Beyond that, the chief characteristic that struck Gabriel as worthy of notice was its size. It was as big as Falada had been, perhaps even bigger. And much of the chunky and exciting detail was gunnery-guns possessing barrels that Gabriel could have walked down without crouching if he was any judge of such things. If there was a logo, livery or other identifying design on the ship's hull, Gabriel could not find it. There was just too much ship.
Beside him, Enda simply stared. "What do we do now?" she breathed.
"I think we sit still and pray," said Gabriel, "because there's no use running away from that, and there's sure no use shooting at it."
The last fires of starrise trickled away from the hull of the huge ship. Mostly gold colored, this starrise, Gabriel thought. It was lucky enough as spacefarers reckoned such things, though not as lucky as the so- called "black" starrise that radiated into the ultraviolet and made everything for miles around fluoresce. The question is, will it be lucky for us? A bare breath later, the ship went into starfall.
It just sank away into nothingness, seeming to attenuate from all sides-a bizarre enough effect when you saw it in proper lighting with a bright star nearby and with starfall's own distinctive light crawling over the body that was leaving real space. In this shadowy reach of the Thalaassa system, though, the ship simply seemed to vanish like a ghost as the lights of starfall traced their way over it. Outlines wavered and effaced themselves, highlights evaporated like water drops under a fierce heat, planes and curvatures melted away. A few seconds later, she was gone.
"That's impossible," Enda said, almost inaudible. "Ships can't reenter drivespace that swiftly." Gabriel sat and stared. A few seconds later, he reached out for the tank and brought up the stardrive controls again. "I don't know what you think," he said, "but I think we need to be somewhere quiet for five days."
Enda simply nodded.
Gabriel hit the control for immersion. The light swept up around them, masked away the darkness of Thalaassan space...
... and they too were gone.
Five days later the light of a new starrise sluiced along the hull of Sunshine and across her cockpit, out of which stared a couple of interested faces, looking to see how the ship took her first starrise under their command. Light that splashed and ran like water sheeted "down" the length of the ship, trailing and trickling away. Normal black space followed in its path, leaving them looking at their first glimpse of the Corrivale system. The primary itself, a middle-sized golden star, burned in the middle distance about two AU away. The other planets were strung out as variously bright or dim "stars" along both sides of their sun's ecliptic. Inderon and Tricus were closest to the primary, then Hydrocus with Grith as a companion spark that it occasionally occulted. The outer worlds, Lordan, Lecterion, Iphus, Almaz, and Chark, stretched out into the depths, too dim to see at all without the guidance of tactical overlay. The "pen" in which they fell out of drivespace was full of other ships and scheduled starrises and starfalls. It was therefore no surprise when the first communication they received was from Corrivale Central, requesting them to get the hell out of there in short order. Not that this was the exact language used, but Gabriel recognized the tone of it clearly enough. "So where are we headed?" Enda asked from back in her quarters.
"I haven't downloaded system comms yet," Gabriel said.
He was hoping that there would be at least one answer to the numerous queries he had sent before they left Thalaassa. There was no Grid access while you were in drivespace, and all that time he had fretted and played with the comms like a man who couldn't wait. Now he was half afraid to go near the console. "Well, wait a few minutes," said Enda. "The system Grid will be speaking to our own system and sorting out billing and so forth for some little while yet. It will call when it's ready."
Gabriel sat there on the hot seat side of the cockpit and let out a long breath. The past few days had been welcome enough time to recover from the attack on them. There was also time for assessment of the damage. They had both been very annoyed to discover that the cargo bay had taken considerable damage in the attack. Both the inner shielding and outer plating would have to be replaced before the ship could legally haul again. Other things had been on Gabriel's mind as well. Chief of them was his dislike not only of being shot at but at the possible reasons for it. "Come now, Gabriel," Enda said. "This is the Verge."
He had laughed at her. "Oh, come on! The Verge has some reputation as being wild and woolly, but not that wild and woolly. I was born here. Not this part, but still this is usually a fairly civilized place. What's going on out here?"
Enda gave him a thoughtful look and knitted those long slender fingers together in her working-things- out gesture. "But 'civilization' simply means living in cities," she said. "There are relatively few people here doing that, wouldn't you say?" "That seems a touch pedantic."
"I would rather say that it strikes to the heart of the matter. The Verge is a fair size, and we are a long way from Bluefall. In the Thalaassa system are two planets with various small cities on them, yes. But most of the other people in the system are living by themselves, working the various mining outposts or living in very small groups, in places that are lonely at best and extremely isolated at worst. Nor, without any centralized Concord presence, is there any really organized means for determining how safely people live in the Thalaassa system." She sat back and put her feet up. "I think that is not your main concern."
"No," Gabriel said. He frowned out into the darkness. "I can still remember perfectly well what Jacob sent me off to 'find out' about. Something going on or not going on 'way out' in the system. We were pretty far out there the other day."
ii г-p ii True.
Gabriel got up and started to pace, then stopped himself, this being one of those habits that could get very wearing for those forced to share close quarters with you. "I don't know, but someone was being waited for out there. I'd bet money on it." "Would you bet, however, that it was us?"
Paranoia, the back of his mind said to him again. "I don't know," he answered. "We might just have stumbled into a trap laid for someone else, but who? No other driveplans were filed for that area, or system plans either."
"Many people do not bother filing system plans," Enda said, "considering them a waste of money." Her look was very demure. "Are you suggesting that we should have done something illegal?" Gabriel said.
"You will wait a long time before you catch me suggesting such a thing to another being," Enda said, and the look became even more demure and grandmotherly.
Gabriel chuckled. "But, Gabriel," Enda said, "is it not true that believing the universe to be actively involved in one's persecution is far preferable to discovering that it is not so involved, and in fact does not give a good flying damn?" "Enda! What language!"
She snorted at him. "Still. Gabriel, I believe as you believe, that you have been the victim of some kind of plot. What kind? We shall see, but do not complicate its magnitude unnecessarily." The communications screen chirped, the particular tone that meant that a message was coming in. Gabriel got up and touched the screen. It cleared and displayed a message. "Iphus Independent Mining Collective," he read, "we have received form 8821, and so on and so on." He read down the message, then said, "Well! We're hired!"
'That is a relief," Enda said. "It would have been annoying to get here and find no work waiting." Gabriel stood, reading the message again. "Did they check back with the mining company on Eraklion?" Enda said.
"They did. Look here-" Gabriel scrolled the message down. "-Satisfactory work record at Eraklion/ Ordinen."
"If we were so satisfactory, then why did they refuse to employ us again?" Enda said, rather dryly. Gabriel turned away from the screen and shook his head, started to pace again, stopped himself again. "We were too good, maybe? Got somebody riled up?" "Do you believe that?" Enda asked.