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QUAN LOI

Lieutenant Richard Grenville looked over the side of the aircar. They were travelling between West Haven, Quan Loi’s main starport where the RCS Far Traveller had landed, and Helle, the much smaller and less developed port to the east of the mountain chain.

The only thing Rick could find positive about the land to the car’s left was that it wasn’t as boring as the sea they’d flown over to avoid the spine of the mountains. The highest elevation was three thousand feet. The car—really a truck with room for three in the cab and a considerable cargo volume in back—could climb to ten thousand if everything worked properly. Tech 2 Kent, the Biology Section driver, didn’t want to test that and Rick, whose normal duties didn’t involve travel of any sort on a planet, was happy to let Kent decide.

An aircar glided like a brick. If the fans failed, the vehicle would hit the ground with whatever velocity gravity could give it. Their current fifty-foot altitude was probably enough to kill the occupants, but Rick figured there was a chance.

“Why did he land at Helle?” Kent said. “There’s nothing there. There’s bloody little at Haven.”

“I doubt Harper had much choice about it,” Rick said. “He was assigned to the Goliath, but she landed with damage on Morroworld. Her captain arranged the best way to get Harper to the Far Traveller, and the choices aren’t great here in the back of beyond.”

Rick was wearing a brand new second class uniform in honor of the man they were picking up. The collar rubbed, but he supposed he was lucky that he didn’t own a first class uniform. Captain Bolton would have insisted he wear full dress to greet their new officer. A utility uniform with a saucer hat were as much formality as any officer should need for duty on a survey vessel on a distant station.

“Sir?” said Kent as he lifted the car slightly to clear a stand of trees with snaky, reddish branches. “If you don’t mind me asking? This guy’s Biology Section, right? So I see why I’m picking him up since I’m the Bio driver…but why’re you along? Was he a buddy at the Academy?”

“I don’t think that Lieutenant Harry Harper even attended the Academy,” Rick said. He wasn’t angry about it, just maybe a little envious. “He’s a boffin like your Doctor Veil. The reason I’m here is that his dad’s a senator and owns half of Ruislip County; at least that’s what Bangs, the adjutant’s clerk, tells me.”

Kent whistled in surprise.

Rick nodded with a twisted smile. “Yeah,” he said. “You know how Captain Bolton is about the nobility. I half thought he was going to come along and greet the new addition to the Fart’s complement himself, but he finally decided that I would do. I hope Harper won’t want me to tug my forelock.”

That was probably a little more informal than Rick should have been with a technician, but third lieutenant on a survey ship wasn’t what he’d joined the Republic of Cinnabar Navy for. Being sent out to nursemaid some well-born amateur made the situation even worse.

“Look, if he’s got that kinda clout…,” said Kent. Below, a surface ship, really a timber raft, was hugging the shore as it headed in the same direction as they were. “Then what’s he coming to us for?”

“Hell if I know!” Rick said, but the situation suddenly struck him funny. “If it was me, I’d get assigned to a pirate chaser since that’s the only kind of action the RCN’s got so long as the treaty with the Alliance holds. If Harper’s not really a naval officer, I can see that might not be something he’d look forward to. But why the Far Traveller, that I sure can’t say.”

“I think we’re getting there, sir,” Kent said in a different tone, swinging the steering yoke to put the car into a climbing turn which heeled them over. Rick looked down over his side of the hull toward a shallow bay into which long piers thrust. In the center was an artificial island—possibly floating—with a causeway and tram to the shore which was encircled by sheds roofed with corrugated steel or structural plastic.

Three starships were anchored near the island. One was so small that it might be intended for transport within the Quan Loi system; another was a standard freighter of about two thousand tonnes displacement when it was floating as now on the water of the harbor. Rick figured that was the Belleisle, the tramp which had hauled their intended passenger here from Morroworld, where the damaged Goliath had landed.

“What’s that tub on the outside?” Kent said. “It looks like a barrel and I’ll bet it handles like one.”

“Put us down on the shore as near as you can to the causeway,” Rick said. If their passenger was still aboard the Belleisle, he supposed they’d have to walk up to the island unless he could get the port authorities to give them a ride on the tram.

“As for the ship,” he continued, looking critically at the oddly shaped vessel, “I suspect that’s from the Yamato Cluster, the Shining Empire they’re calling themselves now. They’re pretty active in this region, from what I can figure out from the briefing material. We don’t even have proper charts of this region. Well, that’s why Navy House sent a survey ship, I suppose.”

Rick guessed he shouldn’t complain about being on a survey ship. If this post hadn’t appeared, he’d have been on the beach where hundreds of other young officers had ended up when Navy House decided that peace with the Alliance was going to hold. Half pay for a junior lieutenant was a license to starve, and Rick didn’t have family money or rich friends he could touch.

The RCN hadn’t operated in the galactic north during the forty years of warfare with Guarantor Porra’s Alliance of Free Stars. The region wasn’t entirely under Alliance control, but the practical routes into it were, so there was no Cinnabar-flagged trade into it. Peace opened new markets for Cinnabar merchants, and the RCN had decided to map routes to aid them. In addition to the civilian benefits, it kept skills current in the ships’ complements involved and it could remind senators at appropriation time that the RCN was a valuable asset even during peace.

“Okay,” said Kent. “I think there’s room right at the south edge of the causeway. If it’s wet, I may be throwing up some mud, though.”

In fact Kent brought them in smoothly on what turned out to be dark-brown ground cover rather than bare dirt. The truck was used to place collectors to gather biological material for that portion of the Far Traveller’s survey, so Kent must have a lot of experience landing in places that got very little traffic.

“Good job, Kent,” Rick said as he opened the cab door. “Now all we have to do is find Lieutenant Harry Harper.”

“That would be me,” called the man standing in front of the nearest shed. He must have been sitting on some of the considerable amount of luggage sheltered within.

And by the Almighty, he was wearing a first class RCN uniform, Dress Whites!

* * *

Joss, the Goliath’s Biology Section hunter was hoping to transfer to the Far Traveller with me. She got up from the box she’d been sitting on and said, “D’ye hear it? That’s a forty-five twelve or I’m Guarantor Porra!”

“What’s a forty-five twelve?” I asked, getting to my feet also. The short answer was, “One more thing Harry Harper was going to have to learn about.” There’d been a lot of those already during my short passage on the Goliath.

Joss looked over her shoulder at me. “Sorry, sir,” she said. She was always polite but she gave me the willies anyway. The right side of her face looked like somebody’d scraped it with barbed wire, and her body was tattooed; at least as much as I could see beneath shorts and a utility shirt. A jacket, the RCN called the garment.

Many of the spacers on the Goliath were tattooed, but the heavy knife Joss wore under her belt was as unusual as her scarring. I guess she had it for her duties collecting specimens on the ground. It made me uncomfortable around her also, but it was just something I had to accept now that I was in the military.

“A forty-five twelve is a utility aircar,” she explained, “basically a light truck with two pairs of fans. They’re standard in the RCN—Bio Section on the Goliath had one, so I’m guessing this is our ride.”

She pursed her lips and added, “The Alliance has the same sorta vehicle, but they’re called Fourriers, no matter which company made them.”

I looked up in the direction Joss’ eyes were turned toward and saw an aircar coming toward us. Until I saw the vehicle, I hadn’t separated out the note of the lift fans from the general racket of the harbor area.

“You’ve seen Alliance cars, then?” I said. I didn’t focus my eyes on Joss as I spoke to her. She seemed to be a perfectly nice person, but I worried that I’d let something show on my face if I looked directly at her.

“Yeah, I was in the army for about ten years,” Joss said, her eyes still on the aircar. “A mercenary, I guess, in a drop commando. Heyer’s.”

I didn’t know what a drop commando was, but I decided not to ask for an explanation. I hadn’t heard any emotion in her words, but there was something in her voice that bothered me. Maybe it was just the complete lack of emotion.

I’d taken the appointment with the Navy simply because it was a real biology job that sounded interesting. Straight out of the Xenos Science Faculty I wasn’t likely to get much without using my family connections, and if I did that I’d become a decorative wall plaque in a lab’s reception room. I wasn’t going to be dazzling the audience at academic conferences, but I’d read biology because I was interested in it and I wanted real work.

Then my tutor, Professor Equerry, called me in for a conference. A former student of his, Doctor Margot Veil, was working in the Biology Department of the naval survey service. Doctor Veil had written to ask Equerry to keep an eye out for a well-born graduate who might be interested in distant travel and really exotic life forms. It would be a chance to do unique work at the very beginning of a career.

I frowned at the birth requirement, but Equerry explained that the position was on shipboard and the Navy was more class conscious than Academe. Doctor Veil’s captain completely ignored her. She hoped to have a junior in her department who could interact with the captain on equal terms.

That wasn’t precisely what I wanted, but no one else was going to give me the position I wanted either. I didn’t need the money—the real money in the family had gone to my uncle’s branch, not my dad’s, but we weren’t short. Regardless, I wanted to do something and analyzing the biota of planets which had never before been visited by a Cinnabar scientist certainly sounded like something to do.

I’d initially joined the survey ship Goliath on Wittenberg, intending to transfer to the Far Traveller in six months’ time. In fact I had only about a month on the Goliath before the ship was badly damaged while surveying routes, losing two antennas while in sponge space.

I learned later that it had been a very dangerous accident and that the hull itself might have broken up. All I knew at the time was that something had gone wrong and that the Goliath was making an unplanned landing on Morroworld.

Captain von Hase of the Goliath sent courier missiles to several locations and also canvassed starships in Morroworld and its system. I was completely out of my depth, so I could only listen and hope I understood—or at least that I looked like I did—when von Hase or one of his juniors rattled off information about my status.

In ten days after the Goliath’s emergency landing, I boarded the freighter Belleisle, bunking with the crew on the large bridge because she had no passenger compartment. To my surprise Joss came with me. I knew the hunter to look at on the Goliath—she was unmistakable—but I’d never spoken to her. The rest of the Goliath’s crew would stay aboard and limp back to Cinnabar when the rigging had been patched up sufficiently.

I had the impression that von Hase was at fault for the Goliath’s condition or at any rate feared he was. He seemed to think that my father was Senator Harper, a mover and shaker in the Senate though out of power at the moment. That was my uncle, Harper of Forwood. He and my dad were on good terms, but I very much doubted that anything I said would cause Uncle Ted to interfere in a Navy House decision to punish an officer for dereliction.

The only concession Captain Blasey of the Belleisle would make after we arrived on Quan Loi was to radio the Far Traveller which was several hundred miles away. He announced that someone would pick me up, and that the Belleisle was no longer responsible for my meals or anything else to do with me. I had plenty of money for my keep, and being cut off from the monotonous rice and fish on the Belleisle was no hardship; but I wondered what I was supposed to do if transport didn’t arrive before dark.

As it turned out the transport—the 4512—was arriving while the sun was barely beyond midsky. That at least had been a needless concern.

The aircar settled to the ground in front of us. I hadn’t been sure there was enough room: The fan housings and plenum chamber made the vehicle considerably wider than the wheeled trolleys the port staff used to transfer cargo. The path was hard surfaced, but it lay beneath water-weed which the most recent exhaust surge had lifted from the harbor surface.

I stepped forward as the cab door opened and heard the officer in a gray uniform call back to his driver, “Now all we have to do is find Lieutenant Harry Harper.”

“That would be me,” I said. I wondered if I was supposed to salute now.

The officer straightened up like I’d jabbed him with a stick. His eyes focused on me and he said, “Harper? Well, if you are, this isn’t as hard as I was afraid.”

He walked toward me, a fellow in his early twenties. His hair was darker than mine and curlier than mine, but there wasn’t much to choose from between us. Except that he probably knew what he was doing and I certainly did not.

I met him and thrust out my hand. That might not be protocol, but it was friendly and positive so it couldn’t be very badly wrong.

“Good to meet you, Harper,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it firmly. “We’ll get you to the Far Traveller where Captain Bolton will sign you in. I’m Rick Grenville, third lieutenant on the Far Traveller. I suppose you’ve got luggage?”

“Well, yes, I’m afraid I do,” I said. I pointed into the shed where my seven cases were stacked. “I didn’t know what I was going to need, so I’m afraid I overpacked. Will this be a problem?”

“All of this?” Grenville said, staring deeper into the shed.

I turned my head and remembered Joss, standing quietly a little behind me. But I’d deal with that after this. I repeated, “Is it going to be a problem?”

I wondered if I could pay for extra luggage. Probably not on a warship. It hadn’t been a problem on the Belleisle, since the freighter had only a half cargo at the time.

The driver had gotten out and walked over to us also. He said, “Sir?” He was looking toward Grenville, which made sense. “Bio Section has a lot of pressurized specimen storage, so unless Veil has a problem—which I don’t see happening—it’ll be fine. And there’s stowage on the outer hull for anything up to a couple aircars. You didn’t bring an aircar, did you, sir?”

“No,” I said, “but I was beginning to wish I had before you arrived. At least if Captain Blasey would’ve told me which direction to drive to find the Far Traveller.”

“Well, we’ll get you there fine, Harper,” he said. “Let’s start shifting this luggage.”

He paused and looked straight at me. “Say,” he said. “What ought I be calling you? Your lordship?”

I cleared my throat, feeling embarrassed. “Well, technically,” I said, “I’m Lord Harper or I guess Lieutenant Harper. What I’d much prefer, though, is Harry—if that’s proper in the Navy. What I’m not is Harper. While my dad is alive, that’s him, Harper of Greenslade—or my uncle, Harper of Forwood. When dad dies, my sister Emily will take over the Greenslade title.”

Grenville smiled broadly at me. “Not something I’d ever had to learn about before,” he said. “And I’m Rick. Harry is fine for me, though Tech 2 Kent here”—he nodded to the driver—“will call you El-Tee or sir.”

“Right?” he added, looking at Kent, who nodded agreeably.

“And a bit of info for you, shipmate,” Rick continued, “since you probably don’t know much more about the RCN than I do dinner parties in Great Houses. We’re RCN from the inside. ‘The Navy’ is what civilians call us—or Land Force pongoes, I suppose. Okay?”

“Thank heaven somebody’s teaching me things for a change,” I said. For the first time I could imagine doing something other than trying to keep out of everybody’s way aboard ship. “Some of these cases may need two of us, so if somebody will grab the other end, we can get me to the Far Traveller while it’s still daylight.”

“I’ll help,” Joss said, reminding me again of her presence. “And Lieutenant Grenville? If you can fit me in, I’d really appreciate it. I’m hoping to sign on with the Far Traveller myself as a Bio Section hunter.”

Rick looked at her. The scars and tattoos should have made her conspicuous in any company, but she stood as quietly as the posts supporting the shed roof and aroused no more attention.

“If you don’t mind riding in back with the gear,” Rick said, “I don’t figure you’ll add more to the load than the fans can handle.”

“Sixty-three kilos,” Joss said with a grin which the scarring made grotesque. “And a time or two I rode in a plenum chamber, being very bloody careful not to let my legs slip.”

“The mass and volume aren’t a problem,” Rick said. “But I can’t promise you a lift back here if Doctor Veil turns you down.”

“This isn’t a place I want to come back to,” Joss said, taking the other end of the packing case I had touched. I started to lift and found that the hunter was at least as strong as I was. “We’ll hope that he doesn’t turn me down.”

“She,” I said, duck-walking toward the open back of the car to keep from banging my knees. “Doctor Margot Veil is a woman.”

Rick and the driver grabbed the next case in line. “I wonder, Harry…,” he said. “Have you got other uniforms than your Whites there?”

“Oh, goodness, yes!” I said. “Did I do wrong? I thought I should wear my best for reporting to a new ship.”

Nobody aboard the Goliath had said anything, but they—the officers, I mean—were all so busy after the ship lost two antennas that I don’t think they even noticed me. If it came to that, they pretty much didn’t notice me before the trouble.

“No, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Rick said. “But on board we pretty much wear utilities, and they’re good enough for the places the Fart mostly lands too. Sometimes the locals don’t even wear pants, so there’s not much point in dressing to impress.”

Joss and I got another crate. “I’ll be glad to get out of this cummerbund,” I said. It was especially awkward for shifting luggage now, but I hadn’t expected to be doing that when I dressed this morning. At home I’d always had servants and I’d expected that to continue on shipboard, but apparently Biology Section personnel were outside the ship’s company. It hadn’t been a serious problem on the Goliath, though I had to keep reminding myself that I was responsible for my own clothes, for example.

We got the seven large crates moved. Kent got into the back of the truck and adjusted them slightly for balance in the air. While he did that, I picked up the document case that I would carry in the cab with me.

“Guess we’re ready to go,” Rick said. “You want the outside or middle seat?”

“Outside if you don’t mind,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve been off Cinnabar you see, and it’s, well, exciting.”

“We’ll hope that Kent keeps it from being too exciting,” Rick said. “You’re welcome to see as much of Quan Loi as you care to, though.”

He glanced at the document case and said, “What’s that, if I can ask?”

“Captain von Hase gave me data chips to carry to Captain…Bolton, he thought? Of the Far Traveller. And Doctor Howe of Biology Section is sending information to Doctor Veil.”

“Well, let’s do it, then,” Rick said. He hopped up the step in the plenum chamber and slid over to the middle of the seat while Kent boarded from the other side. Joss was in back, visible through the rear window.

The driver checked his instruments, then ran up his fans. We slid off the slight slope toward the harbor, then gained speed and zoomed up to fifty feet while curving eastward.

I was finally on the way to a career!

* * *

The aircar had dual hand controls rather than a central yoke, so Rick had to watch that his left knee didn’t get in the way if Kent brought his right arm down fast to bank to the right. There was plenty of room, but he had to be careful.

Harry seemed a decent fellow, despite wearing his Whites. It was hard to believe that a lieutenant didn’t know that much about protocol, though.

Aloud Rick said, “How long have you been in the RCN, Harry? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Harry gave an embarrassed laugh. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know that you’d say I ever was. What happened is that when Doctor Veil accepted me for the position, the personnel department from Navy House sent me a message saying that I’d be ranked as a lieutenant with seniority dated from my twenty-first birthday—that’s three years ago. And I asked dad’s secretary to pick up the sort of uniforms I was going to need.”

Rick laughed whole-heartedly. “Look,” he said, “if that’s the kind of life you’ve had and you’re still willing to muck in and haul baggage, I’m glad to have you on the Fart. Ah, that’s the Far Traveller to us and probably to everybody else in the RCN.”

“I’d figured that out,” Harry said cheerfully. “Some civilian skills do transfer to life in the RCN.”

He furrowed his brow as he thought, then said, “Come to think, I’m a lieutenant in the Sheet Island Space Fencibles. But that’s just because my uncle owns Sheet Island. We have a very pretty parade uniform, and I did get some training in ship handling. I sincerely hope that we won’t have to serve as Cinnabar’s last line of defense, but I’m sure we’ll die bravely if it comes to that.”

It was a moment before Rick was sure that Harry was joking. When he decided it had to be very dry humor—humor you could build a desert with—he laughed. He hadn’t been around enough nobles to be sure how common Harry’s sort was—but not very common, he’d guess.

“How did you happen to join the Fart?” Rick asked. He knew he was going to be grilled about the new lieutenant by every other officer on the ship, starting with Captain Bolton. Since Harry seemed happy to chat about himself, this ride was a good way to answer their questions. Rick had stories which would keep him in drinks at every RCN bar he entered for the rest of his life.

They continued to chat for the next three hours. Harry was getting sleepy but willingly talked about his family—two elder sisters: one a politician under their uncle’s protection; the other a colonel in the Land Forces whom Harry said would be Chief of the General Staff someday if she didn’t get killed first. Rick hadn’t been looking forward to the duty, but he was thoroughly satisfied by the time Kent curved them down onto the landing stage near the stern of the Far Traveller.

The car was overflying a reed delta. From higher up it would be a blotch of bluish gray, but at only fifty feet in the air the individual reed stems were visible. Rick hadn’t seen any signs of a watercourse on the flight from Haven. Now that Harry was peering down intently, Rick began to wonder what he might have missed.

“What?” Harry said. “Doctor Veil asked for me, so I was sent out to the Far Traveller. Since she was still working up, I was assigned to the Goliath which was supposed to meet you on Quan Loi, but it got wrecked on the way on Morroworld.”

“I’m surprised that Doctor Veil had that kind of influence at Navy House,” Rick said. In fact he was utterly amazed. Biology Section was very much the poor relation, even aboard the Far Traveller. That Veil would have a say in the appointment of someone classed as a commissioned officer in the RCN—which Veil was not—beggared belief.

“That bird flying there!” Harry said, pointing. “Do all the birds on Quan Loi have four wings?”

Rick shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Veil,” he said. “I’m not much interested in birds.” He grinned. “Except the two-legged kind.”

“All the vertebrates here have six limbs,” Kent said. “The flying ones modify the first and last sets into wings. The boss says they’re pretty well catalogued on Bryce, and she’s got the files since peace with the Alliance.”

Rick had been thinking of Kent as simply a driver. He suddenly realized that Tech 2 Kent was also a member of Bio Section and had been for long enough to have learned things—even though he had no more specialized training than Rick himself did.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Harry said. “Do you suppose she’ll let me…? But of course! I’ll have access to all the department’s holdings!”

He realized Rick was looking at him expectantly and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Well, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything unusual in a professor choosing his assistant. Hers, in this case.”

Rick shrugged. “The ways of Navy House are beyond the ken of mortal man,” he said.

Kent swung the car out over the sea. After looking down at the sandbanks longer than Rick had found them interesting, Harry turned to him and said, “I was told on the Goliath that the Far Traveller would be different but it probably wouldn’t matter to me. Can you tell me how they’re different, Rick?”

Rick pursed his lips as he thought about what he knew of the Goliath. “They’re both modified from light cruisers…,” he said. “I haven’t been aboard the Goliath but when we’re back on the Fart I can check and correct anything I get wrong off the top of my head. The main thing is that our missile magazines on the Fart have been turned into pinnace hangars. We’ve got four pinnaces aboard so the ship herself doesn’t have to make all the soundings. From what I heard, it was while sounding that the Goliath lost two antennas.”

Harry nodded. “I don’t know the details,” he said, “but the trouble happened while Bio Section was at the base on Morroworld. All nonessential crew were landed while the ship was sounding because insertions and extractions are so awful.”

He looked up and added, “Do you get used to them?”

“Nobody I know ever did,” Rick said. “Sorry.”

After a moment, he added, “It’s pretty unusual for a gradient between two bubble universes to be so steep that a ship loses an antenna. A well-found ship, anyway, and I know the Survey Branch is inspected to regular RCN standards.”

“There was something funny about what happened,” Harry said, “but nobody talked to me about it. Maybe it’s in the report”—he patted the document case—“Captain von Hase sent to the Far Traveller?”

“Maybe,” Rick said. It was as good an answer as any; he sure didn’t have a better one himself.

“Welcome to your new home, shipmate,” Rick said with a broad smile.

* * *

The ship in West Haven looked enough like the Goliath that I would’ve believed they were the same if I hadn’t known better. I’m sure an expert could’ve told the difference, but I was likely better at classifying sponges than the experts in spaceship design were.

Kent brought us in on the landing stage just above water. As he shut down, a crane extended from the hold. I saw a spacer in a cage with windows on the right bulkhead.

“Bio Section’s down here on Level Three,” Rick said as he followed me out of the car, “but first we’d better get you officially signed in on the bridge.”

Kent pulled down the cable from the crane and was sliding its hooks over to a three-point attachment system in the car’s roof.

Rick walked to a pedestrian hatch in the bulkhead to the left. The room onto which the landing stage opened seemed to be a hangar with a storage area at the back.

“Ah, Rick?” I said. “Will Doctor Veil be in Bio Section now? Because I think I’d like to meet her before we go up to the bridge.”

“We can do that, but you ought to see Captain Bolton first thing,” Rick said. He shrugged and added, “I don’t think he’ll care much, but Vermijo, the first lieutenant, can be a bear about things being done right. But sure, come on.”

There was a corridor on the other side of the hatch. Numbers were stenciled on the opposite bulkhead. They didn’t mean anything to me but Rick turned right and then rapped with his knuckles on the jamb of an open hatch just down the corridor.

“Bio Section?” he called. “I’ve brought your new officer. If you don’t mind I’ll stick around to take him up to Captain Bolton, but he wanted to see you first.”

I followed Rick into a lab much like the Goliath’s. There were four work stations with genetic sequencers to the left on an aisle, and a counter with other equipment—including an optical microscope—across from them. A man in his thirties turned at one of the workstations and a woman of forty-odd came out of the enclosed office at the end of the aisle.

“Lord Harper?” the woman called as she came toward me. “I’m Margot Veil and I’m very pleased at your arrival. If you’ll come into the office with me I’ll bring you up to speed.”

She looked at Rick and said, “Lieutenant Grenville, isn’t it? You can come in too. I won’t be but a few minutes; the last thing I want to do is irritate Captain Bolton.”

We dutifully trooped into the small office. Veil closed the hatch behind us and slipped past to take the only chair, which was behind a workstation/desk. “Harper, what do you know about the Archaic Spacefarers?”

I frowned. “I’ve heard of the theory,” I said. “That’s about all I know, though. To be frank, I think it’s about all anybody knows.”

Veil looked at me. Her face had a wooden lack of emotion. She couldn’t be more than fifty given that Professor Equerry had trained her, but she really seemed ageless. Not young, but never aging.

“I hope to change that ignorance,” she said. “And I hope you’ll be willing to help me?”

I swallowed. She obviously cared about my answer. I said, “Ma’am, I’m willing to believe in the Archaic Spacefarers if I see the evidence. I just haven’t seen it as yet.”

Veil nodded and the atmosphere relaxed. “Yes, of course,” she said. “That’s all I could hope for. The evidence will convince you, I’m sure, and between us we’ll be able to convince all reasonable people. Starting with Captain Bolton, though I may be giving him excessive credit for the ability to reason. It may be that your family pedigree will be enough with him. That’s why I hired you, you know.”

I felt myself stiffen and my stomach turn icy. “No, ma’am,” I said. “I certainly did not know that. I assumed that you looked at my high second-class degree and my tutor’s recommendation. If you want me as a social coup, you’ll have my resignation as quickly as I can write it!”

Rick was standing behind me, nearer the door. I heard him shift slightly, but I had to concentrate on Doctor Veil.

“Not at all, Harper,” she said. “I misspoke as I often do. Your degree is fine; it fits you to take over from me—when you’ve gained experience. Which you don’t have yet.”

“I thought I was going to be your lab assistant,” I said, calming down and grateful to be able to do it.

“I suppose you could,” Veil said, “but Mahaffy out there with a certificate degree is better at the grunt work than you or I would ever be. What I need for you is entrée into the houses of local nobles who won’t even answer a polite note from an oick like me. When I realized that, I contacted Professor Equerry. My experience already here on Quan Loi has proven it beyond doubt.”

“You want dinner invitations?” I said, even more puzzled than I’d been angry a moment before. I supposed I could do that—Doctor Veil could go as my plus-one, and if I let it be known in local society that Lord Harper was hoping to meet locals of his own class, there’d be a line as long as Harbor Street.

“No, no, not that!” Veil said sharply. “Their collections are what I want to see. I’m sure that most of the old families throughout the region will have curiosity cabinets of plants and animals—and oddities that they’ve been gathering for hundreds of years. That’s where we’ll find evidence of the Archaics.”

“Ah,” I said. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I misunderstood. That’s a very reasonable plan, and I’ll help you carry it out to the best of my ability.”

“Good, good,” said Veil. “Now go off with Grenville here and take care of the naval niceties. When you come back, I’ll fill you in on the details.”

Rick and I returned to the corridor. I was inexpressibly glad that what Doctor Veil needed from me was something that I could provide.

* * *

Rick led me toward the front of the ship, saying, “The aft companionways are closer, but Captain Bolton will be on the bridge so we’ll save steps in the long run.”

“Is ‘companionway’ naval jargon for elevators?” I asked.

“There aren’t any personnel elevators on a starship,” Rick said nonchalantly. “Elevator shafts twist with every insertion into sponge space and the cages would be trapped. A warship is even worse, because acceleration stresses can be so high—and battle damage can torque a hull into a pretzel.”

“Just how much climbing does this involve?” I asked as we entered a rotunda with large lockers around the perimeter and four thick columns in the center. Rick opened the red-painted hatch in the base of one of the columns.

“Red means it’s up,” he said. “The blue ones are down companionways. And there’s four more in the stern.”

“If they’re just stairs,” I said, and I could see they were, circular staircases with perforated steel treads, “then don’t they go in both directions?”

“They do,” Rick said, “but the traffic doesn’t. It’d be bloody chaos if people tried to go both ways, especially in action.”

He turned his head and grinned at me as he started up. “And it’s seven decks up from here to bridge level. But you will get used to this. After a while.”

I concentrated on the climb. After a few steps I simply put my head down and kept going on. I could see the heels of Rick’s soft boots. They were designed to be worn within suits on the outside of the hull. I found them adequately comfortable in general use, but I’d had almost no experience on the hull while under way.

Occasionally we paused when somebody entered through a hatch slightly ahead. I’m pretty sure that Rick was deliberately hanging back so that our—so that my—slow pace wouldn’t delay others entering above us. It really wasn’t practical to pass on the curling companionway.

I heard another hatch open immediately ahead of me. Rick said, “Watch the coaming when you step out, Harry,” and only then did I realize we’d reached the bridge level.

I staggered as I stepped through the hatchway. I’d kept going by turning myself into a machine. When I tried to change the programming, the machine went to the verge of spinning out of control.

I opened my mouth to ask Rick to hold up for a moment, then closed it immediately. The fast climb—and it wasn’t that fast—had made me queasy. My first priority as a member of the Far Traveller’s crew would be to practice climbing stairs. That hadn’t been a problem on the Goliath, I guess because Biology Section was on Level 9 and my cabin was on Level 8 just below it.

I straightened up and got control of my breath. “Thanks for giving me a moment,” I said. “I needed it, but I’m going to get into better shape.”

“Then let’s meet the captain,” Rick said with a friendly smile.

The bridge was only twenty feet away, visible through the open hatch. There were half a dozen people among the consoles, in a quick glance. It looked exactly like the bridge of the Goliath except that the structural surfaces—deck, bulkheads, and overhead—were enameled a lighter shade of gray.

I thought we were going to enter, but Rick stopped instead at a cabin on the starboard side of the corridor. The light hatch was ajar. He rapped it with his knuckles, standing so that he could be seen from inside through the opening.

“Captain Bolton,” he called. “I’ve brought Lieutenant Harper to join our company.”

Rick stepped back and motioned me forward. Before I reached the hatch, it opened forcefully. A short man in a second class uniform burst into the corridor. I braced myself to salute, but before I could, he thrust out his hand to me and said, “Lord Harper? Welcome aboard, sir!”

I shook his hand, confused by the greeting but I was confused by quite a lot of the RCN’s procedures. I said, “I’m glad to be here, sir,” because it sounded harmless.

“Has Grenville treated you well, your lordship?” Bolton said, looking past me with an expression just short of becoming a glare. “If he hasn’t, by the Almighty…”

I didn’t know what the rest of that threat would have been, but I could guess. “Lieutenant Grenville has been a polite and knowledgeable guide,” I said firmly. “He’s going to get me enrolled and assigned a cabin, but he said it was important that I be introduced to you first, sir.”

Bolton straightened abruptly. “Yes, of course, Lord Harper,” he said. “I was going to suggest we adjourn to my stateroom, where I’ve got some rather decent bourbon from the Bryce Highlands—there’s nothing here in my day cabin, of course. But that can wait until you’re straightened away.”

He stepped back. I saluted and turned toward the stern with Rick. When we heard Bolton’s hatch close, I muttered to Rick, “Is he always that enthusiastic?”

“Maybe he is when he meets nobles,” Rick said in an odd tone. “Your lordship.”

I grimaced. “Don’t give me that crap!” I said. “I’ve got to take it from him, he’s the captain; but I’m damned if I will from you!”

“Just making sure, Harry,” he said. He smiled and I felt relieved.

* * *

“The Battle Direction Center’s armored like the bridge,” Rick said, “and it’s in the far stern so the ship can be conned from it if the bridge is hit. That’s the first lieutenant’s action station, and his office and quarters are adjacent. That’s where we’re going.”

“Ah…?” I said. “I didn’t realize that the Far Traveller was still a warship?”

Rick laughed. “Well, technically every RCN vessel is a warship, and the ship’s crew—not the science crew like you—are RCN personnel just as sure as the admirals on the Navy Board are. But no, when the Ajax was converted to a research vessel and renamed the Far Traveller, her crew stopped expecting to see action. Bow dorsal turret is still active with a six-inch plasma cannon, but any ship going off into the back of beyond is armed. Ours is bigger and in a fancier installation than the four-inch gun on a freighter would be, but it was cheaper and simpler to leave the turret in place than rip it out during the rebuild and replace it with something less impressive.”

We’d met half a dozen spacers going the other way on the corridor. In an undertone I said to Rick, “Don’t people salute on this ship?”

“Not aboard in active service,” Rick said. He glanced sideways at me. “Do you miss getting salutes?”

“Good heavens, no!” I said. “But I was expecting it. I thought the Goliath was just an exception because of the accident.”

I saw the hatch of what must be the BDC ahead of us at the end of the corridor. Though it was open, its armored thickness demonstrated that it wasn’t an ordinary hatch.

Rick led me into the end cabin to the left. Two steel desks with flat-plate workstations faced the hatchway. A woman in her forties sat at one, but a man of twenty at most at the other said brightly, “Lieutenant Grenville, how can we help you?”

“I’m just guiding Lieutenant Harper here around,” Rick said, gesturing to me. “He needs a cabin and to be signed onto the ship’s books.”

“Roger that,” the clerk said, bringing up data on his display. “He wants to be near the biology lab, I suppose?”

The older woman had looked up sharply when she heard my name. Still looking at me, she pressed something on her control field.

“Definitely,” Rick said to the junior clerk. “Time he spends running up and down companionways is wasted from his real job: cataloging worms. Right, Harry?”

I returned Rick’s grin and had opened my mouth to say something when the door to an inner office banged open. The tall, thin man who came out settled his officers’ hat and said, “Lieutenant Harper, come into my office—if you’ll be so good.”

I stepped between the two desks, wondering what I’d done to so infuriate the first lieutenant. Rick had warned me that Lieutenant Vermijo could be a bear about protocol, but I hadn’t expected that ten minutes with Doctor Veil would arouse this level of anger.

I followed Vermijo into the inner room and saluted. I probably did that badly, but I was trying.

“Close the bloody hatch, Harper!” Vermijo said from behind the desk.

I swung it closed; I hadn’t been sure what he wanted or I’d have done that when I entered. “Sir,” I said, standing as stiffly as I could, “Lieutenant Harper reporting!”

“I know who you are, Harper!” Vermijo said. “What I want to know is why you decided to go over the head of the RCN and use your political relatives to force yourself into a position which had already been awarded to a worthy candidate?”

“Sir,” I said, trying to figure out what he was talking about. “I didn’t know there was another candidate. My understanding was that Doctor Veil requested me on the basis of my tutor’s suggestion.”

“Veil isn’t even RCN!” Vermijo said. “Why would you imagine that her opinion would matter to Navy House? If you were a real RCN officer, that would be obvious!”

“She’s head of Biology Section on the Far Traveller!” I said. Remembering where I was I added, “Sir. All I knew of the position was what she and Professor Equerry told me.”

“The slot had already been awarded to my wife’s cousin Jorge,” Vermijo said. “He has a zoology degree from Huntsman College on Maskelaine and was eminently qualified for the position.”

“Sir, all I do is repeat that this is all news to me,” I said. I could have said that a degree from a backwater college wasn’t the equivalent of one from the Xenos Science Faculty, but that wouldn’t have been useful. Besides, from what Doctor Veil had said about Mahaffy’s certificate degree being sufficient for the job, the quality of my degree really hadn’t mattered. “I didn’t pull any strings.”

“You say!” Vermijo said.

My skin prickled all over. For a moment all I saw was pulsing white light. When I was sure I had my voice under control, I said, “Sir, if you doubt my qualifications for the job, then you should take the matter up with Doctor Veil, my superior.”

I swallowed. “But if you’re calling me a liar—”

I’d been wrong about having my voice under control. To avoid choking up, I had to blurt out the rest of what I was saying: “—then I will meet you with pistols as a gentleman!”

“Where do you think you are, Lieutenant?” Vermijo said. He backed up slightly. Because of where he stood behind the desk, he bumped the bulkhead. “You know that officers of the RCN aren’t permitted to fight duels!”

“I don’t know anything of the sort!” I said. “I’m a biologist, not an RCN officer, just as you said. And if I were, it still wouldn’t prevent me from responding as a gentleman should when a total stranger calls him a liar! I know nothing about any political shenanigans inside Navy House!”

That was absolutely true, but as I spoke the words I remembered I’d heard that Doctor Veil had a senatorial backer of her Archaic Spacefarer dream. If that senator had asked Uncle Ted for help, Ted would probably have put his considerable political weight behind the request. At the very least, Uncle Ted would have as little interest in bureaucratic game-playing as I did when a scientist of real stature was trying to put together a team.

But I didn’t know about any of that.

Lieutenant Vermijo’s face lost its angry expression as he took in what I’d said. He stiffened, then cleared his throat and said, “My pardon, Lieutenant Harper. I do not of course doubt your word, and I regret that I misspoke in a fashion to suggest that I did.”

I cleared my throat again also. “I accept your apology, sir,” I said. “I should have realized that I must be mishearing you.”

I was trembling with relief. My sister Emily had fought a duel over some point of party discipline. They’d both missed their first shot and composed the matter. Emily told me after a night of heavy drinking that after the first exchange she’d found herself terrified that she was going to kill the other fellow, a junior whip—who’d blurted something out stupidly. In much the same way as Vermijo had, I now realized.

Vermijo let out his breath. “Yes, well…,” he said. “Thank you for clearing up my mistake, Lieutenant. I’m sure that Brontop and her staff will take care of your billeting, but if there are problems just let us know.”

I took that as my dismissal. I saluted again and quickly turned to exit the cabin. Everybody in the outer office was staring at me. I forced a smile and said, “Lieutenant Vermijo is confident that you’ll take care of my housekeeping affairs. Rick, if things are under control, I’d like to be shown my cabin and get that squared away before learning more about my duties from Doctor Veil.”

“We’re set,” said Rick. “You get more exercise in the companionway, but at least we’re going down this time.”

When we were a safe distance down the corridor, Rick said quietly, “Things go all right in there?”

I swallowed and said, “We reached an understanding. I think things will be all right if I concentrate on my job down on Level Three.”

“You’ll be eating in the wardroom with the rest of us officers,” Rick said. “On Level Ten between the bridge and the BDC.”

“Ah,” I said. It would be an insult to Captain Bolton to take my meals in the lab as I’d hoped to do. “Well, I think it will be all right.”

We reached a blue companionway. Rick paused for a moment at the hatchway and held his hand up to silence me. Gesturing me on when he was sure there was no one close below us in the steel column, he said, “Have you killed many people in duels, Harry?”

The door of Vermijo’s inner office was thin. We might as well have left it open when the lieutenant brought me in to shout at me. The story would be all over the ship by this evening.

I took a deep breath. “I’ve never fought a duel,” I said. “My family doesn’t go in for them. But I would rather die than allow an insult to my honor like that.”

Rick cleared his throat. “I’m sure Lieutenant Vermijo wasn’t thinking about what his words meant when they came out of his mouth. And now he’s truly sorry.”

My knees were trembling in delayed reaction to the scene in Vermijo’s office. I paused at the second hatchway down—the companionway expanded slightly where the hatches entered. I turned to Rick and said, “I’ve never killed anything but some birds. I’m a pretty good wing shot. I’m a biologist, that’s all I am!”

“Well, personally I’m glad to hear that,” Rick said. “Things can be dicey enough in the RCN without worrying about a messmate blowing my head off because I told him I didn’t like his color sense.”

I looked at him. “What’s wrong with my color sense?” I said in puzzlement.

“Not a bloody thing, since you’re in full uniform,” Rick said. “Which made it a safe subject.”

“Well,” I said, “since we’re mates, I’d even let you comment on my heliotrope pajamas.”

Rick laughed, as I’d hoped he would.

* * *

The stern of Level 3 wasn’t familiar territory for Rick any more than it was for Harry but at least a regular RCN officer understood the signage.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about Harry’s flare-up with the first lieutenant. There had been RCN officers who were famous duelists, but dueling had always been a violation of regulations and nowadays the general attitude of the service was to consider that sort of thing to be in bad taste. Rick certainly felt that way himself.

On the other hand, Harry wasn’t a blustering bully using the implicit threat of death to dominate the folks around him. Vermijo had been out of line in using his rank to abuse a junior officer who had accidentally gotten in the way of one of his fiddles. Maybe there was more to be said for dueling than Rick would have guessed before now. Anyway, it’d all passed off harmlessly.

They reached Biology Section without a problem. Rick could see his companion brightening as he began to recognize landmarks.

Inside the section, Kent and the tattooed hunter, Joss, waited on the two jump seats folded out from the bulkhead in what amounted to the lobby. Both jumped to their feet when Rick and Harry came in.

“Kent,” Rick said to the driver. They’d gotten to know one another slightly during the trip to pick Harry up. “Go get Lieutenant Harper’s luggage hauled to Cabin 3P45. Draft a detail on my orders if you need to.”

“Sir, it won’t fit,” Kent said. “You know that.”

“No, but P47 is empty for the moment,” Rick said. “Shift the overage there and Lieutenant Harper can sort it for permanent stowage as soon as he arranges for a servant.”

The tech, Mahaffy, had gotten to his feet as soon as the officers entered. Now he nodded to call attention to himself and said, “Lieutenant Harper?”

When both officers looked at him, he continued, “If you just need ordinary redding up and the usual housekeeping stuff, laundry and all, I’m doing for Doctor Veil when I’m off duty. I guess I can handle you too at an extra florin a week.”

Harry looked at his companion. “Rick?” he said.

Rick shrugged. “That’s standard,” he said. “If there’s a problem I can line up somebody on the starboard watch to do for you.”

“Very good then,” Harry said. “Thank you, Mahaffy.”

Doctor Veil stood at the entrance to her private office. She called, “You can go help Kent now, Mahaffy. You’ve got the latest marine intake processed, haven’t you?”

“Roger, sir,” the tech said, shutting down his console.

The hunter looked as though she wanted to talk to Harry also, but Doctor Veil said, “Harper, I’ve got a problem I’d like your help with. And you too, Grenville, if you don’t mind. You’ve got proper RCN experience.”

“Of course, sir,” Harry said. Rick followed him, wondering what Joss had wanted to say. This wasn’t the time to learn, though.

Rick closed the door behind him, though the panel wasn’t any thicker than Lieutenant Vermijo’s. “Harper,” Veil said, “one of the message chips from the Goliath that you delivered to the bridge was actually meant for me. It’s a message from Doctor Howe, the science officer.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Harry said. “Captain von Hase gave me the case of data chips and asked me to deliver them to the Far Traveller. I didn’t look at them, let alone sort them.”

“Quite right,” Veil said with a dismissive sweep of her hand. “But I want you to take a look at it now.” She switched her console display to omnidirectional so that the document she’d been reading became legible to both the lieutenants on the other side of her desk.

“Doctor Howe is writing about the woman you came here with, Harper,” Veil said. “It’s a very odd recommendation, so I want your opinion about it before I make a decision. Both of you.”

“To head of Biology Section, RCS Far Traveller,” Rick read. “Tech 1 Joss has been attached to my section as a hunter for four and one-half months. Her work has been unexceptionable during that time. Despite that, I fear that her reflexes from her military background may make her unsuitable for shipboard society. Dr. William Howe.”

Harper frowned. “I don’t understand what that means,” he said. “Doctor Howe didn’t say anything to me aboard the Goliath. Ah, I don’t know if this matters, but Joss paid her own passage aboard the Belleisle. Captain von Hase didn’t arrange it the way he did mine.”

“I think I can figure out what it means,” Rick said. “It means that Howe was covering his ass in case something happens but didn’t have the balls to actually commit the other way either. Harry? Was there any problem with Joss on the Goliath?”

“What?” Harper said, frowning. “No, no problem at all, but she wasn’t able to carry out her trapping program on Carside because the Goliath made an emergency landing on Morroworld instead.”

“Right,” Rick said. “So it’s no problem, then. And on the Belleisle?”

“No,” Harper said. “We weren’t crew, of course, just passengers for the six days.”

“Right, but six days on a tramp freighter is plenty time for trouble to start if there’s going to be trouble,” Rick said. “Professor Veil, you said you wanted my opinion. This Joss isn’t a beauty and probably doesn’t know which fork to use at dinner, but ships’ crews don’t run to little ladies and gents. If she’d done something Howe could’ve hung her on, you can bet he would’ve done that.”

Harper had been leaning toward the holographic display. He straightened and said, “I saw and heard of no problem involving Joss on shipboard or on the ground on Carside. When we were put off the ship here on Quan Loi, Joss understood what was happening much better than I did and was unfailingly pleasant and helpful.”

He pursed his lips in thought and added, “It’s not just her military background, understand. I’d never been off Xenos before I was sent to the Goliath. I’d have been completely at a loss when Captain Blasey told me he’d contacted the RCN ship and somebody’d be along to pick me up. And he’d offload my cargo, but that was the last business he had with me.”

“All right,” Veil said. “If there were no incidents, we’ll take a chance. I don’t suppose the local hunters I hire are anything but raw savages. Joss will be billeted on shipboard, though.”

She nodded crisply, then said, “All right, I’ll see her now.”

“Shall we send her in as we leave?” Rick said, putting his hand on the door latch.

“No,” Veil said. “I’ll take care of it in the lab.”

She followed the two lieutenants into the lab. Joss leaped to her feet when the office door opened. Rick would have gone out into the corridor, but before he reached the exit Doctor Veil said, “Mistress Joss, you wish to join the Biology Section of the Far Traveller?”

Joss kept her eyes front, probably focused at a point over the scientist’s left shoulder. “Yes, ma’am!” she said. “I was classed as a Tech 1 Wiper on the Goliath and employed for the Bio Section under Professor Howe. He hired local hunters to collect specimens for their local knowledge. I was a scout with the Forces of the Alliance and therefore could size up and adapt to new environments quickly. Besides, I understood how to use the communication and collection devices, which the locals the Goliath hired never managed to do.”

“That’s certainly been the case with the ones I’ve hired also,” Veil said. She grunted and stiffened her body. “Mistress Joss, you mentioned you’d served in the Alliance Army. As I assume you know, the Far Traveller is an RCN vessel. Will there be a problem with your former loyalties?”

Joss laughed, a broken sound; unexpected, and as ugly as her scarred face. “Ma’am, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s an honest question. I’m from Api. I know now that we were in the Alliance Sphere of Influence, but nobody when I was growing up knew it. I left home when I was fifteen—pretty much had to. On Claiborne, that’s kinda Alliance too, I guess, there was a recruiter for the Forces and I wound up sent to a drop commando, Heyer’s Commando.”

She shrugged. “Some of us was Alliance citizens, a lot of us wasn’t. A lot of us enlisted to get out of jail. Nobody I met gave a crap about politics. That’s still true.”

Rick blanked his expression when Joss said she’d been in a “drop commando.” These were the emergency reaction units of the Forces of the Alliance of Free Stars. They were more often used for internal policing than for ordinary military duties. They had a very bad reputation for brutality.

Granting that what one side in a conflict believes about the troops of the other side is likely to be highly colored if not completely imaginary, the scarred woman’s passing admission was a shock. Rick found himself more sympathetic to Howe’s mealymouthed warning than he had been when he first read it.

“I’ll accept your assurance for now,” Veil said. “At the least I hope you can take over the task of choosing and supervising local collectors on future landfalls. But I warn you, if there’s any problem, you’ll be put off the ship immediately!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Joss said. “In all my time in service, I’ve never been a discipline problem. And sure, I figure I can handle your collector problems.”

“Fine, then,” Veil said. “I’ll have you enrolled with the status and terms that you served on the Goliath. Ah, Grenville? Since you’re more familiar with the naval business than I, could you take care of that as a favor to the Biology Section?”

“Happy to do so, sir,” Rick said. Veil had no command authority over an RCN officer—except he supposed over Harry Harper, within her department—but courtesy is always proper, and he really didn’t mind doing it.

The officers and Joss went out into the corridor. As soon as she’d closed the hatch, the hunter paused and said, “Sirs? Both of you?”

They looked at her. Rick noticed that she could have been an attractive woman—slim and blond—at least from the left profile. Though as the idea flitted through his mind, he realized that the tattoos were even more off-putting than the scars when you saw some of the things being depicted.

“Look,” she said, “I owe you guys for not putting the boot in with Veil. I know you could’ve. And you, Lieutenant Grenville. You understood what Heyer’s was, I saw it in your face.”

“I know what Porra used drop commandos for,” Rick said carefully. “I don’t know anything about Heyer’s specifically. And ground troops aren’t my line of territory regardless.”

“We were troops Guarantor Porra didn’t care what happened to,” Joss said. “Lots of wogs like me, like I said. Crooks and people on the outs with him politically, both of them folks he’d just as soon got killed. We got jobs that nobody else’d do because they didn’t have the stomach for it, like enough. They sent us hard places because they figured we were harder and we were mostly—but if we got scragged instead that was no problem for the Alliance.”

She wasn’t looking at Rick now or at anything in the present. “But don’t think we were out of control. Heyer’s Commando was never out of control. The whole bloody universe was Us and Them, but your buddies were always Us. I’m a member of the ship’s company of the Far Traveller now. You two, all of you, you’re my buddies now. I may not like some of them, but they’re still my buddies. There’s nothing I won’t do for them. Nothing.”

Harry said, “Mistress Joss, I had occasion on the Goliath to sequence what were marked as specimens you had brought in. They were in flawless order and condition. It appears to me that Doctor Veil has made a very good decision.”

“Right,” said Rick. “Let’s get you signed in, shipmate.”

* * *

I tapped on the door of Doctor Veil’s inner office, then opened it and said, “Sir? It took me longer than I expected because the captain asked me back to his stateroom to chat. Over a glass of bourbon. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

Veil smiled up at me. Her display was still omnidirectional so I could see that she was viewing the genetic sequences of a batch of samples, though I couldn’t tell whether the samples had been collected here on Quan Loi or during one of the Far Traveller’s earlier landings.

“Quite right,” Veil said. “Convincing Captain Bolton that the Biology Section is a desirable part of the Far Traveller’s complement is one of the two important special duties which I want from you.”

She gestured toward the chair, bolted to the deck like all furniture on a starship. “Sit down, Harper,” she said. “You know that Bio Section’s job is to gather data about life forms on the planets we visit, supplementing the route information which the sounding section is gathering.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “The sort of information that would be in the Sailing Directions for better known parts of the galaxy.”

“We are also searching for evidence of the Archaic Spacefarers,” Veil continued. “This isn’t in place of the duties which Navy House put on us, but rather in addition. Senator Blankenship has backed my interest in various ways, including having searches for other spacefaring cultures added to the expedition’s mission statement.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I repeated. I didn’t say that she’d already told me that. This was in greater detail than what she’d said before, though.

“Now,” Veil said, “I want you to begin the other portion of your special duties, getting access to the collection of a local magnate, Porphyrio DaSerta. According to a colleague on Bryce, the DaSerta family owns a piece of Archaic sculpture which has not been examined by any scientist in the past hundred and fifty years.

“My own attempts even to speak with DaSerta have been completely ignored,” she went on, giving a grimace of frustration. “The leader of the colony which settled Quan Loi was a Captain DaSerta. The current family claims direct descent from him. They’re very proud of their family and their heritage. I’m not surprised that they ignored my request, but they have apparently refused to allow Alliance scientists to view the item also.”

I nodded. “My father, Harper of Greenslade, is a member of the Society of Dilettantes,” I said. “I can ask Master DaSerta if he would permit me to carry out a commission for my father and examine the DaSerta collection.”

“That’s exactly what I was hoping!” Veil said. “But—your father won’t mind if he hears about it?”

“Dad wouldn’t mind at all,” I said, “even if he learned. And I’ll give him a full report about the collection besides. He really is a member of the Society of Dilettantes.”

* * *

I decided that for a communication like this, hardcopy was the only proper method of communication. The printer was on the bridge, so I went up there—I was already getting used to the companionways, though my calves ached in the morning when I awakened—to draft my note to DaSerta. I’d get Kent to carry it to DaSerta’s dwelling.

The second lieutenant, Lieutenant Dogan, was on duty. We’d been introduced though no more than that, but he knew me as a friend of Captain Bolton.

“Sir,” I called as I seated myself at a utility table which folded out from the rear bulkhead. “I just want to draft a document and I prefer doing it here rather than my cabin if that’s all right?”

Dogan waved and went back to his course calculations.

I’d brought both stationery and calling cards with me, part of the reason my luggage had been so extensive. I hadn’t expected that the fact I’m a gentleman was going to be important to my duties on the Far Traveller, but I am a gentleman. I was carrying the things that I’d believed a gentleman would need on a long voyage. I wrote:

Master Porphyrio DaSerta:

I am the son and envoy of Harper of Greenslade, Member of the Society of Dilettantes.

My father has requested that I view and make records of your Cabinet of Curiosities whose fame has reached him in Xenos on Cinnabar.

May I call on you at your convenience to carry out my father’s commission? I am travelling aboard the RCS Far Traveller and can be reached there by any means you choose.

Harry Harper, Gentleman

Someone came into the bridge while I was writing. I heard a low-voiced conversation but I didn’t look around until I’d completed the note. I don’t handwrite messages often enough to do it without concentration.

Rick had entered and apparently relieved Lieutenant Dogan on watch. Dogan was heading for the hatch. Rick came over when he noticed me looking toward him. He glanced down at the letter and said, “What in heaven’s name are you doing, Harry?”

I folded the note’s four corners together carefully. “Impressing a local nob with my high social status,” I said. “On behalf of my boss, who wants me to search his collection for artifacts of Archaic Spacefarers.”

I’d seal the envelope in my cabin, since I had to go back to Level 3 to give it to Kent anyway. “Say…?” I said to Rick. “Who do I need to tell that if there’s a note or commo message for me from a local, especially if he’s named DaSerta, that it’s important? I need to see it ASAP.”

“You tell the duty officer,” Rick said, “which is me at the moment. I’ll log it. This DaSerta?” he added. “Is he a relative of Romaine DaSerta, the Fleet officer?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “The DaSertas are an old family on Quan Loi which wasn’t a full member of the Alliance.”

“We’ve got the RCN database even if we don’t have full missile magazines,” Rick said, walking over to the nearest console. I think it properly belonged to the navigator, but no one was at it. He brought it live, then turned with a broad smile and called, “Bingo! Full Commander Romaine DaSerta was indeed from Quan Loi. Say, you don’t suppose I could go along with you, could I? He was really hot stuff. They may have a display or the like if it’s the same family.”

“I suspect I can arrange that,” I said. I’d carried up several sheets of stationery because I didn’t want any cross-outs on something like this. I took one of them—headed HARPER OF GREENSLADE—and carefully rewrote the request. This time I added an additional paragraph above my signature:

As a personal favor, my friend and colleague Grenville of Hounslow is a student of naval matters. He hopes that if Romaine DaSerta was your relative, you will permit him to accompany me in hope of viewing memorabilia of Commander DaSerta.

I folded it as I had the other. “I need to take this down and seal it,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll give it to Kent to take.” I frowned and added, “I hope that Doctor Veil will have DaSerta’s physical address.”

“Harry, do you think it’ll work?” Rick said.

I shrugged. “I hope so,” I said. “Doctor Veil will want to rethink her decision to hire me if it doesn’t.”

“And Harry?” Rick added as I reached the hatch, holding the note in my left hand. “Who’s Grenville of Hounslow?”

I turned with a broader smile than before and said, “A young Cinnabar gentleman, so far as somebody on this benighted world can tell. I hope that DaSerta can find data on the Harpers of Greenslade, but I doubt he has a complete listing of the families of the Republic available.”

* * *

The response come within three hours of Kent’s return to the bio lab, where Mahaffy was showing me the Far Traveller’s protocol for recording results of genetic sequencing. Doctor Veil had made it clear that she didn’t care whether or not I could do the work of a lab assistant, but I cared quite a lot.

Somebody hammered on the corridor hatch. Before Mahaffy or I could get to the panel, it flew open to admit one of the watch from the entry hold. He held an envelope with a thick border of royal blue. “Lut’nant Harper?” the spacer said. “Got a message for you.”

“Padko,” Mahaffy said in an angry tone. “Why the bloody hell didn’t you just call it up instead of banging like some bloody barbarian?”

“Because the fellow who brung it’s waiting down in the hold for an answer,” said Padko—not a crewman I’d met before. “Which isn’t SOP, but Lut’nant Harper said that any message that comes for him”—he nodded toward me—“gets brought to him soonest or the captain hisself ’ll burn somebody a new one.”

I suspected there was some matter of protocol involved that I knew nothing about. Goodness knows I’d seen it often enough with servants at Greenslade, which is one of the reasons I hadn’t made an effort to get a servant assigned to me when I joined the RCN. I’m sure that Uncle Tom could’ve said something to somebody. Regardless, my hopes for a life without precedence squabbles were falling short of perfect fulfillment.

I slit the heavy paper of the envelope with my pocket knife. Like my note it had been sealed, though the seal was of bright blue polymer instead of the red wax I’d used.

The card within was engraved with the legend:

HEREDITARY CAPTAIN PORPHYRIO DASERTA

My dear Lord Harper,

You and your esteemed companion will be welcome at DaSerta House at any time after midday tomorrow.

I am pleased to learn that Lord Grenville is interested in my uncle, Romaine DaSerta. The family collection does indeed include Commander DaSerta’s papers and various items from his distinguished service with the Fleet.

DaSerta

The document was so precisely hand printed that I suspected the job had been done by an amanuensis. Otherwise DaSerta himself had devoted himself to the activity with the wholehearted enthusiasm of my great cousin Emanuel, who had modeled castles with the corks of wine bottles.

I used the ship’s intercom to route me to Lieutenant Grenville. “Rick,” I said, “we’re invited for noon tomorrow. We can have Kent drive us and my gear in the Bio Section truck.”

I wondered if my search for Archaic artifacts would be as successful as Rick’s search for naval memorabilia.

* * *

The aircar was fifty feet up, approaching the location which should be DaSerta House. Rick had plotted the location by comparing land records with imagery which the Far Traveller had recorded—automatically—as she prepared to land in Helle Harbor. Rick figured that the perfectly square three-hectare compound surrounded by a stone wall was a solid identifier.

Harry was opposite the driver with Rick in the center as before. Harry pointed and said, “Say, look at that double line of pink trees lining the drive from the gate. Those’re—”

The communicator on the car’s fascia panel suddenly snarled, “Vehicle approaching DaSerta House, land at once or you will be shot down! There will be no second warning!”

“What do I do?” Kent said, turning his head with a desperate expression.

“Land!” Rick shouted, grabbing the nearer control wand and trying to swerve the aircar parallel to the front wall of the compound instead of overflying it. “Bloody hell, man. Don’t you see the turret on the roofline swiveling to track us!”

Kent immediately cut the throttles and banked the car properly while reducing speed. He was a skilled driver, but he obviously didn’t have combat experience.

Neither did Rick, but he had the common sense which the driver seemed to lack. There were ground vehicles on the street, but the graveled expanse was wide enough for Kent to make a U-turn at idle and bring the car to a gentle halt in front of the barred metal gate.

“Would they really have done that?” Harry said. “Shot us down for encroaching on their air space?”

“Who the hell knows?” Rick said. “We’re a long way from Xenos. I don’t want to bet my life on what some wog in the sticks is going to do to a trespasser. The automatic impeller in that turret could shoot holes in anything that didn’t have too much armor to fly.”

Harry got out first and walked to the barred gate. He wore a dress suit of dark burgundy rather than an RCN uniform. Without having talked to him he could only guess at DaSerta’s feelings toward the Republic of Cinnabar, and dressing as a civilian gentleman was probably the better choice anyway.

Rick followed a pace behind, wearing his second class uniform, his Grays, but without any insignia. He didn’t have a selection of civilian clothing aboard—he couldn’t have afforded them, and on most RCN postings (even to a battleship) a lieutenant would have nowhere to store them. This set of Grays were new and looked sharp, at least to Rick’s own eyes.

He’d thought of wearing a suit of Harry’s. They were pretty much of a size, but Harry was just enough taller and longer-limbed that he’d look like a clown until they were taken in. Many spacers were able tailors, but Rick balked at first begging a suit and then making alterations.

The two uniformed guards at the gate carried submachine guns. Rick thought they were Alliance standard, but the men kept their weapons politely slung behind their backs. Harry handed his calling card and DaSerta’s invitation through the gate; Rick had his RCN identification card ready in his hand, but the guards had already begun to pull open the gates.

“DaSerta House welcomes you, gentlemen,” the older, balding guard said. “Transportation will arrive momentarily.”

Harry put the invitation away in his embroidered sabertache. “My research requires considerable equipment,” he said. “May we carry it into the grounds in our vehicle?”

“I’m very sorry, sir,” the guard spokesman said. Their uniforms were dull orange with brown piping. “Neither the vehicle or the commoner driving are to be admitted without special orders. The truck coming should hold as much as you need, and if it doesn’t we’ll call a larger truck.”

An open flatbed, more of a motorized cart than a truck, was trundling up the paved driveway. It wasn’t big, but it would certainly hold the imaging and testing apparatus which Harry had brought. The driver wore the same livery as the guards, but she wasn’t armed.

Kent had opened the truck’s cargo space and the armored specimen case welded to the deck within. The box of the vehicle would easily hold a dozen people—the same frame was used as a military transport—but a separate four-by-six-foot container with interior padding and tie-downs was built in to keep small items from bouncing around in transit. Harry’s equipment was carried there.

Kent brought the imaging apparatus to Harry in the gate, then went back to the aircar with Rick to get the remainder of the equipment, a densitometer and an array of probes. It all fit easily in the back of the flatbed and the driver provided a blanket from under her seat to cushion them.

Kent returned to the aircar and the guards closed the gates; Rick and Harry took the leading pair of six seats in the center of the flatbed and the vehicle moved off, driving partly onto the lawn in its U-turn. Its best speed was a walking pace but there wasn’t far to go. On the porch of the three-story mansion stood a slim man in black dress clothes awaiting them.

Harry looked at the trees—the trunks were dark green, but the foliage was a true pink, though the leaf veins were green. “Those are comfit trees from Wasatch,” Harry said. “Their candied fruit is supposed to be medicinal.”

“Wasatch is a day’s sail from Quan Loi,” Rick said. “We were figuring to meet the Goliath there initially, but they decided that they couldn’t make it farther than Morroworld so we made the scheduled landing here instead. It’s a better base for soundings, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”

He chuckled and looked at Harry instead of the trees on his side of the vehicle. “Which left you to whatever transport Captain von Hase could come up with. Sorry about that, but there’s really worse than the Belleisle this far out from where anybody civilized wants to be.”

There were birds in the high sky. Harry said, “Those all have four wings too and there’s about a dozen of them. It seems that it doesn’t matter much to Doctor Veil, but I am a biologist.”

After a moment, he said, “Rick, Quan Loi is a long way from anything. Closer to Pleasaunce than it is to Cinnabar, but not at all close. How did somebody from here wind up at high rank in the Alliance navy?”

“Well, not high rank,” Rick said. “Romaine DaSerta was a commander in his last battle. He wanted to be a naval officer and the Fleet was open to talented trainees from any bloody where. He had talent, all right, and if he hadn’t been from this benighted place he’d have gotten a lot higher than commander when he died.”

“Fighting us?” Harry said, and raised an eyebrow.

“No, fortunately,” Rick said. “Because he was very bloody good. This was long before the war between us and the Alliance broke out.”

Rick paused to marshal his thoughts. He’d reexamined the Battle of Seringapatam on the ship’s database, but that wasn’t as detailed as the accounts he’d first read in his Tactics course at the Academy.

“DaSerta had three escort vessels—they weren’t destroyers, more like corvettes but without the sparring for fast passage. He fought a squadron from Montaillu long enough for the convoy they were guarding to escape. The freighters didn’t have the crews to get under way quick enough to get away. The naval vessels could have, but they went for the raiders instead.”

“And DaSerta was killed?” Harry said.

“He put his ship alongside the heavy cruiser with the Montaillu admiral,” Rick said. “Pirate chief more like but the ship still mounted fifteen-centimeter guns. They shot DaSerta’s ship to doll rags, but he took down four antennas on the cruiser and she headed back to base as bloody quick as she could. Which wouldn’t have been very quick.”

“I see that Commander DaSerta was very brave,” Harry said. “But he wasn’t alone on his ship, and the whole crew must’ve died with him.”

Rick’s expression went blank as he looked at his companion. “Well, I suppose that’s true, but that’s the way things happen in wars. It’s just how it is.”

Harry shrugged. “I suppose it is,” he said. “And that was thirty or forty years ago?”

“More than fifty,” said Rick. “So yeah, there’s a good chance the personnel would’ve been dead by now regardless.”

Harry nodded. “Common in many species,” he said. “Individuals sacrificing themselves for the good of the race. All that really matters is what best helps the genes survive.”

They had arrived at the full-height porch of the mansion. The driver made a wide turn that brought Harry’s seat to within a pace of the entrance steps.

Rick followed Harry out, muttering, “Time to greet our host.”

Master DaSerta had a goatee and a thin moustache. From a distance he passed for forty, but close up he was at least twenty years older than that. He bowed as the two younger men reached the bottom of the steps, then straightened and said, “Lord Harper? I am Porphyrio DaSerta.”

He extended his hand. Harry took it and said, “I’m Harry Harper, sir, and honored to meet you.” Turning to Rick he went on, “This is my friend and colleague Rick Grenville, sir.”

“Honored, Grenville,” DaSerta said. “You are interested in Uncle Romaine?”

Rick nodded. “Commander DaSerta is a hero whose exploits are taught even in the RCN Academy,” he said. “I was thrilled when Harper here told me that he would be meeting a relative of the man.”

DaSerta smiled thinly, the first expression he had shown since they arrived. “I was only five when I last saw Uncle Romaine,” he said. “I thought of him only as father’s younger brother, the wild one of the family. I didn’t really appreciate the man he was until long after his death. There’s a room devoted to him, a small shrine if you please. You’re welcome to see it, Lord Grenville.”

He turned. “But both of you, follow me now and I will show you treasures.”

The doors whisked open behind him, pulled by a pair of servants in orange livery. Doors along the corridor beyond quivered closed. Rick had the impression of roaches scuttling away from a light, but it was probably children fleeing from strangers’ eyes.

DaSerta opened the door to the first room to the right. A middle-aged man with a fringe of gray hair around a bald spot stood at the near end of a glass-topped display case. There were filing cabinets along the side walls and a full-sized console at the far end of the room.

“Swanny here will help you with any questions, Lord Grenville,” DaSerta said. “I myself will guide Lord Harper through the main collection.”

Harry and their host went off down the hall. Rick put himself in the attendant’s hands, figuring he’d learn the most by doing that while keeping out of Harry’s way. Harry, after all, was doing the real work of the mission at the moment.

Most of the material in the filing cabinets was of no interest except possibly to a biographer of Commander DaSerta. His family had obsessively preserved his childhood schoolwork, not in the expectation he would become famous but because he was their son. Rick suspected that his mother might have been the same way if she’d had the resources to manage it.

DaSerta’s tactical simulations from Officer’s Entry School on Euclid, copied to chip and probably found with his personal effects, were on the console. After six months at the Euclid feeder school, DaSerta was promoted to an Advanced Officer’s Course on Pleasaunce. His graduation certificate as leader of his class there was in the files also.

From the beginning DaSerta’s battle planning had been aggressive, but it took on increasing sophistication while he was still at Euclid. Even at graduation, DaSerta’s simulations assumed that subordinate officers would obey his orders even when these put them into greater danger. It struck Rick that in reality this varied in direct relation to the quality of the navy involved. Even in the RCN at the height of the recent war, it hadn’t been a hundred percent.

“Lord Grenville…?” Swanny said softly. Rick looked up from the simulation he’d been deep into, then followed the attendant’s eyes to the door where Harry stood with their host. Harry was holding his 3-D imaging apparatus, which meant he’d returned to the vehicle without Rick noticing as Harry went by his door.

“I’ve made my record for Father,” Harry said. “Master DaSerta is happy to give you access at a later time for further research into Commander DaSerta.”

Porphyrio DaSerta nodded from beside him.

“Ah!” Rick said. “Let me shut down here and I’ll be right with you.”

“Your lordship?” Swanny said obsequiously. “I’ll be happy to log you out…”

“If you’d be so good,” Rick said. He gave DaSerta an enthusiastic smile. “In that case, if you wouldn’t mind, Master DaSerta, I’d appreciate a glance at the main collection. I’m unlikely to be back on Quan Loi to see it again.”

“Of course,” their host said and led the way back into the room down and across the hall.

The objects included many biological oddities—there was the skeleton of a two-headed snake—and a considerable amount of memorabilia of Captain Romaine DaSerta. This included several uniforms; eyeing them Rick estimated that the captain had been slightly shorter than his descendent Porphyrio but with the same slender build.

There were also files of documents, mostly of a political nature dating from after establishment of the colony on Quan Loi. These were of no interest to Rick, but he browsed a few of them for politeness’ sake. He’d gotten to the end of the long room before he’d repented of asking to see it. He certainly hoped that Harry had gotten more from the visit than he himself had, however.

The last item was on a freestanding table covered by a curtain supported by a frame. Rick’s first thought was Like a birdcage at night, but he caught himself before he made what their host might have felt was a boorish joke. He was here as Harry’s guest, after all.

“This is the great treasure that Lord Harper was particularly taken by,” DaSerta said, nodding to Harry, who nodded back in solemn agreement. “This is an artwork left by the Archaic Spacefarers.”

DaSerta whipped the curtain away. On the pedestal was a disk of quartz crystal a foot in diameter. Because it was displayed on edge, Rick could see the engraving on the back simply by stepping around the pedestal.

By looking at a shallow angle, Rick could read:

THIS SCULPTURE WAS FOUND EIGHTY YEARS

AFTER OUR LANDING ON QUAN LOI.

IT DEPICTS MEMBERS OF A RACE WHICH

INHABITED THE PLANET IN FORMER TIMES.

Rick moved around to the front again and looked at the two spidery figures there. The quartz had been polished after it was carved. The subject appeared to be a man and a woman on either side of a narrow-trunked tree with fronds rather than branches.

“I see,” he said. He cleared his throat and went on, “Master DaSerta, may I ask who engraved the legend onto the back of the disk?”

“I don’t have any idea,” DaSerta said. “One of my ancestors, obviously, or rather one of his servants, but there’s no record of which one. I don’t suppose it really matters when it was found. Some of my ancestors have been very punctilious about inventorying the collections but others have not; and to be honest, I haven’t been as careful myself as I might have been. Perhaps your visit, Lord Harper, will cause me to mend my ways.”

He and Harry laughed mildly; Rick managed to force a smile.

The crystal disk was the condensing lens from the display of a Pre-Hiatus starship. Modern units used air-projected holograms for three-dimensional displays. Ancient consoles didn’t have that capacity and used quartz crystal. This was an absolutely standard thirty-centimeter unit of Terran manufacture. Rick had seen many of them in the History of Space Travel course he’d taken as an elective at the Academy.

It was certainly ancient: two thousand years old at a minimum. But it wasn’t the millions of years old that Archaic remains tended to run to, as best as you could date those elusive fragments; and it was of human manufacture.

Rick doubted whether he could convince Captain DaSerta that his cherished disk wasn’t of prehuman construction, nor would there be any advantage in having done so. He’d tell Harry as soon as the two of them were alone so that Harry wouldn’t be getting Doctor Veil’s hopes up with nonsense.

DaSerta walked them out onto the porch. Harry said, “Excuse me, sir. Those comfit trees lining the drive?” He pointed. “They’re not native to Quan Loi. Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Ah!” said their host. “In this case I can give you a solid answer. My founding ancestor, Captain Mortimer DaSerta himself, planted them. You knew that his ship, Russell 974, landed on Wasatch before proceeding here to Quan Loi, didn’t you?”

“No, I did not,” Harry said in a neutral tone.

Rick tried to hide his shock. That hadn’t appeared in the Far Traveller’s course data either. Quan Loi was listed as settled directly from Earth with no mention of Wasatch.

“The initial plan was that the colonists on the Russell 974 would supplement those sent to Wasatch twenty-three years before,” DaSerta explained. “There was friction immediately, and before the year was out the later colonists reboarded the Russell and transferred to Quan Loi, which had been considered as an alternative destination. Captain DaSerta had become enthusiastic about comfit jelly by then and he brought the species with him to Quan Loi.”

Rick thought about events hundreds of years ago—critically important to the participants at the time and now just a corner of local history. Remembered within the DaSerta family but probably unknown outside of it, even here on Quan Loi. Nonetheless probably true, since the comfit trees along the drive were certainly real.

“The species is very long lived,” Harry said after consulting his handheld data unit. “Over a thousand standard years on Wasatch, so these may well have been planted by your ancestor just as your records indicate. But why is the third one down the left side stunted, sir?”

That was the tree Harry had remarked on as they were driven to the house. The others were all about sixty feet tall; this was only half that, and the trunk was spindly besides.

“It’s always been that way,” DaSerta said. “I’d have taken it out when I succeeded my father as Hereditary Captain, but that would leave a gap. Comfit trees take so long to grow that I decided to leave it the way it’s been for twelve hundred years or so.”

“Would it be all right if I made some densitometer readings, then?” Harry asked. He looked at Rick and said, “Lord Grenville? Would you mind fetching the extended probes that I left with Kent?”

Rick nodded and started down the drive at a fast walk. He’d been sitting as he went through the material on Romaine DaSerta. He was just as glad not to bother with the lowboy, and the vehicle wouldn’t have gained him much time either.

By the time he got back with the bundle of meter-long rods, Harry was already taking readings from the stunted tree while their host watched in mild bemusement. For an instant Harry projected the meter’s findings, then nodded. He said to Rick and DaSerta, “The number of rings is identical to that of the first tree in the row—indicating 1,182 years, Master DaSerta, confirming your records. Now—”

He turned to Rick. “If you’ll help me, Lord Grenville, to set a constellation of these probes around the tree about six feet out from the center of the trunk, I’ll activate them and they’ll screw themselves in.”

Rick was perfectly willing to be doing lift and carry for his friend. It was simple enough and would make Captain Bolton happy when he learned about it.

He pressed the sharp end of each half-inch beryllium rod into the soil, far enough to keep it from falling over when he took his hands away. He moved to the next one each time until he met Harry coming around the tree clockwise. Rick had never used the equipment before, but there wasn’t much to learn.

“Now, step back,” Harry said. “And you too, Master DaSerta, because occasionally these fly loose and it might take me a moment to shut them off.”

Rick obediently stepped onto the paved drive. At least that way nothing would be coming through the ground at him.

Harry keyed his testing device with a small popping sound. The eight poles they’d set in a rough circle suddenly whirred and spun into the ground, throwing up piles of finely divided clay around each disappearing shaft. The heads were duplex, contra-rotating around their common axis.

One probe hit something about a foot into the soil. Rick felt the clack through his boots and the shaft stopped. The others sank in till only a few inches were visible.

Again Harry projected the display so that he and his audience could see what the probes had found. “That’s very odd,” he said.

“Lord Harper?” DaSerta said. “I don’t understand what the image is.”

“I’ve set it to show relative density as a color spectrum,” Harry said. “Violet is highest. As you see, the soil is basically green with flecks of blue for pebbles—like the one that the fifth probe hit. The trunk is blue-green. And there’s a ring of violet, there”—he pointed—“choking the tap root which has apparently grown through it.”

DaSerta turned to the servant who’d accompanied him onto the porch and called, “Wesler, get the gardeners out here with shovels! I want this tree out of the ground in five minutes!”

To Harry he added, “I’ll replace it with something local, maybe a spiked elm. They’ve got reddish foliage and I can put in a well-grown tree. I’d been thinking of doing that anyway.”

Harry put his device away in its pouch and started removing the probes. Rick joined him.

“Tap the center of the top and it’ll spin out on its own,” Harry explained when he saw Rick gripping the exposed end with both hands with flexed knees and trying to draw the probe out by straightening his legs.

A touch on the button achieved what main strength had not. Rick caught the rod before it fell over when it had spun out. From stubbornness he pulled up by hand the one that had stopped a foot down.

A man in his sixties and a boy arrived, both carrying shovels and wearing coveralls. They dipped their heads low to DaSerta and immediately got to work on the ground around the stunted tree. Whatever the steward had told them had sparked their enthusiasm.

“Don’t worry about the tree!” DaSerta said. “Just get the root of it up!”

“The ring appeared to be about eighteen inches down,” Harry said from where he and Rick stood out of the way.

Rick had thought getting a backhoe in would have been faster in the long run, but in fact it was in less than the demanded five minutes that the gardener muttered to his assistant and they laid their shovels behind them. They gripped the tree trunk. Shifting together they worked the trunk in all four directions alternately, then lifted it out of the hole. They flopped it on ground behind the senior man.

They stepped back. Neither appeared to be breathing hard.

Rick got out his folding knife and knelt beside the lump where the tap root continued below a knotted halo of lesser roots. DaSerta stood beside him but didn’t kneel on the dirt. Harry was adjusting his device.

Using the back of the long blade Rick scraped dirt from a smooth, clear object. Not a stone—

“That’s silicon carbide!” Harry said, reading his display. “The clear variety—moissanite!”

“What’s it doing here?” Rick asked.

DaSerta said, “The Archaics regularly used moissanite in their constructions! This may be one of their devices or what survives of it!”

“The ring is at least three thousand years old,” Harry said, “but we can’t prove it goes back any farther than that. Even so I’d like to clean it off and collect all possible data from it. And with your permission, I’ll bring Doctor Veil to see it and I hope handle it.”

“Yes, of course!” DaSerta said. “This is wonderful! Another Archaic artifact!”

Rick continued to scrape away dirt. At least, he thought, he’s breaking even for Archaic artifacts for the day.

* * *

“Where’s the boss?” Mahaffy asked as I entered the bio lab.

“She’s still at the DaSerta estate,” I said, taking one of the empty workstations.

“How long’s it going to take you to finish up there?” Mahaffy said. “We’re supposed to lift for Medlum as soon as the last pinnace gets back and it’s due any time now.”

“I think Doctor Veil’s just going over the site again,” I said as I looked at what I’d gathered. I had densitometer scans of the tree to either side of the stunted one and root sections above and below the ring of the tree that’d been pulled out of the ground. The actual wood was filed in specimen storage in the separate compartment where most of my additional luggage had been transferred by now.

So far as I could tell there was nothing to be seen at DaSerta House beyond what we’d already recorded in every fashion imaginable, but Doctor Veil was so excited to have an Archaic relic in her hand that she didn’t want to leave it. I didn’t say that to Mahaffy, just started sorting the electronic files.

“Did you really find an Archaic artifact?” Mahaffy asked. He’d turned away from what he’d been working on and was looking at me. I didn’t meet his eyes.

“Doctor Veil believes we have,” I said carefully. “I believe so also, though I might wish for additional supporting evidence.”

I wasn’t going to publicly disagree with my superior; and I couldn’t imagine any other fashion in which a moissanite ring could have gotten into the soil of Quan Loi with a year of human settlement.

What I’d told Master DaSerta was true, though. The ring was old, but as solid evidence it didn’t any more prove the existence of the Archaics than the carved quartz lens did. Perhaps further study and analysis back on Xenos with a larger sample of experts could at least suggest what the object was intended for. Silicon carbide was extremely refractory, so it was anybody’s guess how this ring fitted into a larger construct which had completely rotted away.

“You know, the Shinings…?” Mahaffy said. “The Shining Empire, I mean? They say they come from the Archaics. Their ancestors weren’t from Terra at all. They say.”

I smiled. The Shinings had built the barrel-shaped ship in Helle Harbor, I remembered. “I wonder what they cite as evidence for that, Mahaffy?”

“I dunno,” the tech said. “I was just chatting with one of the Power Room crew who’s served in this neck of the galaxy before. He’s ex-Fleet, you see.”

I closed the file I was working on. The visual and densitometer images were all tagged with full descriptions. I turned toward Mahaffy and said, “Well, without genetic samples I can’t disprove that theory, but I will say that I find it most unlikely. Still, not for me to quarrel with another man’s religious beliefs.”

Doctor Veil entered the lab. “The third pinnace is back,” she said. “We’ll be transferring to Medlum within two hours, according to Captain Bolton.”

She stepped over to me. I was afraid I’d done something wrong and started to get up. Instead she extended her hand and said, “Lord Harper, your skill and tact have gained me the greatest triumph of my career. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

I shook her hand, feeling embarrassed. She thought I’d proven the existence of the Archaics. I certainly hadn’t, and I would have to say so if I were questioned.

For now at least, Doctor Veil was pleased with her decision to hire me. I guess I could count that as a win.

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