“Oh, my God.”
“It was the principle of the thing more than the money,” Darrow said morosely. “I had to defy them somehow, I couldn’t just sit back like a docile slave. I knew I might pay for it, just as you know you might pay for spreading information the government has no right to suppress. We’re two of a kind, Rivera, but you’ve had more of a positive influence on the world. I want to say that I’m proud to have known you, since this may be my only chance to say it.”
Life in prison. For a spacer like Darrow it would be worse than death. And he had risked it for principle rather than for profit. It mustn’t happen, Terry resolved—not when there was a way out.
He said slowly, “If another pilot were to take your ship up now, tonight, and get rid of the stash by mixing it in with a new load of ore, there’d be no evidence against you. And since the crew would know there wasn’t, no one would stick his neck out to report you.”
“Sure, but there are no pilots who aren’t busy with their own ships, and if there were, they wouldn’t risk getting involved. The cut-throat nature of this business doesn’t foster mutual aid.”
Drawing a deep breath, Terry said, “Darrow, I haven’t leveled with you. You must have wondered sometimes about my past—”
“I have,” Darrow admitted. “You’re the strangest guy I ever encountered, what you know, what you can do—superb at everything you try. Yet half the time your mind’s off somewhere on other worlds.”
“That’s because I miss those worlds. I was born on Earth, Darrow.”
Darrow stared at him in astonishment. “From anyone else, I’d take that for a fantasy or a lie. It would account for your being as well informed as you are—but all the same, it needs a lot of explaining.”
“Yes, and I’ll tell as much as I can of how I ended up here. But right now, what you need to know is that I’m a pilot, and I used to be captain of a jump ship.”
~ 64 ~
Hard though it was for him to believe, Darrow listened to the story with fascination and evident feeling. Terry didn’t tell him about Maclairn, of course, or about the Elders, to whom he referred merely as “a powerful group of people.” Since Darrow was all too familiar with powerful people interfering in helpless citizens’ lives, he found that part entirely credible. The part about having been taught advanced mind powers aroused more doubt; still, he knew Terry was revered as a healer by clients of the neurofeedback clinic. The interstellar flight part was what interested him most, however. He was, as Terry had predicted he would be, envious.
“But Rivera,” he said finally, “it’s been over twelve years since you’ve flown anything. Do you really think you can take off in an unfamiliar ship like mine and land it on an asteroid?”
“You don’t forget that sort of skill,” Terry said. “I’ve landed on many asteroids. I’ve lifted off in a starship that had been grounded for two hundred years, and later I put it down on an ice world—an earthquake swallowed it after that, but there was nothing wrong with my landing. And I’ve flown more shuttles than I can count.”
Darrow frowned. “I think you can handle it,” he said, “and I don’t really have anything to lose if you can’t. But you do. You could be killed. And even if the flight goes well, you could run into trouble if you were caught transporting the stash. It’s all very well to hope they wouldn’t arrest you if you handed it over to the racketeers—but it’s not as if they were honest. They care mostly about enlisting ongoing sources of money, and you don’t have a ship to keep getting it for them. They could take the stash from you and then arrest you anyway.”
This had occurred to Terry. But risking it was the only way to save Darrow—and besides, to fly again! To see the sun and the stars one more time!
Convinced that Terry was aware of the dangers, Darrow gave him the location of the asteroid on which his claim was staked and agreed to call out the mining crew. Terry made calls to his backup hackers, warning them through a prearranged code that he would be out of touch for some time. Then he went back to the clinic to complete the afternoon’s scheduled neurofeedback sessions. He had to struggle to keep his mind on them, though the pain of his clients soon drove everything else from it. When the last of them had left, he went to the apartment to say goodbye to Alison.
He had decided to tell her the truth. He’d left Kathryn without a farewell, assuming he would soon be back to her, and had spent the past twelve years regretting it. He could not leave Alison in the same way, for there was no denying that what he was about to do might get him into trouble.
Alison was more worried than he’d expected her to be. “I know you care about Darrow,” she said, “and it’s admirable to risk yourself for a friend. But oh, Terry—” To his amazement she seemed personally upset—calm, collected Alison, who had always been poised, always an emotional anchor not only for her clients, but for him. She was fighting to keep her distress from him, but her resolve broke down and he could sense that she was on the verge of crying.
“Alison, what is it?” he asked in dismay. “Not just that I might be in danger, surely—I’ve been in danger all the time for years. At any moment I could have been caught hacking.”
“But you were here,” she said. “You weren’t off in space where I might never see you again. I can’t shut that out the way I do when we share the danger.”
I’ll be away for only a little while, he started to say, but that was what he had written to Kathryn. “I know my work here is important,” he told her, “and I suppose it may be wrong to risk abandoning people in pain when I’ve promised to help them. But this is something I have to do.”
“You think I care about the clinic?” She reached out to him and he found she was in his arms and her tears were wet against his chest. “Terry, you’re so blind! You say you’re telepathic, yet you’ve never even guessed how I feel—”
And suddenly he did know what she was feeling, what he would have sensed all along if he had not so firmly shut it out. Oh God, Alison, he thought, I never meant this to happen, I never meant to hurt you. . . .
Neither of us meant it to, she was thinking, but it happened anyway. “I tried to respect your memory of Kathryn,” she told him. “But it’s been more than twelve years for you, Terry! Would she want you to mourn for twelve years?”
Had Alison’s love for him really been so much less obvious than Nina’s? Terry wondered. Or was it just that he’d been more aware of Nina’s because with her, there had been no possibility of his returning it?
He had not dared to examine his feelings for Alison. It was true that Kathryn wouldn’t want him to mourn so long, and yet . . . the Maclairnans had said that having once experienced the merging of minds during sex, a telepath could never be satisfied by sex with a non-telepath. He could not say this to Alison. He could not bear to let her know that a relationship between them could never be to him what she had every right to think it would . . . that it might turn out like the frustrating relationships he’d had before Maclairn, before he knew he was telepathic. He could not face that possibility, and so he had lived in her apartment for years without letting himself suspect that he wished they could be more than friends.
In turmoil, he pulled away. “This isn’t a time I can answer that,” he said gently. “I have to go now. Please, Alison, don’t be afraid for me! I’m a good pilot. It’s not dangerous for me to fly.”
“You want to fly,” she observed, “more than you want to help Darrow, more than you want anything else in life. And I’m glad you’ve finally got your chance. But it’s not the flying that scares me.”
The spaceport was dark by the time he got there. Darrow had told him that when brought in by the police officer, Bonanza had been put down some distance from its usual pad in a part of the field where he didn’t often go. He found it easily enough, and the three miners in its crew were there waiting for him. He turned on the pad lights and made a thorough preflight inspection, finding the procedure no less clear in his mind after passage of years than if he
had done it yesterday. The ship was not too different from many large shuttles he had flown, though older and more battered. Darrow had assured him that it had no mechanical or AI problems.
He also inspected the interior of the ship. The crew did not watch, though they knew what was hidden there and where it was hidden. They had been with Darrow long enough to see stashed platinum metals brought out, a little at a time, during rendezvous with starships, and they had stuck with him because they’d known. They could not retrieve it by themselves in his absence, as they would have no way to sell it. Moreover, Darrow had promised to split the entire proceeds from the trip among them if they flew with Terry, and they therefore welcomed him with enthusiasm.
Everyone was aboard and Terry was about to close the hatch when the lights on the adjacent pad came on. A man stood there, hailing him. “Hey! What the hell are you doing there! That’s not your ship.”
“Darrow asked me to fly for him while he’s laid up,” Terry called back. He backed down the ladder and walked toward the challenger, realizing that for an unknown pilot to appear did look strange. “I’m a friend of Darrow’s,” he began—and then as the light struck the other man’s face, he recognized him. It was Renssalaer.
Oh, God, Terry thought. In all these years he had never run into Renssalaer, who had told him he was a family man and probably didn’t frequent the hotel’s bar. Was he himself enough older to seem a stranger? No, for his mind training slowed aging; he knew he would be remembered because Renssalaer had almost hired him and an unemployed pilot was a rarity.
“I know you!” Renssalaer said. “You’re a thief. It’s lucky I caught you before you got away with Darrow’s ship.”
“If you remember me, you know my name is Terry Rivera,” Terry said. “You can call Darrow at his home and he’ll tell you I’m taking it up with his permission.”
“That makes no difference, because I’ll bet he doesn’t know about your record. He’ll be grateful for my warning—you stole platinum once, and you’re no doubt aiming to steal some of his.”
“As you know, that charge was dismissed,” Terry said.
“On a technicality. In any case, you won’t mind waiting while I call him, and we’ll have the police here to take over if he changes his mind.” He reached for his phone, and Terry saw that he pressed the emergency key before the number search.
He had to act fast. If the police came they might search the ship and find Darrow’s stash. He ran for it, scrambled up the ladder, and sealed the hatch behind him, aware that by doing this he was virtually proving his guilt and might well be pursued. Yelling to the miners to strap in, he slid into the pilot’s seat and started the liftoff sequence.
As the ground fell away a police car reached the pad. Terry did not have time to think about it when setting his course, and then for a while he thought of nothing except the thrill of breaking through the cloud barrier and seeing, for the first time in more than twelve years, the glory of the stars.
~ 65 ~
The joy of flying again, and of being above the thick gray shroud that had imprisoned him so long, overcame any fear Terry might have felt at the thought of what awaited him at the flight’s end. No matter what happened, even arrest, these days of freedom would be worth it. For the moment he did not care about anything else.
But eventually he shook himself back to awareness of his situation. Did the police know on which asteroid Darrow had staked his claim? If so they might be on his tail. And they soon would know if they didn’t already, since claims were a matter of public record. Police ships were faster than this one; they might be there waiting for him when he arrived. Either way, he would have no chance to unload the platinum metals and mix them with enough ore to disguise the fact that they were already refined. Moreover, he might be accused of claim jumping, a far more serious offense than mere theft. It wouldn’t help if Darrow verified his permission to be there; Renssalaer believed he had conned Darrow, and besides, that would substantiate the case they would have against Darrow himself.
Could he head for some other asteroid and dump the stash there? The ship’s AI had access to standard charts. But he might be followed, and besides, all the nearby asteroids had undoubtedly been claimed—it really would be claim jumping if he allowed his miners to dig on them. And he hadn’t enough life support to reach a distant one.
The only possible action was to jettison the metals into space. The miners wouldn’t like that, but there was no alternative. Reluctantly he turned the ship over to the AI and got out of his seat to give the order.
“No way,” announced the mining boss. “Are you crazy, man?”
Terry was shocked; as a captain he was used to hearing, “Yes, sir.” Biting back a reprimand that he realized was not applicable here, he tried reasoning. “We’ve haven’t any choice. If we wait too long the police may catch us; they’ll board us and search. At any rate they’ll find the stash when we land, so we’ve got to get rid of it.”
“We damn well do have a choice. They may not catch us, in which case we can stick to the original plan—but if they do, we won’t have lost anything we could have kept. I’ll gamble on cashing in rather than throw the chance away.”
“They’ll arrest us for possession, if not for claim jumping.”
“They’ll arrest you, maybe. You’re the captain; the rest of us aren’t liable.”
“They will arrest Darrow and send him to prison for life,” Terry declared. “That’s what we’re here to prevent.”
“It may be why you’re here. We’re here to get the share he promised us, and we’re not going to let go of it unless it’s taken away from us.”
Terry said decisively, “We’ll have no more discussion about it. As you said, I’m the captain, and you have your orders. Now get up and start loading the stuff into the airlock.”
Nobody moved. God, thought Terry, how did mining captains enforce their orders? Darrow had never implied that they were armed. In any case he was not, and he couldn’t physically fight them when it was three against one. And he couldn’t jettison the stash personally, either, since the three could easily restrain him.
They were at an impasse. He stood helplessly, knowing that if he sat back down he would lose what status he had with them and be viewed as useful only as long as the ship was in flight. They wouldn’t hesitate to turn him over to the police as instigator of a scheme to defraud if it came to that.
And then, to his astonishment, the long-range comm came alive. “Ciencia control, this is HS Freerunner, inbound from Earth, requesting permission to approach. Over.”
Terry knew how that worked. Permission would be denied, which they expected; smugglers’ starships broadcast the request on all frequencies when they arrived so that mining captains with something to sell would know they were there. “HS Freerunner, this is Ciencia Control,” came the reply. “Negative, repeat negative, no ships are permitted to approach this world. You are instructed to jump out immediately.”
They wouldn’t jump; they would wait several days in high orbit to see what they were offered, as Control was aware that they would. The police didn’t want to chase smugglers away. If they went after anyone, it would be local captains with whom they were displeased—but only after they had rendezvoused, and had been observed in the act of doing so. And right now the police ship on duty was busy chasing him.
It wouldn’t hunt for him in the direction HS Freerunner’s transmission had come from, Terry realized, looking at the comm’s readout. And all at once he got an insanely bold idea. Could he possibly reach the starship and sell the metals without being caught? The miners would back that plan. And if it failed, Darrow would be no worse off than he would be if the stash were discovered some other way, as it was bound to be if not jettisoned.
To be sure, he, Terry, would be a great deal worse off. To have contact with a starship was the ultimate sin and the penalty was predetermined, whether any sale took place or not. Still, the thought of being back aboard a jump ship even for
a few minutes was appealing.
He took up the comm, using the frequency reserved for commercial transactions, which he knew was intentionally unmonitored by the government. “HS Freerunner, this is IS Bonanza, do you wish to rendezvous? Over.”
The reply came immediately. “Roger, IS Bonanza. Darrow, is that you? Doesn’t sound like you.”
Thank God it was someone who knew him. “Captain Darrow is recovering from an injury. This is Captain Terry Rivera, acting for him, in command.”
“Have you authority to transact business, Rivera?”
“Roger, Freerunner. I have business to transact.” They proceeded to agree on a rendezvous point.
It took five hours to get there, which the miners, with renewed admiration for Terry and happy expectations of receiving more money than originally agreed upon without even having to work for it, spent getting drunk. They were asleep in their seats by the time Terry completed the docking and he realized that it was not customary for mining crews to have any part in the sale of cargo. The less they knew, the better; only the captain was legally liable.
He had no idea of what price platinum metals should bring and was inclined to accept the starship captain’s offer until he recalled the emphasis Darrow had put on negotiating ability as a factor in avoiding arrest. This meant that one wasn’t expected to accept the first offer, and so he held out for nearly twice the amount, earning the respect of Captain Yakimov, who remarked that if he wasn’t already in the smuggling business he would do well to consider it.
Smugglers took pride in their work, Terry perceived with surprise. It wasn’t just that Darrow was proud of his ability to outwit government racketeers—even a brief conversation with Yakimov made him realize that they all viewed laws against free trading of goods as a violation of human rights. Smugglers kept their freedom, he thought wistfully. They flew from star to star as they liked—it was as good as exploring.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 39