Drifter Read Free Page B

natural order, which had expressed itself in a multitude of ways, including the planet below.
    These were fourth-class passengers, and the pilot had her orders, so she chose the shortest and most economical path down.
    The trip was smooth at first, but the shuttle started to jerk and shudder when it hit the atmosphere. Adults swore, children cried, and the hull groaned in protest.
    Wendy shut it out, kept her eyes on the planet below, and held onto the armrests with all her strength.
    Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity but was something a good deal less, the shuttle glided in over HiHo's principal spaceport, and lowered itself onto a blast-burned landing pad.
    The other passengers released their seat belts within seconds of touchdown, and stood in the aisles.
    Once again Wendy forced herself to wait, rising from her seat only as the last few people were exiting the main hatch, and following behind them.
    It was early afternoon and Wendy blinked as she stepped out into bright sunlight. Her boots made a clanking sound as she made her way down the metal roll-up stairs to the duracrete below.
    It was warm and she took a moment to strip off her jacket and stash it in her backpack. That, and the molded duraplast med kit, was her only luggage. Somewhere behind Wendy a destroyer escort fought clear of its pad, engaged drives, and screamed towards space.
    It was a long walk from the economy-class pad to the low-lying terminal, but Wendy enjoyed it, glorying in the opportunity to stretch her legs under the vast sweep of HiHo's blue sky.
    She had been to HiHo twice before, so she found her way through the crowded terminal with little difficulty, and stepped out onto a congested street. There was garbage everywhere. It smelled, and the heat made it worse.
    All sorts of transportation was available, ranging from long black limos to beat-up hover cabs.
    Wendy disliked both options, and looked for something simpler, closer to bone and muscle. There were no animal-drawn carriages in sight, but she did see a dilapidated pedicab, and waved it over.
    The vehicle's operator was an ancient Tillarian, so wrinkled and burned by the sun that he looked like a raisin from which all moisture had been drawn.
    Like all of his basically humanoid race, the Tillarian had a crested skull and a pair of very round eyes. He wore a sweatband with an advertisement on it, a pair of baggy shorts, and some sturdy sandals.
    As Wendy climbed into the pedicab's passenger seat, she wondered what whim of fate or personal decision had brought the Tillarian to HiHo and left him stranded like a piece of sentient driftwood.
    Unlike many of the alien races that man had encountered among the stars, the Tillarians were antisocial almost to the point of paranoia, and rarely ventured beyond the limits of their native system.
    Wendy provided the Tillarian with an address, and he placed his feet the worn black pedals. Pumping hard, he pulled out in front of a hover cab, ignored the blaring horn, and slid into the flow of traffic.
    Five cars back, the woman with one eye swore as her limo driver rear-ended a delivery truck and Wendy disappeared into traffic.
    The pedicab's hard rubber tires hummed over hot pavement.
    Since the three-wheeled vehicle had very little in the way of suspension, Wendy could feel each little bump in the road. But she liked the slow, steady pace at which the scenery moved by, the pressure of the warm, thick air against her face, and the feeling of connectedness that the ride gave her. A few bumps were a small price to pay for such important pleasures.
    Like many of the cities that grow up around spaceports, Zenith had evolved along the path of least resistance, until a certain level of success had been achieved and the second generation followed the first.
    At that point a sense of civic pride had bubbled up from some unseen source, and with it, the desire to impose order on chaos, a process that involved master plans and zoning laws.
    Wendy