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it gives them supernatural powers." He squinted expectantly. "What do you
think?"
"I did try it." Keth shrugged, carefully silent about Bosun Brong's equally
inexplicable disappearances. "I can't describe the way it made me feel, but we
didn't leave the room. She said nothing about any escape. I don't think she
was expecting any raid, and I've no idea what became of her."
"Another watchman thinks you murdered the girl and somehow smuggled her body
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out." The commandant paused to peer at him. "However, he can't suggest either
motive or method. The whole affair is still an ugly riddle. They've decided
not to hold you, but I imagine they'll keep an eye on you."
When he reached his room, the hammered chalice was back on his desk. Midnight
had passed. Falling wearily into his berth, he dreamed of Nera Nyin. She was
lost on the Darkside ice-barrens, nude and shivering, ill with bloodrot. He
was searching for her, carrying the drug to cure her in the golden chalice,
but he could never find her.
Tired and dull the next day, he hardly heard his tutors. A burst of illogical
hope spurred him early to Kai lit, but of course she wasn't there. Sitting at
late mess with no appetite, he heard a rumor that she had been arrested on
drug charges and deported back to Malili.
Doubting that, he longed for news that never came. A voice-card from Cyra and
his father said their health was the same and their work still in progress.
That final year dragged on. He applied again for space training, and again the
classes had been filled with fleetfolk. The midterm passed. Unexpectedly,
Chelni Vorn called from Terradeck.
She had come home to marry him.
13
Duskday The day after Sunset, marked traditionally by the end of the
harvest festivals and withdrawal underground.
He met her at the gate. Taller than he recalled her, tanned richly brown from
the UV screens, she looked trim and athlet- ically appealing in the bright
blue jumpsuit she had worn on the shuttle.
"Dear Keth!" She kissed him with a vigorous warmth and pushed him back to
inspect him. "You're looking splendid."
Deep emotion edged her husky voice, and her blue-gray eyes dimmed with tears.
Thinking she looked nearly as lovely as Nera Nyin, he felt a surge of his old
affection for her.
She wanted a melonade, and they went to the snack bar. She talked about her
years on Malili. The Zone was a frigid little prison where life was limited
and hard, sometimes dangerous. She had hated it bitterly at first, till she
got a better sense of what it meant.
"A seed!" Her eyes shone now. "I wish you could hear the Admiral tell how it
will grow. Into a tree of life for Kai, bearing rich new harvests for the
Vorns. A wonderful dream, Keth, that we can turn into something wonderful for
us."
Her uncle was now commander of the Zone. She had worked for a time hi his
office and then moved through a dozen different jobs at the spacedeck, at the
import and export branches, in the thorium division, in exploration and
general management. She had dispatched shuttles and ridden ore trams in the
mines and driven a sanicraft to inspect the new perimeter.
"But I need you, Keth." She leaned abruptly across the tiny table. "Come back
with me."
Caught off guard, he fumbled for words and reminded her that he still had half
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a year at the Academy.
"That won't matter." Her smile was brightly hopeful. "You'll find the Zone a
better school than Crater Lake."
Her melonade was finished. She wanted to see the lake, and he took her out
across the topside deck. It was the middle of a moontime in the long summer
season when the polar sun never set. Orange-red and veiled in glowing haze, it
hung low in the north, tiny-seeming beneath Malili's vast narrow crescent.
Beyond a single tiny sail, its light lay splashed like blood on the bright
blue water and made yellow fire of the long plume of dust rising from a soil
mill below the dam.
"A splendid view." She leaned across the rail to drink it in before she turned
back to him. "I'll always love Kai hard and bare as it is but we won't have to
mill stone to make soil for Malili."
Delaying what he saw he would have to say, he objected that Malili offered
graver problems than merely grinding soil.
"We'll solve them all," she promised. "The new perimeter will triple the size
of the Zone. The UV and laser screens are already up, the neutron blasting
done. We're just waiting now to make sure the whole area is really sterile."
Eagerness lit her ray-darkened face.
"The Admiral is planning to make the opening a special event. The Navarch is
coming out for it on the Vorn Fortune our new flagship. I've made
reservations for us, but the shuttles won't be taking off till Duskday. We'll
have the rest of the sun-time here."
She wanted to open her uncle's lakeshore lodge. Pointing, she tried to show it
to him. He found the green point where it stood, jutting out from the black
crater wall, but the building itself was too far for him to see. They could
sail the lake and lounge in the gardens, she said, enjoying the finest season
of Kai.
"I've meant for us to marry ever since we were swabbers together at
Greenpeak." She had turned from the rail to him, quietly ardent, eyes dark
with emotion. "I know you've always been fond of me . . ."
She had seen his face, and her voice began to falter.
"I I do love you, Chel." His own voice shook. "But I can't marry you."
"Are you still crazy?" A sudden scorn turned her pale beneath the tan. "About
the humanoids?"
He couldn't speak of the monopole.
"They killed your father, Chel. I hope to help my own father keep them off our
planet."
"You are insane." She turned away for a moment toward the lake, her blunt chin
quivering. "But I've come a long way to see you, Keth." She looked back at
him. "We'll never know about my father. We've our own lives to live. Listen to
me, please."
Wrenched with pity, he could only nod.
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"You've met Zelyk. My fat cousin. A fleet commodore now he'll be commanding
the Fortune. He wants to marry me. I I despise him, Keth. An egotistical
bastard. Both my aunts have always wanted us to marry, to hold the fleet
together. That's half the reason I went out to the Zone. To get away from his
slobbery sort of love."
Her urgent fingers clutched his arm.
"The Admiral likes you, Keth. He encouraged me to come, and he wants us on
Malili-he doesn't care if we make my aunts unhappy." Her wet eyes searched his
face again, and her voice began to break. "I've always loved you, Keth. But
the family ... the family. . . ."
She choked and looked away.
"I guess-guess I'll have to tell you, Chel." His own voice trembled. "I met a
Leleyo girl. A student here. I fell in love-"
"With Nyin?" Her hand jerked off his arm. "The spy?"
"If she was a spy." He shrugged. "I talked to her about the Zone. She-her
people don't want us on their world. Killing her sort of life so we can move
hi "
"That jungle slut!" Her contempt exploded. "Baiting every man she meets with
her stinking nakedness. My uncle told me how she got past him and duped the
Academy and hoodwinked the shipwatch and finally escaped. I hope hope you
enjoyed her!"
His own anger held him silent.
"You utter idiot!" Straight and defiant in the trim blue jumpsuit, she stepped
away from him, arms folded, so lovely hi her wrath, and yet so deeply hurt,
that he longed to take her hi his arms.
"Chel," he whispered. "Chel. . ."
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