“They won’t,” I said. “If they try to, we’ll close up in the ship and I’ll light a thruster.”

  The water of the bay began to dance. I still had the goggles on so I looked up. The glare of a starship burned like a nova; the goggles grayed it down to a level that wasn’t dangerous. The sound came to us through the air a moment later.

  “We better get inside!” Kent said. “That’s the ship, not a pinnace and it’ll kick up a bloody big wave.”

  We sprinted up the boarding ramp. Kent started the hatch closing while I ran to the bridge. The great wave that the cruiser-sized Far Traveller threw up when it landed threw us sideways so hard that our port outrigger grounded on the islet where the truck had crashed. I fell sideways to the deck from the unexpected impact.

  “Shining vessel!” the commo speaker boomed. “Open at once and prepare for boarding by the RCN! If you attempt to escape, you will be destroyed without hesitation! RCN over!”

  Bloody hell! I keyed the commo—probably still on fifteen meters—and blurted, “Far Traveller, this is Harry Harper! We’ve captured the Shining vessel and we’ll open up as soon as we can.”

  I turned and bellowed toward the corridor, “Kent, open the hatch!”

  Returning to the commo unit, I resumed, “Far Traveller, the guard unit on Island Twenty-Three is in league with the traders and shot down our truck. The Shining traders as well as the guards are hostile, but Technician Joss is on the island this ship grounded on and is one of our crew. Harper over.”

  I could see that the two guns in the Far Traveller’s bow turret were pointed directly at us. I heard the ship tremble as Kent started to open the hatch.

  “Roger, Harper,” the commo said. “Are any friendlies on Island Twenty-Three, over?”

  On the display I saw the turret rotate away from us. I took a deep breath. Seeing those twin muzzles had really shocked me. I remembered Joss mentioning that the shot through her tunic had shaken her. I wondered how she was doing but I didn’t have any way of checking.

  “No friendlies,” I said. “I don’t think they really meant to shoot at first, we just startled them. But they gave guns to the Shinings to finish the job. Over.”

  The ship’s plasma cannon fired twice with a tiny interval—maybe a second—between the shots. The largest building on the back of the island flew apart in a pair of fireballs, scattering support beams and chunks of the roof in all directions. The crack! of the discharges was sharper and louder than I would’ve guessed.

  A boat came around the stern of the Far Traveller. Rick and Captain Bolton were in it with three spacers. One spacer ran the motor in the stern while the others held stocked impellers.

  “I’m going down to the ramp to meet Rick and the captain,” I said to Kent. I heard him following me out.

  I knelt at the bottom of the ramp and as the captain pulled up to the outrigger said, “Sir, I’m very glad to see you. I wasn’t expecting the ship herself to arrive.”

  “The fact that I’m commanding a glorified short-haul freighter, Harper…,” Bolton said, climbing the integral ladder nimbly. “Doesn’t mean that I’m not still RCN. Foreigners attacked my people. The Republic expects me to respond appropriately, and I bloody well will.”

  He looked at me and Kent. His eye lingered for a moment on the shotgun I still held in my left hand. “There should be three of you, shouldn’t there?”

  I saw Joss gesturing from the islet. She wore a set of my shorts and a utility tunic which was probably Kent’s. They didn’t look anything like the Shining garments, though she carried one of the carbines.

  “She’s right there,” I said, nodding toward her. “Ah—could your boat fetch her?”

  Rick spoke to the helmsman and the boat purred toward the islet with the three spacers aboard. It had just reached the shore when a pair of aircars arrived from the northeast. I expected them to go to Island 23, but to my surprise one landed on the rear stage of the Far Traveller and the other curved straight for us. There were more aircars on the way, including several which were noticeably larger because they had eight fans instead of the two on normal cars: armored personnel carriers.

  The car coming our way landed on the freighter’s ramp which can’t have been designed for that use but didn’t collapse or even sag. Administrator Marinetti hopped out and joined the four of us already on the outrigger. He was dressed in full uniform except that he appeared to be wearing slippers.

  “Captain Bolton,” he said, “thank you for your prompt aid in this matter. Do you have any personnel on Island Twenty-Three at the moment?”

  “No, but I have my crew mustered with small arms and can provide you with another hundred people at will.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Marinetti said, “but I believe Colonel Monson has the business under control. It’s after all in his bailiwick.”

  He looked at me. “You’re Lord Harper, if I recall. This is the interloping trader, I gather. Where is its crew?”

  “In the bay,” I said. The Far Traveller’s landing had scattered most of the floating bodies, though one was still caught between the hull and the outrigger we stood on. “I guess some are on shore, and I’m not sure that the whole crew boarded on Island Twenty-Three, which is where the ship was when we landed.”

  “There’s nobody alive over there,” Joss said, hopping up from the boat. “None that I could find, anyway.”

  “This is Technician Joss,” I said. Marinetti wouldn’t have seen her before now—she didn’t flaunt herself in front of strangers. “She was instrumental in our survival. And may I say that your guards on Island Twenty-Three probably didn’t plan to attack us.”

  “You may say that, Lord Harper,” the administrator said, “but they certainly planned to sell Zemlite to the Shinings.”

  The newly arrived guards, backed by the automatic impellers of the APCs, were lining those they’d captured on Island 23 up on shore. There were twenty or so prisoners mixed between guards and Shinings wearing yellow garments.

  I started to ask what Marinetti intended to do with them but the shooting broke out before I got the words out. All of the prisoners crumpled. The bay beyond—they were shooting at an angle to us, thank goodness—danced with bullets and body fragments. Some of the executioners had aimed high and the heads exploded on impact.

  Marinetti saw my expression. “Lord Harper,” he said, “this is much easier than explaining to Guarantor Porra why I didn’t do it.”

  “I see,” I said. Then I said, “Administrator Marinetti? I’d appreciate the loan of one of your vehicles to transfer my specimens from the islet where we crashed to the Far Traveller. Our truck was destroyed when the guards attacked.”

  “As a matter of fact, sir…?” Rick said. “I suspect that you and the establishment of Zemlyn’s World can find a use for the ship we’re standing in, which Lieutenant Harper here captured from the pirates who’d been stealing Zemlite from the Guarantor. Isn’t that so?”

  “As a matter of fact,” the administrator said, “a direct means of communicating would be much better than depending on messages sent with the ships which pick up the Zemlite, but I don’t have a budget for large expenditures.”

  “This major operation against interlopers could easily have cost two aircars,” Rick said. “In fact, it did cost the one which your guards shot down and you’ll need to replace. And a second one could be very useful to the Far Traveller, couldn’t it, Captain Bolton?”

  Marinetti turned to Bolton and shook his hand. “Done, sir!” he said.

  “Kent,” Captain Bolton said, “you’ll come to Island Twenty-Three with me and we’ll pick out a pair of aircars, if this meets the administrator’s approval.”

  Marinetti nodded, smiling broadly.

  * * *

  Rick had bought the first round in the commissary on Island 1 so he was musing as he waited for Harry to bring the next pair of mugs. Rachel kept coming to his mind, which surprised him.

  She hadn’t been startlingly beautiful, nor what you’d call a bedroom athlete; but he’d liked her. When he’d told her that the ship was lifting at 1500 hours the next afternoon, she’d looked as though he’d just driven a truck into her. In a calm, reasonable voice she’d said, “Of course. I knew you’d be leaving.”

  He’d thought, Well, that went better than I’d expected…

  Whereupon Rachel broke down in tears, rushing out of the restaurant and blundering into a couple just coming in.

  He’d paid the bill and left. Similar things had happened in the past, but for some reason this one seemed to bother him. She’d said it herself: She’d known he would be leaving.

  Harry set down the mugs. The commissary’s lager was pretty good. It had a faintly bitter aftertaste, but another swig of beer quickly drowned that.

  “You’re looking thoughtful,” Harry said.

  “I’m just wondering if you’ve got anything on for the next couple days,” Rick said. “We ought to check out the new trucks with a hunting expedition, it seems to me. I can get the time off.”

  “I suspect Kent and I can too,” Harry said with a wan expression. “Doctor Veil was really impressed by our collections on the mainland—and the fact that we got a newer truck and the captain’s blessing out of it too. Which was really your work, Rick. I owe you one.”

  “You captured the bloody ship,” Rick said and took a deep draft. “Which I suspect is over and above for field biologists.”

  “Bloody is right,” Harry said. “If I never see another sight like the boarding hold, it’ll be too soon. But they were trying to kill us.”

  Both men carried handhelds. They pinged together. The text crawl said: ALL RCN PERSONNEL RECALLED TO SHIP. ST MARTINS ON MEDLUM HAS BEEN HIT BY A DISASTER. THE FAR TRAVELLER WILL RETURN THERE SOONEST TO PROVIDE HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND TO SUCCOR CINNABAR CITIZENS. BOLTON, COMMANDING.

  “Bloody hell,” said Rick as they and at least a dozen more crewmen in the commissary got up and headed for the door.

  He thought, I wonder if Rachel will be willing to see me again?

  MEDLUM

  The crew of pinnace Beta, from Rick on down, had nothing to do during the launching from orbit, except to hope that the Far Traveller’s launch crew didn’t screw up in the process. Mostly the pinnaces were launched from the surface where air and water buffered the process. If a clamp or cable stuck, the pinnace could be flung out of the bay spinning wildly. Then the enlisted crew could only hope that the lieutenant piloting her reacted quickly to a situation which was as new to him as it was to them.

  Rick grinned crookedly. If you wanted a safe life, you didn’t become a spacer. And you sure didn’t join the RCN.

  The cables at bow and stern tightened on their spools, sliding Beta neatly out of the bay, which had been converted from the light cruiser’s forward missile magazine. “Slicker’n snot, crew!” Rick said over the intercom. It was just him and four techs; they wouldn’t be inserting. “Stand by for braking.”

  He paused to check that St. Martins Harbor was locked in the center of his display, then pressed EXECUTE. The single thruster began snarling and the pinnace dropped deeper in the gravity well.

  Rick lost direct view of the harbor almost at once but the Far Traveller transmitted imagery from its higher orbit to the pinnace for as long as possible. Beta wasn’t using automatic landing, but the console would guide her down to a hundred miles west of the harbor, whereupon Rick would take over for the final stage.

  The unscheduled freighter Astoria 37 had been orbiting Medlum with the intention of landing at St. Martins Harbor. An instant after the captain had begun braking out of orbit, the volcano above St. Martins blew its top. It sprayed a fan of glowing gas and rock down over the city and its harbor.

  Astoria 37 had aborted its landing and proceeded to the next planet on its itinerary. The freighter made no attempt to land on Medlum and offer help, but she did announce the event when she reached Island 1 on Zemlyn’s World. In fairness, there wouldn’t have been much a tramp freighter could have done.

  The Far Traveller had returned to Medlum to bring help but the first requirement was to figure out just what had happened. Beta and her crew of a lieutenant and four techs were doing that.

  The buffeting was worse in a pinnace than aboard a larger ship. Rick gripped the locked controls mainly to have something to anchor his hands while Beta shuddered her way deeper into the atmosphere. Vibration degraded the display into a colored blur without sharp edges, tan or blue depending on whether they were over land or water at the moment.

  Beta slowed further. The sea became a surface rather than a blur. Land approached ahead but the sea was a greasy gray plain prickled with waves and table-sized chunks of floating lava.

  They were over St. Martins Harbor and Beta moved forward at a walking pace. The console was preparing to set them down in a slip. The entire harbor was covered with floating ash, in which ships floated like marshmallows in a cup of cocoa.

  The pinnace hovered on its single thruster, about to touch down, when the display cleared enough for Rick to see that the slip contained not a mass of floating ash but rather a ship which had sunk and filled. Cakes of pumice would have shattered and dissipated under the plasma blast, but a ship’s steel hull would have met the pinnace’s with a crashing impact.

  Rick eased open the throttle and hopped over the slip, finally settling to the surface in the open harbor. He shut the thruster down.

  “Bloody hell,” said Baxter, who’d been echoing the display on her handheld.

  Merganthaler opened the boarding hatch. He and Hironi prepared to haul out the extension ramp.

  The console suddenly spoke: “Pinnace with RCN markings, this is Cinnabar Ship Althea. Our reaction mass pump has choked and we can’t retract it. Can you help us repair this so that we can lift off soonest? Althea over.”

  The Althea was the Cinnabar-chartered vessel which had brought the Mediation Mission to Medlum. Rick, and so far as he knew, the rest of the Far Traveller’s officers hadn’t had any contact with it on their first visit to St. Martins Harbor, but some of the regular spacers may have.

  “El-Tee!” Hironi called from the hatch. “There’s somebody on one of the ships waving I think a tablecloth at us!”

  I waved a hand in Hironi’s direction and said to the console, “Althea, this is Beta. We’ll take a look at the situation as soon as I’ve reported to the Far Traveller. How can we contact the authorities? Beta over.”

  “There’s no bloody authorities!” the console said. “Thank heavens the RCN’s here! Althea over.”

  “Wave back to them, Hironi,” Rick called. “We’ll be over to give them a hand as soon as I’ve reported to the captain.”

  * * *

  I was coordinating communications for the Far Traveller because I could do the job and the regular officers—the real RCN officers—were fully occupied by the recovery work that the crew was doing. I had the rank and I was a gentleman by birth as well as by declaration of Navy House.

  Besides, I was pretty good at it. Organizing Captain Bolton’s needs and priorities wasn’t as hard as genetic analysis of species in a new biota.

  “Master Womble?” I said when the secretary completed the connection. “This is Lieutenant Harry Harper, of the Far Traveller at St. Martins Harbor. We’re coordinating relief for the government. We see you’ve got a fabric mill at Kelway, and we need cloth for tenting. We’re hoping that you can help us here before the weather turns.”

  I’d been making calls like that all morning. A surprising number of residents had survived the explosion by fleeing when the volcano had let off a gush of steam while the earth shook violently. Many had swarmed aboard ships in harbor; many others had simply fled in one direction or the other along the coast road.

  Six hours later, while Althea watched, the volcano had blown a hundred feet of its cone into a blast of rock and gases down the remainder of the slope and over St. Martins. RCN personnel were now running temporary power lines from our fusion bottle into the town, providing not only household power to returning survivors but also powering equipment being used to excavate streets.

  A haze like smoke hung over St. Martins. Some of the ash was dust-fine and formed a layer along the whole track of the volcano’s flow. The crewmen working in the ravaged area wore respirators, but there were none available for civilians. Those who straggled in from camps along the highway hoping to dig valuables from their homes wore crude cloth masks wet with sea water. Spacers were setting up water points outside the town, but fresh water was still in too short supply for anything but drinking.

  The console intercom blinked. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Sir, it’s Mahaffy,” the tech said. Bio Section personnel had been left out of the work crews—partly because the petty officers didn’t know them and partly because they were regarded as without the skill for the jobs in hand.

  That was more true than not, but Kent and Mahaffy controlled access from the transportation bay which was being used as an infirmary for injured civilians. Nobody wanted civilians wandering around the Far Traveller, especially when most of her personnel were absent.

  Joss stood at the base of the stern boarding ramp. Those tramping across the extension bridge had to pass her before getting to the ship. I suppose some refugees simply wanted to board because conditions were more comfortable than in one of the camps, but I doubt whether any of them tried to argue if Joss told them they didn’t qualify.

  I was quite certain it didn’t do them any good if they did try.

  “Go ahead, Mahaffy,” I said, wondering what on earth this was about. I wasn’t concerned. The next thing on my to-do list was to call a factory in Mishtect where they extruded plastic tubing. Bolton wanted to use their tubes as tent frameworks, if we could arrange delivery in a reasonable length of time.

  “Sir, there’s a woman here,” Mahaffy said. “Lady Hergestal. Her aircar landed right on the ramp—that’s how she got by Joss. She says she needs to see you.”