Wildcatter

“Then pretend I’m Grandma.”

“That’s worse. What about Commodore Duddridge?”

“Do you trust him?”

“As much as I trust any bottom-line, bottom-feeding low-life. I told him so, the last time we spoke, just before the shuttle rolled. I told him things I’d been wanting to say for a long time.”

“What sort of things?”

“Well he asked me a lot of personal questions, about my experience with various guys in the crew. Really personal details about their technique and performance. So I felt at liberty to tell him how much better in bed they all were than he was and how most anyone aboard would make a better commodore. I told him I expected he would blame the disaster on me. I wanted to get that into the record. He assured me that he would see that no blame attached to me for what happened to the landing party.”

“And you didn’t believe him?”

“Never!” Meredith moved as if seeking a more comfortable position. No position was comfortable for long in 1.62 gees. “Old Doddery is old for deep-space work and angling for a management slot. He sucks up to the top brass, puts Galactic’s balance sheet ahead of anything else, and still wants the crew to think of him as a brother. He’s always sincere, no matter how little he means it.”

That had been Seth’s impression of the man in the one recorded glimpse he had obtained, but could he be so mean-spirited that he would leave two women to die out of personal dislike?

“When he pulled out, he posted a yellow flag, meaning plague. His beacon message dwelt on the hurricane-force winds and a virus that could penetrate all barriers. He never mentioned the centaurs at all.”

“What? But I told him they were sentient! And I was right. Every time it rains or floods, they come visiting and leave fish offerings. That’s GenRegs’ 196 [E] behavior exactly. He should have posted a purple flag. Why yellow?”

“Perhaps to cover his ass for forbidding Tony Violaceus to try a rescue effort after you lost contact.”

“Tony offered to do that? Jeez! He really is a great guy.”

Seth thought he caught a faint afterthought of, “in bed, too,” but that might be his own Old Adam grumbling. “Tony could have staked the planet for Galactic while he was at it. So perhaps Duddridge didn’t want you rescued, babbling about talking otters? Your remarks from the shuttle can be dismissed as fevered delirium. He hoped to scare Mighty Mite out of sending down a shuttle, but he did not want to close the world to a later visit by Galactic. If this is the case, then he must think that there’s some value in staking this planet. And you must have found it.”

Meredith still worked for Galactic, not Mighty Mite. If she had found something valuable she might have told Duddridge and still want to keep it from Seth.

For a moment she said nothing. Then, “All we found was the centaurs, and they close down the whole planet. There’s another thing, though. Doddery might have refused Tony’s offer because he didn’t want another death on his record. He lost people on both his previous missions, and now three more. Looks bad. You agree that the centaurs are sentient?”

Seth sighed. “After watching them bring you that fish just now because they understood that you were hungry and couldn’t catch your own? You, a member of a species they had never met before? Of course I do. I think ISLA should put Cacafuego off-limits to development.”

Scientific expeditions observing from space would be all. No explorers and no missionaries. What would missionaries preach to six-limbed natives anyway?

The shuttle’s moves were becoming violent−erratic rises followed by sudden descents.

“Will Mighty Mite survive if it cannot stake the planet?”

“No. It will take ISLA years to decide whether to grant Mite a development permit or interdict Cacafuego and release the reward money. The reward won’t even cover the interest on Mite’s debts.” The publicity would help, of course, but not nearly enough. Seth’s plog would be a bestseller, as would Meredith’s, if she managed to pry the records out of Galactic. “We’ll all be celebrities for a week or two.” Especially JR. He’d love it. “And you can sue Galactic.”

“Sue but never win.”

“Oh, don’t think that. They’ll pay up millions to avoid the bad-look out!”

The shuttle shuddered as if it had been kicked. Then again. After a long tremor and a distant grating, tearing noise, it began to tilt.

Seth said, “Let’s move to this side, just in…”

Too late. The cabin twisted violently and arranged the move for them. He slid, stopped with a jolt, and had all his breath knocked out by ninety kilos of Meredith running into him. Then they were buried under loose bedding. They had arrived on the original floor, although it still had a steep slope. Murky green daylight poured in through a window that had been hidden until now.