“It shall be done,” Nesseref repeated. She went through the ritual once more. The control activating that port was nowhere near the one for the hydrogen port, again to make sure the two were not mistaken for each other. After the oxygen truck finished refilling her tank, it also disengaged and drove away from the shuttlecraft.
“Am I now cleared for takeoff?” Nesseref asked. “I want to get this male to treatment as quickly as possible.”
“I understand, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” replied the Big Ugly in the control tower. “There will be a five-minute delay. Do you understand five minutes, or shall I convert it to your time system?”
“I understand,” Nesseref said, as the male beside her let out a loud hiss of dismay. “What is the difficulty?”
“We have an airliner coming in for a landing a little low on fuel,” the Tosevite answered. “Due to the short notice given for your arrival, we could not divert it to another airport. As soon as it is down, you will be cleared.”
“Very well. I understand.” Nesseref didn’t see what else she could say. The other shuttlecraft pilot, the male, was twisting and wriggling as if he had the purple itch. Nesseref turned an anxious eye turret toward him. She hoped he didn’t. The purple itch was highly infectious; she didn’t want to have to have the cabin here sterilized.
“Hurry,” the male kept muttering under his breath. “Please hurry.”
After what wasn’t a very long delay for Nesseref-but one that must have seemed an eternity to that male-the Big Ugly in the control tower radioed, “Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for takeoff. Again, apologies for the delay, and I hope your patient makes a full recovery.”
“I thank you, Los Angeles Control.” Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled as she gave the instruments one last check. After satisfying herself that everything read as it should, she said, “Control, I am beginning my countdown from one hundred. I shall launch at zero.”
The countdown, of course, was electronic. As it neared the zero mark, her fingerclaw hovered over the ignition control. If the computer didn’t trigger the shuttlecraft’s motor, she would. But, again, everything went as it should. Ignition began precisely on schedule. Acceleration squashed her.
It squashed the other shuttlecraft pilot, too. Even so, he let out an exultant shout through the roar of the rocket: “Praise the Emperor and spirits of Emperors past, I am finally free!”
Nesseref asked him no questions till acceleration cut off and left them weightless and the shuttlecraft quiet. Then she said, “Can you tell me how you can sound so delighted in spite of an illness?”
“Shuttlecraft Pilot, I have no illness,” the male answered, which, by then, wasn’t the greatest surprise Nesseref had ever had. He went on, “Changes in my appearance are from makeup, which makes me look infirm and also disguises me. Nor, I must confess, do I share your rank. My name is Straha. Perhaps you will have heard of me.”
Had Nesseref not kept her harness on, her startled jerk would have sent her floating around the cabin. “Straha the traitor?” she blurted.
“So they call me,” the male replied. No, he was no shuttlecraft pilot; he’d been a shiplord, and a high-ranking one, before going over to the Big Uglies. He continued, “No-so, they called me. I have redeemed myself now.”
“How?” Nesseref asked in genuine astonishment, wondering what could have made the Race welcome Straha once more. Something must have, or she wouldn’t have been ordered to Los Angeles, and no one there would have helped him disguise himself to get to the shuttlecraft.
He answered, “I am sorry, but I had better not tell you that. Until the authorities decide what to do with this information, it should not be widely spread about.”
“Is it as sensitive as that?” Nesseref asked, and Straha made the affirmative gesture. Once more, she wasn’t very surprised. If he hadn’t learned something important, the Race wouldn’t have done anything for him.
Cairo Control came on the radio then, to report that the shuttlecraft’s trajectory accorded with calculations. “But your departure was late,” the control officer said in some annoyance. “We have had to put two aircraft in a holding pattern to accommodate your landing.”
“My apologies,” Nesseref said. “The Big Uglies held me up, because one of their aircraft was landing at the facility and lacked the fuel to go into a holding pattern.”
“Inefficiency,” the control officer said. “It is the Tosevites’ besetting flaw. The only thing in which they are efficient is addling us.”
“Truth,” Nesseref said, while Straha’s mouth opened wide in amusement. Even though it hadn’t been her fault, Nesseref felt bad about inconveniencing the aircraft her landing was delaying. Since she couldn’t do anything about it, though, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on making sure the landing went perfectly. On her radar, she spotted not only those two aircraft but also helicopter gunships on patrol around the landing area.
Straha saw them, too, and understood what they meant. “I should be honored,” he said. “Atvar does not want this shuttlecraft shot out of the sky.”
“I too am thoroughly glad the fleetlord feels that way,” Nesseref replied. “I have taken gunfire from the Big Uglies a couple of times while landing here, and I do not wish to do it again. There are too many parts of this planet where our rule is far less secure than it should be.”
“If I had succeeded in overturning Atvar during the first round of fighting-” Straha began, but then he checked himself and laughed again, this time with a waggle in the lower jaw that showed wry amusement. He finished, “It is entirely possible that things might look no different, save that you would be flying Atvar here to see me and not the other way round. I like to think that would not be so, but I have no guarantee that what I like to think would be a truth.”
Braking rockets roared. The shuttlecraft approached the concrete landing area. To Nesseref’s vast relief, no fanatical Big Uglies opened fire on it. It settled to the surface of Tosev 3 as smoothly as it might have on a training video.
No mere mechanized combat vehicle came out to meet the shuttlecraft, but a clanking, slab-sided landcruiser. “The fleetlord takes your safety very seriously,” Nesseref said to Straha. “I have not been met by a landcruiser here since my first descent to this city.”
“Perhaps he worries about my security,” Straha replied, “and perhaps he just wants to secure me.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to find out. You, at least, Shuttlecraft Pilot, are sure to remain free.” Nesseref pondered that as she and the renegade shiplord left the shuttlecraft and headed for the massive armored vehicle awaiting them.
Inside the Race’s administrative center in what had once been known as Shepheard’s Hotel, Atvar awaited the arrival of the landcruiser coming through Cairo from the shuttlecraft with all the delighted anticipation with which he would have faced a trip to the hospital for major surgery. “I hoped Straha would stay in the United States forever,” he said to Kirel and Pshing. “As long as he remained out of my jurisdiction, I could pretend he did not exist. Believe me, such pretense left me not in the least unhappy.”
“That is understandable, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “Straha’s defection, his treason, hurt us far more than any of the mutinies ordinary soldiers raised during the first round of fighting against the Big Uglies.”
“Truth.” Atvar sent his adjutant a grateful look. “And now, with what he has given us, I am not altogether sure I can punish him at all, let alone as he deserves for that treachery.”
“What he has given us,” Kirel said, “is, in a word, trouble. I would not have been altogether dismayed had that knowledge, like Straha himself, stayed far, far away. We shall have to calculate our response most carefully.”
“We have always had to calculate our responses to Straha and everything that has to do with him most carefully,” Atvar replied, to which Kirel returned the affirmative gesture. The two of them had been the only males in the conquest fleet who outranked Straha. What would Straha’s rank be now? That, at the moment, was the least of Atvar’s worries. But it would not be shiplord again-so he vowed.