GLORIA STEPPED OUT ONTO THE DOCK AND IMMEDIATELY wrinkled her nose at the pungent scent of the scumworld. The oxygen-rich air seemed to burn her lungs, but after a couple of deep breaths, she felt better. The air was cool and the sky was a faded blue-green. She saw two men flanking the path at the top of the rise, aiming their rifles at her. One of them carried a flèchette gun, the other an old Mark IV plasma rifle. She walked slowly to the end of the dock and waited. One of the men waved her on, and she made her way up the path; it looked as if someone had sprayed it with an herbicide that kept the surrounding algae mats in check.

Reaching the top of the rise, she paused again. Two more men appeared, one with a flèchette rifle and the other holding a plasma pistol. They were all dressed in pea-green jumpsuits, mottled with random patterns of brown and tan.

“Who’s in charge here?” Gloria asked.

“No one,” said the man with the pistol. “We are not hierarchical. We are an affinity group and we make collective decisions.” Yet it was clear to Gloria that, anarchist ideology aside, the man with the pistol was effectively in charge. He was about thirty, brown hair, brown eyes, and like the others, wore a scraggly growth of beard.

“You mean I have to negotiate with all four of you at once?”

“Who said anything about negotiations?” said the man with the pistol. All four men were staring at her with what seemed to Gloria to be hungry appreciation.

“We didn’t invite you to come out here,” said the man with the plasma rifle.

Gloria slowly turned to look at each of them. “Come on, guys,” she said, “we’ve got a situation here, and we need to discuss it. You obviously want our ship, or you’d have holed the hull by now.”

“We can do more than that, Ms. VanDeen,” said one of the men with a flèchette rifle. “We’ve got plasma RPGs, and we can blow that ship straight to hell.”

“And probably yourselves, too,” Gloria pointed out. “But even if you lived, you’d still be stuck here. How long have you been here?”

“Long enough,” said the man with the pistol. “But our relief could arrive at any time. Maybe even today.”

Gloria shook her head. “I wouldn’t count on it. Didn’t you hear what we said? PAIN is out of business.”

“Why should we believe you?”

“What choice do you have? Look, we’ve got something you want, and maybe you’ve got something we want. Let’s walk over to your building so I can get a look at those weapons—if you have them.”

“We’ve got ’em, Ms. VanDeen,” said the man with the plasma rifle.

“Then let’s see them. I’m not going to negotiate until I see what we’re negotiating about.”

The man with the plasma pistol frowned, then turned to one of the men with a flèchette rifle and said, “Take her down the path a little way and watch her.” Then he walked past Gloria and huddled with the other two men. Her guard motioned for her to move, and she did, but she noticed that the other three men were engaged in what seemed to be a heated discussion behind her. Apparently it was difficult for anarchists to give orders to each other.

The man guarding her was tall and thin, with dirty blond hair and hazel eyes. From the look of his beard, she guessed that they had been here at least three months. And they probably hadn’t seen a woman in all that time.

Gloria smiled at him. “I’m Gloria,” she said. “What’s your name?”

The man hesitated, then answered. “Doug,” he said. “And that’s Marty, and the other two are Alex and Rick.” Doug was trying to look Gloria in the eye, but his gaze kept darting down to her mostly uncovered breasts and her torso, which was not at all concealed beneath the clinging, nearly transparent bodysuit.

“Is it just you four?” Gloria asked. “Must get lonely around here.”

Doug started to answer, stopped himself, then said, grinning self-consciously, “We got a whole army just over that hill.”

Marty, the man with the pistol, returned, having completed his parley with the rest of the affinity group. His comrades looked back over their shoulders at Gloria, then turned to concentrate their attention on the Cruiser.

“Okay,” Marty said, “walk. And if you try anything funny, we’ll shoot you where you stand. We mean it.”

“I know you do,” Gloria said. “One of your comrades parted my hair with a plasma rifle a few weeks back.”

“Yeah,” Doug said, “we heard they were going to try for you. Kind of glad they missed.”

“Shut up and walk,” Marty said, and so they did. Gloria kept ahead of the two men, putting a little extra hip waggle into her stride. Anarchists, Gloria assumed, had the same hormones as other men.

After a few minutes, they reached the building. The main door, about twenty feet on a side, was closed. Marty indicated that she should go through a smaller door to the right. That led into a small pressure chamber, and when the outer door was closed behind them, there was a brief hissing sound and the inner door popped open. Inside, the stench was less noticeable, and the air seemed more Earth-like.

“Just so you’ll know, we can use a plasma weapon in here,” Marty told her.

“I’m sure there won’t be any need for that,” Gloria replied. Marty led her down a short corridor, opened a door, and gestured for her to go ahead. She stepped out onto the concrete floor of the main room. Ahead of her sat a medium-sized freight skimmer with a closed cab and a flatbed, parked immediately in front of the large pressure door at the entrance. Beyond it, she saw a variety of unfamiliar machinery and equipment, apparently left behind by the terraforming crew. To the right, and extending two hundred feet to the rear of the building, were stacks of shipping containers and crates of various sizes. Overhead panel lighting cast a diffuse, yellowish glow.

Gloria walked ahead of the men, toward the containers. She glanced around, like a potential house-buyer idly checking out the premises. When she reached the first of the containers, she paused and read the stenciled notations on their sides. Deciphered, the string of letters and numbers seemed to announce that the containers each held two orbital plasma mines. The date read 06-23-63.

“This what you came to see?” Marty asked, a hint of a sneer in his voice.

“Some of it,” Gloria said, trying to sound unimpressed. “Where are the big plasma bombs?”

“Back there,” Marty said, pointing with his pistol.

“How many?”

“Enough.”

“Come on, Marty,” Gloria said. “Don’t play cute. We know there were eighteen of them in the original shipment. You sent one of them to New Cambridge, and we already have that one, so you should have seventeen left here. Unless you sent some of them elsewhere. We need to know. Seventeen?”

Marty pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. “Seventeen,” he said. “Back there on the left.”

“Let’s see them. I want to count.”

They walked on. Marty said, “How do we know you really got the one on New Cambridge?”

“I told you, we broke up your whole New Cambridge operation. Think about it. How else could we have found you here?”

“She’s telling the truth, Marty,” Doug said.

“Maybe. So why’d they send you here, Ms. VanDeen?”

Gloria turned and smiled at the two men. “Oh, you know. Glamour. Publicity. ‘Beautiful Dexta Agent Finds Missing Arms Cache.’ That sort of thing.”

“Figures,” Marty snorted.

“You boys are just a loose end,” Gloria told them. “Nobody from PAIN is coming to pick up you and the weapons. We’re your only ticket out, guys. Or do you want to spend the rest of your lives here?”

“Shit, I knew it!” Doug said in disgust. “They said it would just be two months, and it’s already been three.”

“Shut up,” Marty told him.

“Shut up, yourself! I’m sick of listening to your crap, Marty. First among equals, my ass!”

“Are these the plasma bombs?” Gloria asked, pausing in front of some big black containers.

“That’s them. Go ahead and count, if you want. There are seventeen of them, like I said.” Marty waved his pistol in her direction. “But don’t get any stupid ideas.”

Gloria made a show of counting and inspecting the containers, crouching and bending as needed to give Doug and Marty a good view of her assets. Her bluff was working, so far, and sex was providing the necessary distraction. It was simply a question of waiting for the right moment.

“Okay,” she said at last, “seventeen. Maybe we can do some business, but I need to see the other stuff, too. Where are the plasma rifles and grenades?”

“Over here, on the right,” Marty said.

Gloria walked over to the crates. “I don’t want to have to count all 24,000 rifles,” she said. “Help me out here, guys. How many of them have been distributed so far?”

“Couple hundred,” Doug said, “give or take. About the same with the grenades.”

Gloria looked at Marty. “That right, Marty?”

“Yeah,” he said with some apparent reluctance. “That’s about right.”

“Good,” Gloria said. “Now we can negotiate.”

“What did you have in mind?” Marty asked her.

“We’ll trade you. Our Cruiser for the weapons. You can leave and go anywhere you want. We’ll stay here, and when we don’t show up on time at New Cambridge, they’ll send another ship for us.” Gloria gave him a satisfied smile.

“We don’t have a pilot,” Marty said.

“You can have ours, as long as you promise not to hurt him.”

She could tell from Doug’s face that he was eager to accept the deal. But Marty looked as if he needed a little more persuasion.

“And I’ll throw in a bonus, just for you two. The others don’t need to know a thing about it.”

“What bonus?” Marty demanded.

“How long since you guys have had a woman?” Gloria stood in front of them, grinning.

Doug’s eyes bulged out, but Marty remained skeptical. “You expect us to believe you’re going to put out for us?”

Gloria allowed herself to look wounded by this show of doubt. “Hey, Marty,” she said, “I’m Gloria VanDeen! You’ve heard all about me, right? Sexually voracious. Wantonly uninhibited. The best fuck in the galaxy. And it’s all true. But don’t take my word for it—find out for yourselves! You must have some beds in this dump.”

“Over there in the crew quarters,” Doug said, trying to be helpful.

“Shut up. It’s some kind of trick.”

“Oh, fuck you, Marty! Three months in this fucking place, and for what? You heard her—it’s over! This is our only chance to get out of here!”

“Maybe. But I don’t like this sex business. Use your head, Doug. She’s just trying to split us up.”

“One of you can fuck me, and the other one can watch, with a gun in his hand,” Gloria said. “I don’t mind. Unless you think you wouldn’t be able to…you know…do it. I mean, that happens with some guys. I think I must intimidate them or something. And, of course, if it’s just been you four guys here together for three months, well, maybe you’ve worked out some other arrangement for yourselves. And that’s okay, really. There’s nothing wrong with same-sex sex. I mean, I’ve done it with plenty of other women, and if you guys are like that—”

“Hey!” Doug interjected. “It’s not like that at all. You just let me show you!”

“You moron! Can’t you see what she’s trying to do?”

“What are you worried about?” Doug turned and got in Marty’s face. “We’ve still got the guns! What can she do?”

At that precise instant, Gloria showed them what she could do. A flying Qatsima kick caught Marty square in the face and sent him reeling backwards, his plasma pistol clattering along the concrete. Doug reacted, but not quickly enough, and as he fumbled with the awkward flèchette rifle, Gloria bounded up in another kick that put a heel in Doug’s groin. He doubled over, and Gloria finished him off with a knee to the chin.

Gloria picked up the plasma pistol and raised her left wrist near her mouth. “You hear all that, Arkady?”

“Every bit of it,” Volkonski said over the wristcom. “Is everything secure there?”

“No sweat,” Gloria assured him. “I’ve got the pistol, and Doug and Marty are in dreamland.”

“Nice work, Gloria.”

“Thank you, thank you. There’s a freight skimmer, and I think I can use that. Just give me a few minutes to tie up the affinity group here.”

“Roger. Nothing new happening here.”

Gloria bent over and checked the anarchists’ pulses, relieved to find that she hadn’t killed either one. She looked around, and after a brief search found some bungee cords wrapped around the cartons of grenades. At summer camp, when she was eight, she had learned how to tie a variety of knots, and she used that knowledge now to secure Doug’s and Marty’s arms behind their backs and tie their feet together. Then, one at a time, she dragged them over the concrete floor to the front of the building next to the freight skimmer. Maneuvering them into the cab of the lorry took some doing, and she had to pause and catch her breath after the job was done.

She inspected the cab of the skimmer and found that she could operate it. Then she checked out the mechanism controlling the big pressure door and found that it involved no insoluble mysteries.

“Arkady? I’m all set here, but we need to coordinate.”

“What are you planning?” Volkonski asked.

“I thought I could just barrel on out of here in the skimmer and down to the dock. If you can give me some covering fire…”

“It won’t work, Gloria,” Volkonski said. “Even if you got past the two guys on the rise, they’d still have plenty of time to put a hole through our hull. What’s your range from the building to the rise?”

“Maybe five hundred meters,” Gloria said. “Why?”

“Too long for accuracy with a flèchette. You’ll have to use a plasma rifle.”

“To do what?”

“To pick off the last two from behind.”

“But wouldn’t that start a fire?”

“Not if you’re careful.”

“Hey, Arkady, I’ve never even fired a plasma rifle. Anyway, I really don’t want to have to kill anyone.”

“Gloria,” Volkonski said patiently, “this is no time to get softhearted.”

“Give me a couple of minutes, Arkady. Let me think.”

Gloria wandered around the vast shed, almost at random, pondering the possibilities. She came to an opened crate of plasma grenades, reached into it, and lifted one out to inspect it. It felt heavy in her hand, not the kind of thing you could throw very far. She knew there were slinglike launchers that were used to fling them a fair distance, but didn’t see one. On the underside of the grenade, there was what appeared to be a timing mechanism. She studied it for a few moments, then went back to the skimmer.

She contacted Volkonski and told him what she had in mind. He didn’t sound very enthusiastic about it, but didn’t have a better idea. Reluctantly, he gave her the go-ahead.

Gloria got into the cab of the freight skimmer and fired up the engine. The skimmer rose a couple of feet off the concrete and hovered patiently. After checking to see that Doug and Marty were still unconscious, she got out of the cab and walked to the controls of the pressure door. She hit a couple of buttons and the inner door rose. Two more buttons, a harsh warning blat! from a Klaxon, and, with a loud sigh, the outer pressure door lifted. Cool, putrid air rushed into the warehouse. Gloria dashed back to the cab of the skimmer and started it moving.

She paused just outside the building. After setting the timer on the grenade, she opened the door and tossed it out into the vast mat of algae. Then she shut the door and floated forward along the path. Ahead, she could see Alex and Rick, in apparent confusion, watching as the freight skimmer closed the distance between them. A hundred meters short of them, she paused and spoke into her wristcom. Volkonski had linked it to the external speakers on the Cruiser.

“Alex! Rick! Listen to me! This is Gloria, and I’ve got Marty and Doug here with me in the cab. They’re still alive, and you guys can stay alive, too, but only if you do exactly what I tell you.”

Gloria waited. The two men had pointed their weapons at the skimmer, but they looked back and forth at each other for a few moments before one of them shouted, “You’ll never make it to the dock, lady!”

“Neither will you, if you don’t shut up and listen,” Gloria responded. “In about thirty seconds, a plasma grenade I left back there is going to explode. The door is open, and the fire will spread inside. The munitions in there will start cooking off, and pretty soon something’s going to put a hole through the containment of one of those plasma bombs. You know what that would mean.”

She paused for a few seconds to let them think about it. “All seventeen of them will go off, but one will be more than enough. In the meantime, that fire will be spreading in this direction. There’s only one way off this planet, so if you want to live, drop your weapons and get down to the dock as fast as you can.”

Before either man could reply, the grenade detonated. Gloria saw a green flash in her rearview mirror, then twisted around in her seat to get a direct view. She was amazed by what she saw.

In the oxygen-rich atmosphere, the plasma released by the grenade had touched off an instant inferno. Flames fifty feet high engulfed the warehouse. The mat of algae flared into brilliance and, as Gloria watched, the blaze moved rapidly in her direction. Too rapidly.

Gloria wasted no more time watching. She gunned the skimmer and dashed forward. Ahead, Rick and Alex had flung their weapons aside and were running toward the dock. A quick glance in the mirror told her that they would never make it, so as the skimmer reached the top of the rise, she slowed just enough for the two men to leap onto the flatbed. Gloria charged down the slope, turned sharply, and glided onto the dock. Before she could get out of the door on her side, two of the Bugs had opened the other door and were extracting Marty and Doug from the vehicle. As she darted around the front of the skimmer and headed for the hatch of the Cruiser, she took a last look over her shoulder and saw the blazing algae at the top of the rise. She dived into the Cruiser, the hatch closed, and Erskine maneuvered them away from the dock.

Gloria looked up and saw Volkonski standing above her, a half smile of admiration and amazement on his features.

“Whew!” she said.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he told her. He extended a hand, pulled her to her feet, then turned and went forward into the cockpit. Gloria followed.

“Erskine?” Volkonski asked.

“Workin’ on it, sir!” Erskine replied breathlessly.

“Forget about rocks,” Volkonski commanded. “Just get us up!”

“Yessir!” Erskine worked the controls so rapidly that even the sensitive mass-repulsion units that softened acceleration and provided ersatz gravity inside the Cruiser couldn’t react fast enough. Gloria felt a lurch and almost lost her feet as the Cruiser clawed its way into the sky.

On the image screen, she saw the dock far below, quickly receding into invisibility. Beyond it, a flaming landscape and the warehouse, smoking and blazing. Then, even the warehouse was gone, and there was nothing left to see but the curving shoreline of the big bay—

And a flash that overloaded the imaging system for a moment. When vision was restored, she saw a billow of green fire rising from the receding landscape, and a concentric shock wave racing outward in every direction. She felt a slight bump as it caught up with the Cruiser.

Erskine looked around with a wan, weary grin on his face. “Made it!” he said.

“With six or seven seconds to spare,” Volkonski said. “That was cutting it a little fine, Gloria.”

Gloria put her fists on her hips and glared at Volkonski. “You’re just never satisfied, are you?”

 

PETRA DOUBLE-CHECKED THE FINAL RESULT. Not because she wasn’t sure—she had been sure ever since her moment of enlightenment back in the hotel—but because she needed to steel herself to do what had to be done next. She stared at the console for a long moment, then slid her chair back and got to her feet.

She walked out of her small office and down a corridor to the office of Elizabeth Irons, chief of Internal Security for Quadrant 4. Petra gave a nod to the assistant at the outer desk, but didn’t pause, and barged straight into Iron’s office.

Irons’s mouth fell open slightly when she saw Petra in her scandalously revealing night-on-the town garb. “Ms. Nash,” she said, “I don’t know what they wear to work back in Manhattan, but here on New Cambridge—”

Petra interrupted her. “Ms. Irons,” she said, “you have to arrest Whitney Bartholemew, Junior—immediately!”