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question must wait its turn. Troxell would soon find a course of action. They'd better be gone before
then.
Brodersen's company scrambled up the ladder and into the ship, followed by him. He made for the
nearest intercom unit. "Su, get us the hell on our way," he rasped.
Valves closed. The engine awoke. At low acceleration, Chinook withdrew from the machinery
around her and regained open space.
Fingers plucked Brodersen's sleeve. He looked about and saw von Moltke. "If you please, Mr.
Captain," she said with a hoarse accent, "I hear your gunner is a casualty. I hear too your armament is
like on Emissary."
"Yes," he said, stupid in his exhaustion, "yes, it is."
"I was a gunner in Emissary," she reminded him. "I can check details by your engineers. Let me shoot
out the transmission dishes on the Wheel and the ship too. Then they cannot tell Earth about us." As he
hesitated: "I doubt they hail called, but they will soon unless we prevent it. If we present, no harm to
them. They must sit quiet till somebody worries and sends a speedster to check. Meanwhile, however,
you are carrying out what plan you hail. Correct?"
"All right," he said, "I authorize. Coordinate it with Phil, Chief Engineer Weisenberg, that is, and with
our linker, Granville," while he longed for nothing but Caitlin.
Minutes later, a slicing energy beam made the San Geronimo Wheel mute. It did no further damage;
but a missile left Emissary a whirl of fragments. That hurt.
Two more felonies, Brodersen thought. We'd better build us a damn good case for deserving an
executive pardon.
Never mind now. The immediate objective is just to survive.
No. Above and before that, sleep. He barely managed to put affairs temporarily in order and start
the ship on a course deemed proper before he stumbled to bed.
Sergei had died. Caitlin held Brodersen close.
XX
Again at an earth gravity, Chinook made for the T machine. On the route prescribed, the trip would
take six Earth days.
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"Our best bet is to conform for the time being, while we try to work out a strategy," Brodersen had
explained. "Else they'll come after us, and watchship has more legs than we do. We for sure can't outrun
a tracker missile."
Von Moltke had probably saved him and his following from that, his mind added. News of his assualt
would have provided the perfect excuse to order his vessel blow out of existence. That would not by
itself relieve Quick and company of the embarrassment created by the Emissary travelers left behind, not
to mention whatever questions were occurring to Troxell's outfit; but presumably they could cope. They
would certainly try to cope, and even failure on their part might prove lethal.
As was, while Chinook remained at large, bearing the possibility of exposing the whole affair,
Langendijk's faction should be safe from everything worse than continued imprisonment. Indeed, from a
tactical viewpoint it was good that Brodersen had not succeeded in releasing them. Now the cause
of-liberty-did not have all its eggs in one highly breakable basket. Half by chance, his operation had
worked well.
No. It didn't. Men are hurt, men are dead. The agents among them are bad enough. I can live with
that-their fighting us was almost criminally reckless; maybe being penned up for weeks drove them a little
crazy-but Sergei is dead, my own man, my friend.
He had awakened beside Caitlin, for a moment conscious only of her. Then the memory rolled over
him. His shuddering breath roused her, to embrace and murmur to him for a long while. "It's a war we're
in, Daniel, my darling, and men have ever fallen in war. Yours is just, a strife like what they waged against
tyrants and foreign overlords again and again on Earth, and us today the happier for it. I knew Sergei too,
aye, better than I've told you. He joyed in the universe; but if he must leave it, proud would he be that this
was why." Thus did she slowly give him back his heart, until he could rise and go about his work.
Later, though, entering their quarters to fetch something, he found her seated silent, the marks of
crying upon her. When he asked what the matter was, she said in a near whisper that she was making a
song and wished to be alone.
She was absent, on duty, when he met with Joelle Ky, Carlos Rueda Suarez, and the nonhuman.
Presently he would arrange a general gathering at which his entire band could hear the tale of Emissary.
However, he must not delay getting a skeleton of the facts for himself, to aid him in planning, and this was
most rapidly done when a minimum of people were on hand. Despite his gratitude to Frieda von Moltke,
he did not invite her, for their lack of acquaintance might slow down the proceedings. Carlos was a
cousin of Antonia, Brodersen's first wife. Though he was a child when she died and had not often met his
in-law, they shared considerable background. Brodersen had first encountered Joelle on business
nineteen Earth-years ago; since moving to Demeter, he'd looked her up whenever he revisited the mother
planet, and for the past decade- Never certain exactly how he felt about her, she being unlike any other
woman ever in his life, he was shocked anew when she entered the office. They had birthdays within a
month of each other, but suddenly she was fifty-eight, long gone in a place whose strangeness must have
helped grizzle the locks he remembered as blue-sheening black, line the brow he remembered as serene,
thin the flesh to a cloak tightly drawn over bones which remained as exquisite as before.
He bumbled to his feet. "belle," he said out of a lumpy larynx, "hello. It's wonderful having you here."
She smiled. That and her voice hadn't changed either; both were pleasing and a little remote, like
compositions by Brancusi or Delius. "Thank you for everything, Dan. I'm so eager to learn precisely what
'everything' means-certainly an enormous lot -- " They clasped four hands and might have kissed, but
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Rueda came through the door and, in Peruvian style, hugged the captain.
"Daniel, Daniel, how magnificent!" His Spanish almost warbled. "Our rescuer, our warrior -I've been
talking to some of your crew- Do you know, when I was a boy I idolized you. And I was right. By God,
but you are a man!"
Stepping back, he reassumed proper aristocratic dignity. Brodersen studied him for a second. A
ghost of Toni lingered in Rueda's straight-lined, short-nosed countenance and hazel eyes. Of medium
height, he had laid a small paunch onto his slimness while he was away, and Brodersen understood how
he must resent that trace of early held: doubtless worse than being left with a mere brown fringe of hair.
At least his mustache was the same.
Then the nonhuman arrived and overwhelmed all other impressions. The chances were that he (she?
it?) had no such intention, Brodersen decided. If anything, the attitude of the creature looked diffident,
though how could you tell? But the sight-he'd need practice before he made complete sense of those
contours-the gait-the smell that was like a seashore, only not really- "May I give you a formal
introduction to Fidelio?" Rueda said, smiling. The alien extended the lower right arm. Brodersen shook
hands. He'd done the same with a tame gibbon once, in Asia during his PC hitch, and been startled; the
ape's thumb was laid out wrong and had no ball to it. Fideio's clasp made the gibbon's brotherlike.
Brodersen met the eyes, which resembled the eyes of no animal on Earth or Demeter, and forgot
about handshakes. It roared in him: This is an intelligent nonhuman being. This is, this is. I'm living the
dream that always was in me.
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