Miles, Mutants, and Microbes Read online

  "Where are you going?"

  "After Zara."

  "Silver, stay with the ship. We don't need two of you lost, for God's sake," Leo ordered sternly. "Ti and I can move much faster, we'll find her."

  "I don't think so," murmured Silver distantly. She reached the flex tube and stared up and down the corridor which curved away to right and left, ringing the spoke. "You see, I don't think she's gone far."

  "If she got on the elevator, she could be practically anywhere on the Station by now," said Ti.

  Silver reared up on her tripoded lower arms, raised her uppers over her head, and narrowed her eyes for a look around the elevator foyer to her left. "The controls would be hard for a quaddie to reach. Besides, she'd know she was more likely to run into downsiders there. I think she went this way." She raised her chin and shuffled determinedly off to her right on all fours. After a moment she picked up speed by changing her gait to a series of gazelle-like bounds in the low-gee of the spoke. Leo and Ti, of necessity, bounded after her. Leo felt absurdly like a man chasing a runaway pet. It was an optical illusion of the quadrimanual locomotion—quaddies even looked more human in free fall.

  A strange rumbling noise approached around the curve of the corridor. Silver hooted, and skidded to one side against the outer wall.

  "Oh, sorry!" cried Zara, whizzing past torso-down and chin up on a low roller-pallet, all four hands going like paddle wheels to propel her along the deck. Braking proved more difficult than acceleration, and Zara fetched up beside Silver with a crash.

  Leo, horrified, bounded over to them, but Zara was already disentangling herself and sitting up cheerfully. Even the roller pallet was undamaged.

  "Look Silver," Zara said, flipping the pallet over, "wheels! I wonder how they're beating the friction, inside those casings? Feel, they're not hot at all."

  "Zara," cried Leo, "why did you leave the ship?"

  "I wanted to see what a downsider toilet chamber looked like," said Zara, "but there wasn't one on this level. All I found was a closet full of cleaning supplies, and this." She patted the roller pallet. "Can I take the wheels apart and see what's inside?"

  "No!" roared Leo.

  She looked quite put-out. "But I want to know!"

  "Bring it along," Silver suggested, "and take it apart later." Her eyes flicked up and down the corridor; Leo was slightly consoled that at least one quaddie shared his sense of urgency.

  "Yes, later," Leo agreed, for the sake of expediency. "Let's go now." He tucked the roller pallet firmly under his arm, to thwart further experimentation. The quaddies, he reflected, didn't seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised.

  Habits of thought, indeed. Here he was worried over the theft of a roller pallet, while planning the greatest space heist in human history. Ti almost bolted when he found out what the rest of the assignment they had planned for him was to be. Leo, prudently, didn't fill in these details until the pusher was safely launched from the transfer station and halfway back to the Habitat.

  "You want me to hijack the superjumper!" yelped Ti.

  "No, no," Leo soothed him. "You're only going along as an advisor. The quaddies will take the ship."

  "But my ass will depend on whether or not they can—"

  "Then I suggest you advise well."

  "Ye gods."

  "The trouble with you, Ti," lectured Leo kindly, "is that you lack teaching experience. If you had, you'd have faith that the most unlikely people can learn the most amazing things. After all, you weren't born knowing how to pilot a jump—yet lives depended on your doing it right the first time, and every time thereafter. Now you'll know how your instructors felt, that's all."

  "How do instructors feel?"

  Leo lowered his voice and grinned. "Terrified. Absolutely terrified."

  A second pusher, packed with fuel and supplies for its long-range excursion, was waiting in the slot next to theirs as they docked at the Habitat. Leo resisted a strong urge to take Ti aside and fill his ear with advice and suggestions for his mission. Alas, their experience in criminal theft was all too comparable—zero equaled zero no matter how unequal the years each was multiplied by.

  They floated through the hatch into the docking module to find several anxious quaddies waiting for them.

  "I've modified more solderers, Leo," Pramod began unnecessarily—three of his four hands clutched the improvised arsenal to his torso. "One each for five people."

  Claire, hovering at his shoulder, eyed the weapons with dread fascination.

  "Good. Give them to Silver. She'll have charge of them until the pusher gets to the wormhole," said Leo.

  They made their way down the hand grips to the next hatch. Zara swung within to begin her pre-flight checks.

  Ti craned his neck after her nervously. "Are we leaving right now?"

  "Time is critical," said Leo. "We don't have more than four hours till you're missed at the transfer station."

  "Shouldn't there be a—a briefing, or something?"

  Ti too, Leo appreciated, was having trouble committing himself to falling free. Well, jumped or was pushed, after the initial impulse it would make no practical difference.

  "You'll have almost twenty-four hours, boosting at one gee to midpoint and then flipping and braking the rest of the way, to work out your plan of attack. Silver will be depending on your knowledge of the superjumpers. We've already discussed various methods of achieving surprise. She'll fill you in."

  "Oh, is Silver going?"

  "Silver," Leo enlightened him gently, "is in command."

  Ti's face flickered through an array of expressions, settling on dismay. "Screw this. There's still time for me to go back and catch my ship—"

  "And that," Leo overrode him, "is precisely why Silver is in charge. Your capture of a cargo jumper is the signal for a quaddie uprising here on the Habitat. And that uprising is their death warrant. When GalacTech discovers it cannot control the quaddies, it will almost certainly be frightened into an attempt to violently exterminate them. Escape must be assured before we tip our hand. The ship you must catch is out that way." Leo pointed. "I can depend on Silver to remember that. You"—Leo smiled thinly—"are no worse than anyone else."

  Ti subsided at that, although not happily.

  Silver, Zara, Siggy, a particularly husky quaddie from the pusher crews named Jon, and Ti. Five, crammed into a ship meant for a crew of two and not designed for overnight use in any case. Leo sighed. The superjumpers carried a pilot and an engineer. Five-to-two wasn't altogether bad odds, but Leo wished he could have loaded them even more overwhelmingly in the quaddies' favor.

  They filed through the flex tube into the pusher. Silver, at the end, paused to embrace Pramod and Claire, who had lingered to see them off.

  "We're going to get Andy back," Silver murmured to Claire. "You'll see."

  Claire nodded, and hugged her hard.

  Silver turned last to Leo, who was gazing doubtfully at the flex tube through which the crew he'd drafted had gone.

  "I thought the quaddies were going to be the weak link in this hijacking operation," jittered Leo, "now I'm not so sure. Don't let Ti cave on you, eh, Silver? Don't let him bring you down. You have to succeed."

  "I know. I'll try. Leo . . . why did you think Ti was in love with me?"

  "I don't know. . . . You were intimate—the power of suggestion, maybe. All those romances."

  "Ti doesn't read romances, he reads Ninja of the Twin Stars."

  "Weren't you in love with him? At first, anyway?"

  She frowned. "It was exciting, to be beating the rules with him. But Ti is . . . well, is Ti. Love like in the books—I always knew it wasn't really real. When I got to looking around, at our own downsiders, nobody was like that. I guess I was stupid, to like those stories so much."
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br />   "I suppose they're not realistic—I haven't read them either, to tell you the truth. But it's not stupid to want something more, Silver."

  "More than what?"

  More than to be worked over by a lot of self-centered legged louts, that's what. We're not all like that . . . are we? Why, after all, was he being moved now to lay a load of his own on her, when she needed all her concentration for the task ahead? Leo shook his head. "Anyway, don't let Ti get confused between his Ninja-whatsit and what you're trying to do, either."

  "I don't think even Ti could mistake a company jumpship crew for the Black League of Eridani," said Silver.

  Leo could have wished for more certainty in her tone. "Well . . ." He cleared his throat, inexplicably blocked. "Take care. Don't get hurt."

  "You be careful too." She did not hug him, as she had Pramod and Claire.

  "Right."

  And don't ever believe, his mind cried after her as she vanished into the flex tube, that nobody could love you, Silver . . . But it was too late to call the words aloud. The airseal doors shut with a sigh like regret.

  Chapter 10

  The freight shuttle docking bay was chilly, and Claire rubbed all her hands together to warm them. Only her hands seemed cold; her heart beat hot with anticipation and dread. She looked sideways at Leo, floating as seeming-stolid as ever by the airseal doors with her.

  "Thanks, for pulling me off my work shift for this," Claire said. "Are you sure you won't get into trouble, when Mr. Van Atta finds out?"

  "Who's to tell him?" said Leo. "Besides, I think Bruce is losing interest in tormenting you. Everything's so obviously futile. All the better for us. Anyway, I want to talk to Tony too, and I figure I'll have a better chance of getting his undivided attention after you've got the reunion-bit over with." He smiled reassuringly.

  "I wonder what condition he'll be in?"

  "You may be sure he's much better, or Dr. Minchenko wouldn't be subjecting him to the stresses of travel, even to keep him close under his eye."

  A thump, and the whir and grind of machinery, told Claire that the shuttle had arrived in its clamps. Her hands reached out, drew in self-consciously. The quaddie manning the control booth waved to two others in the bay, and they locked the flex tubes into position and sealed them. The personnel tube opened first. The shuttle's engineer stuck his head through to double check everything, then whipped back out of sight. Claire's heart lurched in her chest, and her throat constricted dryly.

  Dr. Minchenko emerged at last and hovered a moment, one hand anchored to a grip by the hatch. A leathery-faced, vigorous man, his hair was as white as the GalacTech medical service coveralls he wore. He had been a big man, now shrunken to his frame like a withered apricot, but, like a withered apricot, still sound. Claire had the impression he only needed to be re-hydrated and he'd pop back to like-new condition.

  Dr. Minchenko shoved off from the hatchway and crossed the bay toward them, landing accurately by the grips around the airseal doors. "Why, hullo, Claire," he said in a surprised voice. "And, ah—Graf," he added less cordially. "You're the one. Let me tell you, I don't appreciate being leaned on to authorize violation of sound medical protocol. You are to spend double time in the gym for the duration of your extension, you hear?"

  "Yes, Dr. Minchenko, thank you," said Leo promptly, who was not, as far as Claire knew, spending any time in the gym at all these days. "Where's Tony? Can we help you get him to the infirmary?"

  "Ah." He looked more closely at Claire. "I see. Tony's not with me, dear, he's still in hospital downside."

  Claire stifled a gasp. "Oh, no—is he worse?"

  "Not at all. I had fully intended to bring him with me. In my opinion, he needs free fall to complete his recovery. The problem is, um, administrative, not medical. And I'm on my way right now to resolve it."

  "Did Bruce order him kept downside?" asked Leo.

  "That's right." He frowned at Leo. "And I'm not pleased to have my medical responsibilities interfered with, either. He'd better have a mighty convincing explanation. Daryl Cay wouldn't have permitted a screw-up like this."

  "You, um . . . haven't heard the new orders yet, then?" said Leo carefully, with a warning glance at Claire—hush. . . .

  "What new orders? I'm on my way to see the little schmuck—that is, the man right now. Get to the bottom of this . . ." He turned to Claire, switching firmly to a kinder tone. "It's all right, we'll get it straightened out. All Tony's internal bleeding is stopped, and there's no further sign of infection. You quaddies are tough. You hold your health much better in gravity than we downsiders do in free fall. Well, we explicitly designed you not to undergo de-conditioning. I could only wish the confirming experiment hadn't happened under such distressing conditions. Of course," he sighed, "youth has something to do with it. . . . Speaking of youth, how's little Andy? Sleeping better for you now?"

  Claire almost burst into tears. "I don't know," she squeaked, and swallowed hard.

  "What?"

  "They won't let me see him."

  "What?"

  Leo, studying his fingernails distantly, put in, "Andy was removed from Claire's care. On charges of child-endangering, or some such thing. Didn't Bruce tell you that either?"

  Dr. Minchenko's face was darkening to a brick-red hue. "Removed? From a breast-feeding mother—obscene!" His eyes swept back over Claire.

  "They gave me some medicine to dry me up," explained Claire.

  "Well, that's something . . ." His mollification seemed slight. "Who did?"

  "Dr. Curry."

  "He didn't report it to me."

  "You were on leave."

  " 'On leave' doesn't mean 'incommunicado.' You, Graf! Spit it out. What the hell's going on around here? Has that pocket-martinet lost his mind?"

  "You really haven't heard. Well, you'd better ask Bruce. I'm under direct orders not to discuss it."

  Minchenko gave Leo a stabbing glare. "I shall." He pushed off and entered the corridor through the airseal doors, muttering under his breath.

  Claire and Leo were left looking at each other in dismay.

  "How are we going to get Tony back now?" cried Claire. "It's less than twenty-four hours till Silver's signal!"

  "I don't know—but don't cave now! Remember Andy. He's going to need you."

  "I'm not going to cave," Claire denied. She took a steadying gulp of air. "Not ever again. What can we do?"

  "Well, I'll see what strings I can pull, to try and have Tony brought up—bullshit Bruce, tell him I have to have Tony to supervise his welding gang or something—I'm not sure. Maybe Minchenko and I together can work something, though I don't want to risk rousing Minchenko's suspicions. If I can't"—Leo inhaled carefully—"we'll have to work out something else."

  "Don't lie to me, Leo," said Claire dangerously.

  "Don't leap to conclusions. Yes, I know—you know—the possibility exists that we won't be able to retrieve him, all right, I said it, right out loud. But please note any, er, alternative scenarios depend on Ti to pilot a shuttle for us, and must wait until we re-connect with the hijack crew. At which point we will have captured a jumpship, and I will begin to believe that anything is possible." His brows bent, stressed. "And if it's possible, we'll try it. Promise."

  There was a growing coldness in her. She firmed her lips against their tremble. "You can't risk everybody for the sake of just one. That's not right."

  "Well . . . there are a thousand things that can go wrong between now and some—point of no return for Tony. It may turn out to be quite academic. I do know, dividing our energies among a thousand what-ifs instead of concentrating them for the one sure next-step is a kind of self-sabotage. It's not what we do next week, it's what we do next that counts most. What must you do next?"

  Claire swallowed and tried to pull her wits back together. "Go back to work . . . pretend like nothing's going on. Continue the secret inventory of all possible seed stocks. Uh, finish the plan of how we're going to hook up the grow-lights to keep the p
lants going while the Habitat is moved away from the sun. And as soon as the Habitat is ours, start the new cuttings and bring the reserve tubes online, to start building up extra food stocks against emergencies. And, uh, arrange cryo-storage of samples of every genetic variety we have on board, to re-stock in case of disaster—"

  "That's enough!" Leo smiled encouragement. "The next step only! And you know you can do that."

  She nodded.

  "We need you, Claire," he added. "All of us, not just Andy. Food production is one of the fundamentals of our survival. We'll need every pair, er, every set of expert hands. And you'll have to start training youngsters, passing on that how-to knowledge that the library, no matter how technically complete, can't duplicate."