Hark slept fitfully for a time, but the confusion followed him into his nightmares. Finally, he came wide awake and had to face the fact that he was quite incapable of sleep. He popped the seal on his coffin and lifted the lid. The covers were closed on most of the other coffins but not all of them, and a light shone out of the downden. Hark decided that he'd get a drink of water from the spigot. As he walked down the aisle between the coffins, he noticed that a number of the sleepers were tossing and turning just as he had been. Inside the downden, Helot lounged in a deep chair, and a trooper called Wabst, to whom Hark had never spoken, was sprawled out on the strangely shaped couch. Hark didn't pay much attention to the pair of them until he'd drunk a cupful of the ship's metallic water. It was only then that he noticed how both men were wearing their battle suits rolled down to around their waists so their upper bodies were naked. They had their eyes closed and had strange expressions on their faces, and there was the image of an explicitly gyrating naked woman on the wall screen. Hark was shocked. He found that his high desert prudery hadn't deserted him. He'd heard among the young men around the fire that there were women in distant tribes who performed such lewd dances, but he had never seen anything even close to the image on the screen. And yet it couldn't be the image that was making the two longtimers behave the way they were. They couldn't see the dancing woman-their eyes were tightly shut. The realization hit him like a hammer. It was the suits. The suits were doing something to them. Something close to sexual. Hark was in a quandary. What was he supposed to do? He felt that he was intruding, seeing what he had neither right nor desire to see. He was thinking about creeping away unseen, but the steel cup that was attached to the spigot clinked as it dropped to the length of its chain. Both men's eyes snapped open with a killer's reflex. Helot glared at him. "What do you think you're looking at?"
"What's your problem, new meat? You got some kind of attitude?"
"No, I…"
Wabst started. "What do you think a man's supposed to do when the nearest woman's at least a hundred licks away?"
Helot's face twisted into an unpleasant grin. "This green bastard hasn't made friends with his suit yet."
Hark had a flesh-creep preview of how he'd feel the next time his suit crawled up his legs. By now, Wabst was also grinning.
"Men do all kinds of things when they're kept away from women."
Hark blurted it out before he could stop himself. "Where are the women?"
"Nobody tell you?"
"No."
"Well, kid, the nearest woman is somewhere out on a recstar halfway across the galaxy."
"What's a recstar?"
"He don't know what recstar is."
"Poor bastard's dumber than he looks."
"So what's a recstar?"
"A recstar, new meat, is nothing you need worry about until you've been through combat."
"And he don't look like he's going to get through combat anyhow."
Six
"Disengaging on my mark!"
"Mark!"
"Everyone stay calm."
There was a series of loud bangs as the drop craft disengaged from the conveyor. It nosed out of the lock and slid into space. Its human cargo, the nineteen troopers and five sappers plus Elmo, Rance, and the pilot, experienced a stomach-twisting lurch as they passed out of the Anah 5's internal gravity. They were falling. The men floated in their seats, pressing up against the lap bars. Their helmets were sealed. They were locked into their seats, their weapons racked beside them.
"Better enjoy the calm before the storm; we'll hit the atmosphere soon enough."
The troopers sat facing one another in two rows, backs to the outside of the craft. Beyond the armored shell, fifty-nine identical ships were falling from the cluster in three distinct waves. The free-fall was comparatively easy to get used to. It was smooth and even. Despite the obvious built-in uneasiness, free-fall did have a certain calming effect. The fear of what was com- ing was inside each trooper with a dry-mouthed vengeance, but it was being challenged by a mounting excitement. They were fighting men going out to do what they did best.
"Everyone take it easy. One step at a time."
Hark was surprised at how well he was coping with his fear. He had imagined that it would have him paralyzed by this point. In fact, it was quite the reverse. He wanted to go. He wanted to be down on the ground and getting on with it. His mind kept saying it to him. Yeah! Go! Go! He could hardly stop himself from grasping for his MEW.
"Easy."
Rance's voice was in everyone's helmet. He soothed his troops and held them in check much in the way that a rider might gentle a skittish mount. Rance knew that his calming words were pure bluff. He was as scared as anyone, but he had said the words so many times that they were as good as real.
The pilot's voice cut in. "Atmosphere coming up!"
Unseen by the men-the only vision port in the craft was in the pilot's cabin-wings extended from the sides of the dropcraft's needle body, delta, membrane airfoils that gave the ship both lift and deceleration. They immediately glowed cherry-red; the wings were designed to recycle the released energy back to the ship's propulsion plant. The invasion fleet streaked through the upper atmosphere like silent gliding moths leaving trails of fire. Inside the craft, though, things were not quite as serene. The ship bounced and wallowed. It shook and buffeted. The cabin floor pushed up under the men's feet as the airfoils bit into the planet's thickening air. There were curses and mutterings all down the lines of men. Rance quickly stepped on this routine bitching.
"You can cut that out "for a start!"
The cabin was filled with noise. The air screamed by outside. The airfoils groaned and the structure of the ship protested as both were subjected to more and more stress. Then, without warning, the ship was blown to one side by a violent explosion. The first one was followed by three more in quick succession. Fear swamped excitement.
The pilot's voice came on again. "The first wave are taking a beating. There's six of them down already."
"Where the fuck is the covering fire? We're flying into the biggest goddamn guns on the planet, and we ain't got no covering fire!"
"Put a lid on that, Renchett!"
"Signal from the cluster, they're opening up."
Each time the pilot cut into their communicators there was a burst of static and the almost unintelligible ship-to-ship cross talk.