Rissa and Tregare (14 page)

"Yes. Well, I am finished, and I see you have been waiting for me. I would like to hear Bran's message, and then we can confer."

"Sure. I'll be in my office."

Upstairs, Rissa played the screen's tape. First, a request for information from the warehouse construction superintendent -he was not available, so she, also, recorded her answers, along with questions of her own. Bran's call came next; the picture hardly existed, but his voice came clear.

"Rissa? I'm at Two, staying on
Lefthand Thread.
Call me here when you're ready to come through the Hills. I miss you."

She called the scout; Anse Kenekke relayed her to Limmer's ship, and soon Tregare spoke to her. "Everything go all right? You ready to come here?''

"Yes, and yes. Where shall I meet you?"

"The cabin's best. I may be late, so eat when you get hungry. You're not nervous about running the pass?"

"No, Bran. The angle of light will favor me."

"All right. Be braced for the rough spots-remember?"

"Surely. And I hope you will not be kept
too
late."

He laughed. "No chance. All right-I'll see you then."

"Good-bye, Bran." She checked the tape again; it held nothing more, so she joined Liesel downstairs. The conference was brief; Rissa found most of the decisions obvious, and Liesel did not disagree with any.

"That does it, then. And now you're off across the Hills?"

"Yes. Two minutes to pack and I can be on my way."

"You and Bran come back when you get the chance. And going through that damned pass of his, be careful."

"There is no way to be careful there. One can only be cor-rect-and I intend to be."

"Then I won't worry." They said good-byes. In not much longer than the two minutes she had predicted, Rissa had the aircar rising along the line of the ridges above. she had the oxygen equipment out early; the pass was no place to have to scrabble under the seat. Ahead she saw clouds-
if
the sun is obscured in the pass itself-then
she saw another way. Tregare had followed rising ground levels to the mouth of the cut. She began to climb, gaining altitude far ahead of her turning point. She wondered-if the approach could be made so easily, why had he not done the same? Ex-pecting the unexpected, she concentrated her alertness and veered away from the Hils to make her direct approach, when she would reach the cut from greater distance as wel as greater height. Ahead she saw it, then came abreast and turned. Stil climb-ing at ful power, she pointed toward its center. First there was calm-
this cannot be
all of it-then
an invisible current shook the car and thrust it downward at a rate that shocked her. Dropping, the car lost forward speed; she saw only one choice and took it-deliberately she went into a dive.

Adrenaline hit her; time slowed. Would it be enough? When her speed satisfied her, she pulled the nose up sharply and shot -pitching wildly-through the entrance turbulence into the narrow cut, higher and faster than Tregare had done. Into grayness! She went through a brief bright patch; then the sun was lost again. Her eyes readjusted soon enough to glimpse the white tumble of boulders. She cut sharply into the turn she could not see and narrowly missed crags at her left.
Too soon!
Only her higher altitude, giving more width for maneuver, had saved her.

The second turn! The light was against her now but she knew it had to be soon-saw a shadow and swung into it-the cut widened again and she was safe. Well above summit height, she stayed there until the ground below came its closest and began to drop away.

She spoke aloud. "Next time, peace knows-I'l
ask
first!" But she thought, all things considered, she had not done so badly!

She made a slow, curving descent, barely topping the last
.

ridge before her direct approach to the plateau. She saw the scoutship but not the second aircar; Tregare, then, was stil at Two. She landed, saw no one about, and went into the cabin.

Its door was locked. She turned her key in the pattern that opened without setting off alarms. Inside, she opened their suitcases and stowed the contents into drawers.

She had a shower, long and hot. She called the scoutship and found herself automatically relayed through to
Lefthand Thread.
Tregare was not aboard, and the man who answered did not know how to connect her with
Carcharadon,
so she said, "Then please tel Tregare that his wife arrived safely at Base One.'" He acknowledged and she cut the circuit. she went outside and met Kenekke guiding a sort of motor-ized wheelbarrow, piled high with boxes. "Hello, Anse. Now I see why I got automatic relay when I called the scout." "Hi, Ms. Kerguelen. Yes, I set it that way when I go out." "Have you been here all along? Since we left, I mean?" "No, I've spent some time down at Two. Hain's there now."

"Do you take turns between here and there?" "More than we'd like, but it's only for a little while." "Good. Well, I will not interrupt your work further." They smiled and she went back into the cabin.

Restless, she paced the main room. Then, in the kitchen she poured fruit juice and sat.
I
cannot be inactive like
this-I must learn the work they do at Base Two and help with it.
Decision made, she went to the scout; Kenekke admitted her. "If I might trouble you a moment?" He nodded. "Are there reading-tapes here, and a projector?" "Yes, sure. What kind of tapes do you want?" "Technical material. If possible, on the installation of weapons. That is what Tregare is doing, and I wish to help-if only because, if I stay in that cabin much longer, I shall begin chewing it into smal pieces!" He laughed. "I could gnaw a few chunks off this scout, myself. Well, let's see-there's not much on weapons as such, but it's jury-rigging for installation that concerns us now." "Yes-that is what I would like to see." 

"It won't be on tapes, though-the captain worked al that out on paper. He made copies. I think I can find you a com-plete set, or nearly."

"I wil certainly appreciate it, if you can." The man looked through a chest of large, flat drawers, removing drawings and sheets of notes, and piling these on the cart-table. Finaly, "I think this is most of it, Ms. Kerguelen." He frowned for a mo-ment. "I'll have to remember; the captain said that around other folks, we're to call you Ms. Obrigo." He shook his head. "I guess I don't have to understand it."

She touched his hand briefly. "You and Hain heard my true name because I could tell Bran Tregare trusts you. I am not certain whether it is so important here to hide my identity. But on Earth thirty years ago, it was a mater of death. And, as we know, UET has long fingers."

"UET!"
Kenekke's face and voice made a snarl. Then he hunched his shoulders, roled his head from side to side; she could sense the crackling tensions leaving him. "If it's against
them-
don't worry; I won't make any slips. And neither wil Hain." He smiled tentatively.

"They wanted you bad, eh? I hope you stuck 'em a good one!"

"They thought so, apparently." She hesitated. "Enough so, that to get off Earth safely I had to kill a Committee policebitch. And another of their hounds, I am told, was sent to folow me to Terranova-but he did not expect me to get off at a halfway point when I had paid to go so much far-ther."

"Their greed-they can't believe we're not all as greedy." Kenekke laughed. "You go spacing for them-they keep everything you own tied up, and think that ties
you. 1
walked off from the whole lot-and they're welcome to it, for I have freedom, and-"

"And you would not trade! Of course not. Neither would I." She started to pick up the large, awkward papers, trying not to lose the pile of smaler sheets. Kenekke took the over-sized drawings and fashioned them into a long roll. Then he slid the smaler notesheets into a plastic folder.

"Here-easier handling, this way." She thanked him and returned to the cabin.

She had had her fill of fruit juice; she made a pot of coffee.

She put the papers in the best order she could determine -Tregare's numbering system was helpful, but she found it somewhat cryptic-and began studying drawings along with the correlated notes. At first it was like learning a new language, but she persisted and soon was understanding more than not of what she read.

Dark approached. She turned lights on and closed the cur-tains, and suddenly realized she had forgotten to eat din-ner. She was hungry but-let's see now-she turned a sheet, looked back to the previous one, saw the discrepancy she had missed, and nodded. part of her mind heard the aircar land, but she paid no con-scious heed until the knock resounded at the front door. Then she sprang up and ran to open it.

"Bran!" She hugged him and raised her face; his kiss was quick and light, and he did not return her embrace. Puzzled, she stepped back-then saw his hands held out from his sides, black with grime, and the smears on face and clothes. He laughed. "Let me clean up; then I'll greet you prop-erly." He gestured. "See? You got a smudge on your front, there."

She brushed at it and shook her head. "I do not care. But, al right-get your clothes off; I wil run the tub for you." With the water running at the proper heat, she went to the kitchen for her coffee, and brought a chair to set beside the tub. Tregare slid down into the hot water. "Aah-this is good!"

"Since when do captains get their hands so dirty? And how does the work progress?"

"Captains do what they know best, like anybody else. Prog-ress? Not bad, except someone misread a drawing and welded a turret mount in, the wrong way around. That's how I got so pretty-cutting the thing free and helping manhandle it into place, then welding it in right. Simpler to do it than tel it."

She nodded. "Some things are-I have also found that true. But I meant-what proportion of work is done, on Vanois' ship? And have you begun on Limmer's?"

"Limmer's?
Lefthand Thread's
already equipped." He paused to rinse lather from his hair, then said, "I guess I haven't filled you in on that part of the operation. All right

-you guessed it back on
Inconnu-my
arsenal's on a place caled New Hope. I ran onto a group of Escaped UET techni-cians trying to make a living there. Pioneer world-not much market for their talents-making farm machinery was about the size of it. But some of them were weapons experts, so we made a deal."

She smiled. "Tregare, the Good Samaritan at a profit."

"Right again. I provided the equipment they needed, and drawings, and samples of a few pieces of hardware. Yes-that missing projector you noticed, for one. So they build weapons for me. And when Limmer picked up the first load, he had them equip
Lefthand Thread,
just to be sure everything worked."

"First load?"

"Enough to arm six more ships, to make up the eight I want. Only three on UET's schedule are armed, so five of mine-if I have eight-get rigged with dummy hul plates to hide the weapons. Limmers is fixed that way-that's why you can't see it's armed. For combat, the plates are jettisoned." Trying to reach behind him, he winced. "Hey-scrub my back, wil you? Bruised my shoulder-not much of a thing, but right now it hurts to reach back that way."

"All right." She rubbed lather onto him, then rinsed it, splashing water up as he bent forward. "Now-tel me some-thing of the weapons themselves, since I am to train in oper-ating them."

"Sure. Wel, there's two kinds, plus a defense-of sorts-against one of them. Three separate jobs, there; take your pick." He leaned back again. "The energy projectors-
Inconnu
mounts eight-are the trickiest to handle. Each one is a pair of lasers-above visual range-that have to converge on target
and
heterodyne for peak heat in the infrared. You can blow a hul to vapor-
if
you're tuned right and your convergence is on. Tuning's tricky because frequencies drift as the thing heats up when you fire. UET never bothered; they just set it to creep through the hot part of the spectrum in the first five-six shots."

"But on your ships it is different?"

"Yes. You've got a tuning lever-for one component only, because it's the difference that counts-and a monitor display. When you're on-peak, your scope shows a circle; if it tilts, you move your right-hand lever the other way to push it back."

"That does not sound too difficult."

"Except that with your left hand you're controlling conver-gence. If the light on either side of your scope starts blinking, you move the range lever in that direction until it goes out. So you're watching and doing two things at once, and it takes practice to get your coordination down to a reflex."

He grinned. "Now, then-you've got both hands busy. How do you aim and fire?"

"A foot pedal, I suppose?"

"Partly right. You don't have to aim. Control picks your target and sets the computer to stay with it or change to another. And the projector fires whenever both range lights are out
and
your circle's within five degrees of optimum.

"You do have a foot pedal, though-it's an override-doubles your combined range-and-tuning tolerance to let you take poorer shots. But that's only for when you're losing and can't get a shot off, otherwise."

"So I have one entire foot free-I can play chess, or scratch my other ankle!"

He laughed and reached for a towel; standing in the drain-ing tub, he dried himself. "Rissa, I suppose you've eaten?"

"No. Kenekke let me borrow your drawings of how the weapons are to be installed. Studying them, I forgot dinner." He put a robe on and they moved to the kitchen. He looked at the sheets on top of each stack of papers. "You've got pretty well into it, for one day. But why? You won't need to know these things."

"I will, Bran, if I am to help you at Base Two. I cannot spend my days here, idle. I become-lonesome." Now he gave her the overdue embrace and a longer, intense kiss. Then he ran his hand through her hair to the back of her neck, and squeezed gently. "Well-if you want to get your hands dirty, why not?"

"Good. Now I will clear the table of these papers. Then, shall I prepare food, or wil you?"