LITMIR.BIZ

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myriad of loudspeakers would order him to turn around.

      It didn't come.

      The light grew weaker. He felt a slight breeze. Had he reached his goal? He slowed down to a trot, ready at any second to leap to one side or take off running again.

      He opened his eyes once more, just a crack. The light was less harsh now, and came from far, far overhead.

      In front of him loomed a shape so large that it blocked some of the light as he approached.

      Venron stretched out both arms and walked on. When his fingers touched cool metal, he stopped, laid his head back, and fully opened his eyes.

      He was in a huge room, nearly half a kilometer high. His hands rested on the massive hull of a craft secured to a ramp that inclined sharply upwards and ended at a hatch outlined on the wall of the chamber.

      The shuttle! The schematics had been correct!

      Venron cried out with joy, the fear and doubt that had threatened to overwhelm him vanishing in an instant. His exultation echoed back from the walls—and beyond those walls, the stars awaited him!

      Venron ran around the hull. The shuttle's lower rear hatch was open, as though the ship was waiting for him. Venron hurried up the ramp and ran through the cargo bay, intent on reaching the cockpit. The plans he had downloaded were not complete. Venron had been able to learn little more from them than that the shuttle existed and was kept constantly ready for use.

      And that it was armed.

      He reached the cockpit. It was small, with room for only one person, and hung like a transparent blister from the bow of the shuttle. A second, separate cockpit, probably for the co-pilot, bulged from the bow close by. Venron slid into the pilot's seat. Over the gap into which his legs disappeared hung an expansive display screen showing status indicators. Venron touched one and immediately received a more detailed view of that information.

      The shuttle did not demand authentication to respond to commands!

      Venron had counted on that. Anything else would have been illogical. Among other purposes, the shuttle was intended for use in emergencies. A restrictive access procedure might mean that a shuttle would fail to launch because no authorized pilot was aboard. Further, even an average metach could operate the shuttle by virtue of an interactive help system.

      But Venron would have been able to manage even without such a system. He knew his way around computers.

      His fingers manipulated the touch screen. First, he verified that the on-board computer was not connected to the Net, then he closed the stern hatch and requested the system status. All indications were green. The shuttle was ready for takeoff.

      He initiated engine start-up. The craft shuddered, then, after a few moments, the shuddering transitioned into a gentle vibration. A control lever extended itself and pressed into his hand. Venron grasped it. A countdown appeared on the display, showing the seconds until the engines were ready for ignition. The time was shorter than he had dared hope. Just a few moments more, and he ...

      The image on the pilot's display suddenly changed. Venron now was looking from the shuttle's stern out on the rear part of the hangar. Large doors were sliding open, and through the openings swarmed men and women in the black uniforms of the Tenoy, their weapons aimed and ready.

      "Stop right there!" a loud voice resounded through the hangar. It was not the voice of the Net, so it had to belong to one of the Tenoy. It penetrated even the nearly soundproof cockpit.

      "Think of the disaster you bring on us!" the voice continued. "And on yourself! Only death waits for you outside! Come back! You can still turn around!"

      It was too late for second thoughts or regrets. The Naahk would show a traitor no mercy.

      Venron switched the image on the display from the stern camera back to the countdown. Still a few more seconds. He gripped the control lever more tightly, then touched a button. The Tenoy, who had nearly surrounded the shuttle, hit the floor as though cut down by a scythe.

      The men and women crawled away, desperately searching for cover the hangar did not provide. Venron couldn't see any of their faces; they were hidden by their helmet visors. He was happy about that. He wouldn't have liked to see anyone he knew.

      The triple cannon installed under the bow completed its sweep without Venron discharging it. He didn't have any intention of being a murderer. He only wanted to reach the stars.

      The cannon was now aimed directly at the closed hatch. Venron pressed the discharge control.

      A fireball exploded in front of him, immediately followed by a hailstorm of particles and debris that drummed on the cockpit canopy. A cloud of black smoke billowed through the hangar. Venron pressed the control a second time. There was a second fireball, followed by another shower of debris, but this time no smoke cloud rose. Instead, the smoke was sucked outside as though by a pump.

      Venron, who had dreamed of the stars without suspecting what they actually were, who didn't realize that there was a vacuum between them, watched in astonishment for several moments as the atmosphere in the hangar streamed outward. Then he activated the engines.

      The shuttle shot out of the hangar. The pressure of acceleration pushed Venron deep into his seat. It went black in front of his eyes—a merciful blackness, since it prevented him from seeing how the Tenoy were pulled by the escaping air into the vacuum where they suffocated. Venron tasted blood and felt something soft and solid rubbing against his teeth: the tip of his tongue, which he had bitten off when he clenched his jaws.

      But Venron didn't feel any pain. As he grew used to the acceleration and his blood circulation returned to normal, his eyesight came back.

      He saw the stars.

      They were brighter than in the films. More glittering. And more colorful. In one direction, they shone red, in another white like in the photographs, and violet in a third. They were close enough to touch. They belonged to him. He had only to reach out his hand to them and ...

      A jolt slammed the shuttle. The pilot seat jerked up and Venron would have been thrown against the canopy if he hadn't been automatically strapped in at takeoff. He heard the tearing of overstrained steel, then the display in front of him went dark, along with the light that had illuminated the joystick.

      The stars began to spin. Faster and still faster.

      Venron screamed, but the stars didn't hear him.

      2

      "Crawler Six to Mama. Initiating landing procedure. You'll hear from us as soon as we're down."

      "Roger. Good luck and good hunting!"

      Alemaheyu Kossa, hypercommunications officer of the prospecting ship Palenque, switched the crawler's channel to the background. The syntrons of both ships would exchange a constant stream of data without his intervention: position, systems status, instrument readings—an umbilical cord of communication, intangible and yet real. Alemaheyu's task was to ensure that the stream did not break. Without the data stream, the Palenque's crawlers were helpless, in a sense, blind and deaf. When they ventured out into the endless void of space, there was only one point of contact connecting them with the world: Mama Kossa.

      The prospector ship's twelve crawlers were more than auxiliary craft; they were compact laboratories to which an impulse engine, a rudimentary faster-than-light drive, and a pressurized cabin, large enough for a crew of three, had been attached.

      Experience had taught the men and women of the Palenque that that crew had better consist of people who could stand to be together in cramped quarters for several weeks at a stretch without going for each other's throats. It was a common truth that, after the first week together, a crawler crew felt either burning hatred or unbreakable comradeship. Teams that had worked together for years so preferred the company of their crewmates that they often shared three-person cabins on the Palenque, quarters that were only slightly more spacious than the steel cages on the crawlers.

      "Crawler Four to Mama," called a shrill, chirping

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