Colin Greenland by Take Back Plenty

Author:Take Back Plenty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 2012-06-23T23:00:32+00:00

That’s right. I lay back at the other end of the bed, stupid with pleasure, drowsing through the afterglow of the thril. We gazed at each other, foggily wondering how many more times we’d be able to do this.

“You could come with us,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Enceladus,” he said.

I didn’t even know where it was.

BECAUSE OF THE DRUG?

No, I really didn’t. I still hadn’t been beyond Ganymede, remember, Alice. I could navigate the Tangle, backwards and forwards, and I had the major asteroid clusters sorted out. but the Capellans might have limited the drive to Jupiter for all you could tell by me.

“The rings are absolutely marvellous,” said Tricarico. “Absolutely bloody marvellous.” He sliced his hand languidly through the air. “Thin as a knife and so solid, if you come at them right, you’d swear you could walk on them. It’s all hurtling around out there, and yet it’s absolutely safe, you can run through it, in and out, as long as you check the charts. Because it all just rolls around like a vast great clock.”

I don’t know why he said that, that the rings were like a clock. I was feeling too much of a vegetable to ask. I suppose it was some sort of thril insight.

“They’ve got it all charted,” he went on, “all the big lumps. Anything you can get a fix on that they’ve missed, it’s yours. Do you know, Tabitha, there are still hermits out there, each whizzing round on their own little rock. There’s a monastery, on Enceladus.”

“That’s not why you’re going,” I said. It seemed a brilliantly witty remark just then.

“No, it isn’t,” said Tricarico and launched himself across the bed at me, arms and legs splayed like a ballplayer. Grappling, we bounced lightly off the wall. He nuzzled my throat, but neither of us had the energy. We lay in a huddle while Tricarico told me about the Frasque caravan.

Have you ever been on a caravan, Alice?

NEVER, CAPTAIN.

The Frasque had them for a while when the rumours of war started, ships travelling to the Belt in convoy for safety. The miners were buying lot of basic big machinery from the inner system. All the way to Jupiter it went conventionally, to save on acceleration. Only after slingshotting Jupiter, Tricarico told me, would the great hulks muster the speed for the final skip. The small ships, like the Resplendent Trogon, travelling on the caravan for the prestige more than anything, would wait until the last to get away before skipping themselves.

“Around the shoulder of Jove they whirl,” he said, fantasising. “A hundred jewels flung like seeds across the black field of night! One by one they reach velocity and wink out of existence. There goes the Tredgolds’ Behemoth! Across the open net the cheers ring out! Next the Frazier Asterak Roublov ironclads, Kanzan and Jitoku, one so close after the other the bets will never be decided. Before anyone can catch their breath, the Frasque mass cradles start to sparkle and spin, by twos and threes, disappearing in the darkness like snowflakes on a December midnight.

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