Meta’s sniff was loud in the listening silence.
“So jokes and arguments aside, we have a problem. If your people stay here, they eventually die. All of them. To save them, you are going to have to get them away from here, to a more friendly world. Habitable planets with good natural resources are not always easy to find, but I’ve found one. There may be some differences of opinion with the natives, the original settlers, but I think that should make the idea more interesting to Pyrrans rather than the other way around. Transportation and equipment are on the way. Now who is in with me? Kerk? They look to you for leadership. Now, lead!”
Kerk squinted his eyes dangerously at Jason and tightened his lips with distaste. “You always seem to be talking me into doing things I do not really want to do.”
“A measure of maturity,” Jason said blandly. “The ego rising triurnphant over the id. Does that mean that you will help?”
“It does. I do not want to go to another planet and I do not enjoy the thought. Yet I can see no other way to save the people in the city from certain extinction.”
“Good. And you, Brucco? We’ll need a surgeon.”
“Find another one. My assistant, Teca, will do. My studies of the Pyrran life forms are far from complete. I am staying in the city as long as it is here.”
“It could mean your life.”
“It probably will. However, my records and observations axe indestructible.”
No one doubted that he meant it, or attempted to argue with him. Jason turned to Meta.
“We’ll need you to pilot the ship after the ferry crew has been returned.”
“I’m needed here to operate our Pyrran ship.”
“There are other pilots. You’ve trained them yourself. And if you stay here, I’ll have to get myself another woman.”
“I’ll kill her if you do. I’ll pilot the ship.”
Jason smiled and blew her a kiss that she pretended to ignore. “That does it then,” he said. “Brucco will stay here, and I guess RIses will also stay to supervise the settling of the city Pyrrans with his people.”
“You have guessed wrong,” Rhes told him. “The settlements are now handled by a committee and going as smoothly as can be expected. I have no desire to remain, what is the word? — a backwoods rube for the rest of my life. This new planet sounds very interesting and I am looking forward to the experience.”
“That is the best news I have heard today. Now let’s get down to facts. The ship will be here in about two weeks, so if we organize things now, we should be able to get the supplies and people aboard and lift soon after she arrives. I’ll write up an announcement that loads the dice as much as possible in favor of this operation, and we can spring it on the populace. Get volunteers. There are about 20,000 people left in the city, but we can’t get more than about 2,000 into the ship it’s a demothballed armored troop carrier called the Pugnacious, left over from one of the Rim Wars, so we can pick and choose the best. Establish the settlement and come back for the others. We’re on our way.”
Jason was stunned, but no one else seemed surprised.
“One hundred and sixty-eight volunteers, including Grif, a nineyear-old boy, out of how many thousand? It just isn’t possible.”
“It is possible on Pyrrus,” Kerk said.
“Yes, it’s possible on Pyrrus, but only on Pyrrus.” Jason paced the room, with a frustrating, dragging step in the doubled gravity, smacking his fist into his open palm. “When it comes to unthinking reflex and sheer bullheadedness, this planet really wins the plutonium-plated prize. ‘Me born here. Me stay here. Me die here. Ugh.’ Ugh is right!” He spun about to stab his finger at Kerk, then grabbed at his calf to rub away the cramp brought on by overexertion in the heightened gravity.
“Well, we’re not going to worry about them,” he said. ‘We’ll save them in spite of themselves. We’ll take the one hundred and sixty-eight volunteers and we’ll go to Felicity, and we’ll lick the planet and open the mine, and come back for the others. That’s what we’re going to do!”
He slumped in the chair, massaging his leg, as Kerk went out.
“I hope…” he mumbled under his breath.
3
Muffled clanking sounded in the airlock as the transfer-station mechanics fastened the flexible tubeway to the spacer’s hull. The intercom buzzed as someone plugged into the hull jack outside.
“Transfer Station 70 Ophiuchi to Pugnacious. You are sealed to tubeway, which is now pressurized to ship standard. You may open your outer port.”
“Stand by for opening,” Jason said, and turned the key in the override switch that permitted the outer port to be open at the same time as the inner one.
“Good to be back on dry land,” one of the ferry crewmen said as they came into the lock, and the others laughed uproariously, as though he had said something exceedingly funny. All of them, that is, except the pilot, who scowled at the opening port, his broken arm sticking out stiffly before him in its cast. None of them mentioned the arm or looked in his direction, but he knew why they were laughing.
Jason did not feel sorry for the pilot. Meta always gave fair warning to the men who made passes at her. Perhaps, in the romantically dim light of the bridge, he had not believed her. So she had broken his arm. Tough. Jason kept his face impassive as the man passed by him and out into the tubeway. This was constructed of transparent plastic, an undulating umbilical cord that connected the spacer to the transfer station, the massive, light-sprinkled bulk that loomed above them. Two other tubeways were visible, like theirs, connecting ships to this way station in space, balanced in a null-g orbit between the suns that made up the two star system. The smaller companion, 70 Ophiuchi B, was just rising behind the station, a tiny disk over a billion miles distant.
“We’ve got a parcel here for the Pugnacious,” a clerk said, floating out of the mouth 0f the tubeway. “A transhipment waiting your arrival.” He extended a receipt book. ‘Want to sign for it?”
Jason scrawled his name, then moved aside as two freight handlers maneuvered the bulky case down the tube and through the lock. He was trying to work a pinch bar under the metal sealing straps when Meta came up.
“What is that?” she asked, twisting the bar from his hands with an easy motion and jamming it deep under the strap. She heaved once and there was the sharp twang of fractured metal.
“You’ll make some man a fine husband,” Jason told her, dusting off his fingers. “I bet you can’t do the other two that easily.” She bent to the task. ‘This is a tool, something that we are going to need very much if we are going into the planet-busting business. I wish I had had one when I first came to Pyrrus, it might have saved a good number of lives.”
Meta threw back the cover and looked at the wheeled ovoid form. “What is it a bomb?” she asked.
“Not on your life. This is something much more important.” He tilted up the crate so that the object rolled out onto the floor.
It was an almost featureless, shiny metal egg that stood a good meter
high with its small end up. Six rubber-tired wheels, three to a side, held it clear of the floor, and the top was crowned by a transparent-lidded control panel. Jason reached down and flipped up the lid, then punched a button marked on and the panel lights glowed.