Pegasus in Space (4 page)

Vellum envelope, no less
, she said appreciatively to her unseen listener as she pulled out the formal, engraved invitation card.

Really, Johnny, isn’t he running a bit late with his invitations? I mean, the ceremony is January first—tomorrow!

Don’t tell me you haven’t a thing to wear?
teased Johnny Greene, former etop pilot and currently the kinetic in charge of transport to the officially rechristened Padrugoi Space Station.
My dear wife got a couturier special but Senator Sally Greene was not among the Capital Hill desirables so she has no place to wear it. I had to slot my guests into space available, considering anyone who could wangle an invitation has done so. Sheeesh, you wouldn’t believe the scheduling required!

Even Rhyssa’s mind boggled at the thought of transporting, or teleporting, the hundreds of very important personages to the Space Station.

Ah, a mere snap but it
is
time consuming and left me very little time
to arrange
our
trip
, Johnny continued.
Peter’s got to be there even more than you
.

Rhyssa sat back in her chair, catching an undertone.

Johnny?
She paused.
Are you expecting trouble?

No, not exactly
, came the reluctant reply because telepaths did not, could not lie to each other.
But I’ve a reason, sort of a hunch. Mallie doesn’t confirm it so nothing may happen. Still, I don’t trust Barchenka. She’s been far too amenable
.

The completion bonus?
Rhyssa suggested. They both knew how single-minded and arbitrary Space Station Construction Manager Ludmilla Barchenka had been in suborning all the matériel that would bring the project in on-line by its due date, including the forced employment of many Talents.

Ha! She’d her sights set on the
early
completion bonus
. There was an even more satisfied edge to Johnny’s voice because he had been instrumental in making sure that Barchenka had not finished before the contractual date.

So what’s bothering you?

She’s giving in too easily. She’s been sooo cooperative, so helpful to Admiral Coetzer that I smell a very large rat
.

What does Madlyn say?

She’s suspicious, too. So, I might add, are the grunts. They don’t believe that they’ll all be allowed to go downside. Though we’ve been transporting them down, as many as will fit in empty shuttles on their return leg. Which is another thing that worries me: she’s letting them go
.

She promised that
, Rhyssa remarked, though a little frisson of tension shivered down her back.
With only repair teams needed now, it isn’t economical to keep all those grunts on, using up air, food, and space
.

Next thing you know, she’ll be sending down the offies and LEO will have to find another ‘secure’ facility to stash them in during their sentences
.

Indeed
. Rhyssa was not pleased to think that certain offenders might be returned to Earth. But surely Padrugoi would need janitorial services, unless Admiral Coetzer was against such penal servitude.
Their quarters could be used for more storage space
. Rhyssa wondered why she was suddenly arguing on the side of Barchenka.
And Mallie says nothing?

Nothing she can articulate
, and his mental voice was definitely troubled.
You’ll all come, won’t you? Peter can ’port the three of you to Gate 134 at
the Jerhattan Space Port at GMT 0900 tomorrow. I’ll be there
. Then his mental touch disappeared.

Rhyssa sat back in her chair, propping her elbow on the armrest and her chin on her hand. Peter had to be there, more than she? Hmmm. Well, Peter was the strongest kinetic. Even stronger than Johnny had become, once the former etop pilot got the hang of how Peter used generator gestalt to assist a launch. Peter would be thrilled to pieces to be at the Inauguration. In fact, Rhyssa had had to talk sternly to herself when VIPs all over the world had received their invitations and the Eastern Parapsychics hadn’t received any. They were not, as a group or singly—despite the enormous help they had been to the difficult Barchenka—anywhere on her list of preferred guests.

Rhyssa examined the invitation, running the tip of her finger over the raised engraving, and felt the “tingle” of an encoded line. Well, obviously one did not get into the Inauguration without presenting
this
card.

“Hmmm. Taking no chances, huh, are you, Ludmilla?” So there was a top-level security effort? As well there should be, she thought. And yet, Rhyssa frowned, why? Few could, or would, sabotage Padrugoi now it was built. The cost—in human lives as well as effort—had been staggering, including the on-completion bonus for Barchenka. The project had had the enthusiastic support of every nation; it meant a way
off
overcrowded Earth, to the habitable planets already identified in this sector of the galaxy. The first generation ship had been built in space over twenty years ago and launched to Procyon, eleven light-years away, from the old, now-defunct Space Station. Since then, in speedier spaceships, other journeys had been initiated.

Well, Rhyssa wanted badly to go to the Inauguration. Now she would, and so would Peter. And Dave would, too, for their sakes. As she called up her nonpsychic husband’s office number, she heard a scratch at her door. Had she been “broadcasting” the news that loudly?

“Come on in, Peter,” she called.

The door opened and Peter’s invitation disappeared from her desktop and reappeared in his hand.

“I don’t believe it, Rhyssa, I don’t believe it,” he chortled, clutching it to his chest. “What took ’em so long? And who else is coming with us?”

“Dave’s coming.”

On cue, Dave answered her call. “Yes, Rhyssa?”

“Take the day off tomorrow. We’re going to the Inauguration. I’ve got the invitations.”

“We?”

“You, Peter, and I,” she said, controlling the impatience she sometimes felt when he didn’t pick up on what was so vivid in her own mind.

“Left it a bit late, haven’t they?” Dave said in a dry tone of voice.

“Johnny Greene said it was the difficulty in arranging passenger space when so many have to get there on time,” Rhyssa replied, though that really didn’t wash as a valid excuse.

“Gee, Rhyssa,” and Peter’s facial expression was mixed confusion, annoyance, and surprise. “I could get us there.”

“Yes, I know, dear,” Rhyssa said. “However, we do have the formal invitations, complete with the integral security code.”

Peter’s eyes widened.

“That’s good. I’d hate to be spaced because I had a bogus invite,” Dave said. “See you tonight.”

“Security codes?” Peter tore open the envelope and put the invitation against his cheek to feel the embedded security. “Wow!”

“Double wow! Not even my skeleteam,” and Rhyssa rose from her desk and came around to ruffle Peter’s hair, “would be able to enter Barchenka’s lair without the proper code.”

“Oh,” and Peter lifted his eyebrows, running his finger over the code. His expression altered to “naughty boy.”“I could!”

“We’ll be legal tomorrow,” Rhyssa said, mildly chiding.

“Oh,” and Peter’s face changed—the naughty boy reminded of previous mischief. He looked down and subtly grounded his feet, which had been a centimeter above the carpet.

He had been paralyzed since the day a wall had fallen on him and irreparably damaged his spine. A body brace that was supposed to give him some mobility had malfunctioned and he had lost use of his arms as well, until he had discovered an alternative method of moving himself—using kinesis. Mind, in this case, was very definitely over the mere matter of body. He had also learned how to imitate proper movement, using his remarkable gestalt with any available source of electric power. Given sufficiently powerful generators, young Peter Reidinger had performed feats of
telekinesis far beyond expectation, such as moving supply shuttles from Florida to Padrugoi Station. His youthfulness—Peter was just fifteen—had precluded his regular employment by the Eastern Parapsychic Center; only his age had prevented him from being drafted onto the Space Station by Barchenka. Unknown to many, Rhyssa had had to make use of his particular abilities in several emergency situations, but she had been determined not to strain his blossoming Talent. Indeed, neither Lance Baden, the strongest of the other kinetic Talents, nor Sascha Roznine, who was the head of the Eastern Center’s training program, had yet been able to assess Peter’s full potential. Of course, now that Lance’s conscription on Padrugoi was virtually over, he would be able to train and evaluate Peter Reidinger.

“Speaking of new clothes, though, Peter,” and Rhyssa eyed his casual attire, loose-fitting trousers, well worn, and halfway up his calf. He was getting taller by the minute. “You can’t go like that. Give Tirla a shout. She’ll grab any excuse to go shopping.” Rhyssa paused. “She has excellent taste.”

Peter was quite willing to contact the former waif of Linear G, who was now living on Long Island with her foster parents, Lessud and Shria. Tirla waited, impatiently, until she reached her sixteenth birthday and was legally old enough to marry Sascha Roznine. She’d tagged him as “hers” when he rescued her from subsistence level living in the Linear.

T
he next morning, clad in an elegantly fashionable new tunic suit, Peter linked in with the Center’s generators and teleported Rhyssa and Dave Lehardt to the telepad that General John Greene had given as their destination.

“Neat placement, Pete,” he said, pushing himself upright from the vehicle he had been leaning against. He unfolded arms that had been crossed over the front of his dress uniform and the prestigious medals properly displayed. His face broke into a grin as he noticed Peter trying hard not to be self-conscious in the outfit that Tirla had bullied him into buying. Then Johnny whistled at an elegantly garbed Rhyssa, dressed in a trouser suit of her favorite dark green. He nodded approval at Dave’s dress tunic, trimmed in the same shade.

“Where’re the generators?” Peter asked, noticing how far they were from the main buildings of the Jerhattan Space Port.

“There!” and Johnny pointed to a seemingly innocent pile of vehicle shipping crates bunched together.

“Oh!” They could all hear his tentative “lean” into the units as he tested their capacity. “They’ll do,” Peter said, and then glided to the vehicle, the small torpedo-shaped, windowless drone that Johnny had been leaning against. Its surface, while dull, was bare of the usual remnants of plastic shipping waybills that festooned such shippers.

“Tell us why we’re here,” Dave asked, looking about at the drab edge of the huge landing field.

“Does this rendezvous have anything to do with the fact that each invitation was issued by a different VIP office?” Rhyssa put in. “Are they really valid enough to get us admitted?”

“Oh, yes,” Johnny said, now urgently gesturing for them to enter the ship. They all had to crouch to do so. “I made damned sure of that!”

Did you
have
to steal them?
Rhyssa asked.

Not exactly steal
. Johnny chided her for her suspicions.
Maybe purloin is the appropriate word because the last people Ludmilla wants on that Station today are Talents. And that’s exactly why we have to be there
. He ducked to take his place where a jury-rigged control board had been sited. He gestured for Peter to take the seat beside him.

There were also just four places, seats obviously taken from AirForce units to judge by the style of the safety harness.

“I assume you have a very good reason for smuggling us in, Johnny,” Dave said.

“Oh, I do, but I don’t know what it is, yet,” Johnny said. “Not that I’m unnecessarily risking you three in a wild caper. Or my own neck. Madlyn’s trying to get some information … she’s still up there only because Ludmilla hasn’t figured out yet that our Voice is Madlyn. And Maddie, bless her heart, volunteered to stay on during the switchover to Admiral Coetzer as the duty kinetic. Madlyn does a good ‘scared-silly, mealy-mouthed’ act around Ludmilla.”

The young telepath, Madlyn Luvaro, was gifted with a telepathic voice that literally could be, and had been, heard from Padrugoi to Earth. Her kinetic ability, while minor compared to her telepathy, had been the ostensible reason she had been acceptable to Barchenka in the Talent Draft six months earlier. Sub rosa, she had done extraordinary service by keeping track of the hundreds of “casual” workers, the grunts, who were unlucky
enough to become disengaged from their safety tethers and drifted out into space.

One of the conditions that Rhyssa as head of the Eastern Parapsychic Center had made to make the Talent Draft palatable to kinetics was that
all
extravehicular workers, grunts as well as specialists, would have safety tethers. Barchenka hadn’t cared how many grunts she lost to such accidents. She wouldn’t spare the work-hours or vehicles to rescue them. Not only had she refused to allow teams to stand by to catch drifters, she had also limited the oxygen supplied to grunts so that, if they lost their grip, their oxygen supply lasted their shift, with little left over. Barchenka’s indifference had been one of the many reasons why Talents had refused to work on the Station. Then Barchenka had invoked an archaic pre-glasnost statute, a Russian one that should have long ago been repealed, stating that it was
illegal
to be unemployed and the state was the only employer, not the employer of last resort. This gave Barchenka the right, under Padrugoi’s international charter, to draft any technicians, professionals, or workers required for the construction of the Space Station. The parapsychics had accepted that with as good a grace as possible. But they had also, in the line of duty, done what they could to help their fellow workers.

Though Barchenka had callously used the Talents she conscripted, she had never bothered to learn exactly what their Talents were, above and beyond the specialists she needed to finish the Space Station on time. So she had no idea that kinetics, like Madlyn, were also telepaths.