“The domes will keep things warm,” Harcourt sighed. He nodded to Grounder, and she opened the audio pickup again. “What’re the rest of the R&R facilities, Xanadu?”
“Danged if I know, Captain,” Xanadu replied. “Never heard of the place.”
Flip had calmed down substantially; his voice had turned cold. “Mutiny, Captain. I move we desert.”
Grounder stabbed frantically at the audio switch.
“Don’t tempt me,” Harcourt groaned. “I’ve got a wife and kids back on Terra.”
The bridge was silent; everybody knew that Flip had married just before they left for this last tour of duty. His new wife lived on the same planet as his parents, Flip’s home, which was now entirely too close to the front lines.
Flip sighed, like the air gushing out of a punctured tire. “Right, Captain. We go where we’re told in this man’s fleet.”
“That’s what we swore.” Harcourt felt like doing a little of the other kind of swearing right then, though. He nodded at Grounder, and she turned on the audio pickup again. “Orders understood, Xanadu,” Harcourt sighed. “Johnny Greene en route to Hilo. Signing off.”
“Bon voyage.” Xanadu said, the tone sympathetic. “Signing off.”
Hilo loomed in the vision port, filling its center—bland, tan, and arid with only a few dots of blue and a crescent of azure at its rim.
The gunners and Lorraine jammed the hatchway. “I can almost feel that baking desert wind,” Flip groaned.
“No, you can’t,” Coriander countered. “The temperature never gets above fifty there.”
“And this is R&R?” Billy griped.
“Belay that, folks,” Harcourt sighed. “Wake ’em up, Number One.”
“CS Johnny Greene to Hilo Base,” Grounder said. “Come in, Hilo Base.”
“Hilo Base to Johnny Greene,” a husky contralto answered him.
Every male head on the bridge whipped about to stare at the screen in front of Grounder. They saw a beautiful tanned face with a cascade of black hair, deep red lips, and long lashes over big dark eyes, giving them a collective wink. “Good to see you, Johnny Greene. We’ve been expecting you.”
Grounder bristled. “Oh. This was your idea?”
“Lieutenant!” Harcourt reproved her.
The contralto just laughed, low and warmly. “It wasn’t my idea, Lieutenant, but we have some hunks here who will claim it was theirs, once they get a look at your face.”
Grounder stared, at a loss for words. She had never thought of herself as pretty—but she had been thinking about hunks. At least, until they hit Xanadu.
Harry stepped up for a look over Grounder’s shoulder, Jolie crowding right behind him, eyes snapping. “Cat!” she hissed.
“You mean she’s pretty?” Barney was stationed in front of Grounder; he couldn’t see.
Lorraine groaned. “Just what we need, on leave—competition!”
Grounder finally managed to find her voice again. “What’s the weather like down there, Hilo?”
“Outside the dome,” the contralto said, “it’s forty degrees Fahrenheit with a thirty-knot breeze, kicking up a lot of loose sand.”
Coriander stifled a moan.
“Inside the dome,” the contralto said brightly, “it’s seventy-two degrees, water at sixty-eight. The slot machines are loaded to make sure you can’t lose too badly, the croupiers have curves you never learned in Calculus, and the dealers look like Don Juan should have, with very soft, sensuous hands.”
Jolie, Lorraine, and Grounder perked up, and began to look interested. So did Coriander, but she looked wary, too.
“Of course,” the contralto went on, “we’ve just finished our second dome, where it’s twenty-eight degrees, three different grades of slopes, three chair lifts, and two feet of fresh snow every morning. Skis supplied, of course. The chalet has a loaded bar, a hot band, and dancing all night.”
“This… just might be… an interesting leave, after all,” Billy mused.
The dark-haired beauty on the screen smiled and gave them another wink. “We don’t promise anything but dancing, mind you. You’ll have to do the rest yourselves.”
Harry glanced at Coriander, thinking of all the passes he’d put off making for the last two years; emotional complications in a war zone were something none of them needed. Coriander glanced back at him, saw he was looking, and turned away quickly, blushing.
“Oh, I think we can manage,” Harcourt said easily. “Where do we land, Hilo?”
Finally, after two years, they opened the Johnny Greene’s main hatch. The airlock equalized pressure, but they still wore their suits—Hilo didn’t have all that much mass, and none of them were used to breathing thin air. The crew filed out, looking brightly about them. The sun was shining, the sky was a very dark blue, and…
The sand stretched for miles and miles and miles.
But the airbus was waiting, and an officer in a pressure suit stepped up, holding out a gauntleted hand. “Captain Harcourt? Captain Tor Ripley. Welcome to Hilo.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Harcourt took the hand, a bit surprised to see someone of his own rank for the welcoming committee—almost as surprised as he was by a handshake instead of a salute. “May I present my first officer, Lieutenant Grounder… my astrogator, Ensign Barnes…”
He made the rounds, each of the crew members saluting, Ripley returning. Then, the formalities done, he said, “Welcome to Hilo! Welcome!” and ushered them onto the bus.
The doors closed; air hissed in; the green patch lit.
“Okay, we can crack our helmets.” Ripley gave his headpiece a half-twist, then tilted it backward to bare his face. Harcourt did the same.
“Now, Captain,” Ripley said, “I’d like to talk to you about getting off picket duty for a while.”
As one, all the crew’s heads swiveled, staring at Ripley.
“It’s… certainly something I’m willing to consider,” Harcourt said slowly, somewhat dazed—but instinctively looking for the worm in the apple. “What’s the nature of the assignment?”
Ripley told them.
Grins broke out on all faces. The crew nodded.
“I volunteer, Captain.”
“So do I.”
“Me, too!”
“And me!”
“Guess I do, too,” Harcourt said slowly. “We’ll take the assignment, Captain Ripley.”
Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.
In fact, it sounded like a milk run. All they had to do was make an orbit or three around a small, insignificant planet the Kilrathi called “Vukar Tag.” It was way out in the Kilrathi boondocks. Okay, so it was in enemy territory, but it was closer to the Fleet than to Kilrah, and they had the jump points very clearly mapped.
“One of our destroyers was chasing a Kilrathi raider home,” Ripley explained. “He was following the cat just a little too closely through the jump point, and something in the turbulence got the angle wrong. When the stars stopped shifting, there was no sign of the raider—but they did spot a Kilrathi corvette going into Vukar Tag.”
They were sitting at a poolside table, watching the rest of the crew with a few of their hosts and hostesses, disporting themselves like blowing whales and courting dolphins.
“You know,” Billy said, “I never realized Jolie had a figure…”
“Under combat fatigues, who would know?” Harcourt agreed. “But all the figures we need right now are the ones in your notepad.” For himself, though, he was finding it difficult to keep his eyes off Lieutenant Grounder. Her swimsuit was very demure, but he would never have called it “innocent…”
He wrenched his mind back to the topic. “That’s how they found out the name?”
“Right—not that they could understand it, of course. Nobody aboard spoke much Cat. But the captain had the good sense to slap on the recorder, and when he got back to base, our experts deciphered it.”
Billy glanced at Harcourt.
Harcourt nodded almost imperceptibly.
Billy turned to Ripley. “If you don’t mind, sir—professional interest. What did they find?”
“ ‘Professional interest’ is right,” Ripley answered. “It was just the usual greeting and landing instructions—but they did pick out of it that the planet’s name is ‘Vukar Tag.’ “ He shrugged. “What it means, nobody seems to know. What’s even more of a puzzle, is why there’s a cruiser in orbit around the dustball.”
“A cruiser.” Harcourt had a nasty suspicion. “Any moons?”
“One, and small—but big enough to hold at least a wing of fighters, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Ripley nodded. “I thought the same thing.”
“’Well guarded’ is right!” Harcourt scowled. “What are they hiding there?”
“Well, I hope you’re curious enough to want to find out, Mac,” Ripley said. “I really hope you are.”
“Minerals?”
Ripley shook his head. “It’s mostly desert, and no sign of a mining operation, though they did see shuttles coming up to a transport ship. They may be exporting something, but according to spectroanalysis, the only thing it could be is high-grade silicon.”
“Silicon isn’t exactly rare,” Harcourt pointed out. “There has to be a good supply on every Kilrathi planet.”
“Has to,” Billy agreed. “The sand from Vukar Tag must be very pure, or something.”
“Or something.” Harcourt didn’t want to say it, but it was hard to keep from thinking of religious associations. “So it’s a desert, and it’s a backwater, and all we have to do is fly around it once or twice and get pictures.” He looked up at Ripley. “That right, Tor?”
Ripley nodded. “That’s the mission in a nutshell, Mac. Of course, since it’s a reconnaissance flyby, you’ll be carrying a specialist.”
There was the worm in the apple that Harcourt had been braced for all along—if he didn’t count a cruiser and a wing of fighters. “He’s in charge of the cameras?”
“Yes, and you’ll pretty much have to go by her direction, once you get near the planet.”
Harcourt frowned, picking up on the correction in gender. “She knows navigation?”
Ripley shrugged uncomfortably. “She’s had the same training as you and I, and she’s had fifty hours combat flying time in a Sabre.”
“That’s just great,” Billy groaned.
“Billy, you’re out of line,” Harcourt said severely. Inwardly, though, he was grateful to his sentry for saying what he had wanted to, but shouldn’t. Just enough training and experience to make her think she knew what she was doing, but not enough to really know… “Just so she understands she’s under my orders, Tor.”
“Oh, of course, Mac!” Ripley dismissed the issue. “Now, about your route in…”
The route in, of course, should have been no problem at all. Intelligence had the jump points mapped, and there was no particular reason to think there should be any Kilrathi shipping near any of them—no raiders, since it was inside the borders of the Kilrathi Empire; no pickets, since the fleets were a dozen light-years farther out from Kilrah, waiting to skirmish with the Confederation. There might be the odd transport freighter, but that shouldn’t pose much in the way of a problem.
“I don’t understand, Tor,” Harcourt said. “If all it is, is a ball of sand—why is it worth a close look?”
“Because,” said Ripley, “for a worthless dust ball, it’s amazingly well guarded.”
“Oh, really?” Outwardly, Harcourt still looked relaxed and casual; inside, he was turning into a coiled spring. “What is it? A refitting base? An auxiliary shipyard?”
“Could be, but there really isn’t enough traffic—just the occasional escort or transport.” Ripley shook his head. “From what little we can see from a long way off, there’s nothing there.”
“So why all the ships?” Harcourt asked.
“That,” said Ripley, “is what we want to know.”
Of course, Harcourt should have turned down the assignment right then—or at least talked it over with the crew, and let them turn it down. But two weeks of watching bikinis while soaking up sunlight and alcohol had left him with a warm, ruddy glow that made the worst a Kilrathi could do, seem inconsequential.
Which was just what Ripley had intended, of course—sun, water, and no news, no other crews in from the war zone to trade notes with.
No wonder they had been diverted—in more ways than one!