The Voices of Heaven Read Free

was just more of the lie Tscharka and his buddies had cooked up when they had heard about the Congress debates. I don't know what his plan had been before then, but it doesn't really matter anymore anyway, does it?
    By then I'd checked everything there was to check. I looked at my watch and said, "Good enough, Captain Tscharka. Let's sign off so we can both get out of here."
    "Fine," he said, and led the way back to his cabin. While he was setting up the documentation on his screen a young woman appeared with capsules of coffee. She was part of the standby crew, and pretty, too, I saw at once—though maybe not as pretty as my own girl, Alma.
    He introduced her as his copilot, Jillen something-or-other, and then he gave me an embarrassed grin, "Look, di Hoa, I'm sorry if I was a bastard to you. I'm kind of on edge."
    "I don't blame you. I mean, if you really care about the colony."
    "I do. I hope we can work it out. I'm expecting a call about the Congress." He was looking angry again. "I didn't think I'd find so many heretics on the Congress. It wasn't that way when I left."
    I get uneasy around people who use words like "heretics," so I didn't answer that, and he went back to studying his screen.
    The copilot had left us, and I "sat" down—you know, latched myself to a wall rest, the way you do in microgravity. I wasn't really thinking about Tscharka anymore. I was thinking about the Earth call I was going to make to wish my son a happy birthday, trying to decide what I was going to say. So I just waited for Tscharka to finish running his program, while I gazed at the wall display that showed the broad gray-brown surface of the Moon rolling under us. It was only a vidscreen, but I could recognize most of the peaks and craters. I could even pick out the narrow, bright line of the immense photovoltaic belt that girdled the Moon and gave us the power to run the accelerators that made the antimatter that fueled ships like the Corsair . The Lederman antimatter factory community itself—the place where I lived and worked—was out of sight below the horizon.
    When the captain handed me the finished document screen, I read it over quickly; it said what it was supposed to say, namely that I certified that I had examined the Corsair and found its antimatter fuel stores empty, except for the small amount left to run the ship's standby systems. I signed it and thumbed it, and added my serial code; and then, just as I was holding it out to him, the captain got a call.
    "Wait," he ordered, and turned eagerly to the picture on the wall. The face on the screen belonged to a middle-aged Santa Claus-looking man, fat and bearded, looking tentatively pleased with himself.
    "It's not going to be as bad as we thought, Garold," the fat man said. "The Congress has agreed to give us a hearing, and we're on in a little over five hours. Will you be down to get in on it in time?"
    "I'll land on the next orbit, Tuck," the captain promised, and signed off.
    When he saw that I still had the screen in my hand he actually smiled. "Sorry about that. That was Reverend Tuchman. He's my chaplain."
    "It sounded like good news."
    "I hope so. If they give us a hearing they won't be able to turn us down. It's not," he explained, "as though we were costing the taxpayers much anymore. All the important money was spent long ago. The ships are all built. The colony's established. All we need is supplies."
    "And a lot of antimatter," I reminded him.
    He shrugged that off. "God's work must be done whatever it costs," he said. "Are you through with the screen?"
    "Almost," I said, but before I handed it over I peeked at his serial code. He had piqued my curiosity, and I wanted a look at his basic data. Particularly his religious affiliation. Not many captains talked so much about God's work and traveled with a chaplain in their entourage, and not many people of any kind called other people heretics in this day and age.
    My expression must have shown something, because