Pegasus in Space Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 unluckyenough 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 Then Barchenka had invoked an archaic pre-glasnost statute, a Russian one that should have long ago been repealed, stating that it was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.
    “Not that I don’t want to be on the Space Station for the celebration of such a splendid human achievement,” Dave said, “but last night we all watched the tri-d of her showing Admiral Coetzer around as the new commander.”
    “What? That tri-d fooled a hardened PR man like you? She
had
to do that,” Johnny said deprecatingly. “I was there …”
    “As General Greene?” asked Dave.
    “Well, not so she’d’ve noticed,” Johnny replied. “But there’s something about her geniality,” and he grinned back at Rhyssa and Dave, “that’s very false. As well as totally out of character. Pete, don’t help this ‘lift.’ I’ll be using the push-pull method. I’d rather save you for later, if we should just happen to need our ‘skeleteam.’ ” He took a deep