Torch of Freedom

Chapter Sixty-Three

April, 1922

Brice brought the cab to a halt at the very apex of Andrew's Curve. "Well, here we are."

Nancy Becker got up from the seat and went to stand with her face almost pressed against the observation window. That wasn't as foolish as it seemed, because that was a real window, not a vid screen. Allowing for the various protective shields, she was looking at the vista beyond with her own eyes, not something relayed electronically.

Brice had thought she'd like that. He'd timed the trip so that they'd be in shade when they arrived. Ameta, along with its various moons (the smallest and certainly the most recent of which was Parmley Station), revolved around an F5 subgiant star, which was half again as massive as Old Earth's sun, had twice the diameter, and was almost eight times more luminous. Had the roller coaster cab been perched in direct sunlight, Brice would have had no choice but to use the vid screens. Even with the protective shields—which were cut-rate quality, forget state of the art—it would have been too risky to look at the vista directly.

But they'd be able to do so for at least two hours before the station's revolution around Ameta brought this portion of it back out of the shade.

Brice came to stand next to her. Ameta was on full display, with all of its cloud bands and rings. There seemed to be every shade of blue and green there, along with enough white bands to set them off perfectly. As a bonus—this was rather unusual—the moon Hainuwele was just peeking around the curve of the giant planet below. Most of the time, Brice wasn't fond of the moon. It was close enough to Ameta to be subject to pronounced tidal heating, and its blotchy red, yellow and orange surface was usually sick-looking. In its current location, however, it was far enough away for the ugly details to be u

Even Yamato's Nebula was on its best behavior at the moment. It was as if the entire sidereal universe had decided to give its full support to Brice's bold and risky endeavor. He knew that was a fantasy, of course. But it ought to be true.

"It's beautiful," Nancy said softly.

"Told you," said Brice. Then, spent a minute or so silently berating himself for being less suave than any human male since the extinction of Homo erectus.

But he did not concede defeat. Quaked, but did not lose heart. He'd been pla

This was the first time the two of them had ever been alone, since they met on the tarmac of the spaceport. The months they'd spent since their escape from Mesa drifting on the Hali Sowle had been the equivalent of months spent in the most densely populated apartment in creation. You'd think that a freighter massing slightly over a million tons would have enormous empty reaches, but . . . it didn't. Or, rather, it did . . . but it was a working commercial vessel, nothing more. Despite the cpaciousness of its huge cargo holds, the living quarters were small and Spartan. Neither Ga

To be sure, had Brice and Nancy already established a clear relationship, they could have figured out a thousand ways to elude the informal chaperonage provided by Ga

Well. Brice was not one of them. His isolated upbringing as a member of the Butre clan had made him very self-confident in some situations, but very shy in others.

This was one of the others.

Nancy's head turned, her attention drawn by the sight of a shuttle heading toward the Hali Sowle.

"How soon are they going to be leaving, do you know?"

Brice shook his head. "I haven't heard anything definite yet. Uncle Andrew says they're still waiting for the proper replacement parts to arrive." He laughed suddenly. "I think he's a bit pissed off that they don't trust his repairs to get them there, but I sure don't blame them. 'Course part of the reason he's pissed is because he already had all the parts he needed, before we dumped 'em out to squeeze you and your Mom in. Way he sees it, it was all their fault to start with, so they don't have any business turning their noses up at his custom-built parts."

Nancy returned his grin, and he shrugged.

"Anyway, the guys on the Custis"—EMS Custis was the Erewhonese repair ship which had been at the station as part of the ongoing work to turn Parmley Station into something that still looked like a decrepit and mostly-abandoned amusement park but was actually quite a powerful fortress—"agreed to make a quick hope to get replacements for us. I think their skipper probably works for the people we got Hali Sowle from in the first place. Anyway, he obviously thinks we should use real parts to fix the hyper generator."

"How about us? How soon will we be going to Beowulf?" Nancy asked.

"I'm not sure about that either. I know Ga

That had been part of the deal. Every member of the clan still young enough was being transported to Beowulf in order to begin prolong treatments. The order in which they'd go was determined by their age. Those like Sarah Armstrong and Michael Alsobrook who were getting close to the limit would be sent first, of course. Brice and Ed and James were not at the top of the list, but he figured they'd be going pretty soon.

Best of all, Nancy would be going with them. It was too late for her mother Steph to undergo prolong, but not for Nancy herself.

Zilwicki had been as good as his word. Better, actually. The expense of paying for a complete suite of prolong treatments for her daughter was going to be at least as high as the expense of setting up Steph Turner in a new restaurant. But Anton hadn't blinked. "I'll cover the cost if Beowulf gets sticky about it."

From something Cachat had said, though, Brice thought Beowulf would probably just handle Nancy's treatments as part of the general arrangement they'd made with Ga

"I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, Brice. It's going to be a while yet—there are some other people we have to talk to first, for several reasons—but unless I miss my guess, you're going to see the rage of Beowulf unleashed in the universe sometime pretty damned soon now. They're not going to quibble over the cost of an extra prolong treatment while they're sinking a fortune into forging the weapons to finally take down Grendel. Which they surely will, once they learn the monster has a mother after all."