“Will they let you go back?”
That struck her; she gave him a single swift glance and reached for the stylus again. He leaned across the table toward her.
“No,” he said. “Of course not. But we would. If the Earth were under our control.”
“Are you trying to bribe me, Newrose?”
He tilted back in his chair, and his white hands folded themselves into his lap. “These people are savages, you know. When you’re of no further use to them, they’ll turn on you. You’re just as inferior as we are to them.”
She had to laugh at that. Putting the stylus down, she pushed it and the spy button across the table at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Newrose.” She climbed down the ladder into the Planet.
The floor around the swimming pool stood an inch deep in water. The hard walls of the room reflected back the racket. Paula leaned against the doorjamb, watching. Naked, glistening, David rushed along the side of the pool and jumped in among the other men. The water slopped up over the rim of the pool. Ketac and another man were wrestling, their bodies coiled together; while they fought to drive each other under the water they laughed.
Saba came in the door beside her. “What are they doing?”
“Killing each other.”
One hand on the top of the door, his weight slouched onto one leg, he watched his crew in the pool. “You’ll have to finish with Newrose by yourself. The Martian Fleet is regrouping. We have to go meet them.”
She gathered her breath, her eyes turning toward the pool, looking for David. The boy shot up out of the water, caught the edge of the bottom diving board, and swung himself onto it.
“It’s too bad he’s so small,” Saba said. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All around the leaping surface of the pool the Styths’ heads turned. He called, “Report to the ship in two hours. My watch on watch.” He went off through the dressing room, splashing through the puddles. Paula moved away, to let the naked men out of the water.
Newrose said, “Then we’re all alone here.”
“Kundra is still here. Ymma’s ship. The man with the scarred face.” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes on the clear ceiling above the crater. The sun was setting. In the mid-heaven the Earth shone in half-phase. “Twelve Styths, eighteen of your people, and me.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What did Tanuojin tell you?”
The Martian’s pink cheeks sucked hollow. “We talked for two hours. I should say he talked for two hours. The conversation ranged from the superiority of Styths to the superiority of the Styth Fleet to the superiority of the Styth legal system. I was unimpressed. Frankly, I think he suffers from some kind of mental disorder.”
Paula hooted with laughter. The tabletop was still covered with the marks she had made during their first meeting. She rubbed her hands over it. “If you can diagnose it, Newrose, do let me know.”
“Probably he came away with no good impression of me,” Newrose said.
She turned sideways in her chair. Up overhead, through the clear roof, she could see the blue Earth. Above it were the stars of Scorpio’s tail. Paula said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, the other day.”
“Have you? I’m glad to hear that.”
“What if I did help you? Where would that take me?”
Newrose pulled his chair closer to the table. “Isn’t this interesting? Now you seem to have changed your heart.”
“Tanuojin is gone,” she said.
“Ah.”
“I can see why you don’t trust me.” She glanced up at the Earth again and back to Newrose.
“I want to trust you,” he said.
“Suppose I were to give you a proof? Could you get me out of Luna?”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
Newrose’s pale eyes gleamed. He said, in a taut voice, “Well, that depends.”
“Suppose you were to get me to Mars,” she said, “and suppose I were to take the Styth codebooks with me?”
The Martian’s throat worked in a swallow. His gaze never left hers. “Yes. I can see why you’d have to get out of Luna. Under those circumstances.” His hand rose toward his face. “You can do this?”
Feet crashed on the metal treads of the ladder just below them. She stood and lost her balance and nearly fell. Ymma came up through the hatch in the floor. He shot a fiery look at Newrose, still sitting.
“Get him out of here.”
She nodded at the Martian. “You’d better go.” He looked sharply from her up to the hatched face of the Styth and climbed away down the ladder. Ymma scowled, all the creases dented in his cheeks.
“I just got a message from Tanuojin. The Martians ambushed them—we lost twelve ships in thirty-two seconds.”
She thought unwillingly of David, floating in the metal bubble of the ship. “I don’t know anything about fighting,” she said, and went away down the ladder.
At six in the evening by the clock, most of the lighting in Luna dimmed out, signaling the beginning of the artificial night. Newrose and his staff were quartered on the fourteenth floor, where Paula also lived. She took a current book of codes and went down the empty corridor to Newrose’s suite. She knocked on the door, and Newrose himself opened it.
“Miss Mendoza,” he said. He sounded surprised. Backing up, he held the door wide. “Come in.”
Paula went into the room. It was too warm and too bright for her, and she felt closed in. One of Newrose’s aides sat on a candy-striped settee under the illusion window. He stood up when he saw her. Down a dark hallway opening off the room, she heard Cam Savenia’s voice.
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” Newrose said, smiling.
Paula gave him the codebook. “Here. To prove I’m honest.”
Newrose said, “I never doubted it.”
Paula laughed. She glanced at the entrance into the hallway. Cam Savenia came out of it and stopped.
“Hello, Paula.”
“What are you doing here?” Paula asked.
Newrose came up between them, still smiling, and patted Paula’s arm. “Stay and have a drink with us.”
“I’d better not.” She turned toward the way out, her eyes on Cam. “You shouldn’t let her in here, Newrose.”
Cam flushed. Newrose said, “Oh, well.” Paula went out of the room.
In the corridor, she walked down about fifteen feet from the door into the shadows and waited. After a few moments Cam came after her. Paula fell into step beside her.
“You heard what the Akellar told me,” Cam said. She stopped to light a cigarette. “I’m on your side now, remember?” The matchlight made a mask out of her face. She flicked the match off down the corridor like a firefly into the night.
“What have you found out?” Paula asked.
Cam started off again, long-legged. “Newrose came back from your meeting looking happy as a clam. You must be working on him. Not that I ever doubted you would.”
They went around a corner and into the trunk hall. The night lamps on the walls were replicas of old-fashioned street lamps, hanging on curved brackets over their heads. Paula said, “Is Newrose in touch with anybody off the Planet? Like Hanse, for example?”
Cam’s eyebrows rose. “Not that I know of. Do you think he is? What are you trying to do?”
“I have an intuition.” They had come to Paula’s door. She stopped and reached into her sleeve for her key. “There’s been a battle. General Hanse has won. Not decisively, but well.” She pressed the face of the key into the patch above the doorknob.
Cam’s expression stayed calm, almost placid. “When will the Akellar be back?”
Paula shrugged. She let her door slide open. Cam sucked on her cigarette. The red coal followed her hand through the dimness down to her hip. “I don’t feel exactly right when he isn’t here. I don’t know what I’ll do when he goes back to Uranus.”