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The voice, coming from somewhere behind Kensing's left shoulder,
startled him so that he spun round.
A white-faced figure, wearing common shipboard-issue shirt and trousers
and sandals like Kensing's own, was advancing toward him out of a softly
lit side passage. The form was that of a young man, backlit by ambient
illumination so that Kensing could not at first get a good look at the face.
But the more he did see of the young man's face as he approached, the
crazier it seemed.
Because this looked like-like-
But it couldn't be
-
"Sandy?" And now the voice, a sound from the dim past, was thoroughly
recognizable. "Sandy, is Dad here? What's going on?-I
know this is his yacht. I woke up here an hour ago, lying in a
medirobot-"
Kensing took a step closer to the tottering figure. Softly,
incredulously, he whispered: "
Mike
? Michael Sardou?"
Going aboard the bioresearch station with Commodore Prinsep, prowling and
exploring, Havot happened to be the one to make the first historic contact
with one of the long-term residents.
Advancing cautiously through one of the biostation's corridors, a passage
astonishingly almost choked by a mass of semicultivated greenery, he
encountered a woman who was proceeding cautiously toward him. The
look on her face suggested that she was expecting to encounter something
out of the ordinary.
Her small body was glad in casual shipboard garb. She was youthful
in appearance, with coppery-brown curls framing pretty, vaguely Indonesian
features.
On catching sight of Havot, an armored figure pushing his way through vines
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and stalks, the young woman stopped, staring at him in pure, open
wonder. "Who are you?" she demanded. "And bearing weapons? Why? What-?"
"Only a poor shipwrecked mariner, ma'am." He gave a little helmet nod
by way of bow. "And who are you?" Although Havot, who in his spare time on the
voyage had studied the history of
Dirac and his times, felt fairly certain that he had already
identified this woman from her pictures.
She confirmed his recognition in a kind of automatic whisper, as if she were
still shocked by his very presence. "I am the Lady
Genevieve, wife of the Supreme Premier, Dirac Sardou."
It was only a few seconds later when Commodore Prinsep, advancing
cautiously in stable artificial gravity, through air as good-if
somewhat oddly scented due to the prolific greenery-as that he'd ever
breathed on any other ship, rounded a corner and, to his considerable
surprise, encountered Havot speaking with
Lady Genevieve.
Shortly thereafter the threesome were joined by Dirac, a living,
reasonably healthy, and unmistakably recognizable Premier.
Clad in a self-designed uniform of sparkling elegance, but blinking
and rubbing his eyes as if he'd just been wakened, the
Premier spoke imperiously to the newcomers, in his eloquent actor's
bass. "You won't need your weapons, gentlemen, I assure you."
Prinsep allowed the muzzle of his carbine, which was already low, to droop
still farther; but Havot still held his in a position from which it could
be leveled in a fraction of a second.
And Havot, now finding himself confronted by creatures of flesh and
blood rather than metal, moved one hand casually on his weapon's stock,
unobtrusively detuning the output control to razor-beam setting, for
greater effectiveness against a softer target.
The imperious man, having verbally dismissed the weapons, now ignored
them. As if the newcomers' silence offensive, he snapped at them:
"Probably you can recognize me as Dirac
Sardou? Or am I overestimating my historical durability after this length of
time? In any case, you have the advantage of me."
The commodore, in a voice dominated by fatigue, introduced himself. "And this
is Mr. Havot."
Conversation proceeded slowly. Dirac explained that he had been asleep
when the newcomers unexpectedly arrived. "Rather a deep sleep, gentlemen.
One needs perhaps an hour for full recovery, before one can function as
one would like. But come, I
am forgetting my hospitality. It's been rather a long time since
we've had visitors."
Other denizens of the station now began to appear. As Prinsep and Havot
later realized, these were only people Dirac now wanted awake,
including Varvara Engadin and a man called
Scurlock. Scurlock mentioned his companion Carol, who evidently slept
on, as did Drs. Hoveler and Zador. Men named
Brabant and Kensing were absent somewhere at the moment.
None of the long-term inhabitants who appeared looked anywhere near
three hundred years old, and Prinsep commented on the fact.
The Premier explained tersely. "We have a great many SA
units available, and we've been taking advantage of them, relying a great deal
on our nonorganic people to stand watch."
Prinsep was not interested in nonorganics at the moment. He said: "I hope you
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have at least three ready to be used."
"Sir?"
"The SA units you mentioned. I have wounded who need them badly. We went
aboard the yacht first-found five medirobots there and filled them up.
But three more of my crew still need help as soon as we can get it for
them."
Dirac's countenance had suddenly assumed a strange expression. "One of
those units on the yacht was occupied," he pronounced in a changed voice.
Frowning at the solemnity of this objection, seeing that it must be taken
seriously, Prinsep turned to his companion. "Havot?"
The young man nodded casually. "True, one of the machines had a tenant. A
would-be colonist, as his label described him. I
turned him out to make room for our wounded."
Dirac stared at Havot for several seconds, as if he were deeply interested;
perhaps almost as much in Havot as in what these intruders might have
done on the yacht. Then he asked: "Where is he now? The one you turned out?"
Havot shrugged.
For a moment, Havot thought, something quietly murderous looked out at
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