Deep Freeze

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, Vi

While on duty Vi

After having become acquainted with the computer's slight differences and peculiarities, Vi

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 Vi

"Pete," Vi

"Damn, Vi

"You didn't?"

Pete scratched his nose.

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

"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," Vi

"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."

Vi

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

"Damn," Vi

"Not lately." Pete gri

"You blew a moon apart?"

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

"My God," Vi

Pete chuckled. "But they don't." He put his hand on Vi