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already knew what I intended. It was obvious. There's never any problem about
get-
ting down. Things fall down. The problem is getting down in a fit condition to
come up again. If a ship could take me to the clouds, I could ride out the
storm in a small life-raft. Sure it would crash. Sure I could get hurt. But
just so long as I hit that expanse of rock close enough to the
Swan
I should be in a condition fit enough to reach her and fly her out. There were
a lot of things that could go wrong, and a guy could get killed trying tricks
like that. But it could work. And it was the only way.
"There's a ship coming out from Pallant," said Titus. "The best they have. I
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can get better from New Alexandria, but it would take time."
"We'll use what we have," I said. "The ship's anchored down there, but in that
sort of weather she's taking one hell of a pounding. I want her as fit as
possible for a lift. Have you got a pilot?"
"A good one."
"A liner jockey?"
"An independent. He isn't a hero either. We bought him too."
"And the engineer?"
"The whole outfit. As a package."
"How much did you offer them?"
Charlot smiled. "Fifty," he said.
"Fifty?"
"Thousand," he added. "If they succeed, that is. They don't get anything if it
doesn't work. It's a salvage fee."
"So OK," I said. "You got me cheap. Lucky you."
"You didn't have to go through all that," he told me.
"Like hell," I said. "Are you trying to tell me that if I'd come here, said
how do you do, and then gone down to get the ship, then you'd have fallen all
over me and said 'Here's your money, good-bye and good luck'?"
"I'm not talking about the deal," he said. "I'm talking about the performance.
I'm talking about the way you opened that circuit, and still have it open, so
that you could shout out loud to everyone concerned that you weren't doing it
for nothing, that you were only doing it for the money. It wasn't necessary.
It's futile. You're a fool, Grainger."
"Yeah," I said, "maybe I am. I'm signing off here, Nick. I need some rest
before this ship arrives. I'll be with you when I can."
I closed the circuit, without giving him a chance to say anything. I didn't
want to listen.
I walked out of the room. The man who ran things on Iniomi just didn't
understand. He looked totally bemused. Titus watched me go. I don't think he
understood either, though he thought he did. I wasn't even sure that I
understood.
OK, said the wind. You're out. Out of it all. Not just the job, but the whole
thing. You're going to pick them up, and you've done your level best to make
them hate you for doing it. But do you really think it'll work? Do you really
think that they'll believe the act? I think they'll thank you for it anyway. I
think they'll love you for it.
They don't have to, I told him. It's just something I have to do. It's not for
them. Not for them at all. It's my show. There's no one I'd take risks for
except myself.
You're running away, said the wind. Ever since I got into your mind on that
black mountain, you've been running away. All you want to do is find yourself
a hole and hide. You're stacking excuses a mile high. You don't like Charlot,
you don't like the political situation, you don't like being under an
obligation. Even your fear and the fact that you don't like violence are just
excuses. You're running away because of sheer habit. It's a way of life,
you've got a Gallacellan mentality, Grainger.
The Gallacellans do all right, I told him. They survive.
It's not enough, he told me. Even they know that.
And it seemed that they did. Some of them. The men from the
Cicindel obviously thought survival wasn't enough. They had tried to stop
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Stylaster using the
Varsovien.
But I wasn't so sure that my sympathies weren't with Stylaster. I'd worked
out, by logic alone, why he wanted e ship so badly. There was no way of
confirming the guess, but I was pretty sure. I'd been right when I said the
Varsovien was an
emigration ship. It was the ultimate escape device the ultimate insurance. It
could take a million Gallacellans right out of the galaxy, and it had a Fenris
device to see that nothing
absolutely nothing could stop them.
The Gallacellan wars had ended without the
Varsovien being needed. It was needed again now. But not because the
Gallacellans saw another break-up in their civilisation. They were afraid of
something else entirely. They were afraid of us. The human race. And who could
blame them? The expansion of the companies was devouring the galaxy. The
balance between the companies and New Rome plus New
Alexandria was delicate enough to explode at a touch. War was coming. War
between the companies and the law, war between the companies and each other.
War between human , and alien. Titus Charlot and a couple of thousand like him
thought they could keep the lid on. Maybe they could. For ten years, a
hundred, a thousand. But not for-
ever. Who could blame the Gallacellans for being scared? Hell, was scared.
I
I
wanted out. All the way out. I wanted a nice little niche where I could hide.
A little corner which wasn't worth fighting about, where I could handle my
ship my way without interference. That was what the Gallacellans wanted too,
and Stylaster had been prepared to go to Andromeda to find it. But the
Gallacellans had their differences of opinion too. The
Cicindel had tried to tip us off tried to make us leave the
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