Starfist: A World of Hurt (3 page)

Grandar Bay,
the ship on which the Marines had gone to Kingdom and that supported them in the operation?

For that matter, was the civilian population of Thorsfinni's World also closed off from two-way contact with the rest of humanity?

Ah, thinking about it did no good. All that accomplished was to raise questions and make him think the situation wasn't fair. Great Buddha's balls! One lesson lengthy service in the Marine Corps had taught him was that nothing was ever fair. Anyway, through the window he could see they were on the final approach to New Oslo, the capital city of Thorsfinni's World.

Capital city? With its million-plus population, New Oslo was the only
real
city on Thorsfinni's World, and it looked like a village compared to cities he'd visited on other worlds. New Oslo was on the southern part of Niflheim, a fjord-rent island roughly the same shape and size as the Scandinavian peninsula on Earth, and at about the same latitude. That, and the fact that it was the largest island on the continentless planet, was why Ulf Thorsfinni had selected it for his settlement when he'd led the first colonists there.

New Oslo. Bass wondered if Katie still lived there, and if she was still single and available--and still willing to talk to him after he'd been out of touch for so long. He flinched when he realized he hadn't seen her since before the Diamunde Campaign. She was probably a fat, contented hausfrau with three fat, happy babies by now. Still, they'd had a lot of fun together. It wouldn't hurt to look her up. Anyway, she was more pleasant to think about than aliens and quarantines. And certainly more pleasant than thinking about how he was going to walk out of that clothier with an officer's dress reds.

The bloodred tunic with its stock collar was fine; the only difference between it and the dress reds tunic he'd worn through his entire career was it was made of better material and was tailored. Not even that--he'd had his tunics tailored for the past fifteen years! But those gold trousers--the agony! He
liked
the blue trousers with blood-stripe outer seam that showed he was a noncommissioned officer. Like most enlisted Marines, he'd always thought officers' dress reds were entirely too gaudy.

And he had to turn in his hard-earned--and more-than-once-earned--chevrons, rockers, and crossed blasters for the lousy single silver orb of an ensign's rank insignia. They'd let him keep the wound stripes on his sleeve. As if he
wanted
entire worlds to see them and know how many times he'd done something dumb in the line of fire and gotten injured. If the tailor had put the wound stripes on his sleeve, he decided, he'd have him take them off. That was one benefit of being an officer--officers didn't have to show off that badge of error.

The aircraft landed. Bass and the other two soon-to-be officers piled into a waiting courtesy car and were whisked off to the clothier.

The other two were greatly impressed when they saw the mass of decorations and medals already mounted on Bass's waiting tunic; he had more than both of them combined.

In less than an hour they left, each carrying a bundle. On the way to the hotel where they would stay until returning to Camp Ellis in two days, Bass gave his companions directions to a not-too disreputable establishment where they could find decent food, inebriating drink, and willing women.

As for him, once he stowed his new uniform, he got out his personal comm and punched up Katie's number.

She wasn't there anymore, which didn't much surprise him. Comm Central reported that while he was away on Kingdom she'd moved to--

Bronnysund?

Bronnysund--"Bronnys," as the Marines of 34th FIST called it--was a fishing town in the northern reaches of Niflheim. More to the point, it was the local liberty town for Camp Ellis.

Why had Katie moved to Bronnys? Had she met and married a fisherman? That didn't seem at all like the Katie he'd known and very nearly loved. Did she go there in search of Charlie Bass? That didn't seem very likely either, but the thought certainly stoked his ego.

Maybe she'd like to come to his commissioning ceremony.
Yessir!
Katie pinning on one of his silver orbs. That would almost make having to go through the stupid ceremony worthwhile!

To hell with his orders to remain in New Oslo for two more days. He caught the next flight back to Bronnys and looked for Katie. He found her too.

CHAPTER TWO

Minister of the Interior Anton Elbrus sighed dramatically. "Where did he go? Do any of you have any idea?" he asked the quintet of Firstborn who stood in a loose group before his desk. Nobody spoke right away. Instead, they cast secretive glances at each other and avoided looking at him.

Elbrus's fingers drummed a brief tattoo on his desk. He was a middle-aged man who looked exactly like what he'd been most of his life--a mild-mannered bureaucrat. So it came as a surprise to the younger people in his office when he slammed the flat of his hand onto his desktop with a sharp
crack.
He further surprised them by shouting, "Come on! You're supposed to be Samar's friends. You know how long he's been gone. You know the last time he contacted any of you.
And you know he's missing!
Don't you care that your friend is missing, that he might be injured or lost and needs help?
You,
Yenisey." He thrust a finger at one of them. "Since childhood you two have always done everything together. I'm surprised you didn't go with him. Where did he go?"

Kerang Yenisey quickly looked around at the others, but if he looked for help, none appeared--the others studiously avoided making eye contact with him. "He said he wanted to find a way into one of the hidden valleys," Yenisey finally mumbled.

"I think we all know that," Elbrus replied dryly. "There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of hidden valleys.
Which one?
"

The young people, all members of the first generation of colonists born in Ammon, the only populated area on Maugham's Station, cast nervous glances at each other, but nobody said anything, even though they all had a general idea where Samar Volga had gone.

"He went into one of the interdicted areas, didn't he?" Elbrus asked. That wasn't a wild guess--most of the land area of Maugham's Station was interdicted. "Well?" he asked when no one spoke up.

Yenisey looked at the others again, and when they still didn't speak up, he said, "He went to Haltia. Almost a month ago."

Elbrus squeezed his eyes closed for a moment; that was even worse than he'd expected.

Haltia wasn't far outside Ammon, but it was one of the most rugged of the interdicted areas, and it would be a very difficult area to search.

"Why did he pick Haltia?" he asked so softly it was almost a whisper.

Volga's friends exchanged quick glances, a couple of them nervously licking their lips.

They also knew it would be harder to find their missing friend there than in almost any other area on the continent.

"Almost a month," Elbrus said. "I know he's been gone for almost a month." He fixed Yenisey with a sharp glare. "How long did he say he'd be gone?"

"A couple of weeks," the young man mumbled.

"A couple of weeks," Elbrus repeated. "
A couple of weeks!
And how much longer were you going to wait before any of you mentioned he was overdue? Don't you realize how much trouble your
friend
could be in? Didn't it occur to any of you that he might need help?" He stood abruptly and leaned forward, fists planted aggressively on his desktop. "Do you realize he could be
dead
because none of you thought it was important to report him missing?"

"He's been overdue before," Tanah Ob murmured.

Elbrus looked at her coldly. "
Before?
You mean this isn't the first time he's gone into Haltia?"

"No--I mean yes--I mean, I mean--" the young woman stammered.

"He hasn't gone into Haltia before," Yenisey said.

"Then where has he gone before?"

Yenisey hung his head and sighed though not as dramatically as Elbrus had earlier. He was already talking, he decided, so he might as well give up on holding anything back. "He's been to Baltica, Aland, and Ugric before."

"To get into the valleys?" Those three areas, all interdicted, were within an easy day's land travel from Olympia, Ammon's capital city.

Yenisey nodded without looking up.

"Did he get into them?"

Still looking down, Yenisey shook his head. "No."

"So why did he go to Haltia this time?"

Yenisey grimaced, then looked defiantly at the Minister of the Interior. "Because he found a map that showed what looked like an easy way into the valley."

Elbrus opened his mouth to demand to know where Volga had gotten a map with that kind of detail, since the Ammon government hadn't yet begun detailed mapping of Maugham's Station beyond the populated area, but snapped it closed before he asked. Samar Volga must have found it in the archives, left over from when Maugham's Station was an emergency way station for starships.

"He chose Haltia because he wanted to avoid detection," Elbrus said. It was a statement, not a question, so none of Volga's friends bothered to answer. He made another mental note: he needed to go to the Prime Minister and pressure him to get Parliament to approve the launch of a world-girding satellite net. Because all of the population of Maugham's Station was concentrated in the 350,000 square kilometers called Ammon, with most of the rest of the planet interdicted, the government didn't bother to maintain a world-spanning satellite network, and the planet's single geosync landsat was focused on the populated area. Even if it had instruments sensitive enough for the job, it would take weeks to get authorization to maneuver that satellite into position to locate a lost person in Haltia.

He looked away from the five Firstborn and sighed a third time. "Get out of my sight before I have you arrested."

He waited until they left, then sat heavily. He ponderously shook his head at the folly of the self-called Firstborn, the first generation to be born on Maugham's Station.
His
generation, the people who had colonized the onetime emergency way station, understood the hazards involved in colonizing a new world. They had constructed cities and towns to live in, farms and mines and factories to create an economy, and set about methodically building their world. To ease the development, everything was concentrated in one small area of a middle-sized continent. The arrangement also gave the colonists a feeling of familiarity--they came from densely populated worlds, and there was a danger of widespread agoraphobia if they were spread thinly over the new planet. Later, after a few generations, when the economy was sound and the local resources were well enough developed that Maugham's Station was properly self-sufficient and could apply for full membership in the Confederation of Human Worlds,
then
they could explore the rest of the planet and expand into its vastness.

As an aid in getting started, no one under the age of twenty-five was included among the original colonists, and they held off having children for ten years. The thinking--and Elbrus knew it was right--was that a new colony couldn't afford to have people sidelined with child-bearing and rearing. Only when the colony was past the perilous edge of survival had they built schools. Construction wasn't begun on the world's first college until the first cohort of the generation that called itself the Firstborn was in secondary school. Now, that first cohort was through with its schooling and eager to stretch its wings. Unfortunately, a sizable portion of the Firstborn were too impatient to participate in the methodical development of Maugham's Station and wanted to expand the colony's physical frontiers
now.
Why? The world wasn't going to be self-sufficient in their lifetime, they knew that: the methodology and rationale of colonial development was taught at every level of education from primary through undergraduate.

On a hunch, he leaned forward and queried his console. As Minister of the Interior, he had instant access to all but the most sensitive material stored in the world's data banks. In seconds his query was answered. He let out another sigh.

Elbrus had been a young man, not long out of university, when his family emigrated. He remembered his father, then a junior member of Parliament, protesting the founding of a chair in Human Space Expansion in the History department when Olympia College was founded.

Samar Volga and four of the five Firstborn who'd just been in his office had minored in Human Space Expansion.

Folly, pure folly. His father had been right. The heads of the younger generation were filled with romantic ideas about exploration, of "Going where no man has gone before." And now Elbrus was faced with the consequences of what his father had warned against.

Anton Elbrus didn't have jurisdiction over Haltia--nobody did, except, perhaps, some obscure parliamentary subcommittee--and assembling a search party and transporting it outside Ammon itself exceeded his authority. But he knew how many weeks--or months--it would likely take for Parliament to approve and outfit a search. Olympia's chief forensic pathologist informed him that the longer they waited, the less chance there was of finding anything, so he didn't even bother notifying the President or Parliament.

Like everything else on Maugham's Station, the search and rescue mission was organized methodically. There weren't any explorers or frontiersmen, of course, but there were botanists and zoologists who studied the flora and fauna on the fringes of the towns and cities and close beyond the borders of Ammon, and civil engineers who planned, built, and maintained the landways that linked the cities and towns. A team of twenty such specialists was assembled for the search. Of course, there were some oddballs who liked to picnic or camp in the wilds just out of sight of the towns and cities, so a dozen of them were conscripted as "guides" for the search.

Thirty-two searchers, plus four armed policemen; a doctor; and a three-person administration team to coordinate the searchers' activities and maintain communications with Olympia. Elbrus knew that wasn't enough people to search for a missing person in so large an area, but he didn't dare assemble a larger team for fear of attracting notice on a higher level.