Gateway To Xanadu (7 page)

The abrupt change of subject was a lot more of a concession than the one he’d voiced, and I smiled to myself as I turned back to the controls. When the time came, Val would do what he was told to do, and in the meanwhile I was no longer the bad guy.

“An orbital station is part of the system the Federation set up to make traveling easier,” I said, letting the instruments confirm my estimate that it was too soon to change my heading for Faraway. “Major spaceports started out right on the planet designated as a change of trains’ stop, and all kinds of unexpected difficulties developed with them. If people had to wait a week or more to make connections with a ship going their way, they started wondering about what was beyond the spaceport fence. If they’d checked out local customs first, they might have been there waiting when their ship got in, but most sightseers didn’t bother. They just went their merry way and found out about strange laws the hard way.”

I shifted away from the controls and continued. “The Federation wasn’t about to start a shooting war with half its planet even if the problem of shaking tourists loose from their grip was getting worse by the day, so some bright boy came up with the idea of orbiting stations where sightseers could wander all they liked and never get into trouble. If they want to hit dirt, they have to sit through a lecture on local behavior and pass a test before they’re allowed down, so most don’t bother. Those orbital stations are Federation run and have everything you can think of, but Faraway, being so far out, is a little on the rough side, just like the planet it orbits. If they didn’t need it for a change-of-trains stop, the planet Faraway would have to get along with shuttles and freighters the way other young planets do. A planet doesn’t get an orbital station until its rate of advancement earns it one.”

The black eyes watching me grew briefly annoyed at the statement of fact I’d made, then became amused.

“I’ve discovered that anything worthwhile has to be earned,” he commented with a faint grin while I took my attention briefly away from him. When I looked up again he was standing right over me, the faint grin widened. “I’ve never minded having to earn things, Diana, and I’ve always managed to earn whatever it was I really wanted.”

“And what is it you really want this time, Val?” I asked, for some reason feeling uncomfortable as I looked up at him. The control room was too bright for me to miss seeing any part of his expression, and the amusement he showed in both face and eyes was completely unexplained.

“This time I really want to be partners with a female who spent twelve years proving what she can do,”

he said, leaning down suddenly to lift me out of the pilot’s seat. “I don’t think it will take me nearly as long to prove what I can do.”

“Not many assignments are given out on the basis of that sort of expertise,” I pointed out, as I moved in protest against the arms holding me. “If you’re thinking about trying to match me, Val, don’t waste your time. And put me down. I haven’t done any loosening up yet this morning.”

“Don’t you think it’s about time someone did try to match you?” he asked, looking less amused as he held me without the least effort. “There’s a saying among my people that points up the lack of crowding in the highest positions.”

“It’s lonely at the top,” I quoted without thinking, then immediately regretted saying something that mindless. “Lonely and rough, or possibly lonely because not too many people can hack it. If you’re tired enough of living and want to give it a stab, why should I care?”

“That’s right,” he agreed very quietly, for some reason watching me as he finally put me down. “Why should you care?”

I turned away from him without adding anything to the conversation, then remembered the exercising I hadn’t done. I wasn’t really in the mood any longer, but went to take care of it anyway. In the past I’d cared about my partners, but only in so far as the job was concerned; what they did outside that particular frame of reference was strictly their business, and absolutely none of mine. If Val wanted to get himself killed the way so many others had, why should l care? It was his life, wasn’t it? I stood still in the middle of the exercise area for a minute, suddenly less than pleased at being so close to home, then said to hell with it and got on with the exercising. Val was nothing but another partner, so why would I care what he did?

“How many times did you say you’ve done this sort of thing?” Val asked from the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes glued to the screens. “What happens if you miss the opening”

“I’ve done it at least twice, and if I miss the opening the ship will crash and explode,” I muttered in answer, paying more attention to what I was doing than to Val’s hysterics. Commercial liners send shuttles to all orbital stations to pick up and deliver passengers, but small private ships rarely have shuttles to send. With a ship the size of ours it was necessary to dock the ship itself, and that docking was done tail first.

Just then I was edging us closer and closer to the huge globe that was Faraway Orbital Station, aiming for the relatively tiny docking aperture that had been assigned to us, easing our approach by means of the ship’s gentle directional jets. The screens in front of me made it seem as if we were moving forward, and it was necessary to consciously remember it was backward movement we wanted. Too little thrust and the “wind” created by the massive station would send us floating away again, too much thrust and we’d go slewing all over the place. The littlest bear’s touch was what was needed just then, and I had no concentration to spare for a man who didn’t trust women drivers.

“That wasn’t very funny,” Val growled, but softly enough to keep from distracting me. “You may have gone through this before, but I haven’t. In the Confederacy we’d land a ship like this directly on the planet, not try putting it into a half-inch diameter hole in an orbiting space station. If you’d given me some warning about what had to be done, I could have tried my hand at it. I probably have more experience at precision piloting than you do.”

His voice was so filled with automatic, unconscious superiority that I nearly was distracted, with the urge to look around for something to beat him over the head with, if nothing else. Before I could give in to the urge, though, I felt the first tentative touch of the grabber field, and then it was locked on tight, ready to slide us automatically into the berth. The controls went dead under my hands as the field took over completely, the safety field that made sure no one would end up smashing into the Station. I’d only had to guide the ship in close enough to where the field could take over, but exact positioning is a matter of contest among the people I worked with, and I’d known Ringer would be watching. As soon as I saw my jockeying had put us dead on I felt the usual satisfaction, but then I thought of a way to increase the feeling.

“Well, if you’re so good, go right ahead and take over,” I said to Val in a huff, pulling my hands completely away from the controls as I turned to glare at him. “Well, don’t just sit there, go ahead.”

“Diana, the controls!” he shouted, reaching forward to slap frantically at the board. “Do something, or we’ll crash!”

“You should have thought of that before you opened your big mouth.” I gloated, watching him jump between the board and the screens. “We still have about a hundred and fifty yards to cover before we hit.

Let’s see some of that precision piloting. ”

“How can I pilot when the controls won’t respond?” he demanded, fighting desperately to get the board to react to his efforts, then doing a double-take when his glance showed him the way I’d stood out of the pilot’s seat to stretch. He couldn’t help but smell a rat then, especially when I smiled sweetly at him.

“I think we can trust the grabber field to do the rest of the docking, don’t you?” I asked as he stared at me darkly. “We should be all sealed in in no more than another couple of minutes, so let’s get our stuff and wait at the lock.”

“Grabber field,” he muttered as he came along behind me, following as I led the way to the salon where we’d left the things we were taking with us. I was dressed in a light blue ship’s suit and canvas deck shoes, and Val was wearing his cobalt blue uniform, but the uniform looked enough like a fancy ship’s suit that it would pass any but the closest inspection. On another orbital station I might have fretted a little; on Faraway it was strictly no sweat.

“You might have told me the Station had automatic docking,” the hovering hulk behind me growled, definitely unhappy with me. “Does seeing people having heart failure before your very eyes make the day for you? Do you remember what I told you about using words first and only then indulging in other tactics?”

“Stop getting so wild.” I laughed over my shoulder, at the same time picking up the packet of now-translated documents Phalsyn had given us and tucking it in my bag on the side opposite my completed double-check tape. “When you learn about something in an unusual enough way, the learning sticks with you longer. Don’t you want to remember what you learn, partner?”

I picked up my already-packed monolon bag and turned to look at him, giving him a grin. Val didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor and looked about ready to make mention of the fact, but he was interrupted by the soft bump and scrape of the ship sealing in. A final clank announced it was time to leave the ship, so I turned and headed for the airlock before Val could go back to casting that feral stare; I’d already had more of it than I was interested in, and as I strode away I could hear my partner grabbing up his own bag and hurriedly following.

I’d been idly wondering just where on the Station Ringer would be waiting, but I should have known better than to waste the effort. When the double doors of the airlock slipped back to let me out of the ship, he was standing not five feet away and staring directly at me, his expression more intent than I’d ever seen it. Ringer, Chief of Agents who reported directly to the Federation Council, a Special Agent who had lived long enough to be given a position like that, wasn’t terribly imposing to look at. With the enormous and nearly empty docking area behind him he looked smaller than he really was, round and harmless and neatly dressed in a green four-piece businessman’s suit that suggested to the universe around him that here was a man who probably sold ladies’ underwear. If his brown hair was a trifle too long for your average businessman, and his black eyes a trifle too sharp, those things were usually overlooked in favor of his pudginess-which was almost all camouflage for the muscle underneath.

Ringer wasn’t a man who put other men on guard-which was probably one of the reasons he had managed to survive.

Right at that moment, however, Ringer’s eyes were examining me so closely that anyone trying to sneak up on him would probably have been able to get within ten feet of him before he noticed. His sharp black eyes moved from my long red hair and blue eyes to my face, traveled quickly up and down my body, then went back to my face and started the trip all over again. I smiled faintly at the way he was trying to swallow down his disbelieving shock, and strolled over to him.

“Hi, cutey, wanta have some illegal fun?” I asked in a low, throaty voice, giving him a smile to match.

The expression in his eyes flickered as he remembered the recognition signal we’d used the one time we’d worked together on an assignment, about ten or eleven years earlier, and then he grinned.

“I recognized your hand at the controls during docking, but I didn’t expect that to be the only thing I’d recognize,” he said in a low growl looking me over for the fifteenth time. “Being warned doesn’t do a damned thing to prepare you.”. “You ought to try it from the inside,” I suggested, grinning. “Looking in a mirror has become a traumatic experience -but only from the neck up. From the neck down, everything’s the way it used to be, I’m happy to say.”

“So I noticed,” he murmured, then moved his eyes to a point just behind my left shoulder. “And that can’t be anyone but Valdon,” he went on in a normal-toned voice, coming up with an unphonied smile of greeting as he put his hand out. “I can see why he’s still in one piece after spending two months alone with you.”

“She came close to changing that,” Val said dryly as he stepped forward to take the hand offered him, shaking it as though he’d indulged in the gesture all his life instead of just recently having learned it from me. “She forgot to mention that Stations have grabber fields to do the docking, and simply leaned back from the controls when it looked like we were about to crash. She thought it was amusing.”

“Your people would have been smarter changing her sense of humor rather than her face,” Ringer observed, flexing his hand surreptitiously as he took it back. Val’s grip tended to be somewhat on the firm side, and I was sure he’d toned it down more in practice with me than he had a moment earlier with Ringer. They were examining each other in a sizing-up sort of way that seemed to satisfy both of them; there was an easy, tension-free air between them that grew to the point of friendliness almost instantaneously, the way it sometimes does between two strong men who recognize each other for what they are. Being female I found the process fascinating, but I wasn’t given the opportunity of studying it for very long.

“That so-called sense of humor of hers has gotten her into more hot water than you could possibly believe,” Ringer went on to Val in a chummier tone than I cared for. “Some day it’ll get her in so deep she’ll end up boiled for supper.”

“I’m surprised it hasn’t already,” Val answered, also chummy, while Ringer sent me a disapproving stare.

“You should have seen the things she did to me on Tildor, not to mention the trip here. I think something ought to be done about it.”

“If you can think of something and make it stick, you have my blessing,” Ringer told him with a wolfish grin for me. “And I can probably also guarantee the Council’s blessing, providing you don’t leave too many visible marks on her. Some of them are squeamish.”

“I think you just blew it, Ringer,” I said with a grin I couldn’t hold back on, seeing the sudden surprise that Val was registering.