Polaris Read Free Page A

but the excitement was clearly over. Well, he had to admit he’d never seen a star blow up before, at least not from close by.
    â€œIndigo, we’re ready to make our jump.” Bill Trask’s image gazed at him from the center of the room. Bill was captain of the Rensilaer and, in Rondo’s view, the biggest horse’s ass among the assorted skippers who passed through Indigo. He had no time for peasants, and he let you know exactly how you rated. He was big, ponderous, with white hair and a deep, gravelly voice, and everybody was afraid of him. At least all the communications people. “We estimate timely arrival Indigo. Keep the stewpots warm.”
    The message had been sent fifteen hours earlier. Trask signed off, and his image vanished.
    Rondo opened a channel but kept it audio only. “Acknowledge, Rensilaer, ” he said. “We’ll be looking for you.”
    All three ships would, of course, stop there before proceeding to Rimway. Indigo was a cylinder world, orbiting Planter’s Delight, which had been settled less than thirty years before and already boasted 17 million inhabitants. Indigo had almost half a million more.
    The past few days had been historic, but it was hard to get excited. He was up for a department manager’s job, and that was all he cared about at the moment. Events like this were a hazard. They were no-win situations. Handle them right, and nobody would notice. Screw up somewhere, say the wrong thing to one of the journalists, and it would bebye-bye baby. So he concentrated on maintaining a professional attitude. Keep the experts happy. And make sure the assorted hyperlight transmissions were received in good order, made available, and relayed to Rimway. It was simple enough. All he really had to do was to let the AI handle the details, be on his best social behavior, say good things about everybody, and keep close in case of a problem.
    He watched the Rensilaer ’s status lights, and when they went blue, he informed operations that the ship had made its jump, and he gave them its ETA.
    Ten minutes later, the Sentinel ’s captain appeared, Eddie Korby, young, quiet, studious. Look at him and you thought he was timid. The last person in the world you’d think would be piloting a starship. But he always had an attractive woman on his arm. Sometimes two or three.
    â€œIndigo,” he said, “we’ll be departing in four minutes. I hope you got to watch the show. Delta Kay literally imploded. The passengers seem pretty happy with the mission. See you in a couple of weeks. Sentinel out.”
    Next up was Maddy. “Coming home, Rondo,” she said. “Departure imminent.” Behind her, on his operational screen, the dying star gave her an aura. She looked positively supernatural, standing there, silhouetted against the conflagration. A first-class babe, she was. But there was something about her that warned him don’t touch. “ Polaris out.”
    He took another sip of his gumpo, which was an extract from a plant grown on the world below, and to which he’d long since become accustomed. Lemon with a sting, but when it settled, it provided a general sense of warmth and well-being.
    Sentinel ’s status lamps went blue. On her way.
    He passed it on, not that anyone in Ops really cared, but it was procedure. He checked the logbook, made the entry for the Sentinel, and waited for Polaris ’s lights to change.
    The lamps showed white when the ship was in linear space, and they would go to blue when she’d made her jump. Twenty minutes after Maddy said they were ready to leave, they were still white.
    That shouldn’t be. “Jack,” he told the AI, “run a diagnostic on the board. Let’s make sure the problem’s not at this end.”
    The systems whispered to one another, status lamps winked on and off, turned yellow, turned green, went back to white. “I do not detect any problem with