Trust Territory Read online

  When the light turned green in front of him and the outer lock opened, Reice was facing a short space walk to the strutwork where a dozen suited figures waited.

  His Manned Maneuvering Unit took its cues from his neural firings as he pushed off, away from gravity's artificial embrace, and out of the fifth-force field into the void. A couple of heads turned, which meant that whole bodies turned, as he jetted toward the platform of girders.

  For an instant, feeling the MMU spitting tiny attitude corrections, Reice thought he was careening toward the silver sphere, out of control. All his chemistries spiked. The sphere was spinning rainbows, sprouting rings like a planet, sucking him close as if it were a gravity well.

  He thought he saw it open up, and there, inside . . .

  Somebody was squawking in his ear. "Hey, Reice, do you copy?"

  He hadn't. But he knew the voice. And he could pick out the suit from which the voice emanated: Customs had given Joe South a slot and some rank, but you couldn't make a modern peacekeeper out of a Relic.

  The Relic pilot was determined to stay five hundred years out of date. His suit was something from a museum of spaceflight; his ship, upgraded but visibly antique, was docked off the Tick's bow.

  "Copy what, Customs Leader? The bunch of you ladies sitting out there like you were on some picnic, waiting for me to come by and unwrap your sandwiches for you?"

  Whenever there was trouble—real trouble—ConSec got called in. Whenever, lately, Reice got called in to troubleshoot something significant, South was at the heart of it—or at least on-site.

  South had been Reice's bad luck charm ever since Reice had been tapped to round up the Relic from Before Time Began and bring him safe and sound to Threshold.

  "This sandwich we got," South's com shot back, "needs to get to Remson's plate without being crushed, dirtied, or damaged in any way. Got any ideas, since he's not letting us in there?"

  Reice toggled his com onto a private, scrambled bandwidth. Even South's retrofitted electronics would match freqs and engage the requisite secrecy mode.

  On that private channel Reice said, "I bet you've got your own idea, cowboy. Let's hear it." Reice's attitude jets puffed into braking mode and he used the key pad on his left wrist to finesse an elegant descent that would put him right beside Joe South, on the strutwork before the science module's door.

  South was saying, "Yeah, I want to ask Keebler to let us in there. He's got three hostages, so he says, and the techs here confirm that. I want to promise him that nobody's going to hurt him, and offer him anything else I can think of. I got a real bad feeling about this, Reice."

  Reice had gotten drunk with South, once or twice. They'd pulled off a coup or two together since they'd met—even if South's part had been more accident than intelligence.

  Reice knew South was counting on Reice to remember the pluses, now. It was clear from the tone of his transmission.

  South was never going to understand Threshold society. If the ancient test pilot weren't so stubborn he'd have admitted it to himself by now and gone outsystem, where nobody cared so much about perfect performance or subtlety or the letter of the law.

  But South was here, under the auspices of Riva Lowe's Customs Office and—somehow—on the Working Group attached to the sphere study, because Vince Remson, Threshold's Assistant Secretary, had taken a liking to the pilot.

  So South had clout, in Threshold terms. Worse, he knew it. Worst, he didn't have the faintest idea how to wield that clout.

  Reice warned himself to be patient before he said, "Look, South, you can say anything you want to Keebler, as long as ConSec isn't bound by what you say. My orders are to bring him out of there, free his hostages—alive, if possible—and bring him back to the Stalk."

  On the Stalk—the administrative core of Threshold—heavier hitters than South or Reice would deal with Keebler.

  Reice could now see, if he looked down, the top of South's helmet, and other heads, turned "up" to look at him as he descended.

  South was saying, "I'm telling you, Reice, I got a bad feeling about spilling any blood out here. I'm real sure we don't want any casualties. No matter what it takes."

  "Neither do I. What do you think this is, the twenty-first century?" The Relic pilot talked a lot about instincts, hunches, dreams, and feelings.

  The poor sucker had been one of those guys who sponge-jumped into nowhere, with garbage for equipment, for God and country. When South had gotten free of relativity's grip, God was a moot point and country—in this case, the U.S.— was a political affiliation more than a place.

  Worker bees like Reice and South never got to set foot on the Earth, let alone in ancestral America. That privilege was reserved for the very privileged, the very blue-blooded, and the very, very rich. You couldn't even get into the Harvard School of Ecological Management without clout beyond measure; the yearly tuition was twice Reice's annual salary.

  And South, who still dreamed of going "home to earth— to America" was telling Reice how to handle the Scavenger?

  South had as much chance of guessing right about Keebler as he did of getting back into Space Command. But, Reice reminded himself, South never quit trying.

  Consolidated Space Command (U.S.) was about as likely to welcome an aboriginal test pilot into the ultra-high-security fold as Reice was to get Keebler out of the science module with no casualties.

  Still...

  Reice's feet hit the strutwork. His computer-assisted magnetic grapples kicked in, and he was standing as solidly as he would have been in his Threshold office.

  "South, if you've got such a strong feeling that you don't want violence out here . . ." Reice began. He paused, and twisted from the hips to look at the Ball. From this close it loomed like a space habitat. He felt like an ant faced with a whole peach. And he felt a strange longing, something like what the ant might feel. He could almost smell the desirability, the wonder, the sweetness, the unexplored pleasure of the Ball.

  Reice turned back. The thing gave him the creeps. How the hell did Keebler tow something that size, anyway?

  South stood up, and they were visor-to-visor. Then they were helmet-to-helmet: South wanted to talk without the constant record of the com systems. "We ought to talk him out, I'm telling you. If there's trouble here. . . . Well, we can't risk it," said the Relic.

  "I don't want trouble either. Take it easy. We know all about your low-profile study and your classified parameters."

  Maybe that wasn't exactly what South had meant, but this was no time to talk about weird feelings. Reice wished he didn't share them.

  This close to the Ball, Reice didn't want any trouble. It almost seemed as if the Ball would disapprove.

  The sphere was a quiescent silver now. But Reice couldn't shake the feeling that it was more than an inert ball.

  You didn't want it to catch you doing anything wrong. You felt like it was watching. You felt like it was learning. And then you remembered that it was a hollow ball with nothing inside it that read on any signature-reader that the Trust Territory of Threshold could bring to bear.

  South's helmet clicked against his, demanding his attention. "Let me try now that you're here, okay?"

  "To talk him out?" Reice needed to get in there. If he could find out whether or not the Scavenger was in full life-support, he could determine what options to employ. "How about you and me go in?"

  "Unarmed?"

  South didn't know a modern weapon from a coffee hottle.

  "Sure," Reice lied. "Unarmed."

  Reice let South tell his story, on general com, to the other men on the platform.

  Then, when South was trying to make contact with the Scavenger, Reice said to the waiting support team, "Despite all that, here's what I want. If we get in there, and you get any signal that everybody's breathing the same life-support, chuck one of these in the system." He tossed a chemical flask grenade to one of the Customs cops.

  It spun lazily on its trajectory, and the light reflected from t
he silvery sphere sparkled off it as the Customs cop caught it. "Then what?" the officer asked.

  "Then we'll all take a nice nap and you guys can come in and sort things out."

  South was listening to Keebler. This was Reice's best, last chance. "If that doesn't work, and I don't bring him out within one hour, I want you fellows to decouple this module and tow it back to Blue Mid. We'll quarantine it there and starve the bastard out." If Reice ended up a hostage himself, Keebler was going to pay for it with the rest of his natural life. Reice made sure of it', giving harsh, uninterpretable orders.

  Maybe he was going to die here, or die in there, but he'd trust South's instinct, too: they'd get the science module as far from the silver sphere as they could, as quickly as they could, if Reice wasn't out in one hour.

  He ported all the specs of his action plan to the Blue Tick, and back to HQ from there.

  Now the plan was graven in stone. Reice was the commanding officer on-site. Nobody out here had the rank to argue with him. And the Scavenger's fate was sealed, one way or the other.

  South was waiting to talk to him when Reice got off the secure channel: Reice could tell because a little diode was blinking an alert to him that he had queued message traffic waiting, and South's was the first call sign group in the queue.

  "Keebler says okay, come in, just us two. He wants to talk about bad dreams. He's been having dreams about the Ball. I said I've been having them, too. No reason to lie."

  The insect-eyed visor turned toward Reice was polarized, expressionless, but South's voice was thick.

  "Let's go then. Or have you got cold feet, sonny?"

  "If I'd wanted to go in there I wouldn't have called you, Reice. But I should have known you'd need company. Yeah, let's do it."

  South bowed exaggeratedly, with the slow, graceful motions of a space-suited man in microgravity: Reice should go first.

  Well, Reice had the weapons. And his best weapon had turned out to be South, who'd convinced Keebler to let them into the science module.

  They'd already gotten farther than Reice had expected when they stepped into the lock and the outer doors closed. A red light told them that the lock was cycling. When a green one replaced it, Reice reached out to push the button that would open the inner lock and put them face-to-face with Keebler.

  Then he hesitated. He could hear South's slow, deep breathing in his com. It was almost like the breathing of someone asleep. He said, "Here, take this. If you need to use it, don't think. Just do what's obvious. Aim, and squeeze."

  South muttered, "Shit," and took the microwave weapon. The wedge-shaped weapon had an obvious business end. The ramp sights were yellow. The trigger was where triggers always were.

  Reice punched the lockplate before South had a chance to ask him about the weapon. The Relic pilot probably had never seen one. HPM weapons were ConSec/UNE Peacekeeping issue. You didn't get that kind of firepower when you worked for Customs.

  Reice didn't want South asking questions about what the HPM gun did or didn't do. He wanted somebody pointing something at Keebler, and he wanted that somebody behaving like backup ought to behave. Maybe he should have brought one of his own men in with them.

  Too late for second thoughts.

  The lock slid slowly back and Reice strained, clicking his visor onto low-light magnification, then heat signature, then through every other quick scan he could think of, trying to determine whether or not Keebler was wearing a suit.

  Keebler wasn't. The fool was standing right in the hatchway, helmetless. The crazy Scavenger's big, greasy face was grinning at him, greenish teeth and all. Keebler held out a grimy, hamlike hand and started to open his mouth.

  Reice didn't wait another second. He palmed the calmative gun and shot from the hip, right up into the Scavenger's turkeylike neck, right below the jaw.

  Keebler grunted, then staggered back, eyes wide. "Aw, sonny, why'd ya have t' go 'n' do that fer? I been tryin' to tell Southie here, that I figgered out what we gotta . . . gotta ..."

  The Scavenger staggered back, one step at a time, as if he were trying to play a hopscotch game sketched out by giants.

  ". . . do . . Keebler finished, as he crumpled slowly to the deck.

  "Watch him, South. Tie him up. That dose will only last so long with a crazy like that."

  South was demanding to know what the hell Reice thought he was doing, and then what to tie Keebler up with.

  Reice said, "Cable. Anything. Just do it." Reice had to find the hostages. His adrenaline was pumping. If this fool had hurt innocent people . . .

  Reice began searching: opening doors, cabinets, looking for traces of blood, thinking about what it would be like if this science module was the scene of a massacre.

  But it wasn't. The hostages were piled in a utility closet—alive—and there was some poly rope there, as well.

  "Everybody okay?" Reice prompted hopefully. As he helped the two men and the pale-faced woman out, Reice grabbed the rope on the shelf above their heads.

  He was hardly listening to the hostages, who were thanking him. He had to make sure that South secured the Scavenger.

  "South?" No answer.

  "South!" Reice nearly screamed into his com. But South wasn't answering.

  Reice left the hostages and tore back through two doors, into the main section of the science module, with the rope over his shoulder and a foreboding he couldn't understand in his heart.

  So what if Keebler and South had gotten into a tussle? So what if the Scavenger, or even the pilot, was dead? The hostages were safe. Reice could handle whatever he found.

  But the repugnance, the horror of death, here, now, swept over him like a maelstrom.

  He barely remembered to point his calmative gun, as he came bursting into the main module and skidded so hard that his magnetic boot soles screeched on the module's flooring.

  South was huddled over Keebler. The crazy pilot had his own helmet off. That was why Reice hadn't been able to reach him.

  South was cradling Keebler's greasy, gray-haired head in his lap as if Keebler were a baby. Reice snarled, "You asshole, South! Tie that guy up! If he comes to fast, he'll grab you by the throat and we'll be back where we started."

  The hostages were straggling in behind Reice, chattering, asking questions.

  South looked up at Reice, and the pilot seemed nearly vacant-eyed. "You don't need to tie him up. He's out cold...."

  Reice pulled South off the Scavenger. "Crazy Relic." He tied Keebler securely, wrapping the poly rope around his space-suited form until Keebler's arms were pinioned to his sides and Reice had a long tether.

  "Find his helmet at least, South."

  South was trying to talk to the hostages. The female one was crying in his arms.

  In the end Reice had to do all the real work himself: he found Keebler's helmet, enabled it, put it on Keebler's head, locked it, sealed it, ran the self-test mechanism from the exterior panel on the helmet flange. Then he found Keebler's gloves, put them on the limp hands, and mated the gloves to the suit system.

  Finally Reice hoisted the Scavenger on his shoulder and headed for the lock, ignoring the hostages and the Relic pilot, South.

  South could handle the hostages, take depositions. Reice had his prisoner and he was headed back to Threshold.

  Keebler's unconscious form was an awkward burden. In the lock, Reice contacted his ship and filed a report. Then he filed another one, straight to Remson's office. When he got back there with this Scavenger he didn't want any problems about how he'd taken Keebler into custody.

  If Remson had any questions that Reice or the running log of the event couldn't answer, then South would be around to answer those questions.

  That was why Reice had taken South in with him in the first place.

  Once the lock opened and Reice was out of the fifth-force generator's range, Keebler weighed nothing and Reice felt better. Maybe rescuing three hostages, saving the science station and perhaps a classified project, was all in a d
ay's work, but it was a good day's work nonetheless.

  CHAPTER 3

  Its Ugly Head

  "You can't expect me not to demand an inquiry when my son and his bride-to-be are lost in space as a direct result of harassment by your ConSec Nazis, Secretary Croft," said the father of the missing Richard Cummings III. "I'm holding you, and your whole Secretariat, directly responsible." The executive stood up and paced the pale blue oval office until he came around to the chair in which Riva Lowe was sitting.

  You could have heard a pin drop in the office of Threshold Secretary General Michael (Mickey) Croft. Riva Lowe was conscious of the stars moving in their courses, as if those she could see above her head through the skylight were actually spinning. But it was her head that was spinning.

  Just keep moving, Cummings. Don't involve me in this. I'm here as Mickey's moral support, a neutral witness—I hope. Riva Lowe had worked too long and hard to get where she was in the Threshold bureaucracy to lose it all now, over a couple of runaways whose parents happened to be part of the spacegoing aristocracy.

  But Cummings didn't move on. He was handsome and he was cultured and he was acutely aware of his power, even here in the Secretary General's office. He towered over Lowe as if she were receiving a dressing down in one of his corporate strongholds, not sitting in the sanctum of Threshold's highest official.

  She wanted to tell Cummings that he had no authority here, but she knew it wasn't true. And you don't bait lions when you're an antelope. She met Richard Cummings's stare and held it, hoping she could will his attention away.

  No luck.

  "Well, Director Lowe," said the handsome heir to the North American Mining and Exploration Corporation's fortune, "don't you agree that a full investigation is in order? You're certainly one of the people we most need to talk to— since your Customs officials seem to have committed a number of the errors that may soon be deemed contributory negligence."