Daniel glanced higher into the wedge of sky visible past the overhanging trees. “Someday I’d like you to help me with the constellations from here,” he said. “The Kostromans do name their constellations, don’t they? I guess I was just assuming they do.”
“What?” said Adele. “I have no idea, but I’ll find out.”
She sat on the ground and brought up her little computer. Daniel hadn’t meant Adele to dig into the problem immediately. “Someday” meant to him “when things have settled down.”
Realistically, things weren’t going to settle down while he was on Kostroma. Though for his own sense of well-being he had to pretend this was an aberration in the life of a naval officer, that the normal routine would soon return.
Daniel squatted beside Adele, his arms wrapped around his knees and his buttocks slightly above the ground. Not that he could get much muddier . . .
“The trick would have worked just as well if we’d done it in all truth,” he said. “Tying live prisoners under a fungus bubble and letting the beetles kill the first one or two if they didn’t talk.”
The note of the APC’s fans changed from a pulse to a whisper; the ratings had landed on the other island to retrieve items salvaged from the wreck. The APC had more carrying capacity than the little liferaft, and using it provided hands-on experience in a leisured environment.
“Perhaps,” said Adele, “but we’ll never know.”
She put her wands down and looked over at Daniel. “People like us will never know. But our way worked.”
A hand-sized crustacean scuttled from the muddy bank, extended a pair of tentacles to seize a ration can the Kostromans had flung down, and ran back the way it had come. Each segment of the creature’s jointed back had a stalked eye at the midline. They twisted like flowers in a rainstorm to watch the humans.
The crustacean vanished into the water with its prize; the can gave a plop! as water filled it. The little creature was probably after a home rather than food, but Daniel didn’t know enough about the local biota to be sure.
“There are constellations, yes,” Adele said. “They seem to be named for geographical features of Topaz, where the colony originated. Would you like to see the display?”
She offered the data unit. Daniel shook his head, smiling his thanks. “Not right now,” he said.
He pointed to the trail the crustacean’s many feet had wriggled into the mud. “I was going to put the prisoners on a detail policing up the mess they’d made,” he went on. “The local animals seem to be pleased with the chance to take care of it themselves. Besides, it’s probably best to keep both lots hogtied until we’re ready to leave. I don’t want another slip-up.”
The prisoners, Ganser’s thugs and the surviving Alliance commandoes, lay like so many duffelbags at intervals along the opposite bank of the inlet. They were bound and anchored by the neck to rooted saplings. Two guards were with them, but the prisoners were visible to the Cinnabars on this side of the water also for additional safety.
They were gagged. A prisoner who moved more than a guard thought necessary was kicked, but that was a matter of casually brutal control rather than torture.
“You know,” said Daniel, “if we’d dumped the gang off the end of the dock on Kostroma, we wouldn’t have the APC and Alliance uniforms now. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
Adele sniffed. “That had nothing to do with the decision,” she said. “It shouldn’t have anything to do with any similar decision either. Or are you suggesting that the Lord is with us because our hearts are pure?”
Daniel laughed loudly and got to his feet. “Your heart may be pure,” he said, “but for my own part I’ve just been too busy. One of Ganser’s little friends doesn’t look half bad in the right light.”
Adele rose beside him. He looked at her and, now that he’d defused her suggestion with a joke, said, “Adele, I don’t think God will preserve Cinnabar. That’s what the Republic has a navy for, after all. But I do think that the people with least on their consciences sleep better than others do. I like my sleep.”