Voyage Across the Stars - By David Drake Page 0,3

had had about enough of sides when he left here,” Pritchard said. He looked up at the ceiling and remembered his big, black-haired friend in the spaceport at their last meeting. “He said he was ready to spend the rest of his life fishing like his grandfather.”

“Fishing?” Hammer repeated in angry amazement. “He was going to go from one of my tank companies to fishing?”

It was his Adjutant’s turn to laugh. Danny gestured with his notecards and said, “Well, fishing on Tethys isn’t that different from the sort of jobs we gave M Company, Alois. There’s a lot of water there, and the things that grow in it are pretty much to scale, from what Don told me. . . .

“But the thing is,” Pritchard added, sobering, “Don didn’t get there. We got a query from—” he checked the uppermost card from habit rather than from present need— “Marilee Slade, asking if Don were still on our establishment.”

“Not in two years,” Hammer said with a frown. “Mother? Or Via! Not his wife, is she? Don didn’t take home leave in, well, at least the ten years since I promoted him to ensign.”

“Seems to be his sister-in-law,” the younger man said. Hammer had already swung the display back around. The President’s fingers were calling up Slade’s personnel file and planetary data on Omicron Eridani II—one of a trio of worlds named Tethys by their original settlers. “Brother’s widow, I’d guess, from the way the query was worded,” Pritchard continued. “Never talked much to Don about why he’d joined the Slammers, but I sort of gathered this lady had something to do with it. Also he was the younger son, that sort of hereditary nonsense.” The Adjutant’s eyes met those of the childless President. There was iron in the grin of each man.

Hammer grunted approval at whatever he saw on his display. “Council of Forty runs the place,” he muttered. “Hereditary oligarchy. You know, I like the look of some of these average metal prices. Might be worth our while to ask for quotes, especially on the manganese. Either they sweat their workers like I wouldn’t dare, or they’ve got a curst slick operation.”

He gestured over the desk with an upraised palm. “But I don’t suppose you thought you needed me to clear a trace on Don Slade, did you? Shoot.”

“He left here on a tramp full of hard-cases. He was in a hurry and he wouldn’t listen to reason,” Pritchard said to the ceiling. “Golf-Alpha-Charlie Five Niner. I located a survivor on Desmo and got the story. Fellow’d gotten to Desmo on an Alayan ship. Don had been aboard the Alayan, too, but he’d gotten off at a place called Terzia. Produces medicinals. Place got one or two tramp freighters a month, so it shouldn’t have been a bad place to trans-ship.”

Pritchard shrugged himself out of the chair again and began to pace the large, austere office. “No question of coercion,” he continued. “The survivor says Don tried to talk them all into working their butts off in the jungle or some such thing. Don was free to go, just like the others he was with—and they all lifted off.”

Compared to Hammer, the brown-haired Adjutant was tall. He slapped the notes on his left palm. “What the problem turned out to be is that Terzia’s refused landing rights to every ship that’s approached it since the Alayans lifted off. It could be chance; but chance or not, the result’s the same. For over a year, Don’s been caged there as sure as if he was behind bars . . . and he may be that, too, for anything we know otherwise.”

Hammer was playing with the controls of his display again. “Terzia’s got real-time commo,” the President said in the mild voice that he used when his brain was busy with something besides the words he was speaking.

“Yeah, and that’s funny,” said Pritchard. “I got the impression that the place was virtually pre-industrial. Exports some high-purity natural medicinals, but nothing in quantity. No quantity that there’d be a Stadtler Communications System, unless the economic pyramid comes to a pretty sharp point.”

The President nodded. “One projection system, one Transit launch, one of a lot of things. One Don Slade right now, though that wasn’t going to show up on a Commercial Movements Summary, was it?” Hammer’s fingers tapped the surface of the display gently. “Though that may be a flaw in the compiler’s outlook, not Terzia’s.”

Hammer got up from his chair also. He