Raunchy was rubbing away at her thigh and she neither objected nor responded. She was busy thinking. Nothing was accomplished by it, and it was unpleasant to boot.
The shuttle emerged into the center of the torus like a pop-up toy. The s.p.a.ce station"s gigantic airlock closed beneath them, a just-in-case measure against possible breach and airout. The shuttle door hissed open. They and the other pa.s.sengers emerged into the enormous circle of Thebanis s.p.a.ce Operations Center: Thebanistation. It was brightly lit and alive with voices and color in Degas splashes and just plain noise. The hubbub of many voices in many accents. A busy place the size of a small city, full of civil servants and factors and s.p.a.cefarers coming and going to and from the coming and going ships. Up here, fashion didn"t exist. No one planet"s fashion, at any rate.
h.e.l.lfire turned to Janja. Was there warmth in those deep-set, dangerous eyes that seemed jet until bright light showed their mahogany?
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"Well, Janjy, I- Why don"t you come and see Satana?"
That was a nice idea. The would enable Janja to put off her return for a while longer. It was childish, she thought, this wishing she didn"t have to return to Corundum. They"d have to talk. Last night she had faced him and braced him, and even known elation at his acceptance of her independence, even her public challenge. But last night was last night, with pride and h.e.l.lfire"s example helping, and alcohol. Now . . .
Now it was a bright unalcoholic day, down on Thebanis.
"I"ll ride around to your ship with you, yes. I"d love to see your Satana."
"No need to ride the perimeter crawler," h.e.l.lfire said, indicating a direction with a nod of her head. "Satana"s only a few meters from the end of this spoke."
They walked along Spoke H, broad as a city street, from the station"s apex to its perimeter. All along it were berths; many housed ships that were outside the station"s enclosure. A s.p.a.cer was nosing in now, just over there, clearly visible through the transparent wall along Franjistation"s circ.u.mference.
The three walked to Captain h.e.l.lfire"s ship, the "merchanter" with the name that fitted no merchant-ship. The flames of Hades and the queen of Hades. h.e.l.lfire and Satana. Raunchy should change its name to something more infernal, Janja mused, because her mind was jumping all about like an unchained pup, avoiding any thought of Corundum and her very real problem.
A bit of fondling and simpy face-making took place on that short last walk, all of them remembering a marvelous night. And then they were there, too soon.
Satana nuzzled the rim of the station, in berth 19. An umbilical tunnel, a collapsible ramp, connected the ship to the station. Like a huge hollowed grub worm, 214.
the tunnel was sealed to the s.p.a.cer"s open outer airlock. And Satana was neither sleek nor beautiful.
She was an old ram-scoop, the duck-billed platypus of the s.p.a.ceways.
Even the fresh-looking paint job, a rather dull orange combined with pink, could not add beauty to such a shape. Janja looked at the ungainly monster and made polite noises. She was hardly seeing Satana and she certainly wasn"t thinking about it. She was thinking helplessly that Raunchy and h.e.l.lfire would be doing plenty of fondling, what h.e.l.lfire called "lickin" and stickin"," and that she had just enjoyed her last fondle with the mildly attractive consummately s.e.xy pair. To a ninety-eight-plus probability factor, anyhow. The galaxy was big. It was vastly, incredibly, inconceivably big. The odds were that she"d never see these two again.
Maybe I"ll hear about it and maybe I won"t, when this unstable and ever-challenging woman is blown away because she"s unstable and forever challenging, volatile as fulminate of mercury. And maybe I"ll hear about it months or years-ess later.
Only an idiot would be standing here wishing she could accompany such a captain, Janja, you idiotI She"s a walking deathwish.
"She"s a good ship," h.e.l.lfire said, looking rather maternally upon her Satana. "A good ole ship. Want to come onboard a minute, Cloud-top?"
"Don"t dare," Janja said. "Last night I innocently went to a hotel module on just such an invitation, just a sweet li"l innocent cloud-topped gurl. And I got kidnaped and lost my vir-ginn-itteee. I wouldn"t dare go on that ship with you. What if I got k-kidnaped into s-sp-s.p.a.ce?"
She stared at Satana and at h.e.l.lfire, making her eyes as wide and innocent as she could. It used to be easier.
It didn"t work too well anymore, but h.e.l.lfire laughed.
215.
"What? kid-nap] An honest dull ole merchanter captain like me is?"
"Oh stop." Janja chuckled. "I get sick easily!"
"So do I, girls. Ooops-freeze. You"re covered."
They stared at him. He had been waiting in the airlock, and now came partway down the covered ramp. They were covered, all right. The man, coveralled as a cargo handler and wearing a stationworker"s badge, was playing Lone Ranger with a stopper in each hand.
"Just come along into the tunnel here and lead the way into this dull ole merchant s.p.a.cer, Captain h.e.l.l-fire. The same for you two s.l.u.ts. We need to have some conversation."
"Shaitan"s b.a.l.l.s! It"s the traffic watcher from the Loophole, last night!"
"So right, Captain h.e.l.lfire," he said, waggling the rightward stopper. "You were right about me last night, too. Ho-ho good for you. Also too bad for you-we"ve got a positive make on you from two people on the little Delventine colony raid. Five weeks ago tomorrow you hit "em, remember? Half their supplies and all their personals stolen, and two zapped?" His eyes nicked to Janja. "And today I won"t be getting within reach of your talented left arm, Janja of Aglaya. Leaving Corundum or just visiting?"
"My my," h.e.l.lfire said, while Janja"s stomach tightened up like a big fist. "He knows us, too! Too bad we don"t give a snot about your name or I.D., jacko. Do you know Sweetface here, too?"
""I---"".
"Never mind," h.e.l.lfire went on, cutting him off while Janja marveled that the woman knew the name of Jonuta"s Jarp crewmember. "We are all three armed, jacko. Think you can-" And this time he interrupted.
"I"m authorized. And you are who you are and what you are. This is what is called dead to rights, and I am making an arrest. My stoppers"re set on Fry. You resist arrest and you"re fried, and good riddance. Understand? Say a wrong word to these two, make a 216.
wrong move, and you are molecules, Captain h.e.l.lfire. That is scattered molecules, you understand." He hefted the cylinder in his right hand. "And this one stays aimed right at you, just you. Don"t do anything silly, Whitey and Orangey, or she gets roasted, toasted, and turned to dust motes right before your eyeb.a.l.l.s." "Lord, you aren"t nice at all, jacko." "You have a rep, h.e.l.lfire. If I tried a little niceness with you or let down m"guard, I"d never live to get back into uniform. Now let"s board your ship."
Janja"s brain had begun to function again. Onboard Satana? With all three of us, plus whatever other crew-members are there? Why? What does he want?
"What? Not going to show me some I.D.? I"ve got rights!"
"No you haven"t, h.e.l.lfire." His voice had lost all its easy jocularity and so had his face.
"Going to show those guys some I.D.?" h.e.l.lfire persisted, nodding to her right, past Janja and Raunchy, whose long fingers kept twitching. Neither of them turned to look at no one.
Neither did the Lone Ranger. He kept staring at h.e.l.lfire. So did the muzzle of his stopper. Nasty little tubes! Janja had been hit with one, what seemed a hundred or so years-standard ago on Jonuta"s ship. Just the first or second setting. She remembered. It was awful.
"s.h.i.t," h.e.l.lfire distinctly and succinctly said, and began to walk toward him, into the umbilical tunnel. A giant worm; a mortuary"s cupola on a slant. He stood warily, right-hand stopper leveled at the wiry, lean woman. She began ascending. He glanced, only glanced, at Janja and Raunchy.
"Follow." The leftward stopper waggled. Raunchy shook its head. "No. Not me." "Freeze, h.e.l.lfire, and stay friz. I really am authorized, Jarp. Follow h.e.l.lfire, or I take her down. It"s all the same to me."
No it isn"t, Janja thought, or he"d have done it al- 217.
ready. What does he want? Parley? Blackmail? Steal the ship once we"ve led him inside?
"Hey, come on, Raunchy," h.e.l.lfire called, "I"m too young and s.e.xy to be fried."
Moving slowly, Raunchy stepped past Janja to enter the tunnel.
Janja did not move slowly. She drew while Raunchy blocked the man from her view and thus her from his. Raunchy took another step, onto the ramp, and another, and there was the man again and Janja squeezed the cylinder"s grip. With an "uh!" their accoster stiffened and began to dance loosely. Two seconds later h.e.l.lfire had drawn and fried him. A few seconds after that, since she held, he was scattered components, mote-size.
From somewhere down along the inner perimeter of the wheel, someone yelled. Janja glanced that way, then charged into the tunnel.
"He must"ve had friends. They saw my stopper."
The three of them rushed_ up the claustrophobic length of the tunnel and into Satana"s airlock. No one said a word, but Raunchy and Janja both leveled their stoppers down along the ramp while h.e.l.lfire coded open the inner lock. Then it was open, and they backed after her into the ship.
"Stand out of the way," h.e.l.lfire snapped. "Leave the lock open. Just be invisible." She fingered the comm box mounted beside the airlock, gone all professional and seemingly as competent as her reputation. Her eyes showed nothing approaching panic. "Quindy!"
Janja stared across the open port. "Why?"
"If those were friends of his you saw, they might well just charge right in and up the ramp after us. If they don"t, if they tell Station Control or Security instead, we"re in trouble. Otherwise we"ll hear their footsteps clomping up the umbilical tunnel. You pivot into the opening, see, squatting as you come around, and you squeeze. That"s it. You might just change the 218.
setting on your stopper, Janjy. And thanks, Cloud-top. You"ve got a good head and you sure do know how to act."
Just as Raunchy said, "But we can"t just-" a woman came arunning, from within the ship. She was astonishingly black, astonishingly good-looking. She wore low-slung, bright red pants that were tight above and loose below; a stopper and a red halter, and enormous loops of earrings, pink and silver. Her hair was a ma.s.sy loose mane of bright yellow although her eyebrows were straight black lines, and her halter bounced.
She acknowledged the call professionally: "Captain!"
"Trouble, Quindy. These two are with us. Order ignition and request clearance to depart, calmly and politely as you can."
"You"re the captain, Captain. You do that and I"ll do this."
"Dam" good idea, Quindy-since Control would want to jaw about releasing Satana to you, anyhow." Janja kept her frown inside her head. Hadn"t h.e.l.lfire even thought of that? Was she panicky? She was going on: "Footsteps means bandits. Stop "em."
She started moving and Janja stopped her with a "Captain." As h.e.l.lfire turned back, looking agitated at being held up, yet attentive, Janja spoke quickly. "I think he wasn"t a policer and the others probably aren"t. If they were three policers, why bring us into the ship and why weren"t they closer? I think he wanted to blackmail you-or, once we got him inside, kill us, use you to get Satana in s.p.a.ce-and kill you too."
"Good thinking, Janja. No tune to digest it now. Raunchy, I heard you say "But we can"t" or somesuch. Stand away, then. Quindy, Janja-you"ve got it." And this time h.e.l.lfire wheeled and ran into her ship.
Janja stared after her, then at Quindy. Janja felt caught on a roller coaster. Everything was rushing. There wasn"t time to consider anything. A man was 219.
dead with no corpus delicti, and more might be coming, and only she seemed to be thinking, and she was involved and onboard- She heard the footsteps. More than two feet"s worth, trotting. From opposite sides of the open port she and Quindy looked at each other. Quindy had her stopper in her hand. The intensely black woman"s eyes bored like drills.
"You know what to do, Whitey?" Quindy"s voice was only just audible.
Janja nodded. "On your signal, Goldie," she mouthed.
The liquid black eyes flickered. Then, "Now."
They pivoted toward each other, into the open mouth of the port. Each went into a squat as she swung to face down into the enclosed ramp. Quindy a.s.sumed a two-handed grip on her stopper. Janja had a flashing glimpse of two people, oncoming. Both had stoppers out. The woman was uniformed. That attracted the eyes and Janja squeezed, at her. Unfortunately, so did Quindy.
That way the Franjistation Security officer was reduced to atoms-by Quindy"s stopper, since Janja hadn"t changed the setting on hers-while the man had time to squeeze his weapon. Janja felt a blow and then a ghastly continuing shock was tingling through every nerve in her body, ice and fire on and on, and she twitched and jerked and went spastic and half-rose and kept twitching loosely. A yelling Quindy was frying the man while Janja was flopping backward, absolutely helpless, falling, hitting her head against the unyielding pasteel of the bulkhead behind her, seeing a million colors in living color, and then nothing.
17.
. . . stability isn"t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamor of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation. . . . Happiness is never grand, Aldous Huxley "We"ll let Sweetface and it off on Front," Jonuta said, "and get off it as fast as we can. Sak and Shig understand. There should be something on Front for Sweet-face. I left it there long ago, a nice improbable place! Surely they didn"t get that too. They can not be infallible!"
"But Jone-on Front?"
"Oh, I"ll give Sweets the choice of going on with us, if it wants to." Jonuta shrugged and peeled open his coat to stand in a sweat-absorbing, short-sleeved, collarless shirt. He touched it. "Dam"! This is Panishi cotton, you know? Panish!" He shook his head. "Wide-open Panish, and I am no longer welcome there!"
Kenowa did not want him to continue with that line 220 221.
of thought. She returned to his previous words: "And ... and after Front? Then what?" She had to force herself to ask, because she was afraid to ask.
"Then we set course for Qalara, Kenny." He stood at his con, and everything was on automatic, and fine. "They can"t have got to me on Qalara!"
Her head snapped up at that mention of the planet of his birth. Too, he had not called her Kenny since Franji. She nodded. "And . . . and then? Retirement, on Qalara?"
He looked at her and she saw that Captain Jonuta"s eyes were clear and sharp and full of life. "Retire! h.e.l.l no! We get ourselves together, find some good Qalarans as crew, and head for deare olde Aglaya and some white-haired merchandise. h.e.l.l, Kenny, we can"t retire now, and it isn"t as if we have to start again. We"re just continuing with business as usual. The only way the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can stop me is with a stopper!" He stood for a moment wearing a thoughtful, almost whimsical expression. Then, "And maybe not even with a stopper! I"ll explain that once we"re on Qalara."
Kenowa would have preferred that he had decided to retire, to put all danger and strife behind him. Yet she was elated and tears spewed. "Oh Jone! You"re back!" And she flung her arms around her man.
"Back?" he said, holding her. "No ... but by Booda"s eyeb.a.l.l.s, I"m on the comeback trail, Kenny. They can rob me, stagger me, try to ruin and smash me, but by Booda they can"t crush me. Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can"t keep a good man down."
Weeping and laughing all at once, she clung to him and was held, and clung to. Then she felt his arousal, and she was even more elated.
"d.a.m.n! You s.e.xy s.l.u.t-did you have to get me all excited just now? SIPAc.u.m has everything in control and I was about to hand you the con and go get some rest."
"That"s all right, darling. Just sit down here in the 222.
captain"s chair for a change, Captain, and let"s see what this s.e.xy s.l.u.t can arrange."
Sinisterly black-clad, Corundum saw Starnik out once they had completed their information exchange arid negotiations. It was well after eleven, Franjitime. The pirate went over to the window. Shoulders back, hands clamped behind his back, he stared down at the city called Raunch. He had just learned that his deception out on Dot, combined with his destruction of that TGW s.p.a.cer, had indeed served its purpose. Corundum had brought down on Jonuta the wrath of TGO.
Yet Corundum was not smiling in happiness.
"So, Primeval Princess," he muttered, grim of face and of voice. "You did not come back after all, eh? With that scrawny lesbian bust h.e.l.lfire, I have no doubt. Just the sort of volatile careless girl to get herself blown away before she ever sees the age of thirty. Well Janja, well. This is unworthy of you and of Corundum. How can Captain Corundum hold up his head among those who aggrandize themselves by considering themselves his peers? I shall find you, "Cloud-top." If I must cover half the galaxy to accomplish it. And then, my dear little ungrateful barbarian, we shall take proper leave of each other!"
Janja blinked open her eyes and saw mistily. Her mouth was unbearably dry. She realized the reason: she was lying flat on her back. The mist swam and coalesced and she was looking up into a lean, longish, sharpish face with p.r.o.nounced bones. A sharp salient and hollows without plains or rondure, that face. Black holes of eyes like collapstars.
"Well, Cloud-top. A h.e.l.l of a beginning for you, onboard Satana! You"ll not be awakening all coddled and cuddly in the captain"s cabin every day-ess, you know!"
"h.e.l.l . . . h.e.l.lfire?" Janja put up a quivery hand to touch that face. Though h.e.l.lfire"s complexion was 223.
almost golden, the hand looked very pale against her skin. "I think ... I think I thought I was dead."
"Nan. You took a rectaboosted jolt of stopper setting number Two. No policer"s stopper, I think. And a nice lump on the back of your fluff-top head. You couldn"t control your muscles when you tried to get up, and you fell backward. You are alive, Janjy. We"re alive and Satana"s alive, and they are not. Quindy zapped "em both and uncoupled us while I was getting clearance from Station Control." h.e.l.lfire set a ringer against Janja"s nose and looked stern. "You didn"t reset your stopper on Three, my foolish Janjy. That"s disobeying captain"s orders."
Janja was still rocky, and more interested in feeling warm and safe than in feeling guilty. "S-sorry, Captain."
"Sorry! I"d say you"re sorry. Begin your new berth by disobeying captain"s orders. Disciplinary action called for. A whipping? Severe nipple-biting? Stopper-stuffing? No s.e.x at all until we reach Front, in a few days-ess? Well, we"ll see."
Janja didn"t see the lopsided grin. "Uh-"
"Meanwhile, welcome aboard Satana, Janja Cloud-top. We"re in s.p.a.ce, but you certainly weren"t kidnaped! We could hardly put you off after what we had to do, and this is where you want to be anyhow, isn"t it?"
"Yes."
So how do you earn your keep on my ship? What are your skills? Aside from several I know about, I mean? Bar-fighting and wonderfully fast action against that policer or so-called policer-twice-and a good working brain. And of course your bed skills I am familiar and happy with."