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

for everyone headed planetward, civ or military. “So maybe that’s why he can sit up here; because he can lean on you. Because he knows you’ll do it. You can handle it. And there’s Pete Gallin. He’s all right.”
    “It’s no way to start out.”
    “Hang, he can’t make every launch down here.”
    “ I’d be here,” Beaumont said. She shook her head. The azi line entered the bay, brighteyed, in soiled white coveralls; weeks with no bathing, some of them with gall sores from the bunks. There were already difficulties. Some of the details regarding the azi were not at all pretty, not the comfortable view of things the science people or even the troops had had of the voyage. At least Conn had been down seeing to the azi, she gave him that. He had been down in the holds during the voyage, maybe too often.
    Now Conn handed it to her. She knew the silent language. Had served with Conn before. Knew his limits.
    He had been drinking—a lot. That was the truth she did not tell even Bob.
xiii
    T43 days MAT
Venture communications log
    “ Venture shuttle one: unloading now complete; will lift at ready and return to dock. Weather onworld good and general conditions excellent. Landing area is now marked with the locator signal…”
    “ Venture shuttle two now leaving orbit and heading for landing site…”
xiv
    T45 days MAT
Venture hold, azi section
    “Passage 14,” the silk-smooth voice intoned, “will be J 429-687 through J 891-5567; passage 15…”
    Jin smiled inwardly, not with the face, which was unaccustomed to emotion. Emotion was between himself and the tape, between himself and the voice which caressed, promised, praised, since his childhood. He had no need to show others what he felt, or that he felt, unless someone spoke directly to him and entered the bubble which was his private world.
    When the time came, he listened to the voice and gathered himself up along with the rest of them in his aisle, stood patiently as everyone lined up, coming down the ladder to join them. And then the word was given and the file moved, out the door they had not passed since they had entered the ship, and through the corridors of the ship to the cold room which admitted them to the lift chamber. The lift jolted and slid one way and the other, and opened again where there was no gravity at all, so that they drifted—“Hold the lines,” a born-man told them, and Jin seized the cord along with the rest, beside a silver clip on the line. “Hold to the clips with one hand and pull yourselves along gently,” the born-man said, and he did so, flew easily upward along the line in the company of others, until they had come to the hatch of the ship which would take them to the World.
    It was more lines, inside; and they were jammed very tightly into the back of the hold while more and more azi were loaded on after them. “Secure your handgrips,” a born-man told them, and they did so, locking in place the padded bars which protected them. “Feet to the deck.” They did the best they could.
    It took a short time to load. They were patient, and the others moved with dispatch: the hatch closed and a born-man voice said: “Hold tight.”
    So they went, a hard kick which sent them on their way and gave them the feeling that they were lying on the floor on top of each other and not standing upright. No one spoke. There was no need. The tape had already told them where they were going and how long it would take to get there, and if they talked, they might miss instruction.
    They believed in the new world and in themselves with all their hearts, and Jin was pleased even in the discomfort of the acceleration, because it meant they were going there faster.
    They made entry, and the air heated, so that from time to time they wiped sweat from their faces, crowded as they were. But weight was on their feet now, and it was a long, slow flight as the engines changed over to ordinary flight.
    “Landing in fifteen minutes,” the born-man