Downbelow Station

They had one advantage over Union’s sleek, new ships, the fine equipment, the unscarred young crews, tape-trained, deeptaught with all the answers. The Fleet had experience, could move their patched ships with a precision Union’s fine equipment had not yet matched, with nerve Union conservatism and adherence to the book discouraged in its captains.

They might lose a carrier in this kind of operation, maybe more than one, come jolting in too close, take each other out The odds were in favor of its happening. They rode Mazian’s Luck… that it would not. That was their edge, that they would do what no one sane could do, and shock aided them.

The schematics appeared, one after the other. They argued, for the most part listened and accepted, for there was little to which they wished to object. They shared a meal, returned to the briefing room, argued the last round.

“One day for rest,” Mazian said. “We go at maindawn, day after tomorrow. Set it up in comp; check and doublecheck.”

They nodded, parted company, each to his own ship, and there was a peculiar flavor to the parting as well… that when next they met, they would be fewer.

“See you in hell,” Chenel muttered, and Porey gri

A day to get it all into comp; and the appointment was waiting.

Chapter Five

Ayres awoke, not sure what had wakened him in the quiet of their apartments. Marsh had gotten back… the latest fright they had had, when he failed to rejoin them after recreation. Tension afflicted Ayres. He realized that for some time he had slept tense, for his shoulders hurt and his hands were clenched, and he lay still now with sweat gathered on his face, not sure what had caused it

The war of nerves had not ceased. Azov had what he wanted, a message calling Mazian in. They quibbled now over some points of secondary agreements, for the future of Pell, which Jacoby professed to hand to Union. They had their recreation time, that much, but they were detained in conferences, harassed by petty tactics the same as before. It was as if all his appeal to Azov had only aggravated the situation, for Azov was not accessible for the last five days… gone, the lesser authorities insisted, and the difficulties raised for them now had the taint of malice.

Someone was astir outside. Soft footsteps. The door slid back una

He rose and reached for his robe, then followed Dias. Karl Bela was stirring him from his room likewise, next door to him. Marsh’s room was across the sitting room, next to Dias’s, and the door was open.

Marsh hung, gently turning, by his belt looped from a hook which had held a movable light. The face was horrible. Ayres froze an instant, then dragged back the chair which had slid on its track, climbed up, and tried to get the body down. They had no knife, had nothing with which they might cut the belt. It was imbedded in Marsh’s throat and he could not get it free and support the body at once. Bela and Dias tried to help, holding the knees, but that was no good.

“We’ve got to call security,” Dias said.

Ayres climbed down from the chair, hard-breathing, stared at them.

“I might have stopped him,” Dias said. “I was still awake. I heard the moving about, a great deal of noise. Then strange sounds. When they had stopped so suddenly and so long — I finally got up to see.”

Ayres shook his head, looked at Bela then stalked out to the sitting room and the com panel by the door, punched through a request to security. “One of us is dead,” he said. “Put me through to someone in charge.”

“Request will be relayed,” the answer came back. “Security is on its way.”

The contact went dead, no more informative than usual. Ayres sat down, head in hands, tried not to think of Marsh’s horrible corpse slowly spi

Or guilt, perhaps? Remorse might have driven him to suicide.

Dias and Bela sat down nearby, waited with him, faces stark and somber, hair disordered from sleep. He tried to comb his own with his fingers.

Marsh’s eyes. He did not want to think of them. A long time passed. “What’s keeping them?” Bela wondered, and Ayres recovered sense enough to glance up harshly at Bela, reprimand for that show of humanity. It was the old war; it continued even in this, especially after this. “Maybe we should go back to bed,” Dias said. At other times, in other places, a mad suggestion. Here it was sanity. They needed their rest. A systematic effort was being made to deprive them of it. A little more and they would all be like Marsh.

“Probably they will be late,” he agreed aloud. “We might as well.”

They quietly, as if it were the sanest thing in the world, retired to their separate rooms. Ayres took off his robe and hung it over the chair by his bed, reckoning anew that he was proud of his companions, who held up so well, and that he hated — hated Union. It was not his business to hate, only to get results. Marsh at least was free. He wondered what Union did with their dead. Ground them up, perhaps, for fertilizer. That would be typical of such a society. Economical. Poor Marsh.

It was guaranteed that Union would be perverse. He had no sooner settled into bed, reduced his mind to a level that excluded clear thought, closed his eyes in an attempt at sleep, than the outer door whisked open, the tread of booted feet sounded in the sitting room, his door was rudely pulled back and armed soldiers stood silhoutted against the light.

With studied calm, he rose to his feet

“Dress,” a soldier said.

He did so. There was no arguing with the ma

“Ayres,” the soldier said, motioning with his rifle. They had been moved out of the apartment to one of the offices, he and Bela and Dias, made to sit for at least an hour on hard benches, waiting for someone of authority, who was promised them. Presumably security needed to examine the apartment in detail. “Ayres,” the soldier said a second time, this time harshly, indicating that he should rise and follow.

He did so, leaving Dias and Bela with a touch of apprehension in the parting. They would be bullied, he thought, perhaps even accused of Marsh’s murder. He was about to be, perhaps.

Another means of breaking their resistance, only, he thought. He might be in Marsh’s place; he was the one separated from the others.

He was taken out of the office, brought among a squad of soldiers in the outer corridor, hastened farther and farther from the offices, from all the ordinary places, taken down in a lift, marched along another hall. He did not protest. If he stopped, they would carry him; there was no arguing with these mentalities, and he was too old to submit to being dragged down a hall.

It was the docks… the docks, crowded with military, squad upon squad of armed troops, and ships loading. “No,” he said, forgetting all his policy, but a rifle barrel slammed against his shoulders, and moved him on, across the ugly utilitarian decking, up to the ramp and umbilical which linked some ship to the dock. Inside, then; the air was, if anything, colder than it was on the docks.

They passed three corridors, a lift, numerous doors. The door at the end was open and lighted, and they brought him in, into the steel and plastic of shipboard furnishings, sloping shapes, chairs of ambiguous design, fixed benches, decks of far more obvious curve than those of the station, everything cramped and angles strange. He staggered, unused to the footing, looked in surprise at the man seated at the table.