(eng) L. Neil Smith - Ngu Family Saga 01 by Pallas

Author:Pallas [Pallas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Revenge at a Profit

But the growing of the moustache is an art, Hastings. I have sympathy with all who attempt it.

—Hercule Poirot in Double Sin, Agatha Christie

Emerson plummeted like a stone.

The wind screamed past his ears, whipping at his long silk scarf and forcing his cheeks into a frightful grin beneath the lower rims of his goggles. He could feel it riffling the sparse hairs he was encouraging to grow along his upper lip.

He’d have been grinning even without the wind’s help. He had just reached up and touched the sky, fulfilling in every detail his boyhood dream of flight.

He remembered it perfectly.

It hadn’t been that long ago, after all.

The plastic atmospheric envelope beneath his fingers had felt exactly as he’d expected. In fact, it had been above his fingers, and he’d almost lost his balance and tipped over into an unplanned dive when he’d reached up to touch it.

It had even gone blimp! when he’d flicked it.

The one thing he’d missed, which would have made it perfect, would have been to surprise one of the spacesuited maintenance contractors on the other side of the transparent “smart” material that sheltered the asteroid and gave it such spectacular sunsets, but the odds had been against it. Repair crews from the North and South Poles had a lot of territory to cover in their never-ending rounds.

In the end, he’d been satisfied just to look up at the stars, visible in broad daylight this close to the envelope, to regard the miniaturized features of the surface beneath his swinging heels, and to surprise the occasional passing bird. All too soon, the battery-level indicator under the palm of his right hand told him he had just enough power left to return safely to the ground, five miles down.

Five miles.

Far beneath him lay the not-quite-finished Ngu Departure weapons factory, surrounded by stacks of plastic-covered construction material and piles of leftover scrap. It was a flat-roofed, single-story L-shaped building, built from the same folded sheet-steel strips as Brody’s tavern, as long and wide as the asteroid’s only rolling mill could manage. The larger of the two wings served as the factory proper. The smaller afforded ample space for storage, the boss’s—Emerson’s—office, and three small apartments for himself and overnight stays by his partners, who still lived most of the time in Curringer. Whenever Cherry came out to the plant, which wasn’t often, she stayed with him and helped make endurable the few nonworking hours he allowed himself.

Four miles.

He could even make out the gleaming tubular structure of Mrs. Singh’s “tricycle,” standing by itself in the unpaved, work-churned ground they all optimistically called the “parking lot.” Around the factory, houses had begun to spring up, soon to be followed, Emerson was certain, by stores and bars and other amenities.

Three miles.

Progress was on the march here on the prairie.

Two miles.

In a long, slanting swoop, he aimed for the factory rooftop, which at the moment looked much smaller than any postage stamp. Unanticipated crosswinds had blown him several miles from the vertical during his ascent and he hadn’t cared to waste power by correcting for them.

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