Freedom's Challenge

by Anne McCaffrey

“Platinum, too,” Ray put in.

  “Those are good,” Zainal said. “Any other rare metals? Even a crate or two of raw ore would be useful. Rhenium, any of the platinum group. We’ll say we had to leave cargo behind to lift with such a damaged ship. The gyro went first, we were in a meteor shower…took us a long time to jury-rig the boards. I think that’s a suitable scenario,” and he grinned slyly at Kris for that latest addition to his ever-expanding English vocabulary. “Good Drassi bringing home what they can. And I can raise such a fuss over the shoddy manufacture that delayed us that I shall be sent from one office to another with my complaints, and that’s how I’ll learn what I need to know. Make loud accusations of poor servicing and second-rate materials.”

  “Is Catten so bureaucratic, too?” asked Ray with a frown.

  “Only the Eosi cut corners.”

  “You’re sure you can carry this impersonation off?” Judge Iri was clearly worried.

  Zainal shrugged. “Why not? Who but a Catteni ship would go to Catten? It is not a comfortable place to be,” and he glanced over at his volunteers, chosen as much because they were all sturdily built and would be able to manage the heavier gravity of Catten. Kris wasn’t so sure about her own ability but nothing would have kept her from going along, even if she had to remain in the artificially lower gravity of the ship the entire time. She now had enough Catten to answer any communications the ship might be sent.

  “We have been away a long time, whoever we are,” Zainal said with a little sly grin, “so it doesn’t matter that we have landed and changed the ID. Who will know?”

  “How fast does your paint dry?” asked Ninety facetiously.

  They still had the uniforms that had been tailored to fit the first Barevi raid but Sandy Areson had some new artifices to contribute. First, she’d an awful-smelling mixture that bleached their hair a dingy gray. One of the recovering Victims was a skilled optician (though he never did explain what he had done on Earth that would have caused him to be victimized by the Eosi). When he realized that gray hair and skin would not entirely present the team as Catteni, he finally managed to produce yellow contact lenses, cursing the need to improvise, since he had not considered his first attempt to be successful. But he managed.

  “You’ll have to take them out and wash them every day,” Riz Kamei said, unhappy with that necessity. “No plastics here at all.”

  “Yet…” one of his helpers said with a grin.

  “Whatever,” and Riz flicked his long fingers irritably, “but the lenses will do what’s necessary.” Then he shook his head as if he found even the requirement of yellow as an eye color an offense.

  He showed them all how to put them in, how to clean them in a solution he provided, again muttering about insufficient supplies until everyone really did wonder what his Earth side job had been. He did however allow himself a slight smile of approval when the contacts were in place.

  Kris had never considered herself especially vain, but she had had a brief flush of dismay when her hair had not only been clipped very short on her head but bleached such a hideous gray. Now, with the yellow eye lenses, she looked so much like a Catteni, she was almost nauseated.

  “You’re still much too pretty to be a typical Catten broad,” Ninety Doyle remarked. He added a smile that, with his yellowed teeth and dyed skin, made him look all too much like other Drassi they’d seen in the Barevi markets.

  She gave a shudder of repulsion. “You look awful, Ninety. Lenny would disown you.”

  “Lenny’s mad enough he couldn’t come along,” Ninety said, closely examining his gray complected face. Their Botany suntans also helped approximate a Catteni gray skin. Sandy had said both body paint and hair dye would last about two or three weeks, depending on how often they bathed.

  “Yeah, but Lenny’s closer to a Guinness than I am,” Ninety said gloomily.

  Looking around, Kris remembered that the Catteni who had crewed Baby hadn’t washed at all, remembering the stench in their quarters.

  “If there is any Guinness left, Ricky Farmer wasn’t so sure about that. But I’m sure he’ll bring you back a bottle,” Kris said, meaning to console.

  “Bottle?” Ninety roared in dismay, as if she had uttered an unforgivable blasphemy.

  “Can?”

  “What’d you bet he frees the last vat in Dublin?” Mack Dargle said.

  “I never bet on sure things,” Kris said, grinning.

  “They gotta get your teeth yellower, Kris. That smile’s a giveaway.”

  “And not a tube of Colgate to whiten my teeth anywhere on this planet,” she said in wistful retort.

  “They may bring some back, you know,” Mack Dargle said, taking the mirror from Doyle so he could inspect himself and did a good comic double take. “My own mother wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “Just so long as a Catten wife doesn’t,” Ninety said.

  Mack shuddered. “I saw some of those crew-women. No thank you. I’d sooner wrestle with a crocodile.”

  • • •

  THE PREPARATIONS FOR THIS FORAY INTO enemy territory were finally complete. The window was a nighttime polar one so Kris hurried into the day care where Zane was sleeping, for one last look.

  Zainal came to join her, resting his big hands sympathetically on her arms.

  “He’s a fine strong lad. He’ll do well here,” he said into her ear and pressed his face against her cheek in his special display of affection.

  A noise made them both turn to the doorway and there was Pete Easley, a slightly droll smile on his face.

  “I drew night duty,” he said, though all three knew he had probably done so on purpose. “He’ll be fine. Don’t worry about him.”

  “We won’t,” Zainal said with a nod of his head and with one arm still on Kris’, led her out of the room. Both stopped at the threshold for one more look at the sleeping child.

  Kris tried not to, but she sniffed all the way to the hangar and had to blot her eyes twice. She hadn’t thought—in all the fuss and furor of these preparations—that she would experience the same anguish at leaving him as she had on their first expedition to Barevi.

  “Zane will be all right with Easley,” Zainal murmured as he lifted her down from the flatbed that had brought them to the now-battered and space-worn KDL awaiting them outside the hangar.

  The Judge, Ray Scott, Worry, Pete Snyder, Jay and Patti Sue Greene, and even Aarens were there to wish them a safe journey. Worry was even bold enough to clasp Kris in a bear hug. The judge kissed her hand and then both cheeks. If Ray Scott only shook her hand hard and warmly, Patti Sue was openly weeping as she hugged Kris tightly, murmuring over and over, “I’ll never forget you, buddy, I’ll never forget you.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Kris said, feeling as she might weep like Patti and, ignoring whatever protocol to board there might have been, she scrambled up the steps into the KDL. Everyone else followed, with Chuck Mitford growling how he hated farewells.

  • • •

  ZAINAL INDICATED THAT GINO SHOULD DO THE honors on the takeoff, while he punched the final bits and pieces of their “delayed return story” into the ship’s log. He grinned with unusual good humor when the log acknowledged the entries. There were enough computer hackers to have made it a proper job “as long,” they teased Zainal, “as his Catteni was okay.” They had even coded into the log appropriate star chart coordinates. If, that is, any one would dare question the report of Emassi Venlik, Zainal’s new alias.

  “He lived once. Died badly, and only I know where” was all Zainal would say of the man whose identity he was assuming.

  “Was he a chosen?” Chuck asked.

  Zainal gave a quick shake of his head. His next word startled everyone. “Schkelk!”

  Chuck was the first one to fall into the stance of an alert Drassi, with Kris a second later before Mack and Ninety suddenly realized what had been said: “Listen.” Even Coo and Pess straightened from their usual languid positions.

  Distinctly a
nd slowly enough for them to understand, he gave orders for the ship to take off and the course it was to assume as soon as it had lifted from the ground.

  “Emassi!” was the appropriate reply said in crisp unison and then each went to the duty station they had been assigned.

  Coo and Pess buckled into the two drops seats that had been placed on the bridge for their use in takeoff and landing.

  Zainal never spoke another word of English during the entire eight-day voyage. Neither did they after one of Zainal’s thumps, and Kris was no exception—though she didn’t think he whacked her as hard as he did Gino, Chuck, Mack, or Ninety. But it sure reminded her to keep in her part.

  The yellow lenses irritated Mack’s eyes. Riz had mentioned that someone might have trouble and sent along eyewash, with the recommendation to keep the contacts in for short periods, lengthening the time each day to allow the eyeball to adjust. By the time they were orbiting Catten, he could keep them in most of the day.

  Seen from outer space, Catten was a lovely planet! Almost as beautiful as the pictures of Earth sent back from space by Russian and American astronauts. There were larger landmasses but inland lakes the size of seas and several enormous rivers to judge by the width of them. It was also remarkably green, which caused a good deal of surprise.

  Zainal grinned. And said in Catten: “They have destroyed enough planets so that they are careful about this one. All manufacturing work is done on other worlds.”

  “You should see Earth,” Ninety said proudly.

  “Not all of it is as pleasant as…” Mark paused because there was no Catteni word for Ireland, “where you live.”

  “More unpleasant since Catteni come,” added Gino grimly with an apologetic glance at Zainal who merely nodded. “KDM and…yaya…” which was all Gino could think of as a Catteni description of “Baby,” “will not like what is there now.”

  Everyone paused in reflection on that unhappy observation. Then Gino pointed to a good-sized satellite. “How many moons?”

  “Four,” Zainal replied, then added as an immense space station spun leisurely into view in its geo-synchronous orbit above Catten, “we do not want to dock there.”

  Everyone gawked at the sight of the monstrous edifice, with gantries and netted supplies far larger than the KDL floating on tethers about it. Ships of all sizes made their way in and out of docking slips. One entire quadrant seemed to be a shipyard, taking advantage of the lack of gravity to push large structural members into position for assembly.

  Suddenly the com unit blurted out a harsh barking which was either muffled or distorted so much that only Zainal understood; the others caught maybe one word clearly.

  “…chouma.”

  Zainal rattled off his assumed name, the fact that his ship was damaged and requested landing at an isolated emergency site on planet.

  By listening with intense concentration to the Catteni language, the crew got most of the next exchange, demanding details of the damage. Zainal responded that he could not maneuver into the moon base with currently faulty equipment. Immediately he was bluntly told to sheer off his present course while a landing site could be warned of his imminent arrival. Zainal twitched fingers behind his back to indicate to the others how well their scheme was going. Considering the size and complexity of the space station, the Terrans could well appreciate the need for caution, and why ships had to be in maneuverable condition. They were probably as fastidious about unstable cargoes.

  The interrogation went on. What was the trouble? Where had the KCX been? Was it contaminated? What cargo did it have on board?

  Zainal signaled to Gino to go into his well-rehearsed reply, the pilot scrambling to get his notes out of his pocket in case he needed to refer to them.

  “Engineer Tobako speaking,” he said. He’d had fun choosing an alias. “Gyro unit, two-three-eight…” and he spoke the Catten letters appended to the part, “malfunctioned in meteor swarm, flash-back damaging many boards in control panel and causing helm problems. Maneuvering affected. Suffered hull and interior damages. Landed on largest meteor to repair damage. Gyro part badly made,” and Gino infused a lot of contempt in his voice for that failing. “Imperfect metal. Had to reduce cargo to lift from meteor. Only one cargo deck remains. Three crew died.”

  “Only one part cargo?” The contempt and dismay was clearly audible and nothing at all was said about the loss of lives. “Go to field at…” and the Catten rattled off the coordinates so quickly that, while Gino managed to jot down the English equivalents of the first four numbers, that was as far as he had got by the end of the message. He gave Zainal a startled and anxious look. Zainal nodded to assure those on the bridge that he had heard all he needed to obey.

  “What is the cargo?”

  “Platinum, gold, rhenium, some germanium.” Zainal took up the report now.

  “Ah…” and that drawled exclamation was close to approval. “Is there more where that was found?”

  “Yes. All can be collected again. I will return to the meteor with a repaired ship, and braver crewmen than the Drassi who died. These were only a step above Rassi…” Zainal paused to be sure that his complaint was understood. “It is a cargo I do not wish others to get.”

  “Ah…” and there was more warmth and approval. “A vehicle and mechanical support will meet you on the surface. Klotnik.”

  “Klotnik,” Zainal responded. “Out.”

  When the com line had been cut, every one reacted, sighing, or whistling or mimicking the wipe of a sweaty brow. In fact, Ninety took out a square of cloth and was about to mop his face when Zainal thumped him. Immediately Ninety used his finger to scrape off the sweat, as a real Drassi would do.

  “There is really not that much of a cargo,” Kris said dubiously. Would they get in trouble with what they had? It was all that Walter Duxie, the head miner, could find that might be considered valuable by the Catteni in the short time he had to do any prospecting. The germanium had been pure luck. And what little of the platinum groups they had so far discovered. While the gold had seemed a real sacrifice to some people, the metal had little intrinsic value on Botany. The two professional and many amateur jewelers used it as settings for some of the rather magnificent gemstones which had turned up on the planet during the general assessment of mineral and metal deposits.

  “It is enough, since they think we go back for what was left,” Zainal said and grinned, looking more like the man she knew so well than the very Catteni Emassi who had barked answers over the com. “It has gone well. Now proceed slowly until we are in atmosphere and remember to vent smoke often.”

  That was an effect that Peter Snyder had been particularly pleased to install. It would dissipate fast enough in space but would certainly be visible from the space station, to enhance the story of a “damaged” ship.

  “Much traffic,” Gino said, glad enough to be steering away from the space station with so many other vehicles zipping here and there or ponderously moving out.

  “There are two dreadnoughts in dock, nine large surface landers,” Zainal said, pointing to the stern ends.

  They were visible once you knew what to look for, Kris realized. They looked bigger to her than the Empire ship from Star Wars.

  “I count eighteen H-type ships,” and again Zainal indicated where to look. What initially looked just like protrusions of the spaceship were, in fact, spaceships in dock. The H-types were similar to the one Kris remembered landing at Denver. She shuddered. Zainal went on. “Look beyond the station to your right, past the freighters and drones.” His big finger now indicated a three o’clock position. “There’s a full flotilla there.”

  “I can spot another one on the screen, farther out,” and Gino tapped the screen with the proximity display.

  “Wow!” Mack swallowed as he saw the incredible number of ships being handled by the station. He stared at the display as they moved slowly away from a direct view of the massive unit.

  “How big a navy did you say the Catteni have
?” Ninety asked, looking quite anxious.

  “More than you see here,” Zainal said.

  “Lots of traffic, too,” Chuck said.

  “That is good. For us.” And Zainal smiled.

  When they were far enough from the space station for Kris to feel as if there were no eyes on them, she and the others began to relax. Now they could spend the descent watching, as more details of the planet were visible.

  “I know the field we’ve been assigned,” Zainal said as their ship slowed for landing. “It has some facilities. Always be Catten there. I pilot now.”

  • • •

  “SMALL?” KRIS MURMURED, REMEMBERING TO speak Catten as she took in the landing site. Nine football fields wide at the very least, and long as a Denver jet runway: almost larger than the landing field at the Farmers’ hangar on Botany. Low, large buildings framed one side, and beyond them, across an access road, were separate structures, small enough to be dwellings though they reminded her more of the hovels in a Brazilian barrio.

  They came down, venting more of Pete’s smoke for effect. Zainal’s handling of the ship made them all glad they were well strapped in but the motions certainly imitated a ship that was barely controllable. He also halted at a distance from what looked to be hangar or servicing facilities.

  Immediately he and Gino, who seemed to be moving slowly for such a generally deft man, removed the panels of the control positions and substituted the scorched boards, handing the good ones carefully to Ninety and Chuck to wrap and store in a prepared hiding place. Ninety and Chuck grunted and seemed to get out of their seats like old men. Zainal replaced the damaged panels, as Gino couldn’t seem to get his hands to work properly.

  “What’s the matter with me?” Gino demanded, in English, looking at his hands.

  Ninety and Chuck were taking forever to walk down the short passage and Kris then realized that she felt awfully heavy. It took a real effort to bring one hand over to release the safety belt.

  “Me, too,” she said, struggling to stand.

  “Hmmm,” was Zainal’s anxious response. “Catten’s gravity is heavier than Earth’s. You will adjust—but slowly. Just move slowly and pretend that is how you move.”