Miliko. Two others. All had rifles. He felt a sudden surge of relief to think he
had had someone at his back after all. He waved his hand that it was all right,
hastened toward them. Miliko came quickest, and he hugged her. Miliko’s two
companions caught up, two guards off the shuttle. “I’m sending some personnel up
with you,” he said to them. “Discharged, and I’m filing charges. I don’t want
them armed. I’m also sending up some Downers, and I don’t want the two groups
near each other, not at any time.”
“Yes, sir.” The two guards were blank of comment, objected to nothing.
“You can go back,” he said. “Start moving the assignees this way; it’s all
right”
They went about their orders. Miliko kept the rifle she had borrowed of someone,
stood against his side, her arm tight about him, his about her.
“Hale’s lot,” he said. “I’m packing them all off.”
“That leaves us no guards.”
“Q wasn’t the trouble. I’m calling station about this one.” His stomach
tightened, reaction beginning to settle on him. “I guess they saw you on the
ridge. Maybe that changed their minds.”
“Station’s got a crisis alert. I thought sure it was Q. Shuttle called station
central.”
“Better get to Operations then and cancel it” He drew her about; they walked
down the slope in the direction of the dome. His knees were water.
“I wasn’t up there,” she said.
“Where?”
“On the ridge. By the time we arrived up there, there were just Downers and Q.”
He swore, marveling then that he had won that bluff. “We’re well rid of Bran
Hale,” he said.
They reached the trough among the hills, walked the bridge over the water hoses
and up again, across to Operations. Inside, the boy was submitting to the
medic’s attention and a pair of techs was standing armed with pistols, keeping a
nervous watch on the Q folk who had brought him in. Emilio motioned a negative
to them. They cautiously put them away, looked unhappy with the whole situation.
Carefully neutral, Emilio thought. They would have gone with any winner of the
quarrel out there, no help to him. He was not angry for it, only disappointed.
“You all right, sir?” Jim Ernst asked.
He nodded, stood watching, with Miliko beside him. “Call station,” he said after
a moment. “Report it settled.”
ii
They nestled in together, in the dark space humans had found for them, in the
great empty belly of the ship, a place which echoed fearfully with machinery.
They had to use the breathers, first of what might be many discomforts. They
tied themselves to the handholds, as humans had warned them they must, to be
safe, and Satin hugged Bluetooth-Dahit-hos-me, hating the feel of the place and
the cold and the discomfort of the breathers, and most of all fearing because
they were told that they must tie themselves for safety. She had not thought of
ships in terms of walls and roofs, which frightened her. Never had she imagined
the flight of the ships as something so violent they might be dashed to death,
but as something free as the soaring birds, grand and delirious. She shivered
with her back against the cushions humans had given them, shivered and tried to
cease, felt Bluetooth shiver too.
“We could go back,” he said, for this was not of his choosing.
She said nothing, clamped her jaw against the urge to cry that yes, they should,
that they should call the humans and tell them that two very small, very unhappy
Downers had changed their minds.
Then there was the sound of the engines. She knew what that was… had heard it
often. Felt it now, a terror in her bones.
“We will see great Sun,” she said, now that it was irrevocable. “We will see
Bennett’s home.”
Bluetooth held her tighter. “Bennett,” he repeated, a name which comforted them
both. “Bennett Jacint.”
“We will see the spirit-images of the Upabove,” she said.
“We will see the Sun.” There was a great weight on them, a sense of moving, of
being crushed at once. His grip hurt her; she held to him no less tightly. The