Read Online Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh - Free Book Online

suggestions, based on experience. I’ll pass them to you, by your leave.”
    “No umbrage, captain. Experience is appreciated.”
    “A professional attitude, colonel, and appreciated in turn. Printout follows.”
    He opened the desk cabinet, took out a bottle and a glass and poured himself a drink, soothed his nerves while the printout started spilling onto his desk.
    Everything would have to be packed. Mostly there were the microfax books and the study tapes, that were precious. Uniforms—there were no more uniforms where they were going. They became citizens down there. Colonists. No more amenities either, in spite of the cases of soap. He meant to have a shower morning and evening during the unloading. It was that kind of thing one missed most under the conditions he was going to face. Soap. Hot water. Pure water. And a glass of whiskey in the evenings.
    The printout grew. On the screen, the tighter focus came in. It agreed with the photos in the mission documents.
    Patterns showed up under tight focus…the same patterns which the probe had abundantly reported, curious mounds near seacoasts and rivers, vast maze designs which interrupted the sparse green with tracings of brown lines, loops and rays stretching over kilometers of river-bank and coastline.
    That was where they were going.
xi
    T43 days MAT
Communication: mission command
    “…First drop scheduled 1042 hours 25 minutes mission apparent time. Capt. Ada Beaumont commanding. Selected for first drop: M/Sgt. Ilya V. Burdette with five seats; M/Sgt. Pavlos D. M. Bilas, with five seats; M/Sgt. Dinah L. Sigury, two seats; Cpl. Nina N. Ferry, one seat; Sgt. Jan Vandermeer, one seat; Capt. Bethan M. Dean, one seat; Dr. Frelan D. Wilson, one seat; Dr. Marco X. Gutierrez, one seat; Dr. Park Young, one seat; Dr. Hayden L. Savin, one seat; workers A 187-6788 through A 208-0985, thirty seats.”
xii
    T43 days MAT
Venture loading bay one
    “He’s not coming,” Ada Beaumont said quietly, rested her hand on her husband’s back, kept her eyes front, on the movement of machinery, the loading of cannisters onto the lift, an intermittent clank and crash.
    Bob Davies said nothing. Nothing was really called for, and Bob was careful with protocols. Ada stayed still a moment—looked aside where some of the ship’s crew were rigging the ropes to channel boarding personnel to the lift—but the bay up on the frame was empty yet, the shuttle on its way up from Venture ’s belly, close to match-up with the personnel dock. The lift yonder would take them by groups of ten, synch them out of Venture ’s comfortable rotation, to let them board the null G shuttle. The azi were to go first, taking the upright berths in the hold and to the rear of the cabin, and then the citizen complements would follow, in very short sequence.
    But Conn stayed in his quarters. He had rarely come out of them since their arrival in the system. The ship was crowded; departments were busy with their plans: possibly no one noticed. He played cards and drank with the two of them—he had done that, at the end of watches, regularly. But he never came out among the staff.
    “I think,” Ada Beaumont said more quietly still, when the crew was furthest from them and only Bob could possibly hear. “I think Jim shouldn’t have taken this one. I wish he’d take the out he still has and go back to Cyteen. Claim health reasons.”
    And then, in further silence, Bob venturing no comment: “What he actually said was—‘You handle things. You’ll be doing that, mostly. The old man just wants to ride it out easy.’”
    “He wasn’t that way,” Bob said finally.
    “It’s leaving Cyteen. It’s Jean, I think. He never showed how bad that hurt.”
    Bob Davies ducked his head. There was noise in the corridor to the left. Some of the azi were coming up. The clock ran closer and closer to their inevitable departure. He reached and took his wife’s hand—himself in the khaki that was the uniform of the day