Exile-and Glory Read Free

worth coming out here. And the protein sales would eventually pull their own weight, even pay back some of the investment Ta'avu represented. It had been a good gamble, but too big, too big; now the crunch was coming. A shortage of cash, and the creditors coming around like wolves . . .
    A chime sounded and above the entrance to the flight control deck the NO SMOKING, FASTEN SEAT BELTS signs came on. The chime sounded again and Adams lifted the telephone. He heard Mike King.
    "We're bringing her down now, sir. Some nasty weather expected later. The pilots want to get Cerebrus inside the lagoon while it's calm. If that's all right with you, sir."
    "Fine. Take her in," Adams told him. The big plane banked sharply, leveled, and skimmed lower and lower across the water, touched into the swells outside the lagoon. They bucked four-foot whitecapped waves as the plane taxied to the atoll. Big lock gates opened ahead of them and the plane moved inside cautiously. Adams watched a floating object appear around the hull; it resembled the plastic baths yachts were kept in back in the States, or the floating tanks used to catch fresh water from icebergs. He turned to Courtney with a puzzled expression.
    "Biological trap," she said. "They can purge the whole lock area if they have to, but it's easier this way. They'll sluice out the bath with cold water from the deeps and slide the plane off into the lagoon."
    He nodded and was about to say something when the pilot came out with Mike King. "That's it, sir," Mike said. "Boat's alongside to take you to the Station."
    "Fine," Adams said, but he didn't feel fine. His senses were dulled by the time differential from Santa Barbara; the mild chop taxiing in had upset his stomach, and ahead of him were problems enough to wreck the Company. The turmoil of thoughts contrasted sharply with the peaceful scene of the lagoon and the girl beside him, and he chuckled slightly, but when Courtney smiled quickly he didn't see her.
    She turned away hurt, wondering what he was thinking about. Profits, she thought contemptuously. How could any man look at that out there, blue water and sparkling sun, the dolphins dancing around the open companionway hoping for attention—they got enough to eat—and the big Tonga boatmen grinning from their long narrow outrigger; how could a man look at all that and think about money? It never failed. The unmarried ones had something wrong with them, and of course that would be true—if they didn't, why weren't they married?
     
    The outrigger flashed across the lagoon, skimming almost silently in the strong trade wind and calm water. Samual and Toruga, the boatmen, handled her almost effortlessly. They weren't really boatmen, of course. They'd call themselves fishermen, or just sea people; back in the States they'd be technicians, and damned skilled ones at that. They and fifty like them tended the sea farms under the direction of Ta'avu's ecologist on loan, Dr. Arturo Martinez, who'd no doubt be anxious to get back to his home in San Juan Capistrano.
    There were motorboats at the Station, but the silently skimming outrigger seemed more natural and was certainly almost as fast. Besides, it disturbed fewer sea creatures. After a while Adams was able to lean back and enjoy himself as Courtney chattered with the Tongans in musical Polynesian.
    Around the edge of the lagoon was a series of pens and baffles and large fiberglass tank complexes, each served with a network of pipes for delivering both cold nutrient water from over a mile down outside the atoll and heated water from the reactors. Courtney tried to tell Bill Adams what each pen was, but there were too many. After a while Toruga took over at the tiller and Samual came forward to join Adams. Like all Tongans he spoke English. It was the Kingdom's second language, a principal factor in locating the Station at Ta'avu.
    "We have all kinds of fish, sir," the boatman said. "Some we catch around the reefs, some Dr. Martinez