Dane bent his legs, straightened his back, and began to draw the ma.s.sive bot up out of the lock. At first it hardly moved, but he knew the secret was in a steady pull, not necessarily a strong one. Still, it was with mild satisfaction that he saw his bot come off the deck long before Tooe's, and he had clipped his bot to the main cable before hers even cleared the edge of the hatch. Crouching down, Dane pushed up against the bot, accelerating its slow motion toward the Queen, and floated away from the North Star.

He glided along the cable for a moment, making sure his bot moved smoothly. The cable-constrained orbit of the two ships made this part of the trip "uphill," so additional thrust would be needed. No problems presented themselves, so he braced himself under the Geepee and keyed his suit thrusters on. They flared briefly, propelling him and his cargo up along the cable. Turnover was barely perceptible, but now Dane found himself perched on top of the bot as it fell down the cable toward the Queen; mild vertigo seized him for a moment.

He triggered the temporary thrusters Ali had rigged on the front of the Geepee. The counter-blast of power pushed him into the bot as it decelerated, and two spots of light winked into existence on the Queen's hull. Dane worked the controls in stuttering pulses, watching the two spots of laser light converge; projected from the thruster pack, the two beams would meet when the bot was within human depth perception, which was notoriously unreliable in the glare of s.p.a.ce.

The spots merged and winked out; now Dane, concentrating fiercely, watched the highlights on the hull ahead of him. Dealing with ma.s.s as opposed to weight was still unfamiliar to him. Out of the corner of his vision he saw Tooe slowly overtaking him, her jets silent.

His was still slowing when he glanced over, and watched with a spurt of humor as Tooe triggered her jets just once, a long, low-intensity burn that brought her neatly to a halt within suit-cable distance of the Queen's lock well ahead of Dane.

Now it was just a matter of unclipping from the main cable and guiding the Geepees as they fell slowly but inexorably into the Queen's main lock. Stotz had rigged spring platforms to receive them. The Geepees could not be decelerated as they had been lifted-the prime rule of microgee was never to put yourself between two ma.s.sive free objects.

Once the Geepees stopped jouncing Dane tabbed the lock shut. As Stotz and Kosti appeared in their suits, followed by the Solar Queen's cargo master Jan Van Ryke, Dane realized just how unsuited the Solar Queen was to this type of operation, for the cable-orbit's acceleration made the back wall of the Queen-oriented as she was for vertical landings-into the floor.

Ali arrived a moment later, and for a time all were too busy for anything but brief communications. When the Geepees had been stowed safely for descent to a planet, Van Ryke sealed the cargo bay and they unsuited. Dane could feel the gees increase as he stowed his suit in the locker; the linked ships were spinning up to a quarter gee for comfort. Then Dane picked up his duffel and walked the short distance to his old cabin.

The Queen felt oddly unfamiliar. He walked along the wall of the corridor, threading his way past various outcroppings of ship systems and stepping over occasional hatches, outlined in lumenstrips of bright yellow-green. That reminder of distant Sol's imprint on humanity, tuning human eyes for the colors from the yellow-white sun of a chlorophyll planet, momentarily unsettled him as his mind tried to wrench the corridor into the microgravity layout of the North Star.

North Star-for just a moment, he was aware of Jasper and Rip on the North Star, orbiting opposite the Queen. A brief but intense wave of vertigo seized Dane, and his mind shook free of the image.

Dane looked around the cabin, his home for so long, try-ing to sort his emotions. How close and cramped it seemed, especially skewed ninety degrees! The cabin furnishings had been reoriented, locking into the clamps evident on every bulkhead, but he noted bright scratches on what was now the floor, evidence of how long the Queen's vertical orientation had ruled their lives in Terran s.p.a.ce. How dependent they had been on gravity! Were they growing away from the rest of humanity, out here, or merely adapting?

A strong hand whanged the decking outside Dane's open door, interrupting his musings. "Captain wants us." That growl belonged to Karl Kosti, the big man whose field of expertise was the machinery comprising the jets.

Dane followed the others up to the mess cabin. He smiled to himself as he noted that now, in partial gee, it was the human crewmembers who moved with a flat-footed shuffle, while Tooe moved freely, bouncing from bulkhead to bulkhead with a fine disregard for the mild acceleration of the two ships.

More evidence of. ingrained habits faced him when they all crowded into the mess cabin. The North Star had a perfectly good cabin that had probably served as the former captain's ready room, but the new crew still held all their meetings, formal and informal, in the mess cabin on that ship as well.

After a moment's disorientation, Dane identified his usual place. He glanced at Tooe as she squeezed in next to him, then looked up to see Ali's gaze on him. Was Ali feeling the same disorientation? A sensation almost like looking down the corridor formed by two opposed mirrors made his head swim briefly, and he thought he saw a flicker of unease in the handsome tech's eyes.

He couldn't ask Ali, so he busied himself with looking around at the others, who exchanged brief comments as they crowded in.

Captain Jellico waited until everyone was quiet. He looked much the same as ever, Dane thought: tall, lean, blaster scar down one weathered cheek, keen eyes. The entire crew believed Jellico to be the best Free Trade captain in the star-lanes, and nothing Dane had seen since he hired on had changed his mind about that.

"Slight alteration in plans," Jellico said without any preamble. "Wilc.o.x reports at least two unidentified craft in-system." He nodded over at the lanky, thin navigation officer. "And Ya has tried to raise them, without success." Now he indicated the Martian-born communications officer. Ya shrugged his broad shoulders slightly.

"At this point we are still a.s.suming that the planet is uninhabited," Jellico went on. "Unfortunately there's no way to be sure, especially given the violent weather and EM emissions from the cielanite deposits."

"EM?" asked Van Ryke, his white eyebrows quirking. "That wasn't in the survey. More of Flindyk's trickery?"

"Maybe," said Van Ryke, "but just as likely the general laxness of the Kanddoyds when it comes to gathering data on planets, which they have no use for. We're still in their sphere of influence."

"The magma pipes that cielanite is found in are strongly piezoelectric," said Johan Stotz. "Usually it's earthquakes that reveal cielanite deposits, and the signals can be detected light-years away. Here, it seems that the impact of violent storm waves on the volcanic islands causes huge electromagnetic pulses-radio waves that have very complex waveforms."

"The tides from the three moons make it even worse," said Tau.

"And look," said Tang Ya. He tabbed a control and the galley viewscreen lit up with a telescopic view of Hesprid IV. More than three-quarters of the globe was in darkness, strangely spotted with what looked like chains of Vereldian glowflies. Dane heard someone gasp as the realization hit them all simultaneously.

"Lightning," the communications tech confirmed. "When storms. .h.i.t the islands, the EM pulses help create huge lightning storms."

"Which means almost nothing can get through," Jellico commented.

Tang Ya nodded once and tabbed off the display. "But I've heard nothing even in the calm periods," he added. "Not that we'll have many of those. The Hesprid sun is approaching its peak sunspot activity, so the weather, and the EM, are going to get much worse."

"It's a wonder the place hasn't burned to cinders," AH Kamil drawled, "with all that energy."

"Looks pretty wet to me," Tau commented.

"In any case, we're going to have to a.s.sume that these others are possibly hostile," Jellico interjected, bringing the discussion back on topic. "And given the Patrol a.n.a.lysis of the weapon-scar on the North Star when we found her, we can't afford a confrontation. Even Patrol armor isn't much good against a colloid blaster."

The crew was silent. At the captain's mention of colloid blasters, Dane saw subtle reactions from some of the others- an angry narrowing of Ali's eyes, and a jutting of Kosti's jaw. Dane himself had never seen colloid blasters in action, but he knew what they were. Illegal except for use by armed Patrol craft, they used ship fuel to generate intense beams of particles and plasma. He even knew generally how it worked: cartridge feed, meaning burnout of the projector module each time. For those putting together the lethal beams an illegal catalyst whose major const.i.tuent was cielanite was the key element.

Hesprid IV produced cielanite. It didn't take any great leap of reasoning to figure that pirates who preyed on Traders mining cielanite could have used the cargo for their own purposes.

Dane shook his head slightly to chase away the dark thoughts. No use inventing fears before he had to face them.

Then he realized the captain was talking.

". so I am keeping six of us up here on the North Star," Jellico said. "Three will be on duty and three off, monitoring a constant signals watch."

"You still want us to take the Solar Queen down?" Dane asked.

Jellico's gray eyes rose briefly, and he nodded. "Rip's landed the Queen in some pretty bad weather. As yet we don't know how the Star handles in atmosphere, even a calm one. And though we could land both, leaving us somewhat low on fuel, that would give them-whatever their motives-high end of the gee well. So it's best that one of us is in orbit monitoring things. Any questions?"

"Synchronous...o...b..t?" Rip asked.

"No," Van Ryke interjected, his head slightly to one side, his manner that of a man considering a possible move on a chessboard. "High polar, I would suggest. Survey orbit. There may be other resources here that would increase our payoff."

Tang Ya shook his head. "I don't much care for that. It will be hard enough to maintain radio contact." He glanced at Jellico. "And the redundancy our signals will need to punch through will make them somewhat insecure-especially since we don't know what kind of spy code might have been left in the North Star's systems."

Always a.s.sume someone's listening. Dane could almost hear the com instructor's raspy voice at the Training Pool as she impressed on them the primary rule of communications.

Captain Jellico sat still for just a moment, then nodded to Van Ryke. "We never prospered by overlooking an opportunity," the bulky cargo master added.

No one spoke. Jellico gave a short nod, then said, "Polar it is. Jan, you'll stay with me. Karl, you as well."

Jan Van Ryke, Dane's former master, gave a great sigh, his bushy white brows arched in a slightly theatrical pained expression.

Jellico smiled just a little. "It was your idea. And if we do find ourselves in communication with whoever is here, it's your well-oiled tongue I'll be relying on to talk us out of any trouble they might want to cause."

Karl Kosti looked.slightly disappointed. Dane knew the big man hated free fall--he'd probably been looking forward to planetary gravity again. But he said nothing.

"How will we communicate, then?" asked Rip. "It'll take a tight beam to punch through from the planet, but still."

"We'll have to take that chance, despite the risk of interception," said Jellico. "Try not to, and if you must, keep it terse, and don't rely on our codes." He smiled. "A lot easier for us to find you, and less chance of unfriendly ears. If we make contact with the ships and find them friendly, then standard ciphers will do. If not, we'll pulse a code to you; as much as we can ram through the EM."

"What about a message torpedo?" asked Rip.

"The G.o.ds of s.p.a.ce only know where it would land in that weather," said AH Kamil, with a lazy shrug in the direction of the screen.

Rip nodded, his face faintly troubled. Jellico looked across at his wife, the beautiful Rael Cofort. Some kind of subtle signal pa.s.sed between them, and Dane wondered what they'd agreed on-or if they'd agreed.

Jellico said, "Then let's go!"

Dane watched the captain and some of the others go out, thinking, The Old Man and Dr. Cofort haven't any psi connection that Tau's mentioned-but it sure looks like they have the next best thing.

The captain and the doctor faded from his mind when he looked down into Tooe's huge yellow eyes. Her crest was raised at an alert angle he'd only seen once before, and she said, "Pirates, these others?"

"Maybe," Dane said reluctantly-as if his answer would make the threat real. "Hope not. Cielanite is rare enough to attract thieves-within the law, like Flindyk and his gang on Exchange, and without." He thought again about how cielanite was the main const.i.tuent of the illegal catalyst that energized colloid blasters, and winced slightly.

"They chase us onto planet?"

Dane grinned. "Not likely. Remember gravity, Tooe. It's not just a small area you visit and leave when you get tired of feeling its pull. It costs a lot in fuel to land on a planet, and it'll cost more to leave when we're loaded up."

"I understand fuel, me," she said. "So this why we don't take two ships down?"

"Correct. We'd be too short on fuel unless Stotz was able to both process the raw ore and rig us a fuel catalyst for the two heavy elements in the cielanite. And we may not have the resources for both. Anyway, if someone's going to attack us, they won't do it dirtside, where it's much harder. They'll try to zap us out here, probably when we're climbing into or out of the gravity well."

She nodded. "Ship vulnerable then."

"Right."

"If it's pirates, they can't be too big an operation," Van Ryke said from behind. "Or they'd be down there mining now."

"Either that or attacking us," came Wilc.o.x's quiet voice, as he finished a bulb of jakek.

"They're most likely a Survey team-or else independent scouters," Van Ryke went on, his manner rea.s.suring as he watched Tooe. "It makes sense to be cautious. After all, they don't know who we are-for all they know, we could be pirates, out looking for ships to jack."

Tooe's crest tipped on one side into query mode, and her eyes seemed less intense as she thought that over.

Van Ryke touched her thin shoulder. "I suspect the biggest challenge for you will be getting used to weight."

"What weight?" Kosti joked, looming over the little Rigelian. "She'll get down there and she'll still float."

"Right," Ali drawled from the hatchway. "She'll still be sitting on the ceiling munching her crunchies."

"And the rest of us will brain ourselves, thinking we're still in free fall," Wilc.o.x said, with a smile at Tooe.

Tooe listened to them making jokes. She knew they were jokes, even if the words did not seem funny. She liked it when they made jokes, because she felt rea.s.sured when they smiled and laughed. Going into a gravity well could not be so terrible if they joked-and they would know, for they had done it many times.

"I will not float, me," she said to Karl Kosti, as they started out. "I have ma.s.s!" She smacked her chest. "I will therefore have weight!"

"But not much, little cargo-wrangler," the big man said, laughing as he handed himself downdeck. "Not much!"

"What ma.s.s you do have needs strapping in," Jan said. "I believe the adventure is beginning." He looked up at Dane, his white brows making a shape that Tooe knew signalled an emotional change, but as yet she could not read it. "Good journey, my boy. You as well, Tooe."

He and the others transferring to the North Star suited up, and were soon jetting along the link to the other ship. Tooe watched them on the cargo-bay screen. When they were safely aboard and Rip Shannon conveyed the order to disengage the ships, Dane let Tooe work the controls.

Then it was time to get into the acceleration couch. Tooe hated that; she desperately wanted to stay at the console, where she could see everything.

Dane shook his head. "Tooe, this won't be like working in the heavy-gee gym on Exchange. You have to get into the couch. I wouldn't want to be caught outside mine, and I'm from Terra."

Tooe tried to hide her disappointment as she worked the webbing over her in the way they'd practiced. When she was ready, she looked across at the cargo master's console, wishing she could link up to Rip's piloting console so she could watch the landing.

"Here, Tooe," said Dane suddenly, his fingers playing briefly across the control tabs in his seat, and moments later her console screen lit. With delight she realized her wish had been granted.

She sent a quick glance at Dane, reminded of the psi link. Had he somehow read her thoughts? Except she had felt nothing, and he didn't act like a being who sensed thoughts. She thought back to the psi-sensitives in the klinti, and shook her head. He didn't read her thoughts; he sensed what she would like. This meant he was starting to know Tooe.

Pleased, she settled into her couch to watch her console. For a time she forgot all else, absorbed in the bright graphics of the display, happily tapping her way through various readouts and views, ignoring the brief bursts of acceleration that bounced her smoothly one way and then another, just like playing with the rubberdubber game that Momo had rigged from stretchy cargo straps they'd found in a long-forgotten locker in the heart of the Spin Axis of her former home on Exchange.

Then she saw Rip Shannon tense. Her body unconsciously tensed as she waited for something to happen. Nothing did, in the immediate sense. But as Hesprid IV loomed larger in the main viewscreen, the momentary accelerations became more frequent, and harsher. Now there was constant acceleration underlying all the bouncing, tugging at her guts. This wasn't like the smooth change between adaptation shifts on board the North Star. Tooe felt like she'd eaten too many Daddatik sweetnuts, and they were trying to burrow deeper into her stomach. Now it wasn't fun anymore.

It was then that the planet flipped abruptly, turning from a big ball out there into something vast and dangerous far below, something sucking her down, and Tooe experienced vertigo for the first time. And still she got heavier and heavier.

Now she could hear a sound like an overloaded ventilator, shrill and harsh. She tapped at her keys slowly, her fingers feeling like bloated Poapi-fruits, but all ship systems that she could see were green, except that the hull was heating up.

"Air's getting thick," a voice spoke over the comlink. Jasper, that was who. His voice sounded different, but Tooe's head hurt too much for her to figure out why.

"Huge high-pressure area," Rip replied abstractedly. "Ran into the bulge. More to come."

Despite her own misery, Tooe could hear the tension in the familiar mellow voice, which matched the set of Rip's shoulders and the swift stabbing of his fingers on his console. But then she puzzled out the sense of his words. Wind! She was hearing the sound of the Solar Queen's sleek hull ripping through the air of Hesprid IV. Now her instincts warred with understanding, as a part of her insisted: rupture!

Fighting panic, she scanned the schematic of the ship on her screen, but all the hull sensors indicated the ship was still intact. She fought hard against the danger sense, swallowing constantly. That hurt, too.

Time began to pa.s.s in fragments for Tooe as she struggled against the sickening sensations. What made it worse was the realization that she'd have to go through this again to get away from the planet.

The viewscreen was now gray with clouds streaking past as the Queen tore through the atmosphere. Faint flickers of greenish blue and very occasional glimpses of a gray sea far below were all Tooe could see, but on the radar a peak loomed ahead.

"That's it," Rip exclaimed. "Biggest island in the chain, most cielanite, too. And practically the only place we can land."

"If this is calm," came Ali's voice as the ship shuddered briefly through a wind shear, "I don't want to know what counts as a storm."

"We're just at the leading edge of a terminator storm, racing ahead of sunrise," replied Rip, speaking slowly as he concentrated on his piloting. "Jones's teeth! Look at that lightning! We'll be down and cabled before it hits if we move smartly."

This was actually the easiest part of the descent, Dane had told Tooe, when the ship was actually flying. The landing would be much trickier.

But for Tooe, the actual landing was a blurred misery of jerky accelerations that grew ever stronger, and a weight that dragged at every part of her, growing ever greater in the same direction no matter what the ship did. Her eyes teared so violently that she couldn't see the screen, and she lost track of time.

Then, one final b.u.mp, and as acceleration went steady, the final horror hit Tooe. You couldn't turn planetary gravity on and off like pseudo. It wasn't going to stop, not until they went through that all over again. With that thought, the little Rigelian hybrid let go her grasp on the world around her and slipped into unconsciousness.

Chapter Four.

At the last moment, a sudden flaw in the wind s.n.a.t.c.hed at the Solar Queen, and Rip grounded her more heavily than he'd intended.