Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

gang so he would have more time to study. Halfway through his eleventh year the revelation had come. He had to get into space. He had approached a Navy recruiter clandestinely. The man had arranged for him to sneak through the Academy exams.
    He never would have made it had there been no special standards and quotas for Old Earthers. He would have gotten skunked had he been in direct competition with carefully prepared Outworlders, many of whom had grown up in the military life. Half the officers in Service were the children of officers. Service was a complete sub-culture, and one that was becoming increasingly less connected with and controlled by the over-culture. He had had motivation.
    At twelve he had run away from home, fleeing to Luna Command and Academy. In six years he had climbed from dead last to the 95th percentile in class standing. At graduation he had taken his Line option and been assigned to the Fleet. He had served aboard the destroyers Aquataine and Hesse, and the attack cruiser Tamerlane, before requesting Intelligence training.
    Following a year of schooling the Bureau had assigned him as Naval Attaché to the Embassy on Feldspar. He had had a half dozen similar assignments on as many worlds before his work attracted the attention of Admiral Beckhart, whose department handled dangerous operations, and tricks on the grey side of legal.
    He had taken part in several tight missions, and had reencountered his former classmate, Mouse. They had shared several assignments, the last being to join the Starfishers to ferret out information that could be used to force the Seiners to enter the Confederation fold.
    Some of it Amy had heard before. Some she had not. She was not satisfied. Her first comment was, “You didn’t say anything about women.”
    “What do you mean? What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Everything, as far as I’m concerned. I want to know who your lovers were and how come you broke up. What they were like . . . ”
    “You’ll shit in your hand and carry it to China first, Lady.”
    He was still a little dopey. He did not realize that he had said it aloud till he began to wonder why she had shut up so suddenly.
    After one stunned gasp Amy blew out of the room like a tornado looking for a town to wreck.
    The lady doctor came out of the background, took his blood pressure. “She’s pushy, isn’t she?”
    “I don’t know what’s got into her. She wasn’t like that before.”
    “You’ve had an interesting life.”
    “Not really. I don’t think I’d do it the same if I had it to do again.”
    “Well, you could, couldn’t you?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Rejuvenation. I thought it was available to everybody landside.”
    “Oh. Yes. More or less. Some of the brass have been around since Noah landed the Ark. But Fate has a way of catching up with people who try to slide around it.”
    “Wish we had it out here.”
    “You don’t look that old.”
    “I was thinking about my father. He’s getting on now.”
    “I see. How soon can I leave?”
    “Any time, really. But I wish you’d wait a couple hours. You’ll be weak and dizzy.”
    “Mouse was right about sonic sedation.”
    “I know. But I don’t write the medical budget. Good luck, Mr. benRabi. Try not to see me again.”
    “I hate hospitals, Doctor.”
    He did. His only stays had been at Bureau insistence, to modify him mentally or physically.
    He did a few minor exercises before catching a public tram home.
    Amy was waiting. “Oh, Moyshe. That was stupid of me. You were right. Those things aren’t any of my business.”
    She had been crying. Her eyes were red.
    “It’s all right. I understand.” But he did not. His cultural background had not prepared him for personal nosiness. In Confederation people lived now. They did not consider the past.
    “It’s just that I feel . . . Well, everything’s so chancey the way it is between us.”
    Here she comes, he thought. Hints about getting