A Deepness in the Sky

Gonle looked across at Ezr Vinh and rolled her eyes. Neither of these buffoons liked to acknowledge how much everyone's cooperation—very profitable cooperation—was involved here. Even if the peons weren't welcome anymore, they still supplied a constant stream of food, finished woods, live plants, and program designs.

The mist made little swirls around the lodge, and the illusion of gravity was sorely tested as the visitors tilted this way and that on their grabber-soled shoes. Then they were in the lodge, warmed by very natural-looking burning logs in Tomas Nau's big fireplace. The Podmaster gestured them toward a conference table. There were Nau, Brughel, and Reynolt. Three other figures were silhouetted against the windows and the gray light beyond. One was Qiwi.

"Well hello, Jau," said Ezr. "Welcome...back."

Sure enough, it was Jau and Rita. Tomas Nau brightened the room lights. The warmth and brightness were nothing more than in any civilized habitation, but somehow the cold and gloom so expensively maintained outside made this inner light a joyous security.

The Podmaster waved them to seats, then sat down himself. As usual, Nau was a picture of generous and high-minded leadership.But he doesn'tfool me for a moment, thought Gonle. Before this mission, she had had a long career, dealing with a dozen Customer cultures, on three worlds. Customers came in all the sizes and colors of humanity. And their governments were even more varied—tyrannies, democracies, demarchies. There was always a way of doing business with them. Big boss Nau was a villain, but a smart villain who understood that he had to do business. Qiwi had seen to that, years ago. It was too bad he held the physical upper hand—thatwas not part of the standard Qeng Ho business environment. Things were dicey when you couldn't run away from the bad guys. But in the long term, even that didn't matter.

The Podmaster nodded to each of them. "Thanks for coming in person. You should know that this meeting is being shown live on the local net, but I hope you'll tell your friends what you've seen firsthand." He grinned. "I'm sure it will make for good conversation at Benny's. What I have is incredibly good news, but it's also a great challenge. You see, Pilot Manager Xin has just returned from low Arachna orbit." He paused.I bet there'stotal, awesome silence in Benny's. "And what he discovered there is...interesting. Jau—please. Describe the mission."

Xin came to his feet a little too quickly. His wife caught his hand and he stood on the floor, facing them. Gonle tried unsuccessfully to catch Rita's eye, but the woman's entire attention was on Jau.I bet they kept her on iceuntil he was back; that was the only thing that would have kept her mouthshut about this. Rita's expression was one of vast relief. Whatever this news was, it couldn't be bad.

"Yes, sir. Per your instructions, I was brought on-Watch early, to undertake a close approach of Arachna." As he spoke, Qiwi passed around some Qeng Ho–quality huds. Gonle mouthed a buy offer at Qiwi as she passed; the other grinned and whispered "Soon!" back at her. The big bosses still didn't let peons own these things. Maybe finally that would change, too. A second went by as the huds synched on the consensus image. The space above the table rippled and became a view of the L1 rockpile. Far away, beyond the floor, there was the disk of the Spider world.

"My pilots and I took the last functioning pinnace." A thread of gold arced out from the rockpile; the tip accelerated to the halfway point and then began to slow. Their pov caught up with the pinnace; ahead, the disk of Arachna grew wide. The world looked almost as frozen and dead as when the humans had first arrived. There was one big difference: a faint glitter of city lights across the northern hemisphere, webbing here and there at major cities.

Pham Trinli's voice came from beyond the dark, an incredulous hoot. "I bet you got spotted!"

"They pinged us. Show the defense radars and native satellites," he said to the display. A cloud of blue and green dots blossomed in the space around the planet. On the ground, there were arcs of flashing light, the sweep of the Spiders' missile radars. "It's going to be more of a problem in the future."

Anne Reynolt's voice cut across the Pilot Manager's. "My network people deleted all the hard evidence. The risk was well worth it."

"Hunh! That must have been something motherloving important."