“Let me tell Doctor Veil,” Harry said. He walked to the office door and rapped on it, then went in. Rick noticed that he’d said “tell” rather than “ask permission of.”

  A moment later, Harry and Doctor Veil came out of the office together. Veil said, “We don’t have a physical connection—the science-side database is separate from the naval one. But if you think the information would be useful, you’re welcome to any of it that you can transfer physically.”

  “That would be wonderful!” Rick said. “It doesn’t matter while we’re in sponge space, of course, but the Far Traveller has to set up a planetary base while the pinnaces do the sounding. Captain Bolton will be extremely grateful, mistress. And I shouldn’t wonder if he’ll be grateful to me for having thought to ask you.”

  Doctor Veil gave Rick a smile that struck him as wistful. “For my part, I would be grateful for a closer relationship with the naval side,” she said.

  * * *

  Ten hours after Rick left the laboratory with data chips in a small satchel, he knocked on the door of Harry’s cabin. It was a moment before Harry opened the latch. He was wearing utility trousers which he’d probably just pulled on.

  “Is there a problem, Rick?” he asked.

  “Not a bit,” Rick said. “You got a moment to chat? And hey, I’m sorry if I waked you up.”

  “Come on in,” Harry said. “Though I don’t have much to offer here. Some white wine from Balgorod that isn’t bad at all. I’m not sure where Mahaffy found it.”

  “Just as well not to ask where your servant finds things,” Rick said. “We’ll restock at Medlum and you’ll be able to lay in your own cellar. But if you don’t mind, I certainly would take a small glass as we talk.”

  “Pleased to do both,” Harry said. He opened a small chest and took out two of the half-dozen ten-ounce glasses within. They were unadorned but sufficient for the purpose.

  “So…,” Harry said as he handed over one of the part-filled glasses, “what did you want to talk about?”

  “Basically to thank you for the material you provided,” Rick said. “We’ll probably be getting invitations, us officers will, as soon as we land. Knowing that the Shining Empire and the Alliance both claim the right to rule Medlum is great, and learning that there’s a Cinnabar mission there too is even better. We didn’t realize there was any Cinnabar presence within ten days travel of Medlum.”

  “I didn’t spend much time on the briefing materials myself,” Harry said. “I guess the Foreign Ministry didn’t brief Navy House as fully as they did the Science Directorate. At least they gave us the background materials. It sounded to me that they brought in Cinnabar to mediate because we don’t have any stake in the region.”

  “I wonder if they knew there was an RCN expedition coming out here to sound new routes when they agreed?” Rick said, sipping his wine. He’d come down to see Harry as soon as his watch had ended. It was safer to keep his distance from Lieutenant Vermijo, and Lieutenant Dogan had no interest in anything but the RCN so there was no point in trying to discuss Medlum with him.

  “I doubt that Navy House volunteers any more information to the Foreign Ministry than comes the other way,” Harry said. Then he said, “Medlum seems to have at least a dozen major islands. I’ll be flying around quite a lot choosing regions to sample. And Joss will have to set up collecting teams, if that’s possible. Mostly the locals are cotton farmers, but if the plantations are anything like Greenslade, there’ll be plenty of hunting for the pot to add protein.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Rick said, “is why the Alliance is negotiating with the Shinings to begin with?”

  “What?” said Harry. “Well, the Shining Empire is a growing power in the region, rapidly industrializing. Why not become friends?”

  “Because Guarantor Porra’s normal reaction would be to slap down whatever fleet the Shinings have and take them over. If they’re industrializing, fine. They can build ships for the Alliance, the way Pantellaria’s been doing for the past thirty years.”

  “Ah,” said Harry as he refilled their glasses. “Well, I guess we’ll find out very shortly.”

  * * *

  Some of the crew walked down to the corridors feeding the boarding holds while the Far Traveller was still making its descent. They squatted on the deck with their backs against the bulkhead. It seemed to me that if something went wrong on the landing, they’d bounce around like peas in a whistle.

  Either the spacers didn’t agree or they didn’t care. I’d been around spacers enough even in my short RCN career to realize that fatalism was a major character trait. Probably a necessary one also.

  The ship slowed almost to a halt while we were still in the air. We mushed for a moment, making me fear that something was badly wrong. Then we dropped another ten feet before fetching up with a greater braking effort that squeezed me hard against my acceleration couch in the lab. The actual landing involved severe sidewise rocking which didn’t bother me the way the earlier greasy feeling had. That had seemed uncontrolled and I’d feared we were on the verge of plunging bow first into the ground.

  Only then did I get up from my couch; Mahaffy and Doctor Veil stood also. I called, “Doctor Veil, I’ll head out and find the rep from the Mediation Mission!” She nodded toward me but didn’t speak.

  I didn’t need to be in a hurry. We were down now, but it was a minimum of ten minutes after landing that the harbor would cool enough for the ship to be opened without poaching the spacers who waited in the hold.

  The bolts locking the stern hatch into the hull withdrew with a series of clangs and the gears lowered the hatch to form a ramp. The line in the corridor started moving as soon as the hatch shuddered against the starboard outrigger, which meant that the team which would lay the floating extenders had begun walking across the ramp before it was fully down.

  Many of the folks ahead of me started sneezing. I did the same a moment later as steamy air, sharp with ozone, flooded in through the open hatch. I slitted my eyes, keeping them only open enough to keep my place in the line of moving spacers. There was a stiff breeze when we reached the ramp and I was able to open my eyes wider.

  The boarding ramp resting on the ship’s outrigger had a width of twenty feet, but the floating extenders that connected the ship to the pier were only three feet wide with no handrail. This didn’t appear to bother the spacers in the least, but I stepped to the side on the outrigger and let the crush at the extender empty out.

  I looked around at St. Martins Harbor. Dominating everything to the north was the volcano. The lower slopes were green, but the top thousand feet of the cone were bare and a haze of smoke drifted from the top. Because of the ship’s plasma exhaust I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that the rasp at the back of my throat was from sulfur rather than just loose ions.

  A trail zigzagged up to the top of the cone. Houses were fairly frequent at the base of the slope, but the numbers thinned out quickly.

  Joss stepped to my side and nodded to me. “Sir.”

  She was wearing a light, long-sleeved shirt, but a tattooed serpent thrust its blunt head onto the back of her right hand and on the left hand was a stylized eye. I didn’t see her bush knife, but I suspected the loose shirt covered the hilt of it and the blade was inside the leg of her shorts. I wasn’t going to ask her.

  The hunter’s caution had kept her alive in difficult circumstances, but it was uncomfortable to think that she thought we might be in that sort of circumstance now. I wasn’t trained for that sort of world.

  “How do we get to the Mediation Mission?” Joss said. “Walk?”

  “If we need to,” I said. “I checked the location against the imagery we recorded from orbit. We’ve got quite a good optical suite even for a warship because we’re expected to be choosing locations to sample even on uninhabited planets. But—”

  I smiled at Joss. The last of the backed-up spacers were proceeding toward the pier. A few still trickled from the forward hatch.

  “—the mission is supposed to send a car for us. I don’t see a car, however.”

  “Any cars,” Joss said.

  When I looked at the traffic in St. Martins rather than just the buildings I saw that she was right. The street through the center of town to the base of the volcano was broad and likewise the boulevard running along the harbor, but the other streets viewed from orbit had been narrow alleys. I couldn’t even see them from water level. What vehicles there were had spindly wheels and narrow, flimsy bodies.

  We crossed the floating extension. Some harbors have solid bridges on the piers which they winch out to vessels’ boarding ramps, but I hadn’t seen any of these in the ports where the Goliath or Far Traveller had landed. A starship landing or lifting off does so on the power of plasma thrusters. Though less focused than bolts from the cannon which warships carried as defensive weapons, a multiple battery of thrusters—the Far Traveller had sixteen—was enormously destructive.

  The concrete steps up to the top of the pier were slimy with harbor waste floated onto them by high tides and the surge every time a ship landed in the harbor. Each step was two meters long. The attachment bar slanting up the staircase allowed the extension bridges to move with changes in the tide.

  I didn’t see any cargo-handling equipment. I supposed that heavy cargo was lightered from the shore and hoisted aboard a receiving ship’s own winch. I wasn’t sure how heavy incoming loads were handled; maybe there were mobile cranes.

  I kept a hand above the railing of steel pipe—not gripping it because it was slimed by the harbor water the same way the steps were, but hovering near and ready to grab if my feet went out from under me. Joss had skipped ahead—more fit than I was and probably less cautious as well.

  Nobody hailed her at the top of the pier, but a woman called cheerfully when my head rose into sight, “You, sir? Are you looking for a ride to the Cinnabar Mission?”

  The speaker was an attractive woman of about twenty, standing beside a large-wheeled tricycle parked on the concrete esplanade between where the Far Traveller’s two boarding holds connected with it. She had reddish hair and wore civilian clothes, though the fabric was a plaid of khaki and dull green.

  I waved and called, “I’m Lieutenant Harper. Are you our ride?”

  The tricycle had a saddle in front for the driver. Its rear compartment would hold four seated passengers or a modest load of cargo.

  “Hop in,” she said. She watched Joss approaching beside me. “Two of you, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. The woman’s glance had been neutral—but determinedly so. Even though Joss’ tattoos and knife were mostly out of sight, her scars couldn’t be hidden. “This is Technician Joss. She and I are responsible for field collections. We’re hoping that your mission will be able to help us find local help since you’ve been here longer.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” the woman said, taking my offered hand. “Oh—I’m Rachel Pond. I’m a research assistant for the mission. Which means general dogsbody, which is why I’m here picking you up.”

  The tricycle pulled out with a double whine from the hub-center electric motors in the rear wheels. Rachel pulled back onto harbor street—or whatever it was called—and then turned right up the central street. Our initial whining progress slowed to an amble as the slope steepened. None of the three of us was overweight and the vehicle was very lightly built, but even so we were underpowered.

  I leaned forward and said, “Are there any roads on Medlum? I didn’t see any on the orbital survey we made when we arrived here.”

  Rachel turned her head—not toward me, but at least so that she wasn’t facing away when she spoke—and said, “No, not outside the town itself. The cash crop is Medlum cotton, a very long-staple variety. It’s grown on the coast and on rivers, then transported to St. Martins by boat. As overgrown and mountainous as the islands are, cutting roads for a bulk cargo like cotton would be a pointless expense.”

  I strained to hear her. This was about the worst layout for conversation between driver and passenger that I could imagine.

  I said, “Is the cotton so valuable then, that both the Alliance and the Shining Empire want it so badly? Badly enough to threaten war?”

  Rachel laughed. I thought I heard bitterness. “The cotton is unique and valuable, yes, but of course not enough for a war. That’s just boys being boys—male dominance behavior. The Shinings believe they were a great empire before the Hiatus and they’re determined to regain their place. And the Alliance doesn’t want to be insulted by some Johnny-come-lately yokels.”

  We were moving at a slow walk, but no amount of additional power would have allowed us to go faster unless we were willing to drive over pedestrians, many of them carrying packs or pushing carts. The feeders that entered the thoroughfare we were on were narrow and crooked, really what was left over after houses had been built rather than planned streets.

  I wondered if Medlum had ever had animal transport? I didn’t see any sign of it now except in the irregular road network.

  Rachel’s comment reminded me of Rick’s question from the night before we reached Medlum. “Why is the Alliance negotiating?” I asked. “The Shinings may be a growing power in the region, but the Alliance of Free Stars is that fifty times over.”

  Rachel glanced back toward me again. “Let’s wait until we’re in the mission, shall we? It’s not exactly a secret for us, but talking about it in the street might make a problem for Minister Blakeley. Or she might think it could have. She comes down on me either way.”

  “Understood,” I said. I leaned back in the wicker seat and waited while we trundled through the traffic. I glanced at Joss, but she continued to eye the people and buildings—mostly courtyard houses with blank ten-foot walls facing the street. When she did meet my eye in a passing glance, she showed no emotion or even interest.

  A man with two bundles balanced on a pole over his shoulder crossed in front of an alley to the right. Rachel paused till he was clear, then turned into it. We twisted halfway along before seeing a man in maroon shorts and a beige tunic standing in the passage. He stepped to the side, drawing a vehicular door open as he did.

  Rachel turned around in the courtyard, then parked facing out. We were in the L of a two-story building, beside the blank wall of a similar building. The alley formed the fourth side.

  “Come on in,” Rachel said, leading us toward a door into the wall she’d parked against. “I’ll introduce you to Milo. He’s local and handles our supplies, so he should be able to introduce you to hunters and fishermen. We eat mostly on the economy here.”

  She entered the short corridor and stepped into the office just to the right; the panel door was open. The heavy man behind the desk inside nodded to greet her but didn’t get up.

  “Milo,” she said, “this is Lieutenant Harper and his assistant Joss. They’re on Medlum to take biological samples. I thought you could introduce them to people who can guide them to where they can find samples. Yes?”

  “The guides, they will be paid?” Milo said. He got up and stood beside his desk to look us over.

  “Yes,” I said. “The rates will be determined ahead of time, after we consult with local experts.” Which probably meant Milo himself if he did the bargaining for the mission, but anyway I was making it clear that we didn’t expect to be held up for some wild amount.

  “Very good,” Milo said, nodding and walking toward us. “I will take you to meet some people now. You can walk, I trust?”

  “Yes,” said Joss before I could speak. She looked at me and said, “Sir, I can handle this. You had some business to take care of with Mistress Pond, right?”

  “Ah…,” I said, taken aback. “Well, if you’re sure, that would be fine. Meet you at the ship when we’re both finished, I guess?”

  Joss and Milo went out through the corridor. Milo didn’t bother to show any concern about leaving us in the room. I suppose I could’ve closed the door, but I said, “Do you have an office of your own, Rachel?”

  “I have a cubby as part of Minister Blakeley’s suite,” she said, “but it’s not in the least private. I think the Minister’s in her office now.”

  “Good,” I said. “Would you introduce me?”

  “Well, if you’d like that, surely,” Rachel said. “That’s down the leg corridor. I think she’d have liked it to be on the upper floor, but she needs a full console and to get that up even the main stairs would probably require demolishing part of the building.”

  We went down the corridor and turned. We met two men in Cinnabar-cut civilian suits and a young woman whom I took for locally hired office help. All of them looked hard at my RCN uniform; the men muttered to Rachel and nodded to me, but none of them really spoke.

  We entered the end office where a plumpish man in his forties sat behind a desk in the outer office. I’d decided how I wanted to handle this, so when the man looked up I said, “Good day, sir. Would you please inform Minister Blakeley that Lord Harper would like to speak with her. At her leisure, of course.”

  The secretary touched an intercom button and said, “Minister, Lord Harper is here to see you.”

  He had an earbud. I heard the response only as a hissing. He said, “I don’t know what Lord Harper, mistress! Do you wish me to ask him his business?”

  As he and I both probably expected, the door to the inner office flew open. A woman in a gray-blue business suit stepped out. She was younger than her secretary, probably in her midthirties.

  “Ma’am,” I said, extending my hand as I spoke. “I’m Harry Harper, my dad’s Harper of Greenslade, you know. I’m here with the scientific team on the Far Traveller and I told the captain that I’d connect with your mission so that we don’t put a foot wrong and cause you problems. You know what spacers can be like.”

  “Well, I—” Blakeley said, shaking my hand while trying to gather her mind.

  “And Minister?” I said. “Let me add that Mistress Pond here has been extremely helpful to me and to the mission. She tells me that nobody can give me the answers I needed except you.”