Free Forty Thousand in Gehenna by C. J. Cherryh Page B

the orders. I’m your legs, that’s the way I see it.”
    “Oh, you see further than that. You’ll be governor. I think that’ll suit you.”
    She was silent a moment. “I considered it a matter of friendship. I’d like to keep it on that basis.”
    “I’ll rest a bit,” he said.
    “All right.” She tended to the door, stopped and looked back. “I’ll warn you about the door—you have to keep the door closed. Lizards have discovered the camp. They’ll get into tents, anything. And the window—they come in windows if you have the lights on and the windows open. We try not to carry any of the flitters back to the camp, but a few have made it in, and they’ll make a nuisance of themselves.”
    He nodded. Loathed the thought.
    “Sir,” she said quietly, left and softly tugged the thick door shut. He lay down on the bed, his head pounding in a suspended silence—the absence of the ventilation noises and the rotation of the ship and the thousand other subtle noises of the machinery. Outside the earthmovers growled and whined and beeped, and human voices shouted, but it was all far away.
    The arthritis story was real. He felt it, wanted a drink; and tried to put it off—not wanting that to start, not yet, when someone else might want to call.
    He had to hold off the panic, the desire to call the ship and ask to be lifted off. He had to do it until it was too late. He had never yet run; and he was determined it would not be this time, this last, hardest time.
ii
    Day 03, CR
    That evening (one had to think in terms of evening again, not main-day and alterday, had to learn that things shut down at night, and everyone slept and ate on the same schedules)…that evening in the main dome, Conn stood up at the staff mess and announced the changes. “Not so bad, really,” he said, “since there’s really a need for a governing board and not a military command here. Headquarters and the Colonial Office left that to our discretion, what sort of authority to set up, whether military or council form; and I think that there’s a level of staff participation here that lends itself to council government. All department heads will sit on the board. Capt. Beaumont and I will share the governorship and preside jointly when we’re both present. Maj. Gallin will take vicechairman’s rank. And for the rest, there’s the structural precedence in various areas of responsibility as the charter outlines them.” He looked down the table at faces that showed the stress of long hours and primitive conditions. At Bilas, with a bandage on his shaven temple. That had been bothering him: the thoughts wandered. “Bilas—you had an accident?”
    “Rock, sir. A tread threw it up.”
    “So.” He surveyed all the faces, all the shaven skulls—commissioned officers and noncoms and civs. He blinked, absently passed a hand over his thinning, rejuv-silvered hair. “I’d shave it off too, you know,” he said, “but there’s not much of it.” Nervous laughs from the faces down the table. Uncertain humor. And then the thread came back to him. “So we’ve got the power in; got electricity in some spots. Camp’s got power for cooking and freezing. Land’s cleared at least in the camp area. We’ve all got some kind of shelter over our heads; we’ve done, what, seven thousand years of civilization in just about three days?” He was not sure of the seven thousand years, but he had read it in a book somewhere, how long humankind had taken about certain steps, and he saw eyes paying earnest attention to what sounded like praise. “That’s good. That’s real good. We’ve got excuse for all of us to slow down soon. But we want to do what we can while the bloom’s on the matter, while we’re all motivated by maybe wanting a hot shower and a warmer bed. What’s the prospect on the habitats? Maybe this week we can start them? Or are we going to have to put that off?”
    “We’re looking,” Beaumont said, beside him, seated, “at