Daniel nodded approvingly. “Yes, of course,” he said. “A flotation bladder from a deep sea plant. Storms would occasionally break pieces loose to where the currents could carry them to shore.”
“I don’t care where the plant came from!” Valentina snapped. She jabbed the Captain with the tips of her index and middle fingers. “It’s the design that matters. Where did you get the design, you?”
He looked even more puzzled. “We’ve always had the Sky Ball,” he said. “My father’s father had it.”
The second part of the statement was probably true, Adele realized, since he’d said his mother’s father’s father had been from the crew of the ship destroyed by gunfire. Daniel’s suggestion, that John Tsetzes had destroyed the other vessel when it first appeared, looked increasingly probable.
The alert from the Princess Cecile winked simultaneously in her helmet and Daniel’s. They straightened together.
“What ship? What ship? What ship?” queried a vessel in orbit above Morzanga. Its transponder declared it was the Belle Ideal of Condon’s Planet, one of the independent worlds loosely allied with Cinnabar; Adele recognized the signal as coming from the Goldenfels even before the analysis program—which was part of Mistress Sand’s equipment—confirmed her assumption. No two radio transmitters are perfectly identical, any more than any two human voices are.
Because Adele had set her handheld unit to echo emergency signals automatically, she didn’t have to bring up the commo display. Her wands twitched, locking the bridge and Battle Center transmitters so that the duty officer—Chewning—couldn’t respond. The wrong response—the truth—would be suicide.
Her eyes met Daniel’s. The rest of the group from the Princess Cecile continued to talk among themselves, scarcely aware that the two officers were only physically present at the moment. “Daniel, it’s the Goldenfels,” she said. “Will you trust me to handle this my way?”
“Yes,” he said. The data unit was rock steady in his hands, though he couldn’t see its display or guess what she had in mind. “Woetjans, move other people away from us, please. There’s a problem and Mistress Mundy mustn’t be bothered while she’s dealing with it.”
“Goldenfels, this is Adele Mundy of Bryce,” Adele said. There was a bustle among those nearby, but her world had shrunk down to her screen and her mind as she used the only weapon that could possibly save them: information. “I’m secretary to a pair of rich boobs from Novy Sverdlovsk. Listen, they’ve found the Earth Diamond! I repeat, they’ve found the Earth Diamond! If you’ll help me, we can save it for Guarantor Porra instead of having it go decorate some hog farm in the back of the beyond! Over.”
She was taking a series of risks, the first and greatest being that she’d replied using the Goldenfels’ real name instead of the false identity coming from the ship’s transponder. Adele’s offer was only believable if it was made by an Alliance citizen to an Alliance ship. With luck they’d overlook the question of how she’d recognized them or at least give her a chance to explain.
The fact the Goldenfels had tracked the Princess Cecile from Todos Santos and was giving a false name indicated that Captain Bertram hadn’t come to talk. Because of their relative locations, the Sissie was a sitting duck.
High Drive motors didn’t do a perfect job of combining antimatter and normal matter to create thrust; unconverted antimatter in the exhaust reacted violently with any normal matter outside the nozzle. A ship in vacuum could fire missiles to the surface with reasonable accuracy, but missiles fired from the bottom of an atmosphere would destroy themselves before they climbed to a target in orbit.
“What ship? What ship?” continued for two beats before the transponder shut off. After a brief pause, a male voice said, “Unknown caller, identify yourself. Over.”
“This is Alliance citizen Adele Mundy aboard the yacht Princess Cecile!” Adele said. She’d lived on Bryce long enough, working in the Academic Collections, that she could easily counterfeit an upper-class accent. “I’m alone in the control room because the officers are all getting drunk with the local savages, but somebody may come in at any moment. Listen, the Klimovs have bought the Earth Diamond from the savages! Look it up, I don’t have time to explain, but it’s valuable beyond belief! Land your ship nearby, pretend to be friendly, and I’ll see to it that we get the diamond without any fighting. The Guarantor will reward us all. Do you understand, over?”