Freedom's Challenge

by Anne McCaffrey

  Aarens had known that he didn’t like heights. He’d screamed enough when they had to haul him up to the command post to see what he could make of the control panels. He’d been so damned keen to say he’d been in space in an EVA suit that he didn’t realize that his height phobia would also include vast, black open spaces where, in every direction, there was nothing. The other space walker had to push the rigid man back into the air lock.

  “Take him inside. He’s useless.”

  But that incident happened early on. The completed connections were initially attached to the Baby’s com array to see if they could actually use the Eosi equipment through the thinned skin of the Bubble. They could. And great cheering and congratulations resounded between Botany and Baby. The next step might take longer since a com sat had to be built but Kamiton sampled the messages that were audible through the link and smiled with great satisfaction at what he learned.

  “We can proceed with our plan,” he told Zainal in Catteni. Then, in thickly accented English, he added to the rest of the group on board who did not know much Catteni, “Is good. Works. Hear good.”

  “I told you it would work,” Dick Aarens said, clinging to the door frame, and still very pale from his disastrous EVA. “So how soon can you get this crate back down to Retreat?”

  “Soon,” Zainal said and turned back to Kamiton, speaking in rapid Catteni. “We will leave on the KDL as soon as we return. I want to get back to Catten as fast as possible.”

  “Understood.”

  • • •

  WHEN KRIS’ NAME APPEARED ON THE LIST FOR KDL and a return to Catten, she did some counting on her fingers. Well, if they didn’t have any delays, she’d be back in time for Zane’s first Botanical year birthday. Zainal did not anticipate any delays with the plan he had filed with Ray Scott. He had been amused by the request from the ex-admiral but, with the other ships also departing in opposite directions, he filled in the data.

  “Did I do it right?” he asked Kris, shoving the paper toward her across the table in their main room.

  “You’d better have,” Kris said with mock threat, “or you’re no advertisement for my teaching.”

  He printed in bold letters, using both capitals and lower case as required. But he spelled properly and, even if he used short sentences, they were correctly phrased.

  “You get an A.”

  “Just an A?” he said, pretending to be disappointed.

  “Oh, that’s the best you can do.”

  “Oh?” and he leaned across the table and neatly lifted her out of her chair and high enough so that, when she bent her knees, she cleared the surface. “I must lesson you, too, to see if you can achieve the A.”

  Zane was long since asleep, so they could indulge in the intimacies that would be impossible for the duration of the trip.

  “I hope to bring out my sons,” Zainal said, when they lay side by side, mutually satisfied. “You must not treat them—at first—as you would a Human child.”

  “How old are they?”

  “They are nine and seven.”

  “Same mother?”

  “No. Good Catteni blood in each.”

  “They will have a lot to learn, won’t they?” And, while in one sense Kris felt able to accept the challenge, she hoped she would be able to meet it. Another aspect of it was that Zainal would trust her with his own children. How badly would they have been treated because Zainal had failed to accept the family’s obligation to present himself as Eosi “chosen”?

  “We all have a lot to learn,” Zainal said and, pressing his face against hers, turned her over so they could sleep, spoon fashion, his heavy arm warmly against her.

  • • •

  “NOW COMES THE FUN PART,” ZAINAL SAID TO the crew of the KDL, all assembled on the bridge. They were orbiting into one of the most desolate-looking planets: how could anything, or anyone, live down there?

  They had first let Kamiton off at the asteroid belt and lingered long enough to hear him report that the spy sats he had released in the belt confirmed the fact that there had been quite a few ships poking around the field: more likely, for traces of where Zainal/Venlik might have stored the remainder of his cargo.

  Kamiton would then proceed back to Catten with the report that he had found no suitable planets in the three systems he was supposedly exploring. He would have the opportunity to get in touch with any of the other dissidents and assure them that Zainal’s refuge was invulnerable. He would also visit Perizec, Zainal’s father, and, hopefully, locate the whereabouts of Zainal’s two sons. Since the family had supplied so many “chosen,” they had acquired many assets on the planet. The two young males could be anywhere.

  With a purloined cargo, Zainal would arrive. This time they would have to dock at the space station.

  “It will be easier for you as the station is not on full Catten gravity,” he had told Kris, who had not been looking forward to a second period of feeling more like a piece of compressed stone than a human being. “But you may not leave the ship. You are not Catten enough,” and he had tousled her cropped re-dyed hair.

  The rest of the crew was the same. Gino, Ninety, and Mack Dargle had learned to speak, and understand, much more Catteni. Kamiton even taught them a few so-called Catteni jokes which, when translated, left the audience wondering what possibly could be funny about them.

  “Old slap-stick routines is what they remind me of,” Kris said. “Sort of Marx brothers without any of the same class. More like the Three Stooges.”

  “They were never as good as the Marx brothers,” Ninety said.

  “Speak Catteni,” Zainal said, scowling at all of them.

  “Does not translate,” Kris said with mock obedience in a very deep rasping Catteni voice.

  • • •

  WITH THE KDL BEARING THE ID OF A SHIP Kamiton had found, its forward section embedded in an asteroid it hadn’t been able to avoid, they orbited the desolate planet and made contact with the mining station. This was a huge, scarred globule planted like a ravaged blister on one of the main raised areas. This particular station had been chosen because it had no processing plant in which to refine the ore. So their purloined cargo would match Zainal’s story of finding such ores in an asteroid belt. Once this planet had evidently had oceans that some unimaginable catastrophe had drained or boiled away. There were other, smaller blisters set in deep ranges of what had once been ocean trenches. As they were given clearance and descended, they could see heavy vehicles drawing numerous, and immense, carts of ore toward the main depot, for that was what Kris decided it must be.

  Several such vehicles were already drawing into parallel lines by the facility, which Zainal said was where the cargo levels would automatically be loaded.

  “By what?” Ninety said. “We don’t have enough space suits…”

  Zainal grinned and held up his hands. “That is why there are space locks between the main compartments of the ship and the cargo area. The K-class is a versatile carrier, cargo, slaves, whatever.”

  There was a bit of a scene when the station Drassi wanted Zainal to take on board three Catteni who had been so seriously injured they were no longer any use to him. All this while the ramps from the loading platform were being extended through the KDL’s open cargo bay, and while Ninety, suited up, handled the controls.

  “As soon as the decks are full, Ninety, we’re taking off,” Zainal told Ninety. “So be sure to hang on to something the moment we’re full.”

  “I hear and obey, Drassi,” Doyle said, slapping one fist to his chest in a Catteni salute.

  “Won’t you get into trouble?” Gino asked nervously.

  “Just plot a rapid ascent. This station has no weapons,” Zainal assured him.

  “But can you just refuse to take injured men aboard?” Gino asked.

  “Not for a two-week journey back to Catteni with them on board,” Zainal said. “This station has frequent cargo ships in. The next one can take them. I won’t.”

  So, wh
en Ninety signaled that all four cargo levels were full, Zainal gave Gino the nod to lift just as three space-suited figures, two helping the third who did not seem to have legs, exited from the surface loading facility.

  Zainal reached over and shut off the com board, silencing the threats of the infuriated Emassi in charge of the mining operations.

  “We couldn’t afford the risk,” Zainal said, aware of the shocked look on the faces of his crew.

  • • •

  WHEN THEY WERE AGAIN IN SPACE, ZAINAL AND Ninety, who had come to enjoy such EVA outings, changed the ID symbols on the KDL’s hull to match those used in their first trip to Catten. Once more in communication with the immense Catteni Space Station, Zainal became Drassi Venlik again, cheerfully (for a Catteni) back with the ore he had to leave behind in the asteroid belt.

  There were some scary moments for Kris, however, when the space station sent officials on board to see if the KDL’s cargo should be unloaded into drones for transport to the surface or allow the ship to land at the manufactories needing the ore. The rest of this trip depended on Zainal being ordered to make planetary delivery. One of the officials seemed determined to figure out the site of this rich load.

  “It is my site. By right,” Drassi Venlik said, standing with legs parted in a fighting stance, hands at his sides. This semi-belligerent posture was not lost on the officials, even if they were Emassi.

  Finally they admitted that they had orders for his ship to land on the surface at the refining plant awaiting these very fine metals. Zainal and his crew saluted the officials off the KDL and received immediate clearance from the facility and the location of the refinery.

  “Couldn’t have been better if I’d cut the orders myself,” Zainal said in English, grinning at his success.

  “Yeah,” Ninety began skeptically, “but would you really have laid into the Emassi?”

  Zainal laughed. “There are many Drassi who are Emassi who did not pass Eosi standards to be chosen. They have family who would come to their assistance. Those station Emassi know only what they need to know,” and he dismissed them with a contemptuous flick of his fingers.

  Kris decided that Zainal became more Cattenish the nearer he got to his natal planet. She wasn’t sure she liked that change in him. Then they landed and the weight of Catten gravity pulled her down, until she felt her belly would end up near her knees. And ordinarily her stomach was as flat as Zainal’s. It had a decided bulge to it right now.

  She spent the hours the KDL was being unloaded on her bunk, on Zainal’s order, being “off-duty” as the corridors swarmed with Rassi and Drassi. Zainal, with Chuck and Ninety in full Catteni dress, eyes, and hair, went to the refinery office to complete the forms required and get the credit voucher for the ore.

  It was evidently most unusual for a cargo vessel to require a credit voucher, but Zainal had a story ready for that. They needed special equipment to mine the ores on this asteroid and had been given permission to make such purchases, but would have to show a current voucher to verify that the ship’s account would stand the expense.

  • • •

  “THAT DEPOT’S LIKE ALI BABA’S CAVE,” NINETY said, returning after the first day’s scrounging through the supply warehouse. “Mind you, a lot of the stuff was made on Earth,” he added in a sour tone. “But I located most of what the com sat boys ordered.”

  With great determination, Kris had made a huge stew of the meat Coo and Pess had gone out to the nearest marketplace to get for her. It had taken almost all the energy she could muster with the constant pull of gravity on her muscles and bones. She was sure she’d shrink: she certainly felt compressed.

  Zainal did not return that first night. The Catteni diurnal cycle was only an hour longer than Earth’s but, to Kris’ intense relief, he was back just past dawn the next morning with Kamiton and two other Catteni making a surreptitious dart up the ramp of the open cargo bay.

  The men were introduced as Nitin and Tubelin. Bolemb could not leave as yet and Kasturi was going to bring Zainal’s two boys as soon as the ship was ready to take off again. For Catteni they exuded enthusiasm for the chance to relieve their world of Eosian domination. To believe that Zainal’s crew was really Human, every one, including Kris, had to take out their yellow lenses and show the natural shade of skin on their upper arms and legs. Kris was on watch at that moment and thus did not have to reveal her subtly different limbs.

  Nitin looked older than Tubelin but later Zainal told her it was the other way round. Nitin had had harder duties than Tubelin, and so looked his years of service to ungrateful Eosi. Nitin said little but Kamiton’s exuberance made up for his silence.

  The next day the three real Catteni assumed other identities and went about acquiring more of the material that was on the shopping list. Nor, to the Humans’ surprise, did they question that they had to buy such odd items in unusual quantities: like the huge iron kettles (which were used by the Rassi to cook their mashes in—about the only thing, Nitin said, that they could manage to do without constant supervision). The kettles were destined for the Maasai who were much, much smarter than most of the Drassi Kris had encountered. She stood her shifts on the com desk and had to deal with the calls of merchants who wished to check on the ship’s account and its current position. She had also managed not to reveal her femininity to new members of the Catteni. If Zainal did not think to mention it, she would not.

  The KDL had been parked to the side of the refinery’s double-ballpark of a landing site to allow other vessels to unload. Zainal had neatly maneuvered them close to one of the refinery’s secondary gates, to allow access for his “equipment” to arrive without upsetting the regular traffic in and out.

  “It’s a good place to be,” Zainal had said in explanation. “Many ships come and go. It is also the last place where any Emassis would be found.”

  With their cargo levels full, they waited for word from Kasturi. Kamiton fretted more than Zainal did and paced up and down the corridors, cursing at the com unit which did not utter so much as a burp. They waited two full days, until Zainal, too, showed signs of stress.

  Both men were on the bridge when a low, sputtering ground vehicle came through the gates and trundled around behind the KDL.

  “It has stopped,” Chuck said, swiveling around in his seat at the com board. He flicked on the exterior camera. “Three, two smallish, one not so small.”

  Instantly Zainal and Kamiton were on their feet and pounding down the passageway to the cargo air lock.

  “Prepare to take off,” Zainal called over his shoulder, and Gino hastily started the pre-flight checks as he had done from time to time as something to occupy them during the long wait. “And turn the ship slightly to starboard to incinerate the vehicle.” That came through over the intercom from the cargo level.

  “Right ch’are, captain,” Gino muttered, fingers busy tapping in the necessary code and engaging the rear thrusters to be certain the object was reduced to an unrecognizable lump.

  As they were at the refinery, their leaving would go relatively unnoticed. They lifted and were well above the atmospheric envelope of Catteni before Zainal and Kamiton came forward, both grinning broadly.

  “We got them,” Kamiton said as Zainal motioned for Gino to move out of the pilot’s chair. Kamiton, oddly enough dressed in a space suit, and carrying his helmet, positioned himself against the bulwark.

  So as not to be seen, Kris thought, when Zainal had to make visual contact with the space station for clearance out of Catteni space. But why was he suited up?

  “I’m parked right by net four,” Kamiton said as if he had heard her mental query. “Head slightly in that direction now.”

  Contact was made, clearance was given, and Zainal said that he was going back for another load of the fine ores he had carved out of the space debris.

  “Of course, they’ll come after you again,” Kamiton said. “See you back on Botany,” he added before he put on his helmet and stumped down to the air l
ock. “Can you read me?” he asked a few moments later.

  Kris stuck her finger harder than she needed to on the pad—her body didn’t realize she was out of Catteni’s depressing gravity—and gave him an affirmative.

  Zainal made a small adjustment to his direction, seeming to head directly for the center of net four—large Catteni glyphs had been plastered on the net fabric—one could not miss “4” unless one was totally blind. He also slowed so that when the air lock lights came on, he was almost stationary. He allowed the KDL to drift a count of two hundred, because Kris was counting right along with him, before he gently reengaged the thrusters and pulled away. Then he made a drastic course alteration and signaled to Gino to pour on the power.

  There was a little time for Kasturi to meet the Human crew and for Bazil and Peran to get accustomed to the idea of Humans, and Humans who could speak their language and were not slaves. Kris almost wept at the condition of the two boys: they had come on board filthy, in clothing that was a shred away from being indecent, with many bruises on their limbs and visible through the remaining scraps of their tunics. Their ribs were showing and their faces had the gaunt look of the starved. What they asked Zainal for first—once they had recognized their father—was water.

  “They wouldn’t take anything from me,” Kasturi explained. “They did not show fright, Zainal. They have your blood and courage. In my opinion, many cruel and vicious things have been done to them.”

  Zainal himself bathed the boys, carefully tending their hurts and seeming to count every healed scar. Kris handed him Botanical medications, and they had flinched, even from their father’s very gentle touch. She was close to tears for how they had been treated…worse than even the Rassi she had seen so casually whipped to work.