Crashlander

But I needed to know how much he already knew. Why was I here? Who had come with me? How? How was I surviving? I waited in the hope that he might speak of those things, and of Carlos Wu's autodoc, too.

So we didn't talk much until we were settled at a table, with drinks. Ander wasn't interested in local cuisine. He ordered beef — no imagination. I found crew snapper on the menu, billed as an order for two. Heh heh.

I asked, «What happened to Greg Pelton's expedition?»

Ander said, «Antimatter planet. The more he thought about it, the more he needed to know. He kept expanding his plans until some government gnome took notice. After that it just inflated. Government projects can do that. Everyone wants in; they always think there's infinite money, and suddenly it's gone from science fiction to fantasy.

I don't even know if Pelton's still involved. The UN has probes in the system. Meanwhile the current plan calls for a base on the planet.»

I laughed. «Oh, sure!»

He grinned at me. «Set on a metal dish in stasis, inside a roller sphere also in stasis. It is antimatter, after all.»

He wasn't making it up. He was too amused. «Civil servants love making plans. You can't get caught in a mistake if you're only making plans, and it can pay your salary for life. And I shouldn't have heard that much, Beowulf, nor should you. If a terrorist knew where to find infinite masses of antimatter, things could get sticky.»

«And that is why you weren't asked to ghostwrite the tour guide,» I surmised.

Ander smiled. He said, «Back to work. You've met Outsiders. Would you consider them a threat?»

«No.»

He waited. I said, «They're fragile. Superfluid helium metabolism and no real skeleton, I think. Any place we consider interesting, they die. But never mind that, Ander —»

«They've got the technology to take accelerations that would reduce you or me to a film of neutrons.»

«Not the point. Can you tell me why they honor contracts? They've got ships to run away from any obligation. I think it must be built into their brains, Ander. They honor contracts, and they keep their promises. They're trustworthy.»

He nodded, in no way dissatisfied. «Grogs? Are they dangerous?»

«Tanj straight they're dangerous.»

He laughed. «Well, finally! Kzinti?»

«Sure.»

«Puppeteers. Where are they going?»

«Anywhere they wast to.» He kept looking, so I said, «Clouds of Magellan? That's not the interesting question. The Outsiders can boost a ship or a planet to near lightspeed. Can the puppeteers do that too? Or will they have to summon Outsiders to change their course?»

«And stop.»

«Yeah. I'd say they have the Outsider drive. They bought it or they built it.»

«Or they've got a research project that'll get it for them.»

«I … futz.» Hire Outsiders to push five planets up to four-fifths of lightspeed, then try to figure out how to slow them down. Was that as risky as it sounded? I began to believe it wasn't. There was nothing dangerous in the path of the puppeteer fleet. They had thousands of years to solve the puzzle.

Ander asked again: «Are the puppeteers a threat?»

He had generated in me a mulish urge to defend them. «Mey honor their contracts.»

«They're manipulative bastards, Beowulf. You know that.»

«So are the ARMs. Your people have been in my face since I reached Earth. Do you know what Sharrol and I had to go through to have children?»

«The Fertility Board turned you down, of course.»

«Yeah.»

«What did you do?»

«Sharrol used to play with a Carlos Wu. Carlos had an open birthright. So we worked something out. Then I went traveling.»

He was, from the look of him, learning far more about Beowulf Shaeffer than he had ever wanted to. He tried to stick to what he knew. «Traveling. Any contact at all with Pierson's puppeteers during that period?»

«No.»

«Other aliens? Aliens the puppeteers dealt with?»

That made me smile. «I'm a celebrity among the Kdatlyno …»

GRENDEL

There were the sounds of a passenger starship.

You learn those sounds, and you don't forget, even after four years. They are never loud enough to distract, except during takeoff, and most are too low to hear anyway, but you don't forget, and you wake knowing where you are.

There were the sensations of being alone.

A sleeper field is not a straight no-gee field; there's an imbalance that keeps you more or less centered so you don't float out the edge and fall to the floor. When your field holds two, you set two imbalances for the distance you want, and somehow you feel that in your muscles. You touch from time to time, you and your love, twisting in sleep. There are rustlings and the sounds of breathing.

Nobody had touched me this night. Nothing breathed here but me. I was dead center in the sleeping field. I woke knowing I was alone, in a tiny sleeping cabin of the Argos, bound from Down to Gummidgy.

And where was Sharrol?

Sharrol was on Earth. She couldn't travel; some people can't take space. That was half our problem, but it did narrow it down, and if I wanted her, I need only go to Earth and hunt her up in a transfer-booth directory.