"Bisman, land or you'll explode," Keff said urgently. "The Cridi say that you don't have much time before the device you're carrying goes critical! We don't want anyone to die. Turn back at once. Hurry!"
Glashton, visible over Aldon's shoulder, nodded a white-eyed yes to him. Mirina breathed a silent thanksgiving as he backed the engines down.
Chapter Twenty-One
Carialle timed it so her tailfins touched the ground just before the pirate's did. Keff flung himself up and out of his shock webbing as soon as the altimeter hit zero, not waiting for an all-clear. The Cridi followed him in a stream, except for Big Voice and Small Spot, who elected to stay behind with Thunderstorm and the healers. Tall Eyebrow lifted Keff before he stepped off the ramp, and they sailed lightly over the mud toward the pirate ship. Mirina ran out after them.
"Take me with you!" she shouted. "I have to go to my brother!"
Big Eyes doubled back and picked her up. The woman squeaked in surprise as she was surrounded by an envelope of Core power, then rode in goggling silence the rest of the way.
On the plain near the pavilion, Keff spotted Noonday's white pelt, surrounded by a host of golden backs. Long-eyed like all those of her kind, she saw him long before he'd seen her, and was waving a wing-hand for him to join her. He squinted to bring the artificial lens in his eye to full magnification, and signalled that he was heading toward the newly landed ship. He saw her nod, and go back to talking severely to the others. Keff thought he recognized some of the Thelerie from the remote base in the crowd. The ship behind them was unmistakably Ship Three.
"Hurry!" Narrow Leg cried, flying on ahead as fast as Core power could propel him. "The Core goes critical!"
Tall Eyebrow and the others swept after him. The pirate's ramp lowered, and crew began to pour out of it. Keff and the Cridi flew in over their heads, making for the control room. The pilot stood up. Keff grabbed his wrist and signalled to Wide Foot, who drew him into the air and flew aft toward the exit with him. Zonzalo Don stared up at his sister, hovering in the air with no visible means of support. Keff took him by the shoulders and flung him, with Narrow Leg's help, up into Mirina's arms. Three of the Cridi surrounded Bisman, who cowered down into his chair with his hands above his head. The leader was airborne before he even had a chance to unfold.
"Everybody out!" Keff boomed, pitching his voice over the frightened cries of the crew fleeing for the exit. "Condition red!" He could feel hot gusts of air coming from the aft section. The Core must be back there. No time to remove it. The ship was doomed. "Hurry!"
They emerged into the open air. Waves of heat followed them. The pirates flung themselves out into the mud, gasping for breath.
"It ends," Narrow Leg said. He opened his hands to envelop the group. Keff felt something like a light curtain drop onto his back just before a deafening explosion and a kick of invisible force sent him somersaulting away from the pirates' ship. Plastic globes of Cridi and human bodies hurtled sideways past him. Keff landed with a squashy thud in the yellow mud. He picked himself up on hands and knees, spitting, to watch a plume of fire and smoke rise up from the two halves of the ship, now a hundred meters apart.
"Spacedust," Bisman spat, speaking for the first time. He had landed face first in the mud a dozen meters from Keff. "The hell was that?"
"Something you stole, and never understood," Keff said. "Tad Pole!" he exclaimed, looking up just in time.
"I see," Narrow Leg said. The old Cridi spread his hands again as the debris from the broken ship began to rain down on them. Sections of circuitry, piping, flaming rags, pieces of hull and deck plate, crates of parts, and thousands of little flat pieces of metal pattered down, and bounded off the invisible forcefield ten meters above them like hailstones pinging against a plexiglass dome. The debris splatted down into the mud around them, peppering the landscape. Hundreds of square fragments of metal hammered down on the invisible shield, bouncing off in all directions. Keff realized with a feeling of shock, that he recognized what they were. As soon as Narrow Leg signalled the all-clear, Keff crawled out over the mud, picking through them, searching for one in particular. Suddenly, he spotted the one he was looking for. He pounced on it and put it in his pocket. He turned to his allies and their cowering captives.
"Now, let's go back and see Carialle."
Thunderstorm had been settled in Keff's chair like an eagle on its nest, and Noonday occupied the other, so Keff had to stand in the midst of the huge crowd that filled the main cabin. A dozen Thelerie guardians, sitting up on their haunches with their bronze pole-arms ready, surrounded all ten pirates from the hidden base and most of the crew of the now-destroyed raider. The rest were outside, with more of the Sayas's guard. Carialle gazed from a dozen camera eyes at Aldon Bisman, whom Keff had made to stand in front of her pillar. She felt as if she was hammering on a prison door, almost out into the sunshine, if only he would talk! The key was in this obstinate man's mind. He stood with his hands behind him as if on parade rest, staring straight ahead of him, looking at nothing.
"You were in this vicinity twenty years ago, weren't you?" Carialle asked, zooming in on his face with her closest camera eye. Such an ordinary face: human, male, Earth-Indo-European descent, about sixty, confident, choleric. Apart from empirical data, his face gave away no details. "P-sector, not too far from this system."
The man kept his expression blank, though his respiration went up slightly. Keff reached forward and poked him in the shoulder.
"Tell the lady," Keff said, as Bisman turned his head to glare. "She went to a lot of trouble to have you taken alive. The Cridi would cheerfully have split your ship apart in space and left you to die in vacuum. Talk."
"Yeah," Bisman said, at last. His narrow face was coming out in spectacular bruises, whether from the rough landing or Keff's fists, Carialle could not be sure. "I was there. My father's ship. He found this system fifty years ago. It was close to a new CW trading corridor. Easy meat."
"You were stripping wrecks for parts?" Carialle asked. He nodded silently, suspiciously. She almost trembled to ask the next question. "Do you remember one in P-sector that had been destroyed by an explosion in its fuel tanks? It was a Central Worlds Exploration scout. Twenty years ago. Think. You spent about two hours at it. You walked up and back on the hull, four times, two hundred and thirty steps in all." She saw him start, as if she had read his mind.
"I don't have to think," Bisman said, tightlipped. "Yes, I remember one like that. It was hard to tell if anything good was left, it was in such bad shape. Half the tail was missing, all of the control section was slag."
"Would you swear to that?" Carialle asked at once.
"If I had to." His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"
"Did you know," Carialle asked, feeling her nerves prickle and ordered them under control, "that you were stripping a brainship? A live brainship? My ship?"
Bisman's cheeks paled and hollowed as his mouth dropped open. His eyes went wide. "I'd never," he choked on the last word and tried again. He looked up straight into her camera eye. "Madam, I would never hurt one of you. Never! What kind of character do you think I am?"
"Did you know?" Carialle asked.