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The baby's eyes were not blue, but yellow-flecked green, a strong color
intensified by the short blond fuzz that would become hair. Dr. Kristera had
to stop herself from pulling away from the intensity of the newborn's look.
"He's . . . strong . . . ," she temporized to the mother.
The pilot nodded, closing her eyes.
The surgeon straightened and took the mother's pulse. Strong. The pilot
was in excellent condition, had kept in shape, obviously, even though the
birth had cost her more than any single high gee maneuver in the operations
manual.
The surgeon stepped back as the nursing tech returned.
Maintenance stations were not equipped for childbirth, and for some
reason the mother had rejected adamantly the local civilian health care. The
C.O. had granted her request to use base facilities.
The surgeon wondered if his permission were yet another part of his
efforts at upgrading Standora. Already, the load on the docks was increasing,
after decades of neglect.
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"You can go now, doctor," suggested the nursing tech, a stocky mid-aged
woman.
The I.S.S. surgeon nodded and turned, worrying at her upper lip with her
lower.
What was it about the child?
The blond hair was uncommon at birth, but certainly not rare. But the
eyes . . . it had to be the eyes.
She wished she had more background for O.B. work, but who expected much
in the Service, particularly away from the main staging and training centers?
All babies had blue eyes at birth. Or dark ones. Didn't they?
Who had eyes like that? Like a hawk?
She sucked in her breath.
"It couldn't be . . . it couldn't . . ."
She remembered who had eyes like a hawk, eyes that missed nothing. How
could she have forgotten? How could she have possibly forgotten? Was that why
he had given his permission?
Mechanically, Dr. Kristera began to peel off her gloves. She shook her
head.
Who ever would have thought it?
Shaking her head slowly, she began to remove the rest of her operating
room clothing.
XX
SCREEE . . . THUD!
The mass of metal that had once been a pre-Federation scout came to rest
in the makeshift cradle in the middle of the small hangar.
The man in the gray technician's suit, a repair suit without decoration
or insignia, watched as the salvage trac eased back out into the gray morning.
His hawk-yellow eyes scanned the black plates and fifty meter plus length of
obsolete aerodynamic lines.
The pre-Federation scouts had been a good thirty percent longer and more
massive than present scouts, with the attendant power consumption, but they
had one impressive advantage from his point of view. They had been true
scouts, able to set down and lift from virtually any world within thirty
percent of T-type parameters.
Not that the jumble of metal, broken electronics, and missing equipment
before him was really a scout. But it had been, and would be again.
"You MacGregor?" asked the trac operator, who had returned with the
clipack after stopping the salvage trac outside on the tarmac. The shuttle
port outside the hangar door served the few commercial interests of Standora
and the small amount of native travel.
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"Same."
"Need some authentication."
"Stet." The man in the technician's repair suit produced an oblong card.
The trac operator inserted the card in her clipack, which blinked amber,
then green.
"That's it." The salvage operator glanced over at the long black shape
and shook her head. "What you going to do, break it down for higher value
scrap?"
"Client wants her restored."
"Restored? That'd take years, thousands of creds."
"You're right."
"Why? No resale. Black hole for power use. Wrong construction for a
yacht."
"Prospecting."
"If you say so."
The salvage operator was still shaking her head as she left the hangar
for her cab.
The technician, who was not exactly a technician, cranked down the
hangar door. At one time, when Standora had been on more heavily traveled
Imperial trade corridors, before the increasing power consumption of the newly
colonized planets had pushed jumptravel for commercial purposes into fewer and
fewer ships and trips, all the hangars had possessed luxuries such as
individual conditioning units and powered doors. As the commercial travel had
dropped, so had the amenities.
The long-term lease on the hangar barely covered the taxes and expenses
to the owner, but the lease terms provided that any upgrades in the facility
would revert to the owner at the end of the twenty year contract.
According to the logs that had accompanied the mass of metal that had
once been a scout, the official name of the craft had been the Farflung.
While the hull contained the fragments of drives, generators for screens
and gravfields, all the communications gear and the minimal weaponry
associated with scouts had been removed before the auction. That was fine with
him, since weaponry mounted for use was illegal and since he intended to use
the equivalent of equipment associated with more impressive craft.
He laughed once as he turned back toward the graving cradle. The power
consumption from what he planned for the main drives and screens would really
have stunned the salvage operator.
As she said, it would take time.
But time . . . that he still had.
Timeùwhile the devilkids struggled half a sector away at the
mechanically impossible task of restoring Old Earth. Timeùwhile Eye and
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Service headquarters watched him and wondered how soon he would begin to age
and die. Timeùwhile the ghosts of Caroljoy and Martin nibbled at the warmth
provided by Allison and Corson.
Yes. He had time. For now.
XXI
HIS STEPS WERE measured as he came through the stone archway. His black boots,
not quite polished to the sheen expected of the lmperial Marine he was not,
barely sounded on the stone steps of the rear entrance to the quarters.
"Good evening, Commander." Ramieres nodded at the senior officer
respectfully, but did not leave the cooktop.
Gerswin sniffed lightly, appreciating the delicate odor of the scampig.
"Evening, Ramieres. Smells good. As usual."
"Thank you, Commander. I do my best."
The commander smiled. The rating was the best Service cook he had run
across in his entire career, and better than a score of the so-called chefs
whose dishes he had sampled over the years.
He knew he would miss Ramieres when the younger man finished his tour in
less than three months. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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