“He’s strong,” admitted Hansen. He tapped his forehead. “But this is where strength really counts.”
“You’re so right.”
He grinned and touched her cheek. She melted against his hand before she jerked away.
“I’m too scared,” she whispered.
“Of me?”
“Ervil! In six months, he’ll get jealous. What if he kills you?”
“Nonsense.”
“Then I’ll be all alone with him.” She shuddered. “I don’t think he practices normal sex.”
Hansen slid closer and gripped her shoulders. He kissed her. She kissed back. Suddenly noise came out the sleep compartment: Ervil moving around. Hansen dropped his hands and acted normally. Nadia could have done likewise, but as the compartment door slid open, she leaped up as her hand flew to her mouth.
“Did you sleep well?” Hansen asked, covering for her.
Ervil blinked at them.
Nadia fidgeted.
Later, she told Hansen Ervil had questioned her about what had happened when he was asleep. Hansen seemed doubtful. She dropped the subject. Half a day later Hansen said he couldn’t believe Ervil would ask such a thing.
“You don’t see the way he watches me when you’re asleep,” she said. “I think he’s planning to trick you.”
Hansen snorted. But when the proton beam first struck the Sun Works Factory Nadia noticed he’d taken to wearing his projac at all times. Later, when the pods and shuttles flooded out to build the space shield, and she said now was the moment to leave, that’s when her work bore fruit.
“We should leave for the Jupiter System today,” she said, moving to the pilot seat.
“Hold it,” said Ervil, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Let her go,” said Hansen.
Something in his boss’s voice must have warned Ervil. The short man spun around fast and slid to the left, as if to dodge shots. Hansen, his hand on his holstered projac, now clawed to get it out. Ervil roared, “You’re double-crossing me?” He charged Hansen, who pumped ice slivers into him. The momentum took Ervil into Hansen. Both men crumbled to the floor. Hansen thrashed to disentangle himself. The short, wide-shouldered Ervil lay limply. Hansen finally leaped up, aiming his weapon at Nadia.
She, uncertain about the outcome, had simply played the part of a terrified woman, standing with her mouth and eyes wide.
The suspicion left Hansen. He laughed sharply as he lowered the projac. “Brains over brawn,” he said. “Now to do it right.” He pulled a clip out of his pocket.
“You’re not going to kill him.”
Hansen shrugged, switching clips.
“Why not use Suspend?” she said.
“We don’t have any.”
“I have some,” she said.
He raised his head. “Only the military has access to Suspend.”
“Marten pilfered some. I brought it with my supplies.”
“Why shouldn’t I just kill him?” asked Hansen. “It’s much simpler and makes sure there aren’t any complications.”
“He was your friend once,” she said. “That counts for something.” She searched his eyes, giving him the doe-eyed look of an innocent.
“Certainly,” he said after a moment. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m not heartless.”
“Why don’t you put him in his vacc suit and I’ll get the Suspend. But we’ll have to hurry. This is the perfect moment to leave.”
Hansen nodded, holstering his weapon.
She strode to her belongings and took out a pneumospray hypo filled with a dose of Suspend. She waited as Hansen wrestled heavy Ervil into his suit. Then, as Hansen closed the magnetic seal, she stepped behind him and pressed the hypo to his neck. Air hissed. Hansen jerked upright, whirled and grabbed her. Suspend took almost a full minute to take effect. So she kneed him hard in the groin. He doubled over, gasping. She clutched her hands together and struck him across the back of the head. He slumped onto the deck, the Suspend making him sluggish, and soon he was out.
“Night-night,” she whispered.
She used a second dose and pumped Suspend into Ervil. Then she worked Hansen’s vacc suit onto him, donned one herself and dragged them into the hanger. The Suspend would keep them several weeks in their suits. Their biological functions were now slower than animals in hibernation. She set them beyond the pod’s hydrogen burn range and returned to the ship.
It would be a lonely voyage to Jupiter, but better than with those two.
Thus, as the thousands of pods and shuttles ferried aerogel and prismatic crystals from the Genghis Khan and to the growing space shield, a small and secret hanger in the Sun Works Factory opened. Out of it nosed the stealth pod. Using low power Nadia eased it from Mercury.
An automated tracker spotted it, studied it and decided that one of the pods had malfunctioned. Later a Highborn examined the tape and agreed with the analysis.
Several hours later Nadia dared give a little more thrust. Then the ultra-stealth pod began to coast once more.
11.
Endless monotony left Marten exhausted. The crushing pressure of three atmospheres gave him nightmares of choking to death. So as much as he needed and craved it he hated sleeping. Just as bad were the mind-numbing dramas on his Head-Up-Display, crudely rehashed Social Unity propaganda.
Apparently, the Highborn didn’t see the need for new dramas slanted to their philosophy, or maybe they simply hadn’t gotten around to filming them yet. Whatever the case, someone must have told them that SU propcorp played on everyone’s holos.
By law and technology no one living within Social Unity could switch off their set. The inane shows provided Inner Planets with its mass mentality. From Mercury to Mars people quoted the most popular slogans.
What the Highborn had done was take some of the old shows and ‘fix’ the endings.
SU morality shows, which made up about 90% of the holoset fare, came in two flavors. One, a wily villain out for himself succumbed to the mass suggestion of his hall-mates or hall leader and renounced his villainy. Or two a self-serving villain died hideously as socially aware folk tried to save him or as a socially conscious peacekeeper blew him away in order to save others from his self-centered madness. The HB video-tech had simply chopped the ending and computer-generated new ones. Now the villain working for himself turned out to have been the smart one. Everyone else had been a jerk. The villain lived while an insane hall leader ordered the hall-mates into slime pits where weird funguses rotted them to death. That had hit a little too close to reality for Marten. He more enjoyed it where the hall-mates were beaten to death by out-of-control peacekeepers. At the very end of the show the former villain hurried to join the HBs in order to keep his newly won rank of self-made-man, first step.
After the third show, Marten decided that old or new, they were all swill. So to keep from going stir-crazy he kept his HUD on the stars, at least as routed through the missile’s nose-cone camera.
Space, and a million stars, it was beautiful. If only there were things like starships so he could travel to distant worlds. Or maybe if he could just get out of this suit and somehow head to the Neptune System. Instead, he raced closer toward a suicide ship-assault. Or worse, there would be no assault because the missile missed. Then they would die, buried in glop, and for a million years, five dead men would serenely sail through the interstellar voids.
BUMP.
“Did you feel that?” asked Vip, via comlink. He sounded scared.
“I felt it,” Marten said.
“Were we hit?”
“No, the outer pressure would’ve dropped and we would have exploded, turned into red smears in the bulkhead. Until the drugs wear off, we’re like deep-sea creatures, kept intact by the three atmospheric pressures holding us in.”
Marten’s headphones crackled. A Highborn cleared his throat.
“Men.”
It was Training Master Lycon, speaking via laser-link, no doubt, all the way from Mercury.