Icehenge Read Free

were blurry, but I was angry—angry that I had been deceived, that Swann and the general order of things were being challenged, that friends of mine were being hit—and I swung blindly. I caught one of the policemen on the nose with my fist, and his head smacked the wall with a loud thump. The room was crowded, arms and legs were swinging. The radio console itself was crawling with bodies. Duggins was bellowing still, and hauling figures away from the mass on the radio controls. Someone got me in a choke hold from behind. I put heel to groin and discovered it was a woman—put elbow in diaphragm and twisted under her arm, nearly strangled. Duggins had cleared the radio and was desperately manipulating the dials. I put a haymaker on the ear of a man trying to pull him away. Screams and spherical droplets of blood filled the air—
    Reinforcements arrived. Eric Swann slipped through the doorway, his red hair flying wild, a tranquilizer gun in his hand. Others followed him. Darts whizzed through the air, sounding like arrows. “Mutiny!” I shrieked. “Eric! Mutiny! Mutiny!”
    He saw me, pointed his gun at me and shot. I looked at the dart hanging from my forearm.
    â€¦ The next thing I knew, I was being guided down the jump tube. Leaving it at my floor. I saw Swann’s face swimming above me. “Mutiny,” I said.
    â€œThat’s true,” Eric replied. “We’re going to have to put you under arrest for a few hours.” His freckle-face was stretched into a fool’s grin.
    â€œAsshole,” I muttered. I wanted to run. I could outrun all of them. “I thought you were m’friend.”
    â€œI am your friend, Emma. It was just too dangerous to explain. Davydov will tell you all about it when you see him.”
    Davydov. Davydov? “But he was lost,” I muttered, fighting sleep and very confused. “He’s dead.”
    Then I was in my bed, strapped securely. “Get some sleep,” Swann said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.” I gave him a look planned to turn him to stone, but he just grinned and I fell asleep in the middle of it, thinking, Mutiny.…
    *   *   *
    When I woke up again, Swann was by my bed, tilted in the no-gee so that his head hung over me. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
    â€œBad.” I waved him away and he pushed off into the air above the bed. I rubbed my eyes. “What happened, Swann?”
    â€œA mutiny, you’ve been calling it.” He smiled.
    â€œAnd it’s true?”
    He nodded.
    â€œBut why? Who are you?”
    â€œDid you ever hear of the Mars Starship Association?”
    I thought. “A long time ago? One of those secret anti-Committee groups.”
    â€œWe weren’t anti-Committee,” he said. “We were just a club. An advocacy group. We wanted the Committee to support research for an interstellar expedition.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo the Committee didn’t want to do it. And they took us to be part of the anti-Committee movement, so they outlawed us. Jailed the leaders, transferred the members to different sectors. They made us anti-Committee.”
    â€œDidn’t all that happen a long time ago?” I asked, still disoriented. “What has that got to do with this?”
    â€œWe regrouped,” he said. “Secretly. We’ve existed underground for all these years. This is our coming out, you might say.”
    â€œBut why? What good does it do you to take over a few asteroid miners? You aren’t planning to use them as starships, are you?” I laughed shortly at the idea.
    He stared at me without answering, and suddenly I knew that I had guessed it.
    I sat up carefully, feeling cold and a touch dizzy. “You must be joking.”
    â€œNot at all. We’re going to join the Lermontov and the Hidalgo, and complete their life-support systems’ closure.”
    â€œImpossible,” I