certain you can endure being cooped together for weeks in a small boat.
“Orsini will flit you to Eight. Flandry will surreptitiously land there,
pick up you and the supplies, and proceed into interstellar space.
Returning, you two will reverse the whole process, and meet in Ammon’s
office to report.”
Djana sat still.
“You give away nothing by affirming this,” Rax stated. “My organization
knows. Where is the lost planet? What is its nature?”
“Who are you working for?” Djana asked mutedly.
“That does not concern you.” Rax’s tone was mild and Djana took no
umbrage. The gang lords of Irumclaw were a murderous lot. “You owe Ammon
no allegiance,” Rax urged. “Rather, you owe him a disfavor. Since you
prefer to operate independently, and thus compete with the houses, you
must pay him for his ‘protection.’ ”
Djana sighed. “If it weren’t him, it’d be somebody else.”
Rax drew forth a sheaf of bills and riffled them with a fine crisp
sound. She estimated–holy saints!–ten thousand credits. “This for
answering my questions,” it said. “Most likely a mere beginning for
you.”
She thought, while she inhaled raggedly, If the business looks too
dangerous, I can go tell Leon right away and explain I was playing
along–of course, this bunch might learn I’d talked and I’d have to
skip–A flick of white fury: I shouldn’t have to skip! Not ever again!
She built her sentences with care. “Nobody’s told me much. You
understand they wouldn’t, till the last minute. Your ideas are right,
but they’re about as far along as my own information goes.”
“Has Flandry said nothing to you?”
She plunged. “All right. Yes. Give me that packet.” Having taken the
money, she described what the pilot had been able to reveal to her after
she had lowered his guard for him. (An oddly sweet pair of nights; but
best not think about that.) “He doesn’t know the coordinates yet, you
realize,” she finished. “Not even what kind of sun it is, except for the
metals. It must be somewhere not too far off his assigned route. But he
says that leaves thousands of possibilities.”
“Or more.” Rax forgot to control intonation. Was the sawing rhythm that
came out of the speaker an equivalent of its equivalent of an awed
whisper? “So many, many stars … a hundred billion in this one lost
lonely dustmote of a galaxy … and we on the edge, remote in a spiral
arm where they thin toward emptiness … what do we know, what can we
master?”
The voice became flat and businesslike again. “This could be a prize
worth contending for. We would pay well for a report from you. Under
certain circumstances, a million.”
What Nicky said he was getting! And Leon’s paying me a bare hundred
thousand–Djana shook her head. “I’ll be watched for quite a while, Rax,
if Wayland turns out to be any use. What good is a fortune after you’ve
been blasted?” She shivered. “Or they might be angry enough to
brain-channel me and–” The cigarette scorched her fingers. She ground
it into a disposer and reached for a new one. A million credits, she
thought wildly. A million packs of smokes. But no, that’s not it. What
you do is bank it and live off the interest. No huge income, but you’d
be comfortable on it, and safe, and free, free–
“You would require disappearance, certainly,” Rax said. “That is part of
the plan.”
“Do you mean we … our boat … would never come back?”
“Correct. The Navy will mount a search, with no result. Ammon will not
soon be able to obtain another scout, and in the interim he can be
diverted from his purpose or done away with. You can be taken to a
suitably distant point, to Terra itself if you wish.”
Djana started her cigarette. The taste was wrong. “What about, well,
him?”
“Junior Lieutenant Flandry? No great harm need come if the matter is
handled efficiently. For the sums involved, one can afford to hire
technicians and equipment able to remove recent memories from him
without damage to the rest of his personality. He can be left where he
will soon be found. The natural assumption will be that he was captured