocket. “So you know who I am, and what I represent. Now I’ll tell you why I need you, and what I can do for you in return.” Another languid drag from his cigar. “You’ve heard of the hjadd, of course.”

Who hadn’t? An alien race, their home world located in the Rho Coronae Borealis system, they’d made contact with humankind about three years ago, when they’d permitted the survivors of the EASS Galileo to return to Coyote after their ship had been destroyed fifty-six years earlier. The Galileo had been sent out from Earth to investigate a deep-space object called Spindrift; a foolish mistake by the captain led to a lethal encounter with a hjadd starship, but the three surviving members of the expedition managed to convince the aliens that our race meant them no harm. This in turn led to the hjadd dispatching an emissary to Coyote, with a small delegation sent not long thereafter.

First contact, in other words. “Sure,” I said. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to see one of them while I was here.”

“Yes, well ... you and me both, kid.” Goldstein knocked an ash to the floor. “They’ve had an embassy here nearly a year, by local reckoning. A compound on the other side of town, not far from the Colonial University. But it’s off-limits to everyone except a few people who they’ve accepted as go-betweens, and only rarely do any of them come out ... and only then in environment suits so we can’t see them.”

“But we know what they look like.” I’d seen the same photos everyone else on Earth had: creatures that resembled giant tortoises, only without shells, who stood upright on stubby legs and wore toga-like garments that seemed to shimmer with a light of their own. “Pretty weird, but...”

“Ah, yes ... and it’s the ‘but’ that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?” Goldstein studied the glowing end of his cigar. “A year on this world, and we still know little more about them than we did before they arrived. Although they know a lot about us ... even Anglo, which their emissaries speak with the assistance of translation devices ... they’re very protective of what we learn about them. Believe me, I’ve had my people working at this for some time now. The best insight that I’ve been given is that they’re probably descended from a ‘prey species’ ... a lesser form of life on their native world ... that was subject to attack by predators until they learned how to compete. So they’re cautious by nature, not given to opening up to others.”

“So you’re afraid of them?”

Goldstein gave me a cold look. “No. Not at all. The Dominionists consider them a threat to their doctrine, but me...?” He shook his head. “If I really wanted, I could have their embassy nuked from orbit.”

“I think someone tried that already.” I remembered what happened to the Galileo.

“True, and I have no desire to repeat that mistake. Besides, it would be contrary to my interests.” He took another drag from his cigar. “The hjadd want to pursue trade relations with humankind. Not with Earth, mind you ... they don’t trust that place, not after what happened with the Galileo ... but with us, here, on Coyote. We have something they want, and they’re willing to bargain for it.”

“And that is...?”

“Patience. We’ll get to that.” I shut up and he went on. “I’m not a diplomat, nor am I a scientist.” Dropping his voice, Goldstein gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Fact is, I’m not that much of a spacer, even though I own a fleet of commercial spacecraft. The reason why I was aboard your ship in the first place was because I had to tend to business interests back on Earth, and the accommodations aboard the Lee are more comfortable than the ones aboard my own vessels.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“Keep it to yourself.” Another puff from his cigar. “At any rate ... I’m an entrepreneur, Jules. A businessman, and a damn good one if I say so myself. Started out by buying a second-hand lunar freighter that was about to be decommissioned and went from there.” He patted the coat pocket in which he’d put his pad. “The trick to striking it rich is spotting opportunities when they come up and seizing them before anyone else does. And the hjadd...”

“Are an opportunity.”

“Kid, I’m beginning to like you even more. Yes, the hjadd are an opportunity. Better yet, they’re an opportunity no one else ... particularly not my competitors ... have managed to get their hands on. If Janus can reliably deliver what they want, then I stand to gain a monopoly upon whatever they have to trade in return. Not only that, but I’ll have access to any other races with whom they have contact. When that happens, my company will become the sole freight carrier between us and the rest of the galaxy.”

“Uh-huh. And what does the Coyote government have to say about that?”

“Oh, don’t worry.” Goldstein grinned. “They’re in on it, too. The Federation Navy only has one ship big enough to handle that amount of cargo, and the Lee is already committed to the Earth run. After that, they have nothing but shuttles. And since I have the ships they need, they’re just as willing to subcontract my company ... for a generous share of the profits, of course.”

“Sounds like you’ve got everything lined up.”

“I’ve been working on this deal for the last six months, Coyote time. If all goes well, within the next two or three weeks we’ll be sending the first commercial freighter to Hjarr ... their home world, that is. There’s just one last detail that needs to be taken care of ... and that’s where you come in.”

Goldstein glanced at the cell block door, making sure that we were alone, then he shifted forward in his chair, leaning closer until his face was only a few inches from the bars. “One problem I had with this is putting together a crew,” he went on, his voice lowered once more. “I’ve got a lot of good people, but I know damn well some of them are spies for my competitors ... just as I’ve placed my own informants within their outfits. That’s the way business is. Everyone wants to know what the other guy is doing, and tries to use that info to their advantage. But with something like this ... well, the fewer risks I have to accept, the happier I’ll be.”

He toyed with the cigar in his hand. “So instead of bringing in a crew from Earth or Mars, I’ve decided to build a new team from scratch.” He stopped himself. “Well, almost entirely a new team. Out of necessity, my chief engineer comes with his ship. But he’s been working for me for a long time now, and I trust him like I would my own brother. For all other positions, though, I’ve had to recruit local talent.”

I could see where this was leading ... and yet, I couldn’t quite believe it. “You want me?” I asked, and he nodded. “Why?”

“Because you impressed me.” Goldstein exhaled a lungful of smoke, then looked me straight in the eye. “It took a lot of guts to steal that lifeboat the way you did, and it took even more to bring it safely to the ground. I know those lifeboats, kid ... I’ve got the same type installed on my own ships ... and they’re a bitch to handle. And you managed to land one on your own, with no help from either the Lee or local traffic control. Like I said, I was impressed.”

“Thank you.” Yet I remained skeptical. “How do you know I’m not just lucky, though?”

“Once I found out who you were, I had my people check you out. You’re a rather interesting fellow, Jules. Graduated fourth in your class at the Academia del Espacio. Served as a junior officer aboard the ... what was the name of that ship?”

“The WHSS Victory of Social Collectivism on Mars.”

“Oh, yes. Right.” He rolled his eyes in distaste. “Never could understand the Union Astronautica’s penchant for propagandizing ship names.” He frowned. “You might have eventually earned your captain’s bars, if it hadn’t been for that business with your brother.” A pause. “You realize, of course, you could’ve saved your career if...”

“You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard before.” I didn’t like to talk about Jim, particularly not with strangers. And so far as I was concerned, Morgan Goldstein was still little more than a rich guy who’d come to visit me in jail. “So what is it you want me to do? Be your commanding officer?”

Goldstein stared at me for a couple of seconds, then laughed out loud. “You certainly do have balls, don’t you?” Leaning back in his chair, he shook his head in obvious amusement. “I already have a CO, son, along with a capable first officer. What I need now is someone qualified to fly a shuttle, or just about any other small craft we may have aboard.” His smile reappeared. “I had one or two other people in mind, but when I saw you’d worked as a longshoreman on Highgate ... well, I knew I had my man.”

If he meant to knock me down a peg or two, he did a good job of doing so. So I wasn’t being recruited for the big chair, or even for the little one, but for a task that notoriously falls to Academy washouts, with my former employment as a pod jockey being the final selling point. If this was a job interview, I might have been tempted to walk out of the room ... if I’d been able to, that is.

“Thanks for considering me,” I murmured, trying to keep my temper in check. “So happy to hear that I’m suitable for your needs.”

“More than suitable. You’re the very man I’ve been looking for.” Goldstein became more somber. “That is, of course, unless you want to go home. Then all I have to do is leave, and let my friends among the magistrates know that you’re not interested. In that case, they’ll call you in first thing tomorrow morning. The legal system here on Coyote may not be very merciful, but it is quick. You’ll get a fair and speedy trial, and I have little doubt that you’ll be deported. After that...” He shrugged.

“And if I sign up with you?”

“Then I put in a good word for you with the maggies, informing them I’m willing to post bail for you if you plead nolo contendere. You get one year probation, the government takes into consideration your petition for political amnesty, and in the meantime you go to work for me.” Another smile. “I’ll even throw in salary commensurate with that of a first-class spacer ... non-union, of course ... and see what I can do about finding you a room at an inn here in town. So what do you say?”

As if I had a choice? Besides, I had to admit, what he was offering was tempting under any circumstances. In the Union Astronautica, I might have eventually risen to the rank of captain ... in which case I would have commanded a Mars cycleship, or even a Jovian freighter, and spent my life shuffling back and forth across the solar system.

At one time, that sort of thing had been my highest ambition. But now I was being given the chance to travel to the stars, to see things no one else in my class had ever dreamed of seeing. Sure, maybe it wasn’t going to be from the vantage point of the captain’s chair ... but better this than a lifetime of sleeping on a prison cot.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”

“Excellent. Pleased to hear it.” Standing up, Goldstein dropped his cigar on the floor. “I’ll have a chat with my friends,” he said as he ground the stogie beneath the heel of his shoe, “and I’ll send someone by to pick you up tomorrow morning.” He paused to look me over. “If you have a chance, write down your clothing sizes. That’s a fine outfit you’re wearing, but totally unsuitable for life here.”

“I will. Thank you.” All this and a trip to the tailor, too. It suddenly felt as if I’d hit the jackpot.

But not quite. Goldstein started to walk away when another thought occurred to me. “By the way ... you didn’t say what sort of cargo we’re taking to the hjadd.”

He stopped. For a second, I thought he was going to turn around, but instead he merely glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, did I forget that? Sorry.”

And then he disappeared. The cell block door creaked as it was opened from the outside, then it slammed shut once more. Leaving me to wonder if I’d just talked my way out of jail, or negotiated a deal with the devil.

* * * *

FIVE

Goodbye, Your Honor ... take me out to the ball game ... where the aliens are ... oh, Captain, my Captain ... and a cold Rain.

* * * *

XVII

Morgan Goldstein was true to his word.

Early next morning, not long after Chief Levin brought in breakfast—which I’d didn’t mind skipping; if the eggs had been any runnier and the bacon a little less fatty, I could have raced them against each other around my plate—another blueshirt showed up to take me to court. I straightened my clothes as best as I could, hoped that I didn’t smell too ripe, then let him put the cuffs on me and lead me from my cell.

Two more blueshirts were waiting outside the stockade, along with a wagon drawn by an animal that looked like a cross between a water buffalo and a giant anteater. At least there was one creature on Coyote who stank worse than me. The shag farted a couple of times on the way across town, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed; my guard and the driver had had enough sense to pull scarves up around their noses.

I got a good look at Liberty along the way. Clapboard houses and log cabins lined packed-dirt streets; men and women in homespun clothes walked to work on wooden sidewalks raised a half-foot above storm gutters. We passed a schoolyard in which a crowd of children were at play, and from somewhere far off I heard a belltower clock strike eight times. Here and there, I spotted indications of advanced technology—sat dishes on rooftops, a hovercoupe parked in an alley, comps on display in a shop window—but otherwise the town looked as if had been transported across time and space from nineteenth-century America. Despite the opening of the starbridges, Coyote remained a frontier where the inhabitants had learned how to make do with what they could build with their own hands. I wasn’t sure whether I liked this or not.

We finally arrived at Government House. The wagon trundled around the statue of Captain R.E. Lee, commanding officer of the URSS Alabama and founder of the colony, and came to a halt at a side door of the two-story wood-frame building. The blueshirts helped me climb down from the wagon; the shag passed gas one last time as a fare-thee-well, then I was marched inside.

A quick walk down a short corridor, and then I was escorted into a small courtroom. On the other side of a low rail, two men were seated at a long wooden table. One of them stood up as I approached and introduced himself as my court-appointed attorney. Rail-thin and affable, with curly hair that seemed to stand on end, he seemed more like someone you’d find throwing darts in the nearest pub. Better to have him on my side, though, than the other barrister, who barely nodded in my direction before returning sour eyes to his pad; I wondered if being prosecutor was his way of compensating for going bald before he was thirty.

My lawyer had just finished telling me, in a low whisper, not to speak unless I was spoken to, and then only to say just that which was necessary—play dumb, and let me do the talking—when another door opened and the magistrates walked in. Two men and a woman, each wearing long black robes, all of whom looked as if they’d had lemons for breakfast. Everyone rose as they strode to the bench, and we took our seats again when they did. The chief magistrate picked up her gavel, gave it a perfunctory smack on the table and called court to order, and then we were off and running.

And I do mean running, because we were in and out of there in less than twenty minutes. The head maggie asked the prosecuting attorney if he was ready and willing to press charges against the accused, identified as Jules Truffaut. He responded that he was indeed: two counts of identity theft, possession of forged documents, stowing away aboard an interstellar vessel registered to the Coyote Federation, two counts of assault against Federation Navy officers, theft of a spacecraft registered to the Federation, unauthorized intrusion into Federation airspace, and unauthorized landing upon territory in possession of a Federation colony.

I didn’t need to be familiar with colony law to know that I was seriously up a creek, and not just one found on this planet. Forget deportation. Considering that there was no question that I’d committed every single offense, I would be lucky if I spent the rest of my days in the stockade ... if they didn’t first ship my criminal ass back to Earth.

When the chief magistrate asked how I would plead, though, my attorney calmly rose to tell her that I was pleading nolo contendere to all charges, on the grounds that, as a citizen of Western Hemisphere Union who had grievances with his government, I had been forced to defect to Coyote with the intent of requesting political asylum. The magistrates took a few minutes to study their pads and murmur to one another, and then Her Honor summoned both attorneys to the bench. They spoke for five or ten minutes, their voices too low for me to hear. The lawyers returned to their seats, and my attorney barely smiled when the chief magistrate announced that my case would be remanded to a future date, as yet to be determined by the court. Until then I was free on bail, which had already been posted by a third party.

Another bang of the gavel, and it was over and done. My attorney shook my hand, wished me good luck, then turned and walked away. The last I saw of him, he and the prosecutor were ambling together from the courtroom, chuckling over some small joke I didn’t catch. The magistrates had already disappeared; a brief glimpse of black robes gliding through the anteroom door, and they were gone. Even the blueshirts who’d brought me here took a powder; one of them came forward to release my handcuffs, then he clapped me on the shoulder, told me to stay out of trouble, and followed his pal out of the room.

All at once, I was alone. Nowhere to go, with nothing to my name save for the clothes on my back and a few bucks in my pocket. I stood there for a moment, wondering just what the hell had happened....

And then someone who’d been quietly sitting in the gallery all this time rose to his feet and came forward. A big guy, about a head taller than me and twice my size, with long blond hair and a thick beard to match. In a surprisingly mild voice, he informed me that his name was Mike Kennedy, and that he worked for Mr. Goldstein. Would I come with him, please?

* * * *

XVIII

A hoverlimo was parked out front of Government House, only the second ground vehicle I’d yet seen on Coyote that didn’t have an animal hitched to it. Kennedy opened the rear door for me, and I wasn’t surprised to find Goldstein seated inside.

“Mr. Truffaut, good morning.” In hemp jeans and a light cotton sweater, Goldstein was more casually dressed than when I’d seen him the night before. “I trust your arraignment went well.”

“Yes, sir, it did.” I climbed into the back of the limo. “No small thanks to you, I assume.”

“Think nothing of it. I try to...” His voice trailed off, and there was no mistaking the look on his face as he caught a good whiff of me. I tried to sit as far from him as possible, but even so he pushed a button that half-opened a window on his side of the car. “I endeavor to accommodate my employees,” he finished, his voice little more than a choke, then he leaned toward the glass partition between the passenger and driver seats. “Could you turn on the exhaust fan, please, Mike?”

Without a word, Kennedy switched on the vents. Cool air wafted through the back of the limo. “Sorry,” I murmured. “Three days without a bath...”

“No need to apologize. Can’t be helped.” Goldstein tapped on the glass. The limo rose from its skirts and glided away from Government House. “I’m afraid I’m still a little overcivilized. There’s still settlements where people take baths only two or three times a week ... that’s a Coyote week, nine days ... and then in outdoor tubs just large enough to sit in.” He paused, then added, “I’ve had to do it myself, from time to time.”

“Of course.” He’d made it sound as if going without a bath for more than a day or two was an act of barbarism. For him, perhaps it was. “At any rate, thank you. I appreciate you acting on my behalf.”

“Think nothing of it,” he replied, waving it off. “You’re working for me now ... and you wouldn’t do me any good if your residence was the stockade, now would you?” He smiled. “Soon enough, I’ll have you at an inn here in town. Nice place ... hot running water, two meals a day ... and there’s clothes in your room that Mike has bought for you. You didn’t have a chance to give me your sizes, so we had to guess a bit, but...”

“I’m sure they’ll be fine. Thank you, sir.” I was gazing out the window beside me. This part of Liberty had apparently been built more recently than the neighborhood around the stockade and Government House. I caught a brief glimpse of shops, open air markets, tidy parks surrounded by red-brick bungalows. Very few vehicles, although I spotted a teenager seated on a hoverbike, chatting with a couple of young ladies. More often than not, though, I saw hitching posts to which both horses and shags had been tied.

“Look over here,” Goldstein said, and I craned my neck to gaze past him. A collection of adobe and wood-frame buildings arranged around a quadrangle. “The Colonial University. Established a few years after the Revolution by some of the original colonists. It’s grown lately, thanks to endowments from Janus.”

“I’m sure they appreciate it.” My new boss seemed to never let a chance slip by when he could brag about his munificence. Not that I could blame him; if I owned what was probably the only hoverlimo on a world where most people rode horses, I’d probably do the same. I was about to ask whether any schools had been named after him when something in a field across the road from the campus caught my eye.

The moment I saw it, I knew exactly what it was.

“Stop the car!” I snapped. Kennedy hit the brakes, and before Goldstein could prevent me, I opened my door and hopped out. For a few moments I stared at the field, utterly surprised by what I’d found.

Four bases, with white powder lines running between them, a small mound within the center. Bleachers behind the first and third bases, and a tall, chain-link fence forming an open-sided cage just behind home plate. Small wooden sheds on either side of the cage, with wood benches inside each one. And from the top of the cage, a blue and gold pennant that rippled in the morning breeze:

BREAK ‘EM, BOIDS!

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I murmured. A baseball diamond. Of all the things I’d least expected to see on Coyote...

“Oh, that?” Goldstein had followed me from the limo. “Belongs to the university team. The Battling Boids.” A disinterested shrug. “Next week they go up against the Swampers, or whatever they’re called....”

“The Fighting Swampers.” Mike Kennedy gazed at us from the open window of the limo. “From Petsloc U.” He pronounced it as pets-lock.

“The People’s Enlightenment Through the Spirit of Social Collectivism University.” Goldstein shook his head. “Not much of a school, really. More like a small liberal arts college set up by some unreformed social collectivists. But they’ve got a pretty good ball team....”

“Are you kidding?” Kennedy laughed out loud. “Boss, they stink. Half the time, they’re arguing over who’s most politically correct to play shortstop....”

“Never mind.” Goldstein was obviously amused by my reaction to something as trivial to him as a baseball diamond. “If I’d known you were such a sports fan, Jules, I would’ve mentioned this earlier.”

I bit my lip at his condescension, but said nothing. Although I’d read as much as I could about Coyote before making the decision to defect, I hadn’t a clue that baseball was played here. And for those of us who truly love the game, it isn’t just a sport; it’s a fixation nearly as consuming as sex, drugs, or religion, albeit with none of the unpleasant side effects. When I’d left Earth, I’d thought that this was one thing I was leaving behind. In hindsight, I should have known better. Humankind always carries its culture with it, and no place is truly habitable unless it has baseball.

“I think...” I let out my breath. “I think I’m going to like this place.”

“Hmm ... well, so long as we’re here, there’s something else I’d like to show you.” Goldstein touched my elbow. “Take a walk with me?”

It didn’t sound like a request, but after two days floating around a lifeboat and another cooped up in a jail, any chance to stretch my legs sounded like a fine idea. I nodded, and Goldstein turned toward the university. As we crossed the road again, he raised a hand to Kennedy, gesturing for him to remain behind.

He said nothing as we cut across campus. The Colonial University was a little larger than it appeared from the road. Some of the buildings were taller than others, and someone had obviously devoted some time and effort to landscaping. Shade trees lined gravel walkways, with benches and abstract sculptures placed here and there; students strolled between buildings, chatting amongst themselves, or sat alone beneath trees, engrossed in their books and pads. We sauntered past a kidney-shaped pond where an elderly woman held an open-air seminar with a dozen or so pupils. None appeared much younger than myself, and I felt a twinge of envy. Before things had gone sour for me, I could have been one of them. An academic life, shielded from the realities of the larger and sometimes very harsh world.

We’d reached the far side of the campus, and had walked up a small hill overlooking the pond, when Goldstein came to a halt near a tree-shaded bench. “Over there,” he said, pointing away from the university. “See it?”

Just beyond a small glade, only a few hundred yards away, lay what I first took to be a fortress. A ring-shaped structure, built of what seemed to be solid rock, its outer walls sloping inward to surround a cylindrical inner keep that vaguely resembled an enormous pillbox of the sort that had once been built by German soldiers during one of the world wars back on Earth. Narrow, slot-like windows were set deep within the keep’s round walls, while wiry antennae jutted from its flat roof. There were no openings of any sort visible in the outer walls, although an indention of some sort gave an impression of a gate that I couldn’t make out through the trees.

“The hjadd embassy.” Goldstein’s voice was subdued, almost as if he expected to be overheard. “The original structure was built by us, on land President Gunther ceded to them as sovereign territory. That was shortly after the Galileo crew returned from Rho Coronae Borealis, with the Prime Emissary aboard. Once heshe determined that hisher people would be safe here, though, heshe summoned a ship from home. A few days later, two of their shuttles touched down over there, and then...”

He paused. “They created that place in four days.”

“Yeah, okay, but...” Then what he’d just said struck home. “Did you say four days?”

“Uh-huh.” Goldstein nodded toward the bench. “They wouldn’t allow any of us to come near, but when I heard what was happening, I got someone to let me join the faculty members who were observing everything from here. “There was an expression of wonder on his face as his gaze returned to the distant compound. “It was like seeing a flower blossom in the early morning. At first, it didn’t seem as if anything was happening. But after awhile, we saw that something was growing...”

“Being built, you mean.”

“No. I mean it grew. No scaffolds, no heavy equipment ... not even construction crews. It just rose from the ground, little upon little, so slowly that you didn’t think anything was happening. Then you’d go away for coffee or to have a smoke, and when you’d come back you’d see that the outer walls were just a little taller than the last time you’d looked. And all of it solid ... perfect, like it was a stone plant of some sort.”

“Nanotech?”

“That’s our best guess, yeah ... but far more advanced than anything we’ve ever developed. Spectrographic imaging reveals that the walls are comprised of minerals found in the native soil, but that’s as much as we know. It resists everything else we throw at it. Thermographs, sonar, radar, lidar ... totally airtight. Even the windows are reflective. Nothing gets in and nothing gets out.”

“So what have you ... I mean, what have our people found out? About what goes on in there, I mean?”

“So far, the hjadd have allowed only three people inside. Carlos Montero, the former president, in his role as official liaison. He doesn’t say much to anyone, but that’s to be expected. A Dominionist missionary who ... well, he’s not talking to anyone either, but from what I’ve heard, he’s had a crisis of faith.” He paused. “The third person is myself.”

“You?”

“Only so far as an anteroom, where I spoke with them through a glass window. That’s the farthest they’ve allowed anyone, or so I’ve been told.” Goldstein tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. “I wanted you to see this, to give you an idea of what we’re going after. It’s not just establishing trade relations with another race ... it’s getting our hands on technology of such magnitude that something like that is little more than a trinket.”

Before I could answer, he turned his back to the compound. “Come on,” he said as he began to walk down the hill. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then I’ll introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

* * * *

XIX

Goldstein had made a reservation for me at a small B&B called the Soldier’s Joy, in the old part of Liberty not far from the grange hall that had been the meeting house of the original colonists. Before he dropped me off, Goldstein pointed to a tavern just down the road from the inn and told me he’d meet me there in three hours. Then the limo glided away, leaving me alone again in a strange town.

My room was on the second floor, and while it wasn’t the presidential suite, at least it had its own bath, which was all that I cared about just then. So I took a long, hot shower that rinsed away the last of my travel sweat, then wrapped myself in a robe I found hanging on the bathroom door and lay down on a feather-stuffed bed that felt nothing like a jail cot. I hadn’t slept well in the stockade, and I figured I had time for a mid-day siesta.

The afternoon sun was shining through the windows when I woke up. Opening the dresser and closet, I discovered three changes of clothes, along with a shagswool jacket and a sturdy pair of boots stitched from what I’d later learn was creek-cat hide. There were even toiletries in the bathroom, including a sonic toothbrush and shaver. I got rid of my whiskers and brushed my teeth, then tried on a pair of hemp trousers, a cotton shirt, and a shagswool vest. Everything fit me better than I expected, even the boots; either Goldstein had an amazingly accurate sense for clothing sizes, or his people had found my specs during their research. I didn’t know which prospect unnerved me more.

In any case, I arrived at the tavern a little less than three hours after promising Goldstein I would meet him there. I was on schedule, but my new boss wasn’t. Or at least his hoverlimo was nowhere in sight. And the tavern itself was rather run-down. With a weather-beaten signboard above the front door proclaiming its name to be Lew’s Cantina, it was little more than a log cabin with a thatch roof and fieldstone chimney to one side. Just a shack that someone had neglected to tear down.

I hesitated outside for a few moments, wondering whether I’d misunderstood Goldstein and gone to the wrong place. But there was nothing else in the neighborhood that looked even remotely like a bar or restaurant, and he’d told me he’d buy me a drink once I got there. So I walked across a wood plank and pushed open a door that creaked on its hinges.

Inside, Lew’s Cantina was little more inviting than its exterior. A low ceiling with oil lamps suspended from the rafters. An unfinished floor upon which wood shavings soaked up spilled ale. Faded blankets hanging from log walls. Battered tables and wicker chairs, some of which looked as if they’d been repaired a few times. A stone hearth with a couple of half-burned logs. The bar was no more than a board nailed across the top of a row of beer kegs; behind it stood an old lady, thin and frail, who scowled at me as she wiped a chipped ceramic mug with a rag that probably played host to three or four dozen different strains of bacteria.

Yeah, this was definitely the wrong address. Yet just as I started to turn toward the door, someone in the back of the room called out.

“Hey! Your name Truffaut?”

I looked around, saw three people seated around a table next to an open window. Two men and a woman, sharing a pitcher of ale. I nodded, and the guy seated on the far side of the table beckoned me. “You’re looking for us. C’mon over.”

As I walked across the room, the fellow who’d spoken rose from his chair. “Ted Harker,” he said, offering his hand. “Commanding officer of the...” His voice trailed off, as if unsure how to finish. “Well, anyway, just call me Ted. We don’t stand much on formality. Have a seat. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Ted Harker? The name sounded familiar, although for the moment I was unable to place it. He looked like he was in his late thirties, with long black hair tied back behind his neck and a trim beard just beginning to show the first hint of grey. “Thanks,” I said, shaking his hand, “but I thought I was supposed to meet somewhere else here....”

“Morgan?” This from the woman seated next to him. A little younger than Ted, with short blond hair and the most steady gaze I’d ever seen. Like Harker, she had a British accent. “Yes, well ... figures he’d put you on the spot like this.”

“Typical.” The second man at the table, same age as Ted, with an olive complexion and a Middle Eastern lilt to his tongue. “Bastard has his own agenda.”

“C’mon, now. Speak no evil of the man who signs our paychecks.” Ted motioned to an empty chair, then turned toward the bar. “Carrie? Another round for the table, please, and a mug for Mr. Truffaut here.”

“Jules. My friends call me Jules.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jules.” The woman smiled at me as I sat down. “I’m Emily. First mate.” She didn’t mention her last name, but neither did she have to; when she lifted her beer mug, I noticed the gold band on her ring finger. First mate in more ways than one.

“Ali Youssef. Helmsman and navigator.” The other man extended his hand as well. “I take it you’re our new shuttle pilot.”

“That’s what Mr. Goldstein ... Morgan ... hired me to do.” I looked at the three of them. “So this is it? The entire crew?”

Ted shook his head. “We’ve got two more. One of them is using the facilities just now ... she’ll be back in a minute ... and the other is arriving with the ship. And we’ll have two passengers as well....”

“More than two,” Ali interrupted. “I spoke with Morgan earlier today, and he told me he’s bringing someone else.”

“What?” Ted stared at him in disbelief. “Well, that’s bloody wonderful. So when was he going to tell the captain, pray tell?”

“Don’t look at me.” Ali shrugged as he took a sip from a glass of iced tea; he was the only person at the table not drinking ale. “I just happened to see him on the street, and he told me...”

“Morgan’s going along?” This was news to me; he hadn’t mentioned this during our previous conversations.

“He has to. After all, he’s the one who’s trying to make a deal.” Emily let out her breath. “At least we’re not having to deal with Jared again.”

“No. He backed out at the last minute. Said one trip to Hjarr was enough for him.” A wry smile from Ted. “Just as well. I had enough of him on Spindrift.”

Spindrift. As soon as he said that, everything clicked. “Oh, good grief,” I said, feeling my face go warm. “So you’re ... I’m sorry, but I didn’t recognize you. You were on the Galileo.” Before he could answer, I looked at his wife. “And that would make you...”

“Morgan didn’t tell you?” Emily glanced at her husband. “Nerve of that guy.”

Theodore Harker. Emily Collins. First officer and shuttle pilot respectively, they were two of the three surviving members of the Galileo expedition. Like everyone else on Earth, I’d heard about their encounter with Spindrift, the rogue planet that turned out to be a starship carrying the remains of an alien race called the taaraq. Along with a third member of the expedition—it took me a moment to recall his name; Jared Ramirez, the astrobiologist—they had landed on Coyote fifty-six years after the Galileo’s disappearance, bringing with them the hjadd Prime Emissary. And now, here they were, they were seated across the table from me ... and I hadn’t even heard that they’d gotten married.

Ted looked as if he was ready to blow a mouthful of beer through his nose. He swallowed with difficulty, then looked at Emily. “Morgan certainly enjoys his little games,” he grumbled, then returned his attention to me. “Yes, you’ve found us out. Not that we were trying to keep it from you, but...”

“Keep what from who?” a voice said from behind me, and I looked around to see a girl about four or five years younger than myself. Shoulder-length hair the color of cinnamon, a narrow but pleasant face, nicely curved everywhere that mattered. Incredible eyes, the shade of green you find at twilight on a midsummer day.

And then she looked at me and said, “Who the hell is this?” Like I was a bug she’d happened to find.

“Ensign ... sorry, I mean Jules Truffaut,” Ted said. “He’s our shuttle pilot.”

“Yeah. Okay.” She started to sit down, but waited while the bartender hobbled over to the table with a fresh pitcher of ale. Carrie placed a mug in front of me, then quietly pulled back a chair for the girl. “Thanks, Carrie,” she said, giving the old lady a sweet smile. “Oh, by the way...” She crooked a finger, and Carrie bent closer while the younger woman murmured something in her ear. She nodded, then stood erect and shuffled back to the bar.

“What was that about?” I asked once she was gone.

“No more paper in the outhouse. Thought she should know.” She shook her head, then glanced at the pitcher with distaste. “You guys already on another round? For the love of...”

“You can have mine.” I picked up my mug, offered it to her. “Too early for me.”

“Don’t drink.” Ignoring me, she looked at Ted. “So who’s keeping what from whom?”

“Never mind.” Ted picked up the pitcher and reached for my mug. “Jules, allow me to introduce you to Rain Thompson. Our quartermaster and cargo officer.”

“Happy to meet you. I...”

“Likewise.” Rain barely glanced my way. “Skipper, I just saw Morgan’s limo pull up. Looks like he’s brought someone with him ... besides his bodyguard, I mean.”

“If you mean Mike Kennedy, I believe he prefers to be regarded as a valet.” Ted frowned. “Probably our other passenger. Anyone you recognize?”

“Nope. Thought it might be this guy here—” meaning me “—but now that I know better...” She shrugged.

I was still trying to figure out what it was about me that put her off so much, or if she was just naturally rude to people whom she’d just met, when the door opened and there was Goldstein. He hesitated just inside the door, looking back for a moment as if to see if someone was following him, then walked into the tavern. I noticed that he left the door open behind him ... not by accident, but deliberately, as if to give someone lingering just outside a chance to make up his or her mind whether to come in.

“Gentlemen, ladies ... good to see you again.” He stopped behind my chair, placed his hand on my shoulder. “You found your way here, Jules. Excellent. And I trust you’ve introduced yourself to everyone?”

“Yes, sir, I have. Thank you, Mr. Goldstein.” From the corner of my eye, I caught a sour look on Ted’s face. Perhaps I was coming off as being just a little too deferential to a boss whom no one seemed to respect very much. No one likes a brown-nose, especially when he’s the new kid in town. “I didn’t have any trouble finding my way here,” I added. “All I had to do was follow the cockroaches.”

No one laughed. There was a cold silence as everyone stared at me. “If there’s any cockroaches here,” Rain said quietly, “they’re probably just the ones you brought with you.”

Emily coughed politely behind her hand, and Ali murmured something in Arabic. Yet Goldstein simply nodded as he pulled back an empty chair. “Perhaps I should have told you about this place before I directed you here,” he said. “The cantina was erected by the original Alabama colonists, back in c.y. 01. They built it from materials left over from the construction of their houses, and it’s older than even the grange hall. During their first winter on this world, they’d gather around the fireplace, keeping each other company on those long, cold nights when they were unsure of whether they’d survive until spring.”

He glanced over at Carrie, who continued to putter around behind the bar. “Carrie’s one of those colonists,” he went on, lowering his voice. “She and her husband kept this establishment going on little more than barter and trade credit until the Union occupation. After the Revolution they came back, repaired the place, and opened it for business again. Lew died a few years ago, but she continues to brew her own ale and fix her own food. So show a little respect, please. You’re on hallowed ground.”

There was something in my mouth that tasted like my own foot. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ted said. “Thought much the same thing when I first came here. Tip well and we’ll call it even.” Then he turned to Goldstein. “Right. So we’ve got our shuttle jockey. So where’s our ship?”

“Your ship is on the way, Captain Harker. Ganymede-class freighter with only three Jupiter runs logged to her name.” Ted opened his mouth, but Goldstein raised a hand before he could object. “I know you wanted a new vessel, but this is the best I could arrange on short notice. The next boat in its class is still in the shipyard, two Earth years away from completion.”

“Boat?” Emily scowled at him. “We want a spacecraft, not a tub.”

“Believe me, it’s a good ship.” Goldstein leaned back in his chair with the same air of confidence I’d seen when I was in the stockade. The man with all the answers, and the money to buy them. “Besides, you’ll have an experienced chief engineer to go with it ... someone who knows his ship back and forth.”

“All right. I’ll take your word for it.” Ted picked up his mug, took a sip. “So who are our passengers?”

“Well...” Goldstein took a deep breath. “As you know, one of them is the Prime Emissary, Mahamatasja Jas Sa-Fhadda.”

That caused me to sit up straight. That one of our party would be a hjadd was news to me. One more detail about this voyage that Goldstein had neglected to reveal. Or at least to me; no one else seemed to be surprised. “One of the reasons why the ship has been delayed,” Goldstein continued, “is because we’ve had to retrofit one of its passenger decks as suitable quarters for it ... himher, I mean.”

“All right. I can understand that.” Ted folded his arms across his chest. “What about our other passenger?” He nodded toward Ali. “He tells me that you told him you were bringing someone else, too.”

Goldstein glanced toward the door. He hesitated, and for a moment it seemed as if he were waiting to hear someone say something. “A consultant,” he said at last. “Someone who we’ll need for this voyage, strictly in an advisory capacity.”

Again, he gazed toward the door. A few seconds passed, and then a figure slowly appeared. A form draped in a dark cloak, hood pulled up around his face. He lingered for just a moment, then vanished again, without ever setting foot inside the cantina.

“That’s Mr. Ash,” Goldstein said. “He’s rather shy, and I hope that you’ll respect his privacy.”

Rain stared after him. “Weird...”

Yes, he was. Just as weird as when I’d first seen him, peering in through the barred window of my jail cell.

(TO BE CONTINUED)