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"Now, let's look for a moment at what we propose to do. Search warrants for the Implementation police. We remove Implementation's power to choose what colonists get the leftover materials from the organ banks. We tell them who they may and may not execute. Anything else, Jay?"
"Power. We're taking the electrical monopoly away from the Hospital. Oh, and with less restrictions on the colonists, the police would have less work to do. Castro would have to fire some of 'em."
"Right. Now, you don't suppose every crew on the Plateau is going to agree with all of that, do you?"
"No, not all. Of course not. We may be able to swing a majority. At least a majority of political power."
"Damn your majority. What crew is Castro going to be loyal to? You can name him."
Parlette was rubbing the back of his neck. "I see your point, of course. Given that you've analyzed Castro correctly, he'll follow the conservative faction."
"He will, believe me. The crew who would rather die than accept our compromise is the man he'll follow. And all of Implementation will follow him. He's their leader."
"And they've got all the weapons," said Hood.
CHAPTER 12
THE SLOWBOAT
BLEEDING HEART. Matthew Keller. Polly Tournquist.
Why Polly Tournquist?
She could have nothing to do with the present trouble. Since Saturday evening she had been suffering sensory deprivation in the coffin cure. Why must he be haunted by the colonist girl? What was her hold on him that she could pull him away from his office at a time like this? He hadn't felt a fascination like this since...
He couldn't remember.
The guard in front of him stopped suddenly, pushed a button in the wall, and stepped aside. Jesus Pietro jerked back to reality. They had reached the elevator.
The doors slid back, and Jesus Pietro stepped in, followed by the two guards.
(Where's Polly? Deep in his mind something whispered, Where is she? Subliminally, he remembered. Tell me where Polly is!)
Bleeding heart. Matthew Keller. Polly Tournquist.
Either he'd finally lost his mind--and over a colonist girl!--or there was some co
Perhaps the girl could tell him.
And if she could, certainly she would.
Matt had trailed them to the end of a blind corridor. When they stopped, Matt stopped too, confused. Was Castro going to Polly, or wasn't he?
Doors slid back in the wall, and Matt's three guides entered. Matt followed, but stopped at the doors. The room was too small. He'd bump an elbow and get shot--
The doors closed in his face. Matt heard muted mechanical noises, diminishing.
What in blazes was it, an airlock? And why here?
He was at the end of a dead-end corridor, lost in the Hospital. The Head and two guards were on the other side of those doors. Two guards, armed and alert--but they were the only guides he had. Matt pushed the big black button which had opened the doors.
This time they stayed closed.
He pushed it again. Nothing happened.
Was he doing exactly what the guard had done? Had the guard used a whistle, or a key?
Matt looked down the hall to where it bent, wondering if he could make his way back to Castro's office. Probably not. He pushed the button again...
A muted mechanical noise, nearly inaudible, but rising.
Presently the doors opened to show a tiny, boxlike room, empty.
He stepped in, crouched slightly, ready for anything. There were no doors in the back. How had the others left? Nothing. Nothing but four buttons labeled One, Two, Door Open, Emergency Stop.
He pushed them in order. One did nothing. He pushed Two, and everything happened at once.
The doors closed.
The room started to move. He felt it, vibration and unca
The pressure was gone, but still the room quivered with motion, and still there was the frightening, unfamiliar sound of machinery. Matt waited, crouching on all fours.
There was a sudden foreign feeling in his belly and gonads, a feel of falling. Matt said, "Wump!" and clutched at himself. The box jarred to a stop.
The doors opened. He came out slowly.
He was on a high narrow bridge. The moving box was at one end, supported in four vertical girders that dropped straight down into a square hole in the roof of the Hospital. At the other end of the bridge was a similar set of girders, empty.
Matt had never been this high outside a car. All of the Hospital was below him, lit by glare lights: the sprawling amorphous structure of rooms and corridors, the i
Matt's end of the bridge was just outside what was obviously the outer hull of the ancient slowboat. The bridge crossed the chisel-sharp ring of the leading edge, so that its other end was over the attic.
The Planck. Matt looked down along the smooth black metal flank of the outer hull. For most of its length the ship was cylindrical; but the tail, the trailing edge, flared outward for a little distance, and the leading edge was beveled like a chisel, curving in at a thirty-degree angle to close the twenty-foot gap between outer and i
Something hummed behind him. The moving box was on its way down.
Matt watched it go, and then he started across the bridge, sliding his hands along the hip-high handrails. The dropping of the box might mean that someone would be coming up.
At the other end he looked for a black button in one of the four supporting girders. It was there, and he pushed it. Then he looked down.
The attic, the space enclosed by the i
Matt felt a chill as he looked down at that pointed casing between the fins. The ship's center of mass was directly over it. Therefore it had to be the fusion drive.
The Planck was rumored to be a dangerous place, and not without reason. A ship that had carried men between the stars, a ship three hundred years old, was bound to inspire awe. But there was real power here. The Planck's landing motors should still be strong enough to hurl her into the sky. Her fusion drive supplied electrical power to all the colonist regions: to teedee stations, homes, smokeless factories--and if that fusion plant ever blew, it would blow Alpha Plateau into the void.
Somewhere in the lifesystem, sandwiched between i
If Matt could bring them together...
The moving box reached the top, and Matt entered.
It dropped a long way. The Planck was tall. Even the beveled ring of the leading edge, which had held stored equipment for the founding of a colony, was forty feet high. The ship was one hundred and eighty feet high, including a landing skirt, for the i