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Well& Excellent! It s good to see there are young men with sporting blood out here. Your people and mine will get along well, young Gemini. Roderick waved an arm around at the Marsmen around him. And who in my little group would you like to try to best in a physical encounter? Pol nodded at the giant Marsman who stood next to Valda. Why not him? Now wait a minute& Egan began. Several other belters shouted him down. Pol can take care of himself, Egan, Cass heard Nieminski say. In fact, Cass was not worried about that part either. He and Pol might be young compared to the other belters, but nobody could top their experience at handling themselves in this environment. The Marsman glared down at Pol, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste. Very well, Bardo, Roderick said to him. The boy may need a lesson, but try not to damage him badly. This is crazy! Egan declared. But Marsmen and belters had already cleared a space around Pol and Bardo. Bardo shook his head slowly, as though in disgust, and then made a feinting movement toward Pol. He looked chagrined when Pol failed to react with any defensive gesture at all. Then he reached out to grab his younger antagonist in all seriousness. His fingers met empty air. Pol had leaped lightly from the rock floor and flipped over Bardo s head, just out of reach. He grabbed the arm of a belter in the audience, and used that leverage for enough impetus to land behind Bardo. Chuckles from the belters echoed within the chambers. The maneuver had been no real surprise to people used to living in relative free fall. Bardo had spun almost in time to catch Pol coming down-but not quite. Pol landed with his back to the larger man and, without seeming to glance behind him, curled himself into a backward somersault that took him right between the giant s barrel-like legs. Now, that maneuver was a surprise-to everyone but Cass, who knew Pol had seen his opponent s position through his brother s more-distant eyes. Instinctively, Bardo, bent over to see where his adversary had rolled. Pol had spread his hands on either side to brace himself against the rock floor. He planted one foot against the Marsman s rump and pushed gently, sending the larger man pinwheeling into the air. He spilled, head over heels, into the ranks of those closest to the platform, as laughter rained down from the belters. Enough, Bardo, that will do, Roderick said as the Mars-man scrambled into a crouch, a furious expression on his face. I believe I see what the young man means. You really are in your element out here, aren t you? Cass could not help sharing Pol s feeling of triumph, not only at deflating Page 78 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html some of the pomposity of the visitors but also at a minuscule payback for what both boys suspected other Marsmen had done to the ship on which they were born. Pol could not help glancing at Valda to see her reaction, but she was not looking at him. She was regarding Bardo with what seemed an infinite sadness on her face. Far from scuttling Roderick s proposal, the friendly-seeming little contest seemed to cement it. Work would start as soon as the Martians could assemble the engineering equipment and bring it out. The Martian delegation left soon after, their squat little ship gradually moving clear of the habitat asteroid and disappearing into the blackness. Fifteen minutes later, Cass and Pol saw the silent flare of its rocket as it began its return trip. The body would never have been found without the broadcast locator. Its beeps had been picked up by a team of belters working on a rock within sight of Roderick s departure trajectory. Pol and Cass got their first sight of it along with a couple dozen others when it was brought through the shelter air lock. It was, or had been, a man. It was hardly recognizable as one, since it wore no pressure suit and many of its internal organs had ruptured in hard vacuum. But there was no mistaking that giant physique. Cass felt his stomach turning but managed to hold it down. Pol didn t, causing a general rush for hand-vacs to suck up the contents of his last meal. Egan s only reaction was a grim tightening of his lips. I guess Roderick wanted us to know how he feels about failure, Egan said. The project took nearly three Earth-years, as time was measured in the belt, but less than half of that by Martian time, as the Martian engineers and workers constantly observed. And this was Day One on New Eden, as Roderick had called it, fashioned mostly from materials in the belt itself. The Martians had proved to be as proficient at building a space habitat as Roderick had boasted. In deference to the belters, the periods of light and dark were based on Earth-days on New Eden-or, rather, in the spherical habitat. Its globe was nearly three miles in diameter, with a spin that simulated Earth-like gravity along its inner equator. Its sky was at its center, complete with real clouds. Cass kept staring at them. He had seen reproductions on tape and in still pictures, of course, but never the real thing. Day One also marked the first holiday in the belt since the start of mining operations. Even Roderick s visit three years ago had not prompted a total shutdown of work shifts. But this time, the belters had lifted a phrase from Roderick s speech: What Earth didn t know wouldn t hurt it. Between five and six hundred belters-everyone in the belt, in fact, but one-had gathered on New Eden to bid farewell to the Martian workers and to spend an Earth-day walking on seemingly solid ground, lifting their unhelmeted faces to the sky, breathing in the air that was all around them. Cass wondered what all the celebrating was about. He felt naked, exposed, here in the open without even a pressure suit. He recognized how real the synthetic grass and trees looked, from the pictures held seen of Earth, but even they felt unnatural to him. The excited voices around him and Egan seemed strange, unfiltered as they were by helmet receivers. And the constant pull of gravity generated by the worldlet s spin seemed to him more uncomfortable than his and Pol s workouts in the centrifuge. Of course, he and Pol were the only belters who had never experienced continuous gravity before. And here I am, three hundred miles away, came Pol s thought, tinged with disgust. Cass also picked up the thought that this had been the first time Pol had considered defying an order from Egan. Egan had two reasons for stationing Pol on a rock where be could observe the Martian fleet leaving the belt: one, to make sure it actually left, and, two, because Egan was not sure Pol could physically handle the stress of a constant one-G, since he had not kept up his conditioning over the years as had Cass. Pol had argued that he wouldn t have to stay at the equator; he could remain farther out from center, where the Page 79 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html pull was weaker, and gradually work his way into stronger gravity. Besides, be had already tracked the three Martian ships past his observation post with its instruments, en route back to Mars. But Egan had been adamant, responding by radio-even though he and the boys knew he could have accomplished the same thing simply by using Cass as a human transmitter-that acclimation to gravity would require more preliminary work for Pol, and that the Mars ships were still close enough to change course and loop around for a return trip. Why should they do that? Cass asked. They ve got what they want-assurance of a supply of minerals. And they ve done their part of the bargain. Egan, moving beside Cass in a motorized something he called a wheelchair, couldn t answer that one. It was sim-ply that he didn t trust Roderick. Neither did Cass, for that matter. He still remembered being told what happened to the Gemini, and he d seen firsthand what happened to Bardo. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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