Back | Next
Contents

— 3 —

THE GARDEN SPOT

Don Hawthorne

2034 A.D., Wayforth Station

A class action suit filed by the crew of a CoDominium exploration vessel was upheld today after six weeks’ review of the case by CoDo arbitrators. The suit will now proceed to CoDominium Civil Court for eventual resolution.

Captain Jed Byers of the CDSS Ranger and his crew were prepared to bring suit against the MIT/CalTech University Consortium for breach-of-contract regarding the Ranger’s claim of a discovery bonus for the Byers’ Star System. Though no habitable worlds exist in this system, the primary gas giant does possess a marginally habitable moon. The Ranger’s master and crew admit that this moon’s qualifications for colonial use are barely within the parameters established by CoDominium law, but it was the University Consortium’s position that the very fact of its being a moon rather than a planet rendered any discovery bonus clauses in their contract null and void. In addition, reaching the new system is by no means easy; it lies at the end of several awkwardly linked Alderson Points, and travel time from Earth is over a standard year. Even so, CoDo arbitrators, perhaps fearing to set a precedent that might discourage initiative among exploratory vessels, passed the case upward in the Civil Judiciary, which is expected to hand down a ruling in favor of Captain Byers and his crew.

When asked his opinion on the future of the system which now bears his name, Captain Byers shrugged and said: “That’s not my problem anymore. We found it. Now it’s up to the Survey boys.”

Willard Fahran, attorney for the University Consortium had little to say beyond this: “We don’t see much point in pursuing this any further. The moon isn’t much more than a rock, but the more time we waste on litigation, the less time the Survey groups have to find some shred of value in it.”

Mr. Fahran would not comment on a statement by Allan Wu, Science Officer of the Ranger, that “ownership” of an entire planetary body for personal exploitation allows very little chance of bankruptcy.”

2035 A.D., Byers System

“Geez, this place doesn’t look too good.” Frank Owens, the Navigator, grunted as he hunched over his screen in a posture that would bring misery to his back in years to come.

“What it looks like is borderline quality dog food,” Brian Connolly, the First Officer, concurred. His voice had that fruity uppah-crust British drawl, and even in the gloom of the bridge, you could tell from its modulation that his posture was correct; his spine would never dare be otherwise.

“Cold dog food,” Owens continued. He sat up and turned toward Captain Emmett Potter. “Christ, Captain; people are gonna try to live here?”

“Most likely.” Potter was the end product of ten generations of Narragansett Bay fisherfolk. Though unusually loquacious for a Wet Yankee, he had to be in the right mood, and right now, that mood was not on him. There was too much work to do. He finished tweaking a circuit board and plugged it back into the sensor module. The ship’s master, Farrow, had very little money to spend, and in the months since leaving Wayforth Station Potter had become something of an expert in making do.

“Well, then, they’re for sure gonna die here, I can tell you that right now.” Owens grabbed his floating keypad and began making notes.

“Well, pickings have been pretty slim, lately,” Potter continued. Which was something of an understatement.

There’d been a lucky run of High Desirability planets discovered and placed on the “A” list in the last few years, and Survey Teams were assigned by seniority. The Explorers had been getting rich on discovery bonuses, the senior Survey Teams had been getting richer on all the “Priority:Rush/Habitation Study” orders, and the Companies had been getting richer still on their increased stock values for acquisition of high investment value worlds.

The only people who hadn’t been getting rich were, as usual, the commander and crew of the Fast Eddie.

The CDSS Edward V was her name on the roster, but her first master had been a Canuck drunkard who insisted on calling her Edouard Vee; somebody heard the “vee” in a Montreal accent, thought it was “vite,” which meant “quickly” in French, the joke made the rounds and the name stuck like a leftover curse, far outlasting the short and undistinguished career of the ship’s first, now dead, master.

Fast Eddie had a crew of eight: The master, Thomas Farrow, the flight crew, consisting of Captain Potter, First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens, Chief Engineer William Liu and a black gang comprised of two engineers of indiscriminate but more or less Latin ancestry named Icaorius and Mi’huelo Costanza. Icaorius and Mi’huelo being something of a mouthful, they were known variously as “Ike and Mike,” “the Cisco Kids” or more commonly, “those Christless Spaniards.” They might actually have been Spaniards for all that the officers could decipher of their bizarre dialect, but in fact, they were Basques, and every reference to them as Spaniards by the rest of the crew was followed by mysterious failures in cabin humidity, air conditioning, and most frequently, the mean temperature of shower water. Consequently or not, as time passed there were fewer and fewer such references.

Of the eighth man, the less Potter thought about him the better he felt. Robert Miller was very low on his list of favorite people.

Captain Potter shook his head, thinking about how he had spent the last half of a year, and to what purpose? The ship was a patchwork embarrassment, the crew likewise, and as data began rolling in on the cheesy joke of a habitat beneath them, Potter couldn’t help but recall Hogan’s words. He’d been with Farrow when the Wayforth Station administrator, Vilmer Hogan, had called them in for the assignment. At the time, he knew the master hadn’t had much choice.

“Fast Eddie is just the ship for the job,” Hogan had told them. Potter had noticed that the administrator hadn’t met their eyes when he’d said that.

“It’s Edward the Fifth,” Farrow had said tiredly. He didn’t have much fight left in him, these days.

Potter had jumped in before the administrator could bully Farrow into submission. “And how can you say that, Hogan? She’s been laid up for eight weeks waiting for parts that your service crews claim have to be saved for ships with higher seniority. And you want to send us to a rock that’s over a year from Earth? We’ll be spending the next six months burning fuel to get from one Alderson Point to the next and another half a year to get back.”

“Your wages will accumulate, same as always. And you’ll be reimbursed for your fuel expenditures.”

Potter had given the administrator a sour smile. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Hogan. You know as well as I that we can’t come out ahead on this deal even if we hit the jackpot on a Survey Bonus.” It had seemed like such a good idea for the crew to buy out Fast Eddie once upon a time.…

Hogan had shifted in his chair, and for the first time Potter had noticed the sweat on the fat man’s upper lip; he was very nervous about something. “Look, Farrow, Potter. Survey of this moon is very important to certain people. These people are eager to confirm the moon’s habitability as soon as possible. I’m authorized to cancel all of the Fast Eddie’s outstanding debts, return her to full operational status at no expense to you, and absorb all your operating costs for the duration of the mission.”

Potter remembered listening to the very quiet air conditioning unit in Hogan’s office hum for some time.

“Why?” Farrow had spoken first, surprising them both.

Hogan turned to the Fast Eddie’s master, but Potter felt his attention on himself. “Wayforth Station is a hell-hole; we both know that. It, and places like it, exist only because they sit at intersections of Alderson Points. The CoDominium has written: ‘Wherever two or more Alderson Points are gathered together, there also am I.’”

Potter shifted uncomfortably; he was not a very religious man, but he was pretty sure Farrow was, and he resented Hogan’s sarcastic blasphemy in the presence of Fast Eddie’s master. Hogan’s attitude might also be taken as subversive by certain overzealous CoDo persons.

“Wayforth sits at the center of six such Alderson Points,” Hogan went on, leaning forward over his desk and steepling his fingers. “That makes it valuable, commercially and strategically. It connects to several of those Gold Rush worlds where all the other Survey Teams are even now making maps for the CoDo city planners and the corporate industrial developers. Earth-like worlds, easy to get to; prime stuff for the factions that can afford them, CoDo or otherwise. As for this moon, the Company wants to be sure it’s not missing out on some lucrative mining potential; the Universities are still whining about a wildlife preserve; even the religious nuts are rallying under a common banner—Harmonies, they’ve started calling themselves—for a place to worship away from CoDo interference in their affairs. An out-of-the-way place like this moon appeals to all sorts of people by the very fact of its lack of easy access.”

Hogan leaned back, his bulk making the chair creak even in Wayforth’s low gravity. “But there is another value to out-of-the-way places, too, gentlemen,” he finished.

Potter had sighed. “I see,” he had said, and he did.

Out-of-the-way places were for putting things out of the way, and the things that were most often put out-of-the-way in the CoDominium were people. Earth was still crowded, and the better colony worlds were taken, or their lobbyists were still able to resist forced refugee assignment in the Grand Senate.

You had to put them somewhere, he also knew.

Enter the CoDominium’s newest entity, the Bureau of Relocation, which had been created to find a solution to the increasing numbers of unwanted minorities, religious outcasts and undesirable politicals. The Bureau of Relocation was still in the organizational phase, but was rumored to be up and running by 2040. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Corrections, BuCorrect for short, moved product off Earth like there was no tomorrow, and its product was criminals. Sometimes the colonists were willing; more often they were not. But willing or not, they moved.

“Poor bastards, Potter had said, as he and Farrow signed the contract for the Survey order.

“Don’t worry about your crew,” Hogan had said. “Better they have something to do for two years than sit around idle.”

But Potter hadn’t meant the crew of the Fast Eddie. He had read the discovery team’s preliminaries on the moon of the Byers’ Star gas giant, and he had been thinking about the people who would someday have to live there.

Now that Fast Eddie had arrived; the crew began the long preparations that would culminate, however reluctantly, with the first extended visit of men to the moon’s surface, and Captain Potter’s mood shifted into the low gear of indigestion.

“Pack your long underwear, boys,” Owens pronounced, and transferred the last of the orbital survey data to the Fast Eddie’s shuttle computers. He turned at a chuckle from Connolly. “What?”

“Oh, just thinking about all the things I’ve said that wouldn’t happen ‘til hell froze over.’” The First Officer pointed to a screen rippling with ground images and overlaid with environment data. “They’re all down there waiting for us right now.”

“Cheery thought.”

“All right, knock it off.” Potter’s admonition was quiet, almost weary; but not without a tinge of sincerity. Cat’s Eye’s moon was a NEW PLACE, words that filled the captain’s mind in large block letters, black as death. Too many names were entered in Wayforth’s Mariner’s Hall as having never returned from NEW PLACES, and Potter had no intention of adding any more familiar names to that list, least of all his own. His temper was short, anyway; it was no longer possible to avoid going and speaking to Miller.

The eighth man of the Fast Eddie’s complement was not, strictly speaking, a crew member. Robert Miller was listed on the Fast Eddy’s first-ever passenger manifest as a “CoDominium Xeno-Geologist.” While not welcomed by anyone since the day Hogan had forced him upon the Fast Eddie’s crew, Miller had made himself as unobtrusive as possible during the long flight from Wayforth, earning a grudging acceptance from the others that was best described as belligerent neutrality. Besides a gift for chess, he contributed nothing to the ship’s activities and took what Potter considered to be more than his share of food and oxygen; Miller was an irredeemable athlete, given to spending eight hours or more in the Fast Eddie’s centrifuge ring and eating like a horse afterward.

Half-a-G seemed never to be enough for Miller, and Potter had three times found the rotation setting increased beyond its long-term design limits. He’d finally ordered Liu to program a lock-out on the ring’s controls, and Miller had sullenly acquiesced.

Gripping the handholds above his seat, Potter picked himself up and kicked off in the direction of the bridge door, continuing the zero-G acrobatics as he proceeded down the corridor to the living quarters module of the Fast Eddie. At the last door he floated to a stop and tapped the button.

“Yes?” The voice from within was no less flat for being filtered through a wall speaker.

Don’t say “come in” or anything civil, Potter thought. Asshole. “We’re taking the shuttle down in about an hour. Bring your gear and come to the launch bay when you’re rea—”

Potter was cut off by the rapidly opened hatch, revealing in all his glory Robert Miller, Company Man. Miller was already wearing E-Suit underwear and had a golfbag sized canvas carry-all slung over his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said as he moved past Potter into the corridor.

Potter noticed the slippery grace with which the man moved as he insinuated himself into the gangway and moved off in the direction of the launch bay. “Insinuated” himself, Potter thought. That’s a good word for it; that’s what he’s done since the first day we laid eyes on him.

“He’s a part of your contract.” Hogan was adamant.

“Then the contract’s broken; no non-union, non-essential civilian personnel on Survey vessels, for their own safety and that of the crew.” Potter felt his blood pressure rising; he was doing all of Farrow’s fighting for him again, and it always gave him a migraine.

“You’ll bear no responsibility for him.”

“Damn right, ’cause he’s not going to be aboard.”

Hogan sighed deeply. “Potter, there are Company operatives aboard every ship in the Survey Fleet. You and I both know that, so let’s cut the bull, shall we? At least this way you know who yours is. Miller goes with you.”

“What the hell for, Hogan? We’re a Survey vessel, we can’t file any claims if something valuable is found anyway.”

“You’re forgetting the most important thing about the Byers’ Star moon. Its value as a dumping ground for undesirables. What happens if those undesirables turn over a rock one day and find a vein of gold?”

“You’ve got a lot of rich undesirables, so what?”

“Money is commerce, and commerce means representation in the CoDominium Senate.”

Potter rubbed his eyes in weariness. “Rich undesirables who vote, right, I get it. Can’t be having that, now, can we?”

Hogan shook his head and pressed a button on his desk. “I’m glad we understand each other. Eve, send in Mister Miller.”

When Miller entered, Hogan had introduced him to Potter and Farrow, each man had nodded, and none of them had spoken another word to each other.

With few exceptions, their first meeting with Miller that day had set the tone for all Potter’s future conversations with the man. Which, he considered, watching Miller’s back receding down the corridor, was just the way he liked it.

Potter returned to the bridge, allowing First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens to head for the shuttle bay to make the pre-flight check.

He sat down with a surly grunt as they left, thinking how glad he would be when this was all over.

“Shuttle One to Bridge.”

Potter acknowledged. From the shuttle bay, Connolly and Owens began calling off the pre-launch checklist in bored tones that belied their interest in the shuttle’s operating status.

Alone among Fast Eddie’s accoutrements, at least one of her two shuttles was always kept in perfect working order. They had to be: Fast Eddie might not be much, but it was the only way home, and getting back to the lumbering Survey ship waiting in orbit was only slightly less important than landing in one piece after leaving her.

Giving them the final green light, Potter threw the switches which detached the shuttle from its umbilicals. The squat, ungainly form dropped away slowly from Fast Eddie’s forward ventral bay, dwindling in the dark distance, finally backlit by the bright flare of its engines as it moved into its descent pattern.

“Godspeed,” Captain Potter said quietly. But for himself, the bridge was empty now, and lonely. Along with the First Officer and Navigator, the shuttle carried Ike, several hundred pounds of survey equipment, and Miller himself, stuffed unceremoniously and uncomplaining into an emergency deceleration hammock. Potter found himself envying the Company man even that. It would have been reckless to leave Farrow to oversee the operations of the vessel, and Chief Engineer Liu had enough to keep him and his remaining engineering lackey busy for months.

Potter sat back in the command seat, considering how much he hated being left behind, and how lonely the long trip home would be if anything went wrong down there.

The idea of things going wrong inevitably brought Potter’s thoughts back to Miller.

The man was no more than a Company spy, Hogan had admitted as much; had admitted too that Miller’s job was to be sure that Byers’ Star’s moon had nothing of sufficient value to prevent its designation as a future relocation site for the Bureau of Relocation, BuReloc.

Potter, rubbed his chin. All debts forgiven and a free ride for the Fast Eddie; if Hogan’s on the level. BuReloc is putting an awful lot of effort into getting a man out here just to verify that a place is worthless to the CoDominium government.

“Right,” Potter grunted. But in the last year, he’d had many opportunities to go over the available data on the moon, and there was nothing there to imply that it was anything more than an interesting exception in the Biosphere Rulebook.

Still…

He was nervously chewing the inside of one cheek when the shuttle crashed.

“Fast Eddie, this is Shuttle One down, mayday.”

“Give it a rest for a moment, won’t you?’ Connolly’s voice was weary as he massaged his temples, eyes closed.

Owens stared at his screens in tightly controlled terror. “Fast Eddie’s probably in farside orbit from us right now; goddamn-it, I must’ve told Potter a hundred times to recheck those relay satellites.”

“Well, he didn’t, we don’t have them, so if Fast Eddie’s in farside orbit right now, we can’t talk to them.” Connolly opened a panel on his own console and distractedly pushed a few buttons.

“It’s dead, for chrissakes,” Owens surrendered in disgust. “Leave it alone.” His own board confirmed his judgment that all the shuttle’s port side controls were inoperative. They’d landed very hard and with a lot of noise, and every screen monitoring the port systems had gone dark the same moment that the shuttle had developed an ominous, sickly list.

Ike arrived with the results of his inboard systems inspection; the shuttle was small, and it hadn’t taken him long to ascertain that an outside inspection was necessary.

“Christ on a crutch.” Owens’ voice tightened by the minute as he struggled out of his seat against the unfamiliar gravity. “Well, that should make Miller happy.”

“Miller?” Connolly frowned. “We’ve an emergency here, Owens; we can’t have him toddling outside on a whim while we’re trying to perform damage assessments.”

“Oh? Why the hell not? He’s going to be useless as tits on a bull, and it’ll keep him out of the way while we work.”

Owens was at the door when Connolly added: “Look, Owens, I can’t say I’ve much use for the fellow myself; but we can’t spare anyone to buddy with him; what happens if he wanders off and gets lost, or hurt?”

“Who cares?” Owens mumbled without turning around.

Thomas Farrow, Owner and Master Aboard of the Fast Eddie, stared at the screens with great, sad owl eyes. He’d posted himself to the bridge immediately upon hearing of the shuttle crash.

Pausing only long enough to drop three tabs of Hangover-Be-Gone, Potter uncharitably thought.

Potter had found his temper shortening with every discovery of a new dimension of his own impotence to affect the crisis. He had just learned that the second shuttle was inoperative; there could be no rescue from that quarter. Farrow had neglected to schedule its hundred-hour check, and Potter had found a dozen problems that were sufficient to ground it for full overhaul. He sighed again. But it wasn’t Farrow’s fault that they had no relay satellites; Potter had made the mistake of trusting Hogan’s word on that one, and his ulcer was exacting payment for that folly, now.

Shuttle One was out of contact every ninety minutes for an equal amount of time as the Fast Eddie’s painfully slow orbit carried her around the far side of the Byers’ Star’s moon. Even when directly over the landing zone—Potter had forced the words “crash site” back from his mind so many times he’d lost count—the static generated by the gas giant, Cat’s Eye, was enough to make an unholy mess out of communications.

“We’re coming over the horizon again,” Farrow said in a low voice.

Potter grunted acknowledgment. He had a feeling that Owens and Connolly were tiring of his demand for updates every hour and a half.

Too bad. He began calling for the shuttle.

“It’s just great, that’s all,” Owens’ voice was borne on a wave of interference, but the communications filters were doing their job well enough. “This place is a regular garden spot. Two hours outside in thin air with thin coats, and what’s waiting inside but thin coffee. Anyway, it looks like we put down over a frost heave covered by snow; solid ground beneath one leg and lots of air three feet under the surface beneath the other. This whole area is a swamp marsh frozen solid for the winter. The landing leg collapsed and the whole weight of the shuttle came down on the port lift thrusters. They’re half-buried, so I’d guess they’re shot. Ike shakes his head a lot when I ask him how we can repair them, then he makes lifting gestures and shrugs.”

“I’ve got Liu working on the other shuttle,” Captain Potter said. “Can’t say for sure what we can accomplish, but we’ll keep you posted.”

“Yeah, right. Listen, Connolly wants to talk to you.”

“Put him on.”

“Emmett? It’s about Miller.”

Potter heard Owens bitching in the background at the mention of the BuReloc man’s name. “What is it? What’s he done now?”

“Well, the damn fool’s gone off and started his bloody survey on his own. So far he’s stayed in sight of the shuttle, but that’s not the point.”

Potter shook his head. Miller was utterly inconsequential, now, but he wanted to give Connolly and Owens something to take their minds off the strong likelihood that they would become the moon’s first permanent human residents. “Is he any use to you there?” Potter asked. “In the repairs, I mean?”

He heard Owens shout “No!” in the background.

“No,” Connolly admitted, “but it’s damned dangerous. It’s cold as a witch’s tit out there, with snow to boot. If he falls and kills himself, we’ll have to answer to the Bureau of Relocation for it.”

“To hell with the Bureau right now, Brian,” Potter said. “And to hell with Miller. Let him play with his drills and ore samples. We’ll need all that data anyway, once we get you fellas orbit-capable again and ready to come home.”

And if we don’t get you orbit-capable, you won’t be coming home, so it won’t matter then, either.

There was a long silence. “Right,” Connolly said finally. “Got it, Emmett. See if you can’t—” Connelly’s voice faded out.

“Orbital path,” Farrow said. “We’re losing them again.”

Potter boosted the signal. “Passing on, guys. Talk to you again in an hour and a half. Edward V out.”

He leaned back against the chair’s zero-G harness and tapped the console distractedly, looking out at the surreal patterns of the Cat’s Eye gas giant. “Tom, what’s the latest on that storm front?”

Farrow turned to another screen. “Weather patterns on this rock are pretty strange, Emmett. Looks like they’re tied in closely with the long full-night cycle, when one half of the moon is without light from either the system primary or the gas giant. The valley they’re in is due for that night in about ten standard days.”

Potter stared at the sepia-toned mass of gaseous soup outside, the horizon of the satellite a gray crescent along the top of the port. The moon’s proximity to its parent world allowed enough radiant heat to compensate for its distance from the system primary, but the heavy gravity of the gas giant denied the Fast Eddie any chance of making geosynchronous orbit over her downed shuttle. They could only circle helplessly and wait.

“Sit and spin,” Potter said.

And pray.

A clipboard floated through the bridge hatch, followed by the clambering form of Chief Engineer Liu. “Emmett, we might have a solution to our problem.”

“Well, amen, Chief.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, go ahead.”

“Okay, here’s a list of what’s wrong with Shuttle Two, and here’s what I can reasonably expect to fix in the next eight days.”

Potter scrolled through the datapad screens, grunting occasionally as he passed items of interest. “That’s great, Chief, but these are all quick fixes, and none of them bring the shuttle up to full spec.”

“Well, no. But all together, they’ll get Shuttle Two down in one piece, guaranteed.”

“Well, hell, Chief, we’ve got one shuttle down there, practically in one piece; our problem is how to get that one back up.”

“Relax, Emmett. The idea is we take the second shuttle down filled with as much repair equipment as it will carry, land it near Shuttle One, and then cannibalize the second shuttle for parts to fix the first. Ditch Shuttle One’s ground car to save the weight of the extra crewmen and”—Liu wafted a hand toward the ceiling—”bring our boys home before the snow falls.”

Potter looked at the Engineer for a moment, then went back to the datapad. “Nice work, Bill,” he finally said in a small voice. He turned to Farrow. “Tom? You’re Master Aboard and we’re talking about throwing away several hundred thousand CD credits worth of equipment.”

Farrow shook his head in dismissal. “Don’t be ridiculous. Those are our men down there.” He gave a faint smile. “Besides, the CoDominium is picking up the bill, right? Let’s think of this as an opportunity to stick them for all the taxes they’ve gouged us for over the years. Go ahead, Chief Engineer Liu and don’t spare the horses.”

Robert Miller snatched at his flapping facemask, catching it before the wind could make off with it. He refastened it beneath his hood, and gave Ike a thumbs-up, after which both men returned to the task of lowering the shuttle’s bay ramp into the thin snow covering the alien ground.

The shuttle had come down in the plains in the northeastern corner of a great equatorial valley. Surrounded for thousands of miles by soaring mountains, the resulting large, enclosed land mass was larger than Earth’s North American continent, and enjoyed the highest air pressure on the moon; close to that of Earth at fourteen thousand feet above sea level. That made it just about tolerable if you were a mountain climber.

Which Miller was. He’d been on climbs on a dozen worlds, mostly on BuCorrect business, but frequently for sport. That expertise had been the major reason for his assignment as the CoDominium’s man on this survey mission. Thin air was not usually a problem for him, nor cold, but he most definitely did not wish to stay on this moon any longer than necessary; certainly not for the rest of his life. The shuttle crash had inspired his mind into a protective overdrive, and he’d thrown himself into his work with a fierce abandon.

Still, he’d learned all he could from his samples here on the plains. He needed to get to the foothills to look for exposed ore, and that meant he needed the ground car. Owens and Connolly had shown no interest whatsoever in anything he did, and that was fine with him. This Ike fellow was less obnoxious, and had readily agreed to help him with this much, at least.

Miller had noticed that Ike was largely unaffected by the thin air, and the cold as well. Obviously the fellow was of terrestrial mountain stock, but Miller had make very little to do with anyone on the trip out here, and still less with Ike or Mike. He’d guessed Greece, or perhaps Turkey, but unlike the rest of the crew, Miller had the connection between minor ship malfunctions and implications of Spanish ancestry for Ike and Mike. He might guess at their background, but he said nothing. He wondered if this Ike was the Kennicott Company man aboard the Fast Eddie; his control officer had warned him there was certain to be one, despite the CoDo’s efforts to get him out here on a “clean” ship.

Miller didn’t anticipate a problem in any case; the companies and their lobbyists in the CoDominium Senate were powerful, to be sure. But they weren’t foolish enough to confront the Bureau of Correction directly over one marginally useful world, whatever its economic potential. The outworld companies had the real power these days, but the CoDominium government still controlled the courts. The courts decided who was sentenced to “remedial colony support services,” their euphemism for forced deportation—almost always for life. The companies had a lot of older executives with troublesome young children and grandchildren who frequently made the mistake of thinking themselves above the law. When he thought about it, Miller considered it a rather tawdry system of checks and balances, but it worked, and anyway, he didn’t think about it much.

The ramp was locked in place, exposing the bulky ground car which had been idling within the bay for the last fifteen minutes. Ike helped Miller into the cab, and they drove it down the ramp. Miller was about to drive off when Ike clambered into the seat beside him and shut the door with a grin.

Miller stared at the engineering crewman with a frown. “You don’t need to come with me.”

Ike shrugged. “No work to do; th’ shuttle is tota.” He waved impatiently toward the mountains. “Let’s take a ride.”

Miller decided right then that Ike was just obvious enough to be the Fast Eddie’s Kennicott Company spy; still, he was glad for the companionship. He set the inertial navigation computer, put the ground car in gear and rolled off east toward the foothills.

Inside the shuttle, Owens cursed. “Well, great. That Christless Spaniard just took off for a joyride with the Bureau of Intelligence spook.”

“Oh, terrific. That’s bloody swell.” Finally losing his temper, Connolly threw a fused circuit board against the wall. After a moment, he calmed down. “Well. It’s not like we’d a had a whole lot for them to do here, I suppose.”

The communications panel chimed, and Potter’s voice crackled into the cabin. “Shuttle One, acknowledge.”

“Yeah, Emmett, we’re here,” Owens answered.

“I think we’ve got some good news for you.”

Owens and Connolly shared a brief, hunted look. “Roger that, Emmett,” Owens fought to control his voice. “What’s the scoop?”

“Liu’s been working on the Number Two Shuttle, says he can have it ready in about eight days for a one-way trip to your site.”

A strangled laugh slipped past Owens’ lips. “Well—Jesus Christ, Emmett! What good is that going to do us?”

“Shut up, Owens,” Connolly shouted, taking over the communications panel. “What have you got in mind, Emmett?”

Potter explained Liu ‘s plan, and the four of them went over the details for the next eighty-five minutes. The Fast Eddie’s signal was beginning to fade as Potter added: “And please, Brian; be very thorough when you take soundings of that landing area. We don’t want to hit another sinkhole like you did and have two busted up elevators in the basement.”

Owens laughed an acknowledgement as he signed off.

Potter’s signal had been gone for a full minute before Connolly put a hand to his forehead in panic. “Oh, my God…the sounding equipment; it’s all in the ground car with Miller and Ike.”

Owens began trying to raise the BuReloc man and their own engineering crewman, to no avail. “Jesus, they haven’t been gone more than an hour and a half, how far could they get?”

Connolly sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.

“I suppose,” he said finally, “that we can take some comfort in the idea that not very much more can go wrong on this trip.”

Owens kept calling Miller and Ike, trying not to think about how wrong Connolly could be.

Miller and Ike were gone for five days, and the rest of the crew had given them up for dead. Owens and Connolly had begun clearing a landing area a few hundred yards north, taking soundings manually with a metal pole heated by a battery pack, for although there was snow on the ground, the ground frost beneath was quite thin. Despite the moon’s miserable cold, it was extremely dry this close to the sheltering mountains that separated the valley from the sea winds. The clearing was done with no tools heavier than makeshift brooms and piled rocks to keep fresh drifts out.

Owens and Connolly had been sweeping clear the landing zone in a clockwise pattern, and had reached eight-thirty when the Navigator noticed his British First Officer staring off into the distance.

“Christ, Connolly, you’re not snowblind, are you?”

Connolly dropped his broom and started running past Owens. “It’s the ground car; it’s Miller and Ike, come on!”

Powder clouds of dry snow puffed up around their feet as the two men ran toward the ground car, the thin, cold air of the wretched little moon raking their lungs in spite of their facemasks. Owens thought that men might one day learn to run on this forsaken rock, but they would never enjoy it.

The ground car slowed and turned in their direction when they were within fifty yards, and both of them could see the carcass of some large, shaggy quadruped draped over its hood. Owens and Connolly staggered to a fast walk.

“What the hell is that?” the Navigator wheezed.

“Indigenous life form.” Connolly too was panting as they closed the distance. “Herbivorous grazer, I suspect; likely inhabitant for this sort of terrain.”

Owens shook his head. “First kill on the new world. Man has arrived.”

Connolly threw him a sidelong glance; Owens was not the sort of fellow who made pronouncements on the morality of his species. And in any, case, something about the animal carcass bothered him. Even as they approached, it looked wrong to him; too—lumpy. “Oh, bloody hell,” Connolly said abruptly.

The ground car had chuffed to a halt as they reached it, and both Connolly and Owens could see all the details of the mooselike animal tied securely to its hood. And tied behind it, giving it the unnatural appearance Connolly had noted, was the body of a man wrapped in plastic. The feet protruded from one end, revealing the thick, CoDo issue explorer’s boots of the engineering crewman Icaorius, better known as Ike.

Miller popped the door and leaned out. “There was an accident,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Neither Owens nor Connolly said anything, and Miller went on “Get in, we’ll drive him back to the shuttle.”

Owens turned without answering and headed back for the clearing. After a moment, Connolly followed, leaving Miller standing in the open door of the ground car cab. Finally, the BuReloc man settled back into the cab and drove on to the shuttle. Owens took his hand from his pocket just long enough to casually raise his middle finger to Miller as he passed.

“What do you think happened?” Captain Potter asked during the next communications cycle.

Connolly sighed. “I don’t know, Emmett. Miller says they were up in the foothills, digging at some crystalline ore, when they saw this musk-ox-antelope thing. Ike apparently thought it would be good eating, so he shot it with one of the rifles from the ground car. Then, when he was climbing down to the carcass, some big predator jumped him out of nowhere, apparently trying to steal the kill. Ike lost his footing, and fell into a defile before Miller could do anything.

“How did Miller get the carcass away from the predator?”

“He says he drove it off with the other rifle. Possible, I suppose.”

Potter’s silence ate up a good deal of their precious communications time. “Do you believe him?”

“Hell, no,” Owens said firmly in the background.

Connolly sighed. “I don’t know, Emmett. The animal carcass looks pretty torn up, like a tiger was at it for a minute or two. Miller recovered Ike’s rifle when he brought the corpse up. Both are pretty banged about.”

“All right. Liu’s a little ahead of schedule and he says the shuttle will be ready in two more days. We’ve gotten a little sloppy in our radio contacts; that’s not to happen anymore. I want you or Owens on this line every ninety minutes, clear?”

“Got it.”

Owens leaned in and said: “And what if we have ‘accidents,’ too, Emmett?”

“Then the Fast Eddie writes off the Survey Team and heads home.”

Connolly and Owens shared a look.

“I see,” Connolly said. “So we’d best hope neither of us slips into a coma.

“You or Frank on this line, every hour and a half,” Potter repeated. “And make sure our guest knows it.”

Potter signed off, and leaned back against the chair. He had to prop his feet against the console edge to do it.

In low gravity, as in politics, he considered, leverage is everything.

Behind him, Chief Engineer Liu stared intently at the silent communications console. “Bad,” was all he said.

Potter nodded faintly. “Yup.”

Connolly coined the term “muskylope” for the large four-legged grazer Miller had brought back, and despite the mood of the camp being only a little less frigid than the outside air, all three enjoyed the taste; after their forced diet of survival rations, fresh meat was a welcome relief.

But once the steaks were gone, then Owens’ and Connolly’s distrust of Miller settled back in. They openly refused to sleep at the same time, an insulting statement which provided great moral satisfaction at first, but which only resulted in Miller being the one man in camp who was getting a decent amount of rest during the moon’s seemingly endless day.

“Look at him,” Owens said after waking Connolly for his relief. “Son-of-a-bitch sleeps like a baby.

“Why not? He knows he’s safe.”

“But is he?” Owens asked Connolly in a low voice.

“Yes, I am” Miller answered, and Owens turned to see the BuCorrect man watching them calmly from his sleeping bag.

Owens shook his head. “You spooks are pathetic; America’s in bed with the Russians in our glorious CoDominium, so there’s nobody left to spy on; nobody except everybody. What did you find out there? Something too important to let poor Ike live after he’d seen it? Or was it just for practice?”

Miller lowered his eyes. “It was an accident.” He leaned up on one elbow to look at Owens, and Connolly wondered for the hundredth time if Miller had a gun in that bag with him. “Whether you believe it or not doesn’t change the fact.”

“Right, then. Frank that’s enough, yes?” Connolly said from his own bag in the wall hammock. “Get some sleep; the shuttle’s due in eight hours. I’ll come and wake you then.”

Owens stood up and pulled several blankets from a locker.

“What are you doing?” Connolly asked.

“I’m sick of the company I’ve been keeping.” The Navigator headed aft. “I’m going back to the ground car bay to sleep.”

“Frank, don’t be an idiot, there’s no heat back there!”

“Yeah, but there’s a lock on the door.” Owens stopped in front of Connolly, pointedly ignoring Miller almost at his feet. “Look, there’s fresh batteries in the sleeping bags; you come out to get me in six hours. Check me out sooner if you get bored.” He turned at the hatch, looking down at Miller. “On second thought, considering your company; don’t get bored.”

*     *     *

To Potter’s surprise, the crew member who seemed most affected by Ike’s death was not his brother Mike, but Farrow. The Fast Eddie’s master had taken to wandering about the ship with an apparent intensity of grief that was a little frightening in a man who couldn’t reasonably be kept away from air locks and orbital attitude controls.

Farrow would often look out the viewports, staring down at the moon, and speaking softly under his breath. Rarely, Mike would come up behind the master and place a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of compassion. Seeing as it was from the man whose brother had died to his employer, and that the former appeared less affected than the latter, Potter found these occasional tableaux faintly distasteful, though he couldn’t be exactly sure why.

As long as it keeps Farrow out of the way til we can get our surviving crew back aboard, Potter told himself, how Mike deals with his brother’s death is his own affair.

“Captain Potter, we’re ready.” Liu had finished the preliminary systems check on the second shuttle that morning, ship time, and had spent the rest of the day loading the gear they’d need to get Shuttle One flying again.

“Fine. Well, I guess it’s pretty clear who’s got to go.”

Liu nodded. “I’ll need Mike for the repair work; Owens and Connolly can keep busy, but this is drydock work, and command crew won’t be much use.”

Potter looked over his shoulder to be sure Farrow wasn’t about. “Bill, this is going to be tricky; you need a pilot to get down there in one piece.”

Liu nodded. “There’s nothing for it. But we’ve got to take Farrow down with us; we can’t leave him alone up here on the Fast Eddie. Hell, in his state he could walk out an airlock.”

Potter ground a knuckle against his temple. “Yeah. Well, let’s hope he doesn’t wander off while we’re down there. You recheck your repair estimates?”

Liu nodded again. “Everybody working like coolies, worst case: three days. Most likely only two. We’re up and off and back aboard Fast Eddie, headed home. The survey’s scrubbed, of course; no bonus potential for a screw-up like this.”

“Yeah, break my heart, why don’t you.” Potter looked over Liu’s shoulder and out the port. “I’ve learned as much about this place as I care to already, Bill.”

And I suspect, Potter finished to himself, that our Mister Miller has, too.

Shuttle Two drifted downward, and Potter found himself suddenly wishing there was an overhead hatch, so he could take one last look at the Fast Eddie above them. Involuntarily, he shuddered.

What a gruesome thought; unlucky, too. He began the minute adjustments that, magnified by their thirty-mile descent, would bring them into the general area of the first shuttle’s landing zone. Liu was strapped in next to him, his eyes closed.

Can’t say as I blame you, old friend. This is the sort of joyride that would have the Engineering and Machinists’ Union howling for my blood if they knew about it.

Behind them, Farrow had strapped himself in with a firm confidence that belied his earlier distress. Nevertheless, Mike continued a solicitous, if detached, attention toward his boss. Good, Potter thought. Somebody else can hold his hand for a while.

“Coming up on final, gentlemen,” Potter tried to loosen his tightened throat with speech; it didn’t work.

Air resistance increased around the shuttle, and the noise level from outside increased with it. In seconds the shuttle was a rock-filled washing machine of rattling pressure plates and popping seams. A giant of the air was slapping a pillow against the nose and belly, but the pillow weighed tons.

Potter saw Liu in his peripheral vision. The Chief Engineer had forced his eyes open to check his status panel. “How long, Emmett?” The vibrations made Liu’s voice sound like a jackhammer was digging into his chest.

“Three minutes more.”

“Have to be on the ground sooner; she’s losing it.”

“I meant three minutes to the landing zone. Another five to circle and land.”

Liu rolled his eyes heavenward, and Potter hoped he wasn’t looking for a good spot for harp playing.

When the shaking stopped, it was sudden enough to make Potter shout for a structural integrity check.

“Fine, it’s fine,” Liu said through clenched teeth, as he checked his board. “She’ll hold for that five minutes, but don’t go longer than ten.” Liu mumbled to himself in satisfaction, “Heyah, all gods bear witness, I can fix a rainy day!”

Potter passed over the western mountain range that sheltered the valley, their snowcapped peaks seeming barely below him despite his altitude. Shuttle Two’s flat glide was taking it from one hundred thousand feet to a fifth of that in the course of their three-thousand mile flight path, and the view became spectacular.

The sun had broken through the thin cloud cover, lighting the valley from behind him, while Cat’s Eye illuminated it from above. And in that moment, as he looked across what would one day become known as the Shangri-La, he suddenly felt a great peace.

It’s pure, he thought. It’s harsh in that purity, but it’s a beautiful kind of harsh. People will come here, and will live, and die, as Owens said they would. They’ll settle it and cultivate it, fly over it and bury their dead in it, but they’ll never change it, not really. In the end, like any pure place, it will change them. It will make them what it wants them to be, and they’ll love it for that. The rest of this moon is cruel and ugly, but this valley is cruel and beautiful. Men will go to the other lands, and some will stay there, too. But those lands will never know the kind of devotion people will come to feel for this sheltered valley, this safe haven in a hard world.

The moment passed; the landing zone was beneath them, a cleared circle of dead gray winter grass in an unrelenting sea of shifting white, the crooked shadow of the crippled shuttle nearby. Potter was getting the feel of Liu’s bastard child as he flew her, and realized the landing would be tricky.

Tricky it was, but perfect nonetheless.

One figure stood on the snow beyond the cleared circle; it ran toward the shuttle in a kind of loping shuffle; long step, double-drag the other leg, long step. Potter cracked the hatch and pushed it open, freeing the debarkation ladder as he did so.

“Oh, my sweet Christ!” The blast of frigid air hit him in the face like a flame-thrower; he actually recoiled a step, frantically gathering his parka close as he fought to keep his balance. On the ground below, the figure that had come to meet them was struggling up the ladder. It stumbled into the shuttle and fell against the wall, sliding down to the floor plates.

Potter knelt in the howling wind, pulling back the hood of their one-man reception party. It was Connolly, and he looked half-dead.

“Mike, Bill, help me get him on the couch.” Potter knew that after extended months with no more gravity than the Fast Eddie’s centrifuge, it would take all three of them to lift the First Officer, and maybe Farrow besides. “And somebody close that pneumonia hole before we all wind up like Connolly.”

Potter’s examination told them what they all knew already “Exposure, of course. Frostbite on all his toes and all but two fingers. I’m no doctor, but I can see those’ll have to come off.” Potter lightly touched the blackened digits. “Hell, he’s going to lose this whole foot.” He stood and shook his head, helplessly. “I don’t think we can save him,” he said quietly, as if to himself.

“If he warms up enough to get circulation in his limbs, he’s likely to get blood poisoning,” Liu warned.

Potter nodded. ‘’Keep the temperature down in here,” he said. A boyhood survivor of Atlantic winters in lobster boats on Earth’s Narragansett Bay, Potter had seen plenty of frostbite. “If he does start getting circulation into those fingers and feet, the pain alone will kill him.”

Potter crouched beside his frozen shipmate, trying to get something out of him. “Connolly,” he called quietly. “Brian, it’s Emmett where’s Owens? Connolly, where’s Miller?”

Connolly started babbling so suddenly Potter almost jumped “Frank went to sleep in the ground car bay, I told him not to, I said there wasn’t heat, not there, he went anyway, I woke up and went to check on him, but he’d locked the door. He said he wanted to be there because the door had a lock, and I had to go outside and go around to the ground car bay door, and it had swung open somehow. Frank didn’t answer and I crawled in and he was solid, oh God he was solid as a statue…he was like marble, like blue marble, God forgive me I let him die in there…I should have stopped him, should have ordered him, I—”

Connolly’s voice shattered into a keening wail, sobs wracked his chest, their sound filling the shuttle as the dying man brought his ruined hands up to cover his face. In a moment, Connolly lapsed into unconsciousness.

Potter rose and went to the locker, removing a pair of comically thick insulated mittens with a single index-finger sewn in. He pulled a rifle out as well, a flat-sided accelerator model with rocket shell projectiles for vacuum or zero-G environments.

“Bill,” Potter said, “take another rifle. Mike, Mister Farrow, stay with Connolly and do what you can for him.”

Potter and Liu left the second shuttle and crossed the landing zone toward the first. Byers’ Star had slipped behind the Cat’s Eye gas giant, and this side of the Cat’s Eye moon was turning away from its parent world. Night was coming to their hemisphere, truenight, and the temperature was dropping to welcome it.

“Emmett, this guy is BuReloc.” Liu was trying to reason with Potter, but still matching his stride,

“I don’t give a rip.”

They closed with the shuttle, its port list exposing the belly to them. Beyond the body of the craft could see a man’s legs moving about, and some kind of pole pacing them.

Too angry at the man’s cheek to give any thought of ambush, Potter walked around the nose of the shuttle, and everything seemed to happen at once.

Miller was there, with something in his hands and a pile of broken, frozen dirt on the ground nearby. There were two graves, each marked with crosses. It was all Potter saw before Miller turned toward them, the long black cylinder pivoting before him.

Potter heard Liu say: “He has a gun.” The Chief Engineer didn’t shout, but simply raised his own accelerator rifle to his shoulder and fired in one smooth, practiced motion. Miller spun about and went down, and it was only then that Potter realized he had struck Liu’s weapon down with his hand.

Liu snapped the weapon away and back-stepped. “Are you trying to get us killed?” Liu was almost snarling, but he recovered his composure instantly. “I—I’m sorry, Emmett; but he was—”

But Potter was going to the felled BuCorrect agent. The 9mm rocket shell had hit him in the groin; Potter didn’t need a great deal of imagination to think that Liu had been aiming for Miller’s head until his blow had dropped the weapon’s aim point. A little lower and to the left, Potter mused, and live or die, my friend, the Miller line would have ended with you.

Miller’s teeth were squared in a rictus of agony, but Potter wasn’t feeling especially charitable toward the man just now, and anyway he was curious about something. He turned Miller over, eliciting a gasp of pain from the victim. He lifted the cylinders Miller had been holding when he turned toward them. There was a foot-square metal plate at one end, and Potter held, it up for Liu’s inspection.

It was a shovel.

*     *     *

Back aboard Shuttle Two, Miller sipped cautiously at the tea. His beard stubble was blue-black and, together with the dark circles under his eyes and the sallowness of his skin, made him look as bad in shock as Connolly looked in the last stages of hypothermia. The warmth of the semi-operational craft was bringing some color to his features and a lot of pain to his own near-frozen extremities.

“He wouldn’t come inside,” the intelligence officer said. “He seemed to think that I’d gone out and deliberately opened the bay door to the wind, to kill Owens.”

“And did you?”

Miller sighed and lowered his head. “Christ, Potter, look at where my sleeping bag is; I’d have to crawl right over Connolly to get to the damn door. It must have come open in the night; probably hydraulic failure. Owens wouldn’t feel it through his own sleeping bag until the batteries gave out; his own body heat would have bled away after that.”

Potter said nothing for a time, looking out the shuttle’s forward window. “You buried Owens and Ike?”

Miller nodded. “Connolly wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He wasn’t going to let me do it, but they couldn’t stay in here with us, and leaving them out might have drawn one of those big predators down from the hills. It wasn’t a sentimental gesture.”

Potter turned at that. “Maybe not. But plain markers, or none at all, might make me believe that. Crosses don’t.”

“That was kind of you,” Farrow said quietly from the back. Miller shrugged, wincing at the pain any movement caused him.

Potter sighed. “Right.” He, turned to Farrow. “Tom, would you look after Brian and Mister Miller? We’re going to see about getting Shuttle One flight ready.”

Farrow moved to comply as Potter, Liu and Mike left the Shuttle once more.

“I’m telling you, Emmett,” Liu began when they’d left Shuttle Two. “This CoDo spy is going to be the death of us all.”

Potter said nothing except: “Wait and see.”

Placing lifting jacks beneath the hull and leveling it off, they found that Shuttle One looked far worse off than it really was. The collapse of the landing leg into the sinkhole had severed half a dozen cables, but caused very little actual damage. Liu shook his head at the irony.

“If they’d had jacks and an arc welder, they’d have been back a week ago.”

Shuttle One was operational and flight-ready in twenty hours, which suited Potter just fine, as the truenight of this hemisphere of the moon was now less than twelve hours away. During his watch, he made a cup of tea and sat beside the sleeping Miller, watching him.

“I think you’re awake,” Potter said quietly.

Miller opened his eyes. “What is it?

Potter pursed his lips and studied the blank wall opposite. “Oh, many things. Like why was Ike up there in the hills with you at all?”

“He invited himself. I assumed he was told to keep eye on me. Anyway, I didn’t object to him coming, traveling alone in these circumstances is idiotic.”

“Yup. It’s illegal, too.”

“Right.” Miller sneered.

Potter sipped his tea. “What did this predator look like?”

“Big. Shaggy mane. A lion with an attitude.

“Maybe like a bear?”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know, I’ve never seen a bear.”

Potter nodded. “And you drove it off with the rifle.”

“That’s right, so?”

Potter didn’t answer right away, but only went back to his tea. “Do you hunt a lot, Mister Miller?”

“Not animals.”

“I didn’t think so. I used to hunt a lot when I was young. Sometimes, on Survey trips like this one, I’ll stalk a local animal that looks game. In my years on Survey duty, I’ve seen a lot of strange animals that do a lot of strange things. But there’s one thing I’ve never seen, Miller. Can you guess what it is?”

“Why spoil your fun?”

Potter smiled. “I’ve never seen an animal on an alien world that was afraid of man. They aren’t capable of it, you see. How could they be? They’ve never seen a man before. Our scent is different, but not threatening, assuming they even smell us at all. They don’t see us as a threat, they can’t possibly. Like the American bear. Do you have any idea how many settlers it killed and how many grizzlies the settlers had to kill, before the bears learned that man was dangerous? That man’s rifles were dangerous? And grizzlies at least come from the same genetic soup as we do.”

Potter shook his head. “Nope. You have to kill such animals, Miller. They don’t scare. And it isn’t because they’re too stupid to be afraid of Man; they just don’t know how dangerous human beings can be.”

There was a long silence, during which Potter finished his tea before concluding: “But I do.”

Miller watched him silently.

“That was a clumsy lie, Miller. That contrived gesture of crosses for the graves was another.” Potter stood up and tossed his cup away. “And they’ll cost you. I’d have been happy to blow your head off for killing Ike, or just getting him killed. But this is better. I don’t even care how or why you did it, now. I’m just looking forward to turning you over to the CoDo Bureau of Investigation for murder. Who knows? You might get lucky; maybe they’ll sentence you to Involuntary Colonization and you’ll get sent right back here.” He went to the door and turned, silhouetted for a moment in the hatch. “Won’t that be nice?”

“Potter,” Miller said, “you know that won’t happen. You can kill me and leave me here, and the Bureau of Intelligence will have your ass on general principle. You can take me back and turn me in, and BuInt will squeeze the CBI, and I’ll walk, and maybe BuInt will have your ass anyway, just to make an example of tramp spacers who get delusions of moral grandeur.”

“I suppose there’s a third choice.”

“Of course. Keep your mouth shut. I don’t profit from this escapade; it’s my job. But you and your crew could stand to gain a great deal from what I learned out there. If you’re smart. Just sit tight, shut up and wait for the Survey bonus checks to start rolling in. At the very least, I can promise you that your frostbitten Mister Connolly will even be able to afford some pretty advanced prosthetics and a lot of the very best physical therapy.”

Potter looked at him, his face an impassive mask, then nodded again. “Good night, Miller.”

It was six hours later, and darker than ever. The sky outside was black with snow-laden, lowering clouds that sealed the tops of the mountain ranges, a layer of ephemeral paraffin topping a jar of secret preserves. Neither the light of Byers’ Star nor Cat’s Eye’s radiant energy penetrated to the land beneath. The valley was a great bowl, and the lid was on. The repaired Shuttle One was nearly ready for takeoff; aboard Shuttle Two, the survey crew’s temporary home, most people still slept.

Miller awoke at the prick of a needle into his thigh. He spun about to grasp the handgun kept tucked beneath his left arm, but found only his armpit.

“Live a little longer.” The voice was an anonymous whisper in the dark, followed by a flat click of a hammer being pulled back; Miller recognized the sound of his own pistol. “Convince me you’re just trying to warm that hand.”

“What is it?” Miller felt the pain in his hip going away, and with it any sense of urgency or resolve.

“What did you and Ike find up in the hills that was worth killing him for?”

Miller tried not to answer, but immediately realized there was no real point. He no longer had any control over what he said. “Ore” The words grunted past his best efforts to stop them. “Crystalline—ore—in the rocks.”

“Good. And what kind of crystalline ore was it?”

“Diamonds.” Miller found himself unable to suppress a sly giggle.

“No, now really.”

Miller’s eyelids were heavy, but he wasn’t sleepy. “Half-diamonds,” he said, almost grinning now. Whatever they’d used on him, it was hideously strong stuff. “Half-life zircons.” And this time he really did laugh out loud, but a mitten was abruptly stuffed into his mouth. Shortly thereafter, a finger burrowed hard into the bullet wound in his groin.

Miller returned from the euphoric place he’d been drifting toward with the subtlety of a train wreck. Tears brimmed over his eyes and coursed down his cheeks as he gasped for air, getting only more mitten. After long seconds, the gag was removed.

“Now,” the voice said, and Miller’s soaring pain rendered it still more anonymous: “One more time; what was the crystalline ore you found in the hills?”

Miller gagged, unwilling to believe that the pain was receding again, until the hollow ache in his bowels faded enough to prove it to him. “Zirconium.”

A finger tapped his wound, light as a feather; it felt like an anvil dropped from orbit. “Nothing special about zirconium,” the voice pointed out.

“Hafnium!” Miller gasped. “The ore is a new form of zirconium crytolite; it’s loaded with hafnium, twenty times the amount found in the richest terrestrial samples. Almost eighty percent hafnium.”

The voice was silent. “We are talking about the hafnium used in nuclear reactor rods, aren’t we, Mister Miller?”

Miller nodded.

“And you took samples of this ore, to prove to the CoDominium that you weren’t crazy?”

Miller asserted every iota of his will, until he couldn’t resist answering. “Yes. Worth billions for energy, weapons technology… The moon’s too valuable to use as a CoDo dumping ground, the deportees could wind up owning the Grand Senate in a few decades.”

The voice said nothing, and Miller could feel the drug pulling him farther and farther away. A tiny flare as another needle entered his arm.

“I don’t think so, Mister Miller,” the voice said. Then something like: “Not the deportees,” but Miller couldn’t be sure, for by that time he was dead.

*     *     *

Potter looked down into Miller’s sightless, staring eyes.

He thought he should be able to compose some poetic statement on the irony of life and death and justice, but all he could think of was what a monumental fuckup this mission had turned out to be.

Potter had awakened before anyone else to find Miller dead. Connolly too had passed away while they slept. Liu had taken Mike and Farrow with him to make the final preparations for leaving, and Potter had stayed behind to prepare the bodies for burial. He was the captain, after all, and it was his responsibility to bury his men.

Potter crouched next to Miller and tried to close the eyes; the lids kept parting, widening to finally expose the bright, blue, dead pupils.

I always thought they stayed closed, Potter mused. The Captain of the Fast Eddie turned to Connolly’s corpse. That figures, I guess. Underfed, no way for his body to keep itself warm. Your body never gets a chance to starve to death in this kind of cold. And we knew he’d lose that foot, maybe both, and most of his fingers. Poor Brian was probably better off… Potter stood up, looking back once at Miller.

But this is different.

On impulse, Potter opened Miller’s sleeping bag down to the toes. Down flowed out, filled the cabin, floating to rest on Connolly, Miller and Potter alike. It looked as if Potter had won a particularly deadly pillow fight, or as if the snow had come in after all. The lining of Miller’s bag had been slit open in a dozen places. Potter checked the heater packs at the feet and in the hood; both were still running high enough to rule out death from shock. The dressing on the BuReloc man’s hip was bloody, but not enough to indicate he’d bled to death. Maybe, despite the heaters, the cold.…

Potter felt something under the bandage; a hard chip about two inches long. He reached beneath the bloody dressing and pulled out a key.

Potter recognized it instantly as a storage box key from one of the ground cars. Scraping off the dried blood revealed the number “1”; no surprise there. Miller must have been carrying it when he was shot, then had the presence of mind to hide it under the dressing; not a place anyone would be eager to search.

Potter rose and pocketed the key. He would collect Farrow and Liu and Mike and get them to help bury Connolly and Miller, but first he wanted to check out the key. He left the shuttle and crossed the landing zone, giving a wide berth to Shuttle One, whose lifting jets were being test-fired for the next five minutes.

The ground car was resting outside; although they had no crew weight problem any longer, Chief Engineer Liu had decided it would be prudent to leave it behind anyway. Snow was beginning to drift around its fat tires already, a prelude to the moon’s eventual claim on all that they would leave behind.

Potter brushed snow away from the door to get it open, looking forward to getting inside the cab and away from the roar of the shuttle’s lift-jets.

The cold vinyl seats were blocks of ice, leaching the heat from his buttocks and the back of his thighs. Behind the driver’s seat, Potter found the right box inserted the key and opened it.

Inside was a fist-sized lump of cloudy crystal bearing several marks in Indelink; numbers, angles, three-letter abbreviations. Survey marks. Well, it was ore, clearly, but as to what sort, he had no idea. He slid backwards out of the cab, still holding the rock up before him, and turned to look into the muzzle of a very large revolver.

Chief Engineer Liu’s other hand was open and extended.

“I’ll take that, please, Emmett.”

Potter handed him the crystal without a word.

“What is it, Liu? What kind of crystal?”

“Hafnium-rich zirconium ore.”

Potter thought a moment, suddenly remembering what he knew of hafnium: Mixed with tantalum carbide, hafnium was one of the most refractory substances known, immune to temperatures below 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The alloy was used in nuclear reactor control rods throughout the CoDominium. More importantly, it comprised the ablative heat shields and armor for hundreds of CoDo exploration and military vessels.

“But,” Potter voiced his thoughts, “why? It’s common as dirt; literally. You can get this stuff from beach sand.”

Liu nodded. “Yes. On Earth. But Earth is run by the CoDominium Senate, and you know how; no scientific research, nothing that might allow the Soviets or the Americans to gain any advantage over one another.” Liu turned the rock in his hands. “And of course, there are all those political undesirables, and all those new colony worlds that are going to have to start showing a profit somehow.” His eyes met Potter’s. “That will mean forced relocation, or ‘CoDo-sponsored colonization,’ if you prefer. All those colonies will need power, and the CoDo isn’t going to spend money on solar arrays or hydroelectric structures when it can just dump a pre-fab reactor station and move on. That means an awful lot of reactors, Emmett, and the ships which carry them have reactors of their own, and ablative shielding. And this,” Liu held the stone up between them, “this is where it will come from.”

Can I keep him talking? Potter thought. Will the others see, realize what’s going on? “Did Miller know? Would he have killed Ike to keep it a secret?”

“Miller knew,” Liu said. “Else why didn’t he bring anything else back? As for killing Ike; well by the ounce, even by the pound in a one-planet economy, hafnium’s not so valuable. But Miller’s analysis markings say this stuff has twenty times the hafnium of terrestrial zirconium, and at an already higher purity.”

“How is that possible?” Potter asked, trying to sound interested in anything but Liu’s weapon.

Liu shrugged. “Higher vulcanism on this moon, probably, along with the godawful tidal pressures from the gas giant’s gravity. Who knows? Xeno-Geology was Miller’s field, not mine. Step back, please, Emmett. You can see it just fine from where you are.”

Potter nodded, then looked up at the Chief Engineer. “So, which Company are you working for?”

Liu smiled ruefully “The one that’s going to make me a Vice President.”

“You’re going to kill me, then?”

“Jesus, Emmett, I’m not a barbarian. Let’s just go home and collect the Survey bonus.” Liu smiled “If I get the kind of deal I think I will, you can even have my share of the bonus.”

Potter ignored him, concentrating instead on the fact that, despite his chatty, conversational tone, Liu had not lowered his weapon. “Did you kill Miller?”

After a moment, Liu nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“And Connolly?”

“No. No need.” Liu caught himself. “I mean there wasn’t any reason for me to.”

“And if there had been?”

Liu sighed. “Don’t be difficult, Emmett. I can fly the Fast Eddie home without you if need be.”

“Six months is a long time to be alone.”

“I’ll pass the time calculating my interest-income statements on the ship’s computer. He caught himself again. “Besides, Mike and Farrow will be along, too.”

He’s going to kill us all. Potter finally had to admit it to himself. Liu’s aim had not strayed a particle from the center of Potter’s chest. Company board member or sole Survey bonus recipient; or both. Why share any of it?

With nothing to lose, Potter sighed and reached for the pistol.

*     *     *

Mike came running at the sound of the gunshots. He could see nothing, but he knew the difference between the reports of an accelerator rifle and a firearm; there weren’t supposed to be any firearms in the Fast Eddie’s stores. Farrow raced down the ramp of the shuttle after him.

They passed under the craft to see Chief Engineer Liu and Captain Potter grappling in the snow, leaving a thin smear of reddened ice in their wake. Mike ran toward them, but his foot came down on something and his ankle twisted, throwing him off his feet. He hit the frozen ground hard and heard the gun go off again.

Mike looked to see that he had tripped on some white rock, and having no weapons he grabbed the stone and scrambled toward the men.

Chief Engineer Liu was pressing a gun against Captain Potter’s stomach. Potter was already bleeding from two wounds, when Mike heard a third shot, this one muffled by the Captain’s parka. Mike brought the rock down on Liu’s skull, and the Engineer rolled off Potter’s chest, stunned.

Liu hadn’t dropped the gun, and seemed to be trying to regain his bearings, so Mike swung the rock with his might against the Engineer’s temple. The left side of Liu’s forehead collapsed, his eyes rolled completely back, and he fell to the ground dead. Mike dropped the rock and went to Potter, lifting the Captain just as Farrow arrived.

“Emmett,” Farrow whispered hoarsely. “Emmett, can you make it to the ship?”

Potter didn’t answer; he was beginning to feel the cold through his parka, and tried to fumble for the coat’s heat controls, but his hands wouldn’t obey. “Rock,” he said.

Mike and Farrow shared a look, and the Basque engineer gestured with a nod toward the stone he had used to kill Liu. The Fast Eddie’s master quickly brought the rock to Potter.

Potter tried to push it away. “Liu was a Company man. Precious ore. Mountains filled with it.” He wanted to tell them to bury it, to throw it out the airlock from orbit; never to let the Companies or the CoDominium know it existed, but he was so tired; the fight with Liu had worn him out, and he was so cold. He needed to sleep, just for a little while.

Mike seemed to understand, though. Passing Potter’s bulk to Farrow, Mike stood and put the zirconium ore on the ground where the frozen marsh that comprised the landing zone had been softened by the morning’s test-firing of the shuttle engines.

Mike put his boot over the bloody rock and pushed it beneath the gluey, crunching surface. After a moment, there was no sign it had ever been there.

Potter looked at the mountains in the distance, at the dark, fierce storm clouds, the first snowflakes beginning to fall.

No two alike, he thought. He closed his eyes.

“He was a good man,” Mi’huelo said to Farrow.

Farrow nodded. “He was my friend, Deacon,” Farrow said.

Mi’huelo looked back over his shoulder. “I wonder what that stone was?” The Basque spoke idly, but his tone was cultured, educated.

“I don’t know, Deacon.”

Mi’huelo shrugged. “No matter. If this—Company man—was interested in it, than all the more reason to deny his masters the chance to despoil another world.”

He knelt to help Farrow pick up the body of Captain Emmett Potter, who although not a Harmony, had been a harmonious man. To the Harmonies, who try to harmonize with all things, such a man was highly regarded; the Universe being ultimately in harmony. Those few with the capacity to harmonize naturally were cherished as better parts of its Song. In that perfect song, the Universe sent to the faithful just such voices the faithful required to help them sing it.

And so, they believed, it had sent Emmett Potter; for he was the means through which Mi’huelo Costanza, Deacon of the First Church of the New Harmony, had been guided to this seemingly insignificant moon. For the Harmonies, too, had their secret scouts among the survey ships of the CoDominium.

Deacon Costanza now knew this seemingly insignificant moon could be made to resonate with that Harmony for which he and all the others of his order strove. Conditions on this harsh and unforgiving world would be a perfect place for the Harmonies to gather in solitude and security, for a little while, at least; for who else would want such a place? Deacon Costanza could see no reason for this place to stir greed among men, and here they might live in solitude, unmolested by the anthrocentric CoDominium, with its planet-raping Americans and their equally rapacious Soviet partners.

The Deacon and Acolyte Farrow buried Captain Potter and First Officer Connolly next to Icaorius and Owens, who had been good, true friends; alongside Ike, who had also been a Harmony. The bodies of Liu and Miller they left for the ravens, or whatever their equivalents were on this world, to nurture any scavengers that might roam the skies of the new world, as those buried would nurture the scavengers that moved within the ground.

Then, preparing to leave, Mi’huelo turned for one last look at the land around them, now disappearing behind curtains of snow, falling faster by the moment.

“What did you say Owens called this place?” Mi’huelo asked Farrow.

Farrow thought a moment: “A garden spot, your Eminence.”

Mi’huelo shook his head, smiling. “You see, Thomas? All things harmonize, if only we seek to accept them as part of the Song. Consider the four men buried there, and the two who lie exposed nearby. Theirs were lives claimed by this harsh world that might one day yet become a haven for us Harmonies.”

“Creation willing,” Farrow repeated, nodding. There was so much to understand, but he thought that perhaps today, he had just picked up one thread of one strain of the Music here.

“Remember,” Mi’huelo went on, “as a part of the Song, this place may claim the lives of many more as it plays its part in that music.” He put his arm across Farrow’s shoulders. “The lives of men are only notes in that movement, and it is only the aggregate effect of those notes which may be fully apprehended. These six, Thomas, these six are the first strains in the movement that contributes the story of this place to that song.

“The deaths of these men are the first blossoms of Spring in this world. Their bodies the bone-white seeds, and their blood the bright-red blossoms of the ultimate Harmony, the attainment of which we can only seek, and whose real nature can be known only to itself.

“Kneel beside me, Thomas, and let us seek some small measure of that Harmony.”

The steel floor of the airlock was cold against their knees, its hardness a further challenge to their concentration. No matter; counterpoint was important, too.

Each sought his own path for a few moments; Farrow was devoted to Costanza, and though many Harmonies found some of the Deacon’s interpretations—unsettling—still, he was regarded as a voice of vision.

For himself, Costanza fretted constantly over the Harmonies; they needed so much care and tending to protect them. They were babes in the woods, and they did not understand that those woods were full of peril. The Harmony of existence was a song of many movements, many parts, and though all, by definition, harmonized, not all were pleasant to hear. And despite the order’s belief in harmonizing one’s self to circumstances and events, Costanza knew that every great orchestration needed conductors.

His own song was thus sometimes a lonely one. But he was grateful that he and Farrow had been caretakers of this garden where such seeds of Harmony had been sown.

“Let the blood of those who lie here nourish the seeds of the Song thus begun, and let such fruits flourish and in measures everlasting.”

…flourish, and multiply…

From Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (1st Edition)

BUREAU OF CORRECTIONS

The Bureau of Corrections was one of the first administrative bureaus created by the CoDominium Council in the late-1990s. The Bureau operates as a supranational police force responsible for removing troublesome and repeat criminals off Earth and housing them either in the Sol System or on the outer worlds. It performs a critical function for the CoDominium super powers, serving as a pressure valve for both the US and USSR, whose many overcrowded prisons are filled with violent and habitual offenders. Most of these hardcore prisoners are not only threats to civil peace but extremely expensive to jail and maintain on Earth.

The Bureau’s presence on Earth is limited to two major collection depots (Lompoc Prison in the US and Vladimirsky Central, aka Prison No. 2, in the USSR) for criminal transportees. BuCorrect has been restricted to the maintenance and overseeing of these two criminal detention depots and those offices necessary to transport prisoners to near-Earth orbit. The Bureau of Corrections maintains in-system prisons at Luna Base, Ceres Base and is rumored to have a top-secret, secure facility on one of Saturn’s moons.

It wasn’t until habitable planets were discovered outside the Sol System that it was decided to maintain out-of-system prisons. The primary of these is Fulson’s World, a frigid and desolate outpost, which at the current time is the major CoDominium prison world. Tanith is also becoming an important depository for Earth’s criminal element.

The Bureau of Correction’s authority was increased in the early 2000s to include dangerous political prisoners. This has more than doubled the number of prisoners the Bureau of Corrections has had to warehouse and transport, putting a strain both on their limited staff and budget.

A new development in the transport of criminals has been the shipping of prisoners to newly settled colony worlds in an attempt to save scarce funds due to recent budgetary restrictions. The Bureau of Corrections does not have its own fleet and thus must “borrow” troop transport ships from the Fleet, rent passenger liners from private firms or farm the prisoners out to private concerns. Many of the young colony worlds, Kennicott and Hadley come to mind, do not have the resource base or police resources to deal with the sudden arrival of thousands of hardened criminals. This practice has been roundly condemned in the Grand Senate by colonial governors, the Humanity League and the Prisoners’ Rehabilitation Council.

Another recent development has been to send prisoners on empty mining transports on their way to pick up payloads from the outer worlds. The newly discovered world of Comstock provides a good example of this phenomenon, where there’s not a big enough, or wealthy enough, population base to profitably ship trade items and necessities. Prisoners have been reported arriving on Comstock aboard Anaconda Mining transports. The living conditions aboard these spacecraft are reputed to be inhumane and overcrowded. It’s not uncommon for 5 to 10% of the transportees to die before reaching their destination.

BuCorrect claims that most of these shipboard “deaths” are due to turf fights and revenge killings among the prisoners. This practice has been criticized as inhumane by the Humanity League, who claim that not only are these ships overcrowded, but the artificial foodstuffs provided the transportees is clearly substandard and “fit only for livestock, not human beings.”

There have also been reports that on some of the wealthier planets large landowners and mining companies have been paying unscrupulous and corrupt BuCorrect officers to ship them criminal colonists who are then “charged” a large indenture fee for shipment, which they then have to work off, leaving them slaves in all but name. There have also been numerous complaints about female prisoners who have been auctioned off to colonists as “wives” or to brothels without pay and minimal benefits. Officials who follow-up on these charges are often “disappeared” or are murdered off-world.

While there is substantial truth to these complaints, there is little chance for a remedy as long as the Bureau of Corrections has to stay within current budgetary constraints. This state of affairs will continue until the CoDominium Council makes a supreme effort to clean-up corruption within the Bureau and the Grand Senate allocates enough funds to hire responsible and dedicated personnel.

The recent creation of the Bureau of ReLocation to deal with troublesome minorities, subversives and malcontents has added to the Bureau of Corrections difficulties, causing a loss of over a third of the Bureau of Corrections’ budget. The “logic” being that the new Bureau of ReLocation will be handling many of the political prisoners and minorities that BuCorrect had to deal with. However, due to increasing criminal activity and new nationalistic uprisings worldwide, it is doubtful there will be any lowering of the number of bodies that the Bureau has to place and warehouse. Since they were under-funded before this cut, this leaves the Bureau without the staff or the funds to properly ship and care for the hundreds of thousands of dangerous prisoners that pass through the Department’s aegis on a yearly basis.

Unless conditions on Earth change dramatically, ongoing social disorder and corruption on Earth will cause the CoDominium’s Bureau of Corrections to continue forcibly transporting prisoners from Earth to off-world colonies by any and all available means whether the prisoners are welcome or unwelcome.

Back | Next
Framed