Her hands moved, sending the core of the message from Condor Control—the station that handled starship traffic for all Sexburga—to Daniel’s display in visual form. The course plot, the time parameters, and the two smaller harbors with their approach cones were instantly visible; if Daniel for some reason wanted the audio message as well, he had only to key an icon to get it.
That was the open part of Adele’s duties. At the same time she’d entered the Condor database covertly and copied from it the complete records of landings and departures from the planet in the past thirty days. Her real concern—Daniel’s real concern—was to see when and whether Commodore Pettin had arrived, but for safety’s sake Adele had given her search broader parameters.
RCS Tampico, arrived four days previous. From . . . Adele’s wands moved . . . Holtsmark, berthed at Slip Thirty-two, Flood Harbor. She accessed another file, this one internal RCN records held in the Princess Cecile’s database. RCS Tampico, communications vessel, 1700 tons empty; defensive armament only.
“Condor Control to Gee Are one-seven-five-one,” the controller on Sexburga said. “You’re to put down in slip thirty. I’m transmitting a plot of Flood Harbor. Condor over.”
The speaker was male, probably in his forties, and sounded alertly professional. He hissed his esses and more generally spoke with a soft lilt; Adele decided to class the peculiarities as a Sexburga accent until she learned otherwise.
A schematic appeared in gold light on the left side of Adele’s display. It was offset from but identical to the harbor plan from the Princess Cecile’s database. The local transmission also showed cigar-shaped vessels settled in roughly half the fifty-seven slips. Sexburga was clearly a major port, though most of the ships berthed here were of moderate size.
Adele framed the plan and retransmitted it to a suspense file serving the command console while Daniel set up his final approach. It was received, becoming a sidebar on the upper left corner of a screen almost completely filled by numerical data.
“Gee-Are one-seven-five-one acknowledges receipt of the Flood Harbor berthing plan,” Adele said. “Gee-Are one-seven-five-one out.”
Nothing went to the command console until it had been cleared through Adele’s filters and then requested by the captain. The captain could set up categories for immediate update—this harbor schematic, for example—but even so the data didn’t appear on Daniel’s display until he called for it. The priorities were determined by a human being.
Adele returned her attention to the right half of her display, another RCN internal file: current deployment orders for RCN vessels. The Tampico was on a triangular run from Sexburga to the Cinnabar outpost at Fort Hill Station and finally to Langerhut, an allied system with a Resident Commissioner but almost no direct contact with Cinnabar. The Tampico carried dispatches, supplies, and personnel who were being transferred. The vessel wasn’t connected with Commodore Pettin’s squadron.
The Princess Cecile braked under one-gee acceleration. Even to the naked eye, the image of Sexburga swelled on the real-time display at the margin of Adele’s screen. Speaking loudly to be heard over the whine of antimatter annihilation, Sun said to Betts, “Did you see that? Mr. Leary didn’t quite kill our momentum with the last shift in the Matrix. He was so sure he’d drop us just short of the planet that he left us with a way on to save time. Ain’t he a wonder?”
Betts nodded solemnly. He was clearing his display of the targeting fantasies that had preserved him in the Matrix, moving methodically through a checklist. “A wonder . . .” he breathed.
A wonder indeed.
There were no other RCN vessels on Sexburga or in the PCT-3301 system of which Sexburga was the fourth planet. Adele moved to checking grouped arrivals.
Three ships had arrived in hailing range of Condor Control within minutes of one another a week ago, but they were freighters from three separate systems linked only by chance. Adele called up visuals from the Flood Harbor security cameras and proved beyond doubt that the ships weren’t warships, let alone Commodore Pettin’s squadron with disguised identities.
She thought a smile that eventually touched her lips. She was obviously being obsessive. In that, at least, she’d make a good spacer.