Captive of the Centaurianess by Poul Anderson Page A

the ship's officer would have quailed. However, this was Earth; and the Confeds loved to bait agents of the Terrestrial government; and there was no better way than by putting the victims through channels. Where it came to devising these, the bureaucracy of the Confederated Satellites of Jupiter was beyond compare.
    Being in orbit, the vessel counted as Jovian territory; and Ray's alleged offense did not rate extradition.
    He went on inside, was shown to a seat, and secured the harness. He was clear! No matter how long, the arm of the Vanbrugh family did not reach as far as he was bound. He could stay till the whole business had blown over. To be sure, he might have difficulty getting a job meanwhile, but he'd worry about that when the time came. Always did want to see the Jovian System anyway , he rationalized.
    Sighing, he tried to relax: a medium-sized, wiry young man with close-cropped yellow hair and a countenance a little too sharp to be handsome. Likewise, his scarf was overly colorful, his jacket a trifle extravagantly flared.
    The last passenger boarded. The lock valves closed. A stewardess went down the aisle handing out cookies which, Ray knew, contained medication to prevent space sickness. She had the full-bodied Caucasoid good looks of the ideal Jovian together with the faintly repellent air of total efficiency. "No, thanks," he said. "I've been out before. Acceleration and free fall don't bother me."
    "The cookies are compulsory," she told him, and watched while he ate his. A throbbing went through the vessel as the engine came to life; outside the hull, a warning siren hooted.
    He turned to the passenger beside him, obsessed with the idiotic desire for conversation found in most recent escapers from the law or the dentist. "Going home, I see," he remarked.
    That person sat tall in the gray Jovian army uniform, colonel's planets on his shoulders and a haberdashery of ribbons across his chest. He looked about forty-five years old, Terrestrial, though his shaven pate made it hard to estimate; Ray gauged by the deep facial creases running down to the craggy jaw. Fixing the Earthling with a glacier-pale eye, he responded: "And you, I see, are leaving home. Two scintillating deductions." Though English was his mother tongue also—the one on which his polyglot ancestors had agreed even before the Symmetrist Revolution laid a single ideology on them—he made it sound as if it had been issued him.
    "Um-m-m, uh, well," said Ray and looked elsewhere, his ears ablaze. The Jovian clutched tighter to his side the large briefcase he bore.
    Announcements and orders resounded. The spacecraft shivered, howled, and sprang into the sky. Ray let acceleration pressure push him back into the cushions; the seat flattened itself into a couch; he gazed upward through a viewport and saw splendor unfold, stars and stars and stars, blackness well-nigh crowded out of sight by brilliance. His companion declined to recline.
    The boost did not take long, then they were on trajectory and the Jovian Queen appeared. At first the liner was a mere needle to see, shimmery-blue by the light of the Earth she was orbiting. Soon she was close by, and the sun struck her as she swung clear of the planet's shadow cone, and she became huge and radiant. Despite her weight-giving spin, the tender made smooth contact. Whatever you could say against the Jovians—and some people said quite a bit—they did maintain the best transport in the Solar System. Every national fleet on Earth and most private companies were finding it nearly impossible to compete.
     
    The stewardess directed the passenger s through joined airlocks and toward their quarters. She promised that luggage would be delivered "in due course." That reminded Ray that he'd checked in a single tiny suitcase containing little but a few changes of clothing. And his third class ticket meant that he'd have to share a cabin, which it would be ludicrous to call a stateroom, with two others. The