Mutiny on Outstation Zori Read Free

enough, but he couldn't keep his mind off the anomalous impression that he was crawling the stalk's side at an incredible speed.
    He sat for a time looking out at the cloud fields that slowly rose up to meet and then envelop the compartment. It was the slowest re-entry he'd ever experienced, but it was also the cheapest. The skystalk was essentially a freight transfer elevator, moving raw materials and finished goods up and down from the ships at zero-g to the surface of Hyperion XI. Jamie would have preferred to use a hypershuttle, but Horescin's meager financing wouldn't allow it.
    Unless he'd used a telepath, Benny couldn't have suspected Jamie's true reason for wanting to find Cast. Jamie harbored a desire to play the hero and rescue his old friend in payment for the years of education he'd received as Cast's assistant. It would be a way of finally proving himself to his mentor—and possibly to himself.
    The two pilots had been close associates and hard workers, often sharing major freight hauling contracts that took them across the Frontier Zone. Jamie felt hollow and a bit lonely since Cast's disappearance. He had come out to FZ5 when he was sixteen, and probably would have ended up in the rock mines if Cast hadn't taken him to task. The older pilot had taught Jamie everything there was to know about operating a freighter and bargaining for the best rates and preferred positions at the docks.
    Clamber hadn't hesitated to loan the Paethor eight thousand deits; he'd been eager to help his partner, whatever the need. But he was mildly stunned to discover that Cast also had taken the crystal pendant which was all Jamie had to remind him of his distant Cavonian family. The pendant was a family heirloom inherited after the deaths of his parents and two brothers; a milky-glass tear-drop attached to a goldalloy chain, said to have been hundreds of years old.
    Jamie wondered why his friend had taken it and if it had anything to do with Cast's disappearance. Could someone else have taken it instead and Cast had followed them during his last freight run? It was the sort of high intrigue that appealed to Jamie's imagination. Once again, he pictured himself charging to the rescue.
    At last, some three thousand meters above the planet, the passenger compartment disconnected from the main vator and switched to a side conveyor that gradually came to rest on the outskirts of Hyperion XI's main trade center, Hy-newn. Jamie took a moment to collect his luggage and catch a skimmer for the headquarters of Turner Werch's corp, PANIC, Inc.
    The streets around him were alive with pedestrians shouting and performing exotic piping music, giving Jamie the impression that every inhabitant of the planet was packed into the city. Humanoid and off-world tentacle figures clogged the walkways, creating a sea of multi-colored masks bobbing just outside the skimmer's windows.
    "Is it always this crowded?" he asked.
    The skimmer driver turned in his seat and complained, "It's the damn carnival. Draws everybody into like the third coming of Dr. R.C. Pepsi."
    It suddenly occurred to Jamie that he'd made no plans for a place to stay while meeting with Werch. He began to think that this whole trip might have been a bad idea. "How much farther?"
    The driver punched at the keys of an ancient comp on the vehicle's dashboard and read aloud, "2.759 blocks. Just around the corner to the right."
    Jamie leaned his head back and looked up, reading the holo sign high overhead through the skimmer's bubble. PANIC, Inc .
    "Let me out here. I'll walk it."
    "What about your bags?"
    Damn. "All right, you win. But try and hurry; I'd like to get there before the third coming of what's-his-name."
    * * *
    Clamber dragged his three bags into the open-air first-floor reception area of PANIC, Inc. A neo-human, like himself, with cobalt-blue skin, not like himself, smiled from inside her glassed cubical. "G' day, sir," she greeted. "Can I help ya?"
    Jamie let go of the luggage and