Crashlander   ::   Нивен Ларри

But Feather was grinning at Sharrol. «We go by way of Fafnir. We'll get to Home as Shashters. Home has already approved us for immigration —»

«Under the name Graynor. We're all married,» Carlos amplified.

I said, «Carlos, you've been off Earth. You were on Jinx for a year.»

«Yeah. Bey, Sigmund Ausfaller and his gnomes never lost track of me. The United Nations thinks they own my genes. I'm supervised wherever I go.»

But they keep you in luxury, I thought. And the grass is always greener. And Feather had her own complaint. «What do you know about the ARM?» she asked us.

«We listen to the vid,» Sharrol said.

«Sharrol, dear, we vet that stuff. The ARM decides what you don't get to know about us. Most of us take psychoactive chemicals to keep us in a properly paranoid mind frame during working hours. We stay that way four days, then go sane for the weekend. If it's making us too crazy, they retire us.»

Feather was nervous and trying to restrain it, but now hard-edged muscles flexed, and her elbows and knees were pulling in protectively against her torso. «But some of us are born this way. We go off chemicals when we go to work. The 'doc doses us back to sanity Thursday afternoon. I've been an ARM schiz for thirty-five years. They're ready to retire me, but they'd never let me go to some other world, knowing what I know. And they don't want a schiz making babies.»

I didn't say that I could see their point. I looked at Sharrol and saw hope in the set of her mouth, ready to smile but holding off. We were being brought into these plans way late. Rising hackles had pulled me right out of any postcoital glow.

Feather told me, «They'll never let you go either, Beowulf.»

And that was nonsense. «Feather, I've been off Earth three times since I got here.»

«Don't try for four. You know too much. You know about the Core explosion, and diplomatic matters involving alien races —»

«I've left Earth since —»

«— and Julian Forward's work.» She gave it a dramatic pause. «We'll have some advanced weaponry out of that. We would not want the kzinti to know about that, or the trinocs, or certain human domains. That last trip, do you know how much talking you did while you were on Gummidgy and Jinx? You're a friendly, talkative guy with great stories, Beowulf!»

I shrugged. «So why trust me with this? Why didn't you and Carlos just go?»

She gestured at Carlos. He grinned and said, «I insisted.»

«And we need a pilot,» Feather said. «That's you, Beowulf. But I can bust us loose.