Space Stations

Yup. Keep it to monosyllables, so the tremor of his voice does not give itself away. If they got to her, she would face final, total erasure. Even of a fragment self.

Save your breath for the run, she sent. So he did, gratefully.

If there were no omnisensors lurking along this approach to the launch fields, they might get through. Probably Fleet expected him to stay indoors, hiding, working his way to some help. But there would be no aid there. The Majiken were thorough and would capture all human manifestations, timing the arrests simultaneously to prevent anyone sending a warning. That was why they had sent a lone cop to grab him; they were stretched thin. Reassuring, but not much.

It was only three days past the 3-D interview, yet they had decided to act and put together a sweep. What would they be doing to the Station itself? He ached at the thought. After all, she resided there…

And she was here. He was talking to a manifestation that was remarkable, because he had opened his inputs in a way that only a crisis can spur.

Benjan grimaced. Decades working over Gray had aged him, taught him things Fleet could not imagine. The Sabal Game still hummed in his mind, still guided his thoughts, but these men of the Fleet had betrayed all that. For them, ritual and the Code were a lulling drug they dispensed to the masses. They thought, quite probably, that they could recall him to full officer status, and he would not guess that they would then silence him, quite legally.

Did they think him so slow? Benjan allowed himself a thin, dry chuckle as he ran.

They entered the last short canyon before the launch fields. Tall blades like scimitar grasses poked up, making him dart among them. She growled and spun her tracks and plowed them under. She did not speak. None of them liked to destroy the life so precariously remaking Gray. Each crushed blade was a step backward.

His quarters were many kilometers behind by now, and soon these green fields would end. If he had judged the map correctly—yes, there it was. A craggy peak ahead, crowned with the somber lights of the launch station. They would be operating a routine shift in there, not taking any special precautions.

Abruptly he burst from the thicket of thick-leaved plants and charged down to the verge of a cliff. Above him lay the vast lava plain of Oberg Plateau, towering above the Fogg Sea. From that muddy, scum-flecked sea below came a warm wind, ruffling his hair, calling to his nodules. Come.

He undipped his panels and attached them at shoulder and wrists. Here was a handy spire, ancient volcanic thrust out above the hundred-meter abyss. He paused, called Geronimo!—the ancient cries were always the best—and jumped.

In a sixth of Earth grav, with an atmosphere nearly Earth-thick, the winds were the easiest conveyance. Wings scarcely longer than a big man's arms could command the skies. He flapped a bit, but holding hawklike and still lifted him steadily. He rose through clouds of condensing murk, so no vagrant satellite spy could find him… and let Gray-world push him softly, silently up the rough-cut face of the mesa. Streams laughed at him, sawing their way into the fresh flanks. Moving with the wind, he hung in stillness. Banked. Even got in a moment's meditation.

And rose above the launching field. A mudflat, foggy, littered with ships. A vast dark hole yawned in the bluff nearby, the slanting sunlight etching its rimmed locks. It must be the exit tube for the electromagnetic accelerator, now obsolete, unable to fling any more loads of ore through the cloak of atmosphere.

A huge craft loomed at the base of the bluff. A cargo vessel probably; far too large and certainly too slow. Beyond lay an array of robot communications vessels, without the bubble of a life-support system. He rejected those, too, ran on.

She surged behind him. A satiny self, a delight… yet they had to keep electromagnetic silence now.

His breath came faster and he sucked at the thick, cold air. He had to stop for a moment in the shadow of the cruiser to catch his breath. Feeling your years? she sent, and he nodded. Part of him was centuries old, to be sure, but only inside his skull.

Above, he thought he could make out the faint green tinge of the atmospheric cap in the membrane that held Gray's air. He had labored to lay that micron-thick layer, once, long ago. Now he would have to find his way out through the holes in it, too, in an unfamiliar ship.

He glanced around, searching. To the side stood a small craft, obviously Jump type. No one worked at its base. In the murky fog that shrouded the mudflat he could see a few men and robo-servers beside nearby ships. They would wonder what he was up to. He decided to risk it. He broke from cover and ran swiftly to the small ship. The hatch opened easily.

Gaining lift with the ship was not simple, and so he called on his time-sense accelerations, to the max. That would cost him mental energy later. Right now, he wanted to be sure there was a later at all.