In timeless beauty,
The golden rings of Saturn
Witness the battle.
When he awoke, Karil found himself in zero-gee. The howl and sting of the sandstorm had been replaced by the distant throb of machinery and the cool caress of conditioned air. Terry was curled about him, holding his head in her lap as she drifted in the semi-foetal position of relaxed weightlessness.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I think so. Where are we?"
"We're in an airlock in Loading Bay Four. I never realized till now what a handy prison-cell an airlock makes. From the sound of things, they've been loading supplies aboard a shuttle through the next lock."
Karil, ignoring his headache, examined the chamber. The interior controls had been disconnected, and they were quite efficiently trapped.
"I can't believe how they've been waltzing around here undetected."
"It's not so amazing, Karil. Nova Terra's meant to house ten million people eventually, and except for Titan City in the other cylinder, it's practically empty. And all his men have regulation uniforms and passes. There's no way to know who was working for Titan and who for him, personally."
"We've got to find a way..." He heard the hiss of leaking air.
"Oh, Karil!"
He rushed to the pressure controls, tried vainly to stop the leak. He felt weak and dizzy, began to gasp.
"It's no use, Karil."
Terry's hand was on his shoulder. He turned to her, and they slipped into unconsciousness in each other’s arms.
***
Karil drifted back up into consciousness. When his vision cleared, he saw al-Zubair across the lock. He was dressed for space, and guard drifted beside him, a needle-gun in his steady hand.
"They knocked us out so we couldn't rush the hatch as they entered," Terry said.
"I couldn't leave without one last look at you," al-Zubair said. "You don't look that formidable, but you certainly put a crimp in my plans."
"I had help."
"I know that. I haven't had a chance to attend to the others, since they didn’t walk so obligingly into my hands. Your friend Shagrug, whom I should have killed a long time ago. That was a big mistake. And Loris. She did kill my mother, after all."
"Khadijha?"
"Yes. A cast-off concubine. Migrated to the Galilean with nothing, made a fortune in the mining-towns, and built an empire for her only son. And we very nearly created an outer-world dynasty that could have rivalled the power of High Africa, where we came from."
"Are you telling me," Terry said, "that you and Karil are half-brothers?"
"I suppose we are."
"I guess Progeny was right about the family structure."
"Well, thanks to you, Karil, I have to go crawling to our father with my hat in my hands. And an antimatter-powered warship loaded with annihilation-weaponry. Incidentally, I'm still the only one who knows how it works. Those ships you seized are useless."
"Why do this?" Karil wanted to know. "With a brilliant discovery like that, you could make a fortune in the outer worlds that..."
"You don't understand at all, do you? Solar-sail freight will make you a fortune, despite the slow speed, because it's virtually free transport. The Jovian atmosphere will make you a fortune, despite the difficulty of the mining process, because helium is such a versatile fuel. Antimatter will get you to Earth in a few days, but almost no-one could afford to pay for passage or to buy the goods shipped, because the fuel is so expensive to produce. A ship that fast, which costs so much to run, can only be good for one thing."
"War."
"Precisely. And the High Companies are the only market that could afford to buy them. I may be returning home like a beggar, but I will be running a number of High Companies by the time I have a dynasty to pass them on to."
Karil said nothing. There didn't seem much to say. Sooner or later, these two would try to kill them and leave, and he must make his move then. It was better to be burned down in action than to be asphyxiated slowly. He only wished he could save Terry somehow.
"You've got no reason to kill Terry," he said. "You can take your revenge on me but let her go. If you do that, I won't give you any trouble."
"Karil..." Terry began, but she was cut off by al-Zubair’s laugh.
"I'm almost tempted to do that, Ali Karil, but I'm afraid you're in no position to give me trouble if you wanted to. Besides, I have every reason to eliminate her. She's the only person in Kelley's employ who knows I'm still here, instead of halfway to Earth by now, as Shagrug put it."
"Take us with you," Terry suggested, "as hostages."
"I don't intend to find myself in that desperate a situation. Besides, you've both proved to be very difficult to hold onto. Why should I give myself unnecessary headaches?"
"And besides that," Karil said, "you'd miss your revenge."
"What a passionate fellow you are! I assure you, there's no thought of revenge. It's a useless passion, a fatal flaw, like mercy. As a student of history, Ali Karil, you must see that one who chooses to seek power can't afford the luxury of either."
"Why? Why seek power? You talk about unnecessary headaches. Do you think the chairmen of the High Companies have fewer headaches than you?"
"Hardly, but that's a sacrifice I'll have to make."
A guard appeared behind him. "The message has arrived, Sharif."
Al-Zubair turned, and a hologram flickered into view behind him. Karil recognized most of the heads of the High Companies, including the Sultan of High Africa, his father.
"We are not pleased, al-Zubair, about the loss of the fleet," the Sultan said, "but we are glad to hear that you remain in sole possession of the fuel-process. We await your arrival in a few days with the Anvil. And as for the boy, dispose of him immediately."
The image faded.
"I suppose he was smarter than the rest of us," al-Zubair said. "He sent his special assassins to capture you on Mars, with orders to kill you if necessary, against my wishes. I thought we might use you to help us in the Atalanta matter, and I convinced him not to try to kill you again, when his plan failed. That was hubris on my part."
There was a clanging on the hatch behind him. The guard replied with the butt of his laser and the hatch opened. "Well, I see it's time to lift off. I want to thank you, Ali Karil, for a valuable lesson. I could have had Atalanta and everybody aboard destroyed the instant I found her nosing about Tethys, and it would have been just another case of a free-trader gone missing in space. But I was suspicious, and that warped my judgement. Shagrug's programming was so ingenious, I had to know what he was hiding in that log of his. Besides, since Mjolnir was due for a test-voyage to Jupiter, I thought we might dump the ship in Jupiter orbit and draw attention away from Saturn. Khadijha arranged for her man, Ivan, to discover the ship and be in on the investigation.
"I was suspicious of you, too, a friend of Kelley's, and when I learned you were on Mars, I smelled conspiracy and set up one of my own. Perhaps you could crack her log for me. At the very least, I could certainly keep you under tighter surveillance in the Galilean than I could on Mars. Khadijha said I was making a mistake, that you were going to succeed all too well, and the entire story would come out, so she arranged for the news-leak that would force Mitsu to take over and had Ivan and his team pick up the lot of you, including the ship, so we could make everyone disappear completely, like I should have done in the first place.
"And then, when you and Loris came into my hands, I decided to use you, instead of killing you outright. To tell you the truth, Ivan was so anxious to kill you that I became suspicious of him. I should have realized that his type is always loyal to the highest bidder. So that's three times I could have saved myself a world of trouble by simply killing everyone immediately, but didn't, and I lost an entire spacefleet because of it. I assure you, Ali Karil, I will remember this when I come into power in the High Companies.
"You know, I almost envy you, dying together in the flush of youth and love. I'll remember you when I'm an old man, surrounded by flatterers and enemies, including most of our mutual family, I suppose." He turned to the guard. "You know what to do."
Suddenly he was through the hatch and out of sight. Karil upended, thrust his feet against the bulkhead, and launched himself toward the guard. But the latter was too fast for him. He ducked quickly through the opening and the hatch shut behind him. Karil collided painfully with steel and clutched at the handrail before he could rebound.
He hung there for a moment, looking stupidly at the hatch before him. He wasted a few minutes punching at frozen buttons on the control panel, but soon gave up.
Terry grasped his ankle, crawled up his body, and they embraced again.
"I love you, Karil."
"I love you too, Terry. I'm sorry about this."
"I'm not. I'm just sorry for those who are losing us."
The bulkhead began to vibrate and there was a clang as al-Zubair's shuttle lifted off. They hung together, locked in embrace, listening for the hiss of decompression. Moments passed in silence.
"He's changed his mind," Karil said. "Or it didn't work."
But the delay had only been to give the shuttle time to move out of danger. There was a sharp report as the bolts were blown and the outer hatch careened discus-like into space. The air in the chamber rushed out into vacuum.
"Exhale!"
Karil had only enough time to shout the word before there was no air to carry his voice. But Terry had already emptied her lungs, knowing as well as he that internal pressure would rupture their lungs, but there was enough oxygen in their bloodstream to keep their brains functioning for a few precious minutes.
The suction of the blast ripped at them, and Karil felt Terry being torn away from him. His hand whipped out and his fingers closed on nothing, missing her wrist. He screamed silently, as in a dream. Suddenly she was gone, sucked out through the gaping hole behind them.
Her hand closed over the outer rail, stopping her fall at the edge of nothingness. But Karil had lost his grip and was being swept past her. As he tumbled through the hatchway, he felt her grip upon him, stopping him, and he clutched at her.
The lock was evacuated and there was no more air-pressure to pull them away. They clung there, feeling their free-fall clothing stiffen automatically to protect their bodies. The pain in Karil's eyes and ears was excruciating. It felt like a steel band tightening about his head. His pulse thundered in his ears. His lungs ached for breath.
He glanced up at the colossal structure to which they clung like insects. The nearest functioning lock was many handholds away. It might as well be a thousand kilometres, for there could not be more than a few seconds of consciousness left to them. Karil's thoughts were already becoming hard to focus in his oxygen-starved brain, and the pain had passed excruciating into exquisite.
He must be hallucinating as well, for he distinctly felt both of Terry's hands reaching down to touch him. He glanced up with bloodied eyesight and saw her hanging by her hair, its strands wrapped like clutching fingers about the torn bolts at the edge of the opening. Blood was pouring from her nostrils, freezing on her face. Her eyes bulged and her features were twisted in agony.
She would be found there sometime later by the crew sent to investigate the malfunctioning lock. Perhaps Karil would be drifting just offside. Perhaps Jay and Kelley would bury them together.
Terry slipped into unconsciousness, her grip loosened, and Karil fell away, reaching out to her with freezing, senseless hands, as his anoxia-befogged brain perceived a great shadow falling over them.
He tumbled slightly as he drifted outward and his failing vision swept across the stars to see the Angel of Death coming toward him out of the sun, wings outstretched across the cosmos and blacking out the stars, arms reaching out for him. He smiled hideously and opened his arms as well, felt the icy grip of the Angel's hands upon him.
Karil's last thought as he slipped into unconsciousness was the realization that this was not the Angel of Death after all. It was only Loris, in a p-suit, diving toward him out of Atalanta's winged silhouette.
***
Later, Karil would remember moments of semi-consciousness, when figures moved as in a dream about him. He would recall being strapped to the centrifuge of Isfahan's cat-box to prevent the blood that poured from his nostrils from filling his lungs, while ministering angels hovered about. He heard the angels' voices as if from a distance and thought he recognized the three women he loved most--Terry, Loris, and Atalanta.
"He's coming around," someone said.
He saw faces white and brown, their features indistinct. He saw Terry's life-saving tresses writhing Medusa-like, their tendrils caressing Loris' dark cheek. Once he had seen an eclipse, when the sun had taken the moon into its coronal arms.
"You're a hard man to kill," Loris said.
"High praise from the Angel of Death," Karil mumbled.
"What?"
"I thought you were the Angel of Death coming for me."
"She's an angel, all right," Terry said.
"Terry?"
"Yes, Karil. I'm here. She dragged me in with you."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Karil. A little bloodied about the face, like yourself, but I'm not complaining."
Karil extended a trembling hand and touched her cheek. She clasped his hand and kissed it. With his other hand he reached out for Loris and crushed them both to his chest, shaking like a leaf in his restraints.
"Atty?" he said.
"I'm here, Karil."
"I wish I could hug you too." He reached out and placed his hand against the bulkhead. He could feel it vibrate beneath his fingers.
"I'm so glad we reached you in time," the ship's voice purred. "It's fortunate you'd not drifted far apart, or we could not have saved you both. Terry seems to have survived the ordeal quite well."
"It takes more than a little vacuum to kill a Martian," Terry said. "I was training in low pressure as soon as I could walk. But it wouldn't have done either of us any good if we'd been swept out of the lock. We were saved by a hair."
"Absalom in reverse," Karil said.
"Who the hell is Absalom?" a voice demanded.
"Shag! Where are you?"
"Where else? On the bridge. I'm just flying the ship by myself while you lie around with the women, that's all."
"I thought we were berthed."
"If we were berthed, you'd be in the hospital now, where Atty wanted to take you. We're just passing Mimas."
"You're after al-Zubair! Can you catch him?"
"We can if you get your ass up here where it belongs."
"Leave him alone, for Christ sake," Loris said. "The man just swallowed enough vacuum to kill a horse."
"Have we got a fix on him?" Karil asked, reaching for his straps.
"Well, we lost him saving your useless ass," Shag replied. "But he was heading for Saturn and there's only one place he could hide out there."
"In the ring-plane," Karil said.
Loris tried to push him back into his couch, but she was in free-fall and only succeeded in thrusting herself away. "Atty, will you tell this boy to lie down?"
"Loris is right, Karil," Atalanta crooned. "Your body has received a severe shock and you must rest."
Karil swung out from under Terry and dove toward the door. "I feel fine, Atty."
Loris and Terry swung after him. "That's because you're full of pain-killers, like I am," Terry said. "Otherwise, you'd still be in agony."
Karil dove down the passageway toward the bridge. Isfahan passed him in mid-tumble and miaowed a greeting.
"Izzy! Long time no see." He flew through the hatch into the bridge, did a hand-press flip off the ceiling, and popped down the astrogator's well.
"Welcome home, Stillborn. Can I have some of those pain-killers?"
Saturn filled the viewport, tilting swiftly toward them. Karil glanced at its golden sunlit beauty only momentarily and bent to study the trajectory on the screen.
"Shag," he said after a while, "only you would be crazy enough to come up with a scheme like this."
"I'm glad you agree," Atty said. "It is obviously out of the question."
"That's not your decision," Shagrug told her. "It's Karil's."
"That's right," Karil said. "And it's not out of the question." He laughed. "It's just an insane risk."
"Karil, you know as well as I that the Cassini Division is not a true gap in the ring-structure. It is in fact filled with debris and the appearance of a gap is merely the result of an optical depth ranging over .07 to .10 contrasting with that of .4 in the A-Ring."
"But there are true gaps at the edges, Atty. The vacancy we're going through is 170 kilometres wide. There's plenty of room."
"Plenty is a relative term, Karil, as is vacancy. The number of particles per cubic meter is less than in the rings, but much greater than normal space. We are virtually assured of being penetrated by ring-material."
"Will you two shut up? Jesus Christ."
"We can stand a few micro-penetrations, Atty. We're bound to strike a few dust-grains, sure, but our chances of striking a pebble and blowing ourselves to kingdom come are pretty slim. Hell, Atty, human beings take risks that big every day."
"It would be much safer to alter trajectory so as to miss the ring-system entirely."
"But we'd be more likely to be detected by al-Zubair," Karil replied, as he checked his figures, "and we'd lose the element of surprise. He's parked his ship in the rings for the same reason--she's hard to detect. But when he leaves, his departure will create eddies that you can easily spot."
"The risk," Atalanta said, "is unacceptable."
"It is to you," Shagrug said. "That's why we're on manual override. What's unacceptable to me is to let al-Zubair get away with the Brazen Anvil. A ship like that in the hands of the High Companies? Not a chance! Right, Karil?"
"That's right. Atty, why do you suppose I'm still alive?"
"I don't believe I understand the relevance of your question, Karil. You are still alive because I detected you as I was approaching Nova Terra, because Shagrug is the best pilot in the system, and because Loris..."
"No, I'm still alive because my task isn't finished. And my task is to stop al-Zubair."
"Karil, I was speaking in terms of efficient causes, not final. I do not believe that Aristotelian metaphysics is the proper..."
"All right, cut it out, both of you. Can we do it, Stillborn? Yes or no."
"We can do it. Just keep your eye on the screen and your finger on the trigger. Atty, you keep an Argus-eye out for the Anvil."
"Loris," Shagrug said, "you and Terry are on hole-patrol. Slap a patch over any leaks that appear. Atty will point them out to you. Once we spot that ship, though, forget about the holes and dive for restraint. We'll have to do some fancy accelerating."
"Aye aye, Captain, Sir," Loris grumbled. "Come on, Terry, we've been given women’s work--patching and mending--while the boys play Cops and Robbers on the bridge." They retired aft to prepare their materials.
"You're both passengers," Shagrug called back. "You'll do as you're told. Damn! How can you stand working with that woman, Karil?"
"Funny, she asked me the same question about you once."
"Really?" Shagrug guffawed.
"Anyway, I'm sure she attracts a better class of women than you do."
"Yeah, well, that's probably true."
From Titan, the rings had seemed to be solid and opaque, but as the quarter-million-kilometre system spread out before them, they thinned to rice-paper translucency, and then the portion directly in their path vanished and the stars shone through undimmed. In the distance, they could see the rings appear to coalesce out of nothing, become solid, and curve around Saturn's huge limb.
But however invisible, a vast, thin layer of ice and dirt ranging from dust-motes to icebergs lay swirling and eddying below. If Atalanta should plunge through that layer like a stone through the scum-stilled surface of a pond, she would be blasted to ring-material herself by the high-velocity impact of millions of particles.
In some complex fashion still not fully understood, the shepherd-moons' gravitational fingers stirred up tiny ribbons of relatively open space between the rings, where the orbiting particles were fewer and farther between. To Atalanta's sensors, these were visible, and she displayed them on the screen. Patterns of numbers told Karil where to aim. He flashed instructions to Shagrug and the pilot's delicate touch released a bit of vernier-gas here, a bit there, nudged the plummeting ship a degree this way, a degree that.
Suddenly, anticlimactically, they were through. Automatic claxons began to sound. "We have received minor puncture damage," Atty reported. "We are losing pressure in the captain's cabin and the starboard hold. No major damage has been sustained."
"Just tell the girls where to slap those patches," Shagrug said. "And don't distract us till you spot the Anvil."
There were gold and blue clouds below them now as far as the eye could see. Shafts of sunlight vanished into Saturn's depths. Vast thunderheads roiled and billowed, parted to reveal the darkness below, and closed again. Toward the horizon, impossibly distant and barely curved, one could see the clouds collecting into parallel bands as they were swept with incredible speed about the huge world's circumference. Above them, the rings were enormous arches spanning the cosmos, tissue-paper thin and fragile in appearance, with the stars shining through.
"There it is," Atalanta said.
Karil saw it too, as it vanished around the limb of Saturn, or rather, he saw its shadow, and the wake of its emissions, creeping across the bright B-ring as it rose above the ring-plane preparatory to Saturn-escape, powered by its fusion auxilliaries. Once it had cleared the debris about the rings, it would fire its antimatter drivers and not another ship in existence could hope to catch it.
"We might have a chance," Shagrug said. "They'll be concentrating on the direction of motion, trying not to run into any icebergs. If we can come at them out of Saturn, they may not be able to detect us against its interference. We can cut across their stern and try to disable their drivers."
"I'll go you one better," Karil said. "Let me see if I can time our attack for sunrise." His hands flew over the keyboard, and in a moment the course was computed.
"Get into restraint, Girls," Shagrug shouted. In a moment, Loris' voice came back:
"Okay. All secure."
Shagrug yawed with the verniers and fired the drivers. Somewhere, Isfahan yowled plaintively as acceleration hit. Saturn began to tilt away in the port as they swung into a new orbit. The sun's image slid into the stern-monitor screen and held there. Shagrug kept his eye on the board as he nudged the ship into the proper orbital velocity.
"Beautiful," Karil said finally.
According to calculations, Atalanta would come sweeping around Saturn's limb just as the sun flashed into view, blinding the Brazen Anvil's sensors and hiding the free-trader's emissions as she accelerated to the attack. If they could fuse the Anvil's drivers, she would be crippled, a prisoner of Saturn's gravity.
Shagrug pulled down the target-sight and fitted it to his head. "Maybe we should all be wearing p-suits," he said, "in case they get in a few shots. You wanna get my suit out for me while I check these systems?"
In the screen, Karil saw the lock iris open behind Shagrug's head. It looked amusingly like a halo. He unstrapped and kicked up the well, drifted through the lock and down the passageway. Loris and Terry met him at the locker.
"We heard," Terry said. They scrambled into their suits.
"You two get back into restraint," Karil said. "We don’t want you bouncing around loose."
He gathered up Shagrug's suit and kicked off toward the bridge. As he approached the lock, it suddenly shut in his face.
"What's wrong, Atty?"
"I'm not responsible, Karil. Shag has put all systems on manual for the time being."
"Shag, what the hell are you doing?"
"Karil, I want you to take the women and abandon ship."
Loris and Terry came up behind him, their helmets in their hands. "What's he up to now?" Loris asked.
"What the hell's the matter with you, Shag?" Karil demanded. "Are you crazy?"
"No sense in everybody risking his life, Stillborn. Now get out of here."
"Shag, you don't have a p-suit."
"What good would it be? The weapons systems are right under my ass. And if they hit the drivers, we'll be vaporized. You've already computed the course and I don't need you. When we go into acceleration, you'll start bleeding all over my bridge. You'll be unconscious a few minutes later and no use to me anyhow. Loris, will you take these two kids and your goddamn cat off my ship?"
They heard the hiss of decompression, felt the lowered pressure on their faces, and realized that Shagrug was forcing them into the Hum Bug.
"Izz-zie!" Loris called. "Hey, Meat Loaf, where are you?" The cat flew into her arms.
"Shagrug?" Terry said.
"What is it, Kid?"
"I never thanked you for saving my life, and Karil's.”
"I never thanked you for saving mine, either. Name one after me if I don't come back, will you?"
"I'm not going to call any child of mine Shagrug. What's your real name?"
"Forget it. The offer is withdrawn. Now get your little Martian ass out of here."
They climbed up into the Hum Bug, saw its panels wink on as they entered and strapped themselves in. "Hold on, I've got a present for you," said Shagrug’s voice. Figures flashed across the screen with incredible speed.
"What's that?" Terry asked.
"That's the information your Professor wants," Shagrug's voice said. "Kind of forgot, what with the rescuing and stuff."
"Thank you, Shag."
"Don't mention it, Kid."
"Move over, Lor," said Karil.
"But..."
"I'm still a member of the crew. Besides, you know I can pilot a small ship just as well as you can pilot a big one."
Loris nodded and moved, letting Karil strap in at the helm.
There was a clang and a hiss as the lock released and Atalanta fell away beneath them, seeming to dive into the clouds below.
"Her mass has changed, now," Karil said. "Atty, you might have to re-calculate."
"I shut off her voders," Shagrug said. "Can't stand her goddamn nagging all the time. Now, we're going into radio-silence. I'll come back and pick you up later."
For a moment the Hum Bug drifted, a lonely speck of wrack in the great whirlpool of the Saturn system, and then it tilted and puffed away on a long curve toward the bright arc of the rings. It fell into the current and vanished into the dust and snow. Inside, Karil opened up the Hum Bug's ears and set them hunting across all channels. For a time, there was only the rumble of Saturn and the background hiss of the rings, and then there came a throbbing, as of a great heart.
The Brazen Anvil appeared on the screen. Its silhouette against the stars emerged from behind the limb of Saturn. Sunlight fell upon it and the ship blazed in black and white, tilting above the ring-plane as it rounded toward them, its shadow spreading across the bright B-ring beyond. Karil glanced up at the port, but the ship was still invisible to the naked eye.
Suddenly there was a bright new star in the sky as Atalanta's drivers blazed. She streaked up out of the rings like a comet. They watched the battle from their Ring-side seat. In the port, the curve of Saturn and a section of the rings gave no hint of the Lilliputian drama taking place, but on the screen, greatly magnified and foreshortened by the lenses, the great ship swung toward them, growing ever larger and more menacing, and beside it, Atalanta grew ever smaller and more vulnerable looking in a slow-motion ballet accompanied by the rumble and hiss of the system about them.
With a burst of static, the thrust-nozzle system at the warship's stern erupted into a flickering ball of light. It blazed like a minor sun, automatically darkening the Hum Bug's viewport. Karil gasped in surprise, and found himself cheering, embracing Loris, pounding the instrument panel with his fist. Then, just as suddenly, his laughter died in his throat, cut off by Terry's scream. Shadow fell over his face as the port was darkened a second time.
When it had cleared, he saw the Anvil still accelerating toward them, its once sleek lines now grotesquely misshapen, the last hundred meters of its port side a mass of twisted, blackened metal, yet one of its drivers still firing. It was rising swiftly to pass above them, fighting Saturn's pull, moving off into space and escape.
The meteor-shower that had been Atalanta streaked across the black sky beyond.
For a moment, Karil's mind was unable to grasp the truth. His eyes still searched for the free-trader's familiar form. The realization came, choking his breath, filling his eyes with tears. Terry sobbed behind him.
The Brazen Anvil continued to grow. Details of its superstructure became sharp and clear in the sunlight, a pattern of deep black and skeletal white. Gunports marched down its flanks; the forward port blazed like a scowling mouth across its bow. They could read the name: Khalkeos Akmon.
Karil pressed a sensor on the helm. There was a whir and a click as the Hum Bug's tiny lasers emerged from its bow. The Anvil was becoming enormous now, visible without magnification. It swept toward them slowly and menacingly, like something reptilian, its emissions hissing in their ears.
Karil's hands darted over the controls. His face was expressionless. He could hear the pounding of his blood in his temples, Loris' and Terry’s hushed breathing, Isfahan's thunderous purr. No one spoke.
Karil's hand moved.
Suddenly acceleration crushed them in their couches and Isfahan wailed in protest. The Hum Bug shot up out of the ring-plane, accelerating swiftly, rising like a vengeful ghost in the great cruiser's path. His eyes always on the ship, now seeming to tilt down toward them as the rings fell away beneath, Karil reached out and touched a sensor. The signal-hunter slid across the spectrum of crackle and hiss until they could hear excited voices, the sound of claxons and sirens, now and then a human scream.
The voice of al-Zubair, barking orders, made Karil's flesh crawl.
"Captain!" Karil shouted.
"Who speaks? Identify yourself. What deck? Speak up, man! What damage?"
"Serious damage, Captain. Not on board. Out here." Karil's voice was like ice. His hand hovered over the trigger.
The Anvil seemed to be diving into them, spreading out, tilting down, blotting out the stars. In the sunlight it seemed to burn with a white heat. Karil could see the shadow of the Hum Bug flash across its bow. He could see directly into the bridge, where uniformed figures were strapped into the controls. His eyes narrowed on a figure in black, surrounded by view-screens, flanked by computer panels.
"Who is this? Where are you?"
"Outside the port," Karil said. "It's me. The ghost of Ali Karil." His finger stabbed the trigger as the great ship slid beneath them. Al-Zubair's head snapped up. His eyes met Karil's and an expression of utter disbelief appeared on his face as twin-laser beams flashed through the port, through his body, and into the computers behind him. The bridge erupted in a ball of fire. A series of explosions raced back down the ship's flank as it passed beneath them, the Hum Bug leaping forward and racing the length of the ship into the sky behind it to avoid the blast-debris. The Brazen Anvil rolled over like a sounding whale and slid sideways into Saturn's rings. More explosions followed, and a ripple spread outwards through the ring plane as the ship vanished from sight.
The Hum Bug sped away, Karil tapping the keyboard in search of Nova Terra's position; his expression was dull, his movements automatic.
"What was it you said," Loris asked, "about destroying a shipload of people for revenge?" The comment made Karil smile in spite of himself.
A light flickered wildly on the instrument panel before him; puzzled, he tapped the indicated key.
"Karil?" said Atalanta's voice. "Is that you?"
***
Atalanta sat on a dune overlooking the Caribbean, sheltering her human beings beneath her wing. Anais Nin's former body, repaired and refitted with Atty's systems and higher functions, glinted in the sun. The sea and the sky were a blue such as only Earth and Neptune could boast of. Isfahan crept along the beach, tail twitching, as seagulls eyed him cautiously. He pressed himself flat against the sand, wriggled his hindquarters for a moment, and pounced upon the place where the birds had been a moment before. They scolded him from the air as he darted in frustrated circles, twitching his whiskers and rattling his jaws at them.
"I don't know how often I'll be seeing you two, now that the Sixth Day Project is finished," Terry said. "The last of the animals and embryos were shipped off yesterday."
"You're going back to Mars now?" Karil asked.
"Yes, I'll be going home. If the amnesty discussions are successful, a lot of Martians will be doing that. You should have seen the faces around the High Company table when the Professor told them Atty had given him all of Mjolnir's specifications."
"That doesn't mean you can build antimatter weapons."
"I know that. But they don't. I guess this is what it takes to get the High Companies’ attention--a kind word and a really big gun."
"We'll be going back to the Galilean," Karil said. "But we'll try to drop in on Mars when we can."
"I hope so. You both have a room in the warren whenever you need it."
"I know," Loris said. "Thank you. And thank your family for us."
Terry put her hand on Loris' dark cheek. "You are part of the family, Loris. I hope you'll be able to come for Little Shagrug's name day, and as often as possible after that--not just because I want to see you, but because I want Shagrug to know you. There'll be a lot of pressure on him to become a duster, but I think he ought to see there's such a thing as becoming a spacer too."
"How is Little Shagrug, these days?"
"Alive and kicking."
"And the host-mother?"
"Brandy's fine. Pregnancy becomes her. She thrives on it. I'm thinking of carrying the next one myself, if I can find the time as Clan Mother--a girl to be named Johanna."
Loris smiled.
"Little Shagrug and Johanna, and all the children born from now on--they might be travelling to the stars, or at least designing the ships that will take their children there. It was Charles that pointed out that al-Zubair was wrong: antimatter drive is good for something besides war--it's good for interstellar exploration. He's old enough to remember the excitement of the last great migration--when a trip to Titan was the trip of a lifetime, like setting out in a wagon-train or a clipper-ship, and now we'll be leaving not only the Earth but the sun behind. He's really excited about it."
Karil propped himself up on his elbow and looked at Loris and Terry. Loris' hair was white these days, in mourning for Johanna, and Terry's mane was nearly the same colour from months of working under Earth’s bright sun.
Isfahan was doing his best to prevent a sand-crab from escaping into the sea. The crab advanced upon him, pincers waving, and the cat retreated nervously, hissing and pawing, until he decided, at the water's edge, that discretion was the drier part of valour. He darted aside and squatted on his haunches as the crab scurried into the waves.
In the shade of Atalanta's wing, the air and sand were cool. The breeze smelled of the sea and their bodies were still wet from the surf. Karil began to draw figures on Terry's body with his finger, linking beads of seawater into streams that flowed down the mounds of her breasts and across the hollow of her belly into her navel.
"What are you doing?" she asked, smiling up at him.
"Terry-formation."
"Well, it tickles."
"Does it?" Karil leaned over her and drank the little pool of water from her navel. "Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanteth not liquor," he said, and began to lick the salt from her body.
"You've got to be the only man in the solar system who quotes the Bible during sex," Terry laughed.
"Actually, the word 'navel' is a euphemism." He moved farther down her body; she moaned and stretched, arching to meet his searching tongue. Suddenly, Loris' mouth was on her own, her gentle dark hand upon her breast. Terry whimpered with pleasure and gave herself up to their explorations.
Karil and Loris met over her and kissed, tasting Terry on each other's lips. "If a man should have the sun," Karil said, "shall he not desire the moon also?"
Later, exhausted and sated, they lay together in the shade.
"Thank you for letting me witness that," Atalanta said. "It was quite beautiful."
THE END