their main drives, and headed out towards the nearest nav beacon.
In a week or so the torps would emerge from hyperspace near Jupiter, head in towards Earth, and announce their presence. One of the many recovery firms would pick them up and charge Alexis Strasser a stiff fee for delivery. The NAVCOMP indicated that both missiles were running straight and true.
Lando said, "Forget it," but his emotions belied the words. The message torps had been modified to carry small and somewhat illegal cargos. Each torp was worth twenty thousand Imperials. Counting the cost of the hotel on Weller's World, and Wendy's medical expenses, Lando's profit margin had fallen from a tidy half million to around four hundred and fifty thousand.
The time had come to quit goofing around and pick up his pay. All sixty-nine pounds of it.
A sensor beeped. The tac tank came to life. Lando saw that a small ship was closing in on his position. A Mega-Metals tug or shuttle. Easy fodder for The Tink's energy cannon and missiles. But Lando wanted to avoid conflict if at all possible.
It was like his father always said. "I've been in a lot of fights, son, and never made money off one of them yet."
Lando keyed the comset. "Tinker's Damn to Orbital Control. We're heading for Elder's Flat. Have your security people meet us there."
There was a burst of outraged protest, but Lando flicked the set off.
Wendy bit her lip and clutched her armrests as Lando headed for the surface. The ship bucked up and down and jerked back and forth as the smuggler forced it down through the atmosphere.
Lando watched to see if the pursuing ship would try to catch them. It didn't. Good. Someone had decided to send surface forces instead. That would take some time, and the more the better.
They came in over the ocean just as they had done before. Wendy watched the wave tops whip by to either side, and felt slightly ill.
Tall cliffs made a jagged line against the sky, and Lando was about to pull up when he saw the river. It was wide but still strong after the rough-and-tumble journey down from the mountains.
Lando moved the stick to the left just as the sun appeared.
The river turned into a highway of light and the smuggler followed it upstream.
Rocky cliffs flashed by to either side, sometimes giving way to green valleys, but always closing ranks again.
Then the walls crept in. The river became smaller, faster, and broken by rapids. As Lando pulled the ship up and out, he was surprised by what he saw.
The plateau, or "flat" as Wendy would call it, was like a pan onto which wind and rain had deposited what little topsoil the mountains had to offer.
There was low-lying scrub at first, cut here and there by man-made roads, eventually giving way to carefully tended fields.
Some fields were planted, and some weren't. All of them had been contoured to minimize soil loss. No wonder the settlers were willing to pay such a high price for fertilizer. Farming had always been tough, but the conditions on Angel made it close to impossible.
There were houses as well, each one neat as a pin, surrounded by a cluster of sheds. Most were made of stone, something Angel had plenty of, but were missing the chimneys that one would normally expect to see.
Given the lack of forests, or nearby coal deposits, the settlers had nothing to burn. As a result, each house had to be equipped with its own fusion plant imported at great expense from one of the inner planets.
The town was small and carefully laid out. It consisted of two- and three-story buildings, an arrow-straight street, and a large church with an old-fashioned steeple. The whole thing looked like a scene from ancient Earth.
"There," Wendy said, pointing towards the bow viewscreen. "That's the airfield."
Viewed from above, the airfield looked like little more than a giant "X" that someone had scraped out of the ground. Lando saw a prefab hangar and a couple of beat-up planes, but nothing big or fancy enough to be corporate.
Good.
In a week or so the torps would emerge from hyperspace near Jupiter, head in towards Earth, and announce their presence. One of the many recovery firms would pick them up and charge Alexis Strasser a stiff fee for delivery. The NAVCOMP indicated that both missiles were running straight and true.
Lando said, "Forget it," but his emotions belied the words. The message torps had been modified to carry small and somewhat illegal cargos. Each torp was worth twenty thousand Imperials. Counting the cost of the hotel on Weller's World, and Wendy's medical expenses, Lando's profit margin had fallen from a tidy half million to around four hundred and fifty thousand.
The time had come to quit goofing around and pick up his pay. All sixty-nine pounds of it.
A sensor beeped. The tac tank came to life. Lando saw that a small ship was closing in on his position. A Mega-Metals tug or shuttle. Easy fodder for The Tink's energy cannon and missiles. But Lando wanted to avoid conflict if at all possible.
It was like his father always said. "I've been in a lot of fights, son, and never made money off one of them yet."
Lando keyed the comset. "Tinker's Damn to Orbital Control. We're heading for Elder's Flat. Have your security people meet us there."
There was a burst of outraged protest, but Lando flicked the set off.
Wendy bit her lip and clutched her armrests as Lando headed for the surface. The ship bucked up and down and jerked back and forth as the smuggler forced it down through the atmosphere.
Lando watched to see if the pursuing ship would try to catch them. It didn't. Good. Someone had decided to send surface forces instead. That would take some time, and the more the better.
They came in over the ocean just as they had done before. Wendy watched the wave tops whip by to either side, and felt slightly ill.
Tall cliffs made a jagged line against the sky, and Lando was about to pull up when he saw the river. It was wide but still strong after the rough-and-tumble journey down from the mountains.
Lando moved the stick to the left just as the sun appeared.
The river turned into a highway of light and the smuggler followed it upstream.
Rocky cliffs flashed by to either side, sometimes giving way to green valleys, but always closing ranks again.
Then the walls crept in. The river became smaller, faster, and broken by rapids. As Lando pulled the ship up and out, he was surprised by what he saw.
The plateau, or "flat" as Wendy would call it, was like a pan onto which wind and rain had deposited what little topsoil the mountains had to offer.
There was low-lying scrub at first, cut here and there by man-made roads, eventually giving way to carefully tended fields.
Some fields were planted, and some weren't. All of them had been contoured to minimize soil loss. No wonder the settlers were willing to pay such a high price for fertilizer. Farming had always been tough, but the conditions on Angel made it close to impossible.
There were houses as well, each one neat as a pin, surrounded by a cluster of sheds. Most were made of stone, something Angel had plenty of, but were missing the chimneys that one would normally expect to see.
Given the lack of forests, or nearby coal deposits, the settlers had nothing to burn. As a result, each house had to be equipped with its own fusion plant imported at great expense from one of the inner planets.
The town was small and carefully laid out. It consisted of two- and three-story buildings, an arrow-straight street, and a large church with an old-fashioned steeple. The whole thing looked like a scene from ancient Earth.
"There," Wendy said, pointing towards the bow viewscreen. "That's the airfield."
Viewed from above, the airfield looked like little more than a giant "X" that someone had scraped out of the ground. Lando saw a prefab hangar and a couple of beat-up planes, but nothing big or fancy enough to be corporate.
Good.
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