No one was really surprised that our parents hadn't shown. A cutter flying in the atmosphere would be detected in minutes, maybe seconds, and one in Evdashian space probably almost as quickly. So if they tried moving around in the cutter, the odds were they'd be picked up or blown up in a hurry.
To casual eyeball observation, they might go unnoticed for a while in heavy traffic, especially if there was a mixture of cargo carriers and public transport-units much bigger than personal and family-size floaters. But the police would notice fast. Even floater traffic had to be way down; the radio talked about tough travel restrictions and a limited curfew. And judging from the newscasts and the general Glondis way of doing things, they wouldn't be relaxed soon.
Piet talked with us about the prospects of getting our hands on a cutter. The resistance movement in the old Federation had long predicted a Glondis takeover of the colonies, of which Evdash was one of the most prosperous. Of course, Evdash had had its own branch of the Party-a very minor party here then-and the resistance had infiltrated both the Party and the Evdashian military, just to keep track of what was going on.
Piet had actually been a regional chairman of the Glondis Party on Evdash! Until he'd made a slip that was sure to get him uncovered before long. So he'd arranged an "accident," and disappeared.
Some of that was new to us, especially the part about Piet. The point was that he had resistance contacts, or he had had, in the Party, the Evdashian military, and the public at large. But he didn't know who was still alive and in place, or whether any of them was in a position to help.
On the fifth night after the wedding, we all got up at first dawnlight. After a breakfast of jongas and raw fish, we loaded everything we wanted to take with us into the floater. There wasn't very much. By the time we lifted through the forest roof, the sun sat red and swollen on the watery horizon. The treetops were spotted with flowers now-white, pink, yellow, violet-brought out by the rains. Piet stopped for a minute while we took in the view. Then he punched in a navigation sequence that would take us to a point near Delta City, a seaport. There he'd slip us into the general traffic corridors. If nothing went wrong, we'd head up the Jarf Valley from there, for Jarfoss, the town where Evdash's main naval station was located. He hoped to contact friends there, and get enough information to plan with.
"Who knows," he said. "Maybe we'll even get a line on Klentis and Aven there." I didn't allow my hopes to build, but it did make me feel a little better.
It seemed to me, when I let myself look at the situation, that we had almost no prospects of getting a space cutter. But then, our chances had looked even bleaker when Deneen and I had been on Fanglith. Now we had two and a half years' additional experience. The Fanglith experience was worth about ten years all by itself, not in data so much as in getting grooved in on operating in dangerous situations without much information. Doing the right thing-or a right thing-at the right time; or at least not doing something fatally wrong.
To cut down the risk of detection, Piet ran just above the water the whole 423 miles to the coast. There he joined the sparse early morning traffic-mostly cargo carriers but with a mixture of public transports and private vehicles. We were a pretty scruffy bunch. Piet and I had beards, something rare on Evdash, and Tarel's was starting to show too. The only clothes we had, dirty and mildewed, hadn't been properly washed since we'd put them on more than fourteen weeks earlier. To prepare ourselves for civilization, we'd used the hairbrushes Deneen and Jenoor had carried when we'd left home, but that was it.
There weren't as many police floaters in traffic as I'd expected to see though, and none paid any attention to us.
Finally, near the naval station, Piet turned into an approach pattern to an outlying officers' housing area, set in a matrix of dark forest and light green meadows, of recreation grounds and parking lots and shopping centers, of streets lined with houses whose roofs were red and green and cobalt, of emerald yards with pale blue swimming pools.
It was very nice. I wondered what Imperial troops thought of it-troops from the paved and crowded high-rise population centers of the central worlds. Presumably the people stationed here were still Evdashians.
Piet had said the top command positions, with their personal staifs, would be filled by Imperials now, and there'd probably be a garrison of Imperial Marines here for intimidation purposes. But the principal forces, such as they were, would be Evdashian-the same people as before, acting under new commands and policies. There'd have been some changes, of course. Officers thought of as especially hard-nosed Evdashian patriots would have been shot or imprisoned as examples. Their replacements would be people who seemed willing to carry out Imperial intentions. And a few would be eager to prove how loyal they were to the Empire,
Of course, some of them-people who seemed to just be trying to adjust and get along-would actually be resistance people, or potential resistance people. And so would some of the apparent turncoats who were singing the Imperial song and giving the Imperial salute. That's where our hopes lay.
Our first contact was going to be critical. We had to find a friendly who could help us clean up and get civilized looking, because the way we looked now, we were ripe for stopping and questioning. If we were stopped, we'd say we were just getting back from a hiking vacation, but that would hardly be convincing. We had no useful identification, and at least fourteen weeks' wild growth of hair to explain.
The streets here were grass, neatly trimmed. Piet dropped down low over one of them, then skimmed along as if he knew exactly where he was going. After a few hundred feet he turned smoothly, pulled into an attached garage as if he parked there every day, and put us down on the concrete, leaving the floater-field generator on. I didn't know whether he'd picked this place just because the garage door was open, or whether he knew the people who lived here.
"Larn," he said, "take the controls. If anything happens to me, you're in command."
"Right," I said.
He got out and I moved into the pilot's seat. Looking like something washed up on the beach, he walked casually to the connecting door, but before he could knock, it opened. Behind it was a woman in a summer house suit, with a blast pistol in her hands.
For just a moment she stared at Piet, then without saying a word, lowered the gun. He thumbed toward us. She shook her head and murmured something too quietly for us to hear, then reached to one side and the garage door closed behind us. If anything went wrong now, we couldn't make a quick getaway, but that didn't seem to bother Piet. She disappeared, closing the door behind her, and Piet stepped back over to the floater.
"She has company," he said softly.
"What's she going to do?" I asked.
"Knowing Dansee, she'll think of something."
The situation felt about as uncomfortable as it could get. Knowing almost nothing about what was happening inside, I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do, so I just sat there while Piet stood next to the floater door. From beside me, I could feel Jenoor's hand on my forearm, resting lightly, not gripping. Looking behind me I saw Tarel, his hands fisted. Beside him, Deneen watched intently the door the woman had closed behind her. Bubba probably knew what was going on, but whispering wasn't one of his abilities.
Nothing happened for the slowest several minutes on record. Then we heard voices outside the garage door- women talking and laughing. It sounded as if they'd just come out of the house. One of them seemed to stay in place while two others became more distant. Then the talking stopped, and we heard a house door close. A minute later the woman appeared in the door again, grinning this time and without her blaster.
"Get in here," she said, not trying to be quiet now, and held the door for us. Piet went first, the rest of us trooping after. As we passed, she looked us over, then closed the door behind us. She came across as a nice-looking middle-aged lady who still did something or other athletic. She herded us down a hall and into a kitchen, where we stopped. "Piet," she said, "I'd hug you if you looked a little more sanitary." She indicated the living room with a head motion. "I'm reasonably sure my visitors didn't suspect anything. They were sitting with their backs to the window; I was the only one who saw you float in."