Mutiny on Outstation Zori (2 page)

The apeboy hissed and bared his teeth and lunged at Jamie's throat. The hairy figure fell onto its back as Jamie flipped it over his shoulder. The pilot took three steps to where his attacker lay and punched him out with a well-placed blow to the chin.

Horescin pulled back when Jamie turned around still clinching his fist. The heavy, balding man's eyes narrowed, his voice tightened. "No, my good friend, I'm afraid that it is you who has overstepped the bounds of good ethics." He indicated the blue parrot on the brass ring that had taken flight during the struggle. "Our entire meeting has been recorded. Shall I ask the poly to play it back?"

Jamie relaxed the muscles in his back and shoulders, then he unclenched his fist. He'd forgotten about the parrot; playback from the bird's neural system was admissible as evidence in the local courts, since the creature's brain couldn't be tampered with and to the casual observer it would seem that he had just physically assaulted Horescin for no apparent reason.

Jamie shrugged and adopted a weak smile. "I'll consider an open-ended leasing arrangement with you on the freighter, but that's as far as I'll go. In exchange, you'll pay for the repairs, cancel my debts, and get me passage to Hyperion."

"Ahh, that's more like it." Horescin began tapping the keys of one of his computers.

"You're right," Jamie sighed. "I do want to find Cast Janssen, but not for the reason you think. The money he took was a gift, for all the training he'd given me over the years. We were friends, but I guess you wouldn't understand that."

Horescin turned to face Jamie. "My dear sir, your personal life is of no interest to me. I only want to make a deit or two. Your passage is booked. You may leave in the morning. I'll take care of the rest of your terms."

Jamie stepped over the unconscious monkeyman. He felt slightly elated by the events of the meeting. At last, he had some sort of indication that Cast was still alive. Jamie had told Horescin the truth about the money; it had been a gift. But there was still the matter of the crystal pendant Cast had stolen from Jamie right before he'd disappeared.

CHAPTER 2

Jamie felt a little apprehensive about riding the newly-completed skystalk down to Hyperion XI. The tower with its twin vators and broad solar umbrella stretched like a plastalloy sunflower a thousand kilometers up from the planet's surface.

His interstellar liner had docked at the stalk's midpoint node in zero-g, and Jamie had boarded a downward vator, after a brief pause at the customs center. The vator's passenger compartment felt comfortable enough, but he couldn't keep his mind off the anomalous impression that he was crawling the stalk's side at an incredible speed.

He sat for a time looking out at the cloud fields that slowly rose up to meet and then envelop the compartment. It was the slowest re-entry he'd ever experienced, but it was also the cheapest. The skystalk was essentially a freight transfer elevator, moving raw materials and finished goods up and down from the ships at zero-g to the surface of Hyperion XI. Jamie would have preferred to use a hypershuttle, but Horescin's meager financing wouldn't allow it.

Unless he'd used a telepath, Benny couldn't have suspected Jamie's true reason for wanting to find Cast. Jamie harbored a desire to play the hero and rescue his old friend in payment for the years of education he'd received as Cast's assistant. It would be a way of finally proving himself to his mentor—and possibly to himself.

The two pilots had been close associates and hard workers, often sharing major freight hauling contracts that took them across the Frontier Zone. Jamie felt hollow and a bit lonely since Cast's disappearance. He had come out to FZ5 when he was sixteen, and probably would have ended up in the rock mines if Cast hadn't taken him to task. The older pilot had taught Jamie everything there was to know about operating a freighter and bargaining for the best rates and preferred positions at the docks.

Clamber hadn't hesitated to loan the Paethor eight thousand deits; he'd been eager to help his partner, whatever the need. But he was mildly stunned to discover that Cast also had taken the crystal pendant which was all Jamie had to remind him of his distant Cavonian family. The pendant was a family heirloom inherited after the deaths of his parents and two brothers; a milky-glass tear-drop attached to a goldalloy chain, said to have been hundreds of years old.

Jamie wondered why his friend had taken it and if it had anything to do with Cast's disappearance. Could someone else have taken it instead and Cast had followed them during his last freight run? It was the sort of high intrigue that appealed to Jamie's imagination. Once again, he pictured himself charging to the rescue.

At last, some three thousand meters above the planet, the passenger compartment disconnected from the main vator and switched to a side conveyor that gradually came to rest on the outskirts of Hyperion XI's main trade center, Hy-newn. Jamie took a moment to collect his luggage and catch a skimmer for the headquarters of Turner Werch's corp, PANIC, Inc.

The streets around him were alive with pedestrians shouting and performing exotic piping music, giving Jamie the impression that every inhabitant of the planet was packed into the city. Humanoid and off-world tentacle figures clogged the walkways, creating a sea of multi-colored masks bobbing just outside the skimmer's windows.

"Is it always this crowded?" he asked.

The skimmer driver turned in his seat and complained, "It's the damn carnival. Draws everybody into like the third coming of Dr. R.C. Pepsi."

It suddenly occurred to Jamie that he'd made no plans for a place to stay while meeting with Werch. He began to think that this whole trip might have been a bad idea. "How much farther?"

The driver punched at the keys of an ancient comp on the vehicle's dashboard and read aloud, "2.759 blocks. Just around the corner to the right."

Jamie leaned his head back and looked up, reading the holo sign high overhead through the skimmer's bubble.
PANIC, Inc
.

"Let me out here. I'll walk it."

"What about your bags?"

Damn. "All right, you win. But try and hurry; I'd like to get there before the third coming of what's-his-name."

* * *

Clamber dragged his three bags into the open-air first-floor reception area of PANIC, Inc. A neo-human, like himself, with cobalt-blue skin, not like himself, smiled from inside her glassed cubical. "G' day, sir," she greeted. "Can I help ya?"

Jamie let go of the luggage and whistled silently in relief. "I'm Clamber." He fished out his Eldeit card. "Here to see Turner Werch."

"Did you just get in?"

"Uh, yeah." He passed the card through a slot in the cubicle's front surface. The neo set it on a depression in the console before her and scanned the response.

"First time in Hy-Newn?"

"First time on Hyperion."

"Oh, yes, Mr. Clamber!" she beamed staring at her screen. "It says here that you're to go right up. T.W. is expecting you."

"Swell. Is there somewhere I could stow my gear?"

A deep voice from behind Jamie said, "I'll take it, sir."

Without thinking, Clamber said, "Thanks," and turned to face the business end of a hand-held ident-reader pointed directly at his face.

"After I've read your pulse and eye grams for security."

The black, evil-looking device went
breep
and its handler, an extremely neat and—symmetrical?—man of about forty carefully folded and slipped it into a belt pouch. Then he bent to lift the freighter's luggage.

"Here," Jamie said, "let me help you with those."

"No need, sir." The security man stood upright, hefting the bags as if they were full of inert gases. "I'll put them in your quarters."

"My quarters?"

"Certainly," the man nodded, leading the way to a bank of vators. "All arrangements have been made. We like to make our operatives comfortable while they're with us."

"Operative? I'm afraid you're mistaken. I'm just—"

"No need to explain, sir," the security man smiled. "I won't tell another soul."

The man seemed to like to elevate the importance of his station by pretending he knew more than he actually did. Any other supposition left Jamie with an uncomfortable feeling he was walking into a trap.

The vator door opened at the men's approach and then closed behind them. The machine moved upward without an action or word from either passenger.

"Things run pretty smoothly here...for a company named PANIC Inc."

"It's an advertising ploy," replied Jamie's companion. "The panic is supposed to indicate the client's state of mind, not ours."

"I see."

"You'd be surprised how many corporations get themselves into trouble and need our services."

The vator stopped and the two men stepped into a richly-carpeted passage.

"I'll get you settled in," the security man said, without letting go of the luggage. "Room twelve. You need to go down to the big double doors at the other end of the hall. Just go right in. T.W. is—"

"—expecting me, I know."

"Actually, sir, you're a bit late. Tell him you got held up in traffic. Damned carnival, you know."

"Good idea. Thanks."

"My pleasure."

* * *

A dark-haired man with a high forehead looked up from the two piles of plastext he'd been comparing at his desk when Jamie entered. "Who the hell are you?"

Jamie noted the man's penetrating eyes; they caught and held him like a fist. "I'm Jamie Clamber. You wanted to see me?"

"I did?" the man asked, not of Jamie, but of a tall slim woman who leaned forward in her chair, glancing at the freighter.

"He's Horescin's lead on Cast Janssen," she said in a cultured voice. "The circuit-jockey from FZ5."

"Oh yes." The man rose to greet Jamie, warmly. "I'm Turner Werch. Glad to make your acquaintance, Clamber."

"How do you do?"

Werch was a couple of inches shorter and at least twenty years older than Jamie.

"I'm sorry for the confusion." The businessman gestured toward his cluttered desk. "We're extremely active today. The carnival has left us short-handed while increasing the demand for our services."

Jamie's first impression of Werch was not good; the man seemed as if his mind were on other, more important, matters than meeting a circuit-jockey who'd traveled all the way from FZ5. Maybe he just took some getting used to, or maybe all corporate execs acted a little distracted. Jamie wouldn't know. "What services do you supply?"

Werch avoided the question by saying, "This is my technical associate, Bright Law."

The woman got up from her chair and presented a cool hand. Deep red hair cascaded down the right side of her head, hiding one eye; the left side was completely bald and smoothly polished. "I certainly hope you can help us, Mr. Clamber."

"Jamie will do fine, thanks." Clamber tried not to stare at the top of her head. The baldness was attractive.

The woman's observable eye blinked. "Do what?"

Jamie laughed. She certainly had a way of putting you on the defensive. "I'm not quite sure," he hesitated, turning back to address Werch. "Why did you want to see me?"

The exec went back to his desk, searching for a moment through the piles of plastexts, picking one up, studying it, placing it back, until he located what seemed to please him and held it up. "We understand that you once worked with Cast Janssen."

The woman stared deeply at Jamie.

"Yes. You could almost say that he was my partner, before he died."

"Are you certain he
did
die?" the red-head asked.

She gets right to the point, Jamie thought. "No, as a matter of fact, I'm not sure. His body was never found, but that's not unusual when your ship is gutted by raiders."

Werch shot a glance at Bright Law, who nodded.

"What the hell's going on here?" Jamie demanded. "Is she scanning my mind?"

"Take it easy, Mr. Clamber," the woman said. "We want to determine whether or not you're in on the theft."

"What theft?"

Werch stretched an open palm at an empty chair. "Would you care to sit down, Mr.—"

"No thanks. I'll take this standing up. Now what do you know about Cast?"

"The question is," Werch responded, "and the reason I'm paying triple premiums is to find out what
you
about him."

Jamie relaxed, surveying the other two, curiously. He knew no one was forcing him to be here. He could walk out at any time. But then he'd never learn if Cast was alive, or dead, or what. Perhaps, if he played along, he could find out, and make a few deits at the same time.

"He was a friend; a little pushy and irritable at times, taken to bouts of depression, but the best freighter jockey in the business. And he was responsible. I mean, you could trust him—"

"Truthfully?" The woman leaned forward slightly.

"Well, usually. I worked with him for almost ten years. He helped get me my own ship. What's this all about anyway?"

"Where was he from?" Bright Law asked.

"Look, if you want to know all this, why don't just read my mind?

"I'm afraid," Werch said, "my associate's telepathic powers are limited to impressions of honesty and falsehood, Mr. Clamber. Besides, we are principled people. We have respect for your inner thoughts."

"So," the half-redhead continued, "we still need to know what you can tell us about Janssen's background, from your perspective."

"And again, I ask, why? What's this all about?"

Werch sighed from behind his desk. "Tell him, Bright."

She cast eyes to the ceiling and began to recite. "Our company has been contracted by the Calaban Corp to locate and retrieve twelve single-passenger FTL ships stolen last month while they were being transported to Cavon Province."

She paused, and Jamie questioned. "I take it these were not your normal pleasure crafts?"

Bright nodded reluctantly. "They were a new design, rated at over thirty max FTL displacement. The manufacturers of the Esper Shadows are not happy about the loss; they can and will build more, but they want the dozen missing ships back, and with no questions asked."

Jamie caught on. "So, they're in a panic. What's that got to do with me or Cast?"

Werch rubbed the back of his neck. "Your friend's gene-type was discovered in the cargo hold of the ship used to transport the Esper Shadows."

"What?" Jamie breathed. "You mean he's alive?"

"We think so," Bright answered. "We can't be sure; the genetic impression was contaminated. But if he is, you can help us learn more about him and maybe lead us to...the missing ships."

Jamie thought it through. Supposing Cast was alive: why would he be involved with corporate crime, instead of returning to FZ5 and his transport operations? Had he been tricked into stealing the Esper ships? Or did he live some sort of secret life, operating so clandestinely that even Jamie had never suspected?

Clamber knew he was not getting the complete story here, but…. He shook his head slowly and sat down. "I'm afraid I don't—"