Bruce Van Atta paused in the corridor outside Chalopin’s office at Shuttleport Three, to catch his breath and control his trembling. He had a stitch in his side, too. He wouldn’t be the least surprised if he were developing an ulcer out of all this. The fiasco out on the dry lake bed had been infuriating. To pave the way, and then have fumbling subordinates totally fail him—utterly infuriating.
Sheer chance, that having returned to his own downside quarters for a much-needed shower and some sleep, he’d awakened to take a piss and called Shuttleport Three to check progress. They might not even have told him about the shuttle landing otherwise! Anticipating Graf’s next move, he had flung on his clothes and rushed to the hospital—if he’d been moments sooner, he might have trapped Minchenko within.
He had already chewed out the jetcopter pilot, reamed his ass for his cowardice in failing to force down the launching shuttle, for his dilatory failure to arrive at the lake bed faster. The red-faced pilot had clamped his jaw and his fists and said nothing, doubtless properly ashamed of himself. But the real failure lay higher up—on the other side of these very office doors. He jabbed the control, and they slid aside.
Chalopin, her security captain Bannerji, and Dr. Yei had their heads together around Chalopin’s computer vid display. Captain Bannerji had his finger on it, and was saying to Yei, “… can get in here. But how much resistance, d’you think?”
“You’ll surely frighten them very much,” said Yei.
“Hm. I’m not crazy about asking my men to go up with stunners against desperate folk with much more lethal weapons. What is the real status of those so-called hostages?”
“Thanks to you,” snarled Van Atta, “the hostage ratio is now five to zero. They got away with Tony, damn them. Why didn’t you put a 27-hour guard on that quaddie like I told you? We should have put a guard on Madame Minchenko, too.”
Chalopin’s head came up, and she gave him an expressionless stare. “Mr. Van Atta, you seem to be laboring under some misconceptions about the size of my security forces here. I have only ten men, to cover three shifts, seven days a week.”
“Plus ten each from each of the other two shuttle-ports. That’s thirty. Properly armed, they’d be a substantial strike force.”
“I’ve already borrowed six men from the other two ‘ports to cover our own routine, while my entire force is devoted to this emergency.”
“Why haven’t you stripped them all?”
“Mr. Van Atta, Rodeo Ops is a big company—but a very small town. There are not ten thousand employees here altogether, plus an equal number of dependents not also employed by GalacTech. My Security is a police force, not a military one. They have to cover their own duties, double for emergency squad and search and rescue, and be ready to assist Fire Control.”
“Dammit—I drove a wedge for you with Tony. Why didn’t you follow up immediately and board the Habitat?”
“I had a force of eight ready to go up to orbit,” said Chalopin tartly, “upon your assurance of cooperation from your quaddies. We were not, however, able to get any confirmation of that cooperation from the Habitat itself. They went right back to maintaining comm silence. Then we spotted our freight shuttle returning, so we diverted the forces to capture it—first a ground car, and then, as you yourself came howling in here demanding not two hours ago, a jetcopter.”
“Well, get them back together and get them into orbit, dammit!”
“For one thing, you left three of them out on the lake bed,” remarked Captain Bannerji. “Sergeant Fors just reported in—says their groundcar was disabled. They’re returning in Dr. Minchenko’s abandoned land rover. It’ll be at least another hour before they’re back. For another, as Dr. Yei has several times pointed out, we have not yet received authorization to use any kind of deadly force.”
“Surely you’ve got some kind of hot pursuit clause,” argued Van Atta. “That,” he pointed upward, indicating the events now going on in Rodeo orbit, “is grand theft in progress at the very least. And don’t forget, a GalacTech employee has already been shot by them!”
“I haven’t overlooked that fact,” murmured Bannerji.
“But,” Dr. Yei put in, “having asked HQ for authorization to use force, we are now obliged to wait for their reply. What, after all, if they deny the request?”
Van Atta frowned at her, his eyes narrowing. “I knew we should never have asked. You maneuvered us into that, damn you. They’d have swallowed any fait accompli we presented, and been glad of it. Now…” he shook his head in frustration. “Anyway, you’re overlooking other sources of personnel. The Habitat staff itself can be used to follow up the opening Security drives into the Habitat.”
“They’re scattered all over Rodeo by now,” Dr. Yei remarked, “back to their downside leave quarters, most of them.”
Bannerji cringed visibly. “And do you have any idea the kind of legal liability that situation would present to Security?”
“So deputize ‘em—”
A beeping from Chalopin’s desk console interrupted Van Atta; a comm tech’s face appeared in the vid.
“Administrator Chalopin? Comm Center here. You asked us to advise you of any change in the status of the Habitat or the D-620. They, um—appear to be preparing to leave orbit.”
“Put it on up here,” Chalopin ordered.
The comm tech produced the flat view from the satellite again. He upped the magnification, and the Habitat-D-620 configuration half-filled the vid. The D-620’s two normal-space thruster arms had been augmented by four of the big thruster units the quaddies used to break cargo bundles out of orbit. Even as Van Atta watched in horror, the array of engines flared into life. Stirring a glittering wake of space trash, the monstrous vehicle began to move.
Dr. Yei stood staring open-mouthed, her hands clapped to her chest, her eyes glistening strangely. Van Atta felt like weeping with rage himself.
“You see—” he pointed, his voice cracking, “you see what all this interminable dithering has resulted in? They’re getting away!”
“Oh, not yet,” purred Dr. Yei. “It will be at least a couple of days before they can possibly arrive at the wormhole. There is no just cause for panic.” She blinked at Van Atta, went on in an almost hypnotically cloying voice, “You are extremely fatigued, of course, as are we all. Fatigue invites mistakes in judgment. You should rest—get some sleep.…”
His hands twitched; he burned to strangle her on the spot. The shuttleport administrator and that idiot Bannerji were nodding, reasonable agreement. A choked growl steamed from Van Atta’s throat. “Every minute you wait is going to complicate our logistics—increase the range—increase the risk—”
They all had the same bland stare on their faces. Van Atta didn’t need his nose rubbed in it—he could recognize concerted non-cooperation when he smelled it. Damn, damn, damn! He glowered suspiciously at Yei. But his hands were tied, his authority undercut by her sweet reason. If Yei and all her ilk had their way, nobody would ever shoot anybody, and chaos would rule the universe.
He snarled inarticulately, wheeled on his heel, and stalked out.
Claire woke without yet opening her eyes, snugged in her sleep sack. The exhaustion that had drenched her at the end of last shift was slow to ebb from her limbs. She could not hear Andy stirring yet; good, a brief respite before diaper change. In ten minutes she would wake him, and they would exchange services; he relieving her tingling breasts of milk, the milk relieving his hungry tummy—moms need babes, she thought sleepily, as much as babes need moms, an interlocking design, two individuals sharing one biological system… so the quaddies shared the technological system of the Habitat, each dependent on all the others…
Dependent on her work, too. What was next?