us is involved with the market. Seems other crews are upset with you and me, and
there are rumors flying about tampering with the list, about a deliberate tipoff
due to some black market rivalry between Norway and other ships… Quiet! So I’m
given orders, from the top. You get liberties, on the same schedule and on the
same terms as other troops; you get duty on their schedule too. I’m not going to
comment, except to compliment you on doing an excellent job; and to tell you two
more things: I felt complimented on behalf of this whole ship that there was not
a Norway name involved in that blue section mess; second… I ask you to avoid
argument with other units, whatever rumors are passed and however you’re
provoked. Apparently there is some hard feeling, for which I take personal
responsibility. Apparently… well, leave that unsaid. Questions?”
There was deathly silence. No one moved.
“I’ll trust you’ll pass the news to the incoming watch before I get the chance
to do it in person. My apologies, my personal apologies, for what is apparently
construed by others as unfairness to the people under my command. Dismissed.”
Still no one moved. She turned on her heel, walked away toward the lift, for the
main level and her own quarters.
“Vent ’em,” a voice muttered audibly in her wake. She stopped dead, with her
back to them.
“Norway!” someone shouted; and another; “Signy!” In a moment the whole ship
echoed.
She started walking again for the open lift, drew a deep breath of satisfaction
for all the casual swing to her step. Vent him indeed, if even Conrad Mazian
thought he could put his hand to Norway. She had started with the troops; Di
Janz would have something to say to them too. What threatened Norway’s morale
threatened lives, threatened the reflexes they had built up over years.
And her pride. That too. Her face was still burning as she strode into the lift
and pushed the button. The shouts echoing in the corridors were salve for her
pride, which was, she admitted to herself, as vast as Mazian’s. Follow orders
indeed; but she had calculated the effect on the troops and on her crew; and no
one gave her orders regarding what happened within Norway itself. Not even
Mazian.
Chapter Two
« ^ »
i
Pell: sector green nine; 1/6/53
The downer was with him again, a small brown shadow, not altogether unusual in
the traffic in nine. Josh paused in the riot-scarred corridor, put his foot on a
molding, pretended to adjust the top of his boot. The Downer touched his arm,
wrinkled its nose in bending and peering up at his face. “Konstantin-man all
right?”
“All right,” he said. It was the one called Bluetooth, who was on their heels
almost daily, managing to carry messages to and from Damon’s mother. “We’ve got
a good place to hide now. No more trouble. Damon’s safe and the man’s making no
more trouble.”
The furred powerful hand sought his, forced an object into it. “You take
Konstantin-man? She give, say need.”
The Downer slipped away in the traffic as quickly as he had come. Josh
straightened, resisting the temptation to look about or to look at the metal
object until he was some distance down the corridor. It turned out to be a
brooch, metal that might be real gold. He pocketed it for the treasure it was to
them, something salable on the market, something that needed no card, that would
bribe someone unbribable by other means… like the owner of their current
lodgings. Gold had uses other than jewelry: rare metals were worth lives—the
going rate. And the day was coming when it would take greater and greater
persuasion to keep Damon hidden. A woman of vast good sense, Damon’s mother. She
had ears and eyes, in every Downer who flitted harmlessly through the corridors,
and she knew their desperation—offered still a refuge that Damon would not take,
because he above all did not want the Downer system subject to search.
The net was closing on them. The area of usable corridors grew less and less. A
new system was being installed, new cards, and the sections the troops cleared