Burnett went up, quick. Almost as if he enjoyed doing Lethla a favor.
Rice grumbled and cursed after him.
On the way up, Burnett thought about it. About Lethla poised like
a white feather at the top, holding death in his hand. You never
knew whose body would come in through the star-port next. Number
ninety-eight was Lethla. Number ninety-nine would be Kriere.
There were two shelves numbered and empty. They should be filled. And
what more proper than that Kriere and Lethla should fill them? But, he
chewed his lip, that would need a bit of doing. And even then the cargo
wouldn't be full. Still one more body to get; one hundred. And you
never knew who it would be.
He came out of the quick thoughts when he looped his long leg over
the hole-rim, stepped up, faced Lethla in a cramped control room that
was one glittering swirl of silver levers, audio-plates and visuals.
Chronometers, clicking, told of the steady dropping toward the sun at a
slow pace.
Burnett set his teeth together, bone against bone. Help Kriere escape?
See him safely to Venus, and then be freed? Sounded easy, wouldn't be
hard. Venusians weren't blind with malice. Rice and he could come out
alive; if they cooperated.
But there were a lot of warriors sleeping on a lot of numbered shelves
in the dim corridors of the long years. And their dead lips were
stirring to life in Burnett's ears. Not so easily could they be ignored.
_You may never catch up with the war again._
The last trip!
Yes, this could be it. Capture Kriere and end the war. But what
ridiculous fantasy was it made him believe he could actually do it?
Two muscles moved on Burnett, one in each long cheek. The sag in his
body vanished as he tautened his spine, flexed his lean-sinewed arms,
wet thin lips.
"Now, where do you want this crate?" he asked Lethla easily.