ARTHUR C. CLARKES 

VENUS PRIME 


Arthur C. Clarke is the world-renowned author of such science 
fiction classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, for which he shared 
an Oscar nomination with director Stanley Kubrick, and its popular 
sequels, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, and 
3001: Final Odyssey; the highly acclaimed The Songs of Distant 
Earth; the bestselling collection of original short stories, The 
Sentinel; and over two dozen other books of fiction and nonfiction. 
He received the Marconi International Fellowship in 
1982. He resides in Sri Lanka, where he continues to write and 
consult on issues of science, technology, and the future. 

PAUL PREUSS 
Paul Preuss began his successful writing career after years of 
producing documentary and television films and writing screenplays. 
He is the author of thirteen novels, including Secret 
Passages and the near-future thrillers Core and Starfire. His nonfiction 
has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles 
Times, New York Newsday, and the San Francisco Chronicle. 
Besides writing, he has been a science consultant for several 
film companies. He lives near San Francisco, California. 


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ARTHUR C. CLARKES 


VENUS 


PRIME 


VOLUME 1 

PAUL PREUSS 



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Acknowledgments 


I am grateful to Kristina Anderson, San Francisco artist and 
bookbinder, for an introduction to the bookmakers craft. 
Carol Dawson, writer, and Lenore Coral, librarian at Cornell, 
refreshed my memories of London in general and Sothebys 
in particular. My daughter, Mona Helen Preuss, slogged 
through old auction catalogues at the library of the University 
of California and Berkeley. The staff of the rare-book room 
of the San Francisco Public Library were customarily, anonymously, 
efficient and helpful. Thanks to them all, and let them 
be reassured that my mistakes are my own. 

Paul Preuss 


Introduction 


by ARTHUR C. CLARKE 

U
U
nlike some authors, I have not generally been 
given to collaborative work in the science fiction 
area, especially in regard to my novels which, for 
the most part, have been written alone. There have been, 
however, some notable exceptions. In the 1960s, I worked 
with director Stanley Kubrick on the most realistic SF film 
done to that time, an ambitious little project called 2001: 
A Space Odyssey. Over a decade and a half later, I had 
another close encounter with a Hollywood director named 
Peter Hyams, who produced and directed the visually impressive 
adaptation of my sequel, 2010. 

Both films were rewarding experiences, and I found 
myself both surprised and delighted by some of the results. 
Now I find myself once again involved in an intriguing 
collaborative venture that has evolved from my original 
story, Breaking Strain. 

The novella (horrid word!) Breaking Strain was written 
in the summer of 1948, while I was taking my belated 
degree at Kings College, London. My agent, Scott Meredith, 
then in his early twenties, promptly sold it to Thrilling 
Wonder Stories; it can be more conveniently located 
in my first collection of stories, Expedition to Earth (1954). 

Soon after Breaking Strain appeared, some perceptive 
critic remarked that I apparently aspired to be the Kipling 
of the Spaceways. Even if I was not conscious of it, that 

1 


VENUS PRIME 


was certainly a noble ambitionespecially as I never 
imagined that the dawn of the Space Age was only nine 
years ahead. 

And if I may be allowed to continue the immodest 
comparison, Kipling made two excellent attempts to being 
the Clarke of the Air Age; see With the Night Mail and 
As Easy As ABC. The ABC, incidentally, stands for Aerial 
Board of Control. 

Oh, yes, Breaking Strain. The original story is of course 
now slightly dated, though not as much as I had expected. 
In any case, that doesnt matter; the kind of situation it 
describes is one which must have occurred countless times 
in the past and will be with usin ever more sophisticated 
formsas long as the human race endures. 

Indeed, the near-catastrophe of the 1970 Apollo 13 
mission presents some very close parallels. I still have 
hanging up on my wall the first page of the mission summary, 
on which NASA Administrator Tom Paine has written: 
Just as you always said it would be, Arthur. 

But the planet Venus, alas, has gone; my friend Brian 
Aldiss neatly summed up our sense of loss in the title of 
his anthology Farewell, Fantastic Venus ... 

Where are the great rivers and seas, home of gigantic 
monsters that could provide a worthy challenge to heroes 
in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold? (Yes, ERB made several 
visits there, when Mars got boring.) Gone with the 
thousand-degree-Farenheit wind of sulphuric acid vapor 
. . . 

Yet all is not lost. Though no human beings may ever 
walk the surface of Venus as it is today, in a few centuries
or millenniawe may refashion the planet nearer to 
the hearts desire. The beautiful Evening Star may become 
the twin of Earth that we once thought it to be, and the 

2 


VENUS PRIME 


remote successors of Star Queen will ply the spaceways 
between the worlds. 

Paul Preuss, who knows about all these things, has 
cleverly updated my old tale and introduced some elements 
of which I never dreamed (though Im amazed to 
see that The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was in the original; 
when I read the new text, I thought that was Pauls invention). 
Although I deplore the fact that crime stories 
have such a universal attraction, I suppose that somebody 
will still be trying to make a dishonest buck selling life 
insurance the day before the Universe collapses into the 
final Black Hole. 

It is also an interesting challenge combining the two 
genres of crime and science fiction, especially as some 
experts have claimed that its impossible. (My sole contribution 
here is Trouble with Time; and though I hate to 
say so, Isaac Whats-His-Name managed it superbly in his 
Caves of Steel series.) 

Now its Pauls turn. I think hes done a pretty good 
job. 
Arthur C. Clarke 
Columbo, Sri Lanka 

3 


PART ONE 

THE FOX 
AND THE HEDGEHOG 


5 


I 


Does the word Sparta mean anything to you? 

A young woman sat on a spoke-backed chair of varnished 
pine. Her face was turned to the tall window; her 
unmarked features were pale in the diffuse light that 
flooded the white room, reflected from the wintry landscape 
outside. 

Her interrogator fussed with his trim salt-and-pepper 
beard and peered at her over the top of his spectacles as 
he waited for an answer. He sat behind a battered oak desk 
a hundred and fifty years old, a kindly fellow with all the 
time in the world. 

Of course. In her oval face her brows were wide ink 
strokes above eyes of liquid brown; beneath her upturned 
nose her mouth was full, her lips innocent in their delicate, 
natural pinkness. The unwashed brown hair that lay in 
lank strands against her cheeks, her shapeless dressing 
gown, these could not disguise her beauty. 

What does it mean to you? 

7 


VENUS PRIME 


What? 

The word Sparta, what does that mean to you? 

Sparta is my name. Still she did not look at him. 

What about the name Linda? Does that mean anything 
to you? 
She shook her head. 
Or how about Ellen? 
She did not respond. 
Do you know who I am? he asked. 
I dont believe weve met, Doctor. She continued to 

stare out the window, studying something a great distance 

away. 

But you do know that Im a doctor. 

She shifted in her chair, glanced around the room, taking 
in the diplomas, the books, returning her gaze to him 
with a thin smile. The doctor smiled back. Though in fact 
they had met every week for the past year, her point was 
takenagain. Yes, any sane person would know she was 
in a doctors office. Her smile faded and she turned back 
to the window. 

Do you know where you are? 

No. They brought me here during the night. Usually 
Im in . . . the program. 

Where is that? 

In . . . Maryland. 

What is the name of the program? 

I . . . She hesitated. A frown creased her brow. 

. . . I cant tell you that. 

Can you remember it? 

Her eyes flashed angrily. Its not on the white side. 

You mean its classified? 

Yes. I cant tell anyone without a Q clearance. 

I have a Q clearance, Linda. 

8 


VENUS PRIME 


That is not my name. How do I know you have a 
clearance? If my father tells me I can talk to you about 
the program, I will. 

He had often told her that her parents were dead. Invariably 
she greeted the news with disbelief. If he did not 
repeat it within five or ten minutes, she promptly forgot; 
if, however, he persisted, trying to persuade her, she became 
wild with confusion and griefonly to recover her 
sad calm a few minutes after he relented. He had long 
since ceased to torture her with temporary horrors. 

Of all his patients, she was the one who most excited 
his frustration and regret. He longed to restore her lost 
core and he believed he could do it, if her keepers would 
permit him to. 

Frustrated, bored perhaps, he abandoned the script of 
the interview. What do you see out there? he asked. 

Trees. Mountains. Her voice was a longing whisper. 
Snow on the ground. 

If he were to continue the routine they had established, 
a routine he remembered but she did not, he would ask 
her to recount what had happened to her yesterday, and 
she would recite in great detail events that had occurred 
over three years ago. He rose abruptlysurprising himself, 
for he rarely varied his work schedule. Would you like 
to go outside? 

She seemed as surprised as he. 

The nurses grumbled and fussed over her, bundling her 
into wool trousers, flannel shirt, scarf, fur-lined leather 
boots, a thick overcoat of some shiny gray quilted material
a fabulously expensive wardrobe, which she took for 
granted. She was fully capable of dressing herself, but she 
often forgot to change her clothes. They found it easier to 

9 


VENUS PRIME 


leave her in her robe and slippers then, pretending to 
themselves that she was helpless. They helped her now, 
and she allowed it. 

The doctor waited for her outside on the icy steps of 
the stone veranda, studying the French doors with their 
peeling frames, the yellow paint pigment turning to powder 
in the dry, thin air. He was a tall and very round man, 
made rounder by the bulk of his black Chesterfield coat 
with its elegant velvet collar. The coat was worth the price 
of an average dwelling. It was a sign of the compromises 
he had made. 

The girl emerged, urged forward by the nurses, gasping 
at the sharpness of the air. High on her cheeks two rosy 
patches bloomed beneath the transparent surface of her 
blue-white skin. She was neither tall nor unusually slender, 
but there was a quick unthinking certainty in her 
movements that reminded him she was a dancer. Among 
other things. 

He and the girl walked on the grounds behind the main 
building. From this altitude they could see a hundred miles 
across the patchwork brown and white plains to the east, 
a desert of overgrazed, farmed-out grit. Not all the white 
was snow; some was salt. Afternoon sun glinted from the 
windows of a moving magneplane heading south, too far 
away to see; ice-welded blades of brown grass crunched 
under their feet where the sunlight had sublimed the snow 
cover. 

The edge of the lawn was marked by bare cottonwoods 
planted close together, paralleling an ancient wall of 
brownstone. The ten-foot electrified fence beyond the wall 
was almost invisible against the mountainside, which rose 
abruptly into shadow; higher up, blue drifts of snow persisted 
beneath squat junipers. 

10 


VENUS PRIME 


They sat on a bench in sunlight. He brought a chess 
pad from the pocket of his coat and laid it flat between 
them. Would you like to play? 

Are you any good? she asked simply. 

Fair. Not as good as you. 

How do you know? 

He hesitatedthey had played oftenbut he was weary 
of challenging her with the truth. It was in your file. 

I would like to see that file someday. 

Im afraid I no longer have access to it, he lied. The 
file she had in mind was a different file. 

The chess pad assigned her the white pieces and she 
opened swiftly with the Giuco Piano, throwing the doctor 
off balance with pawn to bishop-three on the fourth move. 
To give himself time to think he asked, Is there anything 
else you would like? 

Anything else? 

Is there anything we can do for you? 

I would like to see my mother and father. 

He didnt answer, pondering the board instead. Like 
most amateurs, he struggled to think two or three moves 
deep but was unable to hold all the permutations in his 
mind. Like most masters, she thought in patterns; although 
at this moment she could no longer recall her opening 
moves, it didnt matter. Years ago, before her short-term 
memory had been destroyed, she had stored uncounted 
patterns. 

He pushed the piece-keys and she replied instantly. On 
her next move one of his bishops was pinned. He smiled 
ruefully. Another rout in the making. Nevertheless he did 
his best to stay with her, to give her an interesting game. 
Until her keepers untied his hands he had little else to give 
her. 

11 


VENUS PRIME 


An hour passedtime was nothing to herbefore she 
said check for the last time. His queen was long gone, 
his situation hopeless. Your game, he said. She smiled, 
thanked him. He slipped the chess pad into his pocket. 

With the pad out of sight, her longing stare returned. 

They made a final tour of the wall. The shadows were 
long and their breath congealed before their faces; overhead 
the hazy blue sky was crisscrossed with a thousand 
icy contrails. A nurse met them at the door, but the doctor 
stayed outside. When he said good-bye the girl looked at 
him curiously, having forgotten who he was. 

Some rekindled spark of rebellion inspired the doctor 
to key the phonelink. I want to talk to Laird. 

The face on the videoplate was bland and polite. 

Terribly sorry. Im afraid the director cannot accept 
unscheduled calls. 
Its personal and urgent. Please tell him that. Ill wait. 
Doctor, believe me, theres simply no way . . . 
He was on the link a long time with one aide after 

another, finally wringing a promise from the last of them 
that the director would call him in the morning. These 
obstinate encounters fanned the rebellious spark, and the 
doctor was deeply angry when the last connection was cut. 

His patient had asked to see her filethe file of which 
she had been the subject until a year before her arrival at 
the hospital. He had meant to wait for clearance, but why 
bother? Laird and the rest of them would be incredulous, 
but there was no way she could use, or abuse, what she 
would see: she would forget it almost instantly. 

That, after all, was the point of this whole shameful 
exercise. 

He knocked on the door of her upstairs room. She 

12 


VENUS PRIME 


opened it, still wearing the boots and shirt and trousers 

she had put on for her walk. Yes? 

You asked to see your file. 

She studied him. Did my father send you? 

No. One of the M.I. staff. 

Im not allowed to see my file. None of us are. 

An . . . exception has been made in your case. But its 
at your discretion. Only if youre interested. 

Wordlessly, she followed him down the echoing corridor, 
down flights of creaking stairs. 

The basement room was bright and warm, thickly carpeted, 
quite unlike the drafty halls and wards of the old 
sanatorium above. The doctor showed her to a carrel. Ive 
entered the appropriate code already. Ill be right here if 
you have any questions. He sat across the narrow aisle, 
two carrels down, with his back turned to her. He wanted 
her to feel that she had some privacy, but not to forget 
that he was present. 

She studied the flatscreen on the desk. Then her fingers 
expertly stroked the hemispheres of the manual input. Alphanumerics 
appeared on the screen: WARNING: unauthorized 
access to this file is punishable by fine and/or 
imprisonment under the National Security Act. After a 
few seconds a stylized logo appeared, the image of a fox. 
That image disappeared, to be replaced by more words and 
numbers. Case L. N. 30851005, Specified Aptitude Resource 
Training and Assessment project. Access by other 
than authorized Multiple Intelligence personnel is strictly 
forbidden. 

She stroked the input again. 

Across the aisle the doctor nervously smoked a cigarette
ancient and hideous vicewhile he waited, seeing 
what she saw on the screen in front of him. The procedures 

13 


VENUS PRIME 


and evaluations would be familiar to her, embedded in 
long-term memory, engrained there, because so much of 
what she had learned was not mere information, but was 
process, performance. . . . 

She was reminded of what had become part of her. She 
had been taught languagesmany of them, including her 
ownby conversing and reading aloud at far beyond the 
level of vocabulary considered appropriate to her age. She 
had been taught to perform on the violin and the piano 
since infancy, since long before the fingers of her hands 
could stretch to form chords, and in the same way she had 
been taught dance and gymnastics and horseback riding, 
by being made to practice incessantly, by having the most 
expected of her. She had manipulated space-filling images 
on a computer, and learned drawing and sculpture from 
masters; she had been immersed in a swirling social matrix 
in the schoolroom since before she could speak; she had 
been tutored in set theory, geometry, and algebra from the 
time she had been able to distinguish among her toes and 
demonstrate Piagetian conservation. L. N. had a long 
number attached to her file name, but she was the first 
subject of SPARTA, which had been created by her father 
and mother. 

Her parents had tried not to unduly influence the rating 
of their daughters achievements. But even where double-
blind scoring was impossible, her mastery was evident. 
Revealed here on the flatscreen, as she had never seen it 
confirmed before, her excellence was enough to make her 
weep. 

The doctor was immediately at her side. Is something 
wrong? She wiped at her tears and shook her head, but 
he gently insisted. Its my job to be of help. 

14 


VENUS PRIME 


Its onlyI wish they could tell me, she said. Tell 
me themselves. That Im doing all right. 

He pulled a chair around and sat beside her. They 
would if they could, you know. They really cant. Under 
the circumstances. 

She nodded but did not answer. She advanced the file. 

How would she respond to what came next? he wondered, 
and watched with what he hoped was strictly professional 
curiosity. Her memories terminated abruptly in 
her seventeenth year. The file did not. She was almost 
twenty-one now. . . . 

She frowned at the screen. What is that evaluation? 
Cellular programming. I never studied that. I dont even 
know what it is. 

Oh? The doctor leaned forward. Whats the date? 

Youre right. She laughed. It must be what theyre 
planning for next spring. 

But look, theyve already assigned you scores. A 
whole group. 

She laughed again, delighted. They probably think 
thats what I ought to score. 

For him, no surprises after alland in her mind, no 
surprises would be permitted. Her immersion in the reality 
her brain had recreated for her could not be drained by a 
few numbers on a flatscreen. They think they know you 
pretty well, the doctor said dryly. 

Perhaps Ill fool them. She was happy at the prospect. 


The file ended abruptly at the conclusion of her standard 
training, three years ago. On the screen, only the logo 
of the Multiple Intelligence agency: the fox. The quick 
brown fox. The fox who knows many things . . . 

15 


VENUS PRIME 


The doctor observed that her cheerfulness persisted 
longer than usual, while she stared at that logo. Perhaps 
it maintained her in a present of some continuity with her 
past. 

Perhaps you will, he murmured. 

Leaving her at the door of her roomshe already forgetting 
him, having already forgotten what they both had 
seenhe moved his bulk ponderously down the old stairs 
to his office. The high-ceilinged, drafty brick building, 
built on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th 
century as a tuberculosis sanatorium, now two hundred 
years later well served its role as a private asylum for 
disturbed members of the families of the modestly well-
to-do. The doctor did his best for those who were innocently 
committed here, but case L. N. 30851005 was quite 
different, and increasingly absorbed his attention. 

On his own flatscreen he called up the clinical file the 
institution had kept since her arrival. An odd emotion took 
hold of him thenwhen decision overtakes a mind, even 
a normal one, it often happens so quickly it erases the 
track of its own processesand the doctor was shaken by 
a shuddering warmth, the certainty of revealed truth. 

He pressed his finger against his ear and keyed his 
commlink with the sanatorium staff. Im concerned that 
Linda has not been sleeping well this week. 

Really, Doctor? The nurse was surprised. Sorry. We 
havent noticed anything unusual. 
Well, lets try sodium pentobarbital tonight, shall we? 
Two hundred milligrams. 
The nurse hesitated, then acquiesced. Certainly, Doctor. 
*** 

16 


VENUS PRIME 


He waited until everyone was asleep except the two 
night nurses. The man would be prowling the corridors, 
supposedly alert for trouble, actually nursing his own insomnia. 
The woman would be dozing in front of the videoplate 
monitors at her station on the main floor. 

He nodded to her as he passed by, on his way up the 
stairs. Ill just have a look around before I go home. She 
looked up, belatedly alert. 

Everything he needed fitted easily inside his luxurious 
Chesterfield without appreciably adding to his bulk. He 
climbed the stairs and moved down the second floor corridor, 
conscientiously poking his head into every ward and 
private room. 

He came to L. N. 30851005s room and entered. The 
photogram camera was watching from its invisible position 
high in the corner; he could keep his back to it, but 
someone passing in the hall would have a different angle 
of view, so he casually swung the door half closed behind 
him. 

He bent over her unconscious form, then swiftly turned 
her head upright. Her respiration was steady and deep. 
First out of his pocket was a flat CT scope the size of a 
checkbook. He laid it across her closed eyes; its screen 
displayed a map of her skull and brain as if they had been 
sliced through. Digital coordinates appeared in one corner 
of the screen. He adjusted the CT scopes depth finder until 
the gray matter of the hippocampus was centered. 

He was still bent over her. He drew a long hypodermic 
from his sleeve, a seemingly primitive instrument frightening 
in its undisguised purpose. But within the shank of 
the steel needle nested other needles, needles within needles, 
graduated in fineness until the slimmest of them was 
finer than a human hair, invisible. They were needles that 

17 


VENUS PRIME 


possessed a mind of their own. He dipped the tip of the 
barrel in disinfectant in a small, clear vial. He felt the 
bridge of her nose, pressed his fingers down to widen her 
nostrils, then carefully, inexorablywatching its progress 
on the miniature screenhe shoved the long, telescoping 
shaft into her brain. 

18 


II 


The olfactory lobes are perhaps the most atavistic portions 
of the brain, having evolved in the nervous systems of 
blind worms that felt their way through the opaque muck 
of Cambrian seas. To function they must be in close contact 
with the environment, and so, beneath the bridge of 
the nose, the brain is almost completely exposed to the 
outside world. It is a dangerous arrangement. The bodys 
immune system is incompatible with the brains processes, 
everywhere sealed out by the blood-brain barrierexcept 
in the nasal passages, where mucous membranes are the 
brains only defense, and every winter cold is an all-out 
struggle against brain disease. 

When the defenses are breached, the brain itself feels 
nothing; the flower of the central nervous system is itself 
nerveless. The micro-needle that probed past L. N.s olfactory 
lobes and into her hippocampus left no internal sensation. 
It did, however, leave an infection, spreading 
fast. . . . 

19 


VENUS PRIME 

*** 

Waking late, the woman who thought of herself as 
Sparta felt an itching sensation high in her nose, beside 
her right eye. 

As recently as yesterday she had been in Maryland, at 
the project facilities north of the capital. She had gone to 
bed in the dormitory, wishing she could be in her own 
room at her parents home in New York City but accepting 
the fact that that would be inappropriate under the current 
circumstances. Everyone had been very good to her here. 
She should have feltshe tried to feelhonored to be 
where she was. 

This morning she was somewhere else. The room was 
high-ceilinged, layered with a centurys accumulation of 
white enamel, and its tall windows, hung with dusty lace, 
were fitted with panes of imperfect glass whose pinhole 
bubbles refocused the sun into golden liquid galaxies. She 
didnt know where she was, exactly, but that was nothing 
new. They must have brought her here in the night. She 
would find her way around, as she had in many other 
strange places. 

She sneezed twice and briefly wondered if she were 
catching a cold. The stale taste of her mouth unpleasantly 
grew to dominate her sensations; she could taste what 
must have been last nights dinner as vividly as if it were 
in front of her, except that all the flavors were here at 
once, green beans mingling with custard, a fragment of 
rice throbbing with odors of gunny sack, crumbs of 
ground beef stewing in saliva . . . Vaguely apprehended 
formulas of amines and esters and carbohydrates danced 
through her mind with a slippery, tickly quality that was 
familiar although she had no idea what they signified. 

She rose quickly from the bed, put on gown and slip


20 


VENUS PRIME 


persshe merely assumed they were hersand went off in 
search of someplace to scrub her teeth. The smell in the 
drafty hall was overwhelming, wax and urine and ammonia 
and bile and turpentineinsistent odors and their 
accompanying, ungraspable mathematical analogues summoning 
ghosts, the ghosts of vanished supplicants and 
benefactors, workers and inmates of this building, and 
their visitors and keepers, everyone who had passed this 
way for a century. She sneezed again and again, and finally 
the clamorous stench subsided. 

She found the bathroom without any trouble. Peering 
at herself in the mirror on the wooden cabinet, she was 
suddenly thrust out of herselfher image appeared to en-
largeuntil she was staring at an immensely magnified 
view of her own eye. Dark brown, liquid at its surface, it 
was an eye of glassy perfection. At the same time she 
could still see her ordinary reflection in the glass; the giant 
eye was superimposed upon the familiar face. She closed 
one eyeshe saw only her face. She closed the othershe 
was staring into the liquid depths of an immense open 
pupil. The blackness within was unfathomable. 

Her right eye seemed to have something . . . wrong? . . . 
with it. 

She blinked a couple of times and the double exposure 
vanished. Her face was itself. Again it occurred to her to 
brush her teeth. After several monotonous minutes the vibrating 
brush massaged her into dreaminess. . . . 

The helicopter made a loud thrumming outside, 
soundly rattling the windows as it landed on the lawn. 
The staff scurried hurriedly about; the unexpected arrival 
of a helicopter generally meant an inspection. 

When the doctor came upstairs from his apartment he 

21 


VENUS PRIME 


found one of the directors aides waiting in his office. The 
doctor was bothered but tried not to show it. 

We promised you the director would get back to you, 
said the aide. He was a small fellow and scrupulously polite, 
with bright orange hair curled tightly against his skull. 

I thought you were still at Fort Meade. 

The director asked me to deliver his message personally. 
Surely he could have called. 
The director requests that you leave with me and 

come to headquarters. Right away, Im afraid. 
Thats impossible. The doctor sat down, tensely upright 
in his old wooden armchair. 

Quite. The aide sighed. Which is why the phone just 
wouldnt do, you see. The orange-haired fellow was still 
wearing his camels hair overcoat and a Peruvian wool 
scarf around his neck, bright orange; his shoes were high-
tops of some shiny orange leather. All organics, flaunting 
his high salary. Carefully he opened the coat and removed 

a .38 caliber Colt Aetherweight with a four-inch suppressor 
from the open holster under his armpit. He was a symphony 
in orange. The pistol was of dull blue steel. He 
leveled it at the doctors ample belly. Do please come with 
me now. 
On her way back to her room, Sparta felt a pain in her 
left ear, so fierce it made her stumble and lean against the 
plaster wall. Buzz and moan of sixty-cycle current through 
lath and plaster walls, clatter of pots washing in the 
kitchen, groans of an old womanthe old woman in 206, 
Sparta realized, without knowing how she knew there was 
an old woman in 206other rooms, other noises, two men 
talking somewhere, voices that seemed familiar 

22 


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*** 

The doctor hesitated. He was not really surprised, but 
the game was moving faster than he had hoped. Lets 
say . . . He swallowed once, and went on, that I dont 
come with you. He had the feeling that this was happening 
to someone else, and wished that were true. 

Doctor . . . The orange man shook his head once, ruefully. 
The staff here is utterly loyal. Whatever passes between 
you and me will never be discussed outside this 
room, I assure you. 

The doctor stood then and moved slowly to the door. 
The orange man stood at the same time, never taking his 
eyes from the doctor, managing to seem deferential even 
while he kept the long barrel of the Colt, hardly wavering, 
aimed at the fork of the doctors wishbone. 

The doctor took his Chesterfield from the coat rack and, 
hauling it on, got himself tangled with his scarf. 

The orange man smiled sympathetically and said, 
Sorry, indicating that had circumstances permitted he 
would have lent a hand. Finally the doctor pulled himself 
into the coat. He glanced backward; his eyes were wet and 
he was trembling, his face contorted with fear. 

After you, please,said the orange man, amiably. 

The doctor plucked at the doorknob, jerked the door 
open, stepped into the hallstumbling against the sill in 
what seemed imminent panic. As he went to one knee the 
orange man came forward with his left hand outstretched, 
contempt curling his smile. Really, theres nothing to be 
so upset . . . 

But as the hand came toward him the doctor erupted 
from his crouch, pinned the dapper orange man against 
the door frame with a massive shoulder, thrust the fist with 
the gun in it high to the side. The doctors right hand came 

23 


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up swiftly with brutal force, brushing aside the mans flailing 
left, pushing up hard under his breastbone. 

Aaahhh . . . ? It was no scream, but a surprised gasp, 
rising on a note of anxiety. The orange man lowered his 
startled eyes to his midriff. The barrel of an outsized hypodermic 
needle, still gripped in the doctors fist, protruded 
from the camels hair coat at the level of his 
diaphragm. 

No blood showed. The bleeding was internal. 

The orange man was not dead yet, not nearly dead. His 
coat was thick and the shaft of the hypodermic too short 
to reach his heart. The telescoping shafts within it were 
still thrusting, seeking his heart muscle when he twisted 
his right wrist and brought the barrel of the Colt to bear, 
pulled the trigger spasmodically 

The phttt, phttt, phttt, phttt of the silenced weapon 
howled like a rocket launcher in Spartas painfully sensitive 
ear. She recoiled and stumbled down the hall toward 
her room, her head ringing with the screams and agonized 
gasps, the tremor of running feet on the floor below shaking 
her like an earthquake. 

Into her mind like a slide flashed on a screen came an 
image to match one of the voices shed heardthat of a 
little man who always dressed in expensive clothes that 
were too loud, a man with curly orange hair, a man she 
knew she disliked and feared. With the conscious formation 
of that image, the amplified sounds vanished. 

By now the other inmates were wandering bewildered 
in the hall, clinging to the walls, for even ordinary hearing 
was enough to apprehend the commotion downstairs. In 
her room Sparta tore off her nightgown and quickly 
dressed in the warmest clothes she could find in the un


24 


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familiar closet, clothes she didnt really recognize but that 
were obviously her own. For reasons her memory would 
not reveal, she knew she must flee. 

The doctors body lay face up across the sill, blood 
pooling under his head. Next to him the orange man was 
writhing on the floor, plucking at the thing in his midriff. 
Help me, help me! he gasped to the nurses who were 
already trying their fumbling best to help him. A woman 
in a pilots uniform thrust the nurses aside and bent to 
catch his words, but a sudden hooting of sirens filled the 
air. After her! Take her . . . he gasped at the pilot, then 
tried to shove her out of the way. He screeched in pain 
the hypodermic had come out in his hand, but not all of 
itTake her to the director! Then his voice rose in a 
terrified howlOh, help me, help meas the questing 
hair-fine remnant of the needle pierced and paralyzed his 
heart. 

A nurse slammed into L. N.s room and found it deserted. 
One side of the bed had collapsed on the floor. The 
window sash had been thrust up and the yellowing lace 
curtains were stirring in the frigid outside airan iron bar 
was thrust like a spear through the screen of heavy wire 
that covered the outside of the window, twisting it aside. 
The iron bar in the screen had been part of the bed frame. 

The nurse rushed to the window as the rising pitch of 
twin turbine engines reached a near-supersonic shriek. 
Black against the frozen brown grass of the lawn below, 
a sleek shape ascended and hovered, a viperlike snout 
quested this way and that under the thump, thump of 
counter-rotating rotors. 

The pilot stumbled into the room, holding a drawn pis


25 


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tol; she shoved the nurse away from the window. Below, 
the black tactical helicopter rose another couple of meters, 
leaned forward, and skimmed off over the fence between 
two poplars, hugging the ground. 

Damm it! The pilot watched in disbelief, not bothering 
to waste any rounds on the armored machine. Who 
the hell is in that thing? 

She is, said the nurse. 

Who the hell is she? 

The one we were hiding here. The one he wanted you 
to take to the director. 

The pilot stared after the helicopter until it dropped 
into an arroyo beyond the highway and failed to reappear. 
She swore and turned away. 

Sparta had no clear idea what she was doing. The irregular 
frozen ground was racing past a meter or two beneath 
the skids, the arroyos low mud and gravel walls 
swaying too close to the whirling tips of the blades as she 
played with the stick and pedals. She dug up gravel with 
a skid: the machine lurched, declined to flip over, flew on. 

A moving map of the terrain was displayed in space in 
front of Sparta, holographically superimposed upon the 
reality she saw through the windscreen. Just now she was 
flying uphillthe interstate magneplane tracks she had 
crossed before finding the arroyo now reappeared in front 
of her, carried on a steel trestle, barring her path. She flew 
under the trestle. The howl of the aircrafts engines echoed 
for a split second, and one rotor rang sharp and clear from 
nicking a steel pylon. 

The arroyo narrowed and its walls grew higher; it had 
been cutlanguidly, over centuriesinto an alluvial fan 
from the uplifted mountains ahead, and there ahead the 

26 


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gorge through which the eroding waters flowed loomed 
abruptly, a gash in the red rock as acute as a gun sight. 

She was still flying by hand, and she felt more confident 
with every passing second she stayed in the air. She 
contemplated her ability to handle a piece of complicated 
machinery she could not remember ever having seen be-
foreknowing what it was for without thinking about it, 
knowing the logic of it, knowing the particular layout of 
its controls and instruments and the capabilities of its 
brainy subsystems. 

She reasoned that she had practiced in it. Knowing this, 
she reasoned that there was some weighty cause for her 
memory lapse. 

She further reasoned that there was cause for her fear 
of the orange man, the fear that had made her run. She 
reasonedbecause she remembered the entire day (why 
did that in itself seem strange?) from the moment she had 
awakened with an urgent desire to brush her teeth, and 
the accumulated anomalies of that day could not be ignored
that a chunk of her life had been deliberately taken 
from her and that she was in danger precisely because of 
that, and that the orange man had had something to do 
with her missing years and with her present danger. 

Spartanot her real name, it occurred to her, but an 
identity she had assumed for a sufficient yet still hidden 
reasonspoke to the helicopter. Snark, this is L. N. 
30851005, do you acknowledge? 

After a momentary pause the helicopter said, I acknowledge 
your command. 

Westerly heading, minimum altitude and maximum 
ground speed consistent with evasion protocols. On auto, 
please. 

Auto confirmed. 

27 


VENUS PRIME 


Flatiron walls of red Jurassic sandstone loomed and 
flashed by on either side of the ship. A streambed of tumbled 
granite boulders mounted in irregular stairsteps up 
the rapidly ascending gorgedry now but for patches of 
snow, it would be an intermittent torrent during the storms 
of late summer. One moment the ship was brushing the 
bare pink branches of tangled willows in the streambed, 
the next it was flying almost straight up the mountainside, 
dodging leaning ponderosas and overhangs of basaltic 
cliff, until suddenly the gorge narrowed to a shallow ravine 
in a forest of pines, and the mountain flattened into 
meadowland dotted with stands of aspen. 

Sparta had adjusted the scale of the terrain-matching 
projection that unscrolled in front of her and now studied 
it, searching the image until she found the topography she 
needed. Snark, proceed to forty degrees north, one hundred 
and five degrees, forty minutes, twenty seconds 
west. 

Forty north, one-oh-five, forty, twenty west confirmed. 
The helicopter slowed suddenly and hesitated at 
the edge of the aspen woods, its snout quivering as if 
sniffing for a trail. 

A moment later the ship streaked across the open, 
snowy flat, toward the range of distant, much higher peaks 
that glistened in the sun. 

We have visual acquisition. 

On a videoplate screen in a basement room fifteen hundred 
miles to the east, a small group of men and women 
watched the helicopter racing over the ground, its sharp, 
highly magnified image observed from a satellite four 
hundred miles above it. 

Why isnt she using evasion protocols? 

28 


VENUS PRIME 


Maybe she doesnt know how. 

She knows how to fly the thing. The speaker was a 
man in his fifties with silver-gray hair clipped close to his 
scalp. He wore a dark-gray wool suit and patternless gray 
silk tie over a light-gray cotton shirt; it was business attire, 
but it might as well have been a military uniform. 

The mans outburst was an unanswerable accusation; 
he got no reply but a nervous shifting of feet. 

A woman touched his sleeve, caught his eye, jerked her 
chin. They stepped into the shadows of the control room, 
away from the others. What is it? he rasped. 

If McPhee actually did restore her short-term memory 
using synthetic-cellular implant, she may be accessing 
skills she acquired before intervention, she whispered. 
She was a handsome woman, as clipped and gray and rigid 
as he was, her dark eyes pools of shadow in the dim room. 

You led me to believe shed already forgotten everything 
she saw or did for the last three years, he said 
petulantly, straining to keep his voice down. 

The permanencethat is, the degreeof retroactive 
amnesia due to loss of short-term memory is often unpredictable 
. . . 

Why am I learning this now? he snarled, loud 
enough to make heads turn. 

. . . except that, as ever, we can be completely confident 
that she will never remember anything that occurred 
after the intervention. The gray woman paused. Until 
the reintervention. Before today, that is. 

The two of them fell silent, and for a moment no one 
in the dark room spoke. They all studied the helicopter, 
which was fleeing its own shadow over snowy hummocks, 
over frozen ponds, among pines and aspens, down steep 
defiles, a darting dragonfly with its twin interlocking ro


29 


VENUS PRIME 


tors fluttering like membranous wings in the crosshairs of 
the tracking satellite, but with a more evident purpose to 
its flight. 

The image stuttered momentarily, then steadied at a 
slightly different angle, as a new satellite took over the 
tracking task. 

Mr. Laird, said the tracking operator, I dont know 
if this is significant. . . . 

Lets have it, said the gray man. 

The target has been gradually turning counterclockwise 
for the past two minutes. It is now on a southeasterly 
heading. 

Shes lost, someonean enthusiastic aidevolunteered. 
Shes flying blind and she doesnt know which 
way shes going. 

The gray man ignored him. Give me the whole sector. 


The image on the screen immediately widened to show 
the Great Plains surging like a frozen ocean against the 
Front Range, the cities beached there like flotsam: Cheyenne, 
Denver, Colorado Springs, fused by their suburbs 
into a single threadlike agglomeration. The helicopter was 
microscopic, invisible at this scale, although its position 
was still clearly marked by the centered crosshairs. 

The target appears to be holding steady on course, 
said the operator. 
Dammit, shes heading straight for Space Command, 
said the gray man. He stared bitterly at the gray woman. 

Seeking sanctuary? she said mildly. 

Weve got to shoot it down, blurted the same enthusiastic 
aide, whose enthusiasm had been converted to 
panic. 
With what? the gray man inquired. The only armed 

30 


VENUS PRIME 


vehicle we own within five hundred miles of her position 
is the one shes flying. He turned to the woman, hissing 
the words but hardly bothering to keep them inaudible. 
If only Id never listened to your clever explanations . . . 
He bit off the sentence, snapping his teeth in his fury, and 
bent over the console. Shes not using evasion protocols. 
Whats the chance of jamming her? 

We cant jam the targets navigation and control circuits, 
sir. Theyre shielded against everything. 

Outgoing transmissions? 

Wed have a good chance there. 

Do it right away. 

Sir, thats not exactly a surgically precise operation. 
Air Defense Command will pop a gasket. 

Do it now. Ill take care of ADC. He turned to an 
aide. A blackline to Commander in Chief, NORAD. Let me 
see the profile before you put it through. 

The aide handed him a phonelink. CINCNORAD is a 
General Lime, sir. His profiles coming on screen B. 

The gray man spoke into the phonelink and waited, 
quickly reading the generals psychological profile off the 
little flatscreen, planning his spiel as he shifted his attention 
to the big screen. 

The spy satellites crosshairs moved inexorably toward 
Air Force Space Command headquarters east of Colorado 
Springs. A curt voice came on the line, and the gray man 
quickly replied. General, Bill Laird herehis voice was 
warm, confiding, deferentialIm very sorry to disturb 
you, but I have a serious problem and Im afraid Ive let 
it get out of handso much so, in fact, I confess its become 
your problem too. Which will explain the EM interference 
your people are experiencing on combat 
channels . . . 

31 


VENUS PRIME 

*** 

The phone conversation drew heavily upon the directors 
resources of amiability and persuasion. It was not the 
last call he had to make; General Lime refused to commit 
to action without confirmation from Lairds superior. 

More earnest lies went through the aether, and when 
the director finally put the phone down he was trembling 
behind his tight smile. He yanked at the gray womans 
sleeve and propelled her back into the shadows. This program 
is about to be ended, thanks to you, he said angrily. 
And we will have lost years of work. Do you think I can 
hold my post after this debacle? Well be lucky to escape 
prosecution. 

I certainly doubt that the president would . . . 

You! Keep her alive, you said. 

She was magnificent, William. In the early stages. She 
was a natural adept. 
She never committed herself to the Knowledge. 
Shes still a child! 
He gave her an angry cough for a reply. He paced 

about, brooding, then halted, shaking his head. Right. 
Time we dissolve our band, disperse into the common 
herd. 

William . . . 

Oh, well be in touch, he said bitterly. There will be 
places in government for both us, Im sure. But a great 
deal of reconstruction lies ahead. He knitted his fingers, 
flexed his arms in his jacket, cracked his knuckles. That 
sanatorium will have to go. All of them will have to go. 
Right nows the time to do it. 

The gray woman knew better than to object. 
*** 


32 


VENUS PRIME 


This bogies a drone? The sergeant was incredulous. 
Efficiently she tapped the coordinates of the approaching 
helicopter into AARGGS, the anti-aircraft railgun guidance 
system. 

Story is, its some kind of experimental ECM ship that 
went nuts, replied the captain. Ops says the people who 
let it loose think its homing on our ground stations. 

Out on the perimeter of the Space Command headquarters 
base, batteries of TEUCER railguns bobbed and 
swung on their pedestals. 

Interceptors cant catch it? 

Sure they could catch it. An F-41 could climb right 
on top of it, look down, shoot down. You seen any of these 
new army choppers in action, Sergeant? They can fly 
about three feet off the ground at six hundred klicks. And 
whats on the ground between here and the mountains? 

Oh. 

Thats right. Houses, schools, that sort of thing. So its 
up to us in perimeter defense. 

The sergeant looked at the radar scope. Well, in about 
twenty seconds well know. Its still coming. She ordered 
AARGGS to arm even before the captain told her to do so. 

The Snark howled across suburban ranch-house rooftops 
and backyard swimming pools and rock gardens, 
across wide boulevards and artificial lagoons, lifting loose 
shingles, shaking the last dead leaves from ornamental aspens, 
terrifying pedestrians, raising dust, and leaving 
muddy recirculated lagoon water surging in its wake. The 
helicopters antennas were continually broadcasting on all 
restricted and unrestricted channels as it closed on the 
base, but it received no reply to its urgent communica


33 


VENUS PRIME 


tions. The bare flat ground of the base perimeter swiftly 
approached. . . . 

As the helicopter screamed in over the fences, over the 
waiting fire trucks and ambulances and police vehicles, 
some observers notedand later testifiedthat the craft 
did not appear to be aiming for the forest of space-directed 
radio antennas that were HQ Space Commands most distinctive 
feature, but instead was headed for the Operations 
Building, in front of which there was a helipad. It was a 
fine distinctionmuch too fine upon which to base a split-
second decision. 

Three TEUCER hypervelocity missiles leaped into the 
air as the Snark crossed the perimeter. They were no more 
than shaped steel rods, dead rounds carrying no explosives, 
but they impacted with the momentum of meteoroids, 
of flying bulldozers. Two-tenths of a second after 
they left the launcher they ripped through the armored 
helicopter. There was no explosion. The disintegrated aircraft 
simply scattered itself over the parade ground like a 
handful of burning confetti. The larger bits of smoking 
metal rolled away like charred wads of newspaper. 

34 


III 


Sparta waited among the bare aspens on the edge of the 
frozen field, waited until the buttery light had faded from 
the cloud-clotted western sky. Her toes and fingers and 
earlobes and the tip of her nose were numb, and her stomach 
was growling. Walking, she hadnt minded the cold, 
but when she finally had to stand and wait for darkness 
shed begun to shiver. Now that darkness had come, she 
could move in. 

Shed garnered valuable information from the Snark 
beforein that split second when it had paused, hovering 
motionless inches above the ground, computing new coordinates
shed jumped clear and sent it on its unprotected 
way. Precisely where she was. Precisely what day, 
month, and year it was. That last had come as a shock. 
Memories had been swarming more thickly with every 
passing minute, but now she knew that even the most 
recent of them was more than a year old. And in the hours 
since shed jumped, while shed been trudging through the 

35 


VENUS PRIME 


snow, shed contemplated the burgeoning strangeness of 
her sense of herself. 

She grasped, viscerally, that in the past houreven had 
she not been indulging in self-inspectionher wild and 
surging sensibilities had started to bring themselves partially 
under her conscious control; shed even managed to 
remember what some of those sensibilities were for . . . and 
thus she could better modulate the insistent vividness of 
her sensestaste, smell, hearing, touch. And her remarkably 
flexible vision. 

But those senses were still getting away from heronly 
sporadically, but then overwhelmingly. The acid sweetness 
of pine needles fallen upon snow threatened more 
than once to overcome her with swooning ecstasy. The 
melting mother-of-pearl of the setting sun more than once 
sent the visible world a-spinning kaleidoscopically, inside 
her throbbing brain, in an epiphany of light. She waited 
out those intoxicating moments, knowing that in the 
scheme of things they must recur, knowing that when 
they did she could, with effort, suppress them. Then she 
pressed on. 

She had a much better understanding of the nature of 
her predicament. She knew it could be fatal if anyone 
learned of her peculiarities, and equally fatal to put herself 
in the hands of the authorities, any authorities. 

At last it was dark enough to cover her approach. She 
trudged across the snowy field toward a far cluster of 
lights where two narrow asphalt roads, recently plowed, 
formed a T intersection. One of the weather-bleached 
wooden buildings had a sign hanging from its rusted iron 
eaves, lit by a single yellow bulb: BEER. FOOD. 

Half a dozen cars were parked in front of the rustic 

36 


VENUS PRIME 


tavern, sporty cars and all-terrain-vehicles with ski racks 
on top. She stopped outside and listened.... 

She heard the clink and thump of bottles, a cat whining 
for its dinner, the creak of wooden chairs and floorboards, 
a toilet flushing in the back, and over all a surround-sound 
system cranked up just shy of pain level. Under the music
hoarse energetic anger of a male singer, rolling 
thunder of a bass line, twined sinuous howls of a synthekord 
doing harmony and three kinds of percussionshe 
picked out some conversations. 

Rocks and straw, a girl was saying, they got a nerve 
even selling a lift ticket, and elsewhere a boy was trying 
to wheedle college class notes out of his companion. At 
another locationthe bar, she estimatedsomeone was 
talking about a remodeling job on a nearby ranch. She 
listened a moment and tuned in on that one; it sounded 
the most promising 

. . . and this other dolly, blond hair down to there, just 
standing there staring through me, wearin nothin but this 
little pink piece of transparent silk like you see in those 
department store ads. But like I wasnt even in the same 
room. 

Probly on somethin. Theyre all on somethin up 
there, man. You know that big sensie-mixer they got, 
thats supposed to be payin for the place? That guy that 
runs its so Z-based all the time, I dont know how he feels 
anythin . . . 

But the dollies, said the first voice. Thats what impressed 
me. I mean, were walkin back and forth carryin 
about one plank of knotty pine panel per trip, right? And 
these blond and brunette and red-headed dollies are just 
sittin and standin and lyin around there. . . . 

37 


VENUS PRIME 


Most of the people who come through here, claim 
theyre goin up to rent the studio facilities? Theyre just 
dealin, man, the second voice confided. Just buyin and 
sellin . . . 

Sparta listened until she had what she needed. She let 
the cacophony fade and turned her attention to the vehicles 
in the parking lot. 

She tuned her vision toward the infrared until she 
could see warm handprints glowing on the doorhandles, 
the brightest of them only a few minutes old. She inspected 
the more recent arrivals. Their occupants were less 
likely to be leaving soon. She peered into the interior of 
a mud-spattered two-seater; bright outlines of human bottoms 
glowed like valentines in both bucket seats. A lap 
robe bundled on the floor in front of the passenger seat 
hid another warm object. Sparta hoped it was what she 
was looking for. 

Sparta pulled off her right glove. Chitinous spines slid 
from beneath her fingernails; gingerly, she worked the 
probes extending from her index and middle fingers into 
the sliverport in the door on the passenger side. She sensed 
the minute tingle of electrons along her conducting polymers: 
images of numerical patterns danced at the threshold 
of consciousness; the surface molecules of her probes 
reprogrammed themselvesall so quickly that only the intention 
was conscious, not the process. As she withdrew 
her fingertips the probes retracted. The car door swung 
open, its lock-and-alarm disarmed. 

She pulled her glove on and lifted the lap rug. The 
object under it, recently handled, was a purse. She removed 
the registration sliver, then left it as it had been 
exactly as it had been, with the lap robe folded precisely 
as it was folded before, according to the image of it tem


38 


VENUS PRIME 


porarily stored in her memory. She nudged the door 
closed. 

Sparta stomped the snow off her boots on the covered 
porch and pushed through the ramshackle double doors, 
to be greeted by a blast of smoky air and badly amplified 
surround-sound. Most of the small crowd were couples, 
college kids on the way back from skiing. A few local 
males, wearing tattered jeans and threadbare plaid flannel 
shirts over red long-johns, were hanging out at the end of 
the long mahogany bar. Their eyes fixed on her as she 
walked boldly toward them. 

The carpenter shed overheard was easy to identify; he 
was the one wearing a laser-rule in a worn leather holster 
on his hip. She hitched herself onto the stool beside him 
and gave him a long, contemptuous stare, her eyes focused 
slightly behind his head, before turning her eyes to the 
bartender. 

The bartenders curly orange hair startled her. That 
passed quicklyhe also wore a frizzy beard. Whatll it be, 
lady? 

Glass of red. You got anything decent to eat? Im 
starved. 

Usual autochef stuff. 

Hell . . . cheeseburger, then. Medium. Everything on it. 
Fries. 

The bartender went to the grease-streaked stainless 
steel console behind the bar and shoved four buttons. He 
took a glass from the overhead rack and stuck a hose into 
it, filling it with fizzy wine the color of cranberry juice. 
On the way back he took the burger and fries from the 
maw of the steel autochef, holding both plates in his wide 
right hand, and slid everything onto the bartop in front 
of Sparta. Forty-three bucks. Servee-compree. 

39 


VENUS PRIME 


She handed him the sliver. He recorded the transaction 
and laid the sliver in front of her. She let it sit there, 
wondering which of the women in the tavern was buying 
her dinner. 

The bartender, the carpenter, and the other men at the 
bar had apparently run out of conversation; they all stared 
at Sparta wordlessly while she ate. 

The sensations of smelling, tasting, chewing, swallowing 
nearly overloaded her eager internal systems. The curdled 
fat, the carbonized sugar, already half-digested 
proteins were at once desperately craved and nauseating 
in their richness. For a few minutes hunger suppressed 
revulsion. 

Then she was done. But she didnt look up until she 
had licked the last drop of grease from her fingers. 

She peered at the carpenter again, giving him the same 
cold, lingering stare, ignoring the black-bearded man behind 
him, who stared at her in pop-eyed fascination. 

I know you from somewhere, the carpenter said. 

I never laid eyes on you before in my life, she said. 

No, I know you. Wasnt you one of them up at Cloud 
Ranch this mornin? 
Dont mention that place to me. I never want to hear 
that place mentioned in my presence as long as I live. 

So you was up there. He nodded in satisfaction, giving 
the bartender a significant glance. His bearded buddy 
also gave the bartender a significant glance, but what it 
signified was a mystery to them all. The carpenter turned 
back to Sparta, looking her slowly up and down. I knew 
it was you, just from the way you stared at me. Course 
you dont much look the same as you did. 

How good would you look if youd been walking in 

40 


VENUS PRIME 


the snow half the day? She tugged at a strand of her 
matted brown hair, as if hed hurt her feelings. 

Nobody willin to give you a ride out? 

Sparta shrugged and stared straight ahead, pretending 
to sip the glass of foul wine. 
He persisted. Get in over your head? 
What are you, a stinking shrink? she snarled. I play 

the fiddle. When somebody hires me to play the fiddle, I 
expect to play the fiddle, period. How come the only people 
who make money in this business are creeps? 

Lady, dont get me wrong. The carpenter ran a hand 
through his matted blond hair. I thought everybody 
around here knew they made a lot more than just music 
sensies up there. 

Im not from around here. 

Yeah. He sipped thoughtfully at his beer. So did his 
buddy. Well . . . sorry. For a while they all stared at their 
drinks, a school of philosophers deep in contemplation. 
The bartender absently swiped at the bartop with his rag. 

Where are you from? the carpenter resumed, hopefully. 


Back east, she replied. And I wish I was back there 
now. Tell me theres a bus out of here in ten minutes and 
youll make my day. 

The bearded guy behind the carpenter laughed at that, 
but the carpenter didnt. Theres no buses through here, 
he said. 

No surprise. 

Dont get me wrong, but Im driving down to Boulder 
tonight. You could get a bus from there. 

Dont get me wrong. she said. I said youd make my 
day. 

41 


VENUS PRIME 


Sure, lady. 

He seemed humble enough, but he was male and naturally 
he was playing the odds. That was fine with her, as 
long as she got within reach of civilization. 

The carpenter ended up having his van drive them both 
all the way to the Denver shuttleport, almost a hundred 
miles away. He gave her no trouble during the seventy-
minute ride. He seemed grateful for what little conversation 
she was willing to give him, and parted from her 
cheerfully with a firm handshake. 

Sparta went into the terminal and threw herself joyfully 
into the nearest contoured, chrome-and-black-plastic 
chair in the busy lobby. To her, the noise and the winking 
neon ads and glaring videoplate billboards, the diffuse 
green light that bounced off every reflective surface, were 
soothing. She pulled her quilted coat tight around her, 
hugging herself, letting fatigue and relief wash over her 
she was back, back among crowds of people, with access 
to transportation and communication and financial services, 
the whole vast neural network of electronics that knit 
the country, the world, the colonies of space together. She 
could get what she wanted without making herself memorable. 
And for a few minutes she could sit right here in 
the open and rest, not bothering to hide, confident that 
nothing about her nondescript appearance would attract 
the slightest attention. 

Her eyes opened to find an airport cop looking down 
at her suspiciously, his finger poised at his right ear, about 
to key his commlink. You been out for half an hour, lady. 
You need sleep, use the hive in Five. He tapped his ear. 
Or you want me to call work-shelter? 

42 


VENUS PRIME 


Goodness, officer. Im terribly sorry, I didnt realize. 
She looked past him, startled, in the direction of the flight 
announcement screen. Oh, dont tell me Im going to miss 
this one too! She stood up and dashed for the nearest 
people-mover headed for the launch pads. 

She didnt look back until she was surrounded by other 
passengers. There was a certain air of glumness about the 
belt riders, huddled in their festive plastic-and-foil vacation 
clothes, probably because for most of them the vacation 
was over; they were headed back to the reservation. 
She made a discreet show of searching her pockets in distress 
before stepping off the rolling walkway at the first 
interchange and heading back toward the waiting area. 

She walked straight into the womens room and peered 
into the mirror. She got a shock. Nondescript wasnt the 
word for her; she was bedraggled. Her drab brown hair 
hung in greasy snakes; there were dark circles under her 
eyes; her boots and pants and the skirts of her coat were 
splashed with dried red mud to the knee. 

No wonder the cop had suspected her of being non-R. 
He was right, of courseonly one agency held her registration
but right for the wrong reasons, and shed have 
to do something about those reasons quickly. 

She washed her face, splashing it repeatedly with icy 
water until she was wide awake. Then she left to find the 
nearest information booth. 

She slipped into the booth and peered at the blank 
flatscreen. Here, on this little flat plate and mounded keyboard, 
was light-speed access to anyone on Earth or in 
space who wished to be accessible (access to persons who 
didnt want to be accessible took a bit longer). Here was 
access to vast libraries of data (access to protected data 
took a bit longer). Here were the means of making or se


43 


VENUS PRIME 


curing loans, paying debts, investing, wagering, buying 
every imaginable kind of legal goods or services, or just 
giving money away (other kinds of goods, services, and 
transactions took a bit longer). All that was required of 
the client was a valid I.D. sliver and sufficient credit in a 
registered account. 

Sparta no longer had the sliver she had stolen, having 
deliberately dropped it in the snow outside the door of the 
mountain tavern, for she had no intention of leaving a 
trail of illicit transactions behind her. But in the intimate 
privacy of an information booththe sort of privacy only 
a place surrounded by crowds could provideher lack of 
a sliver was not an immediate concern. 

Like the long struggle between people who design armor 
and people who design armor-piercing projectiles, the 
long struggle between people who design software and 
people who want to penetrate it was an endless evolutionary 
spiral. In these days of the late 21st century, fiddling 
with open-access programs wasnt easy, even for 
those with inside knowledge. 

Yet it was another of the things Sparta was sure she 
had been trained forto what purpose, she could not remember. 
With fingerprobes thrust deep into the sliverport 
she was able to bypass the keyboard and taste the flavor 
of the system directly. . . . 

Alas, there are no glittering informationscapes, no 
pretty crystal structures of data, no glowing nodes of inference 
and signification. There are no pictures in the electricity
nor in the lightexcept as encoded, and such 
pictures as there are must be filtered through crude external 
analogue devices, steerable beams, glowing phosphors, 
excited diodes, writhing liquid magnetized suspensions, 
the raster. But although there are no pictures in the elec


44 


VENUS PRIME 


tricity, there are relationships. There are patterns, harmonics, 
conformations. 

Datastreams are numbers, huge numbers of huge numbers, 
huger numbers of lesser numbers, a virtual infinity 
of bits. To attempt to visualize even part of the stream is 
beyond the capacity of any general-purpose system ever 
evolved. Smell and taste are different. Feel is different. The 
sense of harmony is different. All are acutely sensitive to 
pattern, and because there are higher-process analogues 
of these patterns, it is possible for some people to savor 
numbers. Calculating prodigiesgeniuses, and more frequently 
idiots savantsoccur naturally in every age; to 
create one purposely requires a prodigious grasp of the 
peculiar neurology of the numerically gifted. So far the 
task had been accomplished just once. 

Sparta didnt even know it. Sparta, like natural calculators, 
had a particular fascination and facility with prime 
numbers; unlike natural calculators, her right brain housed 
artificial neural structures that vastly expanded the range 
and size of the primes she could manipulate, structures of 
which she was yet unaware, even as she used them. It was 
not wholly by coincidence that data encryption systems 
often depend on keys that are large primes. 

Sitting quietly in the Denver information booth, watching 
the flatscreen, Sparta appeared to be studying the 
dance of the alphanumerics; the blurring symbols on the 
screen had no significance, however, for she was questing 
far beyond the interface, following the sharp tang of a 
familiar key through the communication networks like a 
salmon following the trace of its home brook through the 
labyrinth of oceanexcept that Sparta was immobile, and 
the informational ocean surged through her mind. Sitting 
still, she swam ever closer to home. 

45 


VENUS PRIME 


The budgets of the most secret agencies of government 
are not labeled in public print but are broken up and scattered 
through the budgets of many other agencies, disguised 
as insignificant line items, with the funds 
frequently channeled through transactions with cooperative 
contractors and commercial bankers. Occasionally the 
ploy backfiresas when a legate whose colleagues have 
kept him in the dark inquires loudly and publicly why the 
defense forces, for example, have paid millions for helicopter 
replacement parts and have only a handful of 
cheap nuts and bolts to show for itbut generally only a 
few people know or care what the money is really for, or 
where it really goes. 

The money is electronic, of course, spreadsheet numbers 
of constantly changing magnitude, transactions 
tagged in electronic code. Sparta was tracking the routes 
of one code in particular. Sliding into the memory of the 
First Tradesmens Bank of Manhattan through a coded trap 
door, Spartas awareness uncovered the golden thread she 
had been seeking. 

The people who had created her had not imagined the 
playful uses to which she would put her talents. 

Here in the information booth it was a simple matter 
to transfer a modest and reasonable amount, a few hundreds 
of thousands, from an insignificant line item in her 
targets budget (office maintenance and custodial) to a 
real contractor, to that contractors real subcontractor, to 
a well-known phony consultant firm, and now into a cutout 
loop through the black side of another agencywho 
would not miss what they had held for only a microsecond 
flip-flop, but would stop any inquiries coldand finally 
through a random cascade of addresses to another, much 
smaller New York institution, the Great Hook Savings and 

46 


VENUS PRIME 


Loan, which appealed to her for the naivete of its pseudo-
prime key and whose Manhattan branch thus acquired a 
new customer without even knowing ita young woman 
whose name was . . . 

She needed a name, fast, not her real name, not Linda, 
not L. N., but Ellen, and now a last name, Ellen, Ellen ... 
before the flatscreen dumped her she keyed in the first 
word that popped into her mind. Her name was Ellen Troy. 

Sparta needed the information booth only a few seconds 
longer, to reserve a seat for Ellen Troy on the next 
hypersonic ramjet flight from Denver to JFK. The voucher 
and gate pass slid soundlessly from the printer slot. She 
withdrew her newly programmed fingernail PIN spines 
from the sliverport. 

Her flight was not until morning. She would walk to 
the hive in Terminal Building Five, take a cubicle for the 
rest of the night, wash up, clean her clothes, get some rest. 
It would have been nice to shop for new clothes, but with 
the economy as it was, robots doing all the technical stuff 
and people competing for the rest, the shops in heavily 
used public places were overcrowded with sales people on 
duty around the clock. She couldnt buy from machines 
just yet; she would have to wait until she had managed 
to secure an ID sliver of her own before she could buy 
anything, right out in public. 

She was confident that the Great Hook Savings and 
Loan would be more than happy to replace the sliver Ellen 
Troy had lost. Their records would show that Miss Troy 
had been a loyal customer for the past three years. 

47 


IV 


The plan seemed a good one at first. She wanted to find 
her parents, or find out what had become of them. Meanwhile 
she had to survive. She needed an occupation that 
would help her do both, and before long she found one. 

The old United Nations buildings on Manhattans East 
River now housed the U.N.s successor, the Council of 
Worlds. Beside Earth, the worlds in question were the 
orbiting space stations and colonized moons and planets 
of the inner solar system, dominated by shifting coalitions 
of Earthly nations. The historic U.N. treaties against 
territorial claims in space were still honored in letter, if 
not in spirit; like Earths open oceans, space knew no 
borders, but its resources went to those who could exploit 
them. 

Among the Council of Worlds largest bureaucracies 
was, therefore, the Board of Space Control, formulating 
and enforcing safety regulations, shipping rates and 
schedules, customs and passport restrictions, and inter


48 


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planetary treaties and law. The Space Board had huge 
data banks, sophisticated forensic laboratories, its own 
gleaming-white fast ships emblazoned with a diagonal 
blue band and gold star, and an elite corps of trained and 
motivated inspectors. 

The Space Board also employed thousands of nonelite
technicians and clerks and administratorsscattered 
among offices on every space station and inhabited body 
of the solar system but particularly concentrated at Earth 
Central, near the Council of Worlds headquarters in Manhattan. 


Central as it was on the interplanetary scale, the 
Boards administrative functions were widely dispersed 
throughout the city. Twenty-one-year-old Ellen Troy 
had no difficulty getting a job with the Space Board, for 
her credentials were excellentelectronic transcripts from 
her Queens high school and the Flushing Meadow College 
of Business, from which she had graduated at age twenty, 
showed that she had excellent word-and data-processing 
skills. References from the employer she had worked for 
the year after her graduation, the now unfortunately defunct 
Manhattan Air Rights Development Corporation, 
showed that she had been a model employee. Ellen breezed 
through the Space Boards qualifying exam and found 
herself placed exactly where she wanted to be, with access 
to the largest interlinked computer network in the solar 
system, protected in her anonymity by a new name and a 
new appearance (Spartas hair was no longer brown, her 
face was no longer gaunt in its beauty, her teeth were no 
longer hidden by perpetually closed thin lips; instead her 
full lips were always slightly parted), and further camouflaged 
by an enormous bureaucracy in which she figured 
only as another cipher. 

49 


VENUS PRIME 


Spartas plan was at once bold and cautious, simple 
and intricate. She would learn what she could from the 
Boards vast stores of information. Later, whatever effort 
it took, she would earn the badge of a Space Board inspector; 
having achieved that, she would have gained 
the freedom to act. . . . 

In this plan there were only a few minor hitches. She 
knew now that sometime during her eighteenth year, the 
first of the three years she could not recall, she had been 
altered significantly, beyond what was obviousaltered, 
that is, beyond her enhanced senses of taste, smell, hearing 
and sight, beyond even the PIN spines under her fingers, 
the polymer inserts which were already coming into fashion 
among the more avant-garde rich. (She did what she 
could to conceal hers, for Ellen Troy was a daughter of 
the working class.) 

These alterations had left their marks inside her body, 
some of which showed up on routine medical scans. She 
devised a cover story, not too difficult a task . . . but 
she further had to learn to control certain extraordinary 
abilities, some of them obvious, some unexpected, and 
some that manifested themselves at inconvenient moments. 
For the most part she no longer tasted what she 
did not want to taste, heard what she did not want to 
hear, saw what she did not want to seeat least while 
she was consciousbut now and then strange sensations 
overcame her, and she felt urgencies she could not fully 
bring to awareness. 

Meanwhile, life and work went on; a year passed, then 
two. On a hot and humid August morning Sparta bent 
close over the papers on her desk, hardcopies of documents 
and articles she had pored over many times before, 
none of them secret, all easily available to the public, doc


50 


VENUS PRIME 


umenting the innocent beginnings of the SPARTA project. 
One of them began: 

A PROPOSAL submitted to the United States Office 
of Education for a demonstration project in the 
development of multiple intelligences. 

Introduction 

It has frequently been suggested that the brain 
of the average human being has unrealized potential 
for growth and learningpotential which is unrealized, 
that is, in all but a tiny, haphazard 
minority of individuals we recognize as geniuses. 
From time to time educational programs have been 
suggested which would have as their goal the maximization 
of this unused intellectual capacity in the 
developing child. At no time before the present, 
however, have actual methods of stimulating intellectual 
growth been precisely identifiable, much less 
subject to conscious control and application. Claims 
to the contrary have proven at worst false, at best 
difficult to verify. 

Moreover, the mistaken view persists that intelligence 
is a single, quantifiable trait, a heritable or 
even a genetic traita view perpetuated by the continued 
widespread use of long-discredited Intelligence 
Quotient (IQ) tests by schools and other 
institutions. This continued use can only be understood 
as an attempt by administrators to find a convenient 
(and most probably a self-fulfilling) 
predictor upon which to base the allocation of resources 
perceived as scarce. The continued use of 
the IQ has had a chilling effect on the testing of 
alternate theories. 

51 


VENUS PRIME 

The authors of this proposal intend to demonstrate 
that there are no unidimensional geniuses, 
that each individual human being possesses many 
intelligences, and that several, perhaps all, of these 
intelligences may be nurtured and encouraged to 
grow by simple, mindful intervention on the part 
of appropriately trained teachers and educational 
technicians. . . . 

Shaved of its academic fuzz, this documenta draft, 
rejected by the government to which it had been submitted, 
and dating from some years before Sparta herself had 
been bornwas a fair statement of what Spartas parents 
had set out to do. 

They were cognitive scientists, Hungarian immigrants 
with a special interest in human development. In their 
view an IQ number, lacking inherent meaning, was a label 
that blessed some, damned many, and gave easy comfort 
to racists. Most pernicious was the peculiar notion that 
some mysterious something, reified as IQ, was not only 
heritable but fixed, that not even the most beneficial intervention 
in the growth of the child could increase the 
quantity of this magical mental substance, at least not 
more than a few insignificant percentage points. 

Spartas parents intended to prove the opposite. But 
despite their revolutionary rhetoric, the public and the 
granting agencies perceived something old-fashioned 
about their up-by-your-bootstraps ideas, and it was several 
years before support materialized, in the form of a 
modest grant from an anonymous donor. Their first subject, 
as their convictions demanded, was their own young 
daughter. Her name was still Linda, then. 

Not long after, New York State and then the Ford 

52 


VENUS PRIME 


Foundation chipped in grants of their own. The SPARTA 
project got its acronymous name, plus a small staff and 
several new students. After it had been officially underway 
for two years, the Science section of the New York Times 
carried a notice: 

Bullish on Fox, Bearish on Hedgehog 

Psychologists at the New School for Social Research 
hope to resolve an argument that goes back 
at least as far as the 8th century B.C., when the 
Greek poet Archilochus made the enigmatic statement, 
The fox knows many things, but the 
hedgehog knows one big thing. In recent times 
the poets remark has symbolized the debate between 
those who think intelligences are many 
linguistic, bodily, mathematical, social, and so 
forthand those who believe intelligence comes as 
a lump sum, symbolized by an IQ score, which is 
resistant to change and can probably be blamed 
on ones genes. 

Now comes new evidence from the New 
School, favoring the fox. . . . 

Other articles and stories, in a widening circle of media, 
glamorized the SPARTA project. The little girl who was its 
first and for a while its only subject became a stara mysterious 
star, whose parents insisted she be kept out of public 
view; there were no pictures of herself among the chips 
and clippings on Ellen Troys desk. Then at last the U.S. 
territorial government showed interest in the project. . . . 

Ellen, youre hiding something. 
Sparta looked up at the broad brown face in front of 
her. The big woman wasnt smiling, exactly, but her ac


53 


VENUS PRIME 


cusatory expression hid mischief. What are you talking 
about, boss? Sparta asked. 

The woman settled her considerable weight into the 
chair facing Spartas desk, Ellen Troys desk. Taking first 
things first, honey, you applied to get out from under my 
thumb, again. You think Sister Arlene doesnt know what 
goes on in her own department? 

Sparta shook her head once, sharply. Im not hiding 
anything. Ive been trying to get out from behind this desk 
for the past two years. As often as the regs let me apply. 
The desk in question was one of fifty just like it in the 
information-processing department of the Board of Space 
Controls Investigatory Services Division, housed in a pink 
brick and blue glass building overlooking Manhattans 
Union Square. 

The boss, Arlene Diaz, was the IP department manager. 
You and me both know, anybodys had the surgery 
youve had doesnt stand a prayer of getting out of the 
office and onto the beat. So how come you keep doin it, 
Ellen? Tryin to get out there? 

Because I keep hoping somebody upstairs has some 
common sense, thats why. I want to be judged by what I 
can do, Arlene. Not by whats on my scans. 

Arlene sighed heavily. Truth is, field supervisors are 
mighty partial to perfect physical specimens. 

Theres nothing wrong with me, Arlene. She let the 
color come into her cheeks. When I was sixteen some 
drunk squashed me and my scooter against a light pole. 
Okay, the scooter was a total loss. But me they patched 
upits all on file for anybody who wants to look. 

You got to admit it was a pretty weird fix, honey. All 
those lumps and wires and hollow places . . . Arlene 
paused. Im sorry. You wouldnt know it, but its policy 

54 


VENUS PRIME 


that when a person wants to transfer, their supervisor sits 
on the review panel. Ive pondered your scans, dear. More 
than a couple of times. 

The docs who patched me up did the best they could. 
Sparta seemed embarrassed, as if she were apologizing for 
them. They were local talent. 

They did fine, Arlene said. Mayo Clinic it wasnt, 
but what they did works. 

You think soSparta studied her boss from under 
arched brows, and became suspiciouswhat do the others 
on the panel think? 

When Arlene didnt say anything, Sparta smiled. 
Faker, she said. Youre the one whos hiding something. 


Arlene grinned back at her. Congratulations, honey. 
Were gonna miss you around here. 

It wasnt quite that easy. 

There were the physicals to do all over again, the lies 
to rehearse and keep straight, the phony electronic documents 
to plant instantly, backing up the new stories. 

And then the work. The six-month basic training for a 
Space Board Investigator was as rigorous as any astronauts. 
Sparta was smart, quick, coordinated, and she 
could store far more knowledge than the academys instructors 
had to give (a capacity she did not reveal), but 
she was not physically strong, and some of the things that 
had been done to her for reasons she was still trying to 
understand had left her highly sensitive to pain and vulnerable 
to fatigue. It was clear from day one that Sparta 
was in danger of washing out. 

The investigator-trainees did not live in barracks; the 
Space Board regarded them as adults who would show up 

55 


VENUS PRIME 


for classes if they wanted to and meanwhile keep their 
noses out of trouble, being responsible for themselves. 
Sparta reported daily to the training divisions facilities in 
the New Jersey marshes and each night boarded the magneplane 
back to Manhattan, wondering if she would have 
the courage to return the next morning. It was a long ride, 
not long in minutes so much as in the repeated lesson of 
what sort of world she lived in. Sweet Manhattan was a 
jewel nestled in a swamp, cinched in by seaweed and algae 
farms that filled the once flowing rivers that made it an 
island, ringed by hideous shacks and crumbled slums beyond 
the river shores, wholly walled about by smoking 
refineries that transformed human waste and garbage into 
hydrocarbons and salvageable metals. 

She barely survived early cut on the shock testselectrical, 
thermal, chemical, light, noise, high gees on the 
centrifuge, spatial disorientation in the bird cageextreme 
stresses that consumed all her energy in her silent, secret 
defense of her delicate neural structures. She struggled 
through the obstacle courses, the heavy weapons courses, 
the team contact sports where the brute strength of the 
other players often overwhelmed her grace and quickness. 
Exhausted, bruised, her muscles afire and her nerves ragged, 
she would stumble into the magneplane, glide 
smoothly through the fires and smoke of Purgatory, arrive 
late at her NoHo home and climb into her bed in the 
condo-apt she shared with three strangers she rarely saw. 

Her loneliness and discouragement would get the better 
of her sometimes, and then she would cry herself to sleep 
wondering why she was doing it, how long she could keep 
doing it. The second question was dependent on the first. 
If she wavered in her belief that earning credentials as a 
Space Board investigator would give her the access, the 

56 


VENUS PRIME 


freedom she needed to know what she needed to, her resolve 
would quickly crumble. 

At night there were the dreams. In a year she had not 
found a sure way to control them. They would begin innocently 
enough with some fragment of the distant past, 
her mothers faceor with the immediate past, some boy 
shed met that very day, or a classroom lecture shed not 
been prepared for, or been overprepared forand then 
theyd segue into the dark corridors of an endless building, 
a vague goal to be achieved if only she could find her way 
through the maze, the sense that her friends were with her 
but that she was utterly alone, that it made no difference 
whether or not she found what she needed but that if she 
didnt she would dieand then the colored lights came 
wheeling in, gently, from the edges, and the riot of smells 
overcame her. 

Trainees had Sundays off. Sparta habitually spent hers 
walking Manhattan, from one side to the other, from the 
Battery to the Bronx, even in rain, snow, sleet, and wind. 
Although she was not strong, she was tough. Twenty-five 
miles in a day was not unusual for her. She walked to free 
her mind of focused thought, of the need to detect and 
plan and store data. Periodic mental rest was essential to 
avoid overload and breakdown. 

As originally conceived, the SPARTA project would 
never have used artificial brain implants. But when government 
agencies came in, the project changed; suddenly 
there were many more students, and new and larger facilities. 
Sparta was a teenager then, and it didnt seem 
strange at first that she saw less of her busy parents, and 
less of the others, most of them younger children, of whom 
only one or two were near her own age. One day her father 

57 


VENUS PRIME 


called her into his office and explained that she was to be 
sent away to Maryland for a series of government evaluations. 
He promised that he and her mother would visit as 
often as they could manage. Her father seemed under great 
strain; before she left the room he hugged her tightly, almost 
desperately, but he said nothing beyond a murmured 
Good-bye and We love you. A man with orange hair 
had been there in the office the entire time, watching. 

Of what came next her memory was still fragmented. 
Down in Maryland they had done far more than test her, 
but much of what they had done to her brain she had only 
recently deduced. What they had done to her body she 
was still learning. 

Sparta walked up the airy length of Park Avenue, toward 
the Grand Central Conservatory. It was early spring; 
the day was sunny and warm. Along the avenue the rows 
of decorative cherry trees were in full bloom, their fragrant 
pink petals drifting like perfumed confetti onto the glittering 
esplanade. Shining glass and steel, scrubbed concrete 
and polished granite rose all about her; helicopters 
threshed the lanes of air among their tops. Omnibuses and 
an occasional police cruiser whispered past on the smooth 
pavement. Magneplanes hummed in swift assurance along 
thin steel tracks held aloft on high pylons, while quaint 
old electric subway cars, painted in cheerful colors, clattered 
and screeched beneath Spartas feet, visible through 
blocks of glass paving. 

Early in the century, when the mid-Atlantic states had 
been merged for administrative convenience, Manhattan 
had been designated a federal demonstration center 
Skyscraper National Park, as cynics would have it. Although 
the island was ringed with stinking industries and 

58 


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fetid suburbs, the streets of the model city were crowded, 
and most people in the crowd were sleek, colorfully and 
expensively dressed, happy-faced. In federal demonstration 
centers poverty was a crime, punishable by resettlement. 


Sparta was not among the cheerful. Pass/fail in her 
training program was two months away. After that the 
physical stress would lift a bit and the academic side 
would take over, but just now she trembled on the brink 
of quitting. Sixty exhausting days to go. At this moment 
she felt she couldnt make it. 

As she approached the formal gardens of the 42nd 
Street mall she noticed a man following her. She wondered 
how long hed been at it; shed been deliberately tuned 
out, walking in a semi-trance, or she would have seen him 
instantly. He could be someone in the training division 
checking up on her. He could be someone else. 

She roused herself to maximum alertness. Stopping at 
a flower stand, she raised a bunch of yellow daffodils to 
her nose. The flowers had no perfume, but their heady 
vegetable odor exploded in her brain. She peered through 
them, closing one eye, her macrozoom gaze zeroing in . . . 

He was young, with thick auburn hair chopped in the 
fashion of the day, and he wore a stylish, shiny black 
polymer jacket. He was a handsome young man of obvious 
Chinese and Black Irish ancestry, with high cheekbones, 
soft dark eyes, and a sprinkle of freckles; at present he 
seemed oddly uncomfortable and uncertain. 

As soon as shed stopped at the flower stand he had 
hesitated, and for a moment she thought he was going 
to come forward, say something. Instead he turned and 
pretended to study a display in the nearest store win


59 


VENUS PRIME 


dow. To his evident dismay, it was a clothing store displaying 
expensive womens underwear. When he realized 
what he was looking at, his skin brightened under his 
freckles. 

She had identified him instantly, although the last time 
shed seen him hed looked quite different; hed only been 
sixteen years old. Hed had even more freckles then, and 
his crewcut hair had been redder. His name was Blake 
Redfield. He was a year younger than she was, and he was 
the closest to her age of all the other students in the original 
SPARTA. 

But she could see that he wasnt yet sure he recognized 
her. Unlike the girl she reminded him of, whose hair had 
been long and brown, Ellen Troy was a dishwater blond; 
she wore her unremarkable medium light hair in a practical 
cut, straight and short. Her eyes were blue and her 
lips were full. But despite these superficial alterations, Ellens 
facial bone structure had not been altered, could not 
have been safely altered, so to a great extent Ellen still 
resembled the girl whose name had been Linda. 

Luckily Blake Redfield was as bashful as ever, too shy 
to walk up to a strange woman on the street. 

Sparta handed the flower vendor her sliver, took the 
daffodils, and walked on. She tuned her hearing to Blakes 
footsteps, selectively amplifying the distinctive click, click 
of his heels from the hundreds of other slaps and taps and 
shuffles that rolled around her. It was essential that she 
lose him, but in a way that kept him from realizing hed 
been seen. Strolling as aimlessly as before, she passed under 
the arches of the Grand Central Conservatory. 

The last time shed visited the conservatory the scenery 
was sand and rocks and spiny things, with twisted desert 
peaks rising in the distance, but the theme this month was 

60 


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tropical. On every side palms and hardwoods reached for 
the lofty ceiling and lacy draperies of vines and orchids 
descended. Eastman Kodaks panoramic hologram extended 
the jungle view to a distant landscape of mist and 
waterfalls. 

There were a lot of people in the conservatory, but 
most of them were on the mezzanine looking into the forest 
galleries from above, or strolling the broad paths that 
surrounded the central forest. She paused, then walked 
casually into the trees. The thick mat of leaves on the floor 
muffled the hoots of monkeys and the screeches of parrots 
overhead. Shed gone a few steps into the green shadows 
and then, even without amplification, she could plainly 
hear Blakes footsteps on the path behind her. 

Another casual turn here, into a narrow path behind a 
screen of vines as fat and tangled as the tentacles of a 
giant squid . . . Blakes footsteps hesitated, but he made the 
turn and stayed on her trail. 

Another turn, behind glossy dark leaves as big as the 
elephant ears they were named for, but stiffer, like dead, 
dried leather. Yet another turn among the knees of a 
sprawling banyan, its roots like veils of pale wood as 
smooth and thin as travertine stone. Suddenly she came 
upon the awesome waterfall, which descended in soundless 
torrents into the glistening gorge below. Behind her, 
Blake was still comingbut hesitantly now. 

The true thunder of the waterfall was muted, but realistic 
mist drifted from sprinklers high in the walls, invisible 
behind the holographic projection. A vista point 
with a rustic bamboo railing, presently deserted, was 
perched on the edge of the vast, illusory gorge into which 
the water careened. 

Sparta crouched against a tree trunk, wondering what 

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to do. She had hoped to leave Blake Redfield behind her 
in the movie-set rain forest, but he was not to be shaken so 
easily. She took the risk of losing track of his whereabouts 
in order to tune her hearing to the high-frequency hum of 
the Kodak holograms projection system. The depth-offocus 
circuitry was mounted somewhere on the wall a few 
feet in front of her. The shape of the electric pulses gave her 
a crude approximation of its program, but she had no physical 
access to the control center 

then an unsettling sensation came over her, spreading 
from her midsection up through her chest to her arms. 
Her belly began to burn. The sensation was strange and 
familiar at the same time. When studying her own scans, 
months ago, she had seen the sheetlike structures under 
her diaphragm and suspected she knew what they were, 
powerful polymer batteries, but she could not remember 
how to utilize them, or even what they were for. Suddenly, 
responding to her unconscious demand, that memory returned. 


She stretched out her arms and hands and curved them 
into the arc of a microwave-length antenna. Her facial 
mask set in concentration. Data cascaded through her 
frontal lobes; she beamed a single burst of instructions 
into the heart of the projection control processor. 

The hologram leaped forward. Tons of water descended 
upon her 

and she was staring at the old railroad stations polished 
marble wall. She lowered her arms and relaxed her 
trance. She walked to the fake bamboo railing of the vista 
point, which stood on the floor less than three feet from 
the wall. Above her an array of hologram projectors twinkled 
yellow, cyan, and magenta. She turned back and 
looked at the jungle trees. She could see nothing of the 

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animated hologram from inside the projection, but if her 
beamed instructions had worked, the apparent edge of that 
deep gorge should now be at the end of the path, just in 
front of the trees. . . . 

Blake emerged from the jungle, took two steps toward 
her and stopped, staring past her head at torrents of cascading 
water. His eyes followed the water down into the 
gorge. 

Her back was to the railing. In a step she could have 
reached out and touched his handsome, friendly, freckled 
face. A crumpled chewing gum pack lay on the floor between 
them, where he saw canyons of mist. The light on 
him was just that which the conservatorys skylights and 
the projected whitewater of the hologram spilled on him. 
There was nothing at all between them except the chewing 
gum pack and that insubstantial light. 

She was reminded how much she had liked him, once, 
although at that age she wasnt much interested in 
younger kidsshe was a sophisticated seventeen and he 
was only a gawky sixteen, after alland she probably 
hadnt been much good at communicating simple feelings 
anyway. 

Now, simply by knowing that she existed, he could 
destroy her. Blake ran a hand through his auburn hair, 
then turned away, bemused, into the jungle. Sparta ducked 
under the rail. She walked along the smooth marble wall, 
emerged from behind the waterfall, and disappeared into 
a crowded passage that led toward Madison Avenue. 

Blake Redfield paused in the trees and looked back at 
the tumbling water. He was a product of the early 
SPARTA, the pure SPARTA, before it had been disbanded. 
There had been no tinkering with his physical nature, only 

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with the conditions of his education. He had no zoom-lens 
eyes or tunable ears, no enhanced RAM in his skull or PIN 
spines under his fingernails, no batteries in his belly or 
antennas wrapped around his bones. 

But he was multiply intelligent too, bright enough to 
have recognized Linda immediately, bright enough to have 
realized immediately that she did not wish to be recognized. 
And he was curious enough to wonder why. After 
all, hed half-suspected she was dead. . . . 

So hed followed her until she disappeared. He wasnt 
quite sure how shed managed that, but he knew it was 
deliberate. 

He had long wondered what became of her. Now he 
wondered just how hard it would be to find out. 

64 


PART TWO 

THE SEVEN PILLARS 
OF WISDOM 


65 


V 


In the last part of the 21st century the sky had grown ever 
more crowded, from ground level right on up into space, 
until little Earth was ringed like giant Saturnwith machines 
and vehicles, not with innocent snowballs. There 
were bright power stations collecting sunlight and beaming 
microwaves to antenna farms in Arabia and Mongolia 
and Angola and Brazil. There were refineries, using sunlight 
to smelt metal from moon sand and captured asteroids, 
distilling hydrocarbons from carbonaceous 
chondrites and mining diamonds from meteoroids. There 
were factories that used these materials to cast the perfect 
ball bearing, to brew the perfect antibiotic, to extrude the 
perfect polymer. There were luxury terminals to serve the 
great interplanetary liners and entertain their wealthy passengers, 
and there were orbiting dockyards for the working 
freighters. There were a dozen shipyards, two dozen scientific 
stations, a hundred weather satellites, five hundred 
communications satellites, a thousand spy-eyes twinkling 

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VENUS PRIME 


among the night stars, measuring the Earth, seeking out 
the last of its resources, gauging the flow of its precious 
and dwindling fresh water, watching and listening to the 
constantly shifting alliances, the occasional flare-ups of 
battle on the surface of the world belowlike the vicious 
tank and helicopter engagement presently raging in south 
central Asia. By intricate international treaty, all weapons 
with a range of over one kilometer were barred from space, 
including rockets, railguns, beam projectors, every sort of 
directed-energy device, and even exploding satellites, 
whose debris would spread unchecked, but excluding satellites 
themselves. So another few thousand objects orbiting 
the Earth were essentially inert, little more than bags 
of moon rocks, mischievous threats by one power bloc 
against another to destroy orbiting facilities by simple collision, 
although implicit was the ability to destroy whole 
cities on Earth by guided artificial meteorite. 

Yet most of the whirling planet, wondrously, maintained 
an awkward peace. The North Continental Treaty 
Alliance, consisting of the Russians, Europeans, Canadians, 
and Americans, usually called the Euro-Americans, 
had been on good terms for many years with the Azure 
Dragon Mutual Prosperity Sphere, usually known as the 
Nippon-Sino-Arabs. Together the industrial conglomerates 
had cooperated to build stations on or around the inner 
planets and in the Mainbelt. The Latin-Africans and the 
Indo-Asians had stations of their own, and had founded 
tenuous settlements on two of Jupiters moons. The lure 
of solar system colonization had both sharpened and, paradoxically, 
attenuated Earthly rivalries: the rivalry was 
real, but no group wanted to risk its lines of communication. 


Space travel had never been inexpensive, but early in 

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the century an economic watershed had been crossed, like 
a saddle in low hills that nevertheless marks a continental 
divide. Nuclear technology moved into its most appropriate 
sphere, outer space; the principles were sufficiently 
simple and the techniques sufficiently easy to master that 
private companies could afford to enter the interplanetary 
shipping market. With the shippers came the yards, the 
drydocks, the outfitters. 

The Falaron shipyards, one of the originals, orbited 
Earth two hundred and fifty miles up. Presently the only 
vessel in the yards was an old atomic freighter, getting an 
overhaul and a face lifta new reactor core, new main 
engine nozzles, refurbished life-support systems, new 
paint inside and out. When all the work was done the ship 
was to be recommissioned and given a new, rather grand, 
name: Star Queen. 

The huge atomic engines had been mounted and tested. 
Spacesuited workers wielding plasma torches were fitting 
new holds, big cylinders that fastened to the thin central 
shaft of the ship below the spherical crew module. 

The flicker and glare of the torches cast planes of 
shadow through the windows of the outfitters office. In 
the odd light young Nikos Pavlakiss bristling mustache 
sprouted horns of black shadow, rendering his appearance 
demonic. Curse you for a liar and a thief, Dimitrios. Repeatedly 
you assured us everything was on schedule, 
everything was under control. No problem, no problem, 
you told me! Now you say we will be a month late unless 
I am prepared to bear the cost of overtime! 

My boy, I am terribly sorry, but we are helpless in the 
hands of the workers consortium. Dimitrios spread his 
own hands to demonstrate helplessness, although it was 
hard to find remorse on his broad, wrinkled face. You 

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VENUS PRIME 


cannot expect me to absorb the entire cost of the extortion 
by myself. 

How much are you getting back from them? Ten percent? 
Fifteen? What is your commission for helping to rob 
your friends and relatives? 

How do you find the hardness to say such things to 
me, Nikos? 

Easily, old thief. 

I have dandled you on my knee as if you were my 
own godson! the old man objected. 
Dimitrios, I have known you for what you were since 
I was ten years old. I am not blind, like my father. 

Your father is hardly blind. Do not doubt that I will 
report these slanders to him. Perhaps you had better 
leavebefore I lose my patience and dandle you into the 
vacuum. 

Ill wait while you make the call, Dimitrios. I would 
like to hear what you have to say to him. 

You think I wont? Dimitrios shouted, his face darkening. 
But he made no move to reach for the radiolink. A 
magnificent scowl gathered on his brow, worthy of Pan. 
My hair is gray, my son. Your hair is brown. For forty 
years I have . . . 

Other shipyards hold to their contracts, Pavlakis impatiently 
interrupted. Why is my fathers own cousin an 
incompetent? Or is it more than mere incompetence? 

Dimitrios stopped emoting. His face froze. There is 
more to business than what is written in contracts, little 
Nikos. 

Dimitrios, you are rightyou are an old man, and the 
world has changed. These days the Pavlakis family runs a 
shipping line. We are no longer smugglers. We are not 
pirates. 

70 


VENUS PRIME 


You insult your own fa 

We stand to make more money from this contract 
with Ishtar Mining Corporation than you have dreamed of 
in all your years of petty larceny, Pavlakis shouted angrily. 
But the Star Queen must be ready on time. 

What hung in the close artificial air between them, 
known to them both but unmentionable, was the desperate 
situation of the once powerful Pavlakis Lines, reduced 
from the four interplanetary freighters it had owned to the 
single, aging vessel now in the yards. Dimitrios had intimated 
that he had creative solutions to such problems, but 
young Pavlakis would not hear of them. 

Instruct me, young master, the old man said poisonously, 
his voice trembling. How does one, in this new 
world of yours, persuade workers to finish their jobs without 
the inducement of their accustomed overtime? 

Its too late, isnt it? Youve seen to that. Pavlakis 
drifted to the window and watched the flashing of the 
plasma torches. He spoke without facing the old man. 
Very well, keep them at it, and meanwhile take as many 
bribes as you can, gray-hair. It will be the last job you do 
for us. And who else will deal with you then? 

Dimitrios thrust his chin up, dismissing him. 

Nikos Pavlakis took a convenient shuttle to London 
that same afternoon. He sat cursing himself for losing his 
temper. As the craft descended, screaming through the 
atmosphere toward Heathrow, Pavlakis kept a string of 
amber worry beads moving across his knuckles. He was 
not at all certain his father would support him against 
Dimitrios; the two cousins went back a long way, and 
Nikos did not even want to think about what they might 
have gotten up to together in the early, loosely regulated 

71 


VENUS PRIME 


days of commercial space shipping. Perhaps his father 
could not disentangle himself from Dimitrios if he wanted 
to. All that would change when Nikos took over the firm, 
of course . . . if the firm did not collapse before it happened. 
Meanwhile, no one must know the true state of the 
Companys affairs, or everything would collapse immediately. 


The worry beads clicked as Nikos muttered a prayer 
that his father would enjoy a long life. In retirement. 

It had been a mistake to confront Dimitrios before Pavlakis 
was sure of his own position, but there could be no 
backing down now. He would have to put people he could 
trust on the site to see to the completion of the work. 
Andthis was a more delicate matterhe would have to 
do what he could about extending the launch deadline. 

Freighters, blessedly, did not leave for the planets every 
month; it was not a simple matter to find room for a shipment 
as massive as this consignment of robots from the 
Ishtar Mining Corporation. A delay in Star Queens departure 
for Venus was not the most auspicious beginning 
to a new contract, but with luck it would not be fatal. 
Perhaps he could arrange an informal discussion with 
Sondra Sylvester, the Ishtar Mining Corporations chief 
executive, before talking the situation over with his father. 

Rehearsing his arguments, Pavlakis descended toward 
London. 

At the same moment Mrs. Sondra Sylvester was flying 
through the dark overcast sky west of London in a Rolls-
Royce executive helicopter, accompanied by a ruddy, 
tweedy fellow, Arthur Gordon by name, who having failed 
to press a cup of Scotch whiskey upon her was helping 

72 


VENUS PRIME 


himself from a Sterling Silver decanter from the recessed 
bulkhead bar. Gordon was head of Defence Manufactures 
at Rolls-Royce, and he was much taken with his tall, dark-
eyed passenger in her elegant black silks and boots. His 
helicopter flew itself, with just the two of them in it, toward 
the army proving grounds on the Salisbury Plain. 

Lucky for us the army were eager to help, Gordon 
said expansively. Frankly your machine is of great interest 
to themtheyve been pestering us for details ever 
since we undertook development. Havent given them 
anything proprietary, of course, Gordon said, fixing her 
with a round brown eye over the lip of the silver cup. 
And theyve declined to go all official on us, so theres 
been no unpleasantness. 

I cant imagine the army is planning maneuvers on 
the surface of Venus, Sylvester remarked. 

Bless me, neither can I, ha ha. Gordon took another 
sip of the whiskey. But I imagine theyre thinking that a 
machine which can operate in that sort of hell can easily 
do so in the mundane terrestrial variety as well. 

Two days earlier Sylvester had arrived at the plant to 
inspect the new machines, designed to Ishtar Mining Corporations 
specifications and virtually handmade by Rolls-
Royce. They were lined up at attention, waiting for her on 
the spotless factory floor, six of them squatting like immense 
horned and winged beetles. Sylvester had peered at 
each in turn, looking at her slim reflection in their polished 
titanium-alloy skins, while Gordon and his managers 
stood by beaming. Sylvester had turned to the men and 
briskly announced that before taking delivery she wished 
to see one of the robots in action. See for herself. No use 
hauling all that mass to Venus if it wouldnt do the job. 

73 


VENUS PRIME 


The Rolls-Royce people had traded shrewd glances and 
confident smiles. No difficulty there. It had taken them 
very little time to make the arrangements. 

The helicopter banked and descended. Looks like 
were just about there, Gordon said. If you look out the 
window to your left you can catch a glimpse of Stonehenge. 
Without undue haste he screwed the top back on 
the silver flask of Scotch; instead of returning it to the bar 
he tucked it into the pocket of his overcoat. 

The helicopter came down on a wind-blasted moor, 
where a squad of soldiers in battle fatigues stood to attention, 
their camouflage trousers flapping about their knees 
like flags in a stiff breeze. Gordon and Sylvester dismounted 
from the helicopter. A group of officers approached. 

A lieutenant colonel, the highest ranking among them, 
stepped forward smartly and inclined his head in a sharp 
bow. Lieutenant Colonel Guy Witherspoon, madame, at 
your service. He pronounced it lef-tenant. 

She held out her hand and he shook it stiffly. She had 
the impression he would rather have saluted. The colonel 
turned and shook Gordons hand. Marvelous beast youve 
constructed here. Awfully good of you folks to let us look 
on. May I introduce my adjutant, Captain Reed? 

More handshakes. Are you making records of these 
tests, Colonel? Sylvester asked him. 

We had planned to do, Mrs. Sylvester. 

I have no objection to the armys knowing, as long 
as the information is kept strictly confidential. Ishtar is 
not the only mining company on Venus, Colonel Witherspoon. 


Quite. The Arabs and Ni . . . hmm, that is, the Japanese
need no help from us. 
Im glad you understand. Sylvester hooked a loose 

74 


VENUS PRIME 


strand of her long black hair away from her red lips. She 
had one of those faces that was impossible to placeCastilian? 
Magyar?and equally impossible to overlook or 
forget. She gave the belted young officer with the gingery 
mustache a warm smile. We are grateful for your cooperation, 
Colonel. Please proceed whenever youre ready. 

The colonels flat-fingered right hand sprang to the bill 
of his peaked cap, his urge to salute having proved irrepressible. 
He instantly turned away and barked orders at 
the waiting soldiers. 

The machine to be tested, one chosen at random by 
Sylvester from among the six on the factory floor, had 
been airlifted to the proving ground yesterday; it was now 
crouched at the edge of the raw earth landing pad. Six 
jointed legs held its belly only inches from the ground, but 
it was a fat beast, its back as high as a mans head. Two 
soldiers in white suits with hoods and faceplates stood at 
ease beside the machine; their overalls bore bright yellow 
radiation warning signs. Silhouetted against a sky of scudding 
black clouds, the robots diamond-studded eye ports 
and spiny electromagnetic sensors gave it the visage of a 
samurai crab or beetle. No wonder the very sight of it had 
fired the military imagination. 

Captain Reed, when youre ready. The whitesuited 
team double-timed to a truck plastered with yellow radiation 
warnings and opened its rear doors. They removed 
a three-foot metal cylinder, which they carried slowly and 
carefully to the robot, then proceeded to load it into the 
metal insects abdomen. 

Meanwhile Colonel Witherspoon led Sylvester and 
Gordon to a bank of seats erected on the lip of the landing 
pad, shielded from the blustery wind by plastic windscreens. 
The little observation post looked northward from 

75 


VENUS PRIME 


a low ridge into a wide, shallow valley. The ridge crests 
on both sides were pocked with pillboxes, and the ground 
around had been torn up by generations of horses hooves, 
gun-carriage wheels, cleated tires, tank treads, and countless 
booted feet. 

While they waited Sylvester once more declined Gordons 
urgings to sip from his flask. 

Within a few seconds the robot was fueled and critical. 
The soldiers stood well back. Witherspoon gave the signal 
and Captain Reed manipulated the sticks and knobs on the 
tiny control unit he held in his left hand. 

On the control units screen Reed could see what the 
robot saw, a view of the world that encompassed almost 
two hundred radial degrees but was oddly distorted, like 
an anamorphic lensa distortion programmed to compensate 
for the glassy atmosphere of Venus. 

Within moments, the carbon-carbon cooling fins on 
the back of the robot began to glowfirst dull orange, 
soon a bright cherry, finally a pearly white. The robot was 
powered by a high-temperature nuclear reactor cooled by 
liquid lithium. The extreme temperature of the cooling fins 
was excessive on Earth, but essential to create a sufficient 
gradient for radiative cooling in the eight-hundred degree 
surface temperatures on Venus. 

The smell of hot metal reached them across the flat, 
windy ground. Witherspoon turned to his guests. The robot 
is now fully powered, Mrs. Sylvester. 

She cocked her head. Possibly you have a demonstration 
of your own in mind, Colonel? 

He nodded. With your permission, maamfirst, unguided 
terrain navigation according to stored satellite 
maps. Objective, the crest of that far ridge. 

76 


VENUS PRIME 


Carry on, Sylvester said, her lips curving in an anticipatory 
smile. 

Witherspoon signaled his adjutant. With a chorus of 
whining motors the robot came to life. It raised its 
radiator-crested, antennaed head. Its chassis was of heat-
resistant molybdenum steel and titanium-alloy, mounted 
on six titanium-alloy legs for traversing terrain more 
wildly irregular than any that could be found in England 
or anywhere else on Earth. It moved its legs with intricate 
and startling rapidity, and as it scuttled forward, turned, 
then plunged down the hillside, a novel set of tracks was 
left in the earth of Salisbury Plain. 

The gigantic metal beast scurried along, raising a 
plume of dust behind it that blew strongly to the east, like 
a dust devil racing across the desert. 

For some forgotten exercise in siegecraft, moats had 
been dug across the breadth of the valley and berms piled 
behind them; the robot scurried into trenches and over the 
rises without pause, thundering straight up the valley like 
the entire Light Brigade at Balaklava. Now outcroppings 
of gray rock blocked it from its goal at valleys end. The 
robot ran around the sheerer cliffs, but where the slope 
was not too steep, it simply scrambled over them, scrabbling 
for purchase among cracks and ledges of stone. 
Within a few moments it had reached its objective, a row 
of concrete pillboxes on the scudding heights. There it 
stopped. 

Those emplacements were constructed in the 19th 
century, Mrs. Sylvester, Witherspoon informed her. Four 
feet of steel-reinforced concrete. The army have declared 
them surplus. 

I would be delighted for you to proceed with the sec


77 


VENUS PRIME 


ond part of your demonstration, Sylvester said. I only 
wish I had a better view. 

Captain Reed? Over here, if you will, Witherspoon 
called sharply. Reed brought his control unit close enough 
for Sylvester and the others to see the robots-eye view on 
its videoplate. And please take these, maam. Witherspoon 
handed her a pair of heavy binoculars, sheathed in 
sticky black plastic. 

The binoculars were electromagnetically stabilized oil-
lens viewers with selective radiation filtration and image 
enhancement. When she held them to her eyes she saw 
the robot so close and sharp she could have been standing 
ten feet away, although the perspective was markedly flat 
and graphic. There it crouched, a firebug, implacable, facing 
the squat bunker. 

The robot needed to do more than move about on the 
surface of Venus. It was a prospector and a miner; it was 
equipped to seek out and analyze mineral samples and, 
when it came upon ore of commercial value, to dig out 
and partially process the ore, preparing it for further processing 
by other machines and eventual transportation off-
planet. 

Go ahead, Colonel, Sylvester said. 

Witherspoon gave the signal; Reed manipulated the 
controls. The robots diamond-edge proboscis and claws 
slashed into the old bunker. Rust and gray dust flew up 
in a cloud. The robot ate into the bunker, ate around the 
walls, and when the roof collapsed on top of it, ate 
through that. It ate into the floor; slab-iron gun mounts 
and railings went into its maw, and rubber and steel and 
copper cables, and even the contents of the drains, choked 
with ancient grease. Soon there was nothing left of the 
bunker except a cavity in the hillside. The robot ceased 

78 


VENUS PRIME 


working. Behind itself it had deposited neat molten piles 
gleaming iron, ruddy copper, baked calcium. 
Excellent, said Sylvester, handing the binoculars to 
Witherspoon. Whats next? 
We thought possibly, remote control navigation? the 
officer suggested. 

Fine. Any problem if I do the controlling? she asked. 

Our pleasure. Witherspoon waved Reed over; he 
handed her the control unit. She studied it a moment, and 
Gordon leaned his head to hers and judiciously murmured 
something about forward and back, but by the time hed 
finished her fingers were already conjuring with the controls. 
The robot, a glowing dot in the naked-eye distance, 
scuttled backward, away from the ex-bunker. It turned and 
headed downslope, toward them. 

She deliberately tried to run it over one of the steep 
outcrops. At the very edge of the cliff, it refused to go. 
She would not countermand her order, so the robot took 
rudimentary thought and found a solution: it began to eat 
the outcrop away from under itself. Sylvester laughed to 
see it chew its own switchbacks to the bottom of the cliff. 

She ran it at full speed toward their position. It scrambled 
over the red ground, growing impressively larger as 
it came, leaving dust and wavering plumes of heat in its 
wake. 

She turned to Witherspoon, her eyes gleaming. Heat! 

He blinked at her fervor. Why, yes . . . we had thought 
He pointed to a long open bunker lying to the north, halfway 
up the ridge. Phosphorus, Witherspoon said. Close 
as we could come on short notice. If youll just steer the 
machine in there. 

She bent to the controls again. The robot swerved toward 
the open bunker. As it rushed close, the bunker sud


79 


VENUS PRIME 


denly erupted with a glaring white light. Coruscating 
fountains of whistling, hissing flame leaped high into the 
air. Without pausing, the robot charged into the midst of 
the inferno. There it stopped. 

It rested there, its own radiators gleaming through the 
fire. After several long seconds the pyre subsided. At Sylvesters 
gentle urging on the controls, the robot turned, 
quite unperturbed, and climbed straight up to the crest of 
the ridge. The soldiers stolidly kept their positions as the 
metal juggernaut rose above the ridge and bore down 
upon them. When the fiery beetle was a few yards away 
Sylvester lifted her hands from the control unit. The robot 
halted, radiant. 

Well done, Colonel, said Sylvester, handing the controls 
to Witherspoon. Again she hooked her long hair out 
of her eyes. Mr. Gordon, my congratulations to Rolls-
Royce. 

When Sylvester reached her hotel that evening the desk 
clerk informed her that a Mr. Nikos Pavlakis was waiting 
for her in the lounge. She marched straight in and surprised 
him hunched over the bar, his big shoulders straining 
the tight jacket of his suit, a tumbler of water and a 
shot glass of cloudy ouzo in front of him, deep into what 
looked like his second bowl of peanuts. She smiled when 
he mumbled something she took to be an invitation to 
have a drink. 

Im terribly sorry, Mr. Pavlakis, but Ive had a busy 
day and Im facing a full evening. If youd called earlier 
. . . 

Apologies, dear ladyhe choked as he downed a 
peanuton my way to Victoria, unexpected stopover. I 

80 


VENUS PRIME 


thought I would take a minute to catch you up. But some 
other time . . . 

So long as there is no delay in the schedule we discussed, 
you dont need to trouble yourself to report to me, 
she said. He had a very expressive face; she could have 
sworn that his mustache drooped, that his hair had just 
lost some of its curl. Her own expression hardened. 
Whats the problem, Mr. Pavlakis? 

There is no problem, I assure you. We will be ready 
on time. No problem. Some additional costs we must absorb 
. . . 

There is a problem, then. 

Our problem, dear lady. Not yours. He smiled, displaying 
fine white teeth, but his eyes were not smiling 
with them. 

Sylvester contemplated him. All right then. If in fact 
theres no problem please wire me tomorrow, here at the 
hotel, reconfirming your intention to begin loading cargo 
within two weeks, as agreed. When he nodded glumly 
she added, Until then, we wont need to talk again. 

Pavlakis muttered, Good night, dear lady, but she 
was already marching away. 

81 


VI 


London had not fared as well as Manhattan in the new 
century; it was as cramped and soot-blackened as ever, as 
severely Balkanized by differences of accent, skin color, 
class. In a moment ones square black taxicab passed from 
elegant brick townhouses and clever converted carriage 
houses on quaint mews into steaming, crumbling slums. 
The weather was as foul as ever, too, with gray-bellied 
clouds excreting thin drizzle and the occasional riverbottom 
fog bringing equal parts romance and respiratory disease. 
Nevertheless Sondra Sylvester liked the placeif not 
as much as she liked Paris or Florence, which were even 
less changed from what they had been, still rather better 
than she liked New York, which was no longer real. Living 
on Port Hesperus, Sylvester got her fill of artificial luxury 
ten months out of the year; when she took her annual trip 
to Earth she wanted the thing itself, the dirt with the polish, 
the noise with the music, the sour with the sweet. 

The taxi stopped in New Bond Street. Sylvester pushed 

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her sliver into the taxis meter slot, then opened the door 
and stepped to the damp pavement; while she waited for 
the machine to record the transaction she adjusted the line 
of her silk skirt and pulled her chinchilla coat closer 
against the clinging fog. The sliver rebounded and the 
cabs robot voice said, Much obliged, mum. 

She pushed through hungry-looking crowds on the 
sidewalk and walked briskly into the building, nodding to 
a rosy-cheeked young staffer at the door who smiled back 
in recognition. She entered the cramped auction room 
where the book and manuscript sales were held. Shed 
been here often, as recently as yesterday afternoon, when 
shed come to preview todays offerings. Up for sale were 
bits and pieces of two private collections, one of them 
from the estate of the recently deceased Lord Lancelot 
Quayle, the other anonymous. The two collections had 
been broken into a hundred lotsmost of them of little 
interest to Sylvester. 

Although she was early the room had begun to fill. She 
took a folding chair in the middle of the room and sat 
down to wait. It was like being early to church. There was 
a little transeptlike wing to her right, difficult to see into 
from her position; bidders who preferred anonymity often 
seated themselves there. The oldest booksellers, Maggs, 
Blackwells, Quaritch, the rest, were already at their traditional 
places around the table in front of the podium. 
The first rows of folding chairs had been grabbed by outlandishly 
dressed viddie people whose demeanor was less 
than dignified. All that preening and squawking! Surely 
they would be asked to leave if they continued making so 
much noise. . . . 

Two items drew the entertainers and the rest of the 
unusually large crowd. One of them was a distinct oddity. 

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As a result of Lord Quayles lifelong Romish mania, his 
library had tossed up, among the miscellany, what purported 
to be an eyewitness accountscrawled in squid ink 
on fragmented parchment in execrable Greek by a fellow 
named Flavius Peticius, an undereducated, obviously gullible 
Roman centurion (or perhaps written by his nearly 
illiterate scribe)of the crucifixion of one Joshua of Nazareth 
and two other malefactors outside the Jerusalem 
wall, early in the first century A.D. 

Here was spectacle, the very stuff of epic! Not to mention 
timely publicityand this is what drew the movie 
folkfor the BBC had recently mounted a lavish 
production of Desiree Gilfoleys While Rome Burns, featuring 
the lissome former model, Lady Adastra Malypense, 
in an acting debut made memorable by the fact that in 
only one of her many scenes had Lady Malypense appeared 
wearing any clothes at all, and those in the Egyptian 
mode of pleated linen, which is to say transparent. 
Perhaps Lady Malypense herself was among the noisemakers 
in the front row; Sylvester would not have recognized 
her, clothed or otherwise. 

As far as Sylvester was concerned they could have 
been auctioning a piece of the True Crossso much for 
the intrinsic value of the parchment. Sonya Sylvester and 
most of the serious collectors had been attracted by lot 61, 
a single, thick volume; ironically, had its text not formed 
the basis of a classic British film of the previous century, 
the news media might have overlooked it, which Sylvester 
would have preferred. 

She had inspected it yesterday on the plain bookshelf 
behind the podium, where it was guarded by burly porters 
in their dust coats and discreetly watched over by the 

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business-suited young men and women of the staff. The 
book rested open to reveal a scrap of paper lying on its 
title page, written in an irregular vertical hand: To Jonathan 
. . . 

Using this pseudonymous address, the last of the truly 
great, truly mad English adventurerswho was also the 
first of the great, mad philosophers of modern warhad 
conveyed his book into the hands of a close friend. Who 
could trace its travels since? Not Sothebys. 

Valuable booksfortunately or unfortunately, depending 
upon ones point of viewhad never been as valuable 
as, for example, valuable paintings. Even the rarest printed 
book was understood to be one of a set of duplicates, not 
a unique original. Conversely, the rarest painting, while 
unique, could easily be reproduced in a hundred billion 
copies, its likeness distributed throughout the inhabited 
worlds in hardcopy texts and magazines and stored electronic 
images, thus becoming widely knownwhile no 
book, rare or common, could be so casually copied or so 
casually apprehended. Printed books were not unique, thus 
subtracting from their value. But printed books could not 
be easily reproduced, thus subtracting from their fame 
and so again subtracting from their speculative market 
value. 

Rarely there came upon the auction block a book both 
famous and unique. Lot 61 was such a book, The Seven 
Pillars of Wisdom in its first, private, and very limited 
editiondifferent from subsequent editions not only in its 
printing and binding but by almost a third of its text. 
Before todays auction only one copy had been known to 
exist, all others having disappeared or been destroyed; the 
survivor resided in the Library of Congress in Washington, 

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D.C. Not even the Gutenberg Bible could combine fame 
with such rarity; this was the only available original copy 
of an acknowledged masterwork of 20th century literature. 
Sylvesters hopes of acquiring the book were not unreasonable, 
although every major collector and library on 
this and the colonized planets would be represented at the 
sale. Quaritch would be acting for the University of Texas, 
who were surely frantic to add this missing and most precious 
piece to their extensive collection of the authors 
works and memorabilia. Sothebys staff held orders from 
other bidders, and some of them flanking the auctioneers 
podium already had their heads cocked to the phone-links 
in their ears, receiving last minute instructions from far 
places. But all the bidders would have their top limits, and 
Sylvesters was very high. 

Promptly at eleven the auctioneer stepped to the podium. 
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to 
Sotheby and Company. He was a tall man, striving to 
overcome the East End and to achieve Oxbridge in his 
speech and demeanor, and he got the sale moving without 
delay. Although there were flurries of interest over 16th 
century English translations of Caesars Commentaries and 
Plutarchs Lives, most of Quayles library was disposed of 
rapidly. 

Then the crucifixion parchment came up, and the mediahounds 
zeroed in with their photogram cameras. The 
viddie denizens of the front row cooed and fluttered. Sure 
enough, someone addressed the blond woman who made 
the first bid as Adastra, darling, in a stage whisper loud 
enough to be heard at the back of the room. After a few 
quick rounds only Lady Malypense and two other serious 
bidders remained. A Sothebys staffer was representing 
one of them, and Sylvester suspected that the bidder was 

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Harvard, perhaps hoping to acquire a crucifixion account 
to match the one Yale already possessed. The third bidder 
was behind her, a man with the accent of an Alabama 
preacher. It became a two-way contest when Harvard 
dropped out; the Southern churchman was implacable. 

At last Lady Malypense failed to respond to the last 
do I hear . . . ? As if the gavel were a cue, the actress 
and her claque abruptly marched out, looking daggers at 
the portly victor. 

The anonymous collection, the property of a gentleman, 
was now offered in lots. Most were items of military 
history, in which Sylvester took no special interest; her 
field was early 20th century literature, particularly English
that is, British. 

Eventually lot 60, a first edition account of Patrick 
Leigh Fermors exploits during the Cretan resistance of 
World War II, went under the gavel. Sylvester would have 
liked to have had that book, and she bid on itnot that 
she cared about Crete or a half-forgotten war, but Leigh 
Fermor was a fine describer of placesbut its price rose 
swiftly higher than she was willing to go. Soon the auctioneer 
said sold and the room immediately fell silent. 

Lot 61. Lawrence, T. E., The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
as the director spoke, a solemn young man bore 
the heavy book forward and held it aloft, turning it slowly 
from side to side. Printed in linotype on Bible paper, recto 
only, double columns. Bound in full tan morocco, edges 
gilt, in marbled slipcase. Inserted loose in the front, two 
leaves, handwritten, one a note in dedication to Jonathan 
and signed by the author at Farnborough, 18 November 
1922, the other being comments written in pencil, in a 
hand thought to be that of Robert Graves. This very rare 
book is one of eight printed by the Oxford Times Press in 

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1922 at the authors behest, three of which were destroyed 
by him, and three others presumed lost. The reserve is five 
hundred thousand pounds. 

He had hardly concluded his description when the bidding 
commenced. A little rustle of excitement rippled 
through the room as the auctioneer recited increasingly 
greater numbers, almost without pausing: Six hundred 
thousand, I am bid six hundred thousand . . . six hundred 
and fifty thousand . . . seven hundred thousand. No one 
spoke, but fingers were flickering and heads were nodding, 
at the dealers table and elsewhere in the room, so rapidly 
that the auctioneer did not even have time to acknowledge 
those who had made the bids. 

Eight hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, 
said the auctioneer. For the first time there was a momentary 
pause before he got a response. It was clear that many 
bidders were approaching their limits. By the rules of the 
game, the higher the price, the higher the minimum advance; 
the price was now so high that the minimum advance 
was five thousand pounds. Am I bid eight hundred 
and eighty thousand pounds? the auctioneer asked 
matter-of-factly. 

Quaritch and a single other bookseller responded. The 
auctioneers gaze flickered to the transept on his left; evidently 
whoever was seated there, out of sight, had also 
bid. 

Am I bid eight hundred and eighty-five thousand? 

Nine hundred thousand pounds, Sondra Sylvester 
said, speaking for the first time. Her voice in the crowded 
room was new, rich, darkly colored, a voiceit was obvious 
to everyoneaccustomed to giving orders. The auctioneer 
nodded at her, smiling in recognition. 

At the front table the gentleman from Quaritch, who 

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was in fact representing the University of Texas, seemed 
unperturbedthe humanities department of Texas had an 
extensive Lawrence collection and was no doubt prepared 
to go to extreme lengths to acquire the prizebut the remaining 
rival bookseller leaned back in resignation, dropping 
his pencil. 

I am bid nine hundred thousand pounds. Am I bid 
nine hundred and five? The auctioneer glanced to his left 
once, twice, then announced, One million pounds. 

An appreciative groan rumbled through the audience. 
The man from Quaritch glanced curiously over his shoulder, 
made a note on the pad in front of himand declined 
to bid further, having reached his clients top. The minimum 
advance was now ten thousand pounds. 

One million ten thousand pounds, Sylvester said. She 
sounded confident, more confident than in fact she felt. 
Who was in the transept? Who was bidding against her? 

The auctioneer nodded. I am bid . . . He hesitated as 
he glanced to his left, then momentarily fixed his gaze 
there. He turned to look straight at Sondra Sylvester and 
almost shyly indicated the transept with a spasm of his 
hand. I am bid one million, five hundred thousand 
pounds, he said, his voice carrying to her with peculiar 
intimacy. 

A collective hiss whiffled through the audience. Sylvester 
felt her face grow stiff and cold. For a moment she 
did not move, but there was little point in calculating her 
resources; she was soundly beaten. 

I am bid one million and five hundred thousand. Am 
I bid one million five hundred thousand and ten? The 
auctioneer was still looking at her. Still she did not move. 
He averted his gaze then, politely, looking without seeing 
into the bright eyes of his delighted audience. I am bid 

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one million five hundred thousand. The gavel hovered 
over the block. For the last time . . . I have a bid of one 
million five hundred thousand. The gavel descended. 

Sold. 

The audience burst into applause, spiced with little 
cries of delight. Who was being applauded, Sylvester wondered 
bitterlya deceased author, or a spendthrift acquisitor? 


Porters ceremoniously removed the printed relic from 
public view. A few people leaped up, scuttling for the door 
as the auctioneer cleared his throat and announced. Lot 
62, miscellaneous autographs . . . 

Sylvester sat where she was, not moving, feeling the 
eyes of the curious burning into her. In the depths of her 
disappointment she was curious, too, to know who had 
outbid her. She rose slowly and moved as quietly as she 
could toward the aisle. Inching toward the transept wing, 
standing beside it, waiting there patiently as the sale continued 
. . . more and more people leaving throughout the 
final routine minutes . . . and then it was over. Sylvester 
stepped in front of the transept wing. 

She confronted a young man with chopped auburn 
hair, wearing a lapel button in his conservative suit that 
identified him as a member of the staff. You were the 
one? 

On behalf of a client, of course. His accent was mid-
AtlanticAmerican, cultured, East Coast. His face was 
handsome in an odd way, soft-eyed and freckled. 

Are you free to divulge . . . ? 

Im very sorry, Mrs. Sylvester, Im under strict instructions. 


You know me. She scrutinized him: very handsome, 

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rather appealing. Are you free to tell me your own 

name? 

He smiled. My names Blake Redfield, maam. 

Thats some progress. Perhaps you would like to join 
me for lunch, Mr. Redfield? 

He inclined his head in the merest sketch of a bow. 

You are very gracious. Unhappily . . . 

She watched him a moment. He seemed in no hurry to 
leave; he was watching her as closely as she was watching 
him. She said, Too bad. Another time? 

That would be delightful. 

Another time, then. Sylvester walked briskly out of 
the room. At the entrance she paused, then asked the girl 
to call a taxi; while she waited she asked, How long has 
Mr. Redfield been with the firm? 

Let me seethe red-cheeked girl twisted her little 
rosebud mouth charmingly as she made the effort to re-
callperhaps a year, Mrs. Sylvester. Hes not a regular 
employee, really. 

No? 

More like a consultant, said the girl. Books and 
manuscripts, 19th and 20th centuries. 

So young? 

He is rather, isnt he? But quite the genius, to hear the 
assessors speak of him. Heres your taxi now. 

Im sorry I troubled you. Sylvester hardly glanced at 
the square black shape humming driverless at the curb. I 
think, after all, that Ill walk a bit. 

Her pace was determined, not meditative; she needed 
to let her angry blood circulate. She strode rapidly down 
the street toward Piccadilly, turning east through the maze 
of all the little Burlingtons and across the end of Saville 

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Row, her destination a shop near Charing Cross Road, an 
ancient and, in the past, sometimes disreputable place 
presently wearing a veneer of renewed respectability. 

She reached it in no time. Gold letters on a plate glass 
window announced Hermione Scrutton, Bookseller. 
While she was still half a block from the shop she saw 
Scrutton herself at the green-enameled door, twisting a 
decorative iron key in a decorative iron lock while putting 
her eye to the eye of a bronze lion head that served as a 
doorknocker, but which also contained the retina-reader 
that triggered the doors real lock. 

By the time Scrutton got the door open, Sylvester was 
close enough to hear the spring-mounted brass bell clamor 
as she entered. 

Moments later the same bell announced Sylvesters arrival; 
from an aisle of crumbling yellow volumes Scrutton 
emerged, having seen to the alarm system. She was a 
stocky, bushy-browed imp in brown tweeds, a gold ascot 
at her throat, a bald patch visible through her thin graying 
hair, the color high on her cheekswhich were incongruously 
tan to begin withand a smile playing on her mobile 
red lips. My dear Syl. Cant say. Ah, really. Mm, simply 
devastated . . . 

Oh, Hermione, youre not bothered in the least. I 
couldnt have afforded to spend a penny on you for the 
next five years. 

Mm, I confess the thought had occurred to me. And 
certainly I would have missed your, ah, most elegant presence 
in my humble, ah establishment. Scrutton smirked. 
But then one has no difficulty placing the really rare 
items, does one? Mm? 

Who outbid me? Do you know? 

She shook her head, once, her dewlaps flapping. No 

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one whose agent I recognized. I was seated behind you. 
Fraid I couldnt see the bidder. 
Anon was the bidder, she informed her. Represented 
by a young man named Blake Redfield. 

Scruttons eyebrows fluttered up and down rapidly. 
Ahh, Redfield. Mm, I say. She turned away to fuss with 
the nearest shelf of books. Redfield, eh? Indeed. Oh, yes. 

Hermione, youre toying with methe words came 
out of the back of her throat, a panthers warning growl 
and Ill have your artificially tanned hide for it. 

That so? The bookseller half turned, cocking a cantilevered 
eyebrow. Whats it worth to you? 

Lunch. Sylvester said immediately. 

Not your local pub fare, she warned. 

Wherever you choose. The Ritz, for Gods sake. 

Done, said Scrutton, rubbing her palms. Mm. 
Havent eaten since breakfast, at least. 

Somewhere between the butter lettuce and the prawns, 
encouraged by half a bottle of Moet et Chandon, Scrutton 
revealed her suspicion that Redfield was representing none 
other than Vincent Darlingtonat which Sylvester 
dropped her fork. 

Scrutton, her eyebrows oscillating with alarm, gaped 
at her. In all the years she had known Sylvester she had 
never seen her like this: her beautiful face was darkening 
quite alarmingly, and Scrutton was not at all certain that 
she had not suffered a stroke. She glanced around, but to 
her relief no one in the airy dining room seemed to have 
noticed anything amiss, with the possible exception of a 
poised and anxious waiter. 

Sylvesters color improved. What a surprise, she 
whispered. 

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Syl, dearest, I had no idea . . . 

This is vendetta, of course. Never mind the language, 
never mind the period, sweet Vincent has not the least 
interest in literature. I doubt he could distinguish The 
Seven Pillars of Wisdom from Lady Chatterlys Lover. 

Hm, yesScruttons cheek quivered, but she could 
not resistthey are rather close in date . . . 

Hermione, Sylvester warned, fixing a cool eye upon 
her; chastened, Scrutton subsided. Hermione, Vincent 
Darlington does not read. He did not buy that book because 
he knows its worth; he bought it to shame me, because 
I shamed himin quite another arena. Sylvester 
leaned back in her chair, dabbing at her lips with a heavy 
linen napkin. 

Really, my dear girl, Scrutton murmured. Understand 
perfectly. 

No, not really, Hermione. Sylvester said sharply. But 
you mean well, I think. Therefore I am about to put my 
life, or at least my reputation, into your hands. If you ever 
need to blackmail me, remember this momentthe moment 
I swore I would revenge myself upon that worm Darlington. 
If it costs me my fortune. 

Mm, ah. Scrutton sipped her champagne, then set it 
down carefully upon the linen. Well, Syl, let us hope it 
doesnt come to that. 

One ships an object worth a million and a half pounds 
discreetly, and with due regard for its physical well-being. 
Fortunately The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had been printed 
in those long gone days when it was assumed as a matter 
of course that printed pages ought to last. Blake Redfield 
had only to place the book into a padded gray Styrene 

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briefcase and find a shipper who could provide 
temperature-and humidity-controlled storage. 

Lloyds register listed two suitable ships that would arrive 
at Port Hesperus within twenty-four hours of each 
other. Neither would get to Venus in much less than two 
months, but no one else would arrive sooner, and no other 
ships were scheduled for several more weeks; that was the 
nature of interplanetary travel. One of the two was a 
freighter, Star Queen, due to depart Earth orbit in three 
weeks. The other ship was a liner, Helios, scheduled to 
leave later on a faster crossing. Prudence suggested that 
Blake reserve space on both; the asterisk beside Star 
Queens name warned that the ship was undergoing repairs 
and had yet to be cleared for commerce by the Board of 
Space Control. 

Blake was sealing the magnetic lock on the Styrene 
case when the door of Sothebys back room exploded with 
a loud bang. 

A young woman was silhouetted against the brick hallway. 
Heavens, Blake, what have you been up to? she 
inquired, waving a hand to dispel the acrid smoke. 

Ive been up to a few grains of potassium chlorate 
and sulfur, actually. If you hadnt been you, dear, this 
rather expensive object before me would have been 
whisked out of your sight and into the vault before youd 
cleared the air in front of your cute nose. 

Couldnt you have used a little buzzer or something? 
Did you have to destroy the doorknob? 
I didnt destroy the doorknob. More noise than punch. 
Might have blistered the venerable paint. Regrets. 
The apple-cheeked young woman was modestly uniformed 
in a conservative metal skirt. She came to the desk 

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and watched Blake lock the plastic case. Didnt you think 
it was too bad she lost the bidding? She had such good 
taste. 

She? 

She came up to you after the sale, she said. Very 
beautiful for someone her age. She asked you something 
that made you blush. 

Blush? You have quite a vivid imagination. 

Youre no good at pretending, Blake. Blame your Irish 
grandfather for your freckles. 

Mrs. Sylvester is an attractive woman. . . . 

She asked about you afterwards. I told her you were 
a genius. 

I doubt she has any personal interest in me. And I 
certainly have no interest in her. 

Oh? Do you have an interest in Vincent Darlington? 

Oh yes, pure lust. He laughed. For his money. 

She leaned a mesh-covered hip against the back of his 
chair; he could feel her heat on his cheek. Darlingtons 
an illiterate pig, she announced. He doesnt deserve that 
thing. 

  Tis a thing, devised by the enemy,  he murmured, 
and he rose abruptly, moving away from her, to put the 
locked case into the vault. Right. He turned to face her 
across the cluttered yellow office. Did you bring me the 
pamphlet? 

She smiled, her rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes signaling 
her frank interest. I found a shelf full, but theyre still 
at my flat. Come home with me and I will introduce you 
to the secrets of the prophetae. 

He eyed her, a bit askance, then shrugged. Sure. After 
all, it was a subject that had long intrigued him. 

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A discreet knocking at the door, repeated at intervals . . . 
Sondra Sylvester came striding out of the bathroom, her 
blue silk nightgown clinging heavily to her long body. She 
unchained the door. 

Your tea, mum. 

By the window, that will be fine. 

The uniformed young man picked his way through 
feminine litter and laid the heavy silver tray of tea things 
on the table. The windows of the spacious suite had a fine 
view of Hyde Park, but this morning they were heavily 
curtained against the light. Sylvester searched the dim 
room and spotted her velvet clutch purse on the floor beside 
a clothes-draped armchair. She found paper money 
inside and dug out a bill in time to thrust it into the young 
mans hand. 

Thank you, mum. 

Youve been very good, she said, slightly flustered. 

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She closed the door behind him. God, how much did I 
give him? she muttered. Im hardly awake. 

A rounded form stirred under the bedsheets. Nancybeths 
tousled dark hair and violet eyes peered from the 
sheets. 

Sylvester watched as the rest of Nancybeth rose into 
view, graceful neck, slender shoulders, heavy breasts 
darkly nippled. How becoming of you to wait until he 
left. And how novel. 

What are you bitching about? Nancybeth yawned, 
displaying perfect little teeth, a darting pink tongue. 

Sylvester crossed to the videoplate on the wall and fiddled 
with the controls hidden in its carved and gilded 
frame. You said you were awake. I asked you to turn on 
the news. 

I went back to sleep. 

You were into my purse again. 

Nancybeth glared at her with pale eyes that tended to 
cross when she was concentrating. Syl, sometimes you 
act more like a mother . . . She sprang from the bed and 
strode to the bathroom. 

Than like what? 

But Nancybeth ignored her, walking through the dressing 
room, leaving the door open, on into the shower stall. 

Sylvesters heart was thuddingGod, that shelf, those 
majestic flanks, those vibrant calves. Part Italian, part Polynesian, 
she was a bronzed Galatea, sculpture made flesh. 
Irritably Sylvester punched the controls of the video picture 
until the plastic mask of a BBC announcer appeared. 

She set the volume just loud enough to hear the announcer 
talk about rising tensions in south central Asia 
as she went about picking clothes off the floor and hurling 
them onto the bed. From the bathroom came the hiss and 

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dribble of the shower and Nancybeths husky, off-tune 
voice singing something torchy and unintelligible. Sylvester 
looked at the heavy silver teapot and the china cups 
with distaste. She went into the dressing room and pulled 
a bottle of Moet et Chandon from the refrigerator under 
the counter. The videoplate mumbled words that caught 
her attention: A secret unveiled: develops that the winning 
bid in yesterdays spectacular auction at Sothebys 
. . . Sylvester darted to the wall screen and boosted 
the volume. . . . first-edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom by 

T. E Lawrencethe legendary Lawrence of Arabiawas 
placed by Mr. Vincent Darlington, director of the Hesperian 
Museum. Reached by radio-link, Mr. Darlington at 
first refused comment but later admitted that he had 
bought the extremely rare book on behalf of the Port Hesperus 
museum, an institution of which he is the proprietor
not, it might be said, an institution hitherto known 
for its collection of written works. In other news of the art 
world . . . 
Sylvester punched off the video. She ripped the foil off 
the bottle and untangled its wire cage. She began twisting 
the bulging champagne cork with a strong, steady grip. 

Nancybeth emerged from the shower. Steam rose from 
her skin, backlit in the glow from the dressing room light. 
She was perfectly unconcerned about the water she was 
dripping onto the rug. Was that something about Vince? 
On the news? 

Seems he was the one who outbid me for the 
Lawrence. The champagne cork came out with a satisfying 
thud. 

Vince? He doesnt care about books. 
Sylvester watched her, a heavy dark Venus deliberately 
manifesting herself naked, deliberately letting her wet skin 

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chill, letting her nipples rise. He cared about you, Sylvester 
said. 

Oh. Nancybeth smiled complacently, her violet eyes 
half-lidded. I guess it cost you. 

On the contrary, youve saved me a great deal of 
money I might otherwise have thrown away on a mere 
book. Fetch some glasses, will you? In the refrigerator. 

Still naked, still wet, Nancybeth brought the tulip 
glasses to the table and settled herself on the plush chair. 
Are we celebrating something? 

Hardly, Sylvester said, pouring out the cold, seething 
liquid. Im consoling myself. 

She handed a tulip to Nancybeth. They bent toward 
each other. The rims touched and chimed. Still mad at 
me? Nancybeth mewed. 

Sylvester was fascinated, watching Nancybeths nostrils 
widen as she lowered her upturned nose into the 
mouth of the tulip. For being who you are? 

The tip of the pink tongue tasted sharp carbonic acid 
from dissolving bubbles. Well, you dont have to console 
yourself, Syl. The violet eyes under the long, wet lashes 
lifted to transfix her. 

I dont? 

Let me console you. 

The magneplane whirred through the genteel greenery 
of Londons southwestern suburbs, pausing now and again 
to drop off and take on passengers, depositing Nikos Pavlakis 
a mile from his Richmond destination. Pavlakis hired 
an autotaxi at the stand and as it drove away from the 
station he rolled down the windows to let the wet spring 
air invade the cab. Beyond the slate roofs of the passing 
semi-detached villas, pearly cloud puffs in the soft blue 

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sky kept pace with the cab as it rolled past spruce lawns 
and hedges. 

Lawrence Wycherlys house was a trim brick Georgian. 
Pavlakis put his sliver in the port, paying the cab to wait, 
then walked to the door of the house, feeling heavy in a 
black plastic suit that, like all his suits, was too tight for 
his massive shoulders. Mrs. Wycherly opened the door before 
he could reach for the bell. Good morning, Mr. Pavlakis. 
Larrys in the sitting room. 

She did not seem overjoyed to see him. She was a pale, 
smooth-skinned woman with fine blond hair, pretty once, 
now on the verge of fading into invisibility, leaving only 
her regret. 

Pavlakis found Wycherly sitting in his pajamas, his feet 
up on a hassock, a plaid lap robe tucked under his thighs 
and an arsenal of plastic-back space thrillers and patent 
medicines littering the lamp table beside him. Wycherly 
lifted a thin hand. Sorry, Nick. Would get up, but Ive 
been a bit wobbly for the past day or two. 

Im sorry to have to give you this trouble, Larry. 

Nothing of it. Sit down, will you? Be comfortable. Get 
you anything? Tea? 

Mrs. Wycherly was still in the room, somewhat to Pavlakiss 
surprise, temporarily reemerging from the shadows 
of the arch. Mr. Pavlakis might prefer coffee. 

That would be very nice, he said gratefully. The English 
repeatedly amazed him with their sensitivity to such 
things. 

Right, then, Wycherly said, staring at her until she 
dissolved again. He cocked a canny eyebrow at Pavlakis, 
who was perching his muscular bulk delicately on an 
Empire settee. All right, Nick. Something too special for 
the phone? 

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Larry, my friend . . . Pavlakis leaned forward, hands 
primly on his knees, Falaron Shipyards is cheating us 
my father and me. Dimitrios is encouraging the worker 
consortiums to bribe us, and then taking kickbacks from 
them. For all of which we must pay. If we are to meet the 
launch window for Star Queen. 

Wycherly said nothing, but a sour smile played over 
his lips. Frankly, most of us whove worked with the firm 
over the years have accepted that that was always part of 
the arrangement between Dimitrios and your dad. Wycherly 
paused, then coughed repeatedly, making a humming 
sound like a balky two-cycle engine deep in his chest. For 
a moment Pavlakis was afraid he was choking, but he was 
merely clearing his throat. He recovered himself. Standard 
practice, so to say. 

We cant afford this standard practice anymore, Pavlakis 
said. These days we face worse than just the old 
competition . . . 

Wycherly grinned. Besides which, youre no longer 
allowed to get rid of them by something as simple as, say, 
slitting a few throats. 

Yes. Pavlakis jerked his head forward, solemnly. 
Because we are regulated. So many regulations. Set fees 
per kilo of mass . . . 

. . . divided by time of transport, multiplied by minimax 
distance between ports, Wycherly said wearily. 
Right, Nick. 

So to attract business one must abide by the strictest 
adherence to launch windows. 

I have been with the firm awhile. Again Wycherly 
made that lawnmower sound in the back of his throat, 
struggling for breath. 

These calculationsI keep making them in my head, 

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Pavlakis said. He was thinking that Wycherly did not look 
well; the whites of his eyes were rimmed in bright red and 
his gingery hair was standing up in tufts, like the feathers 
of a wet bird. 

Sorry for you, old man, Wycherly said wryly. 

We are so close to doing well. I have negotiated a 
long-term contract with the Ishtar Mining Corporation. 
The first shipment is six mining robots, nearly forty tonnes. 
That will pay for the trip, even give us a profit. But 
if we miss the launch window . . . 

You lose the contract, Wycherly said, keeping it matter 
of fact. 

Pavlakis shrugged. Worse, we pay a penalty. Assuming 
we have not declared bankruptcy first. 

What else have you got for cargo? 

Silly things. A pornography chip. A box of cigars. 
Yesterday we got a provisory reservation for a damned 
book. 

One book? Pavlakis jerked his head again, yes, and 
Wycherlys eyebrow shot up. Why damned? 

The entire package weighs four kilos, Larry. Pavlakis 
laughed, snorting like a bull. Its freight will not pay your 
wages to the moon. But it is to be accompanied by a certificate 
of insurance in the amount of two million pounds! 
I would rather have the insurance. 

Maybe you could load it and then arrange a little accident. 
Wycherly started to laugh, but was taken by a 
spasm of coughing. Pavlakis looked away, pretending to 
be interested in the horse prints on the cream walls of the 
sitting room, the bookcases of unread leatherbound classics. 


At last Wycherly recovered. Well, of course you must 
know what book that is. 

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Should I know? 

Really, Nick, it was all the news yesterday. That 
books The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Must be. Lawrence of 
Arabia and all that. Wycherlys wasted face twisted in a 
grin. Another of the old empires treasures carried off to 
the colonies. And this time the colonys another planet. 

Very sad. Pavlakiss commiseration was brief. Larry, 
without the Ishtar contract . . . 

But Wycherly was musing, staring past Pavlakis into 
the shadows of the hall. Thats a rather odd coincidence, 
isnt it? 

Whats odd? 

Or maybe not, really. Port Hesperus, of course. 

Im sorry, I fail to . . . 

Wycherly focused on him. Sorry, Nick. Mrs. Sylvester, 
shes the chief exec at Ishtar Mining, isnt that right? 
His head bobbed forward. Oh, yes. 
She was the other bidder for The Seven Pillars of Wis


dom, you see. Went to over a million pounds and lost out. 
Ah. Pavlakiss eyelids drooped at the thought of that 
much personal wealth. How sad for her. 
Port Hesperus is quite the center of wealth these 
days. 

Well . . . you see why we must retain the Ishtar contract. 
No room for Dimitrios and his . . . standard practices. 
 Pavlakis struggled to get the conversation back on 
track. Larry, I am not certain that my own father fully 
understands these matters 

But youve had no trouble making it all clear to Dimitrios. 
Wycherly studied Pavlakis and saw what he expected. 
And he is not at all happy with you. 

I was foolish. Pavlakis fished for his worry beads. 

Could be so. Hell know this is his last chance to steal. 

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And still plenty of opportunities for the old crook to buy 
cheap and charge dear on the specs. 

I found no sign of cheating on the specifications when 
I inspected the work two days ago . . . 

I wont be wanting to captain any substandard ship, 
Nick, Wycherly said sharply. Whatever else has been 
going on between Dimitrios and your dadand I suspect 
plentyyour dad never asked me to risk my neck in a craft 
that was unspaceworthy. 

I would not ask you that either, my friend . . . Pavlakis 
was startled by Mrs. Wycherly, silently materializing 
at his elbow with a saucer. On it was balanced a cup filled 
with something brown. He looked up at her and smiled 
uncertainly. You are very gracious, dear lady. He took 
it and sipped the liquid cautiously; normally he took Turkish 
coffee with double sugar, but this was coffee in the 
American style, plain and bitter. He smiled, hiding his chagrin. 
Mmm. 

His polite charade was wasted on Mrs. Wycherly, who 
was looking at her husband. Please dont let yourself become 
exhausted, Larry. Wycherly shook his head impatiently. 


When Pavlakis looked up from his cup, he discovered 
that she had gone. He set the coffee carefully aside. What 
I had hoped was that you could help insure that Star 
Queen would not fail recertification by the board, Larry. 

How would I do that? Wycherly muttered. 

I would be happy to put you on flight pay immediately, 
with bonuses, if you would consent to go up to 
Falaron and live there for the next monthas soon as you 
feel fit, of courseto act as my personal agent. To inspect 
the work daily, until the ship is ready. 

Wycherlys dull eyes brightened. He hummed and sput


105 


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tered a moment. Youre a clever fellow, Nick. Hiring a 
man to see to his own safety . . . His gravelly voice broke 
into grinding coughs, and Pavlakis was aware that Mrs. 
Wycherly was nervously regaining solidity in the shadows. 
Wycherlys spasms subsided, and he glared at his wife with 
eyes full of pain. An offer I can hardly refusehis eyes 
fell back to Pavlakisunless Im unable. 

Youll do it? 

Ill do it if I can. 

Pavlakis stood up with unseemly haste, his dark bulk 
looming in the nebulous room. Thank you, Larry. Ill let 
you be by yourself, now. I hope your recovery is swift. 

As he hurried to the waiting autocab his amber beads 
were swirling and clicking. He muttered a prayer to Saint 
George for Wycherlys health, while voices were raised in 
anger in the house behind him. 

Fifteen minutes on the swift magneplane brought Pavlakis 
back to the Heathrow Shuttleport and the local 
freight office of Pavlakis Lines. It was a cramped shed 
tacked onto the end of a spaceplane hangar, an enormous 
steel barn full of discarded, egglike fuel tanks and scavenged 
sections of booster fuselages. A smell of odorized 
methane and Gunk had worked its way into the paneling. 
When neither of the Pavlakises, Senior or Junior, was in 
England, the place was deserted except for the underemployed 
mechanics who hung around trying to make time 
with the secretary-receptionist, one of Nikoss cousins 
sisters-in-law. Her name was Sofia, she was a wiry-yellow 
blond from the Peloponnese, heavier than her years, and 
she brooded. When Pavlakis walked into the office she had 
an open carton of yogurt on her desk, which she appeared 

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to be ignoring in favor of the noonday news on her desktop 
videoplate. 

For those of you who may have needed an excuse, 
heres a good reason to plan a trip to Port Hesperus, the 
announcer was simpering. Early this morning it was revealed 
that the buyer of that first-edition Seven Pillars of 
Wisdom . . . 

Sofia lifted smoldering eyes to Pavlakis when he came 
in, but no other part of her body moved. A woman has 
been calling you. 

What woman? 

I could not say what woman. She says you were to 
write her a letter. Or send her a wire. I forget. The smoldering 
eyes strayed back to the flatscreen. 

Mrs. Sylvester? 

Sofias eyes stayed fixed on the screen, but her palms 
opened: maybe. 

Cursing the very concept of cousins and in-laws, Pavlakis 
went past a paste-board divider into the inner sanctum. 
The desk that everybody used whenever they felt like 
it was piled high with greasy flimsies. A pink slip sat on 
top, scratched out in Sofias degraded demotic, conveying 
the gist of Sondra Sylvesters last communication: Imperative 
you reaffirm contract in writing this date. If Pavlakis 
Lines cannot guarantee launch window, Ishtar 
Mining Corporation must immediately terminate proposed 
contract. 

Proposed contract . . . ? 

The worry beads clicked. Sofia, Pavlakis shouted. 
Reach Mrs. Sylvester immediately. 

Where to reach the lady? came the delayed reply. 

At the Battenberg. Idiot. By what folly did her father 

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name her Sofia, Wisdom? Pavlakis scuffled through the 
flimsies, searching for anything new and hopeful. His 
hand fell on yesterdays query from Sothebys. Can you 
guarantee shipment of one book, four kilograms gross 
mass in case, to arrive Port Hesperus . . . ? 

Ive reached the woman, Sofia announced. 

Mr. Pavlakis? Are you there? 

Pavlakis snatched at the phonelink. Yes, dear lady, I 
hope you will accept my personal apologies. Many unexpected 
matters . . . 

Sylvesters image coalesced on the little videoplate. I 
dont need an apology. I need a confirmation. My business 
in England was to have been finished yesterday. Before I 
can leave London I must be persuaded that my equipment 
will arrive at Venus on time. 

Just at this very moment I have been sitting down to 
write a letter. Pavlakis resisted the urge to twist his beads 
in view of the videoplate. 

Im not talking about a recording or a piece of paper, 
Mr. Pavlakis, said the cool, beautiful face on the screen. 
How was her face so alluring? Something disarranged 
about the hair, the heightened color around the cheeks, 
the lipsPavlakis forced himself to concentrate on her 
words. Frankly, your behavior has not been reassuring. I 
sense that I should look for another carrier. 

Her words galvanized him. You may have faith, dear 
lady! Indeed, you must. Even the Hesperian Museum has 
honored us to carry its recent and most valuable acquisition 
. . . He hesitated, confused. Why had he said such 
a thing? To be . . . to be friendly, of course, to reassure her. 
In which you yourself have had much interest, if I am 
correct? 

Great Christ, the woman had turned to metal. Her eyes 

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flashed like spinning drillpoints, her mouth was steel shutters, 
slammed shut. Pavlakis turned away, desperately 
swiped away the sweat that was pouring from his hairline. 
Mrs. Sylvester, please, you must forgive me, I have 
been . . . under much strain lately. 

Dont trouble yourself so much, Mr. Pavlakis. To his 
surprise, her tone was as smooth and warm as her words 
. . . warmer, even. He half turned, looked at the screen. She 
was smiling! Write me that letter you promised. And I 
will talk to you again when I return to London. 

You will trust in Pavlakis Lines? Oh, we will not fail 
you, dear lady! 
Let us trust in one another. 

Sylvester cut the phonelink and leaned back in the bed. 
Nancybeth was sprawled face down on top of the sheets, 
eyeing her from the slit of a heavy-lidded eye. Will you 
be awfully unhappy if we delay the island for a day or 
two, sweet? Sylvester whispered. 

Oh, God, Syl. Nancybeth rolled onto her back. You 
mean Im stuck in this soot pile for two more days? 

I have unexpected work to do. If you want to go 
ahead without me . . . 

Nancybeth writhed in indecision, her round knees falling 
open. I suppose I can find something . . . 

Suddenly Sylvester felt a touch of nausea. Never 
mind. Once youre settled I may have to come back for a 
day or two. 

Nancybeth smiled. Just get me to the beach. 

Sylvester picked up the phonelink and tapped out a 
code. Hermione Scruttons ruddy face came on the screen 
with surprising quickness. You, Syl? 

Hermione, I find that my vacation plans have 

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changed. I require your advice. And possibly your assistance. 


Mm, ah, the bookseller replied, her eyes sparkling. 
And what will that be worth to you? 

More than lunch, I assure you. 

110 


VIII 


Captain Lawrence Wycherly made a remarkably rapid recovery 
from his chest ailment and took up residence at 
the Falaron Shipyards, where he ably represented the Pavlakis 
Lines as clerk of the works. The gaunt, determined 
Englishman bore down hard on the frustrated Peloponnesian, 
inspecting the ship daily without warning and hectoring 
the workers, and despite Dimitrioss surliness and 
frequent tantrums the job was finished on time. It was with 
a certain grim satisfaction that Nikos Pavlakis watched 
spacesuited workers electrobonding the name Star Queen 
across the equator of the crew module. He praised Wycherly 
lavishly and added a bonus to his already handsome 
pay before leaving to make the final arrangements at Pavlakis 
Lines headquarters in Athens. 

Star Queen, though of a standard freighter design, was 
a spacecraft quite unlike anything that had been imagined 
at the dawn of modern rocketrywhich is to say it looked 
nothing like an artillery shell with fins or the hood or


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nament of a gasoline-burning automobile. The basic configuration 
was two clusters of spheres and cylinders 
separated from each other by a cylindrical strut a hundred 
meters long. The whole thing somewhat resembled a Tinkertoy 
model of a simple molecule. 

The forward cluster included the crew module, a sphere 
over five meters in diameter. A hemispherical cage of superconducting 
wires looped over the crew module, partially 
shielding the crew against cosmic rays and other 
charged particles in the interplanetary mediumwhich included 
the exhaust of other atomic ships. Snugged against 
the crew modules base were the four cylindrical holds, 
each seven meters across and twenty meters long, grouped 
around the central strut. Like the sea-land cargo containers 
of the previous century, the holds were detachable and 
could be parked in orbit or picked up as needed; each was 
attached to Star Queens central shaft by its own airlock 
and was also accessible through outside pressure hatches. 
Each hold was divided into compartments which could be 
pressurized or left in vacuum, depending on the nature of 
the cargo. 

At the other end of the ships central strut were bulbous 
tanks of liquid hydrogen, surrounding the bulky cylinder 
of the atomic motors reactor core. Despite massive radiation 
shielding, the aft of the ship was not a place for 
casual visits by living creaturesrobot systems did what 
work needed to be done there. 

For all its ad hoc practicality, Star Queen had an air of 
elegance, the elegance of form following function. Apart 
from the occasional horn of a maneuvering rocket or the 
spike or dish of a communications antenna, the shapes 
from which she had been assembled shared a geometric 

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purity, and all alike shone dazzling white under their fresh 
coats of electrobonded paint. 

For three days, Board of Space Control inspectors went 
over the refurbished ship, at last pronouncing it fully 
spaceworthy. Star Queen was duly recertified. Her launch 
date was confirmed. Heavy-lift shuttles brought up cargo 
from Earth; other, smaller parcels were delivered by 
bonded courier. 

Captain Lawrence Wycherly, however, did not pass the 
Boards inspection. With one week to go before launch, 
flight surgeons discovered what Wycherly had disguised 
until now with illegal neural-enhancement preparations 
he had obtained from sources in Chile: he was dying from 
an incurable degeneration of the cerebellum. The viral infections 
and other minor illnesses that had plagued him 
were symptoms of a general failure of homeostasis. Never 
mind that the drugs might have accelerated his disease; 
Wycherly figured he was a dead man, and he was desperate 
for the money this last assignment was to have 
brought, for without itthe tale of his feckless investments 
and frantic spiral into debt was a cautionary tale of the 
agehis soon-to-be widow would lose their home, would 
lose everything. 

The Board of Space Control notified the Pavlakis Lines 
home office in Athens that Star Queen was short a captain 
and that her launch permit had been withdrawn pending 
a qualified replacement. At the same time the Board routinely 
notified the ships insurors and every firm and individual 
who had placed cargo on the ship. 

Delayed by technical difficulties on his way from 
Athens to Heathrow (stewards were staging a slow-down 
in protest against the government-owned airline), Nikos 

113 


VENUS PRIME 


Pavlakis did not learn the devastating news until he 
stepped off the supersonic ramjet jitney at Heathrow. Miss 
Wisdom was glowering at him from behind the passport 
control screens, her paint-blackened eyes the very eyes of 
Nemesis beneath her helmet of wiry yellow hair. This 
from your father, she spat at him, when he came within 
reach, thrusting into his hands the flimsy from Athens. 

Temporarily, but only temporarily, it appeared that 
Saint George had let Nikos Pavlakis down. Pavlakis spent 
the next twenty-four hours on the radio and phonelinks, 
sustained by a kilo or so of sugar dissolved in several liters 
of boiled Turkish coffee, and at the end of that time a 
miracle occurred. 

Neither God nor Saint George had provided a new pilot. 
No such luck, for Pavlakis could find no qualified pilots 
who would be free of their commitments or current 
assignments in time for Star Queens Venus window. And 
the miracle was not wholly unqualified, for no saint had 
prevented the prompt defection of a few of the shippers 
on the manifestthose for whom the arrival of their cargo 
at Port Hesperus was not time-critical, or whose cargo 
could easily be sold elsewhere. Bilbao Atmospherics was 
even now off-loading its tonne of liquid nitrogen from 
Hold B, and a valuable shipment of pine seedlings, the 
bulk of the cargo that was to have travelled in Hold A, 
had already been reclaimed by Silvawerke of Stuttgart. 

Pavlakiss miracle was the intervention of Sondra Sylvester. 


He did not call her, she called him, from her rented 
villa on the Isle du Levant. She informed him that after 
their last conversation she had made it her business to 
check up on him and the members of Star Queens crew. 
She praised Pavlakis for his measures to safeguard the in


114 


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tegrity of Star Queen during the refitting; he could hardly 
be blamed for Wycherlys private difficulties. Her London 
solicitors had given her very full briefs on pilot Peter 
Grant and engineer Angus McNeil. In view of what she 
had learned, she had personally contacted the Board of 
Space Control and submitted an amicus brief on behalf of 
Pavlakis Liness application for a waiver of the crew-ofthree 
rule, citing her faith in the integrity of the firm and 
overriding economic considerations. She had also contacted 
Lloyds, urging that insurance not be withdrawn. 
According to Sylvesters best information, the waiver was 
sure to be granted. Star Queen would launch with two men 
aboard, carrying sufficient cargo for a profitable voyage. 

When Pavlakis signed off the phonelink he was giddy 
with elation. 

Sylvesters best information proved correct, and Peter 
Grant was promoted to commander of a two-man crew. 
Two days later heavy tugs moved Star Queen into launch 
orbit, beyond the Van Allen belts. The atomic motor 
erupted in a stream of white light. Under steady acceleration 
the ship began a five-week hyperbolic dive toward 
Venus. 

115 


PART THREE 

BREAKING STRAIN 


117 


IX 


Peter Grant rather enjoyed command. He was as relaxed 
as a working man can belying weightless, loosely 
strapped into the command pilots couch on Star Queens 
flight deck, dictating the ships log between puffs of a rich 
Turkish cigarettewhen a skullcracker slammed into the 
hull. 

For the second or two that it took Grant to crush his 
cigarette and reset the switches, red lights glared and sirens 
hooted hysterically. Assess and report! he barked. 
He yanked an emergency air mask from the console and 
jammed it over his nose and mouth, and abruptly all was 
silent again. He waited an eternity as the console graphics 
rapidly shifted shape and colorthirty more seconds at 
leastwhile the computer assessed the damage. 

We have experienced severe overpressure in the 
southeast quadrant of the life support deck, the computer 
announced in its matter-of-fact contralto. Number two 
fuel cell has been ruptured. Automatic switchover to num


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ber one and number three fuel cells has occurred. Gas lines 
from oxygen supply one and two have been sheared. 
Emergency air supply valves have been openedGrant 
knew that; he was breathing the stuff now. But what the 
hell happened?Sensors have recorded supersonic airflows 
at exterior hull panel L-43. Loss of pressure on the 
life support deck was total within twenty-three seconds. 
The deck has been sealed and is now in vacuum. There 
has been no further systemic or structural damage. There 
has been no further loss of atmospheric pressure in the 
connecting passages or in any other part of the crew module
hearing which, Grant took the mask from his face 
and let it withdraw into the console panel. This concludes 
damage assessment. Are there further queries? the computer 
asked. 

Yes, damn it all, what the hell happened? The computer 
didnt answer questions like that unless it knew the answer, 
unambiguously. No further queries, Grant said, 
and keyed the comm: McNeil, are you all right? 

No answer. 
He tried the hi-band. McNeil, Grant here. I want you 
on the flight deck. 

No answer. McNeil was out of touch, possibly hurt. After 
a moments thought Grant decided to steal just a couple of 
seconds more in an attempt to learn the cause of their predicament. 
With a few flicks of his fingertips he sent one of 
the external monitor eyes scurrying over the command 
module hull toward panel L-43, on the lowest part of the 
sphere. 

The image on the videoplate was a racing blur until 
the robot eye halted over the designated panel. Then there 
it was, fixed and plain on Grants screen: a black dot in 
the upper right quadrant of the white-painted steel panel 

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as neat as a pellet hole in a paper target. Meteoroid, 
Grant whispered. He flicked grids over the monitor image 
and read the hole at just under a millimeter in diameter. 
Big one. 

Where the devil was McNeil? Hed been down in the 
pressurized hold checking the humidifiers. Simple enough, 
so what was the problem?the meteoroid hadnt penetrated 
the holds. . . . Grant slipped out of his straps and 
dived into the central corridor. 

His feet had hardly cleared the deck when he grabbed 
a ladder rung and yanked himself to a halt. Immediately 
below the flight deck was the house-keeping deck. Unlike 
the curtains of the other two cabins, the curtain that partitioned 
McNeils private cabin from the common areas 
stood open. And inside was McNeil, doubled up and turned 
toward the bulkhead, his face hidden, his fists knotted 
around the bulkhead grips. 

Whats the matter, McNeil? Are you sick? 

The engineer shook his head. Grant noticed the little 
beads of moisture that broke away from his head and went 
glittering across the room. He took them for sweat, until 
he realized that McNeil was sobbing. Tears. 

The sight repulsed him. Indeed. Grant was surprised at 
the strength of his own emotion; immediately he suppressed 
his reaction as unworthy. Angus, pull out of it, he 
urged. Weve got to put our heads together. But McNeil 
didnt move, nor did Grant move to comfort him, or even 
touch him. 

After a moments hesitation Grant viciously yanked the 
curtain closed, veiling his mates display of cowardice. 

In a quick tour of the lower decks and the hold access 
corridor, Grant assured himself that whatever the damage 
to the life support deck the integrity of the crews living and 

121 


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working quarters was not threatened. With a single bound 
he leaped through the center of the ship back to the flight 
deck, not even glancing at McNeils cabin as he passed, and 
hooked himself into the command couch. He studied the 
graphics. 

Oxygen supply one: flat. Oxygen supply two: flat. 
Grant gazed at the silent graphs as a man in ancient London, 
returning home one evening at the time of the plague, 
might have stared at a rough cross newly scrawled on his 
door. He tapped keys and the graphs bounced, but the 
fundamental equation that produced a flat curve did not 
yield to his coaxing. Grant could hardly doubt the message: 
news that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own 
guarantee of truth, and only good reports need confirmation. 


Grant, Im sorry. 

Grant swung around to see McNeil floating by the ladder, 
his face flushed, the pouches under his eyes swollen 
from weeping. Even at a range of over a meter Grant could 
smell the medicinal brandy on his breath. 

What was it, a meteoroid? McNeil seemed determined 
to be cheerful, to make up for the lapse, and when 
Grant nodded yes, McNeil even assayed a faint attempt at 
humor. They say a ship this size could get hit once a 
century. We seem to have jumped the gun with ninety-
nine point nine years still to go. 

Worse luck. Look at thisGrant waved at the video-
plate showing the damaged panel. Where we were holed, 
the damned thing had to be coming in at practically right 
angles to us. Any other approach and it couldnt have hit 
anything vital. Grant swung around, facing the console 
and the wide flight deck windows that looked out on the 
starry night. For a moment he was silent, collecting his 

122 


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thoughts. What had happened was seriousdeadly serious
but it need not be fatal. After all, the voyage was 
forty percent over. You up to helping out? he asked. 
We should run some numbers. 

That I am. McNeil made for the engineers work station. 


Then give me figures for total reserves, best and worst 
cases. Air in Hold A. Emergency reserves. Dont forget 
whats in the suit tanks and portable O-two packs. 

Right, said McNeil. 

Ill work on the mass ratios. See if we can gain anything 
by jettisoning the holds and making a run for it. 

McNeil hesitated and muttered, Uh . . . 

Grant paused. But whatever McNeil had been about to 
say, he thought better of it. Grant took a deep breath. He 
was in command here, and he already understood the ob-
viousthat dumping the cargo would put the owners out 
of business, even with insurance, and put the insurance 
underwriters into the poor house, most likely. But after all, 
if it came to a matter of two human lives versus a few 
tonnes of dead weight, there really wasnt much question 
about it. 

Grants command of the ship at this moment was somewhat 
firmer than his command of himself. He was as much 
angry as he was frightenedangry with McNeil for breaking 
down, angry with the designers of the ship for assuming 
that a billion-to-one chance meant the same as impossible 
and therefore failing to provide additional meteor shielding 
in the soft underbelly of the command module. But the 
deadline for oxygen reserves was at least a couple of 
weeks away, and a lot could happen before then. The 
thought helped, for a moment anyway, to keep his fears 
at arms length. 

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This was an emergency beyond doubtbut it was one 
of those peculiarly protracted emergencies, once characteristic 
of the sea, these days more typical of spaceone 
of those emergencies where there was plenty of time to 
think. Perhaps too much time. 

Grant was reminded of an old Cretan sailor he had met 
at the Pavlakis hangar in Heathrow, some ancient relativeof-
a-relative of the old mans, there on a courtesy invitation, 
who had held an audience of clerks and mechanics 
in thrall as he recited the tale of a disastrous voyage he 
had worked as a young man, on a tramp steamer through 
the Red Sea. The captain of the vessel had inexplicably 
failed to provide his ship with sufficient fresh water 
against emergencies. The radio broke down, and then the 
engines. The ship drifted for weeks before attracting the 
attention of passing traffic, by which time the crew had 
been reduced to stretching the fresh water with salt. The 
old Cretan was among the survivors who merely spent a 
few weeks in hospital. Others were not so lucky; they had 
already died horribly of thirst and salt poisoning. 

Slow disasters are like that: one unlikely thing happens, 
and thats complicated by a second unlikely event, 
and a third puts paid to somebodys life. 

McNeil had grossly oversimplified matters when he 
said that the Star Queen might expect to be hit by a meteoroid 
once in a century. The answer depended on so 
many factors that three generations of statisticians and 
their computers had done little but lay down rules so 
vague that the insurance companies still shivered with apprehension 
when the great meteoroid swarms went sweeping 
like gales through the orbits of the inner worlds. 
Otherwise desirable interplanetary trajectories were put 
out of bounds by the insurors if they required a ship to 

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intersect the orbit of the Leonids, say, at the peak of a 
showeralthough even then the real chance of a ship and 
a meteoroid intersecting was, at worst, remote. 

Much depends on ones subjective notion of what the 
words meteor and meteorite and meteoroid mean, of 
course. Each lump of cosmic slag that reaches the surface 
of the Earththus earning the moniker meteoritehas a 
million smaller brethren that perish utterly in the no-
mans-land where the atmosphere has not quite ended and 
space has yet to begin, that ghostly region where Aurora 
walks by night. These are meteorsmanifestations of the 
upper air, the original meaning of the wordthe familiar 
shooting stars, which are seldom larger than a pins head. 
And these in turn are outnumbered a millionfold again by 
particles too small to leave any visible trace of their dying 
as they drift down from the sky. All of them, the countless 
specks of dust, the rare boulders and even the wandering 
mountains that Earth encounters perhaps every dozen million 
yearsall of them, flying free in space, are meteoroids. 


For the purposes of space flight a meteoroid is only of 
interest if, on striking the hull, the resulting explosion interdicts 
vital functions, or produces destructive overpressures, 
or puts a hole in a pressurized compartment too 
big to prevent the rapid loss of atmosphere. These are matters 
both of size and relative speed. The efforts of the statisticians 
had resulted in tables showing approximate 
collision probabilities at various radiuses from the sun for 
meteoroids down to masses of a few milligrams. At the 
radius of Earths orbit, for example, one might expect any 
given cubic kilometer of space to be traversed by a one-
gram meteoroid, travelling toward the sun at perhaps forty 
kilometers per second, just once every three days. The like


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lihood of a spacecraft occupying the same cubic kilometer 
of space (except very near Earth itself) was much lower, 
and so was the calculated incidence of larger meteoroids 
so that McNeils once in a century collision estimate was 
in fact absurdly high. 

The meteoroid which had struck Star Queen was big 
likely a grams worth of concreted dust and ice the size of 
a ball bearing. And it had somehow managed to avoid 
striking either the upper hemisphere of the crew module 
or the large cylindrical cargo holds below, in its nearly 
perpendicular angle of attack on the life support deck. The 
virtual certainty that such an occurrence would not happen 
again in the course of human history gave Grant and 
McNeil very little consolation. 

Still, things might have been worse. Star Queen was 
fourteen days into her trajectory and had twenty-one days 
still to go to reach Port Hesperus. Thanks to her upgraded 
engines she was travelling much faster than the slow 
freighters, the tramp steamers of the space-ways who were 
restricted to Hohmann ellipses, those long tangential flight 
paths that expended minimum energy by just kissing the 
orbits of Earth and Venus on opposite sides of the sun. 
Passenger ships equipped with even more powerful 
gaseous-core reactors, or fast cutters using the still-new 
fusion drives, could slice across from planet to planet in 
as little as a fortnight, given favorable planetary alignments
and given a profit margin that allowed them to 
spend an order of magnitude more on fuelbut Star Queen 
was stuck in the middle of the equation. Her optimal acceleration 
and deceleration determined both her launch 
window and her time of arrival. 

Surprising how long it takes to execute a simple computer 
program when your life depends on the outcome. 

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Grant entered the pertinent numbers a dozen different ways 
before he gave up hoping that the bottom line would 
change. 

He turned to McNeil, still hunched over the engineering 
console across the circular room. Looks like we can shave 
the ETA by almost half a day, he said. Assuming we 
blow all the holds within the next hour or so. 

For a second or two McNeil didnt reply. When at last 
he straightened and turned to face Grant his expression 
was calm and sober. It appears the oxygen will last us 
eighteen days in the best casefifteen in the worst. Seems 
were a few days short. 

The men regarded each other with a trancelike calmness 
that would have been remarkable had it not been obvious 
what was racing through their minds: there must be a way 
out! 

Make oxygen! 

Grow plants, for examplebut there was nothing green 
aboard, not even a packet of grass seedsand even if there 
were, despite the tall tales, when the entire energy cycle 
is taken into account, land plants are not efficient oxygen 
producers on much less than the scale of a small world. 
The only good it would have done them to have those 
pine seedlings aboard would have been the greater volume 
of air in the pressurized hold. 

Electrolyze water then, reversing the fuel-cell cycle, 
getting from it elemental hydrogen and oxygenbut there 
was not enough water in the undamaged fuel cells or in 
the water tanks, or even in the two mens bodies, to keep 
them breathing for an additional seven days. At least not 
past their deaths from dehydration. 

Extra oxygen was not to be had. Which left that last 
standby of space opera, the deus ex machina of a passing 

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spaceshipone that conveniently happened to be matching 
ones course and velocity exactly. 

There were no such ships, of course. Almost by definition, 
the spaceship that happened to be passing was 
impossible. Even if other freighters already were skidding 
toward Venus on the same trajectoryand Grant and 
McNeil would have known if there werethen by the laws 
that governed their movements, the very laws propounded 
by Newton, they must keep their original separations without 
a heroic sacrifice of mass and a possibly fatal squandering 
of fuel. Any ship passing at a significantly greater 
velocitya passing liner, saywould be pursuing its own 
hyperbolic trajectory and would likely be as inaccessible 
as Pluto. But a fully provisioned cutter, if it started now 
from Venus . . . 

Whats docked at Port Hesperus? McNeil inquired, as 
if his thoughts had been on the same trajectory as Grants. 

Grant waited a moment, consulting the computer, before 
he replied. A couple of old Hohmann freighters, according 
to Lloyds Registerand the usual litter of 
launches and tugs. He laughed abruptly. Couple of solar 
yachts. No help there. 

Seems were drawing a blank, McNeil observed. 
Praps we should have a word with the controllers on 
Earth and Venus. 

I was about to do just that, Grant said irritably, as 
soon as Ive decided how to phrase the query. He took a 
swift breath. Look, youve been a great help here. You 
could do us another favor and do a personal check on 
possible air leaks in the system. All right with you, then? 

Certainly, thats all right. McNeils voice was quiet. 

Grant watched McNeil sidelong as he unbuckled his 
loose straps and swam down, off the flight deck. The en


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gineer was probably going to give him trouble in the days 
that lay ahead, Grant mused. That shameful business, 
breaking down like a child . . . Until now they had got on 
well enoughlike most men of substantial girth, McNeil 
was good-natured and easy-goingbut now Grant realized 
that McNeil lacked fiber. Obviously he had become 
flabby, physically and mentally, through living too long 
in space. 

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The parabolic antenna on the communications boom was 
aimed at the gleaming arc lamp of Venus, less than twenty 
million kilometers away and moving on a converging path 
with the ship. A tone sounded on the console, indicating 
that a signal from Port Hesperus had been acquired. 

The physical convergence would not occur for a 
month, but the three-millimeter waves from the ships 
transmitter would make the trip in under a minute. How 
nice, at this moment, to be a radio wave. 

Grant acknowledged the go ahead and began to talk 
steadily and, he hoped, quite dispassionately. He gave a 
careful analysis of the situation, appending pertinent data 
in telemetry, ending his speech with a request for advice. 
His fears concerning McNeil he left unspoken; the engineer 
was doubtless monitoring the transmission. 

And on Port Hesperusthe Venus orbital stationthe 
bombshell was about to burst, triggering trains of sympathetic 
ripples on all the inhabited worlds, as video and 

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faxsheets took up the refrain: STAR QUEEN IN PERIL. An 
accident in space has a dramatic quality that tends to 
crowd all other items from the newsheads. At least until 
the corpses have been counted. 

The actual reply from Port Hesperus, less dramatic, was 
as swift as the speed of light allowed: Port Hesperus control 
to Star Queen, acknowledging your emergency status. 
We will shortly forward a detailed questionnaire. Please 
stand by. 

They stood by. Or rather they floated by. 

When the questions arrived Grant put them on printout. 
The message took nearly an hour to run through the 
printer and the questionnaire was so detailed, so extremely 
detailedso extraordinarily detailed, in factthat Grant 
wondered morosely if he and McNeil would live long 
enough to answer it. Two weeks, more or less. 

Most of the queries were technical, concerning the 
status of the ship. Grant had no doubt the experts on Earth 
and Venus station were wracking their brains in an attempt 
to save Star Queen and her cargo. Perhaps especially 
her cargo. 

What do you think? Grant asked McNeil, when the 
engineer had finished running through the message. He 
was studying McNeil carefully now, watching him for any 
signs of strain. 

After a long, rigid silence, McNeil shrugged. His first 
words echoed Grants thoughts. It will certainly keep us 
busy. I doubt well get through this in a day. And Ive got 
to admit I think half of these questions are crazy. 

Grant nodded but said nothing. He let McNeil continue. 

 Rate of leakage from the crew areassensible 
enough, but weve already told them that. And what do 
they want with the efficiency of the radiation shields? 

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Could have something to do with seal erosion, I suppose, 
Grant murmured. 

McNeil eyed him. If you were to ask me, Id say they 
were tryin to keep our spirits up, pretendin they have a 
bright idea or two. And meanwhile were to keep ourselves 
too busy to worry about it. 

Grant peered at McNeil with a queer mixture of relief and 
annoyancerelief because the Scot hadnt thrown another 
tantrum and, conversely, annoyance because he was now so 
damned calm, refusing to fit neatly into the mental category 
Grant had prepared for him. Had that momentary lapse after 
the meteoroid struck been typical of the man? Or might it 
have happened to anyone? Grant, to whom the world was 
very much a place of blacks and whites, felt angry at being 
unable to decide whether McNeil was cowardly or courageous. 
That he might be both never occurred to him. 

In space, in flight, time is timeless. On Earth there is 
the great clock of the spinning globe itself, marking the 
hours with whole continents for hands. Even on the moon 
the shadows creep sluggishly from crag to crag as the sun 
makes its slow march across the sky. But in space the stars 
are fixed, or might as well be; the sun moves only if the 
pilot chooses to move the ship, and the chronometers tick 
off numbers that say days and hours but as far as sensation 
goes are meaningless. 

Grant and McNeil had long since learned to regulate 
their lives accordingly; while in deep space they moved 
and thought with a kind of leisurewhich vanished 
quickly enough when a voyage was nearing its end and 
the time for braking maneuvers arrivedand though they 
were now under sentence of death, they continued along 
the well-worn grooves of habit. Every day Grant carefully 

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dictated the log, confirmed the ships position, carried out 
his routine maintenance duties. McNeil was also behaving 
normally, as far as Grant could tell, although he suspected 
that some of the technical maintenance was being carried 
out with a very light hand, and hed had a few sharp words 
with the engineer about the accumulation of dirty food 
trays following McNeils turns in the galley. 

It was now three days since the meteoroid had struck. 
Grant kept getting buck up messages from traffic control 
on Port Hesperus along the lines of Sorry for the 
delay, fellows, well have something for you just as soon 
as we canand he waited for the results of the high-level 
review panel convened by the Board of Space Control, 
with its raft of specialists on two planets, which was running 
simulations of wild schemes to rescue Star Queen. He 
had waited impatiently at first, but his eagerness had 
slowly ebbed. He doubted that the finest technical brains 
in the solar system could save them nowthough it was 
hard to abandon hope when everything still seemed so 
normal and the air was still clean and fresh. 

On the fourth day Venus spoke. Okay, fellows, heres 
what weve got for you. Were going to take this one system 
at a time, and some of this gets involved, so you be sure 
and ask for clarification if you need it. Okay, first well go 
into the cabin atmosphere system file, locus two-three-nine 
point four. Now Ill just give you a moment to find that 
locus. . . . 

Shorn of jargon, the long message was a funeral oration; 
the thrust of the instructions was to insure that Star 
Queen could arrive at Port Hesperus under remote control 
with its cargo intact, even if there were two dead bodies 
in the command module. Grant and McNeil had been written 
off. 

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One comfort: Grant already knew from his training in 
high-altitude chambers that death from hypoxia, near the 
end, anyway, would be a positively giddy affair. 

McNeil vanished below soon after the message concluded, 
without a word of comment. Grant did not see him 
again for hours. He was frankly relieved, at first. He didnt 
feel like talking, either, and if McNeil wanted to look after 
himself that was his affair. Besides, there were various letters 
to write, loose ends to see tothough the last-willand-
testament business could come later. There were a 
couple of weeks left. 

At supper time Grant went down to the common area, 
expecting to find McNeil at work at the galley. McNeil was 
a good cook, within the limitations of spacecraft cuisine, 
and he usually enjoyed his turn in the kitchen. He certainly 
took good enough care of his own stomach. 

But there was no one in the common area. The curtain 
in front of McNeils cabin was pulled shut. 

Grant yanked the curtain aside and found McNeil lying 
in midair near his bunk, very much at peace with the universe. 
Hanging there beside him was a large plastic crate 
whose magnetic lock had somehow been jimmied. Grant 
had no need to examine it to know its contents; a glance 
at McNeil was enough. 

Ay, and its a dirty shame, said the engineer without 
a trace of embarrassment, to suck this stuff up through 
a tube. He cocked an eye at Grant. Tell you what, capn 
whynt you put a little spin on the vessel sos we can drink 
er properly? Grant glared at him contemptuously, but 
McNeil returned his gaze unabashed. Oh, dont be a sourpuss, 
manhave some yourself! For what does it matter? 

He batted a bottle at Grant, who fielded it deftly. It was 

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a Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley of California 
fabulously valuable, Grant knew the consignmentand the 
contents of that plastic case were worth thousands. 

I dont think theres any need, Grant said severely, 
to behave like a pigeven under these circumstances. 

McNeil wasnt drunk yet. He had only reached the 
brightly lit anteroom of intoxication and had not lost all 
contact with the drab outer world. I am prepared, he 
announced with great solemnity, to listen to any good 
argument against my present course of action. A course 
which seems eminently sensible to me. He blessed Grant 
with a cherubic smile. But youd better convince me 
quickly, while Im still amenable to reason. 

With that he squeezed the plastic bulb into which hed 
off-loaded a third of the bottles contents, and shot a 
ruddy purple jet into his open mouth. 

Youre stealing company propertyscheduled for salvage, 
Grant announced, unaware of the absurdity but 
conscious as he said it that his voice had taken on the 
nasality, the constriction, of a young schoolmaster, and 
. . . and besides, you can hardly stay drunk for two weeks. 

That, said McNeil thoughtfully, remains to be seen. 

I dont think so, retorted Grant. With his right hand 
he secured himself to the bulkhead, with his left he swiped 
at the crate and gave it a vicious shove that sent it soaring 
through the open curtain. 

As he wheeled and dived after it he heard McNeils 
pained yelp: Why you constipated bastard! Of all the 
dirty tricks! 

It would take McNeil some time in his present condition 
to organize a pursuit. Grant steered the crate down 
to the hold airlock and into the pressurized, temperature-
controlled compartment it had come from. He sealed the 

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case and replaced it on its rack, strapping it securely into 
place. No point in trying to lock the case; McNeil had 
made a mess of the lock. 

But Grant could make sure McNeil wouldnt get in here 
againhe would reset the combination on the hold airlock 
and keep the new combination to himself. As it happened, 
he had plenty of time to do it. McNeil hadnt bothered to 
follow him. 

As Grant swam back toward the flight deck he passed 
the open curtain to McNeils cabin. McNeil was still in 
there, singing. 

We dont care where the oxygen goes 

If it doesnt get into the wine. . . . 

Evidently hed already removed a couple of bottles before 
Grant had arrived to grab the case. Let them last him 
two weeks then, Grant thought, if they last the night. 

We dont care where the oxygen goes 

If it doesnt get into the wine. . . . 

Where the hell had he heard that refrain? Grant, whose 
education was severely technical, was sure McNeil was deliberately 
misquoting some bawdy Elizabethan madrigal or 
the like, just to taunt him. He was suddenly shaken by an 
emotion which, to do him justice, he did not for a moment 
recognize, and which passed as swiftly as it had come. 

But when he reached the flight deck he was trembling, 
and he felt a little sick. He realized that his dislike of 
McNeil was slowly turning to hatred. 

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Certainly Grant and McNeil got on well enough in ordinary 
circumstances. It was nobodys fault that circumstances 
were now very far from ordinary. 

Only because the two men had shown wonderfully 
smooth personality curves on the standard psychological 
tests; only because their flight records were virtually flawless; 
only because thousands of millions of pounds and 
dollars and yen and drachmas and dinars were involved 
in the flight of Star Queen had the Board of Space Control 
granted the ship a waiver of the crew-of-three rule. 

The crew-of-three rule had evolved during a century 
and a half of space flight and ostensibly provided for a 
minimally sound social configuration during long periods 
of isolationa problem that had not been pressing in the 
20th century, before occupied spacecraft had ventured farther 
than the moon and the time delay for communication 
with Earth was still measured in seconds. True, in any 
group of three, two will eventually gang up on the third 

137 


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as the ancient Romans learned after several hard political 
lessons, in human affairs the least stable structure is the 
tripod. Which is not necessarily bad. Certainly three is better 
than two, and two is much better than one. And any 
group larger than three will soon enough degenerate into 
sub-groups of diads and triads. 

A man or woman alone will almost certainly go mad 
within a relatively short time. It may be a benign madness, 
even an exemplary madnesstaking the form of an obsessive 
writing of romantic poetry, for examplebut no 
form of madness is encouraging to spacecraft insurors. 

Experience shows that a crew of one man and one 
woman will experience a crisis within days. Their relative 
ages do not matter. If the text of their conversation is 
power, the subtext will be sex. And vice versa. 

On the other hand, two men alone together or two 
women alone together, provided their sexual vectors are 
not convergent, will dispense with the sexual subtext and 
will get down to the nitty-gritty of power every time: 
whos in charge here? . . . Although in the case of two 
women the resolution of that question is, for cultural reasons, 
somewhat less likely to lead to fatal violence. 

With three people of whatever sex, everybody will try 
to get along for a while and eventually two will gang up 
on the third. Thus the power question resolves itself, and 
depending on the make-up of the crew, sex will take care 
of itself also, i.e. two or more may be doing it together 
and one or more will be doing it alone. 

Two men, not close friends, both of them heterosexual 
and of comparable age and status but fundamentally different 
in temperament, are the worst possible combination. 

*** 

138 


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Three days without food, it has been said, is long 
enough to remove the subtle differences between a so-
called civilized man and a so-called savage. Grant and 
McNeil were in no physical discomfort, nor would they be 
in extreme pain even at the end. But their imaginations 
had been active; they had more in common with a couple 
of hungry cannibals lost in a log canoe than they would 
have cared to admit. 

One aspect of their situation, the most important of all, 
had never been mentioned; the computers analysis had 
been checked and rechecked, but its bottom line was not 
quite final, for the computer refrained from making suggestions 
it had not been asked to make. The two men on 
the crew could easily take that final step of calculation in 
their heads 

and each arrived at the same result. It was simple, 
really, a macabre parody of those problems in first-grade 
arithmetic which began, If two men had six days to assemble 
five helicopters, how long . . . ? 

At the moment the meteoroid destroyed the stored liquid 
oxygen, there were approximately forty-eight hundred 
cubic feet of air inside the crew module and twelve hundred 
cubic feet of air in the pressurized compartment of 
Hold A. At one atmosphere a cubic foot of air weighs one 
and two-tenths ounces, but less than a fourth of that is 
oxygen. Adding in the space-suit and emergency supplies, 
there were less than seventy pounds of oxygen in the ship. 
A man consumes almost two pounds of oxygen a day. 

Thirty-five man-days of oxygen . . . 

The oxygen supply was enough for two men for two 
and a half weeks. Venus was three weeks away. One did 
not have to be a calculating prodigy to see that one man, 

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one man only, might live to walk the curving garden paths 
of Port Hesperus. 

Four days had passed. The acknowledged deadline was 
thirteen days away, but the unspoken deadline was ten. 
For ten more days two men could breathe the air without 
endangering the chances of the one who might survive 
alone. Beyond ten days one man only would have any 
hope of reaching Venus. To a sufficiently detached observer 
the situation might have seemed highly engaging. 
Grant and McNeil were not detached, however. It is not 
easy at the best of times for two people to decide amicably 
which of them shall commit suicide; it is even more difficult 
when they are not on speaking terms. 

Grant wished to be perfectly fair. Therefore, as he conceived 
matters, the only thing to do was to wait until 
McNeil sobered up and emerged from his cabin; then 
Grant would put it to him directly. 

As these thoughts swirled over the surface of his mind 
Peter Grant was staring through the windows of the flight 
deck at the starry universe, seeing the thousands upon 
thousands of individual stars and even the misty nebulas 
as he had never seen them before. He was moved by a 
certain conviction of transcendence 

which mere speech would surely betray. 

Well, he would write McNeil a letter. And best do it 
now, while they were still on diplomatic terms. He clipped 
a sheet of notepaper to his writing pad and began: Dear 
McNeil. He paused, his ballpoint poised above the paper. 
Then he tore that sheet out and began again: McNeil. 

It took him the best part of three hours to get down 
what he wanted to say, and even then he wasnt wholly 
satisfied. Some things were damned difficult to put on paper. 
At last he finished; he folded the letter and sealed it 

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with a strip of tape. He left the flight deck, taking the letter 
with him, and closed himself into his cabin. The business 
of actually handing the letter to McNeil could wait a day 
or two. 

Few of the billions of videoplate addicts on Earthor 
the additional thousands on Port Hesperus and Mars and 
in the Mainbelt and on the colonized moonscould have 
had any true notion of what was going on within the 
minds of the two men aboard Star Queen. The public media 
was full of rescue schemes. All sorts of retired spaceship 
pilots and writers of fantasy fiction had been dredged 
up to give their opinons over the airwaves as to how Grant 
and McNeil should comport themselves. The men who 
were the cause of all this fuss wisely declined to listen to 
any of it. 

Traffic control on Port Hesperus was a bit more disreet. 
One could not with any decency give words of advice or 
encouragement to men on death row, even if there was 
some uncertainty about the date of execution. Therefore 
traffic control contented itself with few emotionally neutral 
messages each dayrelaying the newsheads about the 
war in southern Asia, the growing sector dispute in the 
Mainbelt, new mineral strikes on the surface of Venus, 
the fuss over the censorship of While Rome Burns, 
which had just been banned in Moscow. . . . 

Life on Star Queen continued much as before, not withstanding 
the stiffness between the two men that had attended 
McNeils emergenceclassically hung-overfrom 
his cabin. Grant, for his part, spent much of his time on 
the flight deck writing letters to his wife. Long letters. The 
longer the better. . . . He could have spoken to her if hed 
wished, but the thought of all those news addicts listening 

141 


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in prevented him from doing so. Unhappily, there were no 
truly private lines in space. 

And that letter to McNeil. Why not deliver it, get it 
over with? Well, he would do that, within a couple of days 
. . . and then they would decide. Besides, such a delay 
would give McNeil a chance to raise the subject himself. 

That McNeil might have reasons for his hesitation other 
than simple cowardice did not occur to Grant. 

He wondered how McNeil was spending his time, now 
that hed run out of booze. The engineer had a large library 
of books on videochip, for he read widely and his range 
of interests was unusual. Grant had seen him delving into 
Western philosophy and Eastern religion and fiction of all 
kinds; McNeil had once mentioned that his favorite book 
was the odd early-20th century novel Jurgen. Perhaps he 
was trying to forget his doom by losing himself in its 
strange magic. Others of McNeils books were less respectable, 
and not a few were of the class curiously described 
as curious. . . . 

But in fact McNeil, lying in his cabin or moving silently 
through the ship, was a subtler and more complicated 
personality than Grant knew, perhaps too 
complicated for Grant to understand. Yes, McNeil was a 
hedonist. He did what he could to make life comfortable 
for himself aboard ship, and when planetside he indulged 
himself fully in the pleasures of life, all the more for being 
cut off from them for months at a time. But he was by no 
means the moral weakling that the unimaginative, puritanical 
Grant supposed him to be. 

True, he had collapsed completely under the shock of 
the meteoroid strike. When it happened hed been passing 
through the life support decks access corridor, on his way 

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back from the hold, and he understood the seriousness of 
the violent explosion instantlyit happened hardly a 
meter away, on the other side of the steel wallwithout 
having to wait for confirmation. His reaction was exactly 
like that of an airline passenger who sees a wing come off 
at 30,000 feet: there are still ten or fifteen minutes left to 
fall, but death is inevitable. So hed panicked. 

Like a willow in the wind, hed bowed under the 
strainand then recovered. Grant was a harder manan 
oakand a brittler one. 

As for the business of the wine, McNeils behavior had 
been reprehensible by Grants standards, but that was 
Grants problem; besides, that episode too was behind 
them. By tacit consent theyd gone back to their normal 
routine, although it did nothing to reduce the sense of 
strain. They avoided each other as much as possible except 
when meal times brought them together. When they did 
meet, they behaved with an exaggerated politeness, as if 
each were striving to be perfectly normalyet inexplicably 
failing. 

A day passed, and another. And a third. 

Grant had hoped that McNeil would have broached the 
subject of suicide by now, thus sparing him a very awkward 
duty. When the engineer stubbornly refused to do 
anything of the sort it added to Grants resentment and 
contempt. To make matters worse he was now suffering 
from nightmares and sleeping very badly. 

The nightmare was always the same. When Peter Grant 
was a child it had often happened that at bedtime he had 
been reading a story far too exciting to be left until morning. 
To avoid detection he had continued reading under 
the bedclothes by flashlight, curled up in a snug white


143 


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walled cocoon. Every ten minutes or so the air had become 
too stifling to breathe and his emergence into the delicious 
cool air had been a major part of the fun. Now, thirty years 
later, these innocent childhood hours returned to haunt 
him. He was dreaming that he could not escape from the 
suffocating sheets while the air was steadily and remorselessly 
thickening around him. 

Hed intended to give McNeil the letter after two days, 
yet somehow hed put it off again. This procrastination 
was very unlike Grant, but he managed to persuade himself 
that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. He was 
giving McNeil a chance to redeem himself 

to prove that he wasnt a coward, by raising the issue 
first. It never occurred to Grant that McNeil might be waiting 
for him to do the same.... 

The all-too-literal deadline was three days off when, 
for the first time, Grants mind brushed lightly against the 
thought of murder. Hed retired to the flight deck after the 
evening meal, trying to relax by gazing at the starry 
night through the wide windows that surrounded the flight 
deck, but McNeil was doing a very thorough and noisy 
job of cleaning up the galley, clattering around with what 
must surely be an unnecessary, even a deliberate, amount 
of noise. 

What use was McNeil to this world? He had no family, 
no responsibilities. Who would be the worse for his death? 

Grant, on the other hand, had a wife and three children, 
of whom he was moderately fond, even if they were 
no more than dutiful in their perfunctory displays of affection 
for him. An impartial judge would have no difficulty 
in deciding which of them should survive, and if 
McNeil had had a spark of decency in him he would have 

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come to the same conclusion already. Since he appeared 
to have done nothing of the sort he had surely forfeited 
all further claims to consideration. . . . 

Such was the elemental logic of Grants subconscious 
mind, which of course had arrived at this conclusion days 
before but had only now succeeded in attracting the attention 
for which it had been clamoring. 

To Grants credit he at once rejected the thought. With 
horror. 

He was an upright and honorable person, with a very 
strict code of behavior. Even the vagrant homicidal impulses 
of what is misleadingly called a normal man had 
seldom ruffled his mind. But in the daysthe very few 
daysleft to him, they would come more and more often. 

The air was noticeably fouler. Although air pressure 
had been reduced to a minimum and there was no shortage 
of the canisters that were used to scrub carbon dioxide 
from the circulating atmosphere, it was impossible to prevent 
a slow increase in the ratio of inert gases to the dwindling 
oxygen reserves. There was still no real difficulty in 
breathing, but the thick odor was a constant reminder of 
what lay ahead. 

Grant was in his cabin. It was night, but he could 
not sleepa relief in one way, for it broke the hold of his 
nightmares. But he had not slept well the previous night 
either, and he was becoming physically run down; his 
nerve was rapidly deteriorating, a state of affairs accentuated 
by the fact that McNeil had been behaving with a 
calmness that was not only unexpected but quite annoying. 
Grant realized that in his own emotional state it would 
be dangerous to delay the showdown any longer. He freed 
himself from his loose sleep restraint and opened his desk, 

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reaching for the letter he had intended to give to McNeil 
days ago. And then he smelled something 

A single neutron begins the chain reaction that in an 
instant can destroy a million lives, the toil of generations. 
Equally insignificant are the trigger-events that can alter 
a persons course of action and so alter the whole pattern 
of the future. Nothing could have been more trivial than 
what made Grant pause with the letter in his hand; under 
ordinary circumstances he would not have noticed it at 
all. It was the smell of smoketobacco smoke. 

The revelation that McNeil, that sybaritic engineer, had 
so little self-control that he was squandering the last precious 
pounds of oxygen on cigarettes filled Grant with a 
blinding fury. For a moment he went quite rigid with the 
intensity of his emotion. Then, slowly, he crumpled the 
letter in his hand. The thought that had first been an unwelcome 
intruder, then a casual speculation, was now finally 
accepted. McNeil had had his chance and had 
proved, by this unbelievable selfishness, unworthy of it. 

Very wellhe could die. 

The speed with which Grant arrived at this self-
justifying conclusion would have been obvious to the rankest 
of amateur psychiatrists. He had needed to convince 
himself that there was no point in doing the honorable 
thing, suggesting some game of chance that would give 
McNeil and him an equal chance at life. Here was the 
excuse he needed, and he seized upon it. He might now 
plan and carry out McNeils murder according to his own 
particular moral code. 

Relief as much as hatred drove Grant back to his 
bunk, where every whiff of tobacco aroma salved his conscience. 


*** 

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McNeil could have told Grant that once again he was 
badly misjudging him. The engineer had been a heavy 
smoker for yearsagainst his better judgment, its true, 
and quite conscious that he was unavoidably an annoyance 
to the majority of folk who did not care to breathe 
his exhaust. Hed tried to quitit was easy, he sometimes 
quipped, hed done it oftenbut in moments of strain he 
inevitably found himself reaching for those fragrant paper 
cylinders. He envied Grant, the sort of man who could 
smoke a cigarette when he wanted one but put them aside 
without regret. He wondered why Grant smoked at all, if 
he didnt need to. Some sort of symbolic rebellion . . . ? 

At any rate, McNeil had calculated that he could afford 
two cigarettes a day without producing the least measurable 
difference in the duration of a breathable atmosphere. 
The luxury of those six or seven minutes, twice a day 
one late at night, one at mid-morning, hidden deep down 
in the central corridor of the shipwas in all likelihood 
beyond the capacity of Peter Grant to imagine, and it contributed 
greatly to Angus McNeils mental well-being. 
Though the two cigarettes made no difference to the oxygen 
supply, they made all the difference in the world to 
McNeils nerves, and thus contributed indirectly to Grants 
peace of mind. 

But no use trying to tell Grant that. So McNeil smoked 
privately, exercising a self-control that was in itself surprisingly 
agreeable, even voluptuous. 

Had McNeil known of Grants insomnia, he would not 
have risked even that late night cigarette in his unsealed 
cabin. . . . 

For a man who had only an hour ago talked himself 
into murder, Grants actions were remarkably methodical. 

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Without hesitationbeyond that necessitated by caution 
Grant floated silently past his cabin partition and on 
across the darkened common area to the wall-mounted 
medicine chest near the galley. Only a ghostly blue safelight 
illuminated the interior of the chest, in which tubes 
and vials and instruments were snugly secured in their 
padded nests by straps of Velcro. The ships outfitters had 
provided tools and medicines for every emergency they 
had ever heard of or could imagine. 

Including this one. There behind its retaining strap was 
the tiny bottle whose image had been lying far down in 
the depths of Grants unconscious all these days. In the 
blue light he could not read the fine print on the label 
all he could see was the skull and crossbonesbut he knew 
the words by heart: Approximately one-half gram will 
cause painless and almost instantaneous death. 

Painless and instantaneousgood. Even better was a 
fact that went unmentioned on the label. The stuff was 
tasteless. 

Most of another day went by. 

The contrast between the meals prepared by Grant and 
those organized with considerable skill and care by McNeil 
was striking. Anyone who was fond of food and who spent 
a good deal of his life in space usually learned the art of 
cooking in self-defense, and McNeil had not only learned 
it but had mastered it. He could coax a piquant sauce from 
dried milk, the juices of rehydrated beefsteak, and his private 
stash of herbs; he could coax flavor from the deep 
freeze with his flasks of oils and vinegars. 

To Grant, eating was one of those necessary but annoying 
jobs that was to be got through as quickly as possible, 
and his cooking mirrored this attitude. McNeil had 

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long ago ceased to grumble about it; imagine his bemusement, 
then, had he seen the trouble Grant was taking 
over this particular dinner. 

They met wordlessly, as usualonly the constraints of 
habit and civility kept them from grabbing their trays and 
retreating to their own lairs. Instead they hovered on opposite 
sides of the little convenience table, each perched 
in midair at a careful angle, not quite looking at or looking 
away from the other. If McNeil noticed any increasing 
nervousness on Grants part as the meal progressed, he 
said nothing; indeed they ate in perfect silence, having 
long since exhausted the possibilities of light conversation. 
When the last course, succotash, had been served in 
those bowls with the incurved rims, designed to restrain 
their contents, Grant cleared the litter and went into the 
adjacent galley unit to make coffee. 

He took quite a long time, considering the coffee was, 
as always, instantfor at the last moment something maddening 
happened. He was on the point of squeezing boiling 
water from one container into another, looking at the 
two hot-liquid bulbs in front of him, when he remembered 
an ancient silent film hed seen on a chip somewhere, featuring 
a clown who usually wore a bowler hat and a funny 
mustacheCharlie somebodywho in this movie was trying 
to poison an unwanted wife. Only he got the glasses 
accidentally reversed. 

No memory could have been more unwelcome. Grant 
nearly lapsed into psychopathic giggles. Had the erudite 
McNeil known what was going on in Grants mind (assuming 
he could have retained his equanimity and humor), 
he might have suggested that Grant had been 
attacked by Poes Imp of the Perverse, that demon who 
delights in defying the careful canons of self-preservation. 

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A good minute passed before Grant, shivering, managed 
to regain control. His nerves must be in even worse 
condition than he had imagined. 

But he was sure that outwardly at least he was quite 
calm as he carried in the two plastic containers and their 
drinking tubes. There was no danger of confusing them 
now: the engineers had the letters M A C painted boldly 
around it. He pushed that one toward McNeil and watched, 
fascinatedtrying hard to disguise his fascinationas 
McNeil toyed with the bulb. He seemed in no great hurry; 
he was staring moodily at nothing. Then, at last, he put 
the drinking tube to his mouth and sipped 

and spluttered, staring at the drinking bulb with 
shock. An icy hand seized Peter Grants heart. McNeil 
cleared his throat, then turned to him and said evenly 

Well na, Grant, youve made it properly for once. And 
very hot, too. 

Slowly Grants heart resumed its interrupted work. He 
did not trust himself to speak, but he did manage a noncommittal 
nod. 

McNeil parked the bulb carefully in midair, a few 
inches from his face. His fleshy face settled into a ponderously 
thoughtful expression, as if he were weighing his 
words in preparation for some momentous pronouncement. 


Grant cursed himself for making the coffee so hot. Just 
the sort of detail that hanged murderers. And if McNeil 
waited any longer to say whatever he was going to say, 
Grant would probably betray himself through nervousness. 


Not that it would do McNeil any good now. 

At last McNeil spoke. I suppose its occurred to you, 

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he said in a quietly conversational way, that theres still 
enough air to last one of us to Venus. 

Grant forced his jangling nerves under control and tore 
his eyes away from McNeils fatal bulb of coffee; his throat 
seemed very dry as he answered. It . . . it had crossed my 
mind. 

McNeil touched the floating bulb, found it still too hot, 
and continued thoughtfully: Then it would be more sensible
wouldnt it?if one of us simply decided to walk 
out the airlock, sayor take some of the poison in there. 
He jerked his head toward the medicine chest, on the curve 
of the wall not far from where they were floating. 

Grant nodded. Oh yes, that would be quite sensible. 

The only trouble, of course, McNeil mused, is deciding 
which of us is to be the unlucky fella. I suppose 
we could draw a card . . . or something equally arbitrary. 

Grant stared at McNeil with a fascination that almost 
outweighed his mounting nervousness. He never would 
have believed the engineer could discuss the subject so 
calmly. Obviously McNeils thoughts had been running on 
a line parallel with his own, and it was scarcely even a 
coincidence that he had chosen this time, of all times, to 
raise the question. From his talk it was certain that he 
suspected nothing. 

McNeil was watching Grant closely, as if judging his 
reaction. 
Youre right, Grant heard himself say. We must talk 
it over. Soon. 

Yes, McNeil said impassively. We must. And then 
he reached for the bulb of coffee and brought the drinking 
tube to his lips. He sucked at it slowly, for a long time. 

Grant could not wait for him to finish. Yet the relief 

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he had hoped for did not come; indeed, he felt a stab of 
regret. Regret, not quite remorse. It was a little late now 
to think of how lonely he would be aboard Star Queen, 
haunted by his thoughts, in the days to come. 

He knew he did not wish to see McNeil die. Suddenly 
he felt rather sick. Without another glance at his victim 
he launched himself toward the flight deck. 

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Immovably fixed, the fierce sun and the unwinking stars 
looked down on Star Queen, which on the grand scale of 
cosmic affairs was as motionless as they were. 

There was no way for a naive observer to know that 
the tiny model molecule of a spaceship had now reached 
its maximum velocity with respect to Earth and was about 
to unleash massive thrust to brake itself into a parking 
orbit near Port Hesperus. Indeed, there was no reason for 
an observer on the cosmic scale to suspect that Star Queen 
had anything to do with intelligent purpose, or with life 

until the main airlock atop the command module 
opened and the lights of the interior glowed yellow in the 
cold darkness. For a moment the round circle of light hung 
oddly within the black shadow of the falling ship; then it 
was abruptly eclipsed, as two human figures floated out 
of the ship. 

One of the two bulky figures was active, the other passive. 
Something not easy to perceive happened in the 

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shadows; then the passive figure began to move, slowly 
at first but with rapidly mounting speed. It swept out of 
the shadow of the ship into the full blast of the sun. And 
now the cosmic observer, given a powerful telescope, 
might have noted the nitrogen bottle strapped to its back, 
the valve evidently left opena crude but effective rocket. 

Rolling slowly, the corpsefor such it wasdwindled 
against the stars, to vanish utterly in less than a minute. 
The other figure remained quite motionless in the open 
airlock, watching it go. Then the outer hatch swung shut, 
the circle of brilliance vanished, and only the reflected 
sunlight of bright Venus still glinted on the shadowed wall 
of the ship. 

In the immediate vicinity of Star Queen, nothing of 
consequence happened for the next seven days. 

154 


PART FOUR 

A QUESTION OF HONOR 


155 


XIII 


When she caught up with the uniformed man, he was 
marching along the river walk in the Council of Worlds 
grounds, heading away from the Earth Central offices of 
the Board of Space Control. The formal gardens were green 
with the tender new leaves of budding trees; another 
spring had come to Manhattan... 

Assistant Inspector Troy, Commander. They told me 
to catch you before you left. 

He kept walking. Im not going anywhere, Troy. Just 
getting out of the office. She fell into step beside him. 
He was a gaunt man, of Slavic ancestry by the look of 
him, with an iron-gray crewcut and a Canadian-accented 
voice so hoarse it was hardly more than a whisper. His 
blue uniform was pressed and spotless; the gold insignia 
on his collar gleamed; his chest was pinned with only a 
few ribbons, but they were the ones that count. Despite 
the blue suit and the headquarters job, the commanders 
deeply creased face, burned almost black, betrayed his 

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years in deep space. He opened a silver pill case and 
popped a tiny purple sphere into his mouththen seemed 
to remember Sparta, marching beside him. He paused at 
the steel railing and held out the open case. Care for one? 
Rademas. When she hesitated he said, Lots of us use 
them, Im sure you know thatmild boost, wash out of 
your system in twenty minutes. 

No thank you, sir, she said firmly. 

I was kidding, he rasped. Actually theyre breath 
mints. Violet flavor. Strongest thing in em is sugar. He 
stretched his face into a shape that was not much like a 
grin. He still held out the open case. Sparta shook her head 
again and he flipped it closed. As you wish. Grimacing 
in distaste, he spit the mint hed been holding under his 
tongue over the rail, into the gelid East River. Guess Ive 
pulled that dumb stunt too often; you rookies are wise. 

He gazed out across the water, its thick green surface 
crowded with long-legged algae harvesters like water 
skates on a pond, their stainless steel manifolds reflecting 
the golden sunlight of early morning. The commander was 
staring past them, straight at the sunprobably wishing 
he had a different view of it, one without a lot of muggy 
atmosphere in the way. After a few moments he turned to 
Sparta, clearing his throat roughly. Okay. Seems Inspector 
Bernstein thinks highly of you. She wrote you a good 
ER. Were giving you a solo. 

Spartas pulse raced; after two years, the prospect of a 
mission of her own! Im grateful for her recommendation. 

Ill bet you are. Especially since you never thought 
shed let you out of her grasp. 

Sparta allowed herself to smile. Well sir, I admit I was 
getting to know Newark better than I ever wanted to. 

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No guarantee you wont go back there when this is 
over, Troy. Depends. 

Whats the assignment, Commander? 

TDY to Port Hesperus. The Star Queen thing. 
Shouldnt be too hairy. Either the ship was holed by a 
meteoroid or it wasnt, in which case it broke or somebody 
broke it. The owner and most of the people concerned are 
already on their way to Port Hesperus in Helios, but well 
get you there first. Youll be working with a guy named 
Proboda from the local. Hes got seniority, but youre in 
charge. Which reminds me . . . He reached into the inside 
pocket of his jacket and took out a leather folder. Since 
we dont want the locals to push you aroundhe flipped 
open the folder to reveal a gold shieldyoure promoted. 
He handed it to her. Heres the visual aid. Sliver in the 
case. The electronics are already in the system. 

Sparta took the badge case in both hands and studied 
the intricate shield. A delicate flush bloomed on her cheekbones. 


The commander watched her a moment, then said 
abruptly, Sorry theres no time for ceremony, Inspector. 
Congratulations anyway. 

Thank you, sir. 

Heres your ride now. She turned with him as a low-
slung white helicopter dropped shrieking toward the helipad 
in front of the Council of Worlds tower. It touched 
down gently, its turbines spinning down to idle, its rotors 
whistling in lazy circles. Forget your personal gear, you 
can req what you need, said the commander. Within 
reason, of course. Youve got a shuttle to catch at Newark 
and a torch waiting in orbit. Everything you need to know 
is in the system. Well update you if we have to. 

159 


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She was startled at her sudden impending departure, 
but she tried not to show it. One question, sir. 

Go ahead. 

Why anyone from Earth Central, sir? Why not leave 
the investigation to Port Hesperus? 

Port Hesperus is short a body. Captain Antreen is in 
charge there; she looked at what we had available and 
asked for you by name. The commander grinned again. 
Be grateful to her. Bernstein never would have let you 
out of Customs. 

Sparta saluted and walked briskly toward the waiting 
helicopter. The commander watched her go on with undisguised 
envy. 

Beside its three-person crew the torch-powered cutter 
carried Sparta and no one else. The slender white ship, 
bearing the blue band and gold star of the Board of Space 
Control, streaked sunward on a hyperbolic orbit and closed 
on Port Hesperus a week after Spartas hasty Earthside 
promotion. Two days out, less than a week from rendezvous 
with Port Hesperus, a radio message came through. 
This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking. Engineering 
Officer McNeil and I have jointly concluded that 
there is sufficient oxygen remaining for one man . . . 

Earth Central was on the horn to Sparta in less than 
an hour; the commanders lined and blackened face appeared 
on the videoplate in the cutters comm shack. All 
right, Troy, this adds a wrinkle. We need to know whether 
this crewman went out the airlock this morning on his 
own, or did he get pushed? 

Yes, sir. Are the dossiers I requested on the Helios 
passengers available? 
There was a minutes delay while her words made the 

160 


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trip to Earth and his made their way back. Were squirting 
you with what we have on the blackchannels, he said. I 
can tell you that youre dealing with an odd bunch there. 
A guy working for the insurance people whos a known 
conthey know it too, so apparently its all right with 
them. A woman into heavy machinery and old books. Her 
temperamental girlfriend. A guy who owns a spaceship 
with a history so odd it had to have its name changed. 
Another guy with practically no history at all. 

Thanks, Commander. 
A minute later he said, Watch yourself, Inspector. He 
signed off. 

Three days before arriving at Port Hesperus, the cutter 
crossed Helioss path and a day after that, Star Queens. If 
Sparta had had a telescope, she could have looked at the 
fast ships with the perspective of a cosmic observer. But 
it was the people aboard them that interested her. 

With its mighty torch blazing, the cutter decelerated 
toward the great rings and spokes and cylinders of Port 
Hesperus, that whole spinning conglomerate of a space 
station hanging in high orbit over the dazzling clouds of 
Venus, with its axis pointing straight at the center of the 
planet. 

At the radiation perimeter the cutters torch flamed out. 
It approached under chemical power, gingerly. 

Port Hesperus was one of the triumphs of 21st-century 
engineering, built almost entirely from the raw materials 
of captured asteroids. Exploiting the resources of the 
planets surface, it had paid back its cost within two decades; 
it currently housed a hundred thousand people in 
conditions that ninetenths of Earths population would 
have considered luxurious. Parks, for example, and green 

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things . . . The great glass central sphere of the station was 
filled with lush gardens, some of them in tribute to the old 
dreams of Venus as a world of swamps and jungles. Come 
to Venus and you could see jungles, all right, as long as 
you stuck to the paths of Port Hesperuss brilliantly lit 
central sphere. Dont try to visit the surface of the planet, 
dont even ask. Of the five human beings who had made 
the attempt in armored and heat-shielded landers, only 
two had returned to tell the tale. 

Spartas cutter matched spin with the star-side docking 
bay under chemical power; in fifteen minutes, under automated 
landing controls, it had made it into the huge 
axial bay, crowded with local traffic. 

The high-security side of the docking bay was all business, 
no nonsense, without amenitiesall white steel and 
black glass, pipes and hoses and blinking lights. A tube 
like a giant leech closed over the cutters lock, the air 
slammed into it under high pressure, and the cutters hatch 
popped. 

Sparta clapped her hands over her painful ears. Floating 
in the airlock, she found herself suddenly face-to-face 
with a delegation from the local Board of Space Control 
headquarters, advancing toward her in the docking tube. 
They didnt look all that friendly. 

The tallest of the locals facing her was the Port Hesperus 
unit captain, Kara Antreen. She was dressed in a 
gray wool suit worth a month of her respectable salary; 
her gray hair was cut in a severe pageboy, and her pale 
gray eyes fixed on Sparta from beneath thick black brows. 

Even without her hands over her ears, Sparta was at a 
social disadvantage. It was this matter of her clothes. She 
had found little to requisition from ships stores, despite 
the commanders invitationthe quartermasters imagi


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nation seemed limited to gym shorts, personal care products, 
near-beer, and entertainment items emphasizing 
soft-porn videochipsso besides picking up a few changes 
of socks and underwear and acquiring a comb and a 
toothbrush, shed arrived at Port Hesperus still wearing the 
mufti of an assistant inspector assigned to shuttleport customs 
and entrythat is, the plainclothes disguise of a bribable 
dock rat: plastic patch-pocket cargo pants, olive drab 
tank top, polymer canvas windbreaker. The outfit was distinctly 
on the casual side, but at least it was neat and 
clean. 

Ellen Troy, Captain, Sparta said. I look forward to 
working with you and your people. 

Troy. Antreen smiled then, lessening the tension. 
And we look forward to working with you. Any cooperation 
we can give youanything at allwe want to be 
there helping out. 

Thats very . . . 

Understood? 

Certainly, Captain. Thanks. 

Antreen extended her hand; they shook vigorously. 
Inspector Troy, this is my aide Lieutenant Kitamuki. And 
this is Inspector Proboda. 

Sparta shook hands with the othersKitamuki, a slender 
woman with long black hair knotted back and floating 
over one shoulder in a sinuous ponytail, Proboda, a rough-
hewn blond male giant, Polish or maybe Ukrainian, with 
a touch of the old hell-for-leather cossacks about his 
slanted eyes. Antreen was all smiles, but her two sidekicks 
studied Sparta as if considering arresting her on the spot. 

Lets get into some gravity, Antreen said. Well 
show you to your quarters, Troy. And when youre settled 
well see if we can clear off a desk for you at unit HQ. 

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She moved off quickly; Kitamuki and Proboda parted to 
let Sparta through, then closed in tight formation behind 
her. 

Sparta followed Antreen easily enough through the 
weightless passageshed had three days without acceleration 
in the middle of her trip and she hadnt lost the 
body-memory of what it was like to have space legs 
passing from the stations motionless hub through the 
gray metal bulkheads of the security sector. They passed 
the stations huge sliding collar, and Sparta paused a moment 
to adjust to the spin. They moved on, through black-
and yellow-striped emergency hatches into wider 
corridors, until they reached one of the main halls in the 
turning section of the station, far enough outside the hub 
to create fractional gees which established a floor, that 
being the inner cylindrical surface of the hall itself. Once 
in the hall, Antreen turned planetward, toward the Space 
Board headquarters in the stations central sphere. 

Sparta paused. Kitamuki and Proboda almost tumbled 
into her. Something wrong, Inspector? Antreen asked. 
Its very good of you, Sparta said, smiling. But time 
is too short, Ill have to check out my quarters later. 
If you say so. Im sure we can get you settled at HQ, 
anyway. 
Ill be going to traffic control first. Star Queen is due 
within the hour. 

We havent arranged authorization, Antreen said. 

No problem, Sparta replied. 

Antreen nodded. Youre right, of course. Your badge 
is enough. Do you know the way? 
If any of you want to come with me . . . Sparta said. 
Inspector Proboda will accompany you. Hell take care 

of anything you need, Antreen said. 

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Okay, thanks. Lets go. Sparta was already moving 
starward, heading for the transparent traffic control dome 
that capped the huge space station. Although she had 
never been beyond Earths moon, she knew the layout of 
Port Hesperus in such detail she would have astonished its 
oldest residents, even its designers and builders. 

It took her only moments to thread through the passages 
and corridors, past busy workers and clerks. By the 
time she arrived at the centers double glass doors, Proboda 
had closed in behind her. He was her equal in rank, 
but older; handling that was going to be the first challenge 
of her assignment. 

The local station patroller glanced at Spartas badge 
and then at the hard-breathing Proboda, whom he recognized. 
The guard waved them both through the glass 
lock, into the glittering darkness of Hesperus Traffic Control. 


Through the arching glass dome Sparta could see the 
hard points of thousands of fixed stars. Below the dome, 
row upon circular row of softly glowing terminals were 
arranged like benches in a Roman amphitheater. In front 
of each console floated a weightless controller in loose 
harness. The doors through which Sparta and Proboda had 
entered were in the center of the ring, and they came in 
like a pair of gladiators onto the sand, although no one 
noticed their arrival. High above their heads, higher than 
the highest row of consoles, the chief controllers platform 
was suspended on three fine struts at the dishshaped 
rooms parabolic focus. 

Sparta launched herself upward. 

She turned as she touched down lightly on the platform 
edge. The chief controller and his deputy seemed only 
mildly interested in her arrival. 

165 


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Im Inspector Ellen Troy of Central Investigative Services, 
Mr. Tanaka. . . .shed stored the names of all the 
key personnel in the stationAnd this is Inspector Proboda, 
she added as the blond hulk arrived behind her, 
scowling. Im instructed to direct the investigation of Star 
Queen. 

Hi, Vik, the controller said cheerily, grinning at the 
flustered cop. He nodded to Sparta. Okay, Inspector. 
Weve had Star Queen on auto for the past thirty-six 
hours. We should have her onboard in about seventy-two 
minutes. 

Where are you parking the ship, sir? 

Were not. Youre right, normally we wouldnt dock a 
ship of this mass, wed stand her in the roads. But Captain 
Antreen of your office here suggested we bring Star Queen 
on into the security sector to facilitate the removal of the 
. . . survivor. That will be dock Q3, Inspector. 

Sparta was mildly surprised at Antreens orderthe 
crewman on Star Queen had survived a week on his own, 
and the extra half hour it would take to bring him in from 
a parking orbit on a utility shuttle would hardly make a 
difference. 

Id like to stay to observe the docking procedure, if 
you dont mind, she said. And Ill want to be first in 
line when the lock is opened, if youd be good enough to 
inform your personnel of that. She turned her head, sensing 
that Proboda was about to object. Of course youll be 
with me at the airlock, Inspector, she said. 

Thats fine with us, Tanaka said. He could care less. 
Our jobs over when the ships in and secured. Now if 
youll excuse me. . . . The muscular little man ran a thick 
hand lightly over his black crewcut. Not until he moved 

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forward out of the harness in which hed been floating did 
Sparta notice he had no legs. 

An hour passed in Traffic Control; the hot sun rose 
somewhere below. From her perch on the chief controllers 
platform Sparta could see up to the stars and across to the 
intense ascending sun; she could see down to the first ring 
of multi-ringed Port Hesperus, which turned ceaselessly 
about its stationary hub like a heavenly carousel. She 
could not see the disk of Venus, which was immediately 
under the station, but the glare of the planets sulfuric-
acid clouds reflected onto the stations painted metalwork 
was almost as bright from below as the direct rays of the 
sun were from above. 

Spartas attention was not on the station but on the 
hundred-meter white ship, standing straight up against the 
stars, which lowered itself by inches with spurts of its maneuvering 
thrusters, toward the gaping bay in the hub below 
the traffic control dome. 

The sight triggered an odd memory, of a backyard barbecue 
in Marylandwho had been there? Her father? Her 
mother? No. A man, a woman with gray hair, other older 
couples whom she could not now quite picture or place 
but that was not the memory, the memory was of a bird 
feeder suspended from the branch of an elm in the backyard 
by a long, thin wire, the sort of wire used as baling 
wire, and at the end of this wire was the bird feeder full 
of seeds, hanging from the wire a good two meters below 
the branch and a meter above the ground, to protect the 
seeds from squirrels. But one squirrel was not to be 
thwarted; this squirrel had learned to grip the wire with 
all four paws and slideslowly, and with obvious trepi


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dationheadfirst down the wire, from the branch above 
to the feeder below. The people who were giving the barbecue 
were so impressed by the squirrels daring they had 
not even bothered yet with any new scheme to frustrate 
it. They were so proud they wanted Sparta to see the animal 
perform its trick. 

And here was a huge white space freighter, sliding 
headfirst down an invisible wire, into the maw of the 
docking bay. . . . 

Something else that memory was trying to tell her . . . 
but she couldnt dredge it up. She forced her attention 
back to the moment. Star Queen was almost docked. 

Outside the security sector the passage to the lock was 
jammed with media people. Sparta, with Proboda dogging 
her, arrived at the back of the crowd. 

I wonder what hes feeling like now? a cameraman 
was saying, fussing with his videochip photogram. 

I can tell you, replied a sleek brushcut type, a stand-
up reporter. Hes so pleased to be alive . . . 

Sparta sensed that Proboda, beside her, was about to 
pull his rank and clear the mediahounds out of the passage. 
She gently preempted him. I want to hear this, she 
murmured, touching his arm. 

. . . that he doesnt give a damn about anything else, 
the reporter concluded. 
Im not so sure Id want to leave a mate in space so I 
could get home. 

Who would? But you heard the transmissionthey 
talked it over and the loser went out the lock. It was the 
only sensible way. 

Sensible? If you say sobut its pretty horrible to let 
somebody sacrifice himself so you can live . . . 

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Dont act the bloody sentimentalist. If that happened 
to us youd shove me out before Id had a chance to say 
my prayers. 

Unless you did it to me first . . . 

Sparta had heard enough. She pushed close to the reporter 
and said quietly, Space Control. Move aside, 
please, and kept repeating it, Space Control, move aside 
please . . .effortlessly opening a path before her. Proboda 
followed. 

They left the pack behind at the security sector lock. 
Beyond the sealed collar of the core they reached the Q3 
lock, which was almost as crowded with technicians and 
medical personnel. Through the big plate glass port the 
bulbous head of Star Queen was nosing into place a few 
meters away, patiently tugged and shoved by mechanical 
tractors. Sparta had a few words with the medics and the 
others as the tube fastened itself over the ships main air-
lock. 

When the pressure popped and Star Queens hatch 
opened, Sparta was standing in front of it, alone. 

The smell from inside the ship was an assault. Nevertheless 
she inhaled deeply, tasted the air with her tongue. 
She learned things from the flavor of the air that no subsequent 
tests could have told her. 

Almost a minute passed before, rising from the depths 
of the ship, a haggard man drifted into the circle of light. 
He paused while still inside Star Queen, just shy of the 
docking tube. He took a deep, shuddering breathand another
and then he let his watery eyes focus on Sparta. 

Were happy to have you safe with us, Mr. McNeil, 
she said. 

He watched her for a moment, then nodded. 

My names Ellen Troy. Im from the Board of Space 

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Control. Ill be going with you while the medics assist you. 
I must ask you not to speak to anyone but me, until I give 
you permissionno matter who asks, or what they ask. Is 
that acceptable to you, sir? 

Wearily, McNeil nodded again. 

If you will move toward me, sir . . . 

McNeil did as he was told. When he was clear of the 
hatch Sparta darted past him and twisted the handle of 
the exterior lock. The massive outer door slid closed, seating 
itself with a palpable thud. Sparta pushed her hand 
into the right thigh pocket of her cargo pants and pulled 
out a bright red flexible plastic disk, which she slapped 
over the rim of the hatchsealing it like a lump of wax 
over the flap of an envelope. She turned and took McNeil 
by the arm. Come with me, please. 

Viktor Proboda was blocking the tube exit. Inspector 
Troy, it is my understanding that this man is to be placed 
under arrest, and that the ship is to be inspected without 
delay. 

You are mistaken, Inspector Proboda. Good, she was 
thinking, he didnt use the word orders, as in my orders 
are . . .which meant that she could put off the inevitable 
confrontation a little longer. Mr. McNeil is to be extended 
every courtesy. Im taking him to the clinic now. When he 
feels up to it, he and I will talk. Until then, no onenot 
anyoneis to enter Star Queen. Her gaze had not left 
Probodas pale blue eyes. Im confident youll be diligent 
in carrying out Centrals orders, Viktor. 

It was an old trick, but he was surprised when she used 
his first name, as shed intended. This slender girl was 
perhaps twenty-five, he was well into his thirties, and hed 
struggled a decade to achieve his rankbut her easy as


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sumption of authority was genuine, and Proboda, a good 
soldier, recognized it. As you say, he gruffly conceded. 

Sparta guided engineer McNeil, who seemed on the 
point of nodding off, to the waiting medics. One of them 
clamped an oxygen mask over McNeils face: McNeils expression 
was that of a man taking a drink of cold water 
after a week in the tropical sun. Sparta repeated her injunction 
to the medics about talking to the media; they 
would disobey her, of course, but not until she had left 
McNeils side. 

The little group emerged from the security lock. 
McNeil, with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, 
guided by medics, with Sparta and Proboda bringing up 
the rear, ran the gauntlet of frantic questions. . . . 

But, after another week of waiting, the media had only 
the arrival of Star Queen and the confirmation of McNeils 
survival to add to the electrifying radio message that had 
initiated their death watch. The broadcast had been as succinct 
as it was chilling: 

This is Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking. 
Engineering officer Angus McNeil and I have jointly concluded 
that there is sufficient oxygen now remaining for 
one man and one man only to live until our ship docks at 
Port Hesperus. Therefore one of us must die if either of us 
is to live. We have mutually agreed to decide the matter 
with a single draw of playing cards. Whoever draws the 
low card will take his own life. 

A second voice had spoken: McNeil here, confirmin 
that Im in agreement with everything the commander 
says. 

The radiolink had been silent then, for several seconds, 

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except for the shuffle and snap of playing cards. Then 
Grant came back on the air. This is Grant. Ive drawn the 
low card. I want to make it clear that what Im about to 
do is the result of my personal decision, freely undertaken. 
To my wife and children, I should like to affirm my love 
for them; Ive left letters for them in my cabin. A final 
request: I wish to be buried in space. Im going to put my 
suit on now, before I do anything else. Im asking Officer 
McNeil to put me out the lock when its all over and send 
me away from the ship. Please dont search for my body. 

Aside from routine automated telemetry, that was the 
last anyone had heard from Star Queen until today. 

The Port Hesperus clinic was in the stations halfgee 
torus. An hour after his arrival McNeil lay propped up 
between clean sheets. His color was rosy, although the 
dark circles under his eyes remained and the once full 
flesh of his cheeks hung in folds. He was a much thinner 
man than he had been when he left Earth. There had been 
more than enough food on Star Queen, but for the last 
few days under deceleration hed had hardly enough energy 
to drag himself to the galley. 

Hed just begun to remedy that lack with a dinner of 
medium-rare Chateaubriand, accompanied by puff potatoes 
and garden vegetables, and preceded by a crisp green 
salad with a light herb vinaigrette and accompanied by a 
half-bottle of velvety California Zinfandelall of which 
had been laid on by the Board of Space Control according 
to Spartas instructions. 

She knocked lightly on the door, and when he said 
Come in she entered the room, followed by the brooding 
Proboda. 

I hope everything was all right? she asked. The salad 

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was gone but the Chateaubriand was only half eaten and 
many of the vegetables were untouched. Not so the wine; 
bottle and glass were empty. McNeil was wreathed in tobacco 
smoke, halfway through a pungent unfiltered cigarette. 


It was delicious, Inspector, simply delicious, and Im 
sorry to let the rest go. But Im afraid my stomachs 
shrunkthat bit just filled me up. 

Thats certainly understandable, sir. Well, if you feel 
rested . . . 

McNeil smiled patiently. Aye, therell be lots of questions 
now, wont there be? 

If youd rather we came back later . . . 

No point in putting off the inevitable. 

We sincerely appreciate your cooperation. Inspector 
Proboda will record our conversation. 

When everyone was settled McNeil launched into his 
tale. He spoke quite calmly and impersonally, as if he were 
relating some adventure that had happened to another 
person, or indeed had never happened at allwhich, 
Sparta suspected, was to some extent the case, although 
it would be unfair to suggest that McNeil was lying. He 
wasnt making anything up. She would instantly have detected 
that from the rhythm of his speech, but he was 
leaving a good deal out of his well-rehearsed narrative. 

When, after several minutes, hed finished speaking, 
Sparta sat thoughtfully in silence. Then she said, That 
seems to wrap it up, then. She turned to Proboda. Are 
there any points youd like to explore further, Inspector? 

Again Proboda was caught by surpriseany points 
hed like to explore? Hed already resigned himself to a 
passive role in the investigation. One or two, he said, 
clearing his throat, as a matter of fact. 

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McNeil drew on his cigarette. Have at me, he said 
with a cynical grin. 

Now, you say you lost your gripI believe those were 
your wordswhen the meteoroid or whatever it was struck 
the ship? What exactly did you do? 

McNeils pale features darkened. I blubberedif you 
want to know the details. Curled up in my cabin like a 
little boy with a skinned knee and let the tears come. Grant 
was a better man than I, calm as could be throughout it 
all. But I hadnt been a meter away from the oxygen tanks 
when they exploded, you seejust the other side of the 
wall in factloudest damn noise Ive heard in my life. 

How did you happen to be at just that place at just 
that moment? Proboda asked. 

Well, Id been down doing the periodic check on the 
temperature and humidity in Hold A. The top compartment 
of that holds pressurized and temperature-controlled because 
were carrying things like specialty foods, cigars and 
so forth, organicswhereas in the vacuum holds weve got 
inert stuff, machinery mostly. Id just come up through the 
hold airlock and I was in that part of the central corridor 
that passes through the life support deck, on my way up 
to the flight deck, whenblam. 

The life support deck was also pressurized? 

We normally keep it that way so we can get into it 
from inside the crew module. Its really a very small space, 
crammed with tanks and pipes, but you can reach in there 
if you have to. When it was hit the inside hatches seized 
up automatically. 

Now, this business about the wine crate . . . 

McNeil grinned sheepishly. Yes, I did behave rather 
badly. I suppose Im going to have to pay someone a pretty 

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penny for the bottles I managed to down before Grant 
caught me. 

That wine was the personal property of the director 
of the Hesperian Museum, Mr. Darlington, Proboda 
grunted. I imagine hell have something to say about it. 
. . . But you say Grant put the partial crate back where you 
got it? 

Yes, and then he changed the combination on the air-
lock so I couldnt get back in. 

A feral gleam appeared in Probodas pale eye. You 
claim the airlock of that hold hasnt been opened since the 
day after the accident? 

Thats right, sir. 

But the top compartment of that hold is pressurized. 
Its a vessel almost half the volume of the command module. 
And it was full of fresh air! 

Aye, it was, and if wed had another like it, Peter 
Grant would be alive today, McNeil said quietly. Originally 
we were to carry some seedlings. They wouldnt have 
saved us, but the extra air that came with em might 
have. He seemed to notice Probodas confusion for the 
first time. Oh, I see your problem, sir. And youre right, 
about the old ships . . . but Star Queen and most of the 
newer freighters are piped to allow any combination of 
gas exchange through all the airtight compartments, without 
having to open the airlocks. That allows us to carry 
cargo that the shipper wouldnt want us to know about or 
get into, you see. If theyre willin to pay freight on the 
entire hold. Which is the usual procedure on military contracts. 


So you had access to the air in that compartment even 
though you couldnt get inside? 

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Right. If wed wanted, we could have pumped the air 
out of that hold and jettisoned the whole thing, got rid of 
the mass. In fact Grant ran some calculations, but we 
wouldnt have saved enough time. 

Proboda was disappointed, but still he persisted. But 
after Grant had, uh, left the ship . . . you could have found 
his new combination for the airlock, couldnt you? 

Could be, but I doubt it, even if Id been interested. 
Im no computer whiz, and a mans private files arent easy 
to crack into. But why would I have wanted to? 

Proboda glanced significantly at the empty bottle and 
glass beside McNeils half full plate. Because there were 
still three and a half crates of wine in there, for one thing. 
And no one to stop you from drinking it. 

McNeil studied the blond inspector with an expression 
that struck Sparta as calculating. I like a glass as well as 
the next person, Inspector. Maybe better. Maybe a little 
too much better. Ive been called a hedonist and maybe I 
am that, but Im not a complete fool. McNeil ground out 
the remains of his cigarette. 

What did you have to fear, Proboda insisted, beyond 
the commission of a felony, of course, if that really 
did concern you? 

Just this, McNeil said quietly, and the steel edge of 
his affable personality finally slid out from under the 
smile, glittering. Alcohol interferes with the functioning 
of your lungs and constricts your blood vessels. If youre 
going to die anyway, you might not mind that. But if you 
intend to survive in an oxygen-poor environment, you 
wont be taking a drink. 

And cigarettes? Do they interfere with the functioning 
of the lungs? 

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After two packs a day for twenty years, Inspector, two 
cigarettes a day are but a crutch for the nerves. 

Proboda was about to plunge on when Sparta interrupted. 
I think we ought to leave Mr. McNeil in peace for 
now, Viktor. We can continue at a later time. She had 
watched the exchange with interest. As a cop, Proboda had 
his strong pointsshe liked his bulldog persistence even 
when he knew he looked foolishbut his shortcomings 
were numerous. He was easily sidetracked, having here 
fixated on the trivial issue of destruction of property 
Sparta suspected that was due to an excessive concern for 
powerful interests in the Port Hesperus communityand 
he hadnt done his homework, or he would have known 
about the hold airlocks. 

But his most serious error was that he had already 
passed moral judgment on McNeil. McNeil was not to be 
judged so easily. Everything he had said about himself was 
true. He was not a fool. And he intended to survive. 

Sparta rose and said, You are free to go wherever you 
like on the station when the medics release you, Mr. 
McNeil, although if you prefer to avoid the media this is 
probably the best place to do it. Star Queen is off limits, 
of course. Im sure you understand. 

Perfectly, Inspector. Thanks again for arrangin this 
lovely dinner. He gave her a jaunty salute from the comfort 
of his bed. 

Before they reached the corridor, Sparta turned to Proboda 
and smiled. You and I make a good team, Viktor. 
Good guy, bad guy, you know. Were naturals. 

Whos the good guy? he asked. 

She laughed. Right. You were hard on McNeil, but I 

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read you as the good guy when it comes to your neighbors. 
Whereas I intend to show them no mercy. 
I dont follow. How could anybody on Port Hesperus 
be involved in this? 
Viktor, lets go climb into spacesuits and take a look 
at that hole in the hull, shall we? 

All right. 

But first weve got to get through the mob. 

They stepped lightly through the clinic doors, into a 
crowd of waiting mediahounds. Inspector Troy! Hey, 
Vik, old buddy . . . Please, Inspector, what have you got 
for us? Youve got something for us, right . . . ? 

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They left the howling newspack outside the security sector. 
Ive never seen them like this, Proboda muttered. Youd 
think theyd never had a chance to report a real story 
before. 

Sparta had no experience with the media. Shed 
thought she could use the standard techniques of command 
and control, the voice and personality tricks, and 
they did work up to a point, but she had underestimated 
the mobs ability to tear at her concentration, to sour her 
internal functions. Viktor, excuse meIve got to have a 
moment. She paused in a corner of the empty passage, 
closing her eyes, floating in midair, willing the tension in 
her neck and shoulders to dissolve. Her mind emptied itself 
of conscious thought. 

Proboda eyed her curiously, hoping no one would 
come along and he would have to explain. The formidable 
young Inspector Troy was suddenly vulnerable, her eyes 
closed and her head pitched forward, floating with her 

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hands up like a small animals paws; he could see the 
down on the back of her slender white neck, bared where 
her straight blond hair had fallen clear. 

Seconds later, Sparta allowed her eyes to open fully. 
Viktor, I need a spacesuit. Im a size five and a half, she 
said, and just like that her expression was firm again. 

Ill see what I can find in the lockers. 

And well need some tools. Limpet clamps and suction 
cups. Grip struts. Inertial wrench with a full set of heads 
and bits. Bags and tape and stuff. 

Thats all in a grade ten mechanics kit. Anything special? 


No. Ill meet you at the lock. 

She moved forward, toward the Star Queen docking 
tube, and Proboda went off to the tool shed. 

Two patrollers were on duty beside the entrance to the 
tube, wearing blue spacesuits with helmets on, although 
unlatched. They were armed with stungunsair rifles using 
rubber bullets that were capable of severely injuring 
a human, even one in a spacesuit, although not likely to 
puncture crucial space station systems. Metal cartridges 
and the weapons that fired them were barred on Port Hesperus. 


Through the double glass windows behind the guards 
the enormous bulk of Star Queen almost filled the docking 
bay. Star Queen was of average size as freighters go, but 
she was much larger than the tenders, launches, and shuttles 
that normally docked inside Port Hesperus. 

Has anyone been here since McNeil was taken off the 
ship? Sparta asked the guards. 

They glanced at each other and shook their heads. No, 
Inspector. No one, Inspector. They betrayed it in their 
voices and they smelled of it: they were lying. 

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Good, she said. I want you to report to me or Inspector 
Proboda if anyone attempts to get past you. Anyone 
at all, even someone from our office. Understood? 

Right, Inspector. 

Certainly, Inspector. You bet. 

Sparta went into the boarding tube. The red plastic seal 
was still in place over the rim of the hatch. She laid her 
hand over it and leaned close to it. 

The plastic seal was little more than it seemed, an adhesive 
patch. It concealed no microcircuitry, although its 
conducting polymers were sensitive to electric fields and 
preserved the patterns of any that had recently been applied. 
By placing her hand over the patch, by leaning close 
to it and inhaling its odor, Sparta learned what she needed. 

The field detectors under her palm picked up the 
strongly impressed pattern of a diagnostic devicesomeone 
had passed a field detector of their own over the plastic, 
hoping to discover its secrets. Doubtless they had 
learned that it had no secrets. Then theyd grown bold 
enough to handle the seal, presumably with gloves. The 
inquisitive one had left no fingerprints, but from the odor 
that clung to the surface of the plastic, Sparta had no 
difficulty identifying who had been there. 

Each persons skin exudes oils and perspiration that 
contain a blend of chemicals, especially amino acids, in a 
combination as unique as the pattern of the iris. When 
Sparta inhaled these chemicals she instantly analyzed 
them. She could call the specific chemical formulas into 
consciousness or, more usefully, match them to patterns 
she had already stored. She routinely stored the amino 
acid signatures of most people she met, eventually discarding 
those of no interest. 

Two hours ago she had stored the amino acid signature 

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of Kara Antreen. She was not surprised to recognize it 
here. Nor could she blame the guards for lying to her. 
Theyd been told to keep quiet; and theyd have to live 
with Antreen long after Sparta had gone back to Earth. 

Sparta couldnt blame Antreen for her curiosity, either. 
Shed examined the seal, but there was no evidence she 
had opened the hatch. The only other entrance to the ship 
was through the midships airlock aft of the cargo holds, 
and Sparta doubted shed used that. Antreen would have 
been in full view of a hundred controllers and dockside 
workers had she donned a spacesuit and gone into the ship 
that way. 

Viktor arrived, pulling the tool bag and a suit for hera 
blue one, the uniform suit of the local law. Hed already 
climbed into his own suit; his gold badge was blazoned 
on his shoulder. 

Minutes later they were drifting close to the spotlit hull 
of Star Queen, their attention concentrated on a small 
round hole in a metal plate. 

Behind them in the cavernous docking bay great metal 
clamps clashed, shackling craft to the station, and self-
guiding hoses and cables snaked out from the refueling 
manifolds, seeking the orifices of fuel tanks and capacitors. 
Tugs and tenders were arriving and launching from 
the bay, sliding in and out of the huge bay doors open to 
the stars. All this activity took place in the dead silence 
of vacuum. The Space Board cutter was moored next to 
Star Queen in the security sector. A launch stood by at the 
commercial lock across the way, fueled and ready to bring 
passengers into the station when the liner Helios arrived. 
Over the whole scene the clear dome of Traffic Control 
presided. 

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Theyd gone through one of the workers locks, dragging 
the translucent nylon bag of tools, tethered to Probodas 
wrist, behind them. Sparta had carefully worked her 
way around the superconducting coils of the radiation 
shield that looped in a lacy hemisphere over the top of 
Star Queens crew module, keeping a respectful distance. 
If Proboda wondered why, he said nothing, and she didnt 
care to explain what shed learned through unsettling personal 
experience, that strong electric and magnetic fields 
were dangerous to her in intimate ways that other people 
could not sense: induced currents in the implanted metal 
elements next to her skeleton were disorienting and, in 
extremis, threatening to her vital organs. 

But she maneuvered to hull plate L-43 without difficulty. 
It was not easily accessible for even one person in 
a spacesuit, since it was tucked away on the underside of 
the crew module just above the convex end of the long 
cylinder of Hold C. 

Ill take a look, she said, squeezing close. Here, put 
this someplace else. She popped the crablike robot eye 
off the hull where it perched over the hole and handed it 
to Proboda; the magnetic rollers on the ends of its legs 
were whirring as it searched for a grip. Proboda put it up 
higher on the module and it scurried away toward its 
home hatch. 

Sparta got her head up next to the damaged plate and 
focused her right eye upon the hole. She zoomed in and 
examined it in microscopic detail. 

Doesnt look like much from here, Probodas voice 
said from the commlink in her right ear. 

Wait til you see inside. But let me get a picture of 
this first, she murmured. She snapped it with the ordinary 
photogram camera looped around her left wrist. 

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What Sparta could see on the outside of the hull, even 
at a magnification that would have astonished Proboda, 
corresponded to just what she would have expected from 
the collision with the hull plate of a one-gram meteoroid 
traveling at forty kilometers per seconda hole the size of 
a BB, in the center of a small circle of gleaming smooth 
metal that had melted and recrystallized. 

The damage done to a ships hull by a meteoroid travelling 
at typical interplanetary velocities approximates 
what happens when, say, a hypervelocity missile strikes 
armor. The indentation on the outside of the plate may be 
modest in itself, but the deposited energy creates a cone-
shaped shock wave travelling inward that spalls a wide 
circle of material off the inside of the plate. This molten 
material keeps on moving and does its own damage; 
meanwhile, if the interior of the hull is filled with air, the 
shock wave quickly expands, producing overpressures 
which are intensely destructive near the hole, although 
they fall off rapidly with distance. 

Is that one of the ones that comes off easily? Proboda 
asked. 

Were not quite that lucky, she said. Want to hand 
me that wrench and a standard Philips? 

Almost a third of the surface area of the life support 
deck consisted of removable panels, and L-43 was one of 
thesenot, unfortunately, a door that conveniently swung 
open like others nearby, but a plate that could be removed 
by patiently unscrewing some fifty flathead bolts around 
its edges. Proboda took a power drill from the nylon tool 
bag and fixed a bit to it. Here, he said, handing it to 
her, anything I can do to help? 

Catch these damn little screws. It took her almost ten 

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minutes to remove the bolts. He plucked them from the 
vacuum and corralled them in a plastic bag. 

Lets try the limpet now. 

He handed her a small, massive electromagnet and she 
set it against the painted yellow triangle in the center of 
the plate, which marked the presence of a ferrous laminate 
hardpoint. She flipped the magnets switch and tugged 
hard. The magnet stuck fast to the hardpoint, but 

Thats what I was afraid of. Can you get your feet on 
something? Then tug on my legs. He braced himself and 
grabbed her feet. He tugged on her and she tugged on the 
plate, but the plate was stuck fast in the hull. 

Well have to set up the grip rig. 

Proboda reached into the tool bag and withdrew a set 
of steel rods with sliding couplings. He fed her the pieces 
one by one, and in a few minutes she had rigged a bridge 
of parallel rods over the recalcitrant hull plate, set against 
the hull to either side on gimbaled feet. She mounted a 
worm gear in a heavy bracket in the center of the bridge. 
She fitted a crossbar handle to its top; its lower end rotated 
in a joint on the back of the magnet. When Sparta twisted 
the crossbars the worm gear turned and began to exert an 
inexorable pull. After three complete turns the bulging 
plate, like a stiff cork sliding out of a bottle, popped free. 

This is what was holding it. She showed him the 
inside of the plate. Sealant all over the place. 

Blobs of hardened yellow plastic had held the plate 
tight, plastic foam that had spewed from emergency canisters 
inside the deck. Some of it had been carried by the 
outrush of air into the meteoroid hole, where it congealed 
and sealed the leak as it was designed to; the rest had 
simply made a mess. 

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Sparta inspected the inner side of the plate and the 
hard dark mound of plastic that covered the hole. She 
photogrammed it, then peered back over her shoulder. Let 
me see that knife kit. He held it out and she took a 
curved, thin-bladed knife from the set. And give me some 
of those little bags. She carefully worked the edge of the 
blade under the brittle plastic. She began peeling back the 
plastic, which came away in thin layers like sediment, like 
wood grain. 

What are you doing that for? 

Dont worry, Im not destroying any evidence. She 
saved the shavings in a clear bag. I want to see what the 
hole looks like under the goop. Beneath the plastic was 
the wide side of the conical hole, as big as a nickel, surrounded 
by an aureole of bright recrystallized metal. 
Well, thats certainly by the book. She photogrammed 
it again, then passed him the hull plate. Lets put all this 
in the sack. 

Sparta shone her hand-lamp into the blackened interior 
of the life support deck. In her private way she spent a 
moment studying what she saw. Then she took more photograms. 
Can you get your head in here, Viktor? I want 
you to see this. 

He squeezed his helmet in close beside hers, so that 
they were touching. What a mess. His voice was as loud 
by conduction through their helmets as it was by commlink. 


Everything within two meters of the point of the hole 
in the hull was severely damaged. Pipes writhed crazily 
and ended in jagged mouths, like frozen benthic worms. 

Both oxygen tanks in one whack. Hardly a more vulnerable 
spot in the whole ship. One oxygen sphere was 
torn open, while another lay in shards like a broken egg 

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shell. Fragments of the shattered fuel cell still floated near 
the ceiling, where they had collected under the gentle deceleration 
of docking.  Scuse me a minute, Ive got to 
get my arm in there. Sparta reached up and gathered 
glittering bits of debris from the ceiling. She carefully 
placed these and other samples in plastic bags. She took 
a final look around inside the ravaged deck, then withdrew. 


They replaced the tools and the evidence they had 
gathered in the net bag. That should do it here. 

Did you find what you expected? 

Maybe. Well have to wait for the analysis. Before we 
go back lets have a peek inside the ship. 

They pulled themselves along the bulging cylinder of 
Hold C, tugging themselves from one handhold to the 
next, until they reached Star Queens midships airlock. 

The midships airlock was set into the long central shaft 
that separated Star Queens fuel tanks and nuclear engines 
from the holds and the crew module, just aft of the holds 
themselves. Sparta manipulated the external controls that 
opened the hatchcontrols that by law were standardized 
on all spacecraftthen entered the cramped space. Proboda 
squeezed in behind her, towing the tool bag. 

She closed the outer hatch. From inside she could pressurize 
the lock, if there were no overriding commands 
from inside the spacecraft. But a big red sign lit up beside 
the inner hatch wheel: WARNING. VACUUM. 

Im going to pressurize, she said. This wont smell 
too good. 

Why dont we just stay suited? 

Weve got to face it sooner or later, Viktor. Keep your 
helmet on, if you want. 

He didnt discuss it with her, but he did keep his helmet 

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on. She didnt let him see her grin. He had delicate feelings 
for a man of his size and profession. 

She used the controls to pressurize the interior of the 
ships central shaft. After a few moments the warning indicator 
shifted from red to greenAtmospheric pressure 
equalizedbut she did not yet open the inner hatch. First 
she pulled off her helmet. 

Crashing into Spartas brain came the smell of sweat, 
stale food, cigarette smoke, spilled wine, ozone, new paint, 
machine oil, grease, human waste . . . and above it all, carbon 
dioxide. The air was not nearly as bad as it had been 
for McNeil in those final days, for it had already mingled 
with fresh air from the station, but it was bad enough; 
Sparta needed a moment of conscious effort to clear her 
head. 

What she didnt tell Proboda was that she wasnt doing 
this for the sake of torturing herself. 

Eventually she could not only directly sense the chemical 
constituents of her surroundings, but evaluate and 
bring to consciousness what she sensed. She had an urgent 
question to ask here, before going inside: had anyone used 
this lock during the voyage? The main airlock was not a 
problem. If either Grant or McNeil had left the ship 
through it during the flight, the other man would have 
known about ituntil they went through it the last time 
together, of course, and only McNeil returned. But this 
airlock was another matter. Conceivably one of them 
might have snuck outside the ship through this secondary 
airlock while the other slept or was busy elsewhere. The 
question had recently assumed new importance. 

The smell of the place answered her question. 

Okay, I think I can take it now. She grinned at Pro


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boda, who looked at her dubiously from within the safety 
of his helmet. 

She twisted the wheel, opened the inner hatch, and 
entered the central corridor. For a moment the experience 
was profoundly disorienting: she was in a narrow shaft a 
hundred meters long, a constricted polished tube so 
straight that it seemed to vanish aft to a black point. For 
a moment she had the unsettling sensation of staring into 
a rifle barrel. 

Anything wrong? Probodas voice was loud in her 
commlink. 

No . . . Im fine. She looked up, toward the bow of 
the ship, to the hatch of the hold airlock a few meters 
overhead. Above that hatch was access to the cargo hold, 
and then to the crew module itself. 

The light beside it was green: Atmospheric pressure 
equalized. She turned the wheel, lifted the hatch, and 
entered the large airlock that segregated the huge detachable 
holdseach of which had its own airlockfrom the 
crew module. The outer hatches of the four hold airlocks 
surrounded her: bright red signs gleamed on three of them. 
DANGER. VACUUM. 

The notice beside the hatch to Hold A, however, glowed 
a less frantic yellow: Unauthorized entry strictly forbidden. 


All of them were of the standard design, heavy-duty 
wide spoked wheels in the midst of circular, hinged steel 
doors. Anyone who could strike the correct combination 
of numbers into the pad beside the wheel would gain quick 
entry. 

She took a moment to bend her head close to each in 
turn, before Proboda clambered up from below with his 

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bag of tools. Holds B and D hadnt been touched in weeks, 
but Hold As keyboard and wheel showed expected signs 
of handling. So, less expectedly, did Hold Cs. 

As the only one thats locked, Viktor, as he climbed 
up beside her. Well have to retrieve the combination 
later, or force it. Want to look in B? Ill check out C. 

Sure, he said. He punched buttons to pressurize Bs 
airlock. She latched her helmet and entered Hold C. The 
ritual of closing the outer hatch behind her, evacuating 
the lock, and opening the inner hatch to the airless hold 
restraining any temptation to impatiencehad to be performed 
carefully. Then she was inside. 

It was a steel cylinder as big as a grain silo, dark but 
for a worklight beside the airlock. In the dim green work-
light the metal monsters, each almost six metric tons in 
mass, stood against the wall like a zaftig chorus line. 
They were all strongly shackled to the holds steel-alloy 
ribs and stringers. In the shadows they seemed to expand 
as she approached them, and their compound eyes of diamond 
seemed to follow her like the eyes in trompe loeil 
portraits. 

They were nothing but inert machines, of course. Without 
their fissile fuel rods, stacked nearby within shielding 
assemblies of graphite, the huge robots could not move a 
millimeter. Yet Sparta could not deny the impression they 
made upon her, their segmented titanium bodies made to 
withstand furnace temperatures, their insectlike legs made 
for negotiating the most abrupt terrain, their diamond-
edged mouth parts and claws made for shredding the most 
recalcitrant natural matrices . . . 

And those glittering diamond eyes. 

As Sparta floated closer to the nearest robot she felt a 
tingling in her inner ear. She paused a moment before 

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recognizing the effects of latent radioactivity, recognizable 
by the same sort of induction currentsminute, in this 
casethat she had feared from the ships radiation shield. 
A glance at the machines serial number confirmed that it 
was the one Sondra Sylvester had had tried at the Salisbury 
proving grounds three weeks before it was loaded 
aboard Star Queen. 

She cautiously moved past the first robot and inspected 
the others, one by one, peering at their erect and fearsome 
heads. All but the first were cold as stones. 

Back in the hold access, with the airlock sealed behind 
her, Sparta waited for Proboda to climb out of Hold D. 
Apparently he had satisfied himself with whatever he saw 
in B and had gone on into the remaining vacuum hold 
while she was still admiring the robots. The top of his head 
stuck out of the hatch, his helmet looking like an ants 
head. She tapped his blue plastic noggin. Why dont you 
take that thing off? she said. The stink wont kill you. 

He looked at her and twisted the helmet off his head. 
He got one whiff and his bold Slavic nose wrinkled all the 
way up into his forehead. He lived in this for a week, 
he said. 

She thought maybe the smell gave him a little better 
appreciation of McNeil, if not more respect for him. Viktor, 
I want you to do something for me. It means us splitting 
up for a few minutes. 

Before were finished in here? We still have to check 
on McNeils story. 

Im pretty sure weve already got the important stuff. 
I want you to get this evidence to the lab. 

Inspector Troygoing all formal on hermy orders 
are to be with you. Not to leave your side. 

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VENUS PRIME 


Okay, Viktor, tell Captain Antreen everything you 
think you have to. 

First you have to tell me, he said, exasperated. 

I will. Then as soon as you get that stuff into the lab 
I want you to go out and intercept Helios. Before anybody 
disembarks. Keep them busy. . . . 

As soon as she had explained her suspicions and he 
understood them, he left. This business of being persuasive 
was draining, she found. Social intelligencethe people-
manipulative intelligencecame hardest to her. Almost 
immediately, almost involuntarily, she collapsed into 
trance again. 

The brief meditation restored her. As she allowed the 
external world to trickle back into her awareness, she began 
to listen.... 

At first she did not filter or focus what she heard but 
took in the whole symphony of the great space station, 
spinning in space above Venus, its sounds vibrating 
through the wall of Star Queen. Gases and fluids coursed 
through its pumps and conduits, the bearings of its great 
hubs and rings rolled smoothly on their eternal rounds, 
the hum of thousands of circuits and high-voltage buses 
made the aether tremble. She could hear the muted voices 
of the stations hundred thousand inhabitants, a third of 
them at work, a third breathing deeply, asleep, a third 
concerned with the rich trivia of existence, buying, selling, 
teaching, learning, cooking, eating, fighting, playing. . . . 

Simply by listening, she could not pick out individual 
conversations. No one seemed to be talking in the immediate 
neighborhood. She could have tuned in on the radio 
transmissions and the communications links, of course, 
had she chosen to go into receptor state, but that was not 

192 


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her purpose. She wanted a feel for the place. What was it 
like to live in a metal world constantly orbiting a hell 
planet? A world with parks and gardens and shops and 
schools and restaurants, to be surea world with unparalleled 
views of the starry night and the brilliant sunbut 
a contained world, one from which only the rich could 
easily get relief. It was a world where people from disparate 
culturesJapanese, Arab, Russian, North American 
were thrown into close proximity under conditions that 
inevitably produced strain. Some came for the money, 
some because they had imagined that space would somehow 
be free of the restrictions of crowded Earth. Some 
came, of course, because their parents brought them. But 
only a few had the pioneering spirit that made hardship 
an end itself. Port Hesperus was a company town, like an 
oil platform in the North Atlantic or a mill town in the 
Canadian forest. 

The message Sparta had through the metal walls was 
one of tension in reserve, of time bided, of a feeling close 
to indentured servitude. And there was something more, 
partly among the recent, reluctant immigrants but especially 
among the younger residents, those who had been 
born on the stationa sense of humdrum, a certain resentment, 
the half-conscious undercurrent of brewing discontent
but for now the older generation was firmly in 
charge, and they had little in mind beyond vigorously exploiting 
the resources of Venuss surface, making themselves 
as comfortable as possible while they did so, and 
earning the wherewithal to get off Port Hesperus forever. 
. . . 

Almost a kilometer away from where Sparta drifted 
dreaming in the freighter, the off-duty life of Port Hes


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VENUS PRIME 


perus was at its busiest. The enormous central sphere of 
the station was belted with tall treestheir tops all pointing 
inwardand ribbed with louvered glass windows that 
continually adjusted to compensate for the whirl of Venuslight 
and sunlight. Among the trees, paths wove 
among lush gardens of passion flowers and orchids and 
bromeliads, under cycads and tree ferns, beside trickling 
brooks and still reflecting ponds of recirculated water, 
over arched bridges of wood or stone. 

A stroller who made the entire three-and-a-halfkilometer 
circuit would come upon seven strikingly different 
views, separately climate-controlled, laid out by the 
master landscape architect Seno Sato to suggest the diversity 
of cultures that had contributed to build Port Hesperus, 
and the mythic past of its mother planet. Step 
through this torii: here is Kyoto, an eaved castle, raked 
pebbles, twisted pines. Brush aside these tamarisk 
branches: Samarkand, its arabesque pavilions of inlaid 
blue stone reflected in perfumed pools. Through these bare 
birches to Kiev, blue onion domes above a frozen canal, 
where today two skaters circle. The snow underfoot becomes 
powdered marble, then plain sand: here is the 
Sphinx, in a garden of bare red rocks. Up this rocky path 
and past this flowering plum to vanished Changan, a 
seven-story stone pagoda with gilded finials. Through 
these yellow ginkgos the boat pond of New Yorks Central 
Park appears, complete with toy schooners, watched over 
with perplexed amusement by the well-polished bronze of 
Alice. An aisle of silent hemlocks leads to Vancouver, 
dripping cedars and totem poles and verdigrised gargoyles. 
And under these dripping tree ferns to the fern swamps of 
legendary, fictitious Venus, with a notable collection of 

194 


VENUS PRIME 


carnivorous plants glistening in the eternal rain. Around 
this tall monkey-puzzle: Kyotos gate . . . 

On either side of the magnificent gardens, in parallel 
belts around the central sphere, were the Casbah, plaka, 
Champs E
lysees, Red Square, Fifth Avenue, and Main 
Street of Port Hesperusshops, galleries, dime stores, Russian 
tea shops, rug merchants, restaurants of fifteen distinct 
ethnic persuasions, fish markets (aquacultured bream 
a specialty), fruit and vegetable markets, flower stands, 
temples, mosques, synagogues, churches, discreetly 
naughty cabarets, the Port Hesperus Performing Arts Center, 
and the streets outside jammed with shoppers and 
hawkers, jugglers and strolling musicians, people wearing 
bright metals and plastics and their own colorized skin. 
Satos gardens brought wealthy tourists from throughout 
the solar system. Port Hesperuss merchants and boosters 
were ready for them. 

The central sphere was frequented by the stations 
workers and families too, of course. Its just that a Disney 
kind of worldeven a Disney world equipped with a cosmopolitan 
selection of foods and beverages and real, 
sometimes kinky peoplegrows familiar after the fifth or 
sixth visit, and deadly dull after the hundredth. Every excuse 
for news, for a diversion, becomes precious. . . . 

Which is why Vincent Darlington was in a snit. 

Darlington waddled about the spectacularly gaudy 
main hall of the Hesperian Museum aimlessly straightening 
the baroque and rococo paintings in their ornate 
frames, trying to keep his fingers out of the piles of cultured 
shrimp and caviar and tiny lobster tails and synthetic 
ham rolls the caterers had hauled in by the kilo and 

195 


VENUS PRIME 


which now gleamed oilily beneath the odd light of the 
rooms stained glass dome. Every few seconds Darlington 
returned to the empty display case at the head of the 
roompositioned where, had this place been a church, as 
its spectacularly intricate overarching stained glass apotheosis 
suggested, the altar would have stood. He drummed 
his chubby fingers on the gilt frame. It had been specially 
built to hold his newest acquisition, and hed placed it 
where no one entering the museum could possibly miss 
itespecially that Sylvester woman, if she had the brass 
to come. 

One reason hed staged the reception. And invited 
someone, that oh-so-special someone, who was quite 
likely to drag her along. He hoped she did come; he 
couldnt wait to see the hunger on her face. . . . 

But now the whole thing was off. Or at least postponed. 
First the news that his acquisition had been impounded. 
Then the news just now that the police were delaying the 
disembarkation of Helios! What in heavens name could 
be so complicated about a simple accident in space . . . ? 

Horribly embarrassing, but he certainly had no intention 
of reopening the Hesperian Museum until his treasure 
was safely enthroned. 

Darlington pushed himself away from the empty altar. 
Hed recoiled from the notion of mingling with the crowd 
of media persons and other rabble that had rushed to the 
security sector when Star Queen, at last, had arrived. He 
had subsequently placed one discreet call to the powersthat-
be, urgingone might in fact say pleading, but only 
really in the gentlest possible fashionthat something be 
done about the red tape that prevented him from taking 
immediate delivery of the most valuable book in the entire 
history of the English languageand honestly now, if it 

196 


VENUS PRIME 


werent the most valuable book, then why had he been 
forced to pay such an outrageous sum for it, surely the 
largest sum ever paid for a book in the English language 
in the history of the English language itself, and that 
surely said something . . . and out of his own pockets, 
which werent, shall we say, bottomless, after all...? 

Not, of course, that he cared about the book, actually, 
the actual contents of the book, that is to say, the words 
in the book. War stories, you know. Given that this fellow 
Lawrence was said to have written rather well, and there 
were those endorsements, G. B. Shaw, Robert Graves, whoever 
they were, but they were said to have written well 
themselves, for the period, that is, anyway someone said 
so, and really, any reputation that lasts a century has some 
value, wouldnt-you-say? But not really what he thought 
he was getting, in factpermitting himself to make a small 
confession to himselfsome confusion actually, quite understandable, 
another chap named Lawrence from the 
same period, after all it was more than a hundred years 
ago. 

Which was quite beside the point. Hed paid money for 
this bloody book. There were only five copies in the universe, 
and three of those were lost, and now there was 
only the one in the Library of Congress of the United 
States of America and histhe Hesperian Museums, which 
itself was his. And hed bought it for one reason, to humiliate 
that woman, who had humiliated him in the aftermath 
of her disgraceful public pursuit of his . . . well, 
that oh-so-special someone. His legal companion, once. 

He supposed he should simply say good riddance to 
the little slut. But he couldnt. She had her quite remarkable 
charms, and Darlington was not likely to find her 
equivalent on this sardine-can-in-space. 

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VENUS PRIME 


Which set him to brooding, as he did endlessly, over 
whether he would ever get off Port Hesperus, whether he 
could ever go home again. He knew, deep down, that he 
wouldnt. Theyd bury poor Vince Darlington in space, unless 
by some miracle they buried his sisters first. Not a 
matter of fighting extradition to Earth, nothing so public, or 
so legal. No, it was the price the familythe poisonous sisters, 
actuallyhad exacted for keeping their persimmon-
lips puckered tightlyfor keeping him out of a Swiss jail, 
to be precise. Of course it would have had to be their 
money . . . 

This was the retreat hed made for himself, and here 
he would stay, in these few small rooms with their velvet 
walls and this . . . really amazing glass dome (perhaps it 
really had been built as a church?), surrounded by his dead 
treasures. 

He eyed the shrimps. They werent getting any fresher. 

He set off on another round of picture straightening. 
When would he be allowed to take possession? Perhaps he 
should cancel now. Captain Antreen had been most unhelpful. 
Oh, smiles and all that, said shed do the best she 
could, but results? No promises there, darling. It all had a 
sour taste to it, rather curdling his intended triumph over 
Sylvester. 

Darlington passed nervously into one of the smaller, 
darker side rooms, He stopped beside a glass case, caught 
by his reflection in its lid. He patted his thinning black 
hair and adjusting his old-fashioned horn-rimmed eyeglasses
hadnt lost his looks quite yet, thank Godtwitching 
his lips in a little moue, then moving on, ignoring the 
contents of the case. 

What Darlington left behind in this small room were 
his real treasures, although he refused to acknowledge 

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VENUS PRIME 


them. Here were those odd scraps of fossil imprints, found 
on the surface of Venus by robot explorers, which had 
made the Hesperian Museum a place of intense interest to 
scientists and scholars, and, after Satos gardens, one of 
the chief tourist attractions of Port Hesperus. But Darlington, 
absurdly wealthy even on a negotiated allowance, was 
a collector of second-rate European art of the melodrama-
and-curlicue periods, and to him rocks and bones belonged 
in some desert gas station or Olde Curiosity Shoppe 
on Earth. His Venusian fossils brought him system-wide 
attention, so he grudgingly allowed them their space. 

He continued to pace, staring at his garish paintings 
and sculptures and expensive bric-a-brac and brooding on 
what that busybody police person from Earth was up to, 
poking about on the derelict ship that held his precious 
book. 

Shortly before Helios was due to rendezvous with Port 
Hesperus and shortly after Sparta had asked him to assure 
its quarantine while she went off on business of her own, 
Viktor Proboda presented himself at the Board of Space 
Controls local headquarters. Captain Antreen called him 
into her office; Lieutenant Kitamuki, her aide, was already 
in the room. 

Your instructions were simple, Viktor. Antreens 
smiling mask had slipped; she was rigid with anger. You 
were not to leave Troys side. 

She trusts me, Captain. She has promised to inform 
me promptly of everything she finds. 

And you trust her? Kitamuki demanded. 

She seems to know what shes doing, Lieutenant. 
Proboda felt it was getting awfully warm in this office. 
And Central did put her in charge. 

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We requested a replacement. We didnt ask that the 
investigation be taken away from us. Antreen said. 

I didnt like that any better than you did, Captain, 
Proboda said stoutly. In fact I took it personally at first, 
considering youd already given me the assignment. But 
after all, most of the principals in the case are Earth-
based. . . . 

Most of the principals are Euro-Americans, Kitamuki 
said. Does that give you a clue? 

Sorry, Proboda said stoutly. He could see the conspiracy 
theory comingKitamuki was big on thembut 
conspiracy theories were not his thing. He put his faith in 
simpler motivations, like vengeance, greed, and stupidity. 
I really think you ought to take a look at these lab results. 
We didTroy did, in facta very close inspection of the 
impact site, and what she found . . . 

Someone back there has passed the word that this 
department is to be discredited, Kitamuki interrupted. 
Here on Port Hesperus, Azure Dragon is producing spectacular 
results, and some among the Euro-Americans, on 
the station and back on Earth, dont like it. She paused 
to let her dark suspicions sink in. 

Weve got to watch our step, Viktor, Antreen said 
evenly. To preserve our integrity. Port Hesperus is a 
model of cooperation, and unfortunately some would like 
to destroy us. 

Proboda suspected somebody was blowing smoke in 
his facehe wasnt sure who. But while Captain Antreen 
didnt always choose to make her reasoning clear, she did 
make her point. How do you want me to handle it, then? 

You do as Troy asks you. Just know that well be 
working with you too, sometimes behind the scenes. Troy 
is not to be made aware of this. We want the situation 

200 


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resolved, but theres no need to go beyond the pertinent 
facts. 

All right, then, Proboda concurred. Shall I see to 
Helios? 

You do that, Lieutenant Kitamuki said. Leave Troy 
to us. 

Now what did you want to tell us about these lab 
results? Antreen asked him. 

201 


XV 


Alone in Star Queen, Sparta started her investigation from 
the top down. 

Immediately below the inner hatch of the main airlock 
was a claustrophobic space jammed with stores and equipment 
lockers. Three spacesuits normally hung against the 
wall in one quadrant of the round deck. One was missing. 
Grants. Another appeared unused. Wycherlys, the unfortunate 
pilots. Curious, Sparta checked its oxygen supply 
and found it partially chargedenough there for half an 
hour. Had McNeil been saving it, in case things went 
wrong, and he too decided to lose himself in space? Sparta 
poked here and there among the supply lockerstools, 
batteries, spare lithium hydroxide canisters and suchbut 
she found nothing of significance here. She quickly moved 
down to the flight deck. 

The flight deck was spacious by comparison, taking up 
a slice through the wide tropics of the crew modules 
sphere. The consoles that circled the deck beneath the wide 

202 


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windows were alive with flickering lights, their blue and 
green and yellow indicator lamps glowing softly on auxiliary 
power. Facing them were seats for commander, second 
pilot, and engineeralthough Star Queen, like other 
modern freighters, could be flown by a single crewmember 
or none, if placed under remote control. 

The room was a pragmatic mix of the exotic and the 
mundane. The computers were state of the art and so were 
the window shades, although the state of the window-
shade art had not changed a whole lot in the past century, 
and the fire extinguishers were still just red-painted metal 
bottles, clipped to the bulkheads. There were racks and 
cabinets of machines, but there was also plenty of good 
working space and a good view out the surrounding windows; 
the deck had been designed in the awareness that 
crews would spend many months of their lives within its 
confines. Sparta was struck, however, that there were no 
personalizing touches, no cut-out cartoons or posters or 
pin-ups, no cute notes. Perhaps neo-commander Peter 
Grant had not been the sort to tolerate individual litter. 

Besides the ships working programs, the logsGrants 
verbal log and the ships black-box recorderswere accessed 
from these consoles. In fact almost all of the codable 
information about the ship and its cargo, except 
Grants and McNeils personal computer files, was accessed 
from this deck. 

Sparta expelled a breath and got down to work. From 
the chemical traces left on the consoles, armrests, handrails, 
and other surfaces she confirmed that no one besides 
Grant and McNeil had been on this deck for several weeks. 
There were still a jumble of traces, but most were months 
old, left by the workmen who had refurbished the ship. 

Sparta had internalized the computers standard access 

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codes. In little more time than it took to slip her gloves 
off and slide her PIN probes into the ports, shed off-
loaded its memory into her own much denser, much more 
capacious cellular storage mechanisms. 

She raced lightly through the first few files of interest. 
The cargo manifest was as she had memorized it on the 
trip from Earthno additions, no subtractions, no surprises. 
Four detachable cargo holds, capable of pressurization. 
On this voyage, only the first compartment of Hold 
A pressurizedthe usual foodstuffs, medicines, so onand 
that diminutive bit of mass worth two million pounds 
Sterling, a book in its carrying case. . . . 

A few other items in Hold A were insured for relatively 
large amounts of money per unit of mass: two crates of 
cigars consigned to none other than Kara Antreen, valued 
at a thousand pounds eachSparta smiled at the thought 
of the stiff Space Board captain savoring her stogiesand 
four crates of wine, one of which McNeil had already confessed 
to looting, worth a total of fifteen thousand American 
dollars and consigned to the same Vincent Darlington 
who was the new owner of the very famous book. 

But there were also items that had cost more to ship 
than they were worth to insure: the newest BBC epic on 
videochip, While Rome Burns, massing less than a kilo 
(and almost all of that was protective plastic packaging), 
wholly uninsured. Although the original had cost millions 
to produce, the chips were much cheaper to reproduce 
than an old-fashioned celluloid-based movie or a tape cassette, 
and indeed (admittedly with some loss of fidelity) 
the whole show could have been beamed to Venus for the 
cost of transmission time. Plus an item that had earlier 
struck Sparta as worthy of close attention: a case of mis


204 


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cellaneous books, 25 kilos, no intrinsic value consigned 
to Sondra Sylvester. 

The contents of Holds B, C, and D, which had remained 
in vacuum throughout the flight, were of much less interest
tools, machinery, inert matter (a tonne of carbon in 
the form of graphite bricks, for example, marginally 
cheaper to ship from Earth than to extract from the atmospheric 
carbon dioxide of Venus)except for the 6 
Rolls-Royce HDVM, Heavy Duty Venus Miners, at 5.5 
tonnes each, total mass 33.5 tonnes gross including separate 
fuel assemblies, etc., consigned to the Ishtar Mining 
Corporation. Sparta satisfied herself that the onboard 
manifest was identical with the one that had been published. 
And she and Proboda had already confirmed its 
accuracy. 

Sparta turned quickly to the mission recorder, which 
contained the entire public record of the voyage. Bringing 
the full record to consciousness, with the time-slip that 
involved, would be a lengthy process. For the time being 
she contented herself with a rapid internal scan, searching 
for anomalies. 

One anomaly stood out, in data space, in smell space, 
in harmony spacean explosion, secondary explosions, 
alarms, calls for help . . . human voices, shocked, coping, 
accusingthe black-box mission recorder contained the 
entire sequence of events attendant upon the meteoroid 
strike. 

Sparta heard it through at lightning speed and played 
it back to herself mentally. It confirmed in fine detail what 
she had learned in her firsthand look at the site of the 
accident. 

One other anomaly stood out in the mission recorders 

205 


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datastream, a conversation, taking place immediately before 
Grants fateful radio message had been beamed to 
Earth and Venus. This is Star Queen, Commander Peter 
Grant speaking. Engineering Officer McNeil and I have 
jointly concluded that there is sufficient oxygen remaining 
for one man. . . . 

But in the moments preceding the announcement, 
Grant and McNeil had not been on the flight deck. . . . The 
two mens voices were muffled by the intervening bulkhead. 
One voice was momentarily raised to the threshold 
of audibilityMcNeilsand his words were stern: Youre 
in no position to accuse me of anything. . . . 

Accuse him...? 

The whole conversation might be recovered, but Sparta 
would have to put herself into light trance to do it. And 
there were other chunks of data that might yield to analysis, 
but she must set aside the time to deal with them. It 
was too soon to sacrifice alertness again. For now she had 
to move quickly. . . . 

The fast liner Helios, driven by a powerful gaseous-
core atomic reactor, had been a week out of Earth, a week 
and a day from Port Hesperus, when that somber message 
had been received throughout the solar system: This is 
Star Queen, Commander Peter Grant speaking . . . 

Within minuteseven before Peter Grant had left the 
Star Queens airlock for the last timethe skipper of Helios 
had received orders from the Board of Space Control, acting 
under interplanetary law, to notify his passengers and 
crew that all transmissions from Helios were being recorded 
and that any pertinent information thus obtained 
would be used in subsequent administrative and legal pro


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ceedings, including criminal proceedings, if any, bearing 
on the Star Queen incident. 

In other words, everyone aboard Helios was a suspect 
in the investigation of some as yet unspecified misdeed on 
Star Queen. 

Not without reason. Helios had left Earth on a hyperbolic 
orbit for Venus two days after the meteoroid struck 
Star Queen. The departure date for the fast liner had been 
on the boards for months, but at the last minute, after the 
meteoroid strike, Helios acquired several new passengers. 
Among them was Nikos Pavlakis, representing the owners 
of the stricken freighter. Another was a man named Percy 
Farnsworth, representing the Lloyds group who had insured 
the ship, its cargo, and the lives of its crew. 

Other passengers had booked the flight long in advance. 
There was an emeritus professor of archaeology 
from Osaka, three Dutch teenage girls setting forth on a 
grand planetary tour, and half a dozen Arabian mining 
technicians accompanied by their veiled wives and rebellious 
children. The Dutch girls rather relished the notion 
of being suspected of interplanetary crime, while 
Sondra Sylvester, another passenger who had booked in 
advance, did not. Sylvesters young travelling companion, 
Nancybeth Mokoroa, was simply bored rigid by the 
whole affair. 

These were not the sort of passengers who mixed easily: 
the Japanese professor smiled and kept to himself, the 
Arabs kept to themselves without bothering to smile. The 
teenagers staggered about in their high-heeled shoes during 
periods of constant acceleration and twitched uncomfortably 
in their unaccustomed tight dresses, whether 
under acceleration or not, and at all times made a point 

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of ogling the one unaccompanied male passenger over fifteen 
and under thirty. He did not return their compliment. 
He was Blake Redfield, a last minute addition to the manifest 
who kept very much to himself throughout the voyage. 


Such social encounters as did occur took place in the 
ships lounge. There Nikos Pavlakis did his nervous best 
to be gracious to his client Sondra Sylvester whenever 
their paths crossed. That wasnt often, as she generally 
avoided him. The poor man was distracted with worry 
anyway; he spent most of his time nursing a solitary 
ouzo and a plastic bag of Kalamata olives. Farnsworth, 
the insurance man, was often to be found lurking in the 
nearby shadows, sipping on a bulb of straight gin and 
ostentatiously glowering at Pavlakis. Pavlakis and Sylvester 
both made it a point to avoid Farnsworth altogether. 


But it was in the lounge, not long after Grants public 
sacrifice, that Sylvester found Farnsworth plying Nancybeth 
with a warm bulb of Calvados. The middle-aged man 
and the twenty-year-old woman were floating, weightless 
and slightly giddy, before a spectacular backdrop of real 
stars, and the sight infuriated Sylvesteras Nancybeth had 
no doubt intended. Before approaching them Sylvester 
thought about the situationwhat, after all, should she 
care? The girl was possessed of heart-stopping beauty, but 
she had the loyalty of a mink. Nevertheless, Sylvester felt 
she could not afford to ignore the sly Farnsworth any 
longer. 

Nancybeth watched Sylvesters approach, her malice 
diffused only slightly by weightlessness and alcohol.  Lo, 
Sondra. Meet m friend Prissy Barnsworth. 

Percy Farnsworth, Mrs. Sylvester. One did not get to 

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ones feet in microgravity, but Farnsworth straightened 
admirably nonetheless, and tucked his chin in a credible 
bow. 

Sylvester looked him over with distaste: although he 
was approaching fifty, Farnsworth affected the look of a 
young army officer, off duty for the weekend to do a bit 
of pheasant slaughtering, saySylvesters recent acquaintance 
at the Salisbury proving grounds, Lieutenant Colonel 
Witherspoon, was a model of the type. Farnsworth had the 
mustache and the elbow-patched shooting jacket and the 
rigid set of the neck right down. The public school accent 
and the clipped Desert Rat diction were strictly secondhand, 
however. 

Sylvester looked past his outstretched hand. Youll 
want to be careful, Nancybeth. A brandy hangovers not 
pleasant. 

Dear mother Sylvester, she simpered. Whatd I tell 
you, Farny? Expert on everthn. I never heard of this stuff 
fore she innerduced me. Nancybeth batted her bulb of 
apple brandy from hand to hand. On the third toss she 
missed, and Farnsworth snatched it out of the air for her, 
returning it without comment. 

Understand you had a very pleasant visit to the south 
of France, Mrs. Sylvester, Farnsworth said, braving her 
determined unpleasantries. 

Sylvester gave him a look intended to silence him, but 
Nancybeth piped up brightly. She had verry pleasan two 
days. Three days? I had verr boring three weeks. 

Mr. Farnsworth, Sylvester hastily interrupted, your 
attempt to pump my companion for information that you 
imagine may somehow be of use to you is . . . is transparent. 


Nancybeths eyes widenedPump me? Why, Mister 

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Farmerworthyand she snatched dramatically at the bil


lowing skirt of her flowery print dress. 

And despicable, Sylvester added. 

But Farnsworth pretended to take no notice. No offense 
meant, Mrs. Sylvester. Light chat, thats all. Comes 
to business, much prefer to talk to you straight from the 
shoulder. Eh? 

Nancybeth growled, Man to man, so to speak, then 
pretended to flinch when Sylvester glared at her. Evidently 
she was farther into her cups than Sylvester had feared. 

Got me wrong, Mrs. Sylvester, Farnsworth said 
smoothly. Represent your interests too, yknow. In a 
sense. 

In the sense that youll be forced to pay your clients 
whatever sum you cant weasel out of? 

He drew himself up a bit. Youve nothing to fear, Mrs. 
Sylvester. Star Queen would dock safely with your cargo 
even if she were a ghost ship. Take more than a measly 
meteoroid to do in a Rolls-Royce robot, what? 

Throughout their exchange Nancybeth was contorting 
her face into a series of exaggerated masks, miming first 
Sylvesters aloof contempt, then Farnsworths wounded 
innocence. It was the sort of childish display that under 
some circumstances lent her a gamin attractiveness. At the 
moment she was about as attractive as a two-year-old on 
a tantrum. 

Thanks for your interest, Mr. Farnsworth, Sylvester 
said coldly. And perhaps you would leave us alone now. 

Let me be blunt, Mrs. Sylvester, begging your pardon 


No, why dont you be pointed? Nancybeth suggested 
brightly. 

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Farnsworth pushed on. After all, were both aware of 
the difficulties of the Pavlakis Lines. Eh? 

Im aware of no such thing. 

Doesnt take much imagination to see what Pavlakis 
had to gain by doing in his own ship. Eh? 
Nancybeth, Id like you to leave with me, this moment, 
Sylvester said, turning away. 

But he did it rather badly, didnt he? Farnsworth 
said, floating closer to Sylvester, his voice deeper and 
harsher. No significant damage to the ship, no damage 
whatever to the cargo? Not even that famous book you 
were so interested in? 

Don forget crew, cried Nancybeth, still the giddy 
imp. Tried to kill em all! 

Good God, Nancybeth . . . Sylvester glanced across 
the lounge to where Nikos Pavlakis hovered over his ouzo. 
How can you say such a thing? About a man youve 
never met? 

Only got half of em, though, the girl finished. Good 
ol Angus won through. 

Thats a shrewd guess, Mrs. Sylvester, and Id lay odds 
shes right. Farnsworths insinuating gaze narrowed melodramatically. 
Pavlakis Lines holds rather large 
accidental-death policies on its crewmembersdid you 
know that? 

Her eyes fastened on his, almost against her will. No, 
Mr. Farnsworth, actually I didnt. 

But suicide, though. Now theres another matter. . . . 

Sylvester jerked her gaze away from him. Something 
about his teeth, his gingery hair, set her stomach to seething. 
She glared at Nancybeth, who peered back in fuddled 
and exaggerated innocence. Taking hold of a nearby con


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venience rail, Sylvester turned her back on both of them 
and launched herself hastily outward, into the gloom. 

Bye-bye, Sondra . . . sooorry we made you mad, 
Nancybeth crooned as Sylvester disappeared through the 
nearest doorway. She squinted at Farnsworth. Suicide? 
Sat mean you don have to pay Grant? I mean, for Grant? 
Cause he killed himself? 

Might mean. Farnsworth peered back owlishly. Unless 
he didnt, of course. 

Didnt? Oh, yeah . . . an if he was murdered? 

Ah, murder. Gray area, that. Farnsworth tugged at 
the knot of his blood-colored polymer tie. I say, been 
awfully good. But fraid I must run. 

Yes, Wusspercy, cooed the abandoned Nancybeth. So 
thats what hed wanted from her, nothing more than a conversation 
with Syl. Run along, why dont you? And while 
youre at it, take a hint from Commander Grant . . . ? Lose 
your body too. 

Across the room, not far away, Nikos Pavlakis floated 
near the bar with his bulb of ouzo and his bag of olives. 
He was well aware that they had been talking about him. 
His temper urged him to confront Farnsworth, to call him 
to immediate account, but his business sense urged him to 
stay calm at all costs. He was frantic over the condition 
of his beautiful new ship. He was almost equally sorrowful 
for the man Grant, who had been a dependable employee 
of his and his fathers for many years, and for Grants 
widow and children. He was even more apprehensive 
about the prospects of McNeil, another good man. . . . 

Pavlakis thought he knew what had happened to Star 
Queen. To him it was retrospectively obvious, transparently 
sobut not, he hoped, to anyone else. Nor could he 

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afford to breathe a word of his suspicions to anyone. 
Farnsworth least of all. 

As Helios slid into its parking orbit near Port Hesperus, 
Sparta was poking about in Angus McNeils private cabin 
on Star Queen. 

Shed quickly looked through the galley, the personal 
hygiene facility, the common areas. Shed found nothing 
inconsistent with McNeils account. A slot in the medicine 
chest which would have held a tiny vial of tasteless, odorless 
poison was vacant. There were two packs of playing 
cards in the drawer of the table in the common room, one 
of which had never been opened, one of which had been 
handled by both McNeil and GrantMcNeils traces were 
strongest, although Grant had gripped one card tightly. 
She noted its face. 

After the common areas Sparta had visited the pilots 
cabin next. It had not been entered since Wycherly was 
last on the ship, before it left Falaron Shipyard. 

Grants cabin, thennotable mostly for what it failed 
to reveal. His bed was still made, the corners squared off 
and the blanket so tight one could have bounced a nickel 
off it at one gee. His clothes were neatly folded in the 
restraining hampers. His bookshelf and personal-computer 
files were mostly electronics manuals and self-
improvement books; there were no signs that Grant did 
any reading for pleasure or had any hobbies except fiddling 
with microelectronics. The promised letters to his 
wife and children were clipped to the little fold-down writing 
desk, and Sparta left them there after ascertaining that 
no one except Grant had touched them. McNeil, if hed 
been curious about their contentsas well he might have 
beenhad had the integrity to leave them strictly alone. 

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In fact there was no trace of McNeils presence anywhere 
in the room. 

There was another letter, addressed to McNeil himself, 
in Grants desk drawer. But as McNeil had not searched 
the drawer, presumably he did not know of its existence. 

McNeils cabin painted a portrait of quite a different 
man. His bed had not been made for days, perhaps weeks 
Sparta noted purplish splotches of spilled wine on the 
sheets that, if hed been telling the truth about not getting 
into Hold A after Grant changed the combination, had 
been there since four days after the explosion. His clothes 
were in a jumble, jammed into the hampers of his locker. 
His chip library was a fascinating mix of titles. There were 
works of mysticism: the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu, a treatise 
on alchemy, another on the Cabala. And of philosophy: 
Kants Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, Nietzsches 
The Birth of Tragedy. 

Some of McNeils books were real, photogrammed onto 
plastic sheets that imitated the paper of a hundred years 
ago. Games: a slim little book on parlor magic, another 
on chess, another on go. Novels: Cabells odd Jurgen,a 
recent work of the Martian futurists, Dionysus Redivivus. 

McNeils personal computer files revealed a different 
but similarly wide range of interestsit took Sparta only 
moments to discover that he had been playing master level 
chess with his machine, that he had carefully followed the 
London, New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong stock exchanges, 
that he subscribed to a variety of clubs, from 
rose-of-the-month to wine-of-the-month. Wine and 
roseshe must collect several months worth of each, 
between trips. 

There were other files on the computer, protected by 
passwords that would have stopped a casual browser but 

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which were so trivial Sparta barely noted themfiles that 
made full use of the machines high-resolution graphics. 
The invention of the home video player a century ago had 
brought erotic films into the living room, but that was a 
mild innovation compared to what followed when the invention 
of the cheap supercomputer-on-a-chip brought 
new meaning to the phrase interactive fantasy. McNeils 
id was much on display in these private files, which Sparta 
closed hastily; despite her opinion of herself as sophisticated 
beyond her years, her face had turned bright pink. 

She made her way into the corridor that passed 
through the center of the life support deck. Just on the 
other side of these close, curving, featureless steel walls 
the fatal explosion had occurred; at the same moment the 
access panels had been automatically dogged shut to prevent 
decompression of the crew module. 

She went through the lock into the hold access then, 
to the three locks that warned VACUUM and the one that 
sternly wagged its bright yellow finger: Unauthorized entry 
strictly forbidden. 

McNeil had told the truth. The traces of his and many 
other hands resided on the keypad, but the most recent 
trace was Peter Grantshis touch on six of the keys overlaid 
all others. Sparta could not recover the order of 
touchsix keys gave rise to six-factorial possible 
combinationsbut if shed wanted to play a game with 
herself she probably could have deduced the likelier possibilities 
within a few seconds, from her knowledge of 
probabilities and, mostly, from what shed learned of the 
man himself. 

There was no point in taking the time. Shed already 
uncovered the combination where Grant had noted it in 
his personal computer files. 

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She tapped the keys. The indicator diode beside the 
lock blinked from red to green. She turned the wheel and 
tugged on the hatch. Inside the airlock the indicators confirmed 
that the interior pressures of the hold were equal 
to those outside the lock. She turned the wheel on the 
inner hatch and a moment later floated into the hold. 

It was a cramped circular space, hardly big enough to 
stand erect in, ringed by steel racks filled with metal and 
plastic bags and cases. The roof of the compartment was 
the reinforced cap of the hold itself; the floor was a removable 
steel partition, sealed to the walls. The wooden 
ships that once plied Earths oceans commonly carried 
sand and rocks for ballast when travelling without a paying 
cargo, but ballast was worse than useless in space. Aft 
of the few stacked shelves ringing the pressurized top of 
the hold, the vessel was just a big bottle of vacuum. 

The pallets near the airlock were strapped down securely, 
carrying sacks of wild rice, asparagus tips in gel, 
cases of live game birds frozen in suspended animation 
delicacies that, having made the trip from Earth, were 
worth far more than their weight in gold. 

And of course that miscellany which had snagged 
Spartas attention in the manifest. Kara Antreens Cuban 
cigars. Sondra Sylvesters books of no intrinsic value. 
Sylvesters books were in a gray Styrene case which 
showed little sign of handlingSparta noted Sylvesters 
own traces, McNeils, Grants, others unknown, but none 
recent. Sparta quickly deduced the simple combination. 
Inside she found a number of plastic-wrapped paper and 
plastic books, some bound in cloth or leather, others with 
quaint and lurid illustrated covers, but nothing she did not 
expect to find. She resealed the case. 

She moved next to Darlingtons consignment, a similar 

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but not identical gray Styrene case equipped with an elaborate 
magnetic lock, something even more complex than 
the numeric pad on the airlock. The case showed no signs 
of tampering. Oddly, it showed no signs of having been 
handled at all. The only chemical signals on the entire case 
were the strong contending odors of detergent, methyl alcohol, 
acetone, and carbon tetrachloride. It seemed to have 
been throughly scrubbed. 

A defensive measure, that, like the human hair laid 
across the crack in the closet door, intended to divulge 
any attempts at searching or tampering? Well, there had 
been no tampering. 

Sparta proceeded to tamper with it. The locks code was 
based on a short stack of rather small primes. No one without 
Spartas sensitivities could have cracked the combination 
in less than a few days, without the aid of a sizable 
computerit would take that long just to run through half 
the possible combinations. But Sparta eliminated possibilities 
by the millions and billions, instantly, simply by 
reading electronic pathways deep in the locks circuitry 
and discarding those that were dormant. 

She was in trance while she did it. Five minutes later 
she had the lock open. Inside the case was the book. 

The man who had had this book made for himself had 
reveled in fine things. He had valued the presentation of 
his hard-wrought words so much that he would not let 
those he hoped to impress with it, or even his friends, see 
anything but the best. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had 
not only been given the trappings of a marbled slipcase, 
leather binding, and beautiful endpapers, it had been 
printed like the King James Bible itself, on Bible paper, set 
in double columns of linotype. 

Sparta had heard about metal type, although she had 

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never actually seen the effect of it. She slid the book from 
its case, let it gently push itself open. Sure enough, each 
single letter and character was pressed onto the paper, not 
simply appearing there as a filmy overlay but as a precise 
quantity of ink pushed crisply into the pulp. That sort of 
craftsmanship in an object of mass production was beyond 
Spartas experience. The paper itself was thin and 
supple, not like the crumbling discolored sheets she had 
seen in the New York library, displayed as relics of the 
past. . . . 

The richness and glory of the book in her hand was 
hypnotic, calling her to handle its pages. For the moment 
she forgot investigation. She only wanted to experience 
the thing. She studied the page to which it had spontaneously 
opened. 

An accident was meaner than deliberate fault, the author 
had written. If I did not hesitate to risk my life, why 
fuss to dirty it? Yet life and honour seemed in different categories. 
. . . or was honour like the Sybils leaves, the more 
that was lost the more precious the little left . . . ? 

An odd thought. Honour considered as a commodity, 
the more that was lost the more precious what was left. 

Sparta closed the fabulous book and slid it back into 
its slipcase, then settled the whole thick package into its 
padded case. She had seen what she needed to of Star 
Queen. 

218 


XVI 


Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to announce that there will 
be a delay in the disembarkation process. A representative 
from Port Hesperus will be joining us shortly to explain. 
To facilitate matters, all passengers should report to the 
lounge as soon as possible. Stewards will assist you. 

Unlike Star Queen, Helios had arrived at Port Hesperus 
in the normal way, grappled into parking orbit by short-
range tugs. Plainly visible through the windows of the 
ships lounge, the space station hung in the sky a kilometer 
away, its wheels revolving grandly against the bright crescent 
of Venus, the green of its famous gardens glinting 
through the banded skylights of its central sphere. Murmuring 
resentment, the passengers gathered in the lounge; 
the most reluctant found themselves helped by stewards 
who seemed to have forgotten deference. All aboard the 
ship, passengers and crew, were frustrated to have travelled 
millions of kilometers across a trackless sea and at 

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the last moment to be prevented from setting foot on the 
shore. 

A bright spark moved against the insect cloud of other 
spacecraft drifting about the station, and soon resolved 
itself into a tiny white launch bearing the familiar blue 
band and gold star insignia. The launch docked at the 
main airlock and a few minutes later a tall, square-jawed 
blond man pulled himself briskly into the lounge. 

Im Inspector Viktor Proboda, Port Hesperus office of 
the Board of Space Control, he said to the assembled passengers, 
most of whom were unhappily glowering. You 
will be detained here temporarily while we continue our 
investigation into the recent events aboard Star Queen; we 
sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause. First 
Ill need to establish that your registration slivers are in 
order. Then I will soon be approaching some of you individually 
and asking you to assist us in our inquiries. . . . 

Ten minutes after she left Star Queen, Sparta knocked 
on the door of Angus McNeils private ward. Ellen Troy, 
Mr. McNeil. 

Cm in, he said cheerily, and when she opened the 
door he was standing there smiling at her from his freshly 
shaved face, wearing a freshly pressed, luxurious cotton 
shirt with its sleeves folded above the elbows and crisp 
plastic trousers, and puffing lightly on a cigarette he had 
evidently lit only moments before. 

Im sorry to interrupt you, she said, seeing the open 
kit on the bed. He had been packing bathroom articles; 
she noted that they seem to have been issued from the 
same government stores as her own hastily acquired 
toothbrush. 

Good time for a fresh start. Sorry you had to see that 

220 


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mess of minemight just chuck the lot, whenever you de


cide to let me back aboard. 

That will be a while yet, Im afraid. 

More questions, Inspector? When she nodded yes, he 
gestured to a chair and took another for himself. Better 
make ourselves comfortable, then. 

Sparta sat down. For a moment she watched him without 
speaking. McNeils color was much better, and although 
he would be gaunt for some time to come, he 
appeared not to have lost his muscle tone. Even after days 
of near-starvation, his forearms were powerfully muscled. 
Well, Mr. McNeil, its fascinating what the latest diagnostic 
techniques can recover from even the most obscure 
pools of data. Take Star Queens mission recorder, for example. 


McNeil drew on his cigarette and watched her. His 
pleasant expression did not change. 

All the data from the automatic systems is complete, 
of course. And the microphones get every word spoken on 
the flight deck. What I listened to confirmed your account 
of the incident in every detail. 

McNeil raised an eyebrow. Youve hardly had time to 
screen a couple of weeks worth of real-time recordings, 
Inspector. 

Youre right, of course. A thorough review will take 
months. I employed an algorithm that identifies areas of 
maximum interest. What I want to talk to you about now 
is the discussion that took place in the common area 
shortly before you and Grant made your last broadcast. 

Im not sure I recall . . . 

Thats where these new diagnostic techniques are so 
helpful, you see. She leaned forward, as if to share her 
enthusiasm. Even though there are no microphones in the 

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living areas, enough sound carries to be picked up by the 
main flight recorder. In the past we wouldnt have been 
able to recover the exact words. 

She let that sink in. His expression still didnt change, 
but his features almost imperceptibly stiffened. She knew 
he was wondering whether she was bluffing. 

She would remove that hope. Youd just eaten dinner 
together. Grant had served you coffeeit was hotter than 
usual. He left you there and started for the corridor. 
Whats the hurry? you asked him. I though we had something 
to discuss. . . .  

Now the last hint of relaxation left McNeils eyes. As 
he crushed his cigarette his fleshy cheeks jiggled. 

Well, Mr. McNeil, Sparta said softly, do you and I 
have something to discuss? 

For a moment McNeil seemed to look past her, into the 
blank white wall behind her head. Then his eyes refocused 
on her face. He nodded. Aye, Ill tell you everythin, he 
whispered. I would make one requestnot a condition, I 
know better than thatbut simply a request, that once 
youve heard me out, if you agree with my reasonin, 
youll keep what Im about to say off the record. 

Ill bear that request in mind, she said. 

McNeil sighed deeply. Then heres the whole truth, 
Inspector. . . . 

Grant had already reached the central corridor when 
McNeil called softly after him, Whats the hurry? I 
thought we had something to discuss. 

Grant grabbed a rail to halt his headlong flight. He 
turned slowly and stared unbelievingly at the engineer. 
McNeil should be already deadbut he was sitting quite 

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comfortably, looking at him with a most peculiar expression. 


Come over here, McNeil said sharplyand in that 
moment it suddenly seemed that all authority had passed 
to him. Grant returned to the table without volition, hovering 
near his useless chair. Something had gone wrong, 
though what it was he could not imagine. 

The silence in the common area seemed to last for ages. 
Then McNeil said rather sadly, Id hoped better of you, 
Grant. 

At last Grant found his voice, though he could barely 
recognize it. What do you mean? he whispered. 

What do you think I mean? replied McNeil, with 
what seemed no more than mild irritation. This little attempt 
of yours to poison me, of course. 

Grants tottering world collapsed at last. Oddly, in his 
relief he no longer cared greatly that hed been found out. 

McNeil began to examine his beautifully kept fingernails 
with some attention. As a matter of interest, he 
asked, in the way that one might ask the time, when did 
you decide to kill me? 

The sense of unreality was so overwhelming that Grant 
felt he was acting a part, that this had nothing to do with 
real life at all. Only this morning, he said, and believed it. 

Hmm, remarked McNeil, obviously without much 
conviction. He rose to his feet and moved over to the medicine 
chest. Grants eyes followed him as he fumbled in 
the compartment and came back with the little poison bottle. 
It still appeared to be full. Grant had been careful 
about that. 

I suppose I should get pretty mad about this whole 
business, McNeil continued conversationally, holding the 

223 


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bottle between thumb and forefinger. But somehow Im 
not. Maybe its because Ive never had many illusions 
about human nature. And, of course, I saw it coming a 
long time ago. 

Only the last phrase really reached Grants consciousness. 
You . . . saw it coming? 

Heavens, yes! Youre too transparent to make a good 
criminal, Im afraid. And now that your little plots failed 
it leaves us both in an embarrassing position, doesnt it? 

To this masterly understatement there seemed no possible 
reply. 

By rights, continued the engineer thoughtfully, I 
should now work myself into a good temper, call Port 
Hesperus, denounce you to the authorities. But it would 
be a rather pointless thing to do, and Ive never been much 
good at losing my temper anyway. Of course, youll say 
thats because Im too lazybut I dont think so. He gave 
Grant a twisted smile. Oh, I know what you think about 
meyouve got me neatly classified in that orderly mind 
of yours, havent you? Im soft and self-indulgent, I 
havent any moral courageany morals at all, for that 
matterand I dont give a damn for anyone but myself. 
Well, Im not denying it. Maybe its ninety percent true. 
But the odd ten percent is mighty important, Grant. At 
least to me. 

Grant felt in no condition to indulge in psychological 
analysis, and this seemed hardly the time for anything of 
the sort. He was still obsessed with the problem of his 
failure and the mystery of McNeils continued existence. 
And McNeil, who knew this perfectly well, seemed in no 
hurry to satisfy his curiosity. 

Well, what do you intend to do now? Grant asked, 
anxious to get it over. 

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I would like, McNeil said calmly, to carry on our 
discussion where it was interrupted by the coffee. 

You dont mean . . . 

But I do. Just as if nothing had happened. 

That doesnt make sense! Youve got something up 
your sleeve! cried Grant. 

McNeil sighed. You know, Grant, youre in no position 
to accuse me of plotting anythinghe released the little 
bottle to float above the surface of the table between them; 
he looked up sternly at Grant. To repeat my earlier remarks, 
I am suggesting that we decide which one of us 
shall take poison. Only we dont want any more unilateral 
decisions. Alsoand he drew another vial from his jacket 
pocket, similar in size to the first but bright blue in color; 
he allowed it to float beside the otherit will be the real 
thing this time. The stuff in here, he said, pointing to the 
clear bottle, merely leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

The light finally dawned in Grants mind. You 
changed them. 

Naturally. You may think youre a good actor, Grant, 
but frankly, from the balcony, I thought the performance 
stank. I could tell you were plotting something, probably 
before you knew it yourself. In the last few days Ive deloused 
the ship pretty thoroughly. Thinking of all the ways 
you might have done me in was quite amusing; it even 
helped pass the time. The poison was so obvious that it 
was almost the first thing I fixed. He smiled wryly. In 
fact I overdid the danger signal. I nearly gave myself away 
when I took that first sipsalt doesnt go at all well with 
coffee. 

McNeil fixed unblinking eyes on the embittered Grant 
before going on. Actually, Id hoped for something more 
subtle. So far Ive found fifteen infallible ways of mur


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dering anyone aboard a spaceship. He smiled again, 
grimly. I dont propose to describe them now. 

This was simply fantastic, Grant thought. He was being 
treated, not like a criminal, but like a rather stupid schoolboy 
who hadnt done his homework properly. Yet you 
are willing to start all over again? he asked, unbelieving. 
And youd take the poison yourself if you lost? 

McNeil was silent for a long time. Then he said, slowly, 
I can see that you still dont believe me. It doesnt fit at 
all nicely into your tidy little picture, does it? But perhaps 
I can make you understand. Its really simple. He paused, 
then continued more briskly. Ive enjoyed life, Grant, without 
many scruples or regretsbut the better part of its over 
now and I dont cling to whats left as desperately as you 
might imagine. Yet while I am alive Im rather particular 
about some things. He allowed himself to drift farther from 
the table. It may surprise you to know that Ive got any 
ideals at all. But Ive always tried to act like a civilized, 
rational being, even if Ive not always succeeded. And when 
Ive failed Ive tried to redeem myself. You might say thats 
what this is about. He gestured at the tiny weightless bottles. 


He paused, and when he resumed it was as though he, 
and not Grant, were on the defensive. Ive never exactly 
liked you, Grant, but Ive often admired you and thats 
why Im sorry its come to this. I admired you most of all 
the day the ship was hit. He seemed to have difficulty 
finding his words: he avoided Grants eyes. I didnt behave 
well then. Ive always been quite sure, complacent 
really, that Id never lose my nerve in an emergencybut 
then it happened right beside me, something I understood 
instantly and had always thought to be impossiblehappened 
so suddenly, so loud, that it bowled me over. 

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He attempted to hide his embarrassment with humor. 
Of course I should have rememberedpractically the same 
thing happened on my first trip. Spacesickness, that time 
. . . and Id been supremely confident it couldnt happen to 
me. Probably made it worse. But I got over it. He met 
Grants eyes again. And I got over this . . . and then I got 
the third big surprise of my life. I saw you, of all people, 
beginning to crack. 

Grant flushed angrily, but McNeil met him sharply. 
Oh yes, lets not forget the business of the wines. No 
doubt thats still on your mind. Your first good grudge 
against me. But thats one thing I dont regret. A civilized 
man should always know when to get drunk. And when 
to sober up. Perhaps you wouldnt understand. 

Oddly, thats just what Grant was beginning to do, at 
last. He had caught his first real glimpse of McNeils intricate 
and tortured personality and realized how utterly 
he had misjudged him. Nomisjudged was not the right 
word. In some ways his judgment had been correct. But it 
had only touched the surface; he had never suspected the 
depths that lay beneath. 

And in his moment of insight Grant understood why 
McNeil was giving him a second chance. This was nothing 
so simple as a coward trying to reinstate himself in the 
eyes of the world: no one need ever know what happened 
aboard Star Queen. And in any case, McNeil probably 
cared nothing for the worlds opinion, thanks to the sleek 
self-sufficiency that had so often annoyed Grant. But that 
very self-sufficiency meant that at all costs he must preserve 
his own good opinion of himself. Without it life 
would not be worth living; McNeil had never accepted life 
save on his own terms. 

McNeil was watching Grant intently and must have 

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guessed that Grant was coming near the truth. He suddenly 
changed his tone, as if sorry he had revealed so 
much of his own character. Dont think I get some quixotic 
pleasure from turning the other cheek, he said 
sharply, its just that youve over-looked some rather basic 
logical difficulties. Really, Grantdidnt it once occur 
to you that if only one of us survives without a covering 
message from the other, hell have a very uncomfortable 
time explaining what happened? 

Grant was dumbstruck. In the depths of his seething 
emotions, in the blindness of his fury, he had simply failed 
to consider how he was going to exculpate himself. His 
righteousness had seemed so . . . so self evident. 

Yes, I suppose youre right, he murmured. Still, he 
privately wondered if a covering message was really all 
that important in McNeils thoughts. Perhaps McNeil was 
simply trying to convince him that his sincerity was based 
on cold reason. 

Nevertheless, Grant felt better now. All the hate had 
drained out of him and he feltalmostat peace. The truth 
was known and he accepted it. That it was rather different 
from what he had imagined hardly seemed to matter. 
Well, lets get it over, he said, unemotionally. Dont we 
still have that new pack of cards? 

Yes, a couple of them in the drawer there. McNeil 
had taken off his jacket and was rolling up his shirtsleeves. 
Find the one you wantbut before you open it, Grant, 
he said with peculiar emphasis, I think wed better speak 
to Port Hesperus. Both of us. And get our complete agreement 
on the record. 

Grant nodded absently; he did not mind very much 
now, one way or the other. He grabbed a sealed pack of 

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the metallized cards from the game drawer and followed 
McNeil up the corridor to the flight deck. They left the 
glinting poison bottles floating where they were. 

Grant even managed a ghost of a smile when, ten 
minutes later, he drew his card from the pack and laid it 
face upward beside McNeils. It fastened itself to the metal 
console with a faintly perceptible snap. 

McNeil fell silent. For a minute he busied himself lighting 
a fresh cigarette. He inhaled the fragrant, poisonous 
smoke deeply. Then he said, And the rest you already 
know, Inspector. 

Except for a few minor details, Sparta said coolly. 
What became of the two bottles, the real poison and the 
other? 

Out the airlock with Grant, he replied shortly. I 
thought it would be better to keep things simple, not run 
the risk of a chemical analysisrevealing traces of salt, 
that kind of thing. 

Sparta brought a package of metallized playing cards 
from her jacket pocket. Do you recognize these? She 
handed them to him. 

He took them in his large, curiously neat hands, hardly 
bothering to look at them. They could be the ones we 
used. Or others like them. 

Would you mind shuffling the pack, Mr. McNeil? 

The engineer glanced at her sharply, then did as he was 
told, expertly shuffling the thin, flexible cards in midair 
between his curved palms and nimble fingers. Finished, he 
looked at her inquisitively. 

Cut, if you dont mind, she said. 

That would be your privilege, wouldnt it? 

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You do it. 

He laid the deck on the nearby lamp table and swiftly 
moved the top section of the deck to one side, then placed 
the bottom section on top of it. He leaned away. What 
now? 

Now Id like you to shuffle them again. 

The look on his face, as blank as he could make it, 
nevertheless barely concealed his contempt. He had shared 
one of the more significant episodes of his life with her, 
and her response was to ask him to play gamesno doubt 
in some feeble attempt to trick him into something. But 
he shuffled the cards quickly, making no comment, letting 
the hiss and snarl of their separation and swift recombination 
make the comment for him. And now? 

Now Ill choose a card. 

He fanned the deck and held it toward her. She reached 
for it but let her fingers hover over the cards, moving back 
and forth as if she were trying to make up her mind. Still 
concentrating, she said, Youre quite expert at handling 
these, Mr. McNeil. 

Nor have I made a secret of it, Inspector. 

It was no secret to begin with, Mr. McNeil. She 
tugged a card from the edge of the deck and held it up, 
toward him, without bothering to look at it herself. 

He stared at it, shocked. 

That would be the jack of spades, wouldnt it, Mr. 
McNeil? The card you drew against Commander Grant? 

He barely whispered yes before she plucked another 
card from the deck he still rigidly held out to her. Again 
she showed it to him without looking at it. And that 
would be the three of clubs. The card Grant drew, which 
sent him to his death. She flipped the two cards onto the 
bed. You can put the deck down now, Mr. McNeil. 

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His cigarette burned unnoticed in the ashtray. He had 
already anticipated the point of her little demonstration, 
and he waited for her to make it. 

Metallized cards arent allowed in professional play 
for a simple reason, she said, with which Im sure youre 
quite familiar. They arent as easy to mark with knicks and 
pinholes as the cardboard kind, but its a simple matter to 
impose a weak electric or magnetic pattern on them that 
can be picked up by an appropriate detector. Such a detector 
can be quite smallsmall enough, say, to fit into a 
ring like the one youre wearing on your right hand. Thats 
a handsome pieceVenusian gold, isnt it? 

It was handsome and intricate, portraying a man and 
woman embracing; if examined closely, in fact, it was 
more than a little curious. Without hesitating, McNeil 
twisted the heavy sculpted ring over his knuckle. It came 
off easily, for his finger was thinner than it had been a 
week ago. He held it out to her, but to his surprise, she 
shook her head 

and smiled. I dont need to look at it, Mr. McNeil. 
The only coherent patterns on these cards were imposed 
by me, a few minutes ago. She leaned away from him, 
relaxing in her chair, inviting him to relax as well. I used 
other methods to determine which cards had been drawn 
by you and Grant. They were the only two cards in the 
deck which seemed to have been handled beyond a light 
shuffle. Frankly, I was partly guessing. 

You made a lucky guess, then, he said hoarsely, 
having found his voice. But if you arent accusing me of 
cheating on Grant, why this demonstration? Some people 
might call it unusual, maybe even cruel. 

Oh, but you, she said fiercely. You wouldnt have 
needed electromagnetic patterns to cheat, would you, Mr. 

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McNeil? She glanced at his forearms, which rested on his 
thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. Even with 
your sleeves rolled up. 

He shook his head no. I could have cheated him easily 
enough, Inspector Troy. But I swear I didnt. 

Thank you for saying so. Although I was confident 
that you would admit the truth. Sparta got to her feet. 
 Life and honour seemed in different categories. . . . the 
more that was lost the more precious the little left.  

Whats that mean? McNeil growled. 

From an old book I glanced at recentlya passage 
that made me want to read the whole thing someday. It 
gave me considerable insight into your situation. Youre 
quite good at concealing truths, Mr. McNeil, but your particular 
sense of honor makes it very difficult for you to lie 
outright. She smiled. No wonder you almost choked on 
that coffee. 

McNeils expression was puzzled now, almost humble. 
How could this pale, slim child have peered so deeply into 
his soul? I still dont understand what you mean to do. 

Sparta reached into her jacket again and brought out 
a small plastic book. Star Queen will be inspected by 
other people after me, and they will be at least as thorough 
as Ive been. Since you and I know you didnt cheat Grant 
out of his life, its probably a good thing you thought to 
bring this book out with you, and that I never found it, 
and that I never had any suspicion of what a gifted amateur 
magician you are. 

She tossed the book on the bed, beside the cards. It 
landed face up: Harry Blackstone on Magic. 

Keep the cards, too. Little gift to help you get well 
soon. I bought them ten minutes ago at a kiosk in the 
station. 

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McNeil said, Im having the feelin that nothing I said 
came as much of a surprise to you, Inspector. 

Sparta had her hand on the door panel, poised to leave. 
Dont think I admire you, Mr. McNeil. Your life and the 
way you choose to live it is your business. But it so happens 
I agree that theres no justification for destroying the 
late, unfortunate Peter Grants reputation. She wasnt 
smiling now. Thats me speaking privately, not the law. 
If youve kept anything else from me, Ill find it outand 
if its criminal, Ill have you for it. 

233 


PART F I V E 

BLOWOUT 


235 


XVII 


Sparta reached Viktor Proboda on the commlink: he could 
stop playing games now. The passengers from Helios could 
come aboard. 

Spaceports in spaceunlike planetside shuttleports, 
which resemble ordinary airportshave a flavor all their 
own, part harbor, part trainyard, part truckstop. Small 
craft abound, tugs and tenders and taxis and cutters and 
self-propelled satellites, perpetually sliding and gliding 
around the big stations. There are very few pleasure craft 
in space (the eccentric billionaires hobby of solar yachting 
provides a rare exception) and unlike a busy harbor, there 
is no swashing about, no bounding over wakes or insolent 
cutting across bows. The daily routine is orbit-matching 
exquisitely precise, with attendant constant recalculation 
of velocity differentials and mass/fuel ratiosso that in 
space even the small craft are as rigidly constrained to 
preset paths as freight cars in a switching yard. Except 

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that in space, gangs of computers are continually rearranging 
the tracks. 

And aside from local traffic, spaceports are not very 
busy. Shuttles from the planets surface may call a few 
times a mouth, interplanetary liners and freighters a few 
times a year. Favorable planetary alignments tend to concentrate 
the busy times; then local chambers of commerce 
turn out costumed volunteers in force, greeting arriving 
liners the way Honolulu once greeted the Lurline and the 
Matsonia. Lacking indigenous grass skirts or flower leis, 
space station boosters have invented novel traditions to 
reflect a stations ethnic and political mix, its economic 
base, its borrowed mythologies: thus, arriving at Mars Station, 
a passenger might encounter men and women wearing 
Roman breastplates, showing their bare knees, and 
carrying red flags emblazoned with hammers and sickles. 

At Port Hesperus the passengers from Helios, disembarking 
after a long delay, traversed a winding stainless 
steel corridor rippling with colored lights, garish signs 
boasting of the stations mineral products in English and 
Arabic and Russian; kanji-splashed paper banners, fluttering 
in the breeze from the exhaust fans, added an additional 
touch of festivity. 

When the passengers reached a glass-roofed section of 
the corridor they were distracted by a silent commotion 
overhead; looking up, they were startled to see a chitoned 
Aphrodite riding a plastic seashell, smiling and waving at 
them, and near her a Shinto sun goddess wafting prettily 
in her silk kimono. Both women floated freely in zero-gee, 
at odd angles to each other and everyone else. These apparitions 
of the stations goddess (the Japanese were 
stretching the identity some) were haloed by a dozen grinning 
men, women, and children gesturing with fruit-and


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flower baskets, products of the stations hydroponic farms 
and gardens. 

The passengers, before being allowed to ascend to the 
level of these heavenly creatures, faced one last obstacle. 
At the terminus of the corridor Inspector Viktor Proboda, 
flanked by respectful guards with stunguns at their sides, 
ushered them into a small cubical room upholstered on all 
six sides with dark blue carpet. Some were admitted individually, 
some in groups. On one wall of the carpeted 
cube a videoplate displayed the stern visage of Inspector 
Ellen Troy, bigger than life-size. She was ostentatiously 
studying a filescreen in front of her, its surface invisible 
to the videoplate watcher. 

Sparta was actually in a hidden room not far from the 
disembarkation tube, and in fact she was paying no attention 
to the filescreen, which was a prop. She had arranged 
with Proboda to bring the passengers into the room in a 
specific order, and she had already disposed of most of 
them, including the Japanese professor and the Arabs with 
their families, and various engineers and travelling salesmen. 


At the moment she was trying to hustle the Dutch 
schoolgirls on their way. We wont have to detain you 
any longer, she said with a friendly smile. 

Hope the rest of your trip is more fun. 

This has been the best part, one of them said, and 
another added, with much batting of lashes at Proboda, 
We really are liking your comrade. The third girl, however, 
looked as prim as Proboda himself. 

Through here, please, he said, all of you. To your 
right. Lets move it along. 

Bye, Vikee . . . 

Vikee felt Spartas amused gaze from the videoplate, 

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but he managed to hurry the girls out and get Percy Farnsworth 
into the room without having to look her image in 
the eye. Mr. Percy Farnsworth, London, representing 
Lloyds. Farnsworth came into the interrogation cube 
with mustache twitching. Mr. Farnsworth, Inspector 
Troy, Proboda said, indicating the videoplate. 

Farnsworth managed to be brisk and breathless at the 
same time. Eager to be of assistance in your investigation, 
Inspector. Say the word. This sort of thing my specialty, 
you know. 

Sparta watched him, expressionless, for two seconds: a 
veteran confidence man whod done his time, now working 
for the other side. That was the story, at any rate. 
Youve already been helpful, sir. Given us a great many 
leads. She pretended to peruse his file on her dummy 
filescreen. Mm. Your Lloyds syndicate seems to have 
been quite enthusiastic about Star Queen. Insured the ship, 
most of the cargo, the lives of the crew. 

Quite. And naturally Id like to contact Lloyds as soon 
as possible, file a preliminary . . . 

She interrupted. Well, off the record, Id say the underwriters 
have gotten off lightly. 

Farnsworth mulled this bit of informationwhat exactly 
did she mean?and apparently decided the inspector 
was willing to play cozy with him. Encouraging, that, 
he said, and dropped his voice to a confidential murmur. 
But would you mind terribly . . . this business with 
Grant . . . 

I suppose youd like to know if it was legally an accident 
or a suicide. Thats the big question here. Unfortunately 
the solicitors will just have to fight it out, Mr. 
Farnsworth. I have nothing to add to the public record. 
Her tone conveyed no coziness. Ill accept your kind offer 

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of further assistance. Please move through that door on 
the left and wait for me inside. 

There? A door into a grim steel tube had suddenly 
opened in the carpetry. He peered through it hesitantly, as 
if expecting to meet a wild animal. 

Sparta prodded him. I wont keep you more than ten 
minutes, sir. Carry on. Eh? 

With a mumbled Quite, Farnsworth moved through 
the door. The moment he was clear it popped shut behind 
him. Proboda quickly opened the door to the disembarkation 
tube. Mr. Nikos Pavlakis, Athens, representing 
Pavlakis Lines, Proboda said. This is Inspector Troy. 

Pavlakis bobbed his big head and said, Good day, Inspector. 
Sparta did not acknowledge him until she had 
finished reading something from her filescreen. Meanwhile 
he tugged nervously at the cuffs of his tight jacket. 

I see this is your first visit to Venus, Mr. Pavlakis, 
she said, looking up. Regrettable circumstances. 

How is Mr. McNeil, Inspector? Pavlakis asked. Is he 
well? May I talk to him? 

The clinic has already released him. Youll be able to 
talk to him soon. His concern struck her as sincere, but 
it did not deflect her from her line. Mr. Pavlakis, I note 
that Star Queen is a new registry, yet the ship is actually 
thirty years old. What was her former registry? 

The heavyset man flinched. She has been completely 
refurbished, Inspector. Everything but the basic frame is 
new, or reconditioned, with a few minor . . . 

Viktor Proboda cut into Pavlakiss nervous improvisation. 
She asked for the former registry. 

I . . . I believe the registry was NSS 69376, Inspector. 

Kronos, Sparta said. The word was an accusation. 
Ceres in 67, two members of the crew dead, a third 

241 


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woman injured, all cargo lost. Mars Station 73, docking 
collision killed four workers on the station, cargo in one 
hold destroyed. Numerous accidents since involving loss 
of cargo. Several people have been injured and at least 
one other death has been attributed to below-standard 
maintenance. You had good reason to rechristen the ship, 
Mr. Pavlakis. 

Kronos was not a good name for a spaceship, Pavlakis 
said. 

She nodded solemnly. A titan who ate his own children. 
It must have been difficult to line up qualified 
crews. 

Pavlakiss amber beads were working their way over 
and through his strong fingers. When will I be allowed 
to examine my ship and its cargo, Inspector? 

Ill answer your questions as best I can, Mr. Pavlakis. 
As soon as I finish this procedure. Please wait for me 
through that door to your left. 

Again the invisible door yawned unexpectedly on the 
cold steel tube. Grimly, staring down over his mustache, 
Pavlakis moved through it without another word. 

When the door closed Proboda admitted the next passenger 
from the disembarkation tube. Ms. Nancybeth Mokoroa, 
Port Hesperus, unemployed. She came in mad, 
glared at Proboda wordlessly, sneered at the videoplate. 
As the corridor door closed, sealing her inside, Proboda 
said, This is Inspector Troy. 

Ms. Mokoroa, a year ago you sued to break a three-
year companionship contract with Mr. Vincent Darlington, 
shortly after you both had arrived here. The grounds were 
sexual incompatibility. Was Mr. Darlington aware at the 
time that you had already become the de facto companion 
of Mrs. Sondra Sylvester? 

242 


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Nancybeth stared silently at the image on the video-
plate, her face set in a mask of contempt that was the 
product of long practice 

and which Sparta easily recognized as cover for her 
desperate confusion. Sparta waited. 

Were friends, Nancybeth said huskily. 

Sparta said, Thats nice. Was Mr. Darlington aware at 
the time that you were also lovers? 

Just friends, thats all! The young woman stared 
wildly around at the claustrophobic carpeted room, at the 
hulking policeman beside her. What the hell do you think 
youre trying to prove? What is this . . . ? 

All right, well drop the subject. Now if you 
would . . . 

I want a lawyer, Nancybeth shrieked, deciding that 
offense was better than defense. In here, right now. I 
know my rights. 

. . . answer just one more question, Sparta finished 
quietly. 

Not another damned word! Not one more word, blue-
suit. This is unlawful detainment. Unreasonable 
search. . . . 

Sparta and Proboda traded glances. Search? 

Impugnment of dignity, Nancybeth continued. 
Slanderous implication. Malicious aforethought . . . 

Sparta almost grinned. Dont sue us until you hear the 
question, okay? 

So we dont have to arrest you first, Proboda added. 

Nancybeth choked on her anger, realizing shed jumped 
the gun. They hadnt arrested her yet. Possibly they 
wouldnt. What dyou wanna know? She sounded suddenly 
exhausted. 

Nancybeth, do you think either of themSylvester or 

243 


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Darlingtonwould be capable of committing murder . . . 
for your sake? 
Nancybeth was startled into laughter. The way they 
talk about each other? They both would. 
Proboda leaned toward her. The Inspector didnt ask 
you what they . . . 

But Sparta silenced him with a glance from the video-
plate. Okay, thanks, you can go. Through that door to 
your right. 

Right? Proboda asked, and Sparta nodded sharply. 
He opened the doorway. 

Nancybeth was suspicious. Wheres that go? 

Out, Proboda said. Fruits and costumes. Youre 
free. 

The young woman stared wide-eyed around the room 
again, her flaring nostrils seeming almost to quiver. Then 
she darted through the door like a wildcat freed from a 
trap. Proboda looked at the videoplate, exasperated. Why 
not her? It looked to me like she had a lot to hide. 

What shes hiding has nothing to do with Star Queen, 
Viktor. Its from her own past, Id guess. Whos next? 
Mrs. Sylvester. Look, I have to say I hope youll han


dle this with more tact than . . . 

Lets play the game the way we agreed. 

Proboda grunted and opened the door to the tube. 
Mrs. Sondra Sylvester, Port Hesperus, chief executive of 
the Ishtar Mining Corporation. His voice was as formal, 
as heavy with respect as a majordomos. 

Sondra Sylvester floated smoothly into the small carpeted 
room, her heavy silks clinging about her. Viktor? 
Must we go through this yet again? 

Mrs. Sylvester, Id like to present Inspector Troy, he 
said apologetically. 

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Im sure youre eager to get to your office, Mrs. Sylvester, 
Sparta said, so Ill be brief. 

My office can wait, Sylvester said firmly. Id like to 
unload my robots from that freighter. 

Sparta dipped her gaze to the phony filescreen, then 
up to Sylvesters eyes. The women stared at each other 
through the electronics. Youve never dealt with Pavlakis 
Lines before, Sparta said, yet you helped persuade both 
the Board of Space Control and the ships insurers to waive 
the crew-of-three rule. 

I believe Ive just told Inspector Proboda why. I have 
six mining robots in the cargo, Inspector. I need to put 
them to work soon. 

You were very lucky, then. Spartas relaxed voice 
conceded no sign that she was being pressured. You 
could have lost them all. 

Unlikely. Less likely, even, than that a meteoroid 
would strike a ship in the first place. Which at any rate 
has nothing to do with the size of Star Queens crew. 

Then would you have preferred to trust your robots 
insured for approximately nine hundred million dollars, I 
believeto an unmanned spacecraft? 

Sylvester smiled at that. It was an astute question, with 
political and economical overtones one hardly expected 
from a criminal inspector. There are no unmanned interplanetary 
freighters, Inspectorthanks to the Space Board, 
and a long list of other lobbyists, the predictable sort of 
special interest groups. I dont waste time on hypothetical 
questions. 

Where did you spend the last three weeks of your 
Earth holidays, Mrs. Sylvester? 
A decidedly non-hypothetical questionand it cost 

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Sylvester effort to cover her surprise. I was vacationing 
in the south of France. 

You rented a villa on the Isle du Levant, in which, 
except for the first day and last day and two occasions 
when you visited, Ms. Nancybeth Mokoroa stayed alone. 
Where were you the rest of the time? 

Sylvester glanced at Proboda, who avoided her look. 
His earlier superficial questioning had not prepared her to 
face this level of detail. I was . . . I was on private business. 


In the United States? In England? 

Sondra Sylvester said nothing. With visible effort she 
settled her features. 

Thank you, Mrs. Sylvester, Sparta said coldly. 
Through that door to the leftand Sparta noted that 
Proboda took just a little too long opening the hidden 
door, softening the impact of its surprise. It will be necessary 
to detain you a short while longer. Not more than 
five or six minutes. 

Sylvester kept the mask in place as she went through 
the door, but she could not disguise her apprehension. 

Proboda hurried the next passenger into the room. 

Mr. Blake Redfield. London. Representing Mr. Vincent 
Darlington of the Hesperian Museum. 

In the instant Proboda was opening the corridor door, 
Spartas fingers flicked out to the monitoring lens, degrading 
the videoplate image visible to Redfield. He came 
into the small room, looking alert, relaxed, proper in his 
expensive English suit, but showing just the edge of a 
young mans temptation to strut his stuff in that certain 
cut of the lapels, that certain length of his shiny auburn 
hair. 

246 


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Inspector Troy, Space Board, Proboda said, nodding 
at the videoplate, failing to notice the image had lost its 
crips focus. Blake turned toward the screen with the reserved, 
expectant half-smile that marks the socially adept. 
If he recognized her he did not betray himself, but she 
knew he was as good at this game as she was. If he had 
a reason to hide, he could hide better than any of the 
others. 

She inspected him intensely, although her macrozoom 
eye was largely disabled by the limited resolution of the 
videoplate, and she had no sense whatever of his chemical 
presence. She had not seen him in two years; he did not 
look older so much as more sure of himself. He was holding 
something in reserve, something she had not known 
in him before. The only sound from him, floating weightless 
in the acoustically deadened room, was his quiet 
breathing. He waited for her to speak. 

If someone had made a voiceprint graph when she did 
finally speak, its very flatness would have been suspicious. 
You acted as Mr. Darlingtons agent in the purchase of 
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Mr. Redfield? 

Thats correct. His voice, by contrast, was warm and 
alert; its graph would have said, if youre not giving anything 
away, neither am I. 

The purpose of your trip? 

Im here to see that the famous book you just named 
is safely delivered to Mr. Darlington. 

Sparta paused. It seemed an illogical reply, deliberately 
provocative, which she could not let pass without challenge. 
If you were planning to personally insure its delivery, 
why ship it aboard Star Queen? Why not keep it 
with you? 

247 


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Redfield grinned. Perhaps I did. 

He knew she knew he didnt. Ive confirmed that the 
book is aboard Star Queen, Mr. Redfield. 
Thats reassuring. May I see it too? 
Spartas heart thudded, hard and quick. Well below the 

level of anything she could bring quickly to consciousness, 
she knew something was happening that she had not anticipated. 
On the spot she decided that Mr. Blake Redfield 
was not to be given more information than he had already. 
Soon, Mr. Redfield. Through that door to your right, 
please. Sorry to keep you waiting. 

As he went out she could see that he was smiling 
broadly. He meant for her to see it. Impatiently she said, 
All right, Viktor, he was the last of the sheep. 

The last of the what? 

The goats are in the pen. Lets get em. 

The tiny room into which Farnsworth, Pavlakis, and 
Sylvester deposited themselves after negotiating a dogleg 
twist in the steel tube was another cubethis one of raw 
steel, as featureless as a submarines brig. The cell had no 
visible exit; the way back had been closed off by sliding 
panels. The blank videoplate overhead filled the entire 
ceiling. 

The sullen conversation among the three inmates was 
on the verge of slicing into vicious bickering when the 
dark videoplate suddenly brightened. A close-up image of 
Inspector Ellen Troy, now three times life size, formed on 
the screen. 

I promised that this wouldnt take long, and it wont, 
the iconic face announced. Spartas image was replaced 
by a crisp view of a convexly curving metal plate. This 
hull plate from Star Queens life support deck, designated 

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L-43, has a hole in it. The image zoomed in rapidly to 
the upper right corner, to the neat black hole in the paint. 

The screen switched to another view of the plate, its 
inner surface blackened, concave. The plate displays internal 
spalling characteristic of a high-velocity projectile, 
such as a meteoroidand again the image changed, moving 
in closer to show a crater in the steel as vast as 
Aetnaswhich was covered by hardened plastic foam, 
making the hole airtight. A new image showed a shiny, 
viscid lump of yellow plastic mounded over the spot in 
the plate where the crater had been displayeda view of 
the hole before the protective plastic had been removed. 

Spartas pedantic, almost hectoring voice continued 
over the succession of images. The significant damage to 
Star Queen was done by an explosion that destroyed both 
major oxygen tanks and a fuel cell, she said, as a view 
of the blackened mess inside the flight deck came up on 
the screen. 

She paused a moment to let them study the wreckage 
before saying, Neither the hole in the hull plate nor the 
internal explosion was caused by a meteoroid, however. 

Their solemn faces were washed in the screens cold 
light. If her audience of three were surprised by this news, 
none betrayed it except by the deepening silence. 

Another close-up, this one a micrograph, snapped into 
view. The melt pattern around the hole shows large, irregular 
metal crystals, characteristic of slow melting and 
coolingnot the fine regular crystals that would have resulted 
from an instantaneous deposition of energy. This 
hole was probably cut with a plasma torch. Another micrograph. 
Here you see that there are in fact two separate 
strata of the hardened plastic plugthe first is very thin 
and its laminations do not show the turbulence patterns 

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expected from a supersonic airflow through the holeyou 
can see the smooth exfoliation here. A computerized 
chart, this time. As this spectrograph proves, this layer 
of plastic was actually catalyzed over two months ago. In 
other words, the hole was in the plate and sealed with 
plastic before Star Queen left Earth. Note that this same 
thin layer has been shattered in the center, blasted outward. 
The explosion occurred inside the shipblew the 
hole open, allowing the air to escapethen was quickly 
sealed again by the ships emergency systems. 

More charts and graphs. The interior explosion was 
caused by a charge of fulminate of gold, detonated by 
acetylene, placed inside the casing of the fuel cellthese 
spectrographs reveal the nature of the explosives. Ignition 
was electrical and was probably triggered through the fuel 
cell monitor, by a preset signal in the ships computer. 

Spartas stern image reappeared, fiercely bright in the 
stark steel cell. Who sabotaged Star Queen? Why was it 
sabotaged? Anyone who can shed light on this may speak 
now. Or if you prefer, please privately contact the local 
office of the Board of Space Control. Star Queen will remain 
off limits pending the completion of our investigation. 


A shaft of light pierced the room and partially washed 
out the screen. A double door had opened at the back of 
the cell; right outside was one of the cores busiest hallways. 


Meanwhile Sparta had flipped a switch that cycled her 
austere videoplate image. Her tiny control room, hardly 
more than a closet full of glittering panels, was tucked 
into a crevice between corridors. She was physically closer 
to them than any of the people in the cell realized. Under 
cover of the cycled frame she turned to Proboda, who hov


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ered near her in the control room. Viktor, you thought I 
was impertinent with Mrs. Sylvester. You follow her, then. 
If she goes to her office or approaches Star Queen, signal 
me right away. Wherever she goes, call me in five minutes. 
Shes already leavingget going! 

Sparta flipped her videoplate image back to live feed. 
Farnsworth and Pavlakis were still in the room, although 
Pavlakis had one tentative foot out the door and Farnsworth 
was walking boldly up to the videoplate. 

Odd, that, Farnsworth said to the giant screen over 
his head. Revealing your evidence without making an 
accusation. 

Were aboard a space station, Mr. Farnsworth. More 
isolated than a town in Kansas. 

And if the villain isnt here with us? 

Then no harm done, she said. 

The man was transparent, but boldstanding there as 
much as telling her he knew what she knew about his past, 
that she would be mistaken to suspect him. Dyou expect 
your revelations to remain secret more than a few 
minutes? Even from Earth? 

Did you have a specific comment to make, Mr. Farnsworth? 


Farnsworth jerked his thumb toward Pavlakis, who was 
still hulking in the background, silhouetted against the 
brightly lit corridor outside. That one. Family history of 
defrauding insurors. Never been able to prove it. But if 
hes not your man he can tell you who is. 

He was an insolent man, even if in this case he was, 
as she had already decided, quite innocent. What would 
you say if I told you Sylvester did it? Sparta asked. Good. 
That set him back a bit 

He took it seriously. Jealousy, you mean?as if hed 

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never thought of it. This fellow Darlington buys the book 
she wanted, so she makes sure he never . . . and so forth? 

And so forth. 

Novel theory, that. . . . Farnsworth muttered. 

Its not a theory, Farnsworth. Her face, three times 
life size, leaned toward him. 
Not a theory? 
Not a theory at all. 
Quite enough said then. Do forgive . . . He was sud


denly in a hurry to radio his employers. He swam off awkwardly 
toward the door. 

Pavlakis had disappeared. 

The commlink chimed in her right ear. Go ahead. 

This is Proboda. Mrs. Sylvester went straight to the 
headquarters of the Ishtar Mining Corporation. Im outside 
the Ishtar Gate right now. The Ishtar Mining Corporation 
was located almost two kilometers away, at the far end of 
the space station; there its windows and antennas could 
look straight down on the bright clouds of Venus. 

That seems to eliminate her, too. Meet me back here 
as soon as you can. 
What happens next? Proboda sounded irritated. 
Shed sent him on another wild goose chase. 

Well wait. Our list is very short, Viktor. I think were 
going to see a confession or an act of desperation. Not 
long. Maybe ten or fifteen min 

She felt as much as heard the massive thud. The lights 
went out, all of them, all at once, and in the blackness the 
low moan of the warning sirens rose quickly to a thin, 
desperate wail. Wall speakers urgently addressed everyone 
within hearing, repeating themselves in English, Arabic, 
Russian, Japanese: Evacuate core section one immediately. 

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There is a catastrophic loss of pressure in core section one. 
Evacuate core section one immediately.... 

Proboda shouted into the commlink, loud enough to 
deafen her. Are you all right? What happened up there? 
Troy? But no one answered him. 

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A space stations vital systems are both independent and 
redundant. Someone who knew Port Hesperus well had 
managed to isolate the entire starward quarter of the 
hub, interrupting main bus power from the nuclear reactor 
and cutting the lines from the solar arrays. All this 
in the instant that a pressure hatch blew out in the security 
sector 

Until emergency batteries cut in, it was going to be 
very dark. 

But not to Sparta, who tuned her visual cortex to infrared 
and made her way swiftly through a strange world 
of glowing shapes, an environment eerily resembling some 
giant plastic model of a complex organism lit only in red 
neon. Otherwise-dark light fixtures still glowed from the 
warmth in their diodes. Wires in the wall panels still 
glowed from resistance to the electricity that had recently 
flowed through them, and the panels themselves glowed 
faintly with borrowed heat. 

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Although most of the microminiaturized devices in the 
station consumed only trickles of electricity, their extreme 
density made for glowing hotspots in every phonelink and 
datalink. Every flatscreen and video-plate glowed with the 
alphanumerics or graphics or images of human faces they 
had displayed when the power was cut. Every place that 
human hands and feet had touched within the last hour 
glowed with the warmth of their passage. If there were 
rats in the walls, Sparta would see them. 

Out in the halls and corridors the emergency lights 
flashed on quickly, drawing from their own self-contained 
batteries, throwing hard beams and stark strobing shadows 
down crowded passages. People swam swiftly through this 
flashing world like schools of squid, moving with single 
purpose toward the central part of the coremoving, for 
the most part, soundlessly, except for a few frightened 
cries, quickly answered by quiet commands, as emergency 
personnel took frightened newcomers in tow and firmly 
steered them to safety. 

Pressure loss was the primal fear in space, but the regular 
inhabitants of Port Hesperus had run drills for just 
this sort of thing so often that when the reality occurred, 
it was almost routine. Old-timers were comfortable in the 
knowledge that so huge was the volume of air in even one 
quarter of Port Hesperuss core that it would be eight hours 
before the pressure dropped from its current luxurious sea-
level value to the thinness of a mountaintop in the Andes. 
Long before then the repair crews would have done their 
job. 

Sparta stayed in the dark, avoiding the corriders and 
the crowds, swimming through the dull infrared glow of 
access passages, along freight shafts, past pipes and cable 
racks in the ventilation tunnels, toward the site of the 

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blown hatch. She was moving against the crowds but with 
the air; shed needed only a moment of listening to pinpoint 
the winds destination, for it wailed through the 
blown pressure plate, playing the core like a vast organ 
pipe. 

As she flew she felt the breeze, stirring gently at 
first, steadily freshening. Twenty or thirty meters from 
the hole the airflow reached hurricane velocity, and if 
she were to slip over that imaginary boundary she would 
be sucked into a supersonic funnel and shot into space 
like a rifle bullet. She would have to get close, but not 
that close. 

The open hatch was in the Q3 security lock, and the 
purpose of this second act of sabotage was clear to her 
someone had needed to create a diversion that would draw 
people away from Star Queen, that would make the neighborhood 
unsafe. Someone much cleverer than Sparta had 
suspected. So Sparta took the shortcut through the alleys 
and backyards of the space station, dashing to get to Star 
Queen, while the culprit was still aboard. 

It occurred to her, as she approached the lock through 
a final stretch of ventilator duct, that the diversion had 
been not just clever but shrewd, provoking maximum terror 
with minimum risk of injurythe only people in the 
immediate vicinity of the blown hatch were the space-
suited guards, and even if they had been sucked into the 
vacuum of the docking bay they would have been protected. 
A softhearted villain, then? 

Not the one who blew up Star Queens oxygen supply. 
Perhaps safety in this case was more apparent than real, 
the accidental byproduct of a fundamentally pragmatic 
scheme. 

Sparta knocked the panel from the end of the ventilator 

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and saw it skitter away, dragged by the wind; she peered 
from her hole into dark, howling desolation. The approach 
to the security lock was deserted. The guards, if not in the 
wrong place at the wrong time and thus instantly sucked 
out, would by now have been ordered to clear out. That 
would have been what the perpetrator planned, needed. 

And if Sparta was right, the individual was still aboard 
the ship, having left the hatch wide openwith no time to 
waste putting on a spacesuitand would be coming out 
again any second. 

Sparta would forestall the escape. She pulled herself 
out of the ventilator. Clinging to the walls against the 
sucking vacuum, she pulled herself hand over hand into 
Star Queens docking tube. She pulled herself along by 
inches while the excruciating wind tore at her ears. Finally 
she reached Star Queens main hatch. 

Inside the ship she punched the switches and watched 
as the hatch slowly sealed itself shut behind her; inside 
the airlock there was silence. She saw the red glow of 
handprints on the switches and on the ladder rungs, one 
persons handprints. 

The two of them were in here together. Sparta leaned 
close to a glowing print and inhaled its chemical essence. 
Not anyone she had met on Port Hesperus, not anyone she 
had touched in weeks. The spicy amino acid pattern, called 
to full visualization, teased at her memory but was nowhere 
within its access. . . . 

In one scenario, Sondra Sylvester was to have been in 
the hold, attempting to steal The Seven Pillars of Wisdom; 
two minutes ago, Sylvester was two kilometers away. In 
another scenarioSpartas favoriteNikos Pavlakis was to 
have been in the ship, on the flight deck, setting its automatic 
systems to undock and blast its way out of the 

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station, into the sun, forever burying the evidence of his 
and his partners treachery. But without accomplices, Pavlakis 
had had no time to rig the diversion. 

Sparta pulled herself cautiously into the ship, past the 
stores deckpausedthen floated down through the flight 
deck. The glow of the console lights, running on batteries, 
made a soft circular kaleidoscope in the darkness. She 
paused again, listening 

A distant careful movement, the brush of a glove, perhaps, 
or the scrape of a shoe against metal. She pinpointed 
it: her quarry was in Hold A. It was no one she had expected 
to find. 

If whoever was in the hold was not Sylvester, it was 
one of her agents. Not Nancybeth, who was as somatically 
focused as an infant, incapable of concentrating on anything 
but her own needs and pleasures for more than a 
minute at a time. All communications to and from Helios 
had been tightly monitored; someone who had been 
aboard Helios, then. Sparta knew shed been a fool. . . . 

She crept weightless through the life-support-deck corridor 
with every augmented sense atingle, through the 
hatch of the hold airlockwhich was ajaruntil her face 
was inches from the outer hatch of Hold A. It too stood 
open. She moved as silently as she could, pulling herself 
along by the friction of the merest pressure of her fingertips, 
into the lock. 

Dont be afraid of me, he said. His voice was as warm 
as before, but this time it rose from a deeper, firmer base. 
He was quite near. I needed to learn something. 

His control was extraordinary, she thought. If shed 
made a voiceprint of his words, they would have betrayed 
no insincerity. 

She stopped where she was, breathless, pausing for 

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thought. She could hear him and smell him, she knew 
approximately where he was, but she had no weapon and 
he was not in the line of sight. 

You dont have to show yourself, he said. Im not 
sure where you are, in fact, although I think you can hear 
me easily. Let me explain. 

Seconds passed while she inched closer to the inner 
hatch. The empty interior darkness of the hold was cold 
and black, what she could see of it, except for the dull red 
glow of the places he had touched. 

Their pattern made plain what he was afterthe space 
where the books Styrene case had rested was a cold, 
empty pit. 

Im going to make the assumption that youre willing 
to listen, he said. 

She had him located now, but still not as precisely as 
she wanted. He was lurking just inside the airlock. That 
soundthat was probably his hand, maybe his hip, rubbing 
lightly against the shell of the hold, no more than a 
foot or two from her head. Keep him talking, talking and 
moving in the way that talking entrains unconsciously, 
keep him talking a half a minute more and she would 
know where to grab. . . . 

I needed to look at this book before you let it off the 
ship, he said. You said it was here, but I needed to know 
if the book you saw was the real book. Youre not an 
expert. I am. 

She inched closer, breathing in and breathing out in 
long, slow, controlled inhalations and exhalations that no 
ear but her own could hear. His breath, because she was 
so close to him, was a visible cloud of warmth, pulsing 
slowly in the dark air beyond the lock. 

A foot away in the darkness he was explaining himself 

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to her. Someone with time and a lot of money to spend 
could, just conceivably, have counterfeited a book from 
the early 20th century. They would have had to find 
craftsmen who could set metal type, to begin withprinters 
who were willing to print a book in the old way, line 
by line, from a text a third of a million words long. They 
would have had to cast the typeit would take months, if 
the person had the skillsunless the original type was still 
in existence and they could get hold of it. They would 
have had to find old paper of the right sortor reproduce 
it, watermarks and all, and make it look old. Then the 
bindings, the marbled slipcase, the leather covers . . . think 
of the craftsmanship, the incredible skill! 

In his passion for the thing he was describing, that 
peculiar old book, he seemed momentarily to have forgotten 
about Sparta. 

She hesitated, then spoke in a whisper that would carry 
only to him. Im listening. No answer. Perhaps he was 
startled by her closeness. Why so important to look at it 
now? Why not wait? she whispered. 

Because the real book may still be aboard. 

Had he hoped to find the real book first? Or was all 
this an elaborate alibi because shed already caught him 
with the real book in his hands? 

Sondra Sylvester flew to Washington, then back to 
London three weeks before she boarded Helios, she said. 
She made other trips from France to England. What was 
she doing there? 

She was in Oxford. She had a book made. His voice 
was bolder now, darker, like old hardwood. I have it in 
my hand. 

A shutter clicked in her mind, a wall descended, a decision 
was made. She slipped her hands over the rim of 

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the hatch and pulled hard, darting into the hold. She 
brought herself up against the steel racks opposite the 
hatch and turned to face him. He was a glowing blob of 
red in the darkness, beside the open hatch. The thing in 
his hand was...a book 

only a book. 

Can we have some light now? he asked. 

Go ahead. 

He reached up and hit the switch beside the hatch. 
Green worklights illuminated the hold and her vision 
shifted into the visible spectrum. For a moment Blakes 
eyes held hers. He looked a bit sheepish, as if regretting 
all the fuss. 

She had an odd thought, thenshe thought he looked 
rather charming with his reddish hair awry and his thoroughly 
rumpled suit. 

He held up the book. A beautiful counterfeit. The 
typeface is perfect. The paper is perfectthe kind they still 
print Bibles on. The binding is extraordinarily good. 
Chemical analysis will prove the book is new, but if youd 
never seen the original, you would have to read a lot of 
it even to become suspicious. 

She was watching him, listening to him. He was different 
indeed. What gives it away? she asked. 

There must have been a gang of them at different 
print shops, whacking the linotype keyboards. Three hundred 
thousand words. Some of the typesetters werent as 
careful as others. 

Errors? 

A few typos. Only a few, remarkably. He smiled. 
There really wasnt time for a thorough proofreading. 

She saw what he was driving at. But Darlington probably 
wouldnt have read it anyway. 

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From what I know of the man he would never have 
opened it. He smiled. Well, maybe to the title page. 

What makes you think the original is still on board? 

Because I personally brought the book up by shuttle 
and saw it secured in that rack only a few hours before 
Star Queen left Earth. Unless it went back off the ship 
immediately, its got to be here. 

Is that the case it came in? The gray Styrene case 
floated beside him. 

Im pretty sure. I wasnt that worried about the lock. 
A determined thief with plenty of time and access to the 
ships computer . . . I thought I knew what Sylvester was 
up to, you see, but it hadnt occurred to me that she would 
move so quickly. News of the meteoroid strike started me 
thinking about how anxious shed been for Star Queen to 
leave on schedule. Then I learned Inspector Ellen Troy had 
been assigned. . . . 

How had he learned that? Shed worry about it later 
she was going to have plenty of time to interview Blake 
Redfield. All right, Mr. Redfield. Let me have this exquisite 
counterfeit. Exhibit A. Ruefully she added, Thanks 
for your helpIll put in a good word at your trial. If 
youre lucky you can get a change of venue. 

Sorry I had to blow a hole in the station. But the fuss 
I made wasnt just for the books sakenot that it isnt 
worth it. He made no move to hand it to her. A wise 
salesman once told me that anything for sale is worth 
exactly what the buyer and seller agree its worth. By that 
standard the real Seven Pillars is worth a million and a 
half pounds. This fake could have cost Sondra Sylvester a 
half a million pounds. Labor and materials. Bribes and 
payoffs. 

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She liked his voice, but he was talking too much. The 
book, please. 

His eyes never left hers. You see, I knew if anyone 
came before I left Star Queen, it would be you. In fact, I 
counted on it. 

Again something had escaped her. Again her heart was 
suddenly racing. Once shed known Blade Redfield well, 
as well as one child could know another. Why was he a 
mystery to her now? 

SPARTA, he said, quietly. I never believed what 
they told us about what happened to you, what happened 
to your folks, why they closed the program. I recognized 
you the second I saw you on that street in Manhattan. But 
you didnt want me to know you even existed. So I . . . 

A great rending and tearing of metal cut him off in 
midsentence, its obscene screech crushing the warmth of 
his voice. 

Creeping up on him, before she knew who he was, shed 
seen that other hold open, but shed ignored it. Follow 
me, she shouted, diving past him into the airlock. 

In the corridor a blast of heat seared her face. The open 
Hold C airlock was the mouth of a furnace. She slammed 
the hatch shut and spun its wheel. Blake, move! 

He scrambled out of the hold, still clutching the counterfeit 
book. Get up there, she urged him. Weve got to 
get off the ship, fast! 

Blake pulled himself out of the access lockjust as the 
hatchcover bulged from a massive impact, slamming him 
sideways off the ladder. Sparta boosted him and leaped 
after him, an instant before the diamond-edged proboscis 
ripped through the hatchs steel plate like a chainsaw 
through plywood, spraying weightless shrapnel. The Rolls


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Royce robot was rapidly carving a hole for itself through 
the sealed lock. 

The mining robot, which had been loaded through an 
outer pressure hatch, was not only too big for the airlock 
but too big for the corridor; that it had to tear the ship to 
pieces to make progress did not deter it. 

Blake sailed up past the cabins, through the flight deck, 
through the stores deck, toward the main airlock, pulling 
and steering himself with one hand in the darkness, holding 
his book in the other. Sparta followed closely, pausing 
only to slam the lower corridor hatch after herself. 

Blake reached the top of the crew module. He careened 
to a halt against the outer hatch of the main airlock, 
reached to punch the switches 

and yanked his hand back as if hed been scalded. 

Sparta pulled herself to a stop below him. Go, Blake, 
go! she barked, before she saw what he saw, the red sign 
blazing: WARNING. VACUUM. They mustve sealed off 
the security area, she said, let it go to vacuum. 

Spacesuitson the wall beside you. 

The robots progress was a demolition derby; an endless 
mashing and tearing of metal and plastic. Any moment 
it would rip through the hull, and then they would 
perish in vacuum. 

No time, she said. Our only chance is to disable it. 

Do what? 

Not here. Were trapped. 

She dived back down to the flight deck. He fumbled 
after her. To him the place was pitch dark but for the glow 
of the console lights, but she saw everything. She could 
see through the steel deck to what looked like the glow of 
an oncoming white dwarf star. 

Forget that damned book! she yelled at Blakebut 

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he held onto the exquisite counterfeit as if it were worth 
as much as his life. The robot arrived on the flight deck 
at the same time he did, a creature of nightmare preceded 
by the flare of its radiators. Having widened the corridor 
opening with its saw-toothed proboscis, its bristling sensors 
appeared first above the edge of the hole, followed in 
milliseconds by its great samurai-helmet head thrusting 
into the room. Its head swiveled in rapid jerks, diamond-
paned compound eyes reflecting the multi-colored glow 
from the instrument panel. 

The wave of heat from its radiators was enough to send 
Blake and Sparta thrashing away in retreat. 

The robots glittering eyes fixed on Sparta. Its leg motors 
accelerated with a whine, and it jumpedfive and a 
half weightless tonnes, its ore-scoops out-stretchedtoward 
the corner of ceiling where she cringed. She possessed 
a small fraction of the machines mass and could 
accelerate much faster; by the time it had smashed into 
the flight deck ceiling she was bouncing off the floor. 

Fire extinguisher, Blake cried, and for a half second 
she thought hed panicked, lost his witswhat goods a fire 
extinguisher against a nuclear reactor?but in the next 
half second she realized that the heat had inspired him. 

That the mining robot was not built to work in free-
fall gave them a slim advantage in the battle. One other 
advantage, hardly more robust, had occurred to her when 
shed leaped to evade its grasp. The brute machine acted 
as if it had a personal grudgeagainst her. It didnt want 
to just punch a hole in the ship and let her die, drunk on 
hypoxia. It wanted to tear her to pieces. It wanted to 
watch. 

Someone was looking through its eyes, controlling its 
every move 

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until Blake flew deftly toward its head, aiming a fire 
extinguisher as he came, pressing its trigger, covering its 
eyes with thick foam. . . . 

Aaahh! Blakes cry was sharp, quickly stifled. The 
robot had swiveled as hed passed; a radiator had come 
within inches of his arm; The Seven Pillars of Wisdom had 
exploded in flames. Frantically he turned the fire extinguisher 
on the book, then on himself, on his burning 
jacket. 

The huge robot was thrown into a frenzy, writhing and 
slashing. It had lost its purchase, lost its view, like a beetle 
flipped on its back. But in seconds it would get a grip on 
something, tear into some fixed structure. Then surely its 
remote operator, forced to settle for efficient death, would 
ignore personal revenge and simply use the machine to 
smash through Star Queens windows. 

Meanwhile the berserk and fiery robot dominated the 
flight deck, blocking their escape; even if it never got a 
good foothold it would kill them by setting them afire, 
melting the cabin around them. 

Sparta knew what she had to do. It would leave her 
utterly vulnerable. The thought flashed through her brain 
that she couldnt trust Blake Redfield, and instantly the 
rest of her brain said store it, first things first. 

She fell into trance. The ultra-high frequency datastream
the frantic-smelling datastream, the hate-filled 
datastream of the robots controlling transmissionflowed 
into her mind. She raised her arms and hands and curved 
them in an antennas arc. Her belly burned. She beamed 
the message. 

The robot jerked spasmodically and then froze. 

She had it like a cat, by the scruff of its neck, clamped 

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in her mind instead of her fistbut it took all her concentration 
to do it. She could override the strong signal from 
the nearby transmitter only because she was a few feet 
from the robot; the power stored in the batteries beneath 
her lungs would trickle away in less than a minute. 

Blake! The word was plosive, hollow. Pull the fuel 
capsule, she gasped. Her beam wavered and the creature 
twitched violently. 

Blake gaped at her. She hung like a levitating Minoan 
priestess in the lurid light, her arms curved into hooks, 
conferring a savage benediction. She forced out the words, 
thin as husks: In its belly. Pull it. 

He moved at last, under it, between its wavering legs 
and claws. Above the paralyzed machine the ceiling was 
charring from the heat of the radiators; the smoldering 
plastic padding began pouring acrid smoke into the room. 
Blake fumbled at the fuel portshe wanted to tell him 
what to do but she didnt dareand after a moment he 
figured it out and got the port open. 

Then he was stymied again. He paused to study the 
fuel cell assembly for endless seconds. 

He saw that it was made for safety, for simplicity. It 
was, after all, a Rolls-Royce. He wrapped his fingers 
around the chrome staples of the fuel assembly, braced his 
feet against the robots shell, and pulled. 

The fuel assembly slid out. Its cladding telescoped to 
shield it as he withdrew it. In that instant the massive 
robot was gutted, dead. Its radiators cooled 

not soon enough to prevent the ceiling exploding 
into flames. 

Damn it, thered better be another fire extinguisher in 
here, he shouted. 

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There was. Sparta yanked it from its bracket, shot past 
him, and covered the blazing padding with creamy foam. 
She emptied the bottle on it, then flung it away. 

They looked at each otherkeyed up, the pair of them 
exasperated, singed and sooty, choking on smoke, and 
then he managed a grin. She forced herself to return it. 
Lets get those suits on before we suffocate. 

He put on McNeils, she Wycherlys. As she was bleeding 
some of Wycherlys oxygen into McNeils empty tank, 
she paused. Shed had another inspiration. 

Blake . . . it was Sylvester who stole the bookwho 
had it stolen. And I think I know where it is now. 
She had a case of other books aboard, but I looked in 
there. . . . 

So did I. This is a guess. Dont hold it against me if 
Im wrong. She twisted the oversize spacesuits gloves 
and yanked them off. 

Where are you going? 

I need my fingers for this. 

She pulled herself back to the flight deck. She moved 
between the claws and legs of the inert robot until she 
found its main processor access. She opened the port and 
reached inside. 

Blake watched her from the ceiling, barely visible in 
the dark. What are you doing in there? Shed been at it 
for what seemed a long time. 

Im going to have to reinsert the fuel assembly. Dont 
worry, its lobotomized now. 

He said nothing. He couldnt think of anything to say 
except, you must be crazy. 

When the fuel assembly slid into the robot its head 
wobbled, its claws clashed feebly, but its movements were 
those of a drugged rhinoceros. Sparta, tiny inside Wych


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erlys borrowed suit, moved into the robots sluggish embrace 
again and reached into the processor. Motors 
whined. The robots abdomen split down the center and 
unfolded in layer upon layer of compound chambers, until 
the complex metal intestines of the ore-processing cavity 
lay exposed. In the grisly light the machine seemed to 
have disemboweled itself. 

Sparta pulled herself over the carapace of the gutted 
robot and peered inside. There, propped between two massive 
worm gears in a mesh of tube snouts and grillwork, 
nestled a fragile, beautiful book, snug in its slipcase. 

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The lights came on first, and spacesuited teams of workers 
moved efficiently into the empty security sector, evacuated 
both of people and of air, to replace the blown pressure 
hatch. Within half an hour of the emergency, the 
core had been repressurized and business had resumed 
as usual. 

Before that, while air was still flowing back into the 
Q3 lock, a patrol squad, pressure-suited and with stunguns 
drawn, burst into Star Queen. They were hardened cops, 
used to dealing with drunkenness and homicidal rage and 
other forms of insanity that commonly afflict the human 
residents of space stations, but the destruction astonished 
them. 

For one thing, theyd had few occasions to see, up 
close, the mining robots that prowled the surface of the 
planet beneath them, the machines that paid all their salaries, 
and to find one looming amid the wreckage of Star 
Queens bridge, even exposed and enfeebled, was plain ter


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rifying. They approached the machine as divers might approach 
a comatose great white shark. 

Except for the robot, which proved disabled, the ship 
was deserted. For a long time none of the patrollers noticed 
that the two spacesuits which had hung on the stores 
deck were missing. 

Sparta and Blake had ditched the suits five minutes 
after theyd put them on. Again theyd taken to the darkened 
ventilator shafts, the conduits. She knew the back 
ways as he could not, having stored a thousand engineering 
diagrams in her memory, but hed been careful to 
memorize what he needed to know about the internal layout 
of Port Hesperus before hed left Earth, even then planning 
his assault on Star Queen. 

Three half-ounce wads of plastique on a timer for the 
pressure hatch, he told her. Cutter charge on the auxiliary 
cables, also on a timer. Threw the main bus breakers myself
wanted to make sure I didnt do any real damage. A 
couple of the power plant workers will have ether hangovers. 
. . . 

C-4? Not fulminate of gold? Acetylene detonators? 
They spoke on the move, chasing each other through the 
shadowy maze. 

Whod use that junk? Thats dangerous as hell. 

Somebody who didnt care about danger and wanted 
the debris to look like an explosion in a fuel cell. 
Star Queen was sabotaged? 
You may be the last person in the solar system to hear 
the news. Assuming you didnt do it yourself. 

He laughed. 

I need the rest of your story, Blake, before I make up 
my mind what to do with you. 

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Lets stop here a minute, he said. Following a manifold 
of pipes and cables, they had reached the mid-region 
of the core. They were in a substation, surrounded by huge 
pumps and fat gray transformers; the twilight gloom was 
striped with bright bars of light projected from a grating 
below, creeping slowly with the stations rotation. Through 
the bars they could see straight into the central sphere, 
ringed with trees and gardens and the twin concourses of 
the stations social center. 

I didnt take explosives courses in SPARTA, Linda 

Dont call me that, ever. Her angry warning echoed 
in the metal chamber. 
Its too late. They know who you are. 
Yeah? Well I know who they are. Her voice betrayed 

her, for she was tired, and the fear surfaced. What I dont 
know is where they are. 

One of them is here, on this station. Looking for you. 
Thats why I went for all the fireworksso I could get to 
you alone. Before they did. 

Who is it? 
I dont think Id recognize him. Or her. Maybe you 
would. 
Dammit. She sighed. Start from the beginning, will 
you? 

He took a breath, closed his eyes, and let his breath 
out slowly. When he opened his dark eyes they glowed in 
the warm light from below. SPARTA broke up a year after 
you left it. There were probably a dozen of us at my level 
then, the sixteen-and seventeen-year-oldsRon, Khalid, 
Sara, Louis, Rosaria . . . 

She interrupted him. That far back my memory is excellent. 


The spring after you left some weird characters came 

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around to see us from a government agency. These people 
were recruiters, looking for volunteers for a supplementary 
training program, making lots of heavy hints about 
the black side. We were given the distinct impression that 
you had gone before us . . . and you were everybodys idol, 
of course. 

Everybodys scapegoat, you mean. 

That too, sometimes. He smiled at the memory. 
Anyway, we were suckers for the pitch. I was, anyway. I 
signed upgot into a shouting match with my mom and 
dad, but they finally gave inand I went off to summer 
camp with a few of the others. This was in eastern Arizona, 
high up on the Mogollon Rim. We were there maybe three 
weeks. They knew we were in good shape, so they got right 
into the intellectual stuff. Survival. Ciphers. Demolition. 
Silent killing. Later I realized it was all lightweight, childs 
play. An auditiona sieve, really, to catch those of us who 
were talented. Psychologically susceptible. 

Whod they catch? You and who else? 

Nobody. Your father showed up one afternoon. He 
had plainclothes heavies with him, FBI maybe. I never saw 
him so angry; he just terrorized these selfstyled tough guys 
who were running the place. To us kids he didnt say 
much, but we could see his heart was breaking. We were 
on carriers back to Phoenix an hour later. That was the 
end of summer camp. Blake paused. That was the last 
time I saw your father. I never saw your mother again, 
either. 

Theyre dead. Officially. Chopper crash in Maryland. 

Yes. Did you go to the funeral? 

Maybe. Maybe not. Thats the year thats missing from 
my memory. 

Nobody Ive talked to went to the funeral. We heard 

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thatabout the crasha month, after we got home. 
SPARTA just fell apart, then. Next fall we were dispersed, 
most of us in private collegessurrounded by people we 
thought of as retarded. We still had a whole lot to learn. 
What happened to you, nobody ever heard. 

What did happen to me? 

Blake looked at her, his warm eyes softening. This 
isnt from experience, this is from research, he said. In 
some of the journals youll find that about that time, there 
was a program to inject self-replicating biochips into human 
subjects. This program was supposed to be under 
Navy control, because they were the biochip experts, instead 
of under Health or Science as youd expect. The first 
subject was somebody who was supposedly clinically 
dead, brain-dead. 

A neat cover story. She laughed, but there was bitterness 
in her voice. All they did was reverse cause and 
effect. 

He waited, but she said no more. This subject supposedly 
showed remarkable improvement at first, but then 
became severely disturbed and had to be placed in permanent 
care. A private place in Colorado. 

Biochips wasnt all they did, Blake, she whispered. 
They had a lot to hide. 

Ive begun to gather that, he said. They did their 
best. Four years ago the place in Colorado burned down. 
Killed a dozen people. End of trail. 

Everything youve told me Ive already reconstructed 
for myself, she said impatiently. 
If I hadnt already seen you alive, I would have given 
up. How did you escape? 
The doctor who was supposed to be my watchdog 
his conscience must have started bothering him. He used 

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biochips to repair the lesions theyd made. I started remembering. 
. . . She turned to him and without thinking 
gripped his arm, hard. What happened during that missing 
year? What were they really trying to do? What did I 
do that scared them, made them turn me into a vegetable? 


Maybe you learned something, he said. 

She started to speak but hesitated; his tone alerted her 
that she might not like what she heard. She withdrew her 
hand and quietly asked, What do you suppose it was? 

I think you learned that SPARTA was more than your 
father and mother claimed. The tip of a huge iceberg, an 
ancient iceberg. He studied her while the station rolled 
in space and the bright bars of light through the grill sliced 
his shadowy features to ribbons. Theres a theory. An 
ideal. Men and women have been burned in the service of 
that ideal. Others who believed in it have been praised as 
great philosophers. And some believers gained power and 
became monsters. The more I study this subject, the more 
connections I find, and the farther back they reachin the 
13th century they were known as adepts of the Free Spirit, 
the prophetaebut whatever name they used, theyve 
never been eradicated. Their goal has always been godhood. 
Perfection in this life. Superman. 

Spartas mind was tingling; images danced in the half-
light but flickered strobing away before she could raise 
them to consciousness. The peculiar vibration overcame 
her ordinary sight; she pressed her fingers to her closed 
eyelids. My parents were psychologists, scientists, she 
whispered. 

There has always been a dark side and a light side, a 
black side and a white side. Patiently he waited until she 
opened her eyes again. The man who ran M.I. was named 

275 


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Laird, he said. He tried to keep his involvement a se


cret. 

I recognize the name. 

Laird knew your parents for years, decades. Since before 
they immigrated. Maybe he knew something that 
would embarrass them. 

No, she whispered. No, Blake, I think he seduced 
them with visions of an easier route to perfection. 

Youve remembered something new? 

She looked around, distracted and nervous. Youve 
been helpful, Blake. Its time we got to the rest of our 
business. 

Lairds changed his name, maybe his appearance, but 
I think hes still influential in the government. 

Ill worry about it later. 

If he could have controlled you, he could have made 
himself anything he wanted. He paused. Maybe even a 
president. 

He failed to control me. He also failed to make me 
perfect. 

I think hed like to bury the evidence of his failure. 

I know that well enough. But thats my problem. 

Ive made it mine, he said. 

Sorry. You cant play this game. Her voice had regained 
its confidence. Lets get on with the game were 
already playing. Catching a thief. 

Inspector Ellen Troy, Board of Space Control. 

The expression on Vincent Darlingtons round face 
wavered between disgust and disbeliefWhatever could 
have . . . ?and finally settled on deference to authority. 
He reluctantly opened the doors of the Hesperian Museum. 

Sparta pocketed her badge. She was still wearing her 

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dock rat disguise, and at the moment she felt more like 
the dock rat than the cop. I believe you know Mr. Blake 
Redfield of London. 

Goodness, Mr. Redfield, Darlington fluttered. Oh, 
come in, inside, both of you. Do please excuse the frightful 
disarray. There was to have been a celebration. . . . 

The place looked like a mortuary. White cloths covered 
lumpy mounds on long tables standing against the walls. 
Lush and reverent scenes in thick oils hung in ornate 
frames. Colored light from the glass dome lay over everything. 


Well! Darlington hesitantly extended a plump hand 
to Blake. It is . . . good to meet you personally at last. 

Blake shook hands firmly, while Darlingtons scandalized 
gaze fell to the charred sleeve of his jacket. Blake 
followed his glance. Sorry, Ive just been involved in the 
pressure-loss incident, he said, and I havent had time 
to clean up. 

My goodness, that was terrifying. Whatever happened? 
Its the sort of thing that makes one long to be 
back on solid ground. 

Its under investigation, Sparta said. Meanwhile it 
has been decided to release your property from Star Queen. 
I think it will be just as safe here with you. 

In the crook of his left arm Blake held a blocky package 
wrapped in white plastic. Heres the book, sir, Blake said, 
holding out the package. He let the plastic fall away to 
reveal the pristine marbled paper of the slipcase. 

Darlingtons eyes widened behind his thick round 
glasses and his mouth pursed with delight. He quietly took 
the book from Blake, gazed at it a moment, then carried 
it with ceremony to the display case at the head of the 
hall. 

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Darlington laid the book on top of the glass and slid 
the leather-covered volume from its slipcase. The gilt 
edges of the pages glittered in the strange, dramatic light. 
Darlington stroked the tan cover as gently as if it had been 
living skin, turning the precious object in his hands to 
inspect its flawless binding. Then he reverently set it down 
again and opened itto the title page. 

He left it there. Blake looked at Sparta. She smiled. 
Did you ship it like this? Darlington said abruptly. 
This beautiful book might have been . . . badly soiled. 

Were keeping the carrying case in evidence, Sparta 
replied. I asked Mr. Redfield to inspect the book and 
vouch for its authenticity. 

I wanted to see it safely into your hands, Mr. Darlington. 


Yes, indeed. Well! Darlington smiled cheerily, then 
glanced around the room with sudden inspiration. The 
reception! What do you know, its not too late after all! 
Im going to call everyone at once. 

Darlington started off toward his office, got two steps, 
and remembered that hed left The Seven Pillars of Wisdom 
sitting in the open. Sheepishly, he returned. 

He fiddled with the complex locks of the display case 
and carefully arranged the book on velvet pillows inside. 
He slid the case closed. 

When Darlington had reset the magnetic locks he 
looked up, simpering at Sparta, and she nodded approvingly. 
Well be going, then. Please keep the book available 
in the event it may be required in evidence. 

Right here, Inspector! It will be right here! Darlington 
patted the display case, then dashed to one of the 
tables and pulled off the shroud with a flourish, unveiling 

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a mound of cracked prawns. He was so excited he almost 

clapped. 

Blake and Sparta walked to the doors. 

Oh, by the way, you must come to the party, Darlington 
called after them as the entrance slid open. Both 
of you! . . . After youve had a chance to freshen up. 

The concourse outside the museum was crowded with 
pedestrians. They were opposite the Vancouver garden; 
they walked swiftly across metal paving and down a path 
among fern-covered granite rocks, seeking the shelter of 
arching pine branches and totem poles. When they were 
alone Blake said, If you wont let me come with you, Im 
going to take Darlington up on his offer. Im starved. 

She nodded. I notice, Blake, that youre as accomplished 
a dissimulator as I am. Involved in the incident . . .  
Its a distinction without a difference, isnt it? Knowingly 
conveying a false impression is lying, period. 
Its the nature of my job, she said shortly. Whats 
your rationale? 

As she turned he seized her gently by the elbow. 
Guard your back. I dont know what they fixed you up 
with, but they left out the killer instinct. 

She recovered the package shed hidden in the transformer 
room, then pressed the commlink in her ear, whose 
insistent chiming shed switched off half an hour ago. 

Where have you been? Probodas half-concern, half-
panic, was almost touching. 
I underestimated our quarry, Viktor. I went to Star 
Queen hoping to . . . 
You were aboard? he shouted, so loudly she yanked 
the commlink from her ear. 

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Dammit, Viktor . . . I was hoping to catch the culprit 
in the act, she resumed, gingerly bringing the link to her 
ear. Unfortunately, I ran into a large robot. 

My God, Ellen, did you hear what went on inside that 
ship? 

I just told you I was there, she said, exasperated. I 
want you to meet me at the offices of the Ishtar Mining 
Corporation. By yourself. Right now. 

Commander Antreen is terribly angry, Ellen. She 
wants you to report back here immediately. 

I have no time. Tell her Ill make a full report as soon 
as I can. 

I cantI mean, on my own initia 

Viktor, if you dont meet me at Ishtar Ill have to handle 
Sondra Sylvester on my own. And Im much too tired 
to be polite. She disconnected. This time she wasnt lying; 
to her dismay, she found herself trembling with fatigue. 
She hoped she wasnt too tired for the task remaining. 

The two major mining companies on Port Hesperus 
provided the economic base for the entire colony; Ishtar 
and Azure Dragon were cordial but serious rivals, their 
headquarters located opposite each other in projecting 
arms on the planetward end of the station. Outside, these 
facilities bristled with antennas that transmitted and received 
coded telemetry. Only spies saw the interiors of 
their competitions armored ore shuttles, and the smelting 
and finishing facilities were located on satellite stations 
several kilometers away. 

After displaying her badge to a videoplate monitor, 
Sparta was allowed to enter Ishtar through its bronze-
studded front doors, the so-called Ishtar Gate, which 
opened on a long spiraling corridor, paneled in dark 

280 


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leather, leading outward from the weightless core toward 
Earth-normal gravity. No guards were in evidence, but she 
was aware that her progress was monitored throughout the 
approach. 

At the end of the corridor she found herself in a room 
lavishly paneled in carved mahogany, carpeted in Chinese 
and Persian rugs. There was no other apparent exit from 
the room, although Sparta knew better. In the center of 
the shadowy room a small spotlight illuminated a gold 
statuette of the ancient Babylonian goddess Ishtar, a modern 
interpretation by the popular Mainbelt artist Fricca. 

Sparta paused, taken by it, her macrozoom eye drawn 
to a microscopic inspection. It was a stunning work, tiny 
yet swelling with power, supple yet knotted, like one of 
Rodins studies in wax. Around the base were carved, in 
letters meant to suggest cuneiform, verses from a primeval 
hymn: Ishtar, the goddess of evening, am I. Ishtar, the 
goddess of morning, am I. The heavens I destroy, the earth 
I devastate, in my supremacy. The mountain I sweep away 
altogether, in my supremacy. 

How may I assist you? The question, phrased not 
helpfully but with disdain, came from a young woman 
who had stepped silently from the shadows. 

Inspector Troy. Board of Space Control, Sparta said, 
turning to her. The tall receptionist was wearing a long 
purple gown of something with the texture of crushed velvet; 
Sparta was acutely conscious of her own singed hair 
and smudged cheeks, her torn, stained trousers. Please 
inform Mrs. Sylvestershe cleared her throatthat Im 
here to talk to her. 

Is she expecting you, Inspector?smooth and cold, 
definitely uncooperative . . . 
The receptionists name was engraved on a solid gold 

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pin beneath her throat, a pin that would have been invisible 
to ordinary eyes. Not to Spartas. 

One talent of a better-than-average cop is to be able 
to say more than one thing at once; some simple statements 
carry a wealth of implication (obey me or go to 
jail), and the first-name trick never hurts, even if it only 
makes em mad. I require your full cooperation, Barbara. 

Barbara responded with a jerk, freezing the image on 
the handheld videoplate shed been consulting. 

Im here to see Sondra Sylvester on urgent official 
business, Sparta told her, regarding The Seven Pillars of 
Wisdom. 

The receptionist stiffly poked out a three-digit code and 
spoke softly to the gadget. A moment later Sylvesters 
lush, husky voice filled the room. Bring Inspector Troy 
to my office at once. The young receptionist lost her hauteur. 
Follow me, please, she whispered. 

Sparta followed her through double locking panels that 
slid silently aside. One curving hall led to another, and 
that soon opened upon scenes of Escherlike ambiguity: 
below Sparta and beside her, curving smoky windows 
overlooked control rooms peopled by dozens of operators 
in front of green and orange flatscreens and videoplates. 
Other curving glass corridors crossed above and below, 
and other control rooms were visible through distant windows. 
Many of the screens Sparta could see displayed 
graphics or columns of numbers, but on others live video 
pictures of a bizarre fishbowl world unreeled like the view 
from a carnival ride. 

Somewhere on the surface of the planet belowon the 
bright visible side or away in the darkness beyond the 
terminatorradio signals relayed by synchronous satellites 
moved robots by remote control, to prospect, to delve, to 

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mill, and to stockpile. The views through the moving 
screens were robot-eye views of hell. 

Abruptly they were past the control rooms. Sparta followed 
the receptionist through a door, down another corridor, 
and finally into an office of such opulence that 
Sparta hesitated before entering. 

A desk of polished chalcedony stood before a wall of 
rough-textured, curving bronze. Ruddy light fell fitfully 
over the surface of the wall, illuminating statues in their 
niches, exquisite works by the solar systems major artists: 
a duplicate cast of Friccas Ishtar, flanked by Innanna, Astarte, 
Cybele, Mariana, Aphrodite, Lakshmi. Another wall 
contained shelf upon shelf of books bound in colored 
leather and stamped with gold and silver. Through heavily 
filtered windows the sulfurous clouds of the planet rolled 
in twilight. 

It was a room that spoke, paradoxically, of despaira 
prison, its static luxuries meant to substitute for the random 
simplicities of freedom. 

You may leave us, Barbara. 

Sparta turned to find Sylvester behind her, wearing the 
same dark silk gown shed worn disembarking from Helios. 
And when Sparta glanced around, the receptionist had 
gone; these women had an uncanny trick of moving silently. 
Sparta found herself wishing that Proboda had 
made his appearance. 

Youre much smaller than I expected, Inspector Troy. 

Videoplate images have that effect. 

And I have no doubt you intended the effect, Sylvester 
said. She crossed the carpeted room to her stone 
desk and sat down. Normally Id ask you to make yourself 
comfortable, but in fact I am extremely busy just now. Or 
perhaps you are ready to release my cargo? 

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No. 
What can I tell you about The Seven Pillars of Wisdom? 


Sparta realized that she was too tired to work at subtlety; 
the directness of her question surprised even her. 
How much did you spend counterfeiting it? As much as 
you would have paid for the real thing? 

Sylvester laughed, a startled bark. An ingenious question
for which there is no answer. But unlike Sparta, 
Sylvester was a bad liar; she held herself on a tight leash, 
and what passed for coolness was the result of long practice 
at restraining a tempestuous nature. 

You left your rented villa on the Isle du Levant the 
day after you arrived there, took a magneplane from Toulon 
to Paris, a ramjet to Washington, D.C., where you 
spent a day in the Library of Congress recording on chip 
the entire contents of the only remaining Oxford edition 
of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom still accessible to the public. 
You then flew to London, where with the help of the 
bookseller Hermione Scruttonwhose record of involvement 
in literary fraud might almost be considered distinguished 
in some circlesyou arranged to meet certain 
parties in Oxford, a city where the craft of printing is cherished 
and its ancient tools preserved, where even the 
working typefonts of the past are displayed as treasures in 
museums, where the revered techniques are still occasionally 
practiced. With the help of several printers and a 
bookbinder, people whose love of the making of books is 
so great they allowed themselves to engage in counterfeiting 
for the sheer joy of practicing their skillsalthough 
the very substantial amounts you paid them didnt 
dampen their enthusiasmyou made an almost perfect 

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copy of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was even easier 
to bribe a notoriously luxury-loving member of Star 
Queens crew to practice his calculating skills on a locked 
case and steal a book from the cargo of his own ship, 
replacing it with your counterfeit. 

As Sylvester listened to this recitation the color in her 
pale cheeks deepened. That is an extraordinary scenario, 
Inspector. I cant imagine what comment you wish me to 
make. 

Only confirm it. 
I am not a pond for you to fish in. Sylvester willed 
herself to relax. Please leave now. I have no more time. 

I was very careless on my first inspection of Star 
QueenI knew that one of your robots had been field 
tested; I thought that explained its residual radioactivity. 
I didnt bother to examine the fuel assemblies. 

Get out, Sylvester said flatly. 

. . . but sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous. If 
Id checked the hot robot I would have seen that McNeil 
had reinserted the fuel rods so that he could open the 
machine. The oversight almost cost Blake Redfield and me 
our lives. At your hands. 

Youre talking utter nonsense. . . . 

In two quick steps Sparta was at the desk. She raised 
the package wrapped in plastic shed been holding at her 
side and slammed it down on the polished stone. Heres 
whats left of your book, Mrs. Sylvester. 

Sylvester froze. She stared at the package. Her indecision 
was so transparent, so agonizing, that Sparta could 
feel the womans apprehension and pain. 

A bluff will gain you nothing but a little time, Sparta 
said. I may not have all the details right, but Ill get at 

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your financial records, Ill talk to the people who know. 
McNeil, for starters. The details and the witnesses will be 
along shortly. And theres your book. 

It lay there, a rectangular bundle wrapped in plastic. 

Difficult to recognize in its present condition, Sparta 
said harshly, her own fear and resentment for the attack 
on her life finally spilling into anger, wiping out the empathy 
that had threatened her judgment, so perhaps you 
will be good enough to tell me which of the two copies it 
is. 

Sylvester sighed. Trembling, she reached to the flimsy 
plastic, threw it back. . . . The charred block of pages lay 
in flakes of ash, in the crumbling fragments of its slipcase. 
This is too cruel, she whispered. Sylvester steadied herself 
in her chair, grasping the edge of her desk so tightly 
that her knuckles whitened. How can I know? 

Sparta pulled the book around and pried open its baked 
pages.  The dreamers of the day are dangerous men,  
she read,  for they may act their dreams with open eyes, 
to make it possible. Dreams should be dream, singular. 
Sparta turned the wrecked book and, leaning over the 
desk, pushed it toward Sylvester. Blake Redfield informs 
me that the text contains many similar errors. This is the 
counterfeit. The original has been returned to its owner. 

To Darlington? 

That is corr . . . 

In her near exhaustion, in the heady rush of revenge 
on the woman whod tried to take her life, Sparta had not 
been listening . . . Her reaction to the black pistol that appeared 
in Sylvesters hand, arcing toward her, was woefully 
sluggish. 

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XX 


Blake Redfield spent a few quick minutes in his Venus-
view room at the Hesperus Hilton; then, in a white shirt, 
maroon tie, and dark silk suit of stylish cut, he sallied forth 
to make a second, more respectable appearance at the Hesperian 
Museum. 

His adventures of the past hour had left him curiously 
undecided, unsettled. His chance sighting of Linda on that 
Manhattan street corner had awakened something in him, 
a feeling not urgent at first, but insistent and increasingly 
intense. 

Hed found it a simple matter to combine his researches 
into his childhood friends mysterious disappearance with 
his own collectors passion, for he was nowhere more at 
home than in old bookstores and library stacks and data 
files, whether electronic or fiber-based. Thus he had 
stumbled upon the long, deliberately obscured trail of the 
shadowy international cult he had only recently been able 
to tie to the prophetae of the Free Spirit. With his nose for 

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inference and testable hypothesis, hed learned more than 
hed expected. 

Long before that, other, more savage passions had been 
awakened, ones hed indulged as a teenage boy playing 
half-serious secret-agent games with his peers in the Arizona 
mountains. Smearing themselves with shoe polish. 
Sneaking up on each other. Plinking at each other with 
capsules of red paint. Blowing things up. Etc. 

Hed resumed his lessons, privately. No more games 
with paint. 

But tracking down Linda, Ellen as she called herself, 
had lacked something of the fantastic quality hed anticipated. 
When he finally found hera nice surprise hed 
arranged, toohed expected to be greeted as a kindred 
soul; instead shed seemed preoccupied by matters she was 
unwilling to share, layers of concern, woven branches of 
potentialso many crimes, so many villains, doing an invisible 
gavotte. So many loyalties to balance. So many 
corners to watch. Shed grown skilled at hiding her 
thoughts and feelings from people, too skilled. And he had 
hoped to touch her feelings. 

Now he wondered how much of a surprise his dramatic 
revelations had been. She was mysteriously adept at things 
he was hardly aware of. 

Vincent Darlington, giddy with social success, greeted 
Blake lavishly and ushered him into the ersatz chapel. 
Space station society was a hothouse affair, fluid and incestuous, 
and gaudy display was part of the game. Plumes 
and trapezes of glitter bobbed on heads whose hair, when 
not shaved off altogether, had been tortured into extraordinary 
shapes, wagon wheels and ratchets and Morning 
Star maces, ziggurats, corkscrews. The faces below came 

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in every natural color and several artificial ones, enlivened 
by splashes of paint and, on the men, odd swatches of 
whiskers. The room was filled to capacity and it seemed 
like everybody was trying to stand in the same place, next 
to the food tables. These were obviously people who appreciated 
Darlingtons taste, if not in art, then in champagne 
and hors d oeuvres. 

Blake recognized a few of his recent companions 
aboard Helios, including, to his mild surprise, Sondra Sylvesters 
companion Nancybeth, who welled up in front of 
him as he tried to push closer to the display case containing 
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Nancybeth was resplendent 
in green plastic kneeboots, and above them a 
miniskirt of real leather, dyed white and hanging in 
fringes all the way from her raw hemp belt. Her top was 
thinly veiled in low-slung, purple-anodized aluminum 
mesh, which went well with her violet eyes. 

Open your mowffy, she coaxed, her chin raised and 
her lips pooched, and when he started to ask her what 
for he got no further than the what, which gave her 
the opening she needed to shove a tube of something pink 
and orange and squishy between his teeth. You looked 
hungry, she explained as he masticated. 

I was, he said, when hed swallowed, wincing. 

Not just your tummy, Blakey. You have hungry eyes. 
Her voice fell a few decibels, so that he had to lean closer to 
hear her. Her six-inch mirrored earrings swung like pendulums, 
threatening to hypnotize him. All the way here on 
the liner I could feel your hungry eyes eating at me. 

How ghastly for you, he said. He said it louder than 
hed intended; adjacent heads turned. 
Nancybeth recoiled. Blake, silly! Dont you understand 
what Im saying? 

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I wish I didnt. He took advantage of her temporary 
retrenchment to gain a few inches toward his goal. Have 
you seen the book yet? Do you think Darlingtons given 
it a decent burial in this mausoleum? 

What do you mean? she asked suspiciously. Her chin 
was abeam his shoulder now, and there was danger she 
would be swept aft. Vince has very good taste. I think 
the gold on the edge of the pages goes really well with 
the ceiling. 

Thats what I meant. Hed finally reached the altar 
that enshrined the relic, only to discover that it was almost 
impossible to see; the party guests in the vicinity were 
using the glass top of the display case as a handy tabletop 
for their plates and wine glasses. Blake turned queasily 
away, Nancybeth still with him. 

Im surprised to see you here without Mrs. Sylvester, 
he said bluntly. 

She wasnt sophisticated, but she had a sixth sense for 
the needs of others, and Blakes matter-of-factness got 
through to her; she answered in kind. Vince wont talk 
to Sondra. He invited me ages agobecause he thought 
Id drag her along. His idea was that she was going to rub 
me in his face, and he was going to rub that book in hers. 

Blake smiled. Youre okay, Nancybeth. You call it the 
way you see it. 

Im seeing it now. And Im calling it. But its not answering. 


Sorry. Fact is, Im looking for someone else. 

Her eyes went cold. She shrugged and turned her back 
on him. 

He moved through the crowd searching the faces of 
strangers. After filling a plate he tried to get away from 
the crowd and found himself alone for the moment in a 

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small chapellike room off the grotesque glass-domed nave 
of Darlingtons cathedral. In this small room were cases 
displaying objects quite different from the run of execrable 
gimcracks Darlington had pushed to center stage. Inside 
the cases Blake recognized the fossils of Venusian life that 
had gotten Darlingtons silly art gallery a place on the map 
of the solar system. 

They were dusty red and gray things, fragmented, morphologically 
ambiguous. He knew nothing of paleontology, 
but he understood that these had been authenticated 
as the remains of creatures that had burrowed and 
crawled, maybe flapped and glided, during a brief paradise 
of liquid water and free oxygen that had prevailed millions 
of years ago, before the catastrophic positive feedback of 
the greenhouse effect had turned Venus into the acid-
drenched, high-pressure inferno it was now. 

The remains were more suggestive than descriptive. 
Scholarly volumes had been devoted to these dozen scraps 
of stone, but no one could say for sure what things had 
made them, or left them behind, except that whatever they 
were, theyd been alive. 

Blake brooded unhappily on the puzzle, hardly new to 
him, that so many people like Vincent Darlington possessed 
so many treasures of which they had not the 
slightest conception of valueaside from money, aside 
from possession itself. 

His ponderings were abruptly interrupted. 

In the adjoining room a womans scream rose above 
the babble, a man yelled, and in quick succession there 
were seven very loud whacksovertaken by a long splintering 
of glass. 

For a moment the air hung still, echoing, before everyone 
in the crowd began screaming and shouting and fight


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ing each other to get out. Blake dodged panicked refugees 
and seconds later found himself in an empty room, confronting 
a bloody tableau. 

Sondra Sylvester was writhing in the grip of Percy 
Farnsworth and a horrified Nancybeth. Sylvesters heavy 
silk gown had been slashed by falling glass, and blood 
was streaming down over her livid face from cuts in her 
scalp. Her right arm was raised stiffly over her head, where 
Nancybeth was trying to pull it down to get at the black 
pistol that Sylvester still held in a steel grip, yelling at 
her, Syl, no more, no more . . . Meanwhile Farnsworth 
had Sylvester around the waist and was trying to throw 
her to the glass-strewn floor; he and Nancybeth had also 
suffered cuts on the scalp and shoulders. Sylvesters finger 
tightened on the trigger and an eighth bullet smashed into 
the riddled stained-glass ceiling, loosing another shower 
of fragments. 

Then Sylvester dropped the pistol, having exhausted 
the ammunition clip. She relaxed almost luxuriously into 
the arms of the others, who suddenly found themselves 
supporting her. 

Blake helped them carry her to the side of the room, 
away from the glass. So much blood was pouring over 
Sylvesters eyes that she must have been blinded by it 
scalp wounds flow copiously, even when theyre not serious
but shed been seeing clearly enough when she sent 
the first rounds from the illegal weapon into Vincent Darlingtons 
body. 

Darlington lay on his back in a spreading pool of crimson, 
staring open-eyed through the shattered dome at the 
tops of tall trees on the opposite surface of the central 
sphere, his body frosted over with powdered glass. 

Behind him, safe inside the case that served as a table 

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for smeared plates and empty glasses, rested the object of 
Sylvesters passion. 

Sparta was inside a kaleidoscope, its broken bits of 
glass falling with rapid stuttering leaps into new symmetric 
patterns that repeated themselves endlessly out to 
the edge of her vision, and beyond. The slowly spinning 
vortex of jagged colors seemed to be sucking her into 
infinity. With each shift, a strung-out, whistling explosion 
echoed through her mind. The scene was dizzying 
and vivid 

and part of her consciousness stood to one side 
watching it with enjoyment. That part was reminded of a 
cartoon shed seen on an eye doctors wall, a car speeding 
across a desert on a long straight road, passing a sign that 
read Vanishing point, ten miles. 

She laughed at the memory, and the sound of her own 
laughter woke her up. 

Her blue eyes opened to find Viktor Probodas brighter, 
bluer ones, wide in his square pink face, only inches away. 
How do you feel? His blond eyebrows were twitching 
with concern. 

Like somebody hit me in the head. What was I laughing 
about? With his help she sat up. There was a heavy 
ache in the muscle of her jaw that brought back an old 
memory, from circa age fourteen, of an abscessed wisdom 
tooth. Cautiously she touched her cheek. Oww! I bet 
thats pretty. 

I dont think the jaws broken. Youd know. 

Great. Do you always look on the bright side, Viktor? 
She pulled herself to her feet with his help. 

We should get you to the clinic. A concussion requires 
immediate . . . 

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Hold off a minute. Did you pass your friend Sondra 
Sylvester on your way in here? 

Proboda looked distinctly uncomfortable. Yes, in the 
core, just outside the Ishtar gate. I knew something was 
wrong from her face. She looked at me but she didnt even 
see me. I was thinking about what that mining robot did 
on Star Queen, and I thought thats why you came here, 
so I thought Id better find you. 

Thanks. . . . Dammit. She grabbed at her ear, but her 
commlink had fallen out. She knocked it loose. Viktor, 
call in and send a squad to the Hesperian Museum on the 
double. Call the museum too, try to warn Darlington. I 
think she went to kill him. 

He knew better than to ask for explanations. He keyed 
the emergency channel, but as soon as he mentioned the 
Hesperian Museum the squad dispatcher interrupted. 

He listened, his jaw sagging, then broke the link. He 
looked at Sparta. Too late. 

Is he dead? 

His chin jerked in a nod. She put four .32 slugs in 
him. After they grabbed her, she put four more through 
his glass ceiling. Its lucky she didnt kill somebody on the 
other side of the station. Still looking on the bright side. 

She touched his arm, half urging him to start moving 
and half comforting the big, sad coprecognizing that he 
was sad for Sylvester, whom hed admired, not for Darlington, 
that silly leech. Come on, lets go, she said. 

A tall woman was standing in the doorway, Kara Antreen. 
Rigid and gray, her square-shouldered severity was 
at odds with the luxury of Sylvesters office. Viktor, I 
want you to take immediate charge of the investigation 
into the shooting of Vincent Darlington. 

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Proboda halted, perplexed. Not much of an investigation, 
Captain. There was a roomful of witnesses . . . 

Yes, it shouldnt take long, Antreen said. 

But Star Queen . . . 

You are relieved of your responsibilities with respect 
to Star Queen, Antreen said flatly. She cocked an eye at 
Sparta, daring contradiction. Thats a new case, now. 

Sparta hesitated, then nodded. Thats right, Viktor. 
Youve been very helpful, and I appreciate it. . . . 

Probodas unhappy face grew longer. 

The captain and I should be able to wrap things up 
pretty quickly, Sparta said. 

Proboda stepped away stiffly. Hed been impressed by 
Inspector Ellen Troy and had unbent enough to let her 
know it. He had even defended her to his boss. Now shed 
grabbed the first chance to cut him out of the case. Whatever 
you say, he growled. He marched out past Antreen 
without wasting a backward glance on Sparta. 

Alone, the two women watched each other in silence. 
Antreen was impeccable in her gray wool suit, Sparta was 
a weary urchin, battered but streetwise. But Sparta no 
longer felt at a disadvantage. She only felt the need for 
rest. 

Youve repeatedly and ingeniously managed to avoid 
me, Inspector Troy, Antreen said. Why the sudden 
change of attitude? 

I dont think this is the place to talk, Captain, Sparta 
said, tilting her chin to indicate the rooms invisible bugs 
and eyes. Corporations like this one are good at keeping 
secrets. But it could still be considered a violation of the 
suspects chartered rights. 

Yes, certainly. Antreens eyelids drooped over her 

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gray eyesand here was an excellent liar indeed, Sparta 
saw, who did not betray herself when she had been anticipated, 
even two moves deep. Back to headquarters, 
then? Antreen suggested. 

Sparta walked confidently past her; Antreen fell into 
step immediately behind. They walked into the spiraling 
transparent corridor that overlooked the control rooms. 

Sparta paused at the rail. 

Something wrong? Antreen asked. 

Not at all. I didnt really get to see this on the way 
in. I was too busy. For someone whos never left Earth 
before, its an impressive sight. 

I suppose it is. 

From ten meters overhead, behind the curving glass, 
Sparta and Antreen peered down at the men and women 
of Ishtar at their consoles. Some were alert and hard at 
work, some were lounging, idly chatting with each other, 
sipping their coffees and smoking their cigarettes while 
watching on giant screens as loyal robots sliced and shoveled 
through the underworld. 

Antreens right hand was in her outside jacket pocket. 
She leaned in close to Sparta, a movement that an Arab 
or a Japanese might not have noticed. But she was close 
enough to make a typical Euro-American nervous. 

Sparta turned to her, relaxed, alert. We can talk here, 
Sparta whispered. They left the eyes and ears out of this 
stretch. 

Youre positive? 

I checked the corridor coming in, Sparta said. So 
lets stop playing games. 

What? 

Sparta heard offended dignity, not guilt, overlaying 

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Antreens cautionshe was excellent. Spartas tone grew 
exaggerated. By now youve got the files I ordered from 
Central, havent you? She was playing the tough cop 
from headquarters, dressing down the locals. 

Yes, of course. 

Anger, persuasively laid over confusion, but Sparta 
laughed in her face. You dont know what the hell Im 
talking about. 

Antreen was suddenly prickling with suspicion. She 
said nothing. 

Sparta prodded her hard. The files on Pavlakis Lines. 
Get your staff in shape, will you?but behind the contemptuous 
sneer on her bruised and blackened face, Sparta 
was striving to keep her throbbing consciousness from 
fractioning again. The broken bits of the kaleidoscope 
were whirling at the edge of her vision. If youd seen the 
reports youd know it was that ape Dimitrios, taking it out 
on young Pavlakis. Revenge. Because the kid ended the 
forty-year-old insurance con Dimitrios had been running 
with his dad. Pavlakis played into his hands by hiring 
Wycherly to protect hima guy who was already in on 
the scam, who needed money more than anything and had 
the added advantage of being a dead man in advance. Got 
all that? 

We have that information, Antreen snapped. Anger 
again, this time laid over smug relief, for Sparta was talking 
police work after all. We have Dimitrioss statement, 
the widows statement. Pavlakis came to us himself before 
we could pick him upbefore the blowout. He says he 
suspected it all along, that Dimitrios rigged a phony accident. 


He did? Sparta grinned, but it was a weird grin com


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ing out of that swollen, seared face. Then what are you 
really doing here? 

I came to tell . . . But this time Antreen couldnt disguise 
the shock. . . . you . . . 

You came for me. Here I am. Took you forever to get 
me alone. 

You know! Antreen looked around wildly. They were 
hardly alone. But they were isolated from the workers below 
in a glass tube with no ears. Afterward, what would 
witnesses make of what was about to happen? 

Whatever Captain Antreen told them to think. 

Antreen jerked her right hand up and out, but she was 
closeit had been a mistake to move in so close. Spartas 
own right hand came across the space between their bodies 
and seized Antreens wrist as it cleared her pocket. In 
a microsecond Antreen was stumbling; Sparta was taking 
her down sideways along the direction of the resisting 
arm, using the resistance. Startled, Antreens left leg tried 
to move across for balance, but it went nowhere except 
into Spartas solidly planted left thigh. Antreen dove, but 
Sparta did not let her dive; controlling the weapon, Sparta 
never let go of Antreens right wrist, and Antreen spun 
onto her back as she fell. She hit the carpeted floor heavily. 


If Sparta had been a little stronger, a little bigger, a 
little less tiredif shed been perfectshe might have prevented 
what happened next. But Antreen was quick and 
strong and as practiced at unarmed combat as Sparta. 
With the leverage of her long legs and free arm she rolled, 
pulling Sparta across herSparta brought Antreens arm 
up sharply behind her back as she rolledanother half roll 
and Sparta would lose her grip; Antreen would be on top 
of her.... 

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Antreen screamed when she drove the spike into her 
own spine. 

It was a crescendo of pain, but she screamed with more 
than pain. She screamed in the horror of what was happening 
to her, what was about to happen to herwhat 
would happen quickly, but not quickly enough. 

Sparta yanked the thing out of Antreens back almost 
instantly. Only then did she see what the weapon was. She 
knew she was too late 

for the telescoping needle had already sprung out and 
was writhing like a hair-fine worm in Antreens spinal 
cord, questing for her brain. Although she could no longer 
feel the fast approaching mind-death, still she screamed. 

Sparta tossed the barrel of the empty hypodermic on 
the mat and sat back, legs splayed, sagging onto her rigid 
backthrust arms, sucking in great gulps of air. The corridor 
thundered with booted feet and around its curve a squad 
of blue-suits appeared, stunguns drawn. They stumbled to 
a halt in good order, the front rank to their knees, half a 
dozen gun snouts pointing at Sparta. 

Antreen had kept on rolling, onto her back. She was 
crying now, great sobs of pity for her dwindling awareness. 


Viktor Proboda shoved his way through the patrollers 
and knelt beside her. He reached out his big hands and 
hesitated, afraid to touch her. 

You cant do anything for her, Viktor, Sparta whispered. 
Shes not in pain. 

Whats happening to her? 

Shes forgetting. Shell forget all this. In a few seconds 
shell stop crying, because she wont remember why shes 
crying. 

Proboda looked at Antreens face, the handsome face 

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framed in straight gray hair, a face momentarily stretched 
into the mask of Medusa but where even now the terror 
was fading and the tears were drying. 

Isnt there anything we can do for her? 

Sparta shook her head. Not now. Maybe later, if they 
want to. But they probably wont. 
Who are they? 
Sparta waved him off. Later, Viktor. 
Proboda decided hed wait; Inspector Troy said lots of 

things that went past him the first time. He stood and 
shouted at the ceiling. Wheres that stretcher? Lets get 
moving. He stepped over Antreen to Sparta, holding out 
his hand. She took it and he pulled her to her feet. Practically 
the whole company was watching you. They called 
us right away. 

I told her it was clean. She was so eager to get me 
she believed me. Whats happening to her is what would 
have happened to me. . . . 

How did you know theyd call us? 

I . . . She thought better of it. Lucky guess. 

There was a commotion among the police, and the 
stretcher came through. As the two bearers were kneeling 
beside Antreen she spoke, calmly and clearly. Awareness 
is everything, she said. 

Are my parents alive? Sparta asked her. 

The secrets of the adepts are not to be shared with the 
uninitiated, Antreen replied. 

Are my parents adepts? Sparta asked. Is Laird an 
adept? 

Thats not on the white side, said Antreen. 

I remember you now, Sparta said. I remember the 
things you did to me. 
Do you have a Q clearance? 

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I remember your home in Maryland. You had a squirrel 
that slid down a wire. 

Do I remember you? Antreen asked. 

And I remember what you did to me. 

Do I remember you? Antreen repeated. 

Does the word SPARTA mean anything to you? 
Sparta asked. 

Uncertainty creased Antreens brow. Is that . . . is that 
a name? 

Sparta felt her throat tighten, felt tears well in her eyes. 
Good-bye, gray lady. Youre an innocent again. 

Blake Redfield was waiting in the weightless corridor 
outside the Ishtar Gate, mingling with the floating pack of 
gawkers and mediahounds who had been trailing the police 
in eager desperation. Sparta slipped past the yellow 
tape and sought him out. 

When he saw her face he was surprised, then concerned. 
She let him study her bruises. I watched my back, 
like you told me. She tried to grin with swollen lips. She 
got me from the front. 

When he held out his hand, she took it. Holding his 
hand, it was easier to ignore the questions the reporters 
were shouting at them, the curses of those who sounded 
like they were ready to kill for a quote. But when Kara 
Antreen was pulled past on a floating stretcher the photogram 
recorders all swung to follow the procession, and 
the mediacrowd swam off after them like sharks after 
chum. Sparta and Blake lingered behind a moment 

Want to take the short cut? 

and a few seconds later they had disappeared. 

They darted through the darkened tunnels and conduits 
toward the central sphere, keeping pace with each other. 

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Did you know it was Antreen all along? Blake asked. 

No, but the first sight of her prodded my memory. 
Something down deep, something I couldnt bring to consciousness 
made me know it was a good idea to stay out 
of her way. This just now was her second attempt. She 
was the one who used the robot on us. 

I thought that was Sylvester! 

So did I. Anger is the enemy of reason, and I was so 
mad I wasnt thinking straight. Sondra Sylvester wanted 
that book more than anything, much more than she 
wanted Nancybeth, or even to humiliate Darlington. She 
never would have risked the real book, even if shed overheard 
us talking and knew she was caught. It was Antreen 
who bugged the ship and heard us. 

They flew in silence, then, until they came to their 
lookout overlooking the central gardens and went to 
ground. Perfectly alone in the swinging cage of light, they 
found themselves suddenly, unaccountably shy. 

Sparta forced herself to go on. Antreen went aboard 
Star Queen and fueled the robot, while I was staging my 
show-and-tell lecture about sabotage. Setting a trap for 
the wrong people. She laughed wearily. She got the opportunity 
she wanted before she was ready for it. She sure 
didnt expect to deal with you. When the robot didnt do 
the job I think she realized how hard it was going to be 
to kill me outright, at least in a way that wouldnt bring 
suspicion on herself. So she went for my memory. After 
all, it worked once before. Shed have been after you, 
next. 

Did you learn anything about your parents? he 
asked, quietly and urgently. About the rest of them? 

Sparta shook her head. Too late, she said sadly. An


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treen couldnt tell us anything now if she wanted to. This 
time she reached out to him and gently took his hand. 

He covered her hand with his, then reached to cup her 
chin. Then well have to do it alone, I guess. The two of 
us. Find them. If youre ready to let me play this game. 

His spicy aroma was especially delicious when he was 
only inches away. I should have let you before. She 
leaned weightlessly forward and let her bruised lips rest 
on his. 

303 


Epilogue 


McNeil told the rest of the untold truth without further 
hedging, the next time she confronted him. He had moved 
out of the clinic and rented a room in transient crew quarters, 
but he spent most of his time in his favorite French 
restaurant, on the concourse opposite the poplars of Samarrand. 
Recorded meadowlarks sang sweetly among the 
nearby trees. 

I knew youd be back, he said. Will you have some 
of this excellent St. Emilion? 

She declined. She told him what she knew, and he filled 
in the rest. And if I cooperate fully, how much time do 
you think theyll give me for it? he challenged her. 

Well, since the property was recovered... 

Dont forget, youd have a hard time proving intent, 
if my lawyer was to be wise enough to keep me off the 
stand, he said cheerfully. 

Slim chance. At any rate, wed get you for the wine 
bottles. 

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Alas, the owner of all the commodities in question is 
since deceased. 

Sparta knew the cause of justice would not be served 
if she laughed out loud, so she nodded solemnly. McNeil, 
youll be cooling your heels in a cell for at least four to 
six months. 

Pity. Almost the length of a quick trip to the Mainbelt. 
Always tried to avoid those. 

Perhaps I will have a glass of that, she said. He 
poured and she sipped. She thanked him. McNeil grew serious. 
One thing you may be overlooking, Inspector. That 
is a magnificent book, not merely an object. It deserved to 
be owned by someone who could appreciate its contents. 
As well as its binding. 

Are you suggesting you were motivated by more than 
greed, Mr. McNeil? 

Ive never told you a lie, Inspector. I admired Mrs. 
Sylvester. Im sorry to see her come to ruin. 

I believe you, McNeil. I always did. 

McNeil could take care of himself. Blake Redfield 
needed help. The investigation of Kara Antreens inexplicable 
pathological behavior would no doubt continue for 
months, if not years; it was with fleeting regret that Sparta 
laid sins at her door that she had not committed. Blake 
was never suspected of having blown a hatch, of having 
cut power, assaulted workers, broken into and burgled impounded 
government property. Instead, he faded into 
Spartas shadow. . . . 

Viktor Proboda was there at the docking bay to see 
them off with a bouquet of hydroponic asters. Accompanied 
by a chorus of mediafolk, Blake and Sparta were 

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about to board the Helios, the first step in the long return 
trip to Earth. 

It was a pleasure, Viktor. If theres any justice, it wont 
be long until we . . . Her commlink softly chimed. One 
sec. 

She cocked her head and listened to the breathless dispatcher: 
Inspector Troy! Inspector Troy! New orders from 
Earth Central! Your trip is canceledyoure to report to 
headquarters right away. 

Whats this about? She looked up to see a squad of 
blue-suits already swimming toward themher escort to 
unit headquarters. 

A few seconds later, when she found time to answer 
Blakes and Probodas insistent questions, all she could say 
was, Ill have to catch up with you later, Blake. I cant 
tell you whats happened. And you wouldnt believe me if 
I did. 

Through the many-layered scandal that had absorbed 
their attention for the past weeksthrough the burials and 
depositions and hearings and trialsthe inhabitants of 
Port Hesperus had never ceased or even slowed their work. 
Five of Ishtars huge new robots had gone to the surface 
immediately after the Star Queen impoundment was lifted. 
The sixth was released to Ishtar and followed its fellows 
after forensic teams had lifted the last molecule of evidence 
from it and the ship it had ravaged. 

The new robot corps was sent to explore a promising 
syncline on the glacis of the huge Lakshmi Plateau, in an 
area previously only lightly surveyed by surface rovers. 
Among the ore samples gathered on these prospecting expeditions 
was one odd fragment now residing in the Hes


306 


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perian Museuma fossil, one among only a dozen 
Venusian fossils. 

It was not unexpected that when serious mining began 
in the region another fossil or two might appear. The operators 
on Port Hesperus had been asked to keep a close 
eye on their screens for just such an event. 

The atmosphere of Venus is so dense at the surface and 
the light of the sun so diffuse that operating one of the 
glowing robots in many ways resembled operating a nodule 
miner on the bottom of Earths oceans. It was not always 
easy for an operator to know what he was seeing on 
the big screens. They showed him a bowl-shaped world 
with close horizons tilting sharply up on every side, the 
sere rock everywhere glowing a dark orange. Looking at 
such a screen was like looking at the world through the 
bottom of a thick ashtray of orange glass. To drive an 
immense robot up a narrow canyon and under the overhang 
of an arching stratified canyon, sampling rock outcrops 
every few yards, could be both strenuous and 
disorienting. 

So the operator of the Rolls-Royce HDVM, alert as he 
was, may be forgiven for not immediately recognizing that 
the creatures slashing proboscis had broken into a cavern 
that was not, as it first appeared, a natural hollow in the 
cliff. So bizarre were the forms suddenly illuminated by 
the glare of the white-hot radiators that the operator had 
only moments to reactmoments dangerously extended 
by the radio delay of the remote signalto prevent the 
destruction of the lines upon lines of carved inscriptions 
and the gaunt, monstrous representations that loomed up 
suddenly on his screen. 

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Afterword 


by PAUL PREUSS 

A
A
glance at the copyright page will show when the 
first of the six novels that make up the Venus Prime 
series was published. All six incorporate superb stories 
by Arthur C. Clarke, with the first volume based on 
Arthurs novella Breaking Strain. My version of Breaking 
Strain had an earlier genesis, however, in a rather 
different form. 

In the late 1980s, computer text games of the Adventure 
typeYou are standing in a small room painted 
white. In front of you is a door. In the ceiling theres a 
trap door to the attic. On the floor lies a bloody axe, and 
so onhad spawned a literary genre that would become 
known as hypertext. While the games were often AgathaChristie-
style mysteries, the sheer novelty of branching interactive 
text engaged many impressive talents; one, 
Robert Pinsky, was to become Americas poet laureate. 

Interactive text was fun, and the serious stuff certainly 
raised intriguing issues concerning the pact between writer 
and reader, but animated graphics swiftly overwhelmed 
text on most personal computer screens. Breaking Strain, 
The Game never made it to diskette. 

A few months earlier, when Byron Preiss had proposed 
the project and invited me to choose among Arthurs stories 
one with the milieu and the maguffin to make a 
science-fiction mystery, I accepted happily. Clarke had 

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been my favorite hard-science fiction writer since long 
before 2001, A Space Odyssey, and the chance to study 
how the master did it line by line, the chance to play in 
the same universeat once both rational and humanistic 
was appealing. In the movie business, they call it homage; 
in science fiction, the terms were to be less polite, but all 
that came later. 

As for mystery material, Breaking Strain leaped out 
at me, a classic life-boat tale of the lone survivor, and sure 
enough, the maguffin was right there on Star Queens 
cargo manifestthat first-edition Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 
which Arthur was later surprised to find was not my invention 
but his own. 

By the time the game died, I had gotten deeply involved. 
I had a couple of hundred pages of script and 
flow charts that laid out everything which could be allowed 
to happen interactively (given personal-computer 
speed and memory of the time) from the moment Star 
Queen docked at Port Hesperus. I had made crude sketches 
of the ship and the station and the mining robots; artist 
Darrell Anderson had already transformed some of these 
into spare, elegant graphics, using programs of his own 
that were ahead of their time. I had a long list of all the 
things the bionic Sparta could do. Spartas tool kit even 
contained a Swiss Army knife for when things got really 
complicated. 

There was one significant lack. As a character, Sparta 
was a hollow shell, a nobody. Or rather an anybodyanybody 
who might sit down at the keyboard to play the 
game, any you who found himself or herself in the air-
lock of Port Hesperus, challenged with this mystery. Any 
you at all, really, but assumed to be young, and of unspecified 
sex. For a computer game that was okay and, 

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VENUS PRIME 


like Darrells graphics, maybe even a little ahead of its 
time. 

A novel, however, depends crucially on such details as 
the age, sex, and history of its protagonist. When Byron 
asked me if Id be interested in transmuting the canceled 
game into the first of a series of novels, I was eager to do 
so, not least because Sparta, conceived as a computerized 
nonentity, weighed heavily upon my storytellers conscience. 


I agonized over whether Sparta was male or female for 
all of about ten minutes. Of course she was a young 
womanthe whole point of not specifying Spartas sex in 
the game was to invite girl players to identify with you. 

And I had no trouble finding the foundations of her 
superhero status. My appreciation of psychologist Howard 
Gardners theory of multiple intelligences is more explicitly 
acknowledged in the second volume of the series, but 
in fact I had earlier taken up the notion that monolithic 
IQ is a shamthat there are several different kinds of intelligence, 
and that they are more or less incommensurable. 
Sparta was someone in whom multiple intelligences 
had been fostered from birth. 

But the perversion of her talents, their bionic enhancement? 
Her mysterious and fragmented past? For that impulse, 
although I suppose I have to acknowledge several 
parts mass-media influence and wishful thinking, I have 
no easy explanation. Im not much for conspiracy theories. 
Like the CIA man in John Le Carres The Honourable 
Schoolboy, when things go spectacularly wrong I tend to 
favor the screw-up theory. 

So in rereading the first chapter of this book, Im a 
little taken aback to see how urgently the need to recover 
an erased identity springs to the fore: Does the word 

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VENUS PRIME 


Sparta mean anything to you? . . . The word Sparta, what 
does that mean to you? Indeed, Spartas search for her 
identity, her determination to recover her history and personal 
integrity, became the plot drivers of the entire series. 

I remember calling up Byron and excitedly reading him 
passages from the first chapter over the phone. Her memory 
starts to come back! She makes a daring escape in a 
helicopter! He was bemused, I think, but he encouraged 
me to carry on. Perhaps he sensed that Sparta had become 
real to me, a lost soul possessed of immense potential 
and that I had internalized her. 

Having decided that Sparta was the victim of a conspiracy, 
I had to decide who was conspiring about what. 
Again the answer came easily. What to do about the aliens 
is a question that figures in a number of Arthurs works; 
hes had fun at the expense of those who would try to 
manipulate hidden knowledge of alien visitation to their 
own ends (Dave, this mission is just too important. . . .). 

So there would be aliens in the workstruly Clarkeian 
aliens, not pallid little humanoidsand there would be 
shadowy characters trying to keep the rest of us in the 
dark (although not a cigarette addict among them). On the 
trail of the aliens, eluding the conspirators, I would begin 
Spartas grand tour on Venus in the inner solar system 
and move outward, through fits and starts, to Earths 
moon, to Mars, to Jupiter and its moons, and finally into 
interstellar space. 

The vehicle for the journey was Arthurs incomparable 
imagination, as expressed in a handful of chosen stories, 
each a favorite of mine for a different reason. After 
Breaking Strain came Maelstrom II, a thrilling adventure 
that uses orbital mechanics to spring a shocking surprise, 
while Hide and Seek is another neat twist on 

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VENUS PRIME 


Newtonian mechanics. A Meeting with Medusa, on the 
other hand, is epic in its scope and majesty, and Jupiter 
V isnt far behind, broaching the theme Arthur later made 
famous in his Rama novels. Finally, The Shining Ones 
is an alien vision of rare beauty and mystery. 

In Arthurs exemplary science fiction, the dilemma or 
resolution of every story depends on some physical principle, 
some fact of nature, but nothing he wrote ever failed 
to give his characters their dueeven as he put them in 
their place, human sparks against the backdrop of an infinite 
cosmos, a cosmos inhabited in unimaginable variety. 
Sparta and her pyrotechnically inclined sidekick Blake are 
intended to embody just such striving, mostly rational, 
mostly optimistic Clarkeian beings. At times desperate or 
discouraged, at times fatally mistaken, at times fragile to 
the point of collapse, Sparta, who started as a bionic cipher, 
ended by being as human as I could write her. In 
Arthurs honor, it was the least I could do. 

Paul Preuss 

Sausalito, California 

March 1999 

312 


Infopak 
Technical 
Blueprints 


On the following pages are computer-
generated diagrams representing some 
of the structures and engineering found 
in Venus Prime: 
Pages 314317: Star Queen Interplanetary freighter2 
perspective views; wireframe and cutaway 
views of crew module; main engines; 
fuel tanks. 
Pages 318320: Port Hesperus Venus-orbiting space 
station2 cut-away perspective views; 
axial components. 
Pages 321323: Mining Robot Mechanism for analysis 
and processing of Venusian surface elements
2 full-figure side views; individual 
mining components. 
Page 324: Visual Feedback Enhancement A geological 
analysis of the Venus surface as 
seen by mining robot. 
Pages 325328: Sparta Neuronal implant schematics 
visual components; auditiory components; 
olfactory components; tactile 
components. 


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