“I wasn’t paid . . .” the man began. Brun made the universal signal for money—and saw it recognized, proving once again that humans had a common origin, something she’d been willing to doubt this past year and more. She pointed to the sky, then rubbed her fingers again. Money there, if you get us there. The man spat.
“All right. But I don’t want to hear any complaints when it’s crowded in the shuttle.”
Brun stared around. Shuttle here? This was no shuttlefield. But the man was walking quickly along the shadowed edge of the clearing, and she followed.
“We got us a ways to go, and I guess it’s lucky I brung a extra. Hope you can ride.” With that, he ducked into the trees and Brun smelled . . . horses.
This was not how she’d planned to ride again. She had imagined herself on one of her father’s hunters, galloping over the fields of home. Instead, Brun had to stretch her sore legs on the wide barrel of a brown horse with all the character of a sofa, because Hazel, who had never been on a horse before, had to have a saddle. The man swore he couldn’t ride bareback—and if he was used to that armchair for a saddle, no wonder. At least her body had not forgotten that balance.
“By God, you can ride,” the man said, as she moved up beside him. Brun smiled, thinking nonsmiling thoughts, and he looked over at Hazel. “That’s it,” he said. Brun glanced over; Hazel looked terrified. She was clutching the knob that stuck up from the front of the saddle as if it could anchor her, and trying to strangle the horse with her legs. Brun caught her eye, and gestured down her own body: Sit straight, head up, relax your legs. Hazel straightened.
They rode through the night, meeting no one at all on the trail. Brun shifted as one spot after another wore raw. She had wanted to wear pants again; she had wanted to ride again, but this—she thought of the old saw about being careful what you asked for. The man spoke occasionally: “That way’s Lem’s cabin.”
“Over there’s the pass to Smoky’s place.”
When first light began to give shape to the treetops on the slopes above them, their guide slowed. “It’s only a tad more,” he said. “Just down this slope.” At the foot of the slope, they came out of trees and brush to find a long grassy field ending in a steep hill. Brun could not see anything resembling a shuttle. Was this a trap after all? But the man led the way along the edge of the field, and she realized it might be a grass runway. It was longer than it looked; when she glanced back along it, the far end was hidden in ground fog. The hill, as they neared it, revealed a hangar door set into it. That was promising. Set back under the trees was a log cabin with a peaked roof; beyond it was a larger log building, a barn, and in between was an enclosure of peeled poles where two more horses and a cow munched hay.
The man led them up to a gate set into the enclosure, and swung off his horse as if he’d only ridden an hour or so, not all night. Neither Brun nor Hazel could dismount alone. The man had to help them, pushing and tugging. He swore at them. Brun wished for the ability to swear back. She had not been on a horse in years, and in between she’d borne twins—what did he expect after riding all night bareback? She was sure she’d worn all the skin off her thighs and buttocks. As for Hazel, she’d never ridden before; she’d be lucky if she could walk at all in a few hours.
In the cabin, a stocky woman prepared breakfast for all of them. She never looked at them, never spoke, but set plates in front of them and kept them full. Brun raged inwardly, but they could not take all the women on this planet. I will come back, she vowed silently. Somehow . . .
After breakfast, Brun managed to stand up; she gave Hazel a hand. Outside, the man was opening the hangar door, and at last Brun could see what was waiting for them. Her grin broadened. It was a little mixed-purpose shuttle, the same kind she’d been in when Cecelia had sent her back to Rockhouse. She could fly it herself if she had to. She thought briefly of knocking the man on the head and doing just that, but she had no idea how he planned to evade Traffic Control—if this place even had Traffic Control. It did have warplanes, though, and she had no desire to meet them.
With considerable difficulty, Brun helped Hazel up the narrow ladder into the shuttle. The man was already busy at the controls; he glowered when Brun made her way forward and settled herself in the other control seat. “Don’t touch anything!” he said sharply. Brun watched. Everything looked much the same as on Corey’s ship. Although the names of the measures were strange, she could identify most of the instruments. The man ran down the same sort of checklist.
The little craft bumped its way down the field, engines screaming, gaining speed with every meter. But could it possibly be enough? The trees at the far end approached too rapidly—Brun could remember going much faster than this at Rotterdam. Suddenly, the shuttle rose into the air as if hoisted on a crane . . .
“Short field ability,” the man said, grinning. “Surprised you, didn’t I? She needs a third less runway, and she can clear a hundred feet when she goes up.”
Sun streamed in the cockpit windows; Brun stared avidly at the control panel. Her mind had been so hungry, all this time, for something real, something to do. She glanced back at Hazel; the girl grinned, pointing to the gauges. Yes—a spacer girl, she would have had the same hunger. But now Hazel was looking out and down, at the shadowy folds of hills and valleys receding as they rose. Was this, perhaps, her first planet? Brun had never thought of that. Higher . . . there was a river, winding between hills, with a roll of ground fog like wool resting on the hill to windward. The craft climbed steeply, and the view widened every minute. Over there should be the city they came from, with its spaceport . . . yes. Small—smaller than she expected, though the spaceport had landing space enough for a dozen shuttles.
The radio crackled; their pilot spoke into his headset, but it was so noisy Brun couldn’t hear what he said. Higher . . . higher . . . the morning sky that had been a soft bright blue darkened again. The gauge that must be an altimeter had reeled off thousands and ten thousands, but Brun didn’t know what the unit of measure was. It neared sixty thousand somethings, and passed it. Then the pilot pulled the nose up even higher, and pushed a button on the left side of the cockpit. Acceleration slammed her back in her seat as a penetrating roar came from behind. The sky darkened quickly to black; stars appeared.
She noticed a streak of sunlit vapor climbing below them; their pilot yelled something into his headset. The vapor trail turned away. The pilot pointed through the front window. Brun peered back and forth, not seeing what he meant, until Hazel tapped her arm. “Ten o’clock, negative thirty . . . their space station.” Then she could see it, as its shape passed over a sparkling expanse of white cloud on the bulging planet below. She had been there, on the inside, unable to see . . . and now she was here. Free. Or almost free.
The man handed Brun a headset; she put it on. Now she could hear him. “Changing from lift engines to insystem—we’re supposed to rendezvous with something out here. Dunno if it’s military or civilian or what. They gave me code words to use.”
The craft lurched as he switched from one drive to another, then the artificial gravity kicked in, and she might as well have been sitting in a model shuttle on some planet’s surface. Quiet, too, just as it should have been, with only the faint crisp rustle of the ventilation system. She glanced back at Hazel, who was grinning ear to ear. It felt right to her as well, then. She peered out at the stars, burning steadily . . . but she could not recognize any of the geometry. What system was this?
“Might’s well take a nap, now she’s on auto,” the man said. He switched off the banks of instruments useless with this drive, yawned, and hung his headset on a hook. “I’m going to.” He closed his eyes and slumped in his seat.