Ларри Нивен - Crashlander

I bought it all.

I would own it when it landed on Home, and there I would sell it. Money moving between stars might be noticed, but fertilizer packages were supposed to move.

Next: the apt in Pacifica, in Milcenta Graynor's name. Should I do something about that? But Sharrol had been so efficient. She might well have put it up for sale herself.

Or we could just let the lease lapse. I left it alone.

Twenty minutes gone. Plenty of time to cross the slidebridge to Baker Street Island, put coins in a booth, and be waiting on Landis Island when the dirigible Wyvern touched down.

Direct sunlight flamed on my cheeks, forehead, closed eyelids. I thrashed in terror and snapped awake. I'd taken the pills, hadn't I? Pat pockets, find the bottle. Seal broken. Good.

We had left most of the islands behind.

A balcony rimmed the gondola, screened with webbing to discourage fools and jumpers. Several passengers had taken their trays out there. I got my breakfast and went out in time to occupy an inflated chair. I took my shirt off. My blood was suffused with the antisunburn chemicals, and my skin darkened fast as the morning wore on.

We flew not far above the water. Following the surfaces of enormous swells, Wyvern felt a long-period surge and drop. This was the deep ocean. Waves had room to grow out here. So did the sea beasts.

A voice from the control room directed our eyes to where a black shadow was forming in the dark water. It surfaced; water ran from it, a black island. Then a neck rose, and rose farther, dozens of yards into the air. A bar of a head with eyes wide-spaced for binocular vision studied the lights of the flying machine above it.

I felt the heady ecstasy of the discoverer and then a sudden savage guilt.

We would end on Home.

A flat phobe could live and raise her children there without forcing her body to admit that she had left Earth. In that respect it lacks interest, and that was why we chose it. I would be there, too, marooned beneath the stars … at the bottom of a hole, as the Belters say of planets.

I didn't even know if there were alien embassies on Home. «I'm out of the aliens business,» I'd said.

I'd been on Fafnir for a year and a half, and I'd spent it beneath the ocean. This was my last chance to see the world. My last spaceflight, in miniature.

It's misdirection, see, Sharrol? The crashlander's hand is more nimble than the eye of the ARM. But I'd known what I was doing all along.

Sanity check –

Ander wouldn't ignore the spaceports; Ander wouldn't forget the iceliners. I had to gamble that he had looked at Outbound Enterprises first, and thoroughly, before he had come to Pacifica. Sharrol and Jeena and I might get clear before Ander looked again.

Then the records would tell him that a family native to Fafnir had been frozen while, halfway around the planet, Ander was watching water war with Beowulf Shaeffer. He would have no reason at all to connect these Graynors with fleeing flatlanders.

I was not burning time at my family's cost. I was confusing my back trail. With luck and ingenuity we'd be clear of Ander Smittarasheed and would stay that way.

Now, what of Sigmund Ausfaller?

They had followed us to Fafnir by following the track of Carlos's ship, but Fafnir wasn't even the best bet. Flat phobes would try to reach Home. My best guess was that Sigmund had sent Ander here and taken Home for himself.

I would wake from the frozen state, and Sigmund Ausfaller would be looking down at me.

If Ausfaller was on Home, then there was not one tanj thing I could do to protect us. Carlos Wu must deal with him, for I could not. I told myself that Carlos Wu was a match for a dozen Sigmund Ausfallers.

Night came, and the air grew chilly. I waited until I was alone and presently pushed my Persial January Hebert identity through the safety web and watched it fall.

It was very like flying with Nakamura Lines as a passenger. The differences were all to the good: the breeze, the clean taste of the air, the lesser isolation. In case of disaster, help was hours away, not weeks or months.

I noticed a «recess» mentality I'd seen during spaceflight. This was not a real place. Breaks in discipline would not be paid for. Diets broke down. Couples paired off or split up for quick liaisons. Children ran wild; distance and the soft walls absorbed their shrieking. A few adults were trying out funny chemicals or flying by wire.

The people around me were mostly Shashters eager for company to while away the hours. Some of us squared off for computer-game competitions. Our numbers kept changing. Staying with the same people was difficult because jet lag was hitting us all differently.

I let conversation find me, doing very little of the talking. I didn't want anyone remembering a pale flatlander or ex-astronaut on his way to Shasht. I turned down some interesting offers — honest, Sharrol.

The vast reach of Fafnir's ocean passed beneath us. Two days passed very pleasantly before the long backbone of Shasht rose from the sea.

And then all the relaxed people around me began acting like children who have remembered their homework.

The terminal was on the ridge, perched on the spine of the continent. I had my choice of booths or a magnetic car or a footpath down through a rocky canyon.

I chose the footpath. Maybe I was being overcautious; maybe I just wanted the walk, or the tan, or some extra time before they froze me into something not much like a living man.

Nobody tried to stop me. An hour's walk brought me to the Outbound Enterprises office at Shasht North Spaceport.

Outbound was a smallish pillbox of a building surrounded by parldand. It reminded me a little too much of a certain park on Earth that had once been a burial ground. Like Forest Lawn, the Outbound building was a pocket of green surrounded by glass slabs of cityscape.

Within the glass wall was a circle of benches and an arc of transfer booths, six, with phones at either end. Ms. Machti ruled at the center. She was a dark, pretty woman guarded by hands-off body language and by the circle of desk that enclosed her like a fortress.

I was glad to see her. She knew me by sight. Her fingers were dancing over her keyboard even as she greeted me. «Mr. Graynor! You've had a busy year and a half.»

«Nice and quiet, actually,» I said. «Are Milcenta and Jeena all right?»

«Cooled down and ready for shipment. I take it Adelaide never appeared.»

«No. Went her own way, I guess.»

«Just as well, perhaps,» she said primly. I don't think she approved of Mart Graynor having two wives, let alone bent ones. «Well, we have a few formalities to cover, and then you can join them. Did you know that your specs list you at six feet eleven inches?»

My shock must have showed. Who would have seen that listing?

I managed a credible laugh. «Did you have an oversized box laid out for me?»

«No, that's not a problem; it was only a matter of rewriting the specs. But we couldn't do that. Ms. Graynor doesn't seem to know your exact height. We'll have to measure you.

«Stet.»

«So.» She waved in a counterclockwise circle. Waving me around the desk? I walked that way and saw the sliding staircase leading down.

Of course. Most of Outbound must be underground.

I started down. Ms. Machti called, «Mr. Graynor? You've a call from a Mr. Ausfaller. He says you can't take off yet.»

Ausfaller! How could he know … What did he know? «He asked for Martin Wallace Graynor?»

«No, he wanted the red-haired man at the desk, and I said, 'Mister Graynor? and he —»

«Stet. Can you —» I did not want the call transferred to my pocket phone. «May I take it on one of those?» I waved at the booths.