“How do you mean?”
“Well, suppose you were planning a move like that, and it involved taking over the Trojan. Would you want a guy like Mitch around when it happened? Sounds to me as if someone had him pulled because he would have been too dangerous.”
It made sense, Keene had to agree. Although inclined to be flamboyant at times, Mitch was a capable leader who would have been a natural rallying point for resistance to organize around. If the Pragmatists had seized the Trojan too, they would have wanted more pliable individuals there to deal with—such as SA rookies and freshy graduated SOE trainees supposedly going to Jupiter to gain interplanetary experience. And that was exactly the way it had happened. At least, if it were true, it would mean Robin was okay after all. However, if he and Charlie did manage to make some sort of contact with Aztec, he decided he would keep such thoughts to himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to raise Vicki’s hopes like that, and then be proved wrong.
“Then there was Colby Greene,” Charlie said. Colby had been a presidential political aide who had ended up with Keene’s party and escaped with them via Mexico. “Kind of a weird sense of humor, but he was okay. I never heard more of him after that last reunion six months before we left Titan.”
“I met him a couple of times in Foundation. He was working there with Cavan in whatever Cavan gets mixed up in. Neither of them could stay away from politics very long. I think Leo missed the old Washington underworld.”
They talked for a little longer about the others who had been with them then, but Keene could feel himself fading as exhaustion finally overcame him. They had the air beds but not the energy to inflate them. Stretching back among the rocks, he pulled the covers close and fell into total oblivion.
* * *
The probe had grounded in a hollow among the rocks on the ridge above Joburg, apparently scraping over some boulders before coming to rest canted sideways and nose-down with some dents in the forward section of its underbelly and one of its stub wings crumpled at the tip. The damage didn’t look serious, but Jorff didn’t feel it would be wise to risk compounding it further by having Rakki’s people drag it down to the open ground below for easier recovery. The technical people from Serengeti could come out and look at it, and decide for themselves how they wanted to deal with the situation. In any case, his thoughts right now were in regions far removed from matters to do with recovering damaged probes.
He sat contentedly in the dusk, his back propped against the probe’s motor cowling, legs stretched out along the ground, enjoying the flashes of bare thigh and underwear in the shadows as Leisha stepped into her pants and hitched them back up. In the days back on Earth, he’d always lit up a cigarette at moments like this. Since the habit had never taken on in Kronia’s permanently enclosed environments, he made do instead with a swig of coffee from the flask they had brought up with them. No complaints, he told himself again. She certainly lived up to the promise of the body and the eyes.
“You want some?” He gestured with the flask.
“I just did.” Leisha laughed, buttoning her top.
“I meant coffee.” Jorff poured some into the cup and set it on a rock. “Don’t start getting smart with me.”
“Well, you should have known better. Words are what I do.” She came over out of the darkness and squatted down. “Thanks. . . . Mmm. Tastes good.”
“You know, it doesn’t pay to be conscientious,” Jorff said.
“How do you mean?”
“I’m doing too good a job here. See, Rakki’s soldiers are catching on fast, which means they’ll be shipping out sooner. So we won’t be taking any more walks. And I was just deciding, you know, I could get used to this.”
Leisha took it as an invitation and wriggled closer, seeking warmth against the evening chill. “It’s better to end these things on a high,” she said. “Before they turn sour.”