Free Labyrinth of Night by Allen Steele Page B

controls. ‘Katsu, we’ve got a passenger here dumb enough to think he can flap his arms and fly. Hey, keep an eye on the radar, willya?’
    Shimoda looked back at Cassidy. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s always cranky when he has to rush somewhere.’ He checked his gauges. ‘Cabin pressurization normal. We can remove our helmets.’
    He unsnapped the collar of his skinsuit and removed his helmet, then reached over to take off Boggs’ helmet since the pilot had his hands occupied with the airship’s yoke. Cassidy fumbled with his own helmet, finally getting the thing to detach from his skinsuit; Shimoda helpfully reached back to push the switch on Cassidy’s chest unit which turned off the internal air supply. The Japanese co-pilot placed a headset over his own ears, then pulled a spare out of a locker to toss to the musician. Boggs managed, with one hand steadying the yoke against the buffeting of the wind, to yank a George Dickel baseball cap out from under his seat and pull it over his head, securing a headset over it. The foam-padded headsets barely muffled the engine roar, but the mikes made it a little easier for them to hear each other.
    ‘I’m sorry we had to leave your parcel behind,’ Shimoda apologized. ‘Our cargo capacity is limited, as W. J. explained, and we’re forcing matters by putting you aboard. What was it, anyway?’
    ‘My guitar.’
    ‘A guitar?’ Boggs yelled again. ‘Are you that musician we’re supposed to be sent?’
    ‘Yeah, that’s me. I’m the musician. That’s my guitar you left at the base. What are you in such a hurry for?’
    Boggs peered at him closely, squinting the sunburn-wrinkled corners of his eyes. ‘You were just up there. You tell me. All I know is, I just got high-priority orders to get us the fuck outta here mucho pronto. Something’s about to happen back there and I was told not to have my vessel at risk.’ He returned his attention to the controls. ‘If there’s anything you need to tell us, son,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘now’s the time, ’cause I’m righteously p.o.’d…and I ain’t half-kidding about those flying lessons.’
    ‘Well, ah…’ Cassidy remembered Jessup’s warning to him, back on the Shinseiki, to keep his mouth shut. Screw it. Something nasty was about to come down, and he was only slightly more informed than these two characters. ‘There’s some Marines up there on the Shinseiki,’ he said, and both men darted glances toward him. ‘Space Infantry,’ he added. ‘They’re planning something called Steeple Chase, but I don’t know what…’
    ‘Do they have landers?’ Boggs snapped. ‘STS craft?’
    ‘What’s an STS craft?’ Cassidy shrugged, feeling stupid; he was quickly getting used to the emotion. ‘I mean, if you know what’s going on here…’
    ‘Oh, I know. I know, all right.’ Boggs stared at Shimoda; the co-pilot nodded his head gravely. ‘Gotta be STS fighters. I’ll be a sheep-dipped son of a…’ He suddenly grinned at Shimoda, who merely smiled back and shook his head, then he glanced over his shoulder again at Cassidy. ‘So you’re the guitar player. That’s funny.’
    ‘It’s better than getting another boring scientist,’ Shimoda remarked.
    ‘Keep your eyes peeled on the radar, pal. Angels one-two and leveling off, course thirty-two north by four-zero-four east.’ Boggs pushed the yoke out of his lap and the airship’s nose eased back to a more horizontal position. Cassidy decided it was safe to look up again; he raised his eyes and gazed out the port window.
    A thousand feet below him was the rocky, wind-scored terrain of the Martian low plains. The blimp’s tiny shadow passed over an endless red desert, falling into valleys and ancient crumbling riverbeds, passing over small hills and the eroded escarpment of an old impact crater. It was the first time he had gotten a chance to look at Mars; he hadn’t seen the landscape during the lander’s descent, and he had been