“There have been strikes since then,” Brandir snapped. “Any witling could tell.” He chopped a hand at the sight that had particularly interested him. Though craters were few, a big one with a central peak loomed in the southern hemisphere, receding from view as ship and planetoid wheeled.
“True,” Ilitu agreed, conciliatory. “No matter how sparse, bodies must meet on occasion, in the course of four billion years or more. Yon great meteoroid, and the comet, and others; but seldom, and of scant geological consequence.”
“Not to a man who can think. Piss about as you wish, grounds!de. I know what I will seek.”
Ilitu’s slender frame tensed. “Best we plan our field work before we start it,” he said.
“When I desire your opinion, I will inform you,” Brandir retorted.
Kaino plucked his sleeve. “Come,” the pilot murmured. “I’ve need of you aft.”
Brandir bridled. “I’m scanning the terrain.”
“The cameras will do that better. Likewise Ilitu. Come.” Kaino put a slight metallic ring into his voice. Sullenly, Brandir accompanied him from the cabin. In space, the pilot was master.
They did not push off and fly, but used handholds to pull themselves along the passage beyond, side by side. “What do you intend?” Brandir demanded.
“To calm you, brother mine. I smelted a fight brewing, and we cannot afford it. Relations have grown too strained already.”
Brandir cast a sharp glance at the redhead. “You speak thus?”Kaino finger-shrugged and grinned lopsidedly. “After a person has crossed the half-century mark, the fires damp down a little. I should have thought yours were cooler from the outset—and you my senior, and Etana companionate with me, not you.”
Brandir flushed below his thinning ashen hair. “Do you suppose me jealous? Nay, it’s his insolence.”
“It’s that, sitting in your castle, you’ve become too wont to have what you want when you want it. Yes, my own self-importance was stung. But we’ve both had plenty of women, inside our group or outside it. If Etana’s come to favor a new man above me—I suspect his mildness appeals to her—why, there will be no lack of others to welcome ine home. Meanwhile, Etana does not disdain either of -us two, does she? Ease off, you. We should both carry too much pride to leave room for vanity.”
Brandir parted his lips, clamped them shut again, and shook his head angrily.
The copilot emerged from a cpmpanionway, spied them, and drew near. She was in her thirties, dark, fuller-bodied than usual among Lunarians. Like Ilitu, she had dressed hastily, and the black locks floated unkempt about a face that remembered Oceanian ancestors. A faint muskiness clung to her skin.
The three’poised in confrontation. She recognized the ill humor in Brandir and offered him a smile. “I was bound forward to see what we’ve found,” she said.
“You felt no urgency earlier,” he answered.
Resentment kindled. “Off duty, I choose my trajectory for myself.”
Kaino meowed. They gave him a surprised look.
“R-r-rowr,” he voiced. “S-s-s-s. Pity that you’ve neither of you the fur to bristle or the tails to bottle.”
After a moment, Etana laughed. Brandir’s mouth twitched upward. “Touch& “ he muttered.
“I meant no offense, my lord,” the woman told him softly. Never hitherto had she used that honorific. Her only allegiances were to the companionate she shared with Kaino and to this ship; she could and would leave either when she saw fit. “I did not suppose you especially cared.”
“I ought not,” Brandir replied with some difficulty. “You are a free agent.”
Comprehension flickered into Kaino’s eyes, and perhaps as much compassion as he was capable of. He drifted aside and kept quiet.
Etana touched Brandir’s hand. “We shall be here for a span, and then it’s a long voyage home,” she said. “There will be time for talk and for other things.”
“You are … kinder than I knew.” He put on the reserve of the aristocrat. “I’ll seek to arrange matters as may best please you, my lady.”
Groundside, he, the major partner in Selene Space Enterprises and the most experienced leader aboard, would be in command.
He stood on that height he called Meteor Mountain and rejoiced.
As small as this world was, from here he could barely see parts of the crater ringwall, thrusting above the horizon. Under his feet the terk, lumpy mass went down to a plain of almost glassy smoothness, its gray-brown webbed with cracks and strewn with boulders. Over his head and around him gleamed the crowded constellations. Though night had fallen, they gave sufficient light for a person accustomed to Lunar Farside after sunset. Beynac was in the sky, free of the shadow cone, a spark gliding through Auriga toward the galactic belt.