beautiful. It was serviceable. It was one of a small fleet of rockets that acted as ferries, blasting up from the stodgy gravitational pull of Erythro, or coming down without daring to give in to it by even a trifle, and, either way, working one's way through the cushiony, windy unpredictability of an untamed atmosphere.
Insigna didn't think the trip would be pleasurable. Through most of it they would be weightless and two solid days of weightlessness would, no doubt, be tedious.
Marlene's voice broke into her reverie. 'Come on, Mother, they're waiting for us. The baggage is all checked and everything.'
Insigna moved forward. Her last uneasy thought as she passed through the airlock was - predictably - But why was Janus Pitt so willing to let us go?
25
Siever Genarr ruled a world as large as Earth. Or, to be more accurate perhaps, he ruled, directly, a domed region that covered nearly three square kilometers and was slowly growing. The rest of the world, however, nearly five hundred million square kilometers of land and sea, was unoccupied by human beings. It was also occupied by no other living things above the microscopic scale. So if a world is considered as being ruled by the multicellular life-forms that occupied it, the hundreds who lived and worked in the domed region were the rulers, and Siever Genarr ruled over them.
Genarr was not a large man, but his strong features gave him an impressive look. When he was young, this had made him look older than his age - but that had evened itself out now that he was nearly fifty. His nose was long and his eyes somewhat pouchy. His hair was in the first stages of grizzle. His voice, however, was a musical and resonant baritone. (He had once thought of the stage as a career, but his appearance doomed him to occasional character roles, and his talents as an administrator took precedence.)
It was those talents - partly - that had kept him in the Erythro Dome for ten years, watching it grow from an uncertain three-room structure to the expansive mining and research station it had now become.
The Dome had its disadvantages. Few people remained long. There were shifts, since almost all those who came there considered themselves in exile and wished, more or less constantly, to return to Rotor. And most found the pinkish light of Nemesis either threatening or gloomy, even though the light inside the Dome was every bit as bright and homelike as that on Rotor.
It had its advantages, too. Genarr was removed from the hurly-burly of Rotorian politics, which seemed more ingrown and meaningless each year. Even more important, he was removed from Janus Pitt, whose views he generally - and uselessly - opposed.
Pitt had been strenuously opposed to any settlement on Erythro from the start - even to Rotor orbiting around Erythro. Here, at least, Pitt had been defeated by overwhelming public opinion, but he saw to it that the Dome was generally starved for funds and that its growth was slowed. If Genarr had not successfully developed the Dome as a source of water for Rotor - far cheaper than it could be obtained from the asteroids - Pitt might have crushed it.
In general, though, Pitt's principle of ignoring the Dome's existence as far as possible meant that he rarely attempted to interfere with Genarr's administrative procedures - which suited Genarr right down to Erythro's damp soil.
It came as a surprise to him, then, that Pitt should have bothered to inform him personally of the arrival of a pair of newcomers, instead of allowing the information to show up in the routine paperwork. Pitt had, indeed, discussed the matter in detail, in his usual clipped and arbitrary manner that invited no discussion, or even comment, and the conversation had been shielded, too.
It came as an even greater surprise that one of the people coming to Erythro was Eugenia Insigna.
Once, years before the Leaving, they had been friends, but then, after their happy college days (Genarr remembered them wistfully as rather romantic), Eugenia had gone to Earth for her graduate studies and had returned to Rotor with an Earthman. Genarr had scarcely seen her - except once or twice, at a distance - since she had married Crile Fisher. And when she and Fisher had separated, just before the Leaving, Genarr had had work of his own and so had she - and it never occurred to either to renew old ties.