Starliner(75)

He smiled.

"—Grantholm's Seventeenth Commando. Except on our side."

"If all Grantholm troops are as good as the Streseman kid," Wanda Holly said to no one in particular, "then Nevasa doesn't have a prayer. I followed him in, and there were six bodies in that first room."

She swallowed. "I think six."

"It's the fact that Streseman was along that permits me to trust your judgment," the commander said. "I'd like to think that you wouldn't have tried something like this if you hadn't had a wire to the top levels of the Grantholm government."

"The girl was our passenger, sir," Ran replied softly. "It's not our war. But she's our passenger."

"So she was," Commander Kneale agreed with a wry smile. He gestured toward the door. "Go on, go on," he said. "Trident Starlines doesn't thank you, because the company isn't going to know a thing about this if we're lucky. But I'm proud of you.

"Only the next time . . ." he went on, "I hope you'll let me in on the business."

Kneale's smile had changed into something that an impala might have noticed on the face of the last lion it ever saw.





SZGRANE

"Ah, sir . . . ?" Ran Colville said as he looked cautiously from the Szgranian guard of honor to Commander Kneale. "I should be going on duty in ten minutes."

Here on their own planet, the Szgranians' accouterments included plasma dischargers, massive tubes that were crew-served weapons in human military forces.

The twenty guards escorted a closed palanquin the size of a boat, the same vehicle which had awaited Lady Scour when the Empress of Earth docked. It was carved from ivory which a glance suggested was all one tooth. That didn't seem likely, but the Szgranian ecosystem was in the portion of the hynogogue course which Ran still hadn't finished.

"I know what the duty list looks like, Colville," Kneale said with pointed calm. "Trust me to take care of that end, won't you? Our docking here has gone more smoothly than I'd have expected at Sonderburg on Grantholm—in peacetime. That's because of the personal intervention of Lady Scour. I'd say that if the lady wants to show you the town, Trident Starlines should accommodate her. Don't you think so too?"

The city of Betaniche climbed the crags above the combined space- and riverport. Two starships were already on the ground when the Empress dropped into the system from sponge space: a small freighter of Grantholm registry, and the private yacht of a merchant stocking his gallery with Szgranian carvings. They had been hastily moved to the edge of the field to give the larger vessel sufficient room.

"Ah," said Ran. "Yes sir."

An earthen levee restrained the river. Flowers covered the inner face of the embankment and the mudflats separating it from the land baked and blasted by magnetic motors. The Empress dug craters three meters deep beneath each nacelle when she landed with only four tugs, but the port authorities were too busy greeting Lady Scour to show any concern over the damage.

"Then go, for pity's sake!" Kneale snapped with a brusque gesture.

Ran stepped quickly down the gangplank. He glanced back and saw Wanda Holly entering the Embarkation Hall. They'd planned to get together when his shift ended—Szgrane was a new planet to both of them—but the summons from Lady Scour put paid to that notion. Ran waved to the Second Officer and hoped that Kneale would fill her in.

Szgranian flowers tended to blue and blue-gray petals. Their scent was sharp rather than sweet, and it mingled unpleasantly with the smoke of shanties ignited as the starliner docked.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" Wanda called from the starliner as a female page threw open the door of the palanquin.

The first thing Ran noticed as he got in was that the vehicle had double-wall paneling. The intricate carvings on the outside were complemented by those of the separate sheet some twenty millimeters within. Ran could look out from the shadowed interior of the palanquin, but the offset panels acted the way a one-way mirror does to protect the privacy of those behind it.

The second thing Ran noticed as the door closed behind him was that Lady Scour already reclined on the cushions he was expected to share.

"Good evening, Junior Lieutenant Randall Colville," the Szgranian noblewoman said. The palanquin rolled upward on the shoulders of its eight bearers. "Are you surprised to see me? I was going to send the palanquin back . . . and then I thought I should watch as you got your first view of my planet."

"I—ah, I'm surprised and pleased to see you again, Lady Scour," Ran said. His mind clicked through possibilities, all of which were absurd except for the obvious male/female connection.