The ship lifted high enough that its plasma motors no longer licked a shroud of steam from the pool on which the vessel had floated. The plume of ions flaring from the thrusters was a rainbow beauty over which a long steel cigar continued to lift. She was an Archaeologist-class heavy cruiser, an old ship with a greater length-to-beam ratio than more modern vessels of the type. If Daniel had wanted to, his goggles would have let him read the pennant number to identify her.
The plasma motors stripped atoms and voided them as ions to provide thrust. Any reaction mass would do, but water was ideal as well as being available generally on human-habitable worlds. Permanent harbor facilities were usually on seas or lakes which absorbed the plasma roaring from the thrusters at stellar heat and made refueling a matter of extending a hose.
When the vessel was well above the surface of the planet, she would switch to her High Drive, which used matter-antimatter conversion to provide sufficient inertial velocity to enter the Matrix. The High Drive was efficient but not perfect. If exhausted into an atmosphere, atoms of antimatter would flare and eat away the vessel itself.
The trio let the throb of the cruiser’s liftoff drop back from its plateau before any of them tried to talk over it. Harbor Three was a huge installation with frequent movements, but the sound of a heavy ship taking off or landing made it impossible to speak in a normal voice anywhere within the perimeter.
Uncle Stacey took out his hundred-florin touchpiece—part of an issue struck twenty-two years before to mark the birth of Speaker Leary’s son Daniel. He spun it so that the internal diffraction grating caught the light.
“People talk about how pretty Cinnabar coins are,” he said as they watched the cruiser rise. “There’s nothing as lovely as a well-tuned plasma motor, nothing. Unless maybe it’s the way the universe shines on you as you drop into the Matrix.”
“That reminds me,” Adele said with a faint smile. “I need to talk to my banker again. It’s time to make another draft on my prize account.”
Uncle Stacey snorted. “Bankers!” he said. “The worst risk one of that lot faces is that the wine he orders with dinner won’t be properly chilled.”
He twisted his head one way, then the other to look back at Adele; she politely stepped out to the side and nodded to him.
“My brother-in-law interests himself in banking,” Stacey said. “That’s Daniel’s father, you know. Though the lad’s turned out an honor to his Bergen blood, I say.”
His tone wasn’t usually so sharp. Daniel would have been surprised, but he knew that Uncle Stacey was in Xenos to render on behalf of Bergen and Associates, Shipfitters his quarterly accounts to the company’s financial backer . . . who was Corder Leary.
Speaker Leary’s financial interests were widespread. The only thing unusual about his share in Bergen and Associates was that the involvement was direct instead of being filtered through one or more holding companies. Daniel knew his father wasn’t a cruel man, but he was extremely punctilious about power relationships, especially when kinship was involved. You always knew where you stood with Corder Leary; or, more precisely, where at his feet you were to kneel.
An open four-wheeled jitney was leaving the Aristotle, probably to pick up Daniel and his party. Aircars weren’t permitted within Harbor Three for safety reasons: the risk of starships maneuvering in close proximity was great enough without adding aircraft to the mix. Heavy machinery and laborers at shift changes used the slow-moving overhead rail system circling the whole installation; branches led off the central line and snaked through sectors of six to ten bays, with shunts where carloads could wait until required.
The jitneys carried light cargo and small groups of people along the roadway beneath the rails. One had dropped Daniel and his party here at Dock 37, then whined off to make a delivery to the Aristotle in Dock 36 before returning. The driver claimed he was carrying urgent medical supplies in the hampers, but Daniel strongly suspected that liquor was arriving in trade for some item of the battleship’s furnishings.