“It doesn’t matter how many engines it has-we’ll be using the Valliardi Transfer.” Delia leaned against the sealed plastic globe of a large arerium, this one containing red dirt from Mars and a living example of the only terran plant hardy enough to thrive in the harsh winds of the nearly airless environment: the tumbleweed.
“I’ve got to know my way around Circus as if I’d built it myself.” He waved a hand at the Stirner case. “What if I used that party hat and the computer decided to shut down? I need these facts in my internal memory, not in some machine’s externals.”
“All right!” Delia said. “Then recite the ring Basics.”
“Circus Galacticus consists of three rings, laid out in steps, their axes perpendicular to the axis of the engine array. Each ring is precisely one hundred two point three meters, outer diameter. Each possesses its own superstructure with multiple redundancy in conning capability. The ring closest to the engine array, Ring Three, stores the tritium slurry and the pumps. Ring Two contains the battery of biological infestation garbage that you plan to dump on some planet to make it habitable for Brennen’s great great great great great-”
“Virgil.”
“Huh?”
“You were looping.”
“Was I? Oh.” Virgil shook his head and sighed. So easy to get locked into something. “Also in Ring Two are the anti-matter planet smashers. Three of them. Entrusted to a suicidal psychotic prone to destructive rampages-”
“Virgil.”
“Who is the only person who can pilot a billion-auro starship-”
“Get off the table.”
“Which is armed with three fifty-meter spheres of anti-matter held in magnetic suspension-”
“You’ll fall!”
“And wired with transference devices-”
“Don’t kick!”
“To transfer them to the cores of planets or whatever I want to-”
“Virgil!”
The floor meets my head. Hello. Goodbye. “Ring One contains life sup-sup-suppertime, very… best… time…”
Delia punched a comm button. “Send medics. Patient with possible concussion.”
The medics burst into the room before she could finish speaking.
Jord Baker opened someone else’s eyes and peered out.
“Delia?”
“I’m here.” She sat close to his bed, stroking someone’s blond hair where it stuck out between bandages and StatoBraces.
“I thought I was dead.”
“It wasn’t that far a fall. Two meters.”
Jord rose up on someone’s elbow and stared dizzily. “Whaddya mean, Dee? It was eight hundred. I checked the gauge before I jumped.”
Delia’s hand stopped in midstroke and floated spiderlike overhead, fingers curled like dead legs.
“Jord?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Well who’d you-” Jord Baker went limp, someone else’s body falling back to the bed. Delia stared at him, mute horror freezing her body.
Wizard bends over me, speaking in ciphers. He shakes his head, stoney and cold as Rushmore. Rushmore rushes up fast, the suit responsive in my hands. I nozzle the suit toward Jefferson. Good revolutionary, lousy president. Gray hard face looms at a hundred forty klicks. Right between the eyes-
“What happened?” shouted Delia.
Brennen jumped back from the screaming body, his face impassive, watching the display. “I was just looking at him.”
“Virgil,” she said, trying to catch his random gaze in hers. “Virgil. You’re safe. You’re at Brennen Eastern. You’re lying down.” She fought off the aimless thrash of his arms and pinned them down. “You’re safe. You’re alive.”
The roar’s coming back! Back. Down. Focus. Rushmore fades to gray walls. Wizard stands tall, his back to me, a brooding giant. Delia has a soothing code running. Play along until you get the ship. Right.
“He’s over it.”
“May I talk to him?” Brennen asked with an impatient edge.
Virgil smiled weakly. “Of course.”
Brennen turned away and cleared his throat. “There were originally plans for you to take one thousand colonists in cold storage. We just finished an automated test flight from Earth orbit to Mars. The test subject was in cold storage at near absolute zero-on revival, he said he had died in his sleep. He stroked out several hours later.
“I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
Perfect. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You and me both.” He turned to Delia. “Are you sure he’s capable? If he went out like this somewhere out there, the whole project will-”
“You’ve taken precautions. So have I.”
Brennen nodded. Through an impassive face he watched Virgil momentarily, then turned and walked out of the room. Delia knelt beside Virgil.
“Another memory?”
Nod. It can’t hurt.
“Your own?”
“Pretty sure. I… yes. One of mine.”
“Can you handle Circus Galacticus?”
“I don’t know.” My fingers look so fat in her hand. They’re loading me up so I’ll last a little longer if I forget to eat on the flight. Do they think I’d let Nightsheet take me that easily? Stupid. “I suppose I can. It’s mostly a matter of putting in the co-ordinates, letting the astrogator recompute the next one after each jump and interpreting the data from the observation probes.”
“The computers will make probe decisions. You’re there to be a human override, just in case. It would be good for you to keep an eye on the data, though. We’ve tried to make it as easy as possible on you.”
“And on the Brennen Trust.”
“Of course.” Delia smiles, white teeth perfect but for her canines, slightly too long, almost vampire-like. Her hand feels smooth, but feels lab tough. She breathes softly, a tiny breeze over my head, I want-
“No.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ve just got to sleep. Tomorrow’s the day, isn’t it?”
“If your scan shows that bump is healed, we’ll start on-board training.”
“For how long?”
“Probably until October. Maybe less. There’s still a lot of construction going on. Refitting something that’s been built along entirely different lines is expensive. In both hours and auros. I’ll see you before launch date. Don’t worry.”
“You won’t be up during training?”
She smiled and stood up. “I’d only be in the way. Besides, I’m writing up a study on a Brennen grant and I’ve got to finish it.”
“Oh. Well, see you later, then.” NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo Delia!
Chapter Four
8 April, 2107
The Big Noise bellows into an ear of Master Snoop and tries to use a strange cipher. I crack it easily. I have a feel for his code, too, though shades of meaning elude me. Hidden behind dark glasses, his metric eyes click around, watching me, watching the phone, watching the launch pad. I sit against cool hardness, my salute never wavering.
Delia’s face appeared on the phonescrim eye-to-eye with Launch Director Muod Jatala. Fatigue had darkened her eyes and unkempt her hair.
“He’s acting like a spoiled brat,” Jatala said. “Been flipping me off for the past twenty minutes and hasn’t moved an inch.”
“Catatonic. It’s just a game. He’ll come out of it sooner or later.”
“Lady,” Jatala’s dark skin grew a shade darker. “I don’t know how much you know about flying, but we’ve got a launch window to Circus that’ll close in about thirty minutes. Now, do you want to pay for the extra fuel or for the launch delay?”
Delia tapped her nails on the desk.
Jatala spoke in a firm tone. “I’ve got a flyer coming out to you. It should be there by now. Be on it.”
She looked at Jatala and sighed. “Straight.”
The pilot landed the flyer a dozen meters from where Jatala stood, where he had been standing for eleven minutes, his back to Virgil. Delia climbed out of the cramped wedge of metal and looked at the Launch Director, then at his problem. She mimicked Kinney, raising her middle finger from an angerclenched fist and pointing it at Virgil, then at the sky.