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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Rick Massey, newly-appointed as executive on the space freighter Zenobia, finds that there are more than simple navigational problems ahead. The ship is carrying the daughter of the fabulously powerful chairman of a commercial empire as his representative in a very delicate piece of trade negotiation. Other interests are determined that it will not succeed--there is a fifth column on board. Massey starts off prepared to dislike the girl, but is reluctantly brought to see that she is a very smooth operator. Not least, when he owes her his life.

eBook Publisher: Golden Apple, Wallasey, Published: UK, 1968
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2004

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [207 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [229 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [173 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [625 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [198 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [320 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [222 KB] , hiebook (KML) [492 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [276 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [163 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [202 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [260 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [261 KB]
Words: 58553
Reading time: 167-234 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Fine rain fell with soft insistence through grey curtains of thin mist. Headquarter complex loomed like an immense, horseshoe cliff in the distance, studded with yellow asterisks of light. Gantries shone wetly in the brilliant lighting of the pad.

Northern Hemisphere Space Terminal was a byword for its weather. For three months in the twelve, its shortening days were uniformly dull and damp, a feature that ate its way into the deeper levels of personality and turned personnel into misanthropic trogs.

There was an experiment here, all ready in design, for any eager Ph.D. seeker, on the failing efficacy of slogans. New arrivals, in this season, responded for a week to the bright encouragement of the morale boosters to rise above it; the second week it took a really good slogan to keep that cheerful smile fixed in place. Week three found the P.R.O.'s digging down into well-based psychological drives for their effect. But week four brought the pay off. The weather was still there; so they said, "Oh, to hell," and joined the long term residents in comfortable gloom.

It made no difference to schedules. Ships blazed their dramatic way in and out, buttoned down to a split second time scheme. Missing out on electronic eyes, their fallible human operators were not so lucky when they reached ground level.

Rick Massey rose slowly on the freight elevator into the hard white light of Zenobia's loading bay, and looked sourly out at the surrounding scenery. Every external surface was running with water like a half tide rock and even inner, moisture-repellent finishes were fighting a rear guard against patches of condensation. Briefly stopping at a small subsidiary console, in the bulkhead of the loading bay, he signalled through to the duty man in the power slot to boost up interior heat. With lift-off only five hours distant, he did not want to have them batten down the hatches with a load of unnecessary moisture on every wall.

It was Lois Hale who answered the call. A clipped, precise voice, strictly limited to the business aspects of the request and not encouraging any spread of chat.

"Clear excess condensation. Check."

That was all right, though. He was in no mood for social noises. As duty executive for the day, most of the final stages of preparation had come under his management and since this was his first mission with Zenobia, it had been a tricky assignment. Any ship was difficult in the last few hours. Whatever else could be altered, the finely calculated time for lift-off was a fixed thing. Other matters had to be adjusted to that Procrustean bed. That in itself, led to endless split second decisions and compromises on stores or personnel or both. This time, some of the imponderables were so far out of local control that intelligent anticipation was worse than useless. It would have been a heavy day for an executive used to Zenobia, for Navigation Executive Massey, Number Three in the hierarchy and anxious to make a good impression on this civilian group, it had been a bastard of a day.

Massey had returned from his obligatory stint of three years' service with the Inter Galactic Organisation's peacekeeping force, one month ago. After a fortnight in the headquarters block, being reintroduced to the more urbane ways of the civil branch, he had been appointed to Zenobia as Navigation Number One for an extended mission with diplomatic overtones. It was this last which had brought in complications.

According to available information, at flight control level, they were to carry a delegation of diplomatic V.I.P.'s. Some kind of trade mission, sponsored by Gavin J. Richardsen, no less, and aiming at strengthening economic ties between Earth planet and certain key supply sources of infrangom--the most important metal in space vehicle technology. Richardsen, chairman of the northern hemisphere finance control committee, had power beyond the aspirations of emperors in the old days of dynastic confusion. He and his southern hemisphere counterpart were the two most influential men on the planet. It was quite feasible that he could order a ship the size of Zenobia for his enterprise, even at the immense cost which such a voyage would be.

But from Rick Massey's point of view, the remote control intervention of this eminence grise was purely frustrating. He had been intelligence officer on an I.G.O. super ship and knew the carry-on that top security measures entailed; but always, on those occasions, he had worked from a brief. This time, there had been maximum pressure and much use of Richardsen's name; but a dearth of precise detail, even about the size and composition of the party.

He felt the temperature surge damply, even in the open bay. Lois had got down to it straight away. Making judgements about his colleagues, as any incoming person was bound to do, he had ticked her off as a first rate operator. Slight, fair, with penetrating grey-green eyes, she could have been an executive on any other ship. She stayed here to be with her immediate chief, the power executive, Ian McAskill. Physically, they were a good pair and might indeed have been taken for brother and sister. They had worked together so long now, that they hardly needed speech to supplement their sensitive awareness of what the other was doing.