The Venus Belt (18 page)

“Dunno, Winnie,” answered Lucy. “Lemme think on that a bit. I ain’t convinced it was the same party tried t’get you all three times.”

That was a wrinkle I hadn’t considered.

“Of
course
it was,” said Koko. “Who else could it have been?”

Francis looked up at her a moment, then dismissed the argument and shifted his attention back to the patient in the tank.

Scott’s proprietary manner had returned. “She’ll be weak, you unde
r
stand. If we can shut the bore off, she’s going straight back into stasis until I get a recovery system set up. This is going to be one sick little girl for a while.”

Lucy stood before the tank and Scott beside the switch as Francis and Dave prepared to lift the lid. The word was given, the toggle thrown, and, as the mechanical coffin opened, a flood of signals began passing through the eighteen inches between Lucy and the diabolical device on the girl’s head. Slowly the fatal tension appeared to drain from her sic
k
ened body, a bit of color returned. She began breathing evenly, and Scott, consulting vital signs, looked satisfied.

Suddenly the victim lurched upward on an elbow, confused terror brimming in her eyes. I took an unconscious step forward and she fixed on me, shrinking backward into the tank. Scott sprang to her side, trying to make her lie down. The look of wild horror on her face intensified, she kept her eyes riveted on me.

“
You!
I have to— What is this? Who are you people? I have to— Don’t you know what’s happening? Aphrodite doesn’t know what it is,
but it frigh
t
ens the voices falling from the stars!
”

She collapsed. Scott and Francis checked her signs as Dave prepared an injection. They gave it a few seconds to work, then closed the lid and switched the stasis field back on.

“I think she’ll be all right, now,” Scott observed. “You sure that bore is thoroughly deactivated?”

“Like a doornail,” Lucy answered, “except fer reabsorbin’ its intrusions in her brain. Give ‘er a day or two outa stasis, an’ likely it’ll just fall off.”

“What do you suppose she meant?” asked Francis. “Did that ra
m
bling mean anything to you, Win?”

“Some of it. Her disorientation was plain enough.”

“As was her residual conditioning against you.” He scrubbed his glasses once again and set them on his nose. “Aphrodite, voices falling from the stars—what was
that
all about?”

I thought about it. “You’ve seen more delirium than I have. Voices from the stars—those mysterious
signals
they’ve been picking up. And Ap
h
rodite—well, at least we know the real villains, now.”

“Or do we?” asked Koko. “Win, I have a scary thought—or maybe just a silly one. You guys said the brain-bore has a radio circuit, right?”

“Right, but—oops! Koko, I
hope
that’s just a silly idea.”

“So do I, Boss. I don’t like to think we’re being invaded from interste
l
lar space. And by remote control!”

“W

innie, you been
nekkid
long enough!” Lucy grabbed my arm and started pushing smartsuit buttons.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I snatched my arm away, but not in time to keep my feet from turning orange. I looked at them and shuddered. We’d returned to my room at
Le Petit Prince
,
leaving the med
i
cal types to map out my suitcase burglar’s convalescence. Koko leaned back in a chair now—gorillas are another reason extraterrestrial furniture’s substa
n
tial—watching a movie on my Gigacom.

Bedtime for Bonzo
, probably.

She looked up at me. “Lucy’s right, Boss. You need a little decor
a
tion, a little flair, like me.” Her smartsuit was pretending to be the un
i
form of a Revolutionary officer—Continental Army, naturally. Her sleek and ultr
a
modern Whitney .464 spoiled the effect a little; it should have been a sword, or at least a flintlock.

“Look,” I said, “if
you
want to go around dressed for Halloween, that’s your business. Leave those alone, will you, Lucy?” She’d pushed another half-dozen buttons while I was arguing with Koko, turning the rest of my suit a glossy black. The feet were still the color of a pair of tangerines, now with just the slightest trace of webbing. They clashed with the pink carpet.

I sat down on the bed, trying to get them back to normal.

“Aw, c’mon, Winnie, lemme finish. Cross m’heart, you’ll like it.”

“You left your heart down in Nikita’s Funerium.” I turned around and looked in the mirror. “This white part on the belly, Lucy, what am I su
p
posed to be, anyway?”

“It’s a surprise. Now gimme yer arm.” She started pushing buttons again.

“Listen, if you like decoration so much, how come your own precious body remains unsullied? Sorry, cancel that. I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s okay, Winnie. Now I think on it, you’re right.” Her skin began to lighten up at once. Suddenly she was swathed in her favorite pa
t
tern, a riotous yellow paisley, lots of different shades of green and blue. It made her look like a giant tea cozy. “There, how’s that?”

“Friendship compels me to reserve comment.” I looked in the mirror again. “Now tell me what
this
is all about.” My suit had become a solid sh
i
ny black, except for orange feet and a snow-white “bib” down the front. I pulled my hood up suspiciously. Sure enough, a pair of beady li
t
tle birdlike eyes—and a beak.

“Appropriate,” said Lucy, “seein’s how we’re takin’ off fer th’ South Pole.”

“Sure, and if we were going back to Gunter’s Landing, I’d have to wear a Santa Claus—
the South Pole
?
I have a freighter to catch, Lucy, providing it ever takes off.”

“Winnie, I got Eddie’s flivver parked down t’Port Piazzi. Won’t ge
t
cha back to Earth, but we’ll all be a lot more comfortable on Bulfinch.”

Koko sat up abruptly. “We’re gonna see another asteroid?
Oh, boy!
”

“Well, so much for the charms of Dr. Francis. After all, who can co
m
pete with the Wild Frontier?

“Hold on, Lucy. How can we leave Ceres, with that solar flare and—”

“I’m plannin’ t’lay on extra shielding. Ugly thing t’do t’Eddie’s brand-new Cord—a ‘23 Ad Astra, as pretty as they come. But it’ll get us home. Until
Lord Kalvan’s
primed t’lift, we can go over his notes an’ records, mebbe figger out what happened to him.”

“Oh, no you don’t! You’re not going to sneak up on me like that. I’m staying right on Ceres until the flare warning is over, then I’m going straight back to Clarissa.” I folded my arms across my chest and glared at her.

“Clarissa’s
also
missin’, I’ll remind you. Winnie, what’s wrong with comin’ down t’Port Piazzi? Th’ smaller, independent vessels gather there, mebbe you could find somebody willin’ t’risk th’ passage early.”

It made a sort of weird distorted sense. The bigger, more cautious co
m
panies would wait until there wasn’t a stray photon out of place. Worth looking into, anyway. But not as a penguin. I erased Lucy’s artistic efforts, then discovered I no longer cared for the plain, undecorated look, either. I summoned up the operator’s manual on my hoodscreen, and started pus
h
ing buttons for myself.

“How do you like it?” I examined the results in the mirror: basic blue on blue, with a double-breasted row of brassy buttons down the front. Now if I could only find a helmet. “A policeman’s outfit, circa 1890—that’s 114 A.L. to you anarchists—see the badge? Properly, I’d have a billy club, and—oh, yes, I forgot.” I programmed in a golden chain across my stomach, mimicking a pocket watch.

They were both speechless with admiration.

Only after I began packing my bags did it occur to me I’d never go
t
ten any
sleep
in this hotel. Now
there’s
a problem with ignoring night and day—you keep on putting off going to bed. Wonder how Alaskans handle it. Neverthless, something here on Ceres seemed to agree with me; I felt just fine, although it took Lucy’s superior mechanical strength to squeeze my suitcase shut—at one-tenth gee, sitting on it doesn’t work at all.

“Lucy, how does it feel to—I mean, when you lift an arm, for i
n
stance, does it feel like you’re really lifting your arm?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t make much sense, otherwise, would it?”

Koko shut off the Gigacom—reminding me that I’d forgotten to i
n
clude it in the suitcase. I stuffed it in a pocket. “How about walking, L
u
cy? You move just like a...well, a hovercraft.”

Lucy’s bulk lifted slightly off the floor, drifted a couple of feet, and set back down again. “That felt like one step. Hadda concentrate, though, ‘cause this rig blends ‘em all together t’smooth out th’ ride. Yeah, an’ I seem t’hear with ears, an’ see with eyes. Watch this—”

A fine, three-sided slit appeared in the space between her arms, b
e
came a sort of trapdoor that pivoted downward, stopping at the perpe
n
dicular. Resting on the inside of the door was a metallic cylinder, its half-dozen muzzles gleaming hungrily in my direction.

“Pardon my aim, Winnie.” She turned slightly until I was out of her line of fire. “No sneak-uppity backshooter’s gonna eighty-six
this
ol’ lady agin!” She patted the Gabbet Fairfax at her side. “I got this, too, but mainly fer window-dressin’.”

“Uh, Lucy, if it feels like you’re taking a step when you glide forward, how do you go about unlimbering that Darling gun?”

“By stickin’ out m’tongue, nosy. T’start th’ fireworks, I just give ‘em th’ raspberry, wanna see? Didn’t think y’would.” She folded up the we
a
pon. “Well, let’s get outa this gruboon fleatrap.”

Honest Whatshisname, the hovercab driver, was waiting for fares ou
t
side. He looked us over and folded away the second pair of back seats for Lucy. The vehicle whooshed forward as she told him “Port Piazzi,” gained speed as we passed the couple of remaining blocks out of town, and curved around to intersect a huge overpass. Suddenly, we did a motorcycle stun
t
man’s loop, and found ourselves traveling upside-down along the highway’s
underside
.
I gulped, shutting my eyes against the sight of thickly planted fields whizzing overhead.

“Gruboon?” asked the cabbie. I nodded weakly. “Well, circular velo
c
ity on Ceres is a couple hundred miles per hour
short
of what this buggy’ll do flat out. You wouldn’t care t’wind up orbiting in an unpressurized v
e
hicle—the atmospheric envelope folks wouldn’t like it, either.”

I indicated tentative agreement and peeked out at the countryside. It was like riding in a small airplane.

I’ve always
hated
riding in a small airplane.

“We’ll do a little better when we hit the main road,” the cabbie said cheerfully. “Have you in Piazzi in thirty minutes, or you can ride for free!”

Ulp! We didn’t ride for free, but by the time we sighted the side slopes of the south polar crater, I couldn’t even
think
of sleeping—and I wasn’t very hungry, either. I paid the modest fare and we caught a bus out into the port.

Gunter’s Landing had been an enormous, Spartan bowl, ringed with cavelike offices and service facilities. Port Piazzi was much the same, e
x
cept that, where only a few dozen giants had rested on the crater floor, here were thousands of smaller vessels, and a more informal atmosphere.

Or is that a more informal
vacuum
?

As we climbed off the bus, a bright sizzling flash caught my atte
n
tion. I increased the magnification, tickled the contrast-enhancement, and there he was, five hundred yards away, clinging like a spider to an exposed swatch of skeleton on a small freighter, welding torch splashing over its hull. The re
g
istry read:

PROMETHEUS UNCHAINED

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

But somebody’d chalked it over, changing it to
Sitting Duck
.

“Karyl? Karyl Hetzer?” I had to try several frequencies before he a
n
swered.

“Win Bear, Private Eye—and Koko!” He shut his torch off and hopped three dozen feet to the ground, kangarooing over to meet us. “Introduce me to your friend.” He shook manipulators with Lucy, patted Koko’s head (to her annoyance), and clapped me on the shoulder.