Seed of Stars (8 page)

And Carvalho waited.

Piet said: "Oh, just as they come. We'll have the full-check patient last" And he strove to attend to his professional duties. The cornea had healed, the wounds cleaned easily, the bruised foot was not serious, the suspected tonsillitis was caused by heavy smoking, and the ears of the man with otitis media were swabbed and cleaned by Carvalho.

And at last there remained Crewwoman Mizuno.

"Oh, Carvalho," Piet said, assuming an ease he did not feel. "Will you go along to stores and get me half a dozen of these ampoules?" He wrote the code number down on a chit

Carvalho took the paper and frowned. "But, sir, these..."

Piet's voice took on a snap. "I want them for my ready-bag, now, please!"

. Carvalho went. He was hardly out of the office when Piet had the other door open, and Mia was with him, her small round face worried. He tool^ her by the shoulders urgently.

"Now, what the hell is this about? Were you dizzy? Were you? Or what is that bitch after? Did you tell her . . . ?"

"Piet—you're hurting my arms!"

He released her. "Look—Hoffman knew that Maseba would be taking this sick call. It's only by the merest chance that I'm here. Tell me, quickly!"

"Piet—I don't understand. She couldn't know..

"Then why did she send you here? Good God! Do you know what happens to a crewwoman caught growing a child?"

"I was in radar three, doing a cell check for Maranne," she said. "I remember I had just put my hand up to my forehead, maybe stood with my eyes closed for a few seconds. When I opened them again, there was Hoffman, looking at me. It was nothing, Piet, I was just a little tired. But she wouldn't accept my explanation—she just ordered me on this call."

"And what did you say to her?"

"What
could
I say? I just saluted, said 'Yes, ma'am* and left."

Piet relaxed for a moment Mia smiled, and it made him smile too, and feel better.

She said, softly: "It won't be long, Piet love. Not long, now. They won't get us." She drew her hand down her belly and added: "Doesn't show, h'm?"

He patted her in the same place. "Like a board." He added, with ail assurance that he did not feel: "Go on. IH sign you off all clear. But stay out of Hoffman's way, if you can."

She looked at him wisely. "You, too."

He stared at her wonderingly for a moment, his fears beginning to rise again. "You think ...?"

"No, no, Piet love. Just remember there's not long to go now, and we'll be free." She blew him a butterfly kiss, and was gone, just as Carvalho returned with the ampoules.

The rest of Piet's duty period was spent heloing with the testing of the blood analyzer. Maseba could be as much a fanatic about his own gear as was Bruce over the correct running of
Venturer Twelve
as a whole. At

length, duty completed, he walked the corridor and took an elevator back to his quarters.

Opening the door of his cabin, he found Trudi Hoffman waiting there. She faced him with a gleam of triumph in her ice-blue eyes, a set smile on her face.

When he trusted himself to speak at last, he said: "Get out of my cabin!"

Her smile remained, unmoved, mocking. "And if I don't want to?"

"Get out, before I break your neck," his voice was a low-pitched growl.

She examined the end of her thin cigar, then tapped a half-inch of ash onto the floor. "I don't think so, Piet You may be good at chopping up dead bodies, but you're not really the violent type."

He was trembling now, as he stood facing her. "You bitch, you lousy, stinking bitch!"

"Lieutenant! Hardly the way for one officer to address another, surely?"

"What do you want?"

"Explanations, perhaps. . . ." She eyed him steadily. "Or ... do you know, I'm not quite sure. There's a great deal I don't understand, and I would so like to do so."

Every muscle of his body was stretched tight, tension increased by the quiet, mocking confidence of her manner, but he held back.
If I once lay a hand on her, I'll tear her to pieces.
. . . The thought burned red in his mind.

"Your examination of Crewwoman Mizuno, for instance," Trudi continued. "Surely it was very brief for a complete physical check? It seemed quite clear to me that the girl was unwell; that was why I sent her on sick call."

"Was it?"

"But of course; what other reason could I possibly have?"

Piet hesitated. It seemed pretty clear that she was playing with him.

"And during this lightning examination, were you able to make any diagnosis, Lieutenant Huygens?" she asked.

"The girl is perfectly fit in every respect. At the time, you saw her, she was nearing the end of her duty period and was tired."

"A-one, fit for duty, then?"

"That was my report."

"But slightly pregnant, wouldn't you say? Or didn't you put that in your report?"

Panic flowed through him in a sickening flood. She knew,
of course she knew.
Doors were closing in his mind. He could only stand, pale and shaken, staring into her ice-queen face as she continued:

"You've been sleeping with her. That much is obvious. Perhaps even understandable. After all, a little variety. I shop around myself from time to time, when the mood takes me. Of course, I'm a bit conventional about the way in which I indulge my appetites. I don't cross ranks, for instance. Come to think of it, I don't get myself pregnant, either. How did that happen, by the way? Is your little monkey woman so fertile that human estrogens don't work on her? Or did you perhaps tamper with her contracapsule? After all, you are a medic, aren't you?"

"Trudi. . . ." His voice was a strangled gasp, forced through a fear-congealed throat. This woman, this cold-eyed Norse goddess, held his and Mia's lives in the palm of her hand.

"Perhaps it's some new kick, some twisted way of proving your virility?" she said, contemptuously. "A primitive like her . . . maybe she gets a charge out of feeling a half-European fetus growing in her womb. What is it—three, four months? You'll have to move soon if you're going to abort her, otherwise it could be a bit messy. But still, I suppose she's pretty hardy; back on Earth her kind drop their pups on the side of the rice field and get right back to work, I understand."

Facing the icy lash of Trudi's words Piet was still able to console himself that there was at least one thing that she didn't know. Her automatic assumption that Mia's child would eventually be aborted proved that she had not even contemplated the possibility that he and Mia might be planning to jump ship at Kepler III. So long as she didn't know that, and so long as she didn't tell what she
did
know, there was still some hope.

"What do you want from me, Trudi?"

"What did I ever want?" she said, her features softening slightly. "Our appetites matched, didn't they? Don't tell me your monkey woman gives it to you any better than I did; or maybe you've forgotten, it's been so long?"

The message in her eyes was clear now, the tone of her voice almost pleading. It was such a simple thing that she wanted; an act that they had performed together a thousand times. He had only to say the word and the danger that threatened his and Mia's plans would be removed. Trudi would have no qualms about sharing his favors with Mia, so long as he operated as an efficient satisfaction machine; she had implied as much already. And how many times could she possibly demand his cooperation during the short time that remained before the arrival at Kepler III? And Mia .. . what of Mia? Would her own attitude be so coldly reasonable?

He knew damned well that it wouldn't. Mia would rather have died a thousand deaths than submit to such a calculated rape.

Then Mia must never know.

"All right, Trudi," he said. "Remind me."

Her eyes gleamed with anticipation as she began to undress. Ship temperature, monotonously constant, demanded little clothing beneath a thin uniform. Soon she was naked, her clean body smell, a different odor from that of Mia, in his nostrils. She sat on the edge of the bed, her long, creamy European legs dangling as she stretched her arms upwards, tautening her full breasts. Placing her hands behind her head, she opened her legs and thrust towards him with demanding, urgent movements of her pelvis.

"Ride me, Piet, for God's sake! Ride me!" Her voice was a husky moan. "Make it quick and hard, and strong!"

Afterwards, when she was gone, he had a shivering fit, and was sick.

Magnus was a careful, methodical man with something of the pedagogue in his makeup. Several weeks before, the heads of sections concerned had been presented with two-centimeter-thick copies of the E.D. officer's outline plan for the independence investigation of Kepler III, with a request that they should study it in preparation. This they had done, after their various fashions, picking out the items that were particularly relevant to their own specialties, taking whatever preliminary action was necessary, and largely ignoring the rest of the closely typed pages. It was thus with some impatience that they listened for a solid hour at the beginning of Magnus's briefing session to a careful, paragraph-by-paragraph interpretation of the first fifty pages of the outline.

It was clear to Surgeon Lieutenant Maseba, who was sitting next to his commanding officer, that not the least restive member of Magnus's captive audience was Tom Bruce. Observing the increasing tension of the commander's lean body, and the increasing grimness of his hatchet face, Maseba made a private bet with himself that if Magnus's dissertation continued for just five minutes more Tom Bruce would blow his top, a rare but not unknown phenomenon which usually resulted in severe damage to the ego, and to the subsequent service career of the person who provoked it. On this occasion, however, the situation was rather out of the ordinary, inasmuch as Magnus, with his civilian rank equivalent to that of World Supreme Court judge, was clearly senior in any kind of pecking order, either civil or military, to Bruce.

The least tolerable part about the situation for Bruce, as Maseba saw it, was the fact that although he had been supplied with a detailed outline the same as the rest of the officers present, there was in that outline hardly any mention of duties assigned to him beyond a curt acknowledgment that, as commander of
Venturer Twelve
, it would be his business to house and feed the Explorations Division officer's staff as necessary during the period of investigation, and that he should maintain the ship in readiness for liftoff at such a time as the investigations should be completed. Bruce, in other words, was relegated to the terms of a combination hotelier and interstellar bus driver. Through their short acquaintance Maseba had sufficient respect for Magnus's intelligence to realize that this treatment of Bruce could not be entirely accidental; but he had not so far been able to explain to himself satisfactorily just what Magnus's purposes were in this instance. On the other hand, his experience of the E.D. officer's interventions on the chess board suggested that here also, Magnus might very well be thinking several moves ahead. He turned his attention to the tall, slightly stooping figure whose carefully cultured voice flowed on so smoothly, never once at a loss for the elegant phrase, the precise word with which to make his meaning clear.

"You are all, I'm sure, familiar with the Magarach Principle?" continued Magnus, beaming enquiringly. Then, despite a spattering of confirmatory nods from the less somnolent members of his audience, he went on to explain: "Briefly, the principle states that any colonial population must continue to grow at a certain rate in order to preserve its cultural heritage and stability. After the first seventy-five years of colonization, during which the development of a planet can be said to be in the melting pot, to coin a phrase, population growth should settle down to a steadily rising curve. If this fails to happen, and the birth rate falls below a certain percentage, then it can be predicted that the colony, as such, is no longer viable. Now, you may ask, under such circumstances, surely the situation could be remedied by the introduction of new batches of colonists fresh from Earth? However, historical precedent shows us quite clearly that this is not the case. The introduction of such 'new blood' at this stage of development, with its inevitable dangers of clash between the 'old' colonists and the 'new,' can only result in the kind of instability which may well destroy the colony completely through conflict between racial groups, even to the extent of civil war and insurrection, as in the case of Damien II, some ten years ago, when the intervention of two Space Corps ships was required to restore order, and it was eventually found necessary to declare the colony nonviable, with the consequent evacuation of the entire colonial population. I do not intend to go into detail about the manner in which the Corps handled this particular operation; suffice it to say that there were certain questions at the time, and considerable adverse comment about the use of an unnecessary measure of violence..."

"Rubbish!"

Maseba winced as the unmistakable bark of Commander Tom Brace's parade-ground-trained voice broke in on the smooth tones of Magnus, and glanced at his wrist watch. Three and a half minutes flat.