You’ll need at least one change of clothing, lad, Jeran said with an amused snort and himself plucked several items of clothing from the cottage, more neatly folded than Rojer had left them. These were added to the carisak.
Closing it, Rojer sprinted for the nearest single personnel carrier. As he stretched himself out on the narrow couch inside, he reached out a long arm to haul the lid down. He heard a brief second thump and grinned that his uncle bothered to check that the latches had caught. So methody of him!
Please thank Raini for me, Jeran. I’m sure I won’t eat as well &ad luck, Rojer, the brisk kindly voice of his grandmother cut in.
thanks for everything … and then Rojer felt the indefinable sensation that told the experienced travelling Talent that he was nolonger where he had just been. He heard a chuckle.
Granddad? Now I’d call that cocky!
Would you? And his grandfather’s chuckle renewed with a certain pleased edge to it.
`OK in there, sir?’ a slightly less confident voice asked.
`Fine!’ The hatch opened to reveal a double-domed darkness, well sprinkled with stars, but Rojer was too familiar with Callisto to believe that’s where he’d been `ported.
He sat up and saw the naval rating peering in at him.
`Rojer Prime… his grandfather corrected him firmly.
Lyon, Prime. Am I expected?’ `Yes, sir, you are sir Rojer grimaced a bit at the `sirring’ since it evoked memories which still caused him to wince. He hitched himself out of the corner, slung the carisak over his shoulder and gestured for the rating to lead the way.
As he came round the carrier on his way to the airlock that joined the carrier depot with the gigantic Moon Base facility, he stopped abruptly. There, above him, half-lit by Sol, was the complete sphere of the refugee ship he was here to explore. She was appropriately equipped with regulation buoy lights.
`She’s a beaut, sir, even for an alien craft, the rating said with an odd ring of pride in his voice. `We were lucky to snag her to Mars Phobos Base even if now there’s as many `Dinis here as there would be if she’d been sent to one of theirs.’ “Dinis bother you?’ Rojer asked, bridling at the hint of intolerance in the rating’s tone.
`Me, sir? No, sir,’ was the almost startled reply as they entered the first of several lift shafts on the way to their destination.
`Cute little beggars, most of `em.
Better manners n some I could name not too far from here. To starboard now, sir.
A quick scan of the rating’s mind showed Rojer that the man was honest enough – so long as he was not required to be much in their company.
`Don’t they keep that Hiver queen here?’ The rating visibly flinched and shot Rojer a nervous look. `No, she’s down on Earth’s Moon Base. Heinlein Rojer depressed the `deliver’ button. A mellifluous Buildings. No way she or anything she can make out of her eggs can get out of that place.’ `Oh? Has she hatched more of the larvae?’ Surely someone would have mentioned it to him, Rojer thought, if the matter had been noteworthy.
`A couple of oddies. Small scuttling things,’ and the rating gave a snort of disdain. `Vents got checked again, thinking she might be trying to send `em outside. No way she can!’ The man had pride in his service’s security measures.
As they traversed several corridors and took one more long ride upwards, Rojer wondered how soon he could wangle a chance to get down to the Moon and observe her. If, as the experts were now fairly certain, the queens controlled all ship functions, he ought to see her for himself as well as the attendants and other varieties she had finally allowed to hatch. As far as he knew, his cousin Rhodri was still on duty there.
`Here you are, sir,’ the rating said, stopping by a door and pointing to a palm-pad. `If you’ll just do the necessary .
Rojer obliged by placing his hand on the pad and felt the tingle that registered the quarters to his imprint.