Free The Stardance Trilogy by Spider & Jeanne Robinson Page A

vidphone in Skyfac. From my desk you can tap Tom’s desk.”
    Shara’s voice was low. “Bryce, two days. God damn you, name your price.”
    He smiled slightly. “I’m sorry, darling. When informed of your collapse, Dr. Panzella became most specific. Not even one more day. Alive you are a distinct plus for Skyfac’s image—you are my gift to the world. Dead you are an albatross around my neck. I cannot allow you to die on my property. I anticipated that you might resist leaving, and so I spoke to a friend in the,” he glanced at Cox, “ higher echelons of the Space Command, who was good enough to send the Major here to escort you home. You are not under arrest in the legal sense—but I assure you that you have no choice. Something like protective custody applies. Goodbye, Shara.” He reached for a stack of reports on his desk, and I surprised myself considerably.
    I cleared the desk entirely, tucked head catching him squarely in the sternum. His chair was bolted to the deck and so it snapped clean. I recovered so well that I had time for one glorious right. Do you know how, if you punch a basketball squarely, it will bounce up from the floor? That’s what his head did, in low gee slow motion.
    Then Cox had hauled me to my feet and shoved me into the far corner of the room. “Don’t,” he said to me, and his voice must have held a lot of that “habit of command” they talk about because it stopped me cold. I stood breathing in great gasps while Cox helped Carrington to his feet.
    The multibillionaire felt his smashed nose, examined the blood on his fingers, and looked at me with raw hatred. “You’ll never work in video again, Armstead. You’re through. Finished. Un-em-ployed, you got that?”
    Cox tapped him on the shoulder, and Carrington spun on him. “What the hell do you want?” he barked.
    Cox smiled. “Carrington, my late father once said, ‘Bill, make your enemies by choice, not by accident.’ Over the years I have found that to be excellent advice. You suck.”
    “And not particularly well,” Shara agreed.
    Carrington blinked. Then his absurdly broad shoulders swelled and he roared, “Out all of you! Off my property at once! ”
    By unspoken consent, we waited for Tom, who knew his cue. “Mister Carrington, it is a rare privilege and a great honor to have been fired by you. I shall think of it always as a Pyrrhic defeat.” And he half-bowed and we left, each buoyed by a juvenile feeling of triumph that must have lasted ten seconds.
     
Chapter 4
    The sensation of falling that you get when you first enter zero gee is literal truth—but it fades rapidly as your body learns to treat it as illusion. Now, in zero gee for the last time, for the half hour or so before I would be back in Earth’s gravitational field, I felt like I was falling. Plummeting into some bottomless gravity well, dragged down by the anvil that was my heart, the scraps of a dream that should have held me aloft fluttering overhead.
    The Champion was three times the size of Carrington’s yacht, which childishly pleased me until I recalled that he had summoned it here without paying for either fuel or crew. A guard at the airlock saluted as we entered. Cox led us aft to the compartment where we were to strap in. He noticed along the way that I used only my left hand to pull myself along, and when we stopped, he said, “Mr. Armstead, my late father also told me, ‘Hit the soft parts with your hand. Hit the hard parts with a utensil.’ Otherwise I can find no fault with your technique. I wish I could shake your hand.”
    I tried to smile, but I didn’t have it in me. “I admire your taste in enemies, Major.”
    “A man can’t ask for more. I’m afraid I can’t spare time to have your hand looked at until we’ve grounded. We begin reentry immediately.”
    “Forget it. Get Shara down fast and easy.”
    He bowed to Shara, did not tell her how deeply sorry he was to et cetera, wished us all a comfortable journey, and