Second Star (Star Svensdotter #1) Page 5

  “They must have heard I was coming,” O’Hara murmured. I stole a sideways look at his rapt expression and held my peace.

  I had seen that expression before. Axial flying at Ellfive was the dream come true of every child from six to sixty, manned flight under manned power, no propellers, no pressure plates, no fairy dust, just flyers and their wings and the deep blue of the sky. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the solar system, except perhaps the Bat’s Cave, the cavern they had sealed over on Luna. Unless the Russians had started jumping off Nix Olympica on Mars. We watched flyer after flyer launch from the two ledges, taking turns jumping from Orville to Wilbur and back again, soon afterward to glide by the aircar on their colorful graphite-and-plastic wings. A few of them waggled their wings in greeting. Most of them cursed us for being in their way. Flyers are no respecters of authority when it interferes with their glide path.

  “You know, I remember after the Beetlejuice Message,” the big man said finally, “how all the crazies came crawling out of the cracks. They had bug-eyed monsters on the cover of Scientific American and little green men chasing each other across the news on every trivee screen on Terra. Liberals were ready to welcome the new and no doubt superior race with open arms—”

  “—and conservatives speculated darkly over the intentions of what was undoubtedly an invasion force,” I said, getting into the spirit of the thing. “We were no longer alone in the universe. But what did the Beetlejuicers look like?”

  “And what did they eat?”

  “And did they have separate sexes?”

  O’Hara dropped his voice and said in a tone one step up from the tomb, “Did they have sex?”

  We looked at each other and smiled. It was getting easier to do, and it made me nervous. “That was a time.”

  He nodded, looking back at the flyers. “It was that. Funny how Frank Sartre turned all that into an afternoon on the wing for these folks.”

  “All Frank said was what he’d been saying for the previous twenty years.” I quoted, “ ‘The surest road to the stars is to build self-supporting habitats in orbit about the earth, colonies that will pay for themselves with solar power and zero-gravity industries as well as provide bases for further exploration and exploitation of the stars.’ But after the Beetlejuice Message everyone decided he was a prophet and swore him in as chairman of the Habitat Commission.”

  “He design this?” O’Hara waved an all-inclusive hand.

  “God, no. Frank proposed a small, enclosed sphere maybe two kilometers in diameter. It was Congress who decided to go for broke and build the largest of all the O’Neill habitat designs. One of the structural engineers told me there was more margin for error that way.” I hesitated, wondering if he would understand. “The Beetlejuice Message was like the spark from heaven, and afterward there were no light half-believers of casual creeds left. I don’t think Frank expected the response that followed the Message. Not a tenth of it.”

  “It was one hell of a spark,” O’Hara agreed. “Where do I get my wings?”

  I was admiring the style of one woman in a pair of bright blue Wright Flyers. She would beat up almost to zerogee, until she couldn’t quite grab air anymore, and then sideslip a hundred meters down on one gentle swoop, until gravity began to tug her down, only to climb again. “Talk to Anitra Kvasnikof at Daedalus. She’ll arrange for you to be fitted and have the cost of the wings deducted from your salary.”

  “How much?”

  I turned to measure his impressive frame with my eyes. “What you have left over from your first paycheck after the freight on the orchid stuff ought to just about cover it.”

  We watched the airshow for a while longer. “What’s the worst I can expect on the job?” he said, suddenly serious. “Bottom line. You could start with this Luddite movement that keeps kidnapping astronomers on Terra.”

  Back to business. “Obviously the Luddite group has stepped up its activities—”

  “Obviously?”

  I sighed. He wanted chapter and verse. Well, if I were the new security supervisor, so would I. “Do you know who they are?”

  “I know a little about what they represent. A rabid anti-technology terrorist group, aren’t they? Started about two hundred years ago back in the English part of the European Commonwealth, when guildsmen thought the mechanization of the industrial revolution was going to put them out of work. The group we’re talking about now was formed more recently. They’ve got around two thousand hardcore members and another fifty thousand dilettantes who merely dabble in destruction. Ideologically, the group opposes space exploration and colonization on the grounds that if Terra was good enough for their fathers, it’s good enough for them.”

  Put like that, the Luddite demon shrank to a much more exorcisable size. “That’s them.” I rubbed my forearm. The shamskin had long since fallen off and the teeth marks were almost invisible. “You must understand, O’Hara, that when you accepted the job of security supervisor, you took over the—the—you inherited the duty of—of—well, you get to space the next guy who tries to blow me up.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said absently.

  He wouldn’t have been so goddam nonchalant the week before. I struggled to match his calm. “Have you been briefed on my no-weapons policy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you agree?”

  “No.” He smiled at my expression and said, “But you’re the boss.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I am, but I expected more argument out of a security supervisor who once fought a revolution and wound up responsible for the defense of an entire Terran nation.” I waited hopefully but he said nothing more and I went on. “The closer it gets to commissioning, the more frantic the Luddites will get to prevent it happening, and the more alert we have to be for sabotage. I want you to concentrate your efforts in preventing a repeat of last week.”

  “All right,” he said equably.

  I was insensibly comforted by that deep-voiced reassurance, pronounced in an interesting amalgam of African sibilants and eastern seaboard A’s. Next to a cat’s purr my favorite noise is English spoken with an accent. “Sometimes we have trouble with liberty parties from Orientale, but in general the Patrol MPs manage them pretty well. For the rest, discipline is enforced through the director’s mast for punishments and rewards. You settle the petty cases and save the Solomons for me. Most of the supervisors handle their own departments, which is why there have been only one hundred and seventeen masts in the last fifteen years.”

  “I think it might have a little to do with the swift and speedy execution of justice on the part of the director. I like your style, Star.”

  “Other than sabotage—”

  “I like the way you blush, too.” One forefinger investigated the opening of my collar. “How far down does it go?”

  I moved out of reach, or tried to. An aircar is not what anyone could call roomy. “Theft here isn’t as bad as some projects I’ve worked on. Of course there aren’t many places four hundred thousand klicks from Terra to hide a D-9 StarCat.”

  “No.”

  I knew he was laughing at me and I went on doggedly, “The problems here aren’t all that different from the problems on any large construction project anywhere on Terra. Ellfive welders are just as thirsty as any 798er out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the operators are even more horny than their union brothers downstairs, if that’s possible. There are a few illegal stills. Two years ago we had a couple of hookers posing as biotechs show up and sell over half a million Alliance dollars in magazine subscriptions until Kate found out and alerted the Magdalene Guild. That’s about as exciting as it gets. I don’t have any problem with drinking or doping as long as blood and urine are clear on the job, especially zerogee and EVA. There isn’t much anyone has to import to have fun.”

  “What happened to the last security supervisor?”

  “Nobody knows.” He stared at me, startled out of his placidity, and I nodded once for emphasis. “There was trouble with one of the si
licon techs in the Frisbee. She was a hell of a tech and he wasn’t much of a supervisor, so I was fixing to fire him when she came to me and asked me not to. A few days later he went EVA for a safety inspection. He didn’t come back, and no one’s seen him since.”

  “You think—”

  I held up a cautionary hand. “I’ve told you exactly what I know happened firsthand. Anything else is speculation, no more, no less.”

  “And she was a hell of a tech,” he said.

  “Yeah. She signed on the first mining expedition to the Trojans. I was sorry to see her go.”

  He shook his head. “Right. Tour over?”

  I nodded, and said, “You might want to spend the rest of the afternoon choosing a home.”

  “Question.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where do you live?”

  I made a vague gesture that encompassed the entire South Cap. “I’ve got a place a couple thousand feet below Orville and Wilbur, about halfway down the mountains.”

  He peered over the side. “I don’t see it.”

  “It’s a little house, and it’s the only one there.”

  He looked back at me. “Sounds lonely.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, trying to be honest. “Sometimes just alone. I like it that way.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced. He raised one hand and touched my cheek. “Soft,” he said. He tucked a wisp of my hair back behind an ear. “Pretty.”

  My communit started wailing the emergency call and I keyed it to receive. I kicked in the throttle and had the aircar in a steep, diving turn back toward the North Cap almost before Archy bellowed, “Star, Patrolman trouble at Kate’s! Rex says get there soonest!”

  “On my way, and I’ve got the security supervisor with me.” I leveled off at three hundred and let the throttle out, although an aircar at flank speed would have trouble keeping up with a snail with a limp.

  “What’s up?” O’Hara said, loosing his death grip on the side of the aircar and raising his voice to be heard over the sound of air rushing by.

  “Sounds like trouble with the liberty party from Orientale. Archy? What’s happening now? Let me talk to Rex.”

  “He’s not answering his communit, Star. Kate says they’re heading for their shuttle and to go directly to the hangarlock.”

  Twenty minutes later, most of which I spent mentally composing a speech to Daedalus on the advisability of upgrading aircar performance, we were at O’Neill. I was at the hangarlock in ten minutes flat, an Ellfive record, rolled into the barrel lock, and rolled out the other side into the middle of what seemed to be World War IV.

  Half the combatants were Ellfive longshoremen and the rest were Patrolmen, with a few Ellfive security guards standing out like red bees at an ant convention. Rex was one of them, and as I watched, a man in the black and silver of the Space Patrol braced himself against a joist and brought a fist down hard just behind Rex’s left ear. O’Hara winced and clicked his tongue. Rex’s eyes rolled up and his body went limp and the force of the blow knocked him literally into a spin across the hangar toward us. O’Hara fielded him with one hand, unhooked a bungee cord with another, and fastened Rex to a cargo sling safely out of the line of scrimmage.

  The fight would have caused the Marquis of Queensberry considerable anguish and Buster Keaton nothing but pure, unadulterated joy. Fortunately the walls of the transitional hatch were heavily padded; we had had too much experience with green hands pulling a little too hard on a load that was a little too large to handle once it got moving. The rules of inertia and mass don’t change just because the rule of gravity no longer applies. The longshoremen had an edge in home ground and weapons and were laying vigorously about themselves with boathooks and fenders, where the Patrolmen had only their fists. An unconscious longshoreman tumbled across the cargo bay, bounced off a bulkhead, caromed off an extinguisher rack, and for all I know may be tumbling still. I saw a Patrolman take a swing at one longshoreman, miss completely, and continue around in a pirouette that brought him in an increasingly lazy circle to the center of the lock, where he tangled with a cargo net. The longshoreman hooked his feet into a toehold, snagged the net with a boathook and gave the net and the Patrolman a firm nudge toward the opposite bulkhead. The net and the Patrolman picked up speed, the Patrolman smashed into the wall, fifty kays of net smashed into him, and the lights were out for that representative of zerogee law enforcement.

  Something scratched at my sleeve and I looked down to see someone’s front tooth, the root bloody, bump into my forearm. A globule of blood promptly attached itself to my sleeve and spread into a dime-sized stain. I looked up. There wasn’t a Patrol MP in sight. I cursed and turned to pull myself out of the way and ran up against—who else? Caleb Mbele O’Hara. I glowered at him. “You are more underfoot than a litter of kittens.”

  He jerked his head toward the melee and inquired serenely, “You want me to break that up?”

  “And just how would you go about it, pray tell?”

  He thought it over, surveying the scene as he dangled one-handed from a wall grip. “Could we turn the gravity back on?” he suggested. In spite of myself I almost laughed, and O’Hara saw it and grinned, a white slash in his dark face. “That’s better. Is there a P.A. around here somewhere?”

  “Over by the p-suit locker,” I said, pointing. “See the control panel?”

  “Got it.” He reversed neatly and began pulling himself swiftly from one wall grip to another. I followed, noticing that he was a quick learner, because he bore no resemblance to the guy grabbing for sky all across the hangarlock the previous week.

  We got to the control panel and I pulled the mike and thumbed the switch for the loudspeaker. “Crank it up to full volume,” O’Hara said, tucking his toes beneath a locker and cupping the mike in both hands, “and plug your ears.”

  I did both and nodded that I was ready.

  I saw his chest expand as he took a deep breath, another, and then the entire hangarlock was filled with a shrill, high-pitched shriek that escalated into a kind of ululation that sounded like deranged laughter. The sound echoed from bulkhead to bulkhead and the vibration bounced me around worse than my worst aircar landing. Whenever the sound seemed to be dying down O’Hara filled his lungs and brought it back to life. The fight slowed up right away, as the brawlers broke off fighting to jam their fists in their ears instead of each other’s faces. It turned out there wasn’t a thousand to each side, but more like ten or twelve.

  When the activity had slowed enough to suit him O’Hara gave the bulkhead behind him a gentle kick that had him running out of steam in almost the exact center of the hangarlock. “All right,” he said, still into the mike clipped to his collar, “break it up. You”—he pointed to a Patrolman with stripes on his sleeve—“and you”—he pointed to Rex, who had regained consciousness and was fighting his way free of the bungee cord—“follow me. The rest of you stay put, and Duffy”—this to the lead longshoreman—“you see to it they do.” He turned and sent the mike tumbling toward me end over end. I caught it, snapped it back into the wall socket, and followed the three of them through the barrel lock.

  “I want to call Orientale,” the Patrolman said immediately.

  Rex was almost, but not quite, too angry to speak. “This started at Kate’s, Star. They gang-raped one of her girls.”

  · · ·

  Charlie’s brown eyes looked tired when she came back into the dispensary. “She was able to identify her assailants before I sedated her. I pulled the visas filed with security when the party checked in and printed out pictures. Name, rank, med file, and serial number on the back of each. DNA matches the semen samples.” She shoved them at me. “Here. Get them away from me.”

  “How is she?”

  “Multiple contusions, concussion, loss of blood, nightstick fracture right ulna, retinal damage to left eye, shock, no front teeth left, and that’s just the physical damage.” Charlie shook her head. “I don’t even want to talk abou
t her mental state. She’s angry now, but that’ll wear off, and when it does…” Her voice trailed away, and she shook her head again.

  “What does she say happened?”

  “She says one of the Patrolmen—that one—wanted to buy an hour. She didn’t like his attitude, so she said no. When he got obnoxious about it she left. He followed her upstairs and insisted, with help from his three shipmates. She fought. A customer next door heard the commotion and came in to check and they jumped him and made him watch.” Charlie tugged at the collar of her jumpsuit. “That’s all she remembers. She passed out when they started taking turns.” She was silent for a moment, and then said, “I’d forgotten this kind of thing still happens, Star. I just—I guess—I didn’t believe it could happen here, on Ellfive. Want to see her?”

  “If it will help,” I said steadily.

  She gave a tired shrug. “It can’t hurt.”

  When I got back to Kate’s my control was hanging by a thread. Kate, her bartender, three of Kate’s other girls, and the customer—a longshoreman who had called in his friends and forced the Patrolmen into a retreat to the hangarlock and their shuttle—confirmed the victim’s story. The Space Patrol sergeant in charge of this liberty party, his face waxen, repeated the only thing he had said so far, “I want to call Orientale.”

  “You don’t cooperate with this investigation and you’ll be lucky if you ever see Orientale again,” I told him.

  “She was only a whore,” he said. There was a murmur of agreement from his comrades in arms, grouped in back of him in a stiff line with their hands bound behind their backs.

  We were standing in the middle of the shambles of what had been a friendly neighborhood bar with a little casino in the back. The second story was full of rooms with beds in them that took up almost all the floor space of each room. Variously bruised and bandaged and all of them white and shaken, Kate’s staff was sweeping up broken glass and stacking pieces of broken tables and chairs in a big pile. Kate herself, a large, normally ebullient woman with sharp black eyes and a nose like a bran muffin, was straddling a chair on my left, smoking a slender cigar with her little finger crooked as if she were drinking tea with King William. Her black eyes squinted against the smoke, fixing on the sergeant’s face in an unwavering stare.