Read Online Refugee by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online Page B

I agreed tersely. “We're not breaking any law. We're just leaving the city, as ordered.”
    “And the planet,” she added. “If they found out about that—and they might suspect, the way we snuck out.”
    “Maybe,” I agreed uneasily. I would have disparaged the notion out of hand—since I knew the Maraud authorities did not care about us—except for the fact of the saucer. There had to be some reason for it to be out here, and we could not safely assume that reason had nothing to do with us.
    The light zoomed toward us. In moments we recognized a private pick-up craft, used by explorers to collect samples of minerals from the planet's surface. Callisto was extremely shy of heavy minerals, which made them all the more valuable. Prospectors were constantly ranging out with metal detectors to search for what few nuggets there were. A lode of iron ore could make a man's fortune. Even mineral dust was far more valuable on Callisto than it was elsewhere, except on Ganymede. Most of our metals had to be imported from the inner planets of the Solar System, and even with the gravity shields, that was expensive.
    This craft was typical. It had a nether power scoop and a fair-sized storage compartment and a sealed cockpit with windows looking forward, upward, and down. That meant the occupant did not have to suffer the inconvenience of wearing a space suit, the way we peasants did. Cheaper saucers were not sealed; they might be hardly more than flying platforms, and a miscue could dump the operator off. Not so this one. I envied whoever could afford this sort of vehicle: sealed afloat instead of suited and landbound like us.
    The saucer came right up to us, evidently using a metal detector to spy us out. The metal was the main value in a pedal car; it could be melted down and lose only a fraction of its price, and it would be very easy to spy from the dome. However, there was not a great deal of metal here, for most of the transporter's mass was plastic; for a saucer to come out in the hope of salvaging a vehicle like this—no, that didn't make much sense.
    It all came back to the original question: why would anyone be looking for us? Legal or illegal—I think our status was now hazy—we remained only refugees, nothing people, completely unimportant to anyone except ourselves.
    The saucer paused to hover directly over us, putting us in shadow. That hardly mattered; we weren't trying to draw on Jupiter's pale radiance for power. Then a bright beam of light speared down at us from a unit by the cockpit, blinding to our Jovelight-acclimatized eyes. It found us and blinked off and on again, rapidly, several times.
    The saucer was signaling us. It was, of course, impossible to communicate by sound through the vacuum when there was no direct physical contact. Saucers used radios to talk to each other and the city domes, but of course we didn't have a radio. We didn't have a flashlight either, and in any event didn't know the blinking communication code. We didn't have anything that wasn't essential to our progress across the surface or our journey through space, because everything cost precious money. We were unable to make any meaningful response. So my father just waved and pedaled on.
    The nether hatch in the saucer opened. The scoop pincers descended slightly, holding something. They were going to drop us a message!
    The pincers descended, in order to get below the grav-lens. It was possible for objects to pass right through it without interfering with its function; gravity does not obey ordinary rules. Once below, the pincers cranked open to release the message capsule. It was a bright-orange cylinder that seemed almost to glow, even in the shadow.
    Suddenly our transporter swerved violently to the left. I was jammed into the right wall of the vehicle.
    We must have hit a craterlet. Craters aren't all landscape-sized; they graduate on down to pinhead size, and some of those can be almost as deep as they are broad. They have