The spaceplane touched down with tyres squealing, greasy smoke shooting up as the flight computer applied the brakes. The nose lowered, and it rolled to a halt, then started to taxi back towards the hangars.
An alien world. A new beginning. Gerald Skibbow emerged from the stuffy atmosphere of the spaceplanes cabin, looking about with reverence. Just seeing the solid picket of raw jungle bubbling around the spaceports perimeter he knew hed done the right thing coming here. He hugged his wife, Loren, as they started down the stairs.
Damn, will you look at that! Trees, real bloody trees. Millions of them. Trillions of them! A whole bloody world of them. He breathed in deep. It wasnt quite what hed expected. The air here was solid enough to cut with a knife, and sweat was erupting all over his olive-green jump suit. There was a smell, vaguely sulphurous, of something rotting. But by damn it was natural air; air that wasnt laced with seven centuries of industrial pollutants. And thats what really counted. Lalonde was dreamland made real, unspoilt, a world on which the kids could make anything come true just by working at it.
Marie was following him down the stairs, her pretty face registering a slight sulk, nose all crinkled up at the scent of the jungle. Even that didnt bother him; she was seventeen, nothing in life was right when you were seventeen. Give her two years, shed grow out of it.
His eldest daughter, Paula, who was nineteen, was staring round appreciatively. Her new husband, Frank Kava, stood beside her with his arm protectively round her shoulder, smiling at the vista. The two of them sharing the moment of realization, making it special. Now Frank had what it took, a perfect son-in-law. He wasnt afraid of hard work. Any homestead with Frank as a partner was bound to prosper.
The apron in front of the hangar was made from compacted rock chips, with puddles everywhere. Six harried Lalonde Development Company officers were collecting the passengers registration cards at the bottom of the steps, running them through processor blocks. Once the data was verified, each immigrant was handed a Lalonde citizenship card and an LDC credit disk with their Govcentral funds converted to Lalonde francs, a closed currency, no good anywhere else in the Confederation. Gerald had known that would happen; he had a Jovian Bank credit disk stashed in an inner pocket, carrying three and a half thousand fuseodollars. He nodded thanks as he received his new card and disk, and the officer directed him towards the cavernous hangar.
Youd think theyd be a bit better organized, Loren muttered, cheeks puffed against the heat. It had taken fifteen minutes queueing before they got their new cards.
Want to go back already? Gerald teased. He was holding up his citizenship card, grinning at it.
No, you wouldnt come with me. The eyes smiled, but the tone lacked conviction.
Gerald didnt notice.
In the hangar they joined the waiting passengers from an earlier spaceplane flight, where the LDC officer collectively labelled them Transient Group Seven. A manager from the Land Allocation Office told them there was a boat scheduled to take them upriver to their allocated settlement land in two days. They would be sleeping in a transients dormitory in Durringham until it departed. And theyd have to walk into town, though she promised a bus for the smaller children.
Dad! Marie hissed through her teeth as the groans rose from the crowd.
What? You havent got legs? You spent half the time at your day club in the gym.
That was muscle toning, she said. Not forced labour in a sauna.
Get used to it.
Marie almost started to answer back, but caught the look in his eye. She exchanged a slightly worried glance with her mother, then shrugged acceptance. OK.
What about our gear? someone asked the manager.
The Ivets will unload it from the spaceplane, she said. Weve got a lorry ready to take it into town, itll go straight onto the boat with you.
After the colonists started their march into town a couple of the spaceport ground crew marshalled Quinn and the other Involuntary Transportees into a work party. So his first experience of Lalonde was spending two hours lugging sealed composite containers out of a spaceplanes cargo hold, and stacking them on lorries. It was heavy work, and the Ivets stripped down to their shorts; it didnt seem to make a lot of difference to Quinn, sweat appeared to have consolidated into a permanent layer on his skin. One of the ground crew told them that Lalondes gravity was fractionally less than Earth standard; he couldnt feel that, either.
About quarter of an hour into the job he noticed the ground crew had all slunk back into the shade of the hangar. Nobody was bothering with the Ivets.
Two more McBoeing BDA-9008s landed, bringing another batch of colonists down from the orbiting starship. One spaceplane took off, ferrying LDC personnel up to the empty berths; they were going home, their contract time expired. He stopped to watch the big dark delta-shape soar into the sky, dwindling away to the east. The sight laced his thoughts with vicious envy. And still nobody was paying him any attention. He could run, here and now, away into that awesome expanse of untamed land beyond the perimeter. But the spaceport was the place where he wanted to run to , and he could well imagine how the homesteaders would treat fugitive Ivets. He might have been stupid enough to be Transported, but he wasnt that nave. Cursing softly under his breath, he hauled another composite box full of carpentry tools out of the McBoeings hold and carried it over to the lorry.
By the time the Ivets finished the unloading and began their long trudge into Durringham the clouds from the west had arrived bringing a warm, persistent rain. Quinn wasnt surprised to find his grey jump suit turned out not to be waterproof.
The Lalonde Immigration Registration Department managers office was in an administration block grafted onto the spaceports flight-control centre. A long rectangular flat roof structure of ezystak panels clipped onto a metal frame. It had been assembled twenty-five years previously when the first colonists arrived, and its austere fittings were showing their age. Lalonde didnt even rate programmed-silicon constructs for its administration buildings, Darcy thought bleakly; at least the Lunar-built structures had some concessions to comfortable living. If ever a colony project was funded on the cheap, it was Lalonde. But the office did have air-conditioning, powered from solar cells. The temperature was appreciably lower than outside, though the humidity remained constant.
He sat on the settee working his way through the registration cards which the latest batch of arrivals had handed over in exchange for their citizenship and LDC credit disks. The starship had brought five and a half thousand people from Earth; five and a half thousand losers, dreamers, and criminals let loose to wreck another planet in the name of noble destiny. After sixty years in the Edenist Intelligence agency, Darcy couldnt think of Adamists in any other terms. And they claim theyre the normal ones, he thought wryly, give me ungodly freakishness every time.
He entered another cards memory into his processor block, glancing briefly at the hologram. A fairly handsome twenty-year-old man, face composed, eyes haunted with fear and hatred. Quinn Dexter, an Involuntary Transportee. The processor block balanced on his lap didnt respond to the name.
The card was tossed onto the growing pile. Darcy picked up another.
Something you never told me, Nico Frihagen said from behind his desk. Who are you people looking for?