Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (41 page)

“I find I do not understand that sign,” observed Arcan plaintively, but there was no reply volunteered.

IT TOOK THEM two hours to extricate the Variance from the space station platform, and set a course.

“When do you think they will follow us?” asked Diva.

Grace shook her head. “We were lucky there was nobody up there. I have altered the manifest so that it looks as if Kylon has taken the ship over to the Sacran system.”

“Won’t they find out he hasn’t?”

“Oh, sure, but we will be long gone by then. Kylon is out on one of the asteroids at the moment, and I don’t think he will be back for a couple of weeks. They won’t set out after a space trader that has been missing for two weeks.”

“Good job!”

Grace grinned. “We try to please. Where shall we try first?”

Diva raised a thoughtful eyebrow. “Well, he can’t be in the vicinity of Valhai,” she hazarded. “The signal was far too weak for that. And I don’t think he would be on the main trade routes to anywhere, because Atheron will have wanted to avoid detection by other ships.”

“Then you think he would have travelled out in the Nomus direction?”

“I think that is the first place to look, yes.”

“Nomus it is then.” Grace examined the screen in front of her, and pushed the down button several times. “Nomus. Estimated arrival in two months.”

“Two months! What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Can’t Arcan transport us there?”

Arcan’s voice sounded regretful. “I have not ‘seen’ the failed star, and neither have either of you. I am afraid I cannot help. I could take you over to one of the Sacran planets of course, but with the current conjunction Nomus is closer to the Almagest system, so that wouldn’t be very much help.”

Grace looked behind her doubtfully. “We
could
go into suspended animation …”

“Not me! I had enough of that on the way over from Coriolis to Valhai. I haven’t forgotten the boy who died! Those stasis pods are dangerous.”

“I suppose they are. Anyway, somebody should stay awake to monitor the long range scanner.”

“That’s the job for me. You can go into one of the stasis pods if you like,” Diva informed her generously.

“Not a chance. I have never used one before, and this is not the time to start.”

“So how are we going to while away the time?”

Arcan had some ideas for that. “I expect you would like to get a thorough background on piloting spaceships such as this,” he suggested.

Diva covered her eyes. “Your expectations are always so high,” she informed him. “Is that all there is to do on board a Sellite starship?”

“I don’t understand. Is there something else you would rather do?”

“Somethi … I should jolly well think there is!”

“Really? What would that be?”

“Anything would be better than spending two months studying orbital mechanics, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I like orbital mechanics. I am unsure of your criteria for enjoyment.”

“Very simple,” said Diva, “no studying, no work, nothing boring.”

“Clarify please,” said Arcan. “I find things which are not studying or work boring.”

“Don’t you ever have fun?”

“‘Fun’?”

“You know, things that make you laugh …” Diva narrowed her eyes. “Oh, you can’t laugh, can you, Arcan?”

“Show me.”

The girls tried to produce a peal of laughter, and failed, which made them both giggle about it for several minutes.

“That is ‘fun’?”

“Exactly.”

“It seems very silly to me,” Arcan told them severely. “I do not think I am capable of it. It appears similar to ‘joking’. Six was always trying to show me this idea of ‘joking’. It is something he values very much. I could never see the point of it, myself, but then I am very different from you flimsies.”

“You have no idea.”

“No, Diva, I have many ideas. More than you, certainly.”

“And none of them fun, just think …”

“You are quite right there. I just think. What could possibly be better than that? If you had been almost comatose for about thirty thousand of your Coriolan years then you would appreciate a bit of thinking too.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate thinking,” Diva explained, “it’s more that there are other things under Almagest to do.”

“Well I suppose there are for a limited being such as yourself. Eating and sleeping, for example.”

“I give up.” Diva waved a hand tiredly in assent. “We will study your stupid book with you.”

“Then the time will pass most quickly.”

“You wish!”

SIX WAS BORED out of his skull. He had been forced to read the piloting manual to try to help pass the time. He thought that Diva would have teased him mercilessly if she had known. Well – at least he would know how to drive a spaceship if he needed to. Unfortunately this one had a couple of problems. In the first place, the automatic on-board computer wasn’t working. According to the manual the computer made any sort of interplanetary travel much easier. Secondly, there was something wrong with the fuel feed, and although he could get the engine to give small bursts of energy when necessary, a ‘manoeuvre blocked’ sign came up every time he tried to get out of orbit from around Nomus.

So here he was. Stuck in orbit around the dead star. Great! Just the thing for a no-name like himself! And he might be here for a long time. He had enough supplies to keep himself alive and the crew in stasis for a year. After that things would go steadily downhill. Now that would be fun, wouldn’t it? He gave a long sigh. Even sitting in a bubble on Valhai had been better than this.

He wasn’t even sure his patch through to Diva had worked. All he got back had been an incomprehensible static. He hoped Diva had been able to hear him say he was in orbit around Nomus, but he couldn’t depend upon it. She may not even have realized that the communication came from him. The effort had fried the circuits of the little spaceship’s communication electronics, so there would be no repeat. He gave a heartfelt sigh, and tried to turn his thoughts to his home planet of Kwaide. It helped, he found, when time seemed to stop.

THE PROXIMITY ALERT in the Variance went off after about eight weeks with an unmistakable alarm tone which refused to silence itself.

“Arcan! How on Sacras can I get this thing to stop screaming in my ear?” asked Diva, who had skipped that part of the manual.

“I did tell you that all the information in the manual would be useful,” said Arcan mildly.

“You did,” acknowledged Diva. “I took no notice.”

“I can tell.”

“Bully for you!”

“Just accept them on the automatic screen with the 2697321 code, and the sound will cease.”

Grace put the instructions into effect, and bent to examine the characteristics of the spacecraft detected.

“Is it Six?” Diva asked.

“It might be,” answered Grace. “It is certainly Sellite – though that is no surprise, since the Sellites never gave interplanetary technology to anybody else. And it can’t be on an asteroid trip, because it is a trader and is sitting in orbit around Nomus. It could well be Six.”

“It will be.” Diva was sure. “I knew we would find him. He will have to be forever grateful to us.”

“Knowing him, I wouldn’t count on that. He will probably be furious it took us so long to get here.”

“He’ll fall on our necks.”

Grace hesitated. “He might—” she agreed, “—but then again, he might not.”

“He’d jolly well better be grateful. If he thinks I just sat through eight weeks of learning space lore just to have him snap at me he’s got another think coming!”

“WHAT TOOK YOU so long?” demanded Six the minute he saw Diva.

Diva spluttered. “Wh-what in Lumina do you mean … ‘so long’?”

“Hello-o?” Six opened his eyes wide and twisted his head in disbelief. “… Arcan? Remember? Couldn’t you have asked Arcan to transport you here?”

“For your information, Six, Arcan can’t travel to places that neither he nor anybody else has seen. So no, we couldn’t have asked him to transport us here. And no, thanks very much, we haven’t had a very nice journey out either. Not that you care, of course, no-brain!”

“Moron!”

“Cretin!”

“Dummy!”

They fell on each other after that and exchanged a fierce hug, but pulled apart almost straight away. Six went over to Grace and gave her a hug too, this time a little longer than that of Diva.

“Grace,” he said, “missed me?”

She smiled. “Of course I have. Been pret-ty boring around here without you. We have had to fall back on reading the flight manual to keep ourselves sane.”

“You too!” He grinned. “Bet you thought your studying days were over when you got out of the bubble, Diva. Still, you never know when piloting a spaceship might come in handy.”

“Diva was all for throwing it out of the air lock,” said Grace, “but I managed to restrain her.”

“And Arcan?”

“I am here, too, Six. It is good to hear your voice again.”

“And yours!”

“Indubitably. You are not alone on this ship, I perceive?”

Six shook his head. “Atheron and company,” he explained.

“In stasis?”

“Thankfully, yes. I found it hard enough existing here for eight weeks on my own. Atheron yapping away at me would have made it impossible.”

Arcan managed to transmit surprise. “How did you manage to elude your captors?”

Six told them the abridged version of his feat, and basked for a pleasant moment in the resultant acclaim.

“Nah,” he said modestly, “it was nothing really.”

“If it had been me,” said Diva, “I would have—“

“Yes, your mulchiness? I suppose you would have done it all so much better than I did?”

“Well, of course I would, but I wasn’t going to say that. What I
was
going to say is that I wouldn’t have bothered putting Atheron and his minions into stasis. They would have found out for sure just what makes up the surface of Nomus, if
I
had had anything to say in the matter!”

“You’re just saying that!” Six flashed back. “You wouldn’t have done anything of the sort!”

“Would so!”

“Would not!”

Grace looked at the mutinous faces in front of her, and decided to step in. “All right, leave it alone, will you? Let’s just be happy we are all back together again, shall we?”

There was audible mumbling from each side of her, until both parties finally fell silent. Grace gave them a severe look each and then started to go on. “What are we going to do now?” she asked. “Should we let Arcan transport us back to Valhai, or should we take the Variance?”

“The what?” Six said automatically.

“The Variance. The name of our space trader.”

Six looked revolted. “Variance? What on Sacras …?”

“From statistics. Diva named it.”

“I know where it is from. I’m surprised Diva could remember anything about statistics. She’s tried hard enough to forget everything else.”

“I think it is a perfectly fine name,” said Diva, bristling.

“Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Stands to reason. Personally I can’t see the point of calling a ship after a statistic.” He gave a shrug.

“No, you wouldn’t, of course. It just happens to be about numbers not being where they ought to be …” Diva raised her eyebrows eloquently.

“If that refers to me, where does your royal numbness think I ought to be?” Six narrowed his eyes. “I might be just a no-name from Kwaide, but at least I know better than to name spaceships. As if! That’s a girl thing.” He gave a sound that reminded Grace of the warthog they had met on Kwaide. “Girls!” he echoed.

Grace was forced to put a hand onto Diva’s wrist and press it meaningfully, causing the Coriolan girl to horizontally translate her glare from one subject to the other. “Enough!” Grace repeated. “How are we going to get back to Valhai?”

“Kwaide, you mean,” corrected Six.

“Well, Kwaide then. Wait a minute – why Kwaide?”

“Because that is where we are going to need two spaceships in the very near future.”

“Ah – you’re planning on stealing the two spaceships.” Grace nodded. “Have you thought that the Sellites might just take exception to that?”

“No, I haven’t.” Six was irritated. “I can’t be expected to think of everything, can I?”

“But why do you have to steal them in the first place?”

“It’s as clear as the sunny side of Valhai. There are more and more refugees pouring in each day. We can’t expect Arcan always to be available. He’s doing all this for nothing as it is.”

“I am glad you have said that, Six,” said Arcan. “I already told you that I am not prepared to continue as general pack vaniven to half the system. I don’t mind helping out in an emergency, but they always seem to want more. I was thinking of telling them all that they would just have to do it on their own.”

“There you are then,” said Six. “We need to set up our own supply line, using more conventional methods.”

“And has it occurred to you that the Sellites might just decide to come on over and get their mega-valuable space traders back, nomus?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I don’t quite know how to get around that one, I’m afraid.”

“Oh well planned, no-name!” Diva gave him a sarcastic bow.

“So do better, lady numbskull –
if
you can!”

“Certainly.” Diva drew herself up to her full height, and there was a silence.

Six grinned. “Well?”

“It may take me some time.” She informed him.

“You don’t say!”

Arcan decided it was time to interrupt. “Let Grace think about it,” he said calmly. “She is the one who is good at that sort of thing. If you want to take both these ships back to Kwaide we are going to have to mend this one – and that will involve finding out just what is wrong with it in the first place. Perhaps the three of us could be getting on with that while Grace considers what to do.”

IT TOOK GRACE a few hours to come up with some semblance of a plan to present to the others.

“You might not like it,” she warned them.

“If it gives me two ships I shall,” assured Six.

“It should, but … there is a cost.”

“Cough it up, then.”

Arcan was confused. “Why should she cough? Grace, are you unwell?”

Grace shook her head with a giggle. “Six, you know you shouldn’t use expressions that confuse Arcan. Stop it.”

“Put a sock in it, you mean?” he asked.

“Where do you want to put the sock?” Arcan asked. “Do you require more clothes, Six?”

“No he doesn’t,” said Diva, “Ignore him, Arcan! Go on, Grace!”

Grace bit her lip. “It just seems that … the trouble is … we need someone to negotiate with, and …”

Six and Diva came up with the same answer at the same time. “Atheron!”

Grace nodded. “I’m afraid so. He is the one person we have access to, he is influential, and he knows the value of negotiation. Plus, he will be anxious not to lose his position amongst the Sellites, so he may be amenable to a few concessions in return for a major cover-up about what happened here. Of course, all this is really just the price of his freedom – and transfer to Valhai. He can invent some lucrative contract with the Elders on Kwaide which necessitated the sacrifice of two ships or whatever he wants. It doesn’t really matter, as long as he signs them over to us.”

The other two looked at Grace with awe.

“It’s brilliant!” breathed Diva.

“That awful old man is going to get away with it again!” Six made a disgusted face. “I was going to leave him in stasis until he rotted!”

“Don’t exaggerate, Six, you were going to do no such thing!” Diva told him severely. “He may know where your sister is being held.”

“That is the other advantage,” said Grace. “I thought we might be able to convince him to tell us where Eight is as well – we just have to figure out what Atheron wants.”