"Yes," said Piet. He sat down at his console and checked a status display. "Air and reaction mass will be at capacity within the hour. We'll check the gifts, see what's worth taking and what's not, but we'll leave the bales where they are for the time being. We don't want to give the impression that we're stowing them for departure."
He looked up at the rest of us and smiled brilliantly. "Primary set is in six hours. An hour after that, we'll inform the crew to begin loading operations. When they're complete—another hour?—we'll close the hatches and lift."
Piet rubbed his forehead. "I didn't," he added as if idly, "much care for the way our hosts treat their prisoners."
The
Oriflamme
shuddered as another shock rippled through the soil beneath us.
The primary was just below the horizon. The sun at zenith in the clear sky was only a blue-white star, though it cast a shadow if you looked carefully.
Three dirigibles rested outside the entrance to the domed city, their partially deflated gas bags sagging. The airships and their crews were armed, but the Chay all wore gray. None of their officers were present, and the guards themselves didn't bother to look at me as I walked into the dome.
Half a dozen Chay in orange and pastel blue capes preceded me by twenty meters. A group of gray-clad laborers followed at a similar distance, chattering among themselves. Like me, some of the laborers left their cowls up and the veils over their faces even after they entered the dome.
I hadn't done a more pointlessly risky thing since the night I went aboard the
Porcelain.
Though . . .
Boarding the
Porcelain
hadn't made me a man, perhaps, but it had made me a man I like better than the fellow who'd lived on Venus until then. I wasn't going to leave a human prisoner here to be tortured to death.
The hard floor of the dome was a contrast to the springy surface of the mat on which it rode. The cape hung low enough to cover my feet, but I was afraid somebody would notice that the sound of my boots differed from the clicking the locals made when they walked. I took deliberately quick, mincing steps.
There were hundreds of pedestrians out, but the broad boulevard seemed deserted by comparison with what I'd seen in the afternoon. Though the dome was clear, it darkened the sky into a rich blue that concealed all the stars except the sun itself. The walls of overhanging apartments wicked soft light from within, but even the lower levels weren't bright enough to illuminate the street.
I could see the cage ahead of me. I gripped the cutting bar beneath my cape to keep it from swinging and calling attention to itself; and because I was afraid.
I could claim to be looking around; but the Chay would want to carry me back to the
Oriflamme,
and if they did that they'd see we were loading the ship to escape. To save the others, I'd have to insist on staying overnight in the city. What would the Chay do with me when the
Oriflamme
lifted?
Lord God of hosts, be with Your servant.
Though I'd been no servant of His; a self-willed fool, and a greater fool now because I wouldn't leave an enemy of mine to die at the hands of enemies of his.
I'd slipped away from the
Oriflamme
without causing comment. I told Dole I was going for a walk to calm my nerves. I didn't want my shipmates to worry if they noticed I was gone.
It didn't seem likely they would notice, what with the work of preparing for departure. I was only in the way.
There were no guards around the Council Hall or the cage in front of it. Occasional Chay strode across the court, on their way from one boulevard to another, but they didn't linger. Even those in bright garb were hard to see. My gray cape would be a shadow among shadows.
A Chay in silvery fabric walked out of the Council Hall carrying a bundle. I paused beside a tower, close against the wall. If the fellow had been a moment slower, I'd have been crossing to the cage myself. The grip of my bar was slick with sweat.
The Chay thrust his bundle into the cage. He had to wiggle it to work it through the mesh. It fell with a slapping sound to the floor within. The Chay called something obviously derisory in his own language, then went back the way he'd come.
Feeding time at the zoo. The prisoner didn't move. I couldn't even be sure which of the still forms within the lattice was the living man.
There wouldn't be a better time. I walked to the cage, keeping my steps short. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Chay laborer start across the courtyard. I continued forward, my heart in my throat. The Chay disappeared past or into a neighboring residential tower.
I took the cage in my left hand and shook it to test the structure. The bars were grown as a unit, not tied together where they crossed. They were finger-thick, hard and obviously tough; but my bar would go through them like light through a window.
"Ho! Federation dog!" I snarled. I pitched my voice low though loud enough for the prisoner to hear. I could still brazen out my presence if I had to. "Come close to me or it'll be the worse for you!"
"I don't think he can move, Jeremy," Piet said from behind me. "We'll have to carry him."
I turned, my mouth open and the tip of the bar sliding from beneath my cape. Piet was indistinguishable from a Chay in his gray cape, but his voice was unmistakable.
"Yeah, well," I said. I switched my bar on. "I'll drag him out, then."
The blade
zinged
across the bars. I cut up, across and down, then bent to slash through the base of the opening. I wondered how the Chay had created the cage to begin with, since it didn't appear to have a door anywhere. I couldn't believe they'd simply grown it around their prisoners.
Piet caught the section as it started to fall. He held a cape to me as I hung my bar. I'd brought an extra garment myself, so Piet tossed his spare onto the cage floor to be rid of it.
My boot skidded on the slimy surface. I had to grab the frame to keep from falling. One of the prostrate figures moaned softly. I raised his torso, tugged the cape around him, and lifted him in a packstrap carry.
The cut section now hung from the hinge of tape Piet had wrapped around it. When I ducked out, he taped the other side so that our entry wasn't obvious.
The prisoner was a dead weight, though a modest one. It was like carrying an articulated skeleton, more awkward than heavy. Piet took the man's other arm and we strode back the way we'd come.
"Do Chay get drunk, do you suppose?" I said.
"Let's hope so," Piet said. "We're a couple of fools to do this."
The few remaining pedestrians scurried along with their heads down. "If the Chay have a curfew . . ." Piet said, speaking my thought.
"The dome wall isn't very thick except where the door is," I replied. "I can cut a way out if the gate's closed. We can."
The tunnel was open. A Chay in a violet garment entered as we neared it. We passed him in the other direction. He called out in his language. We ignored him. I walked on my toes to approximate the mincing Chay gait until we were around the first bend in the gateway.
The sunlight outside was as faint as my hope of salvation. I drew a great breath through my filter and said, "So far, so good."
The crews of the airships on guard didn't challenge us. Some of the Chay were eating beneath their veils. The mat of vegetation rolled underfoot, absorbing high-frequency ground shocks and smoothing them into gentle swells.
A tall figure strode toward us from the shadow of a translucent brown dome. "I'll carry him, if you like," Stephen offered in a low voice.
"He's not heavy," Piet said.
We walked on. Stephen fell into step behind us and a little to Piet's left, where he could watch our front as well as guarding the rear. This final part of the route was over an organic causeway crossing scores of circular fields only ten or twenty meters in diameter.
The ground rumbled. A line of dust lifted in the distance, kicked into motion by the quake. The causeway swayed gently. Beneath us, plants waved their zebra-striped foliage at us.
"I hadn't expected that the two of you would do this together," Stephen said in a pale voice. We hadn't spoken during the trek, but we could see that now there were no Chay between us and the edge of the mat.
"We weren't, Stephen," Piet said. "Jeremy made a foolish decision quite independently of me."
"I jumped out of a year's growth when he spoke to me," I said.
My voice sounded almost normal. That surprised me. I'd just learned that Stephen thought I'd supplanted him in Piet Ricimer's friendship. I'd known there were a lot of ways this jaunt could get me killed, but that one hadn't occurred to me.
"Tsk," said Stephen. "I don't lose control of myself, Jeremy."
I stumbled, then stared at him past the sunken form of the man we carried. "Do you read minds?" I demanded.
"No," said Piet. "But he's very smart."
"And a good shot," Stephen said with a throaty chuckle.
I laughed too. "Well, nobody sane would be doing this," I said aloud.
Though the mat felt like a closely woven carpet to walk on, it was actually several meters thick. The edge was a sagging tangle of stems, interlaced and spiky. There were no steps nor ramp off the island of vegetation; the Chay never walked on bare soil. The ground beyond bounced the way tremors shake the chest of a sleeping dog.
Stephen hopped down ahead of us. "Drop him to me," he said, raising his arms. "I'll take him from here."
I looked at Piet. He nodded. "On three," he said. "One, two,
three
—"
Together we tossed the moaning prisoner past the border. Stephen caught him, pivoting to lessen the shock to the Fed's weakened frame. The landscape heaved violently. Stephen dropped to his knees, but he didn't let his charge touch the ground.
My cape tore half away on brambles as I clambered down, baring my legs to the knee. There was no longer need for concealment, only speed.
Stephen strode onward with the Fed held lengthways across his shoulders like a yoke. Small shocks were incessant now. I had to pause at each pulse to keep from falling when the ground shifted height and angle.
"I should have allowed more time," I muttered. The
Oriflamme
was still out of sight beyond the rim of the bowl in which we'd landed.
"You were there before I was," Piet reminded me.
"Don't worry," Stephen said. "They aren't going to leave without us."
Piet laughed. "I suppose not," he agreed.
"I'd thought . . ." I said. "Maybe I'd just put him out of his misery. But I couldn't do that."
Stephen gave an icy chuckle. "We've brought him this far," he said. "We may as well take him the rest of the way."
We reached the lip of the bowl. The center of the depression was only twenty meters or so lower than the rolling plain around it, but that was still enough to conceal a starship. Sight of the
Oriflamme
warmed my heart like the smile of a beautiful woman.
A squeal similar to that of steam escaping from a huge boiler sounded behind us. It was more penetrating than a siren and so loud that it would be dangerous to humans any closer than we were.
I turned. Three cannon-armed dirigibles lifted above the city.
"Here," said Stephen, swinging his burden to Piet as if the Fed were a bundle of old clothes. "I'll watch the rear."
He locked a separate visor down to protect his eyes. A full helmet would have been obvious even under his cowl. Stephen parted his cape and threw the wings back over his shoulders, clearing his flashgun and the satchel of reloads slung on his left side.
I seized the Fed's right arm. "Run," Piet said, and we started running.
The
Oriflamme
was three hundred yards ahead of us. The ground had been still for a moment. Now On Chay shook itself violently. I stumbled but caught myself. The prisoner's legs swung like a pendulum to trip Piet and send him sprawling.
As Piet picked himself up, I glanced over my shoulder. The Chay dirigibles were a hundred meters high. Stephen walked sedately twenty meters behind us, watching our pursuers over his shoulder. The alarm still screamed from the Chay city.
Piet and I ran on. We'd taken only three strides when the bolt from a plasma cannon lit the soil immediately behind us into the heart of a sun.
The shock wave flung us apart. I smashed into a waist-high bush that might have been the ancestor of the mat on which the city was built. It clawed my chest and my legs as I tore myself free.
The cannon that had fired was a bright white glow in the bow of the center dirigible. Stephen swung his own weapon to his shoulder. A meters-long oval of soil blazed between him and us where the slug of plasma struck.
Stephen fired. The bolt from his laser was a needle of light against retinas already shocked by the plasma discharge.
The underside of a gas bag supporting the right-hand dirigible ruptured in a veil of thin blue flames. The Chay used hydrogen to support their craft. The fire spread with the deliberation of a flower opening, licking the sides of the bags adjacent to the one the bolt had ignited. The craft sank out of sight. The crew was trying desperately to land before the conflagration devoured them as well as their vehicle.
Piet stumbled forward alone with the prisoner. I grabbed the Fed's free arm and shouted, "D'ye have a gun?"
"Only a bar!" Piet said. "I didn't
want
to hurt the Chay, just free this poor wretch."
A laser pulse plowed glassy sparkles across the ground ahead of us. The bastards were shooting at us with the flashgun we'd given them that morning!
Stephen fired. A microsecond following the
snap
of his bolt, our world erupted in another plasma discharge.
The shock threw Piet and me sprawling, but this time the cannoneers were aiming at Stephen. Dirt fused into shrapnel and blew outward in a fireball which kicked Stephen sideways with his cape afire.
Fifty meters from us, Salomon or Guillermo lit the
Oriflamme
's thrusters momentarily to check the fuel feeds. Bright exhaust puffed across the encampment, blowing down tents and disturbing the piles of Chay goods we were abandoning. Grit sprayed the back of my neck.