Exile's End

That, of course, made his half-siblings look at each other with mingled amusement and disgust. In a sense he seemed as ancient to them as did their father, and therefore it was not conceivable that he'd ever been as young as they were; and in another sense he was their brother, not their parent, and therefore had no business making such speeches.

They were technical adults themselves, as of today, and had for the first time been admitted to any entertainment they cared to sample; had been able to purchase intoxicants, experiment as they pleased - and hadn't bothered with much of it, because like so many of their kind they had figured out ways to do illegally at fourteen (or earlier) everything that today was supposed to be so new and magical at eighteen. Jason had spent much of his time discreetly trailing after a certain golden-haired, closely-chaperoned girl; and Xanthe had spent her time keeping an eye on her twin.

Which was why they were arguing now, uncharacteristically, as the shuttle they were co-piloting lifted from Chaitanya's surface toward their father's ship and as night began to come down on the hemisphere where Chaitanya Spaceport was located. No longer were they young enough for curfews, but staying dirtside to sleep hadn't even occurred to either of them. It was almost beyond imagining, to voluntarily sleep anywhere but in the safety of the Valeria's familiar compartments.

"Jason, you looked just plain foolish!" Xanthe told her brother now, tossing her mane of dark hair and giving him a quick glare when her eyes weren't busy with the instrument console in front of her. "How could you think she'd be interested in you, even if she could get away from her chaperone? Do you think she doesn't know her father hates ours?"

Jason Valeria was not responding well to his twin's needling, because he was barely noticing it at all. The slim, wiry young man - shorter by centimeters than half-brother Jock, and so much less powerfully built that seeing the likeness of their faces was always something of a shock to strangers - was doing his job as co-pilot well enough, because that came almost as naturally as breathing; but he was thinking far more about that slender, blonde girl who'd been boarding another House's shuttle just as he and Xanthe had boarded theirs, than about his sister's chattering tongue.

"Jason! You do know that's Kyla Robie you've been trailing around all day?" Xanthe could have reached out and shaken him, the half-smile on his face was so aggravating. "I realize no one ever sees her, the old man keeps her locked up like some kind of exotic crystal - but you did know that's who she is? And you do remember what that means?"

Jason gave himself a small, deliberate shake. It was becoming obvious that his twin wasn't going to run down until she got a reply, and he was too happy to want to give her the sort of cutting response that she probably deserved (probably even expected!); so he was searching half-heartedly for some appropriate word or phrase that could be used to quash her gently, when he heard a different sound from her lips.

"What?" she said, and followed the word with another that Jock would definitely not have let her say in his presence no matter what birthday she'd just celebrated. "Jason! My console's off-line. Have you got her?" (Her, of course, being the shuttle.)

He hadn't. The shuttle was moving, at just the same speed as a moment earlier when Xanthe had had it firmly in her experienced grasp; but its course was altered, and neither twin had entered any request for that course change.

Jason tapped the comm. "Shuttle to Valeria," he said, in his surprisingly deep young voice. "Are you tractoring us? What's going on?"

There was no reply except static. At his side Xanthe tapped her own comm, and tried for another contact. "Chaitanya Control, this is Valeria shuttle," she said, with the outward calm of a lifetime already spent encountering and dealing with the sometimes terrible surprises that were part and parcel to a trader's life. "We're being tractored, apparently not by our own ship. Control, do you copy?"

More static. The twins looked at each other, then at the readouts on their consoles; and they went to work without a word, tapping in instructions - rerouting controls - reconfiguring power circuits.

To no avail whatsoever. The comms stayed dead, the consoles stayed off-line, and the shuttle continued lifting toward - where?

* * *