Patriots

Mark sat in a corner of the cabin shivering while Amy flew the dirigible through the darkening sky. They must be getting near the Ba

"What happened an hour ago," he said wonderingly. "It's as if somebody else did it."

"You did it, Mark," Amy said. "I don't think… I never thought I'd meet anybody who could do what I watched you do."

"Yerby would," Mark said. "He wouldn't have stopped where I did, either."

"Being willing to stop is as important as being brave enough to start," Amy said. She kept her eyes resolutely on the terrain ahead.

"Wonder what my dad would think to see me brawling that way?" Mark said with a sneer for his own behavior. "I guess the only thing I've learned since I left Quelhagen is what your brother taught me: Never hit a man in the jaw with your bare hand."

He shook his head and added bitterly, "Of course, Yerby'd be ashamed of me for hitting him with my bare hand at all."

"Yerby wouldn't be ashamed of you, Mark," Amy said softly. Pumps whined, compressing hydrogen in the ballonets so that the dirigible would sink. They must be just about to land. "And I've met your father. I don't think that he'd be ashamed of you either."

Mark managed to stand. He felt better than he thought he would; just weak, really. The dirigible was descending into the Ba

Amy looked over from the controls. "Mark," she said, "not everything my brother has to teach you is wrong. It's just that sometimes he doesn't use the best judgment about where to display what he knows."

They landed lightly. A dozen of the folk in the courtyard grabbed dangling lines and held the dirigible down against any chance gust that might hit before the pumps had squeezed most of the lift back into the high-pressure tanks between the ballonets.

Mark reached for the door latch. Before he touched it, Yerby burst into the cabin bellowing, "In the name of all that's holy, girl, where have you been?"

The frontiersman paused, looked around him, and added, "And where in thunder is Doc Jesilind?"

"The doctor was called off-planet abruptly. He said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Yerby," Amy said in a clear voice. "We'd gotten confused on direction, but Mark very kindly guided me home."

"Direction?" Yerby said, his brows knitting as he tried to understand.

Amy put one arm through Mark's and led him out of the cabin, clearing a path with an imperious wave of her free hand. "Because we got lost," she said, "I didn't get to see the Bottomless Pool after all. Since human guides are so unreliable, I think the best choice is for Mark to navigate me there using the map in his holoviewer."

Amy looked at Mark. "If he's willing," she added.

Mark blushed and cleared his throat. "I'm willing," he said in a squeak.

21. Company Coming

Nothing unusual had happened in the month since Mark enabled the full range of the landing system at the Spiker, so he'd pretty well forgotten about it. Now when the alarm he'd rigged in the Ba

The commo room was on one end of the ground floor, across the central hall from the parlor. The kitchen, the large dining room, and an office/workroom completed the floor plan. The second story was broken into spartan bedrooms for guests-Mark had one of them, while the top was for the Ba

Yerby had been asleep when the alarm rang. He crashed into the commo room just behind Mark, still wearing the clothes Mark had seen him in the night before.

"There's an anomaly in the data the ship's captain radioed down," Mark explained. "He says they're the three-hundred-ton Judy from Hestia, but the ship's own core memory says they're the Aten, a twenty-eight-hundred-ton liner in the Zenith-Earth trade."

Amy and three of the men who worked for the Ba

Desiree managed the plastics plant, but she must have been up at the compound when the alarm sounded, because she appeared only a heartbeat later. She gestured the employees out of the way so that she could stand stone-faced beside Amy in the doorway.

"If they bothered to fake their landing a

"Now, don't have kittens, lad," Yerby said. He sat at the console, brushing Mark aside without noticing the contact. His big hands rested on the keyboard. "You've took over the whole system here, that's right? They can't land by themselves so long as this-" He rapped the terminal feeding through the compound's radio. "-is hooked to the box at the Spiker?"

"That's right," said Mark. He hadn't thought Yerby was following the description of the changes Mark had made in the automatic landing system. Yerby's "simple frontiersman" act covered a mind just as surprising as his physical strength. "They'll wait awhile for a control signal, because there might be another ship on the magnetic mass. But before long, they'll just decide to land at Wanker's Doodle."

Yerby chuckled. He changed screens and began to type information into the keyboard. He used two fingers, but he didn't need to hunt for the keys he hammered.

"They'll get their control signal, never fear," Yerby said as he worked. "For most nearly a year me and our daddy-"

He flicked a smile toward Amy. "D'ye remember that, girl? Or was you too young?"

"I remember," Amy said. She was tense with concern.

"Anyhow, we brought ships down on Kilbourn when the module packed up and we couldn't get a replacement in. Guess I haven't forgotten how to do it."

"Yerby," Amy said. Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. "If you crash the ship, you'll kill hundreds of people. Many hundreds. Even though they're enemies-"

"Now, hold your tater!" Yerby snapped. "First thing, I don't guess a bunch of softies from Zenith are going to pack themselves near as tight as Mark says. Besides, they're going to have a lot of big equipment-aircars and such. That's right, ain't it, lad?"

He rotated his head to look at Mark. "I guess so," Mark said.

They are enemies. Maybe the only way to deal with them is to smash the Aten on hard rocks that can't hold enough of a magnetic field to slow the ship for a landing. But-

Mark's mind couldn't imagine a future in which he let something so horrible happen. And he couldn't imagine how he could prevent it from happening.

"Yerby, you can't kill all those people!" Amy cried.

Desiree looked from Amy to her husband. Her face had no more expression than a billet of wood, but Mark knew by now not to confuse stolidity with stupidity. Yerby's wife was anything but stupid.

"Now, who said a single flaming word about killing?" Yerby said loudly. He slapped the Execute key to transmit the landing codes he'd just entered.

He stood and faced the others. "I don't guess I'm risking anybody's life. Leastways, nobody's life more than I am my own, because I'll be going to fetch them myself. They'll have a soft landing, I guarantee."

Yerby smirked at his audience. He was enormously pleased with himself.

"Yerby, what have you done?" Amy asked.

"I brought them down on the big island in The Goo," Yerby said. "The wet ground'll build enough field that they won't smash to bits, but I don't guess they'll be invading any time soon."