Pegasus In Space

"Valhalla?" Peter asked, pointing to the largest of these features.

"Correct," was Ajmal's response, nodding once again with pleasure at Peter's correct identification.

"Aj, we need to alter the tracking on Number One now," Simona Opitz said from her station, one of the white-coated men standing by her. "Or did Mr. Reidinger want to see the space ice?" She turned a very friendly but firm smile on Cyberal. "Have you remembered to ask where you want him to 'port objects in here yet? After all, that's why you're here. We can't monopolize his time, you know."

Which Peter had no trouble interpreting to mean "monopolize our time." Well, he could appreciate that now he'd seen the staff arrive; they seemed to be waiting for their day's assignments.

"You were very good to give me so much of your time, Ajmal," Peter said affably, glancing back at the astronomer who was actually pouting. "Where would it be safe to 'port in here? I certainly wouldn't want to…"

"Over there." Ajmal gestured negligently toward the window partition and the control panel, exasperated by the captain, who merely smiled back. "We don't use that area as much."

Peter took good note of the angle of the partition window, the edge of the control panel, the storage cabinet beneath it, looking very much like the comer of many other facilities. Then he saw the discoloration on the wall from the top of the window to the floor that resembled the southern tip of South America and Cape Horn. That and the windowsill would make it an easily identifiable site for him to "see." Since deciding on such a place was the real reason he'd been brought to the observatory, his business here was over. Saying all that was polite to Ajmal and then Simona, Peter left the observatory with Cyberal.

"Damned managing female," Cyberal said without rancor when they were in the corridor and the corporal was once more their advance scout. The astronomy office was on the north end of Akahiro Block. "Ajmal loves to talk, or had you noticed?"

Peter nodded with a little chuckle. "But all of that," he began as they retraced their steps, "the mining and Callisto-they depend on getting the Mars Base started, don't they?"

"It is started, you know," Vin Cyberal replied in a low voice. "It's keeping it going that's the problem. It needs more personnel, supplies, materiel, instrumentation, and air. Water's been found." He shrugged at the immensity of the task involved. "But we don't know if it's enough. That's why the search for space ice."

"Well, humans walked on the Moon mid-twentieth century and they can now live comfortably and independently on it, why not on Mars before this century is out?"

I should have asked to "see" the Mars Base while I had the chance, Peter railed at himself. For that matter, there were plenty of coordinates he could use now that Airy was the Greenwich line of Mars and there were sufficient high-resolution images to paper the walls of the old Pentagon Building.

Back on Padrugoi, Cass Cutler had disguised herself as yet another innocuous cleaner, complete with a service trundle cart full of janitorial supplies. She had trudged the corridors of the lower levels, hunting for Flimflam. She had found him late on the first day, innocently asleep in his proper quarters. The contact was enough to refresh her sense of him, but she didn't like what he was dreaming and balked at probing deep enough to wake him up and get him moving about so she could see what he was doing and where he went.

The janitorial staff was composed mainly of offenders sentenced off-Earth: offies in the current slang. They wore double wristbands, which technically limited them to the lower levels of Padrugoi. Janitorial squads were brought above the permitted level by guards, especially when the open public areas had to be cleaned up after special assemblies or brawls among freighter crews. They were searched before and after the work period. Cass observed to herself that brawls could be started. So it wouldn't be hard to leave something behind where only the intended recipient could find it. There might indeed be a flourishing black market on Padrugoi in spite of all the precautions. No anomalies had been brought to official notice since Barchenka's time. She didn't know if this was a reflection on Admiral Coetzer's more enlightened regime or not.

Until the sabotage of Limo-34. Only that had been arranged to be a space accident and no one, or no evidence, should have remained to explain the destruction. Had Flimflam, if indeed he was responsible, slipped out of a work party on the boat bay and sabotaged the spaceship? Not by himself.

The next shift started in two hours so she cleaned the dormitory hall. Ironic that the area janitorial staff lived in needed cleaning. She was accustomed, from work in the Linears, to filth, but those buildings were much older than Padrugoi. Finally men and women emerged from their sleeping quarters, to eat before going to work. No one noticed her but then, part of her value was that she could blend nicely into any sort of background. Five men exited Flimflam's room but he did not. The prospect of cleaning for another eight hours in this section of Padrugoi had no appeal whatsoever; even if the hallway hadn't been so clean since oxygen had first filtered into it.