He took a step to the side and offered his hand to Rhonda. "Engineer Blankenship," he nodded, shaking her hand. "Welcome."
"Thank you sir," she said. "You have a beautiful world."
"We like it," he said, moving to Kulasawa. "And Scholar Kulasawa. What do you think of the Freedom's Peace, Scholar?"
"It's more than merely beautiful," she said. "I'm looking forward to examining it in much more detail."
"You'll be given that chance," Peter promised gravely, waving toward the wraparound couch. "But please; let's be comfortable."
We crossed to the couch and sat down, Peter and Suzenne taking one end as the rest of us spread out around the curve, Kulasawa taking the far end. "I'm sure you have many questions about our world," Peter said as Suzenne began pouring drinks from the carafe. "If there's anything you'd like to know right now, I'll do my best to answer."
I took a deep breath. So he wanted questions. So OK, here it came. "I have one,"
I said. "Are we the first visitors you've had in the past fifty years?"
Peter and Suzenne exchanged glances. "An interesting question," Peter murmured.
"A very interesting question, indeed."
"I thought so," I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. Whatever was going on here, that single glance had been all I needed to know I'd hit the target dead center. Whatever the hell the target was. "I'd like an answer, if I may."
A muscle in Peter's jaw tightened briefly. "As it happens, you're the fourth Expansion transport to find us," he said.
I felt Rhonda stir beside me. "And what happened to the other three?" I asked carefully.
"The crews are still here," Peter said, his gaze steady on me. "Most of them.
There were two... fatalities."
"What kind of fatalities?" Kulasawa asked.
"They were killed trying to escape," Suzenne said. "I'm sorry."
"What do you mean, escape?" I asked.
"What she means is that you can't leave, my friends," Peter said quietly.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to stay with us for the rest of your lives." A lot of different thoughts go shooting through your mind when you hear something like that. My first thought was that this was some kind of strange joke Peter and Suzenne liked to play on visitors, that any second now they would smile and say, no, they were just kidding. My second thought was that the TransShipMint Corporation was going to be seriously unhappy if I disappeared without paying back their two hundred thousand. My third was that I wasn't going to be very happy either if I wasn't allowed to make that debt right.
And the fourth, which overrode them all, was that I was damned if I would walk meekly into this cage they were casually telling me to step into.
I kept my eyes on Peter, trying hard to think. Were the guards outside monitoring us? Probably not. Could Rhonda and I take out Peter and Suzenne?
Probably. But that wouldn't get us across the colony and back to the Sergei Rock.
And even if we got there, would it do any good? There were still those InReds hanging around out there. We knew they scared away normal flapblacks—were they waiting like ghostly sharks to grab us and haul us to oblivion?
Rhonda was the first to break the silence. "I don't understand," she said.
"You can't just order us to stay here."
"I'm afraid we have to," Peter said. "You see, if you leave you'll bring others back here. That's something we can't allow to happen. I'm sorry."
"Why not?" Kulasawa asked.
Frowning, I turned to look at her. My ears hadn't deceived me: her face was as calm and controlled as her voice.
Peter must have noticed it, too. "If you're expecting to be rescued, Scholar, I
can assure you that the chances of that are vanishingly small. None of the other transports who came here ever had anyone come looking for them."
"And you think that means no one will come looking for us?" Kulasawa asked.
"Did you tell anyone else where you were going?" Suzenne countered. "Or where you would be looking for us?"
Kulasawa shrugged fractionally. "That's irrelevant."
"Not really," Suzenne said. "You see, we've learned from the other fortune-hunters that a prize like the Freedom's Peace tends to inspire great secrecy on the part of the searchers. All any of you want is to make sure you get all the profit or glory—"
"That's enough, Suzenne," Peter murmured. "Let me hasten to assure you that you'll all be treated well, with homes and jobs found for you—"
"Suppose we don't choose to roll over and show our throats," Kulasawa interrupted. "Suppose we decide we're not going to feed your megalomania."
Peter's eyebrows lifted, just a bit. "This has nothing to do with megalomania," he said. "Or with me."
"Then what does it have to do with?" Rhonda asked quietly.
"The fact that if the Expansion learns where we are, they'll want to bring us back," Peter said. "We don't want that."
Kulasawa frowned. "You must be joking," she said. "You'd kidnap us for that?
Do you seriously think anyone in the Expansion cares a pfennig's worth for any of you?"
"If you think that, why are you here?" Peter asked, regarding her thoughtfully.
"And please don't try to tell me it was in the pure pursuit of knowledge," he added as she began to speak. "The more I study you, the more I'm convinced you're not actually a scholar at all."
Kulasawa favored him with a thin smile. "One for two, Your Highness," she said.
"You're right, I'm not a scholar."
I looked at Rhonda, saw my own surprise mirrored in her face. "Then who are you?" I demanded.
"But on the other point, you're dead wrong," Kulasawa continued, ignoring my question. "Pure knowledge is exactly the reason I'm here."
"I see," Peter said. "Any bit of knowledge in particular you're interested in?"
"Of course," Kulasawa said. "You don't really think I care about your little world and your quaint little backwater duck-pond monarchy, do you?"
"Yet you were willing to pay three hundred thousand neumarks to come here,"
Rhonda pointed out.
"Don't worry, I intend to get full value for my money," Kulasawa assured her coldly. "By the time I'm finished here, I'll have completely changed the shape of Expansion space travel."
There was a sort of strangled-off gasp from the other end of the couch. I turned that direction just in time to see Peter put a restraining hand on Suzenne's arm. "What do you mean by that?" the king asked, his voice steady.
"It should be obvious, even to you," Kulasawa said, regarding both of them with narrowed eyes. Clearly, she'd caught the reaction, too. "I want those ion-capture engines of yours."
"Of course," I murmured under my breath. It was obvious, at least in retrospect.
The current limit on spaceship size was due solely to the limits in the power and size of their drives; and those limits were there solely because the Jovians' unique engineering genius had died with their bid for independence from Earth. Examination of the Freedom's Peace's drive would indeed revolutionize Expansion space travel.
As I said, obvious. And yet, at the same time I felt obscurely disappointed.
After all of Kulasawa's lies and manipulation, it seemed like such a petty thing to have invaded an entire world for.
But if Peter was feeling similarly, he wasn't showing it. In fact, I could swear that some of the tension had actually left his face. "I presume you weren't planning to disassemble them for shipment aboard your transport," he said.