I cleared my throat and said, “Thank you, Joss. And I think you’re right about waiting, though I don’t think there’ll be a problem with the hand over.”

  She went out of the cabin. I stood for a moment to settle myself before going up to the wardroom.

  * * *

  I stopped about two blocks from the Pilkey mansion. It was still five minutes till time for the exchange. I dismounted and shut off the engine because the high-pitched ringing fed my nervousness. That was bad enough already.

  “In a couple minutes, you’ll be in your own bedroom,” I said, forcing a cheerful smile to reassure Ophelia. The cut on her forehead had been cleaned and dressed. There was still a bit of swelling and redness around the small bandage, but Blenkins’ doctor had assured me there wouldn’t be a scar.

  I hoped this wouldn’t mean problems for Blenkins. He’d been the best friend Ophelia could have had, but I’ve seen enough of life to know that people don’t always see reality when their emotions are involved. Still, I’d been honest with Pilkey and he seemed to be grounded firmly in reality rather than the ditz I’d taken him for when we met. I couldn’t blame myself for risks other people chose to take.

  “Thank you, Lord Harper,” Ophelia said in a small voice. I hadn’t heard her speak loudly since the night we kidnapped her. “You’ve been very kind to me.”

  That was complete nonsense. I grimaced and said, “Well, it’ll be over with soon.”

  My handheld squawked. Joyeuse said, “They’re coming out of the front door.”

  “We’re on the way,” I said. I switched on, took the handgrips of the trike and kicked firmly on the starter. My formal tights weren’t ideal for starting the engine, but it fired up instantly.

  The street was of two-story buildings, generally commercial at ground level and residential above. Of the twenty-odd pedestrians I could see in the immediate vicinity, at least six of them were spacers from the Far Traveller. If I hadn’t been able to start the trike myself, I’d been confident I could find help.

  We puttered along the boulevard to Pilkey’s mansion. Because of the stone wall I couldn’t see what was happening within the compound until we were almost to the gate. Guards were pulling it open, and I could see Colonel Hagen driving the runabout up from the house. Rick sat beside him.

  I pulled the trike in front of the gate and did a tight turn so that it was ready to head back to the ship. Shutting down I dismounted and walked around to the right side to lower the boarding steps. “Ma’am,” I said, offering my hand to support Ophelia as she dismounted.

  She darted off to the runabout. I could see Lord Pilkey waiting on the porch, but whatever Hagen had told him seemed to have sunk in. Pilkey wasn’t doing anything to jeopardize the hand over.

  Rick and Hagen were walking toward the trike; Rick was favoring his left leg slightly but he looked in pretty decent shape.

  “You going to be okay driving this thing back?” I called. “I’ve got a bit to discuss with Colonel Hagen here.”

  “I’m fine!” Rick said. “Just a bruise on my ankle from a shackle.”

  Hagen said, “I regret that, but the person responsible won’t be making future mistakes of judgment. Worse things happen in wartime.”

  I nodded and said, “Lady Ophelia has a cut and maybe a headache, which I regret also.”

  I handed Hagen the plan Joss had made for me. “These are the locations of the five mines buried under the front wall,” I explained. “I’m told there are no anti-tamper devices.”

  Hagen looked at it, then glanced along the stone wall. “This was your doing, Lord Harper?” he said.

  “I didn’t know anything about it,” I said. “It was to be a diversion if Lord Pilkey decided not to let me go on my first visit. The rescue party would have come in through the back gate while the explosions drew the attention of those inside the house.”

  A smile of sorts made Hagen’s lips quirk. He said, “It might have worked if the extraction team was good enough. Judging from the way you took Lady Ophelia to begin with, they might have been.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t come to that,” I said, and that was true as any words I’ve ever spoken.

  Hagen shrugged. “I am too,” he said. “I need to get Lady Ophelia back to her father. May I ask, Lord Harper, will you be staying on Mindoro for long?”

  “No,” I said. “We’ve recovered all the pinnaces and Captain Bolton plans to lift for Zemlyn’s World as soon as Rick, Lieutenant Grenville, is back aboard.”

  Colonel Hagen said, “Then let me wish you well on your future enterprises. And I hope that I’ll never again be part of them.”

  Then he saluted me.

  ZEMLYN’S WORLD

  A day out from Zemlyn’s World Rick entered the bio lab. Harry looked up and called, “Hey, Gimpy! How’re you getting on?”

  Doctor Veil was in the main lab discussing what she took for an anomaly with Mahaffy (who kept saying, “Sir, the sequencer is working perfectly.”). Veil said, “Lieutenant Grenville! Very good to see you after your difficulties.”

  “That’s thanks to Harry here,” Rick said, “at least from what the riggers on the starboard watch tell me. Doctor Veil, I realize I must owe a great deal to your forbearance that he was free to do that. Thank you.”

  “I was glad to provide any help I could to Lord Harper,” Veil said. She cleared her throat and added, “And your support of the Biology Section is noted and appreciated also, Grenville. Is there anything we can help you with?”

  “Actually, I’m here hoping to learn a bit about animals on Zemlyn’s World,” Rick said. “I gather there’s no political situation, which is why Captain Bolton chose Zemlyn as our next base.”

  “There’re no permanent settlers on Zemlyn’s World,” Harry said. “I suppose that’s what the captain is thinking about. Guarantor Porra personally owns the planet. It’s not part of the Alliance of Free Stars. He leases the Grinder concession to a consortium, and the staff on the planet is on contract.”

  “The Grinders are the most interesting things on the planet,” said Doctor Veil, “and not just economically. They’re warm-blooded marine creatures which crop algae from rocks in the far north. There is a very similar creature on Broadstairs, twenty light-years away, and the algae they feed on is very similar to a Broadstairs variety also. We intend to take genetic samples of both animal and plant to compare with file records of those from Broadstairs.”

  “So they’re hunted for their pelts?” Rick said, staring at the holographic image Harry was projecting above his workstation. Without the human added for scale, the Grinder could have been a small caterpillar rather than an animal twenty feet long. It was shown swimming by undulating the fins fringing the sides of its flattened body.

  “Oh goodness, no,” Doctor Veil said. “Male hormones are gathered in the breeding season. They’re used to make an anti-aging drug which is very widely sold within the Alliance and to some degree more widely yet.”

  “There’s a problem in the Cinnabar sphere,” Harry said, grinning. “Given that the profits go straight into Guarantor Porra’s pocket.”

  “The literature is mixed about the effectiveness of Zemlite,” Doctor Veil said. “Some people swear by it, especially those who admit using it themselves. I haven’t made an exhaustive study. But”—she gestured to the image of the Grinder—“the fact that the creatures and their food source have been transplanted here from Broadstairs implies that the Archaics thought that the hormones were valuable.”

  Or thought that the creatures themselves were ornamental, Rick thought. Or that they tasted good, or a hundred other hypotheses, most of them not involving the Archaics. He noticed that Harry was carefully avoiding a response to his superior’s enthusiasm.

  “Were you interested in the Grinders, Rick?” Harry said.

  “To be honest,” Rick said, “I just wondered if you had some sort of an overview of life on Zemlyn. You see, on Mindoro I found myself on a mud island with nothing to do but look at the local wildlife. There was a little fuzzy fellow about the length of my hand running about in the tops of the canes. One missed a jump and fell right on top of me. I got a good look before he scrambled back up a stem.”

  He cleared his throat. “I guess you think that’s pretty silly,” he said. “Me just wanting to know more about the animals we might be seeing on Zemlyn?”

  “Not at all,” Doctor Veil said. “I’m afraid that there aren’t many of such records as you’re looking for. I hope we may have gathered some before we leave the planet, though.”

  “You’re not expecting to be abducted again, are you, Rick?” Harry asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I wasn’t expecting it the first time,” Rick said. “I do expect to be on the ground a fair amount here, though; and I guess the days I spent on the island made me, well, more interested in little critters.”

  “Well, I’ll show you what we’ve got,” Harry said. “Sit here and I’ll copy you.”

  He patted the seat of the vacant workstation to his left. “The truth is,” he went on, “that except for the Grinders, nobody’s been very interested in the biota of Zemlyn’s World. We’re going to change that.”

  Rick pursed his lips. He sat down in the offered seat and said, “Say, Harry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “These Grinders on Broadstairs? Do they make this Zemlite too?”

  Doctor Veil said, “No, they do not, Lieutenant. The algae on Broadstairs grows much nearer the equator in warmer water. One of the things we’ll be checking is to see whether the Zemlyn’s World algae has been genetically modified from the original on Broadstairs; or whether the reverse may be true.”

  A variety of small creatures living on or in the ground of Zemlyn’s World began to appear on Rick’s display as Harry sent files from his workstation. There was a worm a foot long—it looked like a worm—that had a long pointed head with jaws which split lengthwise into four segments. The jaw edges were toothed.

  Rick wondered how it proceeded through the soil. Mostly he hoped that he wouldn’t encounter one in the flesh.

  If the Archaics had genetically modified the Grinders to form Zemlite, then maybe they really did use the stuff.

  For something.

  * * *

  Captain Bolton had brought them into orbit over Zemlyn’s World and had done a brilliant job of it: The Far Traveller was ninety-five thousand miles above the surface of the planet.

  Bolton’s ship handling was on the clumsy side but his astrogation had been casually flawless during this voyage.

  The ship already in powered orbit above the planet contacted them by modulated laser though there was also a transmission on the twenty-meter band that was the default of all human spaceships. Modulated light was crisp and static-free over long distances, but the ship you were calling had a working twenty-meter receiver if it had any commo equipment whatever.

  “Zemlyn Corporation Vessel Argus to Far Traveller,” it said. “State your business. Over.”

  Rick was on communications duty, viewing the Argus through the Far Traveller’s excellent optics. The Argus appeared to have even better optics than those fitted to the survey vessel in order to identify exploration sites from space. Being able to accurately identify the Far Traveller at a glance was remarkable.

  “Zemlyn Control,” Rick said, “this is RCS Far Traveller surveying the region for the general advancement of knowledge. We request landing permission, over.”

  “Far Traveller, you are cleared to land in the harbor at Island One in the Grinder Archipelago,” the Argus said.

  A caret pulsed on a location in the far northern hemisphere of the local display inset of Rick’s console.

  The voice continued, “You are to immediately check in with administration on the island. If you land anywhere else on the planet, units of the Guard Force will be directed to your location and you will be arrested. The Guard Force is not noted for the delicacy with which it deals with interloping traders—which is what you will be if you stray from the approved location. Over.”

  “Roger, Zemlyn,” Rick said. And if your optics are as good as they seem to be, they tell you that we’ve got two working plasma cannon, so good luck to any pongo sent to arrest us. “Far Traveller out.”

  The exchange had been copied to Captain Bolton on the command console. Rick sent a Communication Closed note to the captain, but he could already feel the High Drive motors shifting to bring the ship’s thrust in line with the axis of travel, for braking.

  Next stop, Island 1.

  * * *

  Captain Bolton and I walked together the length of the quay and then the additional hundred yards to the administration building. The slips at Island 1 were designed for vessels much smaller that the Far Traveller, but Captain Bolton had brought us down farther out in the harbor and ran the extension bridge to the end of a quay instead of to the long side as a small ship would have done. It would make no difference to the Biology Section, as we’d be flying the truck off the stern hatch regardless.

  “So…Lord Harper,” Bolton said. “How are you finding life in the RCN?”

  “Well, I don’t think I can rightly claim to be RCN, sir,” I said. “Certainly my biology career has been more interesting than it would have been as a junior assistant in a lab back on Cinnabar.”

  “What you’re doing now is RCN business,” Bolton said. I looked at him in surprise but he nodded when he met my eyes. “We need a base and this is a very good one from the standpoint of the soundings we’re making. Furthermore, the facilities here on Island One are ideal for our purposes.”

  I missed a half step. “Sir,” I said. My first thought was that he’d been joking. “This is a barren wasteland with stunted brush and no permanent human occupation.”

  “There are no theaters or art museums, that’s true,” Bolton said. “But the corporation provides liquor that won’t poison customers, most of them its employees, and prostitutes about whom the same is true. That really covers the requirements of most spacers on liberty. For the exceptions, there are chapels of a variety of faiths—often sharing the same building but trading times of services.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I hadn’t been using the correct frame of reference.”

  Island 1 was a regimented—it wasn’t sprawling—community of barracks, refectories, and business establishments. The buildings were to a common plan and solid. While not luxurious, they provided more comfort and privacy than accommodations on a starship did, even a ship as relatively under-crewed as the Far Traveller was as converted to a survey ship.

  The front of the admin building was windowless except for the small panel at eye height in either panel of the double doors. There was an atrium beyond as a wind trap, and in the lobby within Commander Marinetti met us. He was a short man wearing an ornate uniform of green and gold.

  “Pantellarian dress uniform,” Bolton murmured. He was in uniform himself so he stopped and saluted. “Sir!” he said. “I am Frederic Bolton, captain of the survey vessel Far Traveller. As we reported to your guard ship, we have no commercial or political agenda whatever. We’re here to advance human knowledge of the region, plot courses through it and assess the biota of the planets herein. This”—he turned to me—“is Lord Harry Harper, a Harper of Greenslade, you know; one of our biologists.”

  I wasn’t in uniform, so I reached out and shook Marinetti’s hand. His grip was firm but he didn’t try the childish trick of trying to crush my hand.

  “You’re welcome, of course, Captain and Lord Harper,” Marinetti said, “but I don’t know what we can do for you. We don’t get many visitors on Island One, and apart from Zemlite processing, there’s nothing here. And the Zemlite is rigidly controlled of course.”

  “All we want is water to float the ship on,” Captain Bolton said, “and the right of the crew to purchase beer and other entertainment at ordinary prices. And Lord Harper hopes to carry out biology research.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said brightly to the administrator. “On the mainland, however. As you yourself pointed out, almost nothing is known about the biota of Zemlyn’s World except for the Grinders. My assistants and I hope to get data which will fit Zemlyn’s World into the community of galactic life forms.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” Marinetti said, “so long as you understand that starships are only permitted to land here. The Company—Guarantor Porra, that is—is a stickler about the Zemlite monopoly.”

  “Understood, sir,” I said. “We’ll be flying off to the mainland in a standard aircar with just the three of us”—me, Joss, and Kent—“and ordinary collecting equipment.”

  “That will be fine,” the administrator said. “I’ll make a note for Colonel Zemke who runs the Guard Force, but we don’t have a detachment on the mainland. Just the islands where the Grinders breed, with the main body here on Island One.”

  “If I may ask sir,” Bolton said, “how large is your Guard Force? As we were coming in, I saw a very extensive equipment park on the north end of the island.”

  “Yes, we’ve got several hundred vehicles,” Marinetti agreed, “but I can’t guarantee how many of them are going to be operational at any one time. They all have to be capable of flight in order to respond to interlopers anywhere in the archipelago. We’ve got about five hundred troops here on Island One and another two hundred or so spread out on the other twenty-two islands.”

  He grimaced and went on, “You see, the Zemlite is extremely valuable, but processing it from the bull Grinders is a complex job. The factory here on Island One has three hundred workmen. Thus most of the troops are here to guard the factory and warehouse. Raids on other islands can carry off a few carcasses, but we can have a large force anywhere in the archipelago within an hour. That’s much too quickly for a small plant to dress out and process even one Grinder. Adults weigh several tonnes each.”

  “There won’t be any problem with us taking genetic samples from Grinders after they’ve been processed, will there?” I asked. That was for Doctor Veil since the differences between Grinders here and the population on Broadstairs was critical to the theory that the Archaics had modified the original population.