The captain paused near the airlock, lifting one booted foot. He bad to shout to be beard, but there was an immense cahn in him: “Any closer, lad, and you get your teeth bashed in.”
Esperero paused. There was a sudden strangeness in the answer-pity? sorrow? “Why do you flee thus? We would not harm you. We would be your friends.”
“That,” said Joachim, “is just the trouble, I think.”
Esperero nodded, slowly. A crooked grin twisted face, ‘You have a gesture, you hurnans,” he said. “May I shake
your hand?”
“Hm?” Joachim braced himself. It might be a trick, only it was hard to see what could be gained by capturing him alone. “All right. Sure.” Joachim reached down. Esperero’s hand was small and supple, with a warm strength, in his own clasp.
“Goodbye, my friend,” said the Alorian.
He released Joachim and descended the ladder. The Nomad stared after him, then shrugged and went on up. Trevelyan pushed a button and the ladder was drawn in as the outer door wmned shut. The wind’s noise dimmed and silence came down like a falling moon. He locked the motor; the boat could only be opened from the inside now.
Ilaloa was standing there, too, wet and cold in the bleak white light. Her eyes were wide with a reborn fear. “Quickly,” she said. ‘Be off, fast. There are the other boats, and they can be flown too. And they have guns!”
Joachim sprang to the nearest viewsereen, but he could see only darkness and flying clouds. He threw the intercom switch. “Emergency stational Battle stational And take off I” lt wasn’t a normally organized crew, but the men all had some training. Boots clanged on metal as they ran for action posts. There were guns and missile tubes in the gliding fins and just above the gravity drive cones, and one heavy cannon in the nose. Joachim stayed at the centrally located airlock; Trevelyan whirled and went up the gravity shaft to the bows. Ilaloa didn’t follow him, though Sean was pilot. She remained with the captain, drawing herself into a comer as if she wanted to be invisible.
Trevelyan glimpsed Nicki in one of the bunkrooms as he fell upward, and hailed her. She answered with a wave. She was helping care for one of the woman, hurt in their shipwreck landfalls Emerging in the bow chamber, he saw Sean in the pilot chair, looking out the forward viewscreen as his fingers danced across studs and switches. The Nomad’s
tousled head turned with laughter toward him. “Good man, Micah! Can you handle one of those big friends?”
“Yes, sure. But get us off the ground, Sean!” Trevelyan jumped into the gun-tender’s seat. The Long John was autornatically loaded and fired, but it took two men to direct the robots. Petroff Dusban was the other one; his dripping, flame-colored beard brushed the gleaming control panel. Kogama lwao was in the co-pilot’s ch , and Ferenczi sat in the background.
“I’ll get her off in good time,” Sean said.
It was strange, thought Trevelyan, that utter happiness should make a man so reckless of death.
The boat trembled. Sean took her up so smoothly that for an instant Trevelyan didn’t realize they were beaded skyward. Skyward, outward, starward-the words were a song within him.
They didn’t have figures for the Peregrine’s orbit, but she wouldn’t be hard to find and board. And after that”They’re firing, Sean,” said Kogama.
Sean looked at the detector dials. The craft lurched a bit from a Dear miss, exploded by her own counterfire. “Yeah,” he said. “And-ob, ob!” He spoke into the intercom. “Pilot to captain. They’re taking another of the boats after us. Neutrino emission.”
“Just let me focus my screen,’ answered Joachim. “Uh@ huh, I see it now. Brethren, this is not a good thing.”
Sean reached out and worked the dials of his own auxiliary screen until it showed the ground below. That was a huge black circle, falling away as they climbed for heaven. The moonlight picked out steel below them, rising.
“Can we give ‘em the slip?” asked Ferenczi.
“No,” said Sean. “They’re coming too fast. We’d better swing around so we can use our heavy stuff.”