CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Many natives of the fifty-plus Zede System worlds were romantics who styled themselves as being more sensitive to love, life, beauty, and aesthetics in general than the somewhat benighted denizens of the hustle-bustle worlds of the mainstream United Planets society. This pose did not prevent Zedians from developing efficient industry and cutting edge technology. As David Webster had known, ownership of a Zede Starliner marked a man as being tasteful and, not coincidentally, quite rich; but luxury liners were just one aspect of Zede leadership. The Verbolt Cloud chamber, the heart of all modern computers, was a Zede development. The descendants of Jonathan Blink, inventor of the blink drive that sent man to the stars, had settled on a Zede world during the diaspora from New Earth and the name was still alive in the system.

Whether a Zedian was poetic or practical, a practitioner of the cultural arts or a machinist, he was possessed of an adamant pride. The Zede worlds, he would say—and loudly—were the most beautiful, the most fruitful, the most cultured, the most technologically developed.

Genealogy was and had always been important to a Zedian. It was an ancestrally impoverished man who couldn't trace his lineage back to the colonial period, with a significant emphasis on those of his forebears whohad fought and died in the thousand year old Zede War. That ancient conflict had left scars both on the Zedian national character and in Zedian space. Tour ships ran regular schedules to the areas of scattered asteroids that had once been blue planets, water planets, life zone planets.

A true citizen of a Zede world forget that once ships from the U.P.

proper had sent planet busters blasting down into verdant, fertile worlds?

Never. The old battle flag of the Zede League was still being manufactured and sold by the millions, and, as the Zede mining exploration ship Carmine Rose blinked away from Tigian toward the rim of the galaxy, that familiar Zede symbol was painted on her bow in vivid reds and blacks.

The ship looked like anything but its colorful namesake. She was squat and angular, built for doing a tough job under the harsh conditions of space rather than for beauty. Brutally efficient tools for digging, boring, blasting, and sampling made odd little nodules on her hull; and to the eye of an experienced spaceman the ports and protrusions of her weapons systems were quite evident.

In spite of her hard-nosed exterior her interior offered not just comfort for her crew of two and their three passengers, but a surprising degree of luxury. She was, then, a typical product of Zede genius, tough and let's-get-it-done on the outside, a pussycat inside. She had the same power plant that had been developed for the new fleet class space tugs and the conveniences of a passenger liner. She was legally the property of a subsidiary of Pete de Conde's primary corporation, but she was in the care of, and was the pride, joy, and only child of Iain and Kara Berol, loyal and poetically practical citizens of the Zede world, Haven.

Iain Berol was a large man, barrel shaped, strong-necked, and powerful.

He wore his hair long and shaggy. In contrast to his percheron body his face was almost delicate, with a strong, straight nose, smoldering black eyes, and chiseled chin. His wife, Kara, was built to match, a big girl, but formed as gracefully and as curvaceously as a sports flyer. She had a pixieish smile that, when properly applied, lit not only her face but a considerable area surrounding her. Kara was pilot and navigator. She could make the Rose's Phase II computer do everything but tap dance and sing songs. Iain was weapons man, general technician, drive engineer, and mining expert. He took it on himself to be the prime host to the passengers, among whom was the H.M.F.I.C. in charge of a businessempire encompassing the mining company that owned the Carmine Rose.

There were no complaints from the passengers, although both Mr. and Mrs. de Conde confined themselves to their cabin for a period which lasted through the first half dozen blinks. The third passenger, Vinn Stern, showed great curiosity about the ship. He had endless questions for Kara Berol about the drive, the mining equipment, and the weaponry. Once the Rose was out-galaxy and blinking along the Rimfire route Vinn offered to stand watch. Kara, who hated six-on-six-off watches, readily agreed. She told Iain that Vinn was fully capable of taking a full eight hour watch. The major portion of each watch consisted of enduring the long charging periods after Rose had drained her generator in the swift coverage in multiple jumps of a few hundred light-years; and since the Rimfire route was so well delineated even a neophyte navigator such as Vinn could tune the blinkstat communicator to the next beacon, copy the coordinates onto the computer, and push a button.

While on duty Vinn spent his time familiarizing himself with Rose's very interesting systems. She was, he found, one hell of a well equipped ship. Kara told him that Rose's detection instruments matched those aboard an X&A fleet cruiser. Her weapons were awesome. Her computer was the latest Zede development, a Phase II model that Vinn had not seen.

After having become acquainted with the computer's slight differences and peculiarities, Vinn decided that the Zede machine was not superior in general function to the standard Century series that was in use on U.P.

ships, but it did have minor features that offered him interesting little challenges. In addition to the inaccessible area wherein resided X&A's little black box—the "spy box," as Kara called it—another area of memory was closed off to the noninformed user. It took Vinn five watches to break into the closed file. It listed, defined, and gave operating instructions for the Carmine Rose's weapons system. That in itself was not surprising. The startling thing was that the Rose was even better armed than Vinn had dreamed.

"Pete," Vinn asked as soon as he had opportunity to be alone with de Conde, "did you know that this ship carries two planet busters?"

"Damn, Vinn," Pete said in surprise.

"You didn't?"

Pete scratched his nose.

De Conde's hesitation to answer was revealing. "You did know," Vinn said.

"I'm wondering how in hell you found out," Pete said. He scratched his nose again.

"One of my assignments when I worked on Xanthos was to develop methods to search out hidden files," Vinn said. "And when I'm alone with a computer I lose all self-control and can't keep my hands off it." He grinned, then sobered. "Why the illegal weapons, Pete?"

"It depends on where you are and how you look at the question whether or not they're legal," de Conde said. "Somewhere way to hell and gone out in the big empty where no X&A ship has ever gone there's no one to say they're not allowed."

Vinn knew and he knew that Pete knew that busters were forbidden to any vessel, anywhere. "You haven't told me why you need them," he said.

De Conde looked away. "Well, I suppose a buster could be considered a mining tool under certain circumstances."

"Damn," Vinn said. "I believe you're going to tell me that your company has used them in the past."

"Not lately." Pete grinned. "The last time was about ten years ago. The system was isolated. There was a big, airless moon orbiting a gas giant. It was a useless hunk of rock, except that it had a core of metals so pure that it was almost unnecessary to refine them."

"You blew a moon apart?"

"A lot easier to mine that way," Pete said.

"My God," Vinn said. "If X&A knew— Hell, if they knew that this ship had been within twenty light-years of Xanthos with two busters aboard—"

Pete chuckled. "But they don't." He put his hand on Vinn's arm. "Look, Vinn, we have the tightest security in the galaxy. You take Iain and Kara.