ISHTAR CITY, VENUS
August 13, Year 26
0317 hours, Venus time
Marcus Blythe opened the street door cautiously, but he dropped his walking stick with a loud clatter before he managed to close the door behind him. He froze.
"It's all right, Dad," Sal said. "I'm up working, so you haven't bothered me."
"Ah," said Marcus. He turned around and saw his daughter seated at the table in the common room of the suite. He'd thought the light was on merely to guide him back to his bed as usual. "Ah."
"Do you need. ." Sal asked.
"No, I'm quite all right," Marcus said in a tone of injured innocence. He bent carefully to retrieve his stick, fumbling it several times in the process. That was as much his arthritis-twisted hands as the drink, though. In truth, he wasn't drunk by his standards or those of the Old Port District more generally. "I was out toasting the success of our new venture with a few friends, you see."
He began to tremble. Sal rose quickly from her seat, bumping the table and disarranging the array of small parts on it. "Dad?" she said.
"No, I'm all right!" Marcus said with a touch of the fire appropriate to a space captain and shipowner; rarely heard since he became a cripple who spent his time drinking with other has-beens.
Sal put her arms around her father anyway, holding him close. There were tears at the corners of his eyes. Marcus wasn't an old man, but to himself-not to her, never to her-he was a useless one.
"Is it really going to happen, Sallie?" he said.
Sal used the bandanna with which she secured her hair in private to dab at the tears. "I don't think Mister Gregg lies about things, Dad," she said." I don't think he could imagine a reason he'd want to. Now, if you're really all right, why don't you wash up before you go to bed? I've changed your sheets-and not before time."
"Yes, I'll do that," Marcus agreed humbly. He didn't move for a moment. "It. . Sallie, it's so hard to believe that my own daughter is in partnership with Stephen Gregg. Mister Stephen Gregg!"
"Yeah," Sal said. "It is very hard to believe."
She hadn't let herself feel anything. She didn't know what she even ought to feel. Elation? Fear? There was reason enough for those and any number of other emotions; she just didn't know what was right.
"It means we'll be rich, you know, Sal," he said. "When I was young I thought-well, you're young, you know. But-"
"I don't know that we're going to be rich," Sal said, almost completely concealing her nervous irritation at hearing her father tempt fate. "All we have is a chance, a chance to recoup our losses on the last voyage."
"Oh, it's better than that, girl!" Marcus said, irritated in turn at having his hopes discounted. "Why, Gregg is Captain Ricimer's right-hand man! Gregg's cut his way to a dozen fortunes in the Reaches. You think he's not going to make sure this latest investment doesn't turn a profit too? A profit in a rich gentleman's terms!"
Sal swallowed. "I know that Mister Gregg is a skillful businessman, Dad," she said. "I just don't want you to get your hopes up. Would you like a hand to the corner?"
The bathhouse was at the junction with the main corridor three doors down.
"And I want you to know," Marcus bumbled on, "that nobody thinks the less of you for. . what you've done. Your mother was a good woman at heart, a truly loving wife while we were together, and-"
"Dad, shut up," Sal said in a voice like a dragon's. "You're drunk and you don't know what you're saying."
She turned her father around in a curt movement better suited for shifting furniture and opened the door for him. Men were shouting at one another in slurred anger somewhere in the night, but they could have been blocks away. When there weren't crowds of pedestrians to absorb sound, it echoed long distances in the underground corridors of the older Venerian settlements.
"I'm not drunk!" Marcus protested feebly. "Sallie, what did I-"
"Sweat all the booze out of you before you come back here!" Sal said. "In the future, don't tell foolish lies to your drunken friends, and especially don't tell them to me!"
Puzzled, shocked completely sober, Marcus Blythe stumbled into the street. "Sallie, I'm sorry for-" he called.
She slammed the door on the last of his words and stood trembling against the inside of the panel for a moment. Were they all saying that she was Gregg's mistress? If her father said it to her face, then they probably were.
Sal sighed. It didn't matter. Most folk assumed the only use for a woman on a starship was to service the sexual needs of the crew. She'd lived with that all her life, so she could live with this too.
She sat down at the table and began to sort the parts into groups by subassemblies. She'd tacked a high-intensity lamp to the wall to work by. Its glare made her eyes sting; she switched it off and rubbed her forehead, swearing softly at nothing she could put a clear name to.
After a moment Sal turned the light back on. She dipped the copper bristles in solvent and resumed brushing the rust off the sear.
Spread before her on the table was the completely disassembled revolver that she'd pulled from the Federation officer's death grip. After she had it completely cleaned, she would treat the external surfaces with a corrosion-resistant phosphate finish.
When Sarah Blythe went beyond Pluto the next time, she would go armed.
BETAPORT, VENUS
August 14, Year 26
1741 hours, Venus time
Piet Ricimer rose from the table in the back room of the Blue Rose Tavern and stretched with a groan. "I'm going to complain to the landlord about how hard the chairs in this room are," he said.
"They were comfortable enough six hours ago," Stephen said. "Maybe we've just worn them out."
The Blue Rose was on Ship Street, facing the port's transfer docks. The tavern had been Piet's headquarters from the beginning, long before he'd bought the freehold with a small fraction of the profits on his most recent raiding voyage.
Business was good tonight. A gust of laughter from the public bar rumbled its way through the wall. Guillermo was outside, acting as doorkeeper in case an important message arrived in person rather than by telephone.
"Six hours?" Piet echoed. "So it is. Shall we take a break?"
"Ten minutes more," Stephen said. He typed a string of commands on the keyboard, then rotated the holographic screen so that the display faced his companion. "I want to run through the last of the ships offered to the squadron."
Piet sat down again, his expression neutral. "All right," he said.
In the public bar, three sailors sang in excellent harmony, "There were ninety and nine who safely lay-"
"The Gallant Sallie," Stephen said. He leaned back in his chair so that his shoulders touched the glazed tiles of the wall behind him. "A well-found vessel of a hundred and fifty tonnes. A crew of sixteen plus the captain and mate. She mounts four ten-centimeter guns, sufficient for the purpose we'd want her for-which I take to be transport rather than combat. She could easily be up-gunned, of course."
"No, we don't need another fighting ship," Piet said. He looked at Stephen rather than the display. "If I recall correctly," he continued evenly, "this vessel's owner and captain is a woman."
Stephen got up, turned to face the corner behind him, and forced his palms hard against both walls of the angle. "Governor Halys is a woman, Piet," he said in a tense, clipped voice. "We serve a woman."
"We serve mankind, Stephen," Piet replied. His arms were spread, his right hand on the console and his left draped with deliberate nonchalance across the back of his chair. "I hope that we serve God as well, by executing His plan to return mankind to the stars. But I take your point."