ted. «Forty-eight.» He'd lost it all. No Lloyd's on the Rimfire. No planet. And one hell of a lot of explaining to do. «Fusion potential coming down,» Paul said tensely, watching the clock, hearing the tug captain's countdown. «Thirty,» Pete counted. «Twenty-nine.» «Get us out of here,» Dean Richards said. «Now.» «Twenty-five. Twenty-f—» He jerked to attention, his finger jabbing at the blink button at the same time. The damned thing had gone off early. He saw it clearly, saw it in full Tri-D color on the viewer, saw the old fortification tremble and buckle upward, and as his finger hit the blink button and the viewer went black he saw just a beginning burst of fire dissolve the domed roof of the fort. «We lost it all, honey,» he said, the ship back in normal space. «Lady Sandy, where are we?» Dean Richards asked. Rimfire's computer was working. He'd have coordinates within seconds, but his viewers showed nothingness, blackness. Pete, in a dull voice, gave Rimfire the coordinates of the position. He'd blinked back to the midpoint beacon, back toward the galaxy and the New Earth range. He felt drained. His head hurt. With all the renewed knowledge in his head he couldn't imagine how he'd explain all of the events of the past few hours to a service inquiry board. They'd have a ball with just one aspect of it, how he and Jan came to be in command of the Ramco Lady Sandy. All the proof, all the evidence, was flying outward from a central point in fragments and molten lava. No planet. No salvage contract. No job. He stood, pulled Jan into his arms. He had that. Yes, he had that. «Sir,» the voice said on the communicator, «I'd like to know your name.» Pete gave it. «Captain Jaynes,» Richards said, «we're beginning to piece things together a bit over here. I have many questions. I'd like to suggest that you suit up and enter Rimfire through the hatch just astern of you.» It was, Pete knew, not a suggestion. It was an order. He wasn't about to go anywhere without Jan. They suited up. The cold of space is a tangible thing. It can crystallize metal. It can make itself felt through the best-insulated spacesuit, if only psychologically. They moved along the Lady's hull clinging to safety lines, magnetic shoes clomping on the hull. Line at his waist, Pete pushed himself, floating, from the Lady's stern, contacted the hull of the Rimfire feet-first, pulled Jan across. Two efficient service ratings helped them out of their suits once the airlock had filled, led them forward to the control room. All of Rimfire's officers were congregated there. Julie Rainbow was at her post. Pete accepted the outstretched hand of the Rimfire's captain, introduced Jan, shook hands with the other officers. «Well,» Pete said, feeling very, very tired, «there's a lot of explaining to do.» Richards smiled, waved them to a seat. «I think we already have a few of the answers, Captain.» Rimfire's crew had been working during the period of time it took Pete and Jan to cross over and enter the X&A ship. «I want to confirm one thing, first,» Richards said. «May I look at your watch?» Pete's wristwatch was standard service issue. He held his arm out, crooking his wrist so that Richards could see the face. Richards whistled and help up his own wrist, but Pete had already checked the control-room chronometer. «Captain,» Richards said, «in view of this I think we can have a little talk, later, about that Lloyd's contract you mentioned. My engineer, Mr. Victor, tells me that some abnormality in our generator got us caught up in subspace. Is that your opinion?» «Captain,» Pete said, «it's a long story, and I'll be happy to tell it to you. I have only one request. Well, two. First, we'd love a cup of good service coffee, and I'd like your word that you'll listen to the entire thing before you start asking questions. It seems that all the proof of what is going to seem like a bunch of wild lies went up with our planet.» Julie Rainbow was already in motion. She had two steaming mugs of coffee within seconds. «You said your planet,» Richards prompted, as Pete sipped. «Captain,» Julie Rainbow said, «excuse me.» Richards looked at her with one raised eyebrow. The girl was never going to learn not to interrupt. It seemed ages ago and only days ago that he'd told her— «Captain,» Julie persisted, «that planet. It's still there.» Jan leaped to her feet. Julie nodded. «I just put the long-range detectors on it.» Rimfire's detectors were vastly superior to the detectors on board a tug. «I wanted to see what a planet buster did, and it's still there.» Jan had spilled coffee when she leaped to her feet. It didn't matter. She put her mug down and started doing a little dance of joy. She pulled Pete to his feet and hugged him. «It's still there,» she whispered. «It's still there.» «Captain,» Pete said, «before I start talking, can we check out Jan's Planet visually? What's on that planet will answer a lot of questions.» «I don't want to risk a blink with the Rimfire, not until I know what the hell happened,» Richards said. Pete turned to the computer, and even as Richards started to protest, his fingers flew. «It's all right. I'll explain later. It's a simple matter of tuning the generator. I didn't take time to do that. I just programmed instruction.» And with that, even as Paul Victor lunged at him, he pressed the blink button, and they all froze, felt the eerie, old mode, and were back in space within visual of a beautiful blue-and-white water world, one of the most beautiful sights in the universe, a life-zone planet. «There was a nuclear blast,» Paul Victor said, after examining instruments. «Either it was too weak to trigger the buster, or the buster malfunctioned.» There was a crater at the site of the old fort, edges glazed by heat. There'd been some radiation released into the air, but nothing which would give anyone any problems. The site of the explosion itself could be cleared by an antiradiation team in a couple of months. «And now, young man,» Paul Victor said, «I want to know what you meant when you said something about tuning a generator.» «I have some questions first,» Richards said. «I think they'll all be answered as I go through it,» Pete said, grinning down at an ecstatic Jan. «Two things first.» «Coffee?» Julie Rainbow asked, coming to her feet. «Yes, thank you,» Pete said. «Then I'll record our claim to the planet on the Rimfire's permanent tapes, just to make it doubly official.» «And then maybe you'll be kind enough to tell us what the hell has been happening,» Richards said. «Be glad to, sir,» Pete said, unable to control the grin, feeling Jan at his side, soft-warm and wonderful. Chapter Fourteen The atmospace yacht Jan's Planet, cleared for approach and landing at Rimfire Spaceport, zapped down with a flair, leveling and stopping just before disastrous impact seemed imminent. She skimmed the pad, settled in front of a large, private hangar. White-clad attendants swarmed around her as the hatch opened. Directly behind her a service launch made a more sedate approach, a slow, careful landing, eased to come to rest near the Jan's Planet. Again the white-clad attendants scurried. They met halfway between the ships, a rather handsome foursome, a fleet admiral in service blue, a fleet captain, dainty, pretty even in the severe uniform, and a sportily dressed couple who came from Jan's Planet hand in hand. Captain Julie Rainbow ran a few steps forward to kiss first Jan, then Pete. Dean Richards, his temples showing a bit of distinguished gray, embraced Jan and shook Pete's hand. The four boarded Jan's Planet. Pete had given the crew time off, so there were just the four of them as the sleek yacht soared vertically and then leveled and shot into the stratosphere and into near space on a ballistic trajectory. «Good Lord,» Julie laughed, as the trajectory peaked and she felt that over-the-hump quick kiss of momentary weightlessness. «That's the first time I've done that since I was a kid in trainers.» «Pete's in his second childhood,» Jan said. «Nothing too good for real heroes,» Pete said. «First to circumnavigate the galaxy, discoverers of humpteen new life-zone planets.» Dean Richards was using the visuals. «Richardsville has grown,» he said. «Namesake of the principal city on Jan's Planet,» Pete went on. «Want me to do the kiss-me-quick again?» «I came here to see a museum,» Dean Richards said. «Don't let him kid you,» Julie said. «He came to see the city named after him and to see his godson.» «How is little Dean?» Richards asked. «Pete's ready to buy him his first ship,» Jan laughed. «Well, he's smart for a five-year-old,» Pete said. He was going down, calling for clearance. The skies of Jan's Planet were no longer theirs and theirs alone. He made one of the patented, wild, heart-stopping Jaynes landings. A ground vehicle wheeled up to the yacht. As the four boarded, Julie admired the building ahead. It was set in the center of a vast, deeply grassed plain. «You picked a spot for it, all right,» she said. The ground vehicle delivered them to an impressive entrance under a sign which said: JAYNES MUSEUM OF ANCIENT WEAPONS OF WAR. Pete and Dean fell behind as the tour of the new museum began. The curator hired by Pete, noting that the two men seemed to want to talk, directed his comments to Jan and Julie. «You made a wise decision, Pete,» Richards said, «taking the finder's fee in land.» «I didn't think so the first few years,» Pete said. «That mining contract on the eastern desert didn't hurt you.» «Nope.» «Hope you're seeing to it that they don't mess up the land.» «Sure,» Pete said. «It's a clean operation, all underground. There's the same desert up above that was there when we first saw it.» A flash of memory. Jan's Planet in his viewers for the first time, the loss of the old Stranden 47, the terrible moment when he'd seen nuclear fire burn up through the domed roof of the old fort on South America. He'd named the continents of the western hemisphere after similar landmasses on old Earth. The first few years of residence on one of their vast tracts of land on the continent he'd named North America. And, not quite so pleasant, the months of investigations which had finally resulted in confirmation of their claim to the planet, and to the salvage contract on U.P.S. Rimfire. Favorable testimony by Dean Richards and his officers had helped, and a firm friendship had resulted. «Guess you've heard that the Academy and the service are now using old-mode hangup time for pounding education into the heads of empty-headed cadets,» Richards said. «Read something about it.» He halted in front of a battered, partly melted tug. The 47, lifted from the eastern desert, had a permanent home in the museum. «Pete, I'm always pleased when we can stop off here, but I made a special trip this time,» Richards said. Pete turned, brought his mind back from the sweet, sweet days aboard that old Mule of a tug. «Department of Space and Alien Exploration suggested it,» Richards said. «You've made yourself quite a reputation with those papers on theoretical effects of blink-generator tunings.» «Ummm,» Pete said. «They've assigned me to research your theory that the pre-blink signal can be read both ways.» «Good,» Pete said. «I'll be glad to see some work done on that.» It needed someone with the power of deductive reasoning, he felt. An old Academy kick-out could only take it so far, reasoning that although subspace has dimension, of sorts, that that dimension is infinitely large or small and that there should be a way to take the short way to infinity, read the emergence of a pre-blink signal and use that signal to make blinks into previously unexplored space. By doing so, the long, tedious exploration to lay new blink routes would be eliminated. «X&A has authorized me to offer you a temporary admiralcy,» Dean said. Pete's fingers went to his skull, played there for only a second. «What in the hell for?» «To be consultant on the project. We'll use Julie's ship, the old Rimfire. I'll be project boss.» Lord, Lord, he was thinking. Admiral Peter Jaynes. He laughed. «Intrigues you, doesn't it?» Richards asked. «It does.» If it had come a few years earlier he would have leaped at it. «Like to have you and Jan aboard.» «Dean, I wish to hell I could.» «Thinking about little Dean?» «Yeah. We're away from him enough as it is. And we've just started renovation of the fort in the desert. It's the best-preserved one. Give people a chance to see the kind of things men did back when we fought wars. And we've got our first crop of wheat coming up out on the plains.» «Well,» Richards said, «I told them I wouldn't be able to pry you away.» «I'm afraid not. You'll keep me posted, I hope.» «Sure. Might be calling on you for some of that nondeductive reasoning of yours, too. You know what it will mean if you're right about this.» He knew. A ship could move through space, through any space, in galaxy or out, just as fast as the blink charge would build. No more careful probes to be sure blink lines were clear. Julie Rainbow, for example, could take the Rimfire out past the periphery, send an exploratory pre-blink signal, clear the area, and be on the fringe of another galaxy in one blink. «Well, our ladies are waiting,» Richards said. A quick, low orbit of the planet showed the two service officers how well settlement and development were going, and then they were on the launch headed back for Rimfire. The sleek atmospace yacht blinked outward, past Rimfire, even as she pointed her blink signal for the familiar blackness of intergalactic space. Jan's Planet headed inward, hit the New Earth range, and blinked to come to rest in normal space near blink beacon NE795. Nearby, a Stranden Mule kept vigil over the junction of blink routes. The two-man crew, man and wife, had a few moments of interest in a boring, three-year hitch as the pre-blink signal of the yacht came and a brief courtesy greeting was exchanged. The man-wife, with four months to go to relief, were dreaming of a holiday back on Tigian. «Every year, same time,» the tugboat man told his wife. «New yacht this time,» the wife said. «Same name.» «Yes.» The man adjusted the visuals to have the yacht in view. «Every year same thing. They say hello and then put up a privacy screen. I wonder what the hell they do over there for two weeks same time every year?» Jan came into the lounge on board Jan's Planet in a silken singlet. «Ready for coffee?» she asked. «Sounds good,» Pete said. She poured. He sighed in contentment. Two weeks. Two glorious weeks of nothing. Nothing but Jan. Little Dean was in good hands living it up on the farms. Two glorious weeks. She looked more like a Tri-D star than a girl he'd talked away from the Spacer's Rest, Lord, how many years ago? «You'd like to be out there with Dean and Julie, wouldn't you?» Jan asked, as she sat beside him and he felt the silken touch of her hip against his. «In a way. But not now. This is my time.» «And, sir, your time is my time,» she said. «Sure you don't think this is a dull way to spend a vacation?» «What do you think?» His fingers went to his skull. She reached for his hand. «I'll tell you what I think,» she said. She said it with silent, moist, pressing lips.