The Beyond had once begun with the stars nearest Earth and now it started with
Pell, for the oldest stations were shut down as Earthward trade phased out and
the pre-jump style of trade passed forever. The Hinder Stars were all forgotten,
unvisited.
There were worlds beyond Pell, beyond Cyteen, and Union had them all now, real
worlds, of the far-between stars which jump could reach; where Union used the
birth labs still to expand populations, giving them workers and soldiers. Union
wanted all the Beyond, to direct what would be the course of the future of man.
Union had the Beyond, all but the thin arc of stations which Mazian’s Fleet
still thanklessly held for Earth and the Company, because they had once been set
to do that, because they saw nothing they could do but that. At their backs was
only Pell… and the mothballed stations of the Hinder Stars. Remoter still,
isolate… sat Earth, locked in its inner contemplations and its complex,
fragmented politics.
No trade of substance came out of Sol now, or to it. In the insanity which was
the War, free merchanters plied Unionside and Company Stars alike, crossed the
battle lines at will, although Union discouraged that traffic by subtle
harassments, seeking to cut Company supply.
Union expanded and the Company Fleet just held on, worldless but for Pell which
fed them, and Earth which ignored them. On Unionside, stations were no longer
built on the old scale. They were mere depots for worlds now, and probes sought
still further stars. They were generations which had never seen Earth… humans to
whom Europe and Atlantic were creatures of metal and terror, generations whose
way of life was stars, infinities, unlimited growth, and time which looked to
forever. Earth did not understand them.
But neither did the stations which remained with the Company or the free
merchanters who carried on that strange crosslines trade.
Chapter Two
« ^ »
i
In Approach to Pell: 5/2/52
The convoy winked in, the carrier Norway first, and then the ten
freighters—more, as Norway loosed her four riders and the protective formation
spread itself wide in its approach to Pell’s Star.
Here was refuge, one secure place the war had never yet reached, but it was the
lapping of the tide. The worlds of the far Beyond were winning, and certainties
were changing, on both sides of the line.
On the bridge of the ECS 5, the jump-carrier Norway, there was rapid activity,
the four auxiliary command boards monitoring the riders, the long aisle of com
operations and that of scan and that of their own command. Norway was in
constant com link with the ten freighters, and the reports passed back and forth
on those channels were terse, ships’ operations only. Norway was too busy for
human disasters.
No ambushes. The station at Pell’s World received signal and gave reluctant
welcome. Relief whispered from post to post of the carrier, private, not carried
on intership com. Signy Mallory, Norway’s captain, relaxed muscles she had not
known were tense and ordered armscomp downgraded to standby.
She held command over this flock, third captain in seniority of the fifteen of
Mazian’s Fleet. She was forty-nine. The Beyonder Rebellion was far older than
that; and she had been freighter pilot, rider captain, the whole gamut, all in
the Earth Company’s service. Her face was still young. Her hair was silver gray.
The rejuv treatments which caused the gray kept the rest of her at somewhere
near biological thirty-six; and considering what she shepherded in and what it
portended, she felt aged beyond the forty-nine.
She leaned back in her cushion which looked over the upcurving, narrow aisles of
the bridge, punched in on her arm console to check operations, stared out over
the active stations and the screens which showed what vid picked up and what
scan had Safe. She lived by never quite believing such estimations.
And by adapting. They all did, all of them who fought this war. Norway was like
her crew, varied salvage: of Brazil and Italia and Wasp and jinxed Miriam B,
parts of her dating all the way back to the days of the freighter war. They took
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