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it. He said, "Gonnelson? Mallory? Can you two land this thing if I
clear it at groundside?"
He got qualified assents, and turned to Jargy Hoad. "What you say, once this
bucket hits a good place to orbit, we take the scouts downside and show these
closet Uties how the cow ate the cabbage?"
Jargy grinned. "Sounds good to me."
Shegler's had no missiles worth worrying about. The scout-ships dodged them
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easily enough, and
Tregare saw them explode harmlessly, upstairs. "Jargy? Two launching sites, I
spotted. You see any more?"
"Just the two. I'll take the one nearest me."
The scouts projectors weren't in the same league with the ones ships carried,
but they did the job. Both missile sites went up, taking quite a lot of
Shegler's soil with them.
Circling, waiting for the dust to settle or drift downwind, \b211\b
Tregare spotted the ionization trails of projectors reaching up from
groundside. Big ones, too-But not geared for traverse fast enough to nail a
scout. Bran yelled to Jargy, and the two methodically wiped out the gun
emplacements. Then Tregare made three fast passes over the settlement, at
speeds intended to break every window in the place and maybe a few other
things, and then two slow ones, to draw fire from anyone who still had some.
Nothing happened. "Looks like
Sheglers has shot its wad," said Jargy.
"Seems as if." He called up to \iInconnu.\i "Gonnelson? I think it's safe to
land now. Let's see if you and Mallory can set yourselves down like a crate of
eggs." No answer, but after a while the ship's ID-beacon came in, signal
strengthening, so he knew it was on the way down.
Anything more, now? He first rejected the idea that came to him, then
reconsidered it. Item one:
\ithat Henry could've warned us.\i Item two: \imaybe these people need a
little more convincing.\i
So before he landed his scoutship, Tregare made one more pass, and blew the
Port Admin building purely all to hell.
The Port itself, it turned out, had been the government of Sheglers Moon. Now
there wasn't any.
So while \iInconnu\i sat, undergoing repairs, the only government was Bran
Tregare. The main item of business was refueling and repair \iof Inconnu,\i
but he did take time to ask who among the survivors had held down what kind of
semi-executive job previously, and made some appointments. To the woman he
assigned to replace the late Mace Henry, he said, "After I leave, you're in
charge for just as long as you can keep things under control. Can you?"
She pushed short, greying hair back from her thin face. "After the way you
shot hell out of us, what do \iyou\i care? And what's the point? Now UET knows
about us. When they come back-"
"By groundside time, that'll be years from now. If they bother, even. Still-"
He thought about it. "In your shoes, I'd think in terms of evacuating. A few
at a time, whenever a ship comes in and has room to take some extra aboard."
Pause. "Guarantee me no Uties in the lot, I could take on maybe a dozen. More,
if they're real friendly and don't mind sleeping crowded." He shrugged.
"Food, things like that . . . they're no problem."
\b212\b
She looked at him. "Suppose we did that. The last few left here . . . what do
\ithey\i do?"
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He knew what she meant, but that wasn't what he answered. "They blow the fuel
plant, so UET
doesn't get the use of it."
She shook her head. "Tregare, you're a real monster. You know that?"
He couldn't let his hurt show. "Well, I had some help."
Before Mallory pronounced \iInconnu's\i Drive solid again, Tregare did a
little trading, after all-remembering Number One's reputation for being
interested in new food plants, he swapped some electronic components for a few
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bags of seed. He took aboard seventeen evacuees from Shegler's:
mostly tech people, but also a mother with two children. He wasn't too crazy
about having kids loose in a ship, but they behaved themselves all right. And
finally, quite a bit later than he'd expected at the time of landing, Bran
lifted \iInconnu\i off Shegler's Moon. Just out of atmo, Gonnelson docked one
scout and Jargy the other.
He picked his time so as to use the Venus-like primary for a vee-enhancing
sling turn that put him dead on for Number One-no need, on this leg, to take
any detours. The first couple of days he worried about the Drive and hung
around Control a lot. Then, deciding that Mallory knew his stuff, he went back
to his normal routine.
He didn't know why things weren't so good between him and Erdis Blaine, but
they were not. Down on Shegler's he'd been too busy and harassed to have much
time with her-time that did either of them a lot of good, anyway. Now, when he
could relax with her, it wasn't working. She'd miss one rendezvous after
another and make some kind of excuse. He never checked up on her, because if
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