“Perhaps he did, your excellency,” Daniel said. “All we know at this point is that Tsetzes didn’t return by way of Tegeli, because there’d be record of his reappearance there if he had.”
Daniel had been hot-tempered when he was a boy. Indeed, he still was when it was a matter of himself as a private person. But a junior officer in the RCN gets a great deal of experience in biting his tongue when those higher on the chain of command make stupid or even insulting statements, and the experience stood him in good stead now.
Adele inserted her image at the top of Daniel’s display, joining the conversation formally. She kept the image slightly smaller than the Klimovs’ and washed it out so that it was almost monochrome.
“Captain Leary?” she said obsequiously. “Might Tsetzes have tried to reach the Commonwealth by the route Commander Bergen later found, but miscalculated and destroyed his ship in the process? If he’d gotten through, I think there’d have been some mention of him in the files I was able to copy in San Juan. As it is, there’s no record of John Tsetzes after he landed on Tegeli . . . and nobody knew about that landing until you uncovered the artifacts at Pansuela House.”
“I agree that’s a possibility, Mundy,” Daniel said, feeling himself relax as Adele spoke. “I’ll continue to hope that the Nicator crashed on Morzanga, though. If it disintegrated in the Matrix, I’m afraid there’s no hope of ever recovering the Earth Diamond.”
“Then set us down, Captain,” the Count said with a wave of his hand. “By all means, set us down and we will search the wreck in all hope. But for myself . . . diamonds are sturdy things, that is so; but I fear that a crashing starship would break even a diamond into little bits.”
* * *
“Adele?” Daniel called over her helmet intercom. “We’re about to receive a deputation from the village. Unless you’re doing something particularly important, why don’t you join us on shore.”
“I’m on my way,” Adele said, closing up her data unit and slipping the control wands into their sockets. “There’s nothing on this planet’s RF band except thunderstorms.”
She walked to the companionway as she stowed the data unit, wobbling for the first few steps. She’d been sitting for a long time. In a way Adele’s determined search for radio transmissions was a failure, because she hadn’t turned anything up. On the other hand, it was important to know the crew of the Princess Cecile were the only civilized people on Morzanga.
Adele smiled faintly. Her mother would’ve objected to the term “civilized people” because it implied that the natives of Morzanga were something else. They were something else. “Uncivilized” was a description, not an insult. The natives of Morzanga didn’t live in a technologically advanced civilization like the one whose officials had shot her mother dead and staked her head onto Speaker’s Rock in Xenos.
Though the Morzangans probably had their equivalent. They were human, after all.
The corvette was open to vent the recycled wastes of ten days in space. Crewmen had locked automatic impellers capable of throwing streams of half-ounce slugs into the access ports on both sides of A Deck and at the cargo hatches on C Deck. The forward turret was raised; its twin plasma cannon were trained toward the village just out of sight to the west.
The gun crews looked tense. Not frightened, nothing like frightened; but very grimly prepared to turn everything within a mile of the ship into a shattered wasteland.
The squad on watch in the access hatch had similar expressions, holding their weapons instead of carrying them slung or leaning them against the bulkheads. They nodded as Adele stepped past.
Tovera carried her miniature sub-machine gun openly instead of concealed in her attaché case. She followed Adele onto the boarding bridge over the slough whose waters had absorbed the blast of the starship’s landing.
“I feel underdressed,” she murmured, nodding to the spacers holding stocked impellers and full-sized sub-machine guns. Occasionally she chose to demonstrate that she had a sense of humor.
“I doubt it’ll be that sort of party,” said Adele, resisting the impulse to hold her arms out for balance. The bridge was a full meter wide, and though footsteps made it quiver, Adele knew it was stressed for three-ton loads. “If it is, I’m sure they’ll make allowances for us.”