The Gentle Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page B

was pretty sure it was her. She was running toward the biggest ship left, a true cruiser as big and potent as those above us.
    Next I saw three of the enemy ships converge above her. "Sharyn!" I cried, and rammed the skyeycle forward, into the lines of sight of the three cruisers to divert their attention, firing wildly in all directions.
    They paid no attention. In unison they poured fury into the cruiser below. It disappeared in a blaze of energy.
    "No!" I cried. I circled twice, but saw no sign of Sharyn.
    "Look out!" Wendy yelled. We dodged another attack.
    I whimpered. "Sharyn."
    Wendy pulled on my arm. "We have to get out of here," she pleaded, her voice cracking with sorrow.
    I closed my eyes for a moment. Sharyn was gone. I wanted to die.
    It would have been easy to die there; but Wendy would have died with me. She didn't deserve to die for my failures.
    I felt another tug on my arm. There were tears in Wendy's eyes, tears for Sharyn.
    There was no time for grief, not yet. We dived for the forest, just in time; another cruiser had run out of other things to do, and followed us enthusiastically.
    We dropped through the forest canopy. Blaster fire sizzled past.
    I peered through the shadows. The forest was too thick to maneuver through, for normal skycycle pilots. The cruisers should have had us trapped.
    But we would be a bit more difficult to kill than that. I tilted the skycycle edge-up, and laced my way delicately through the trees. I concentrated on careful maneuvering until I and the cycle were one being, with no other thought or purpose in life.
    Wendy cried for both of us.
    A few hours later, I poked the cycle's bubble through the foliage. The sun was higher in the sky; we had been traveling Eyeward. We were alone.
    Wendy lifted her head from her hands, shifting her head from side to side to expunge the cramp: it is not comfortable, riding sideways in a skycycle for hours on end.
    I spun the ship and pointed in a new direction. "I think there's a stream over there, where we can wash our faces." I looked at my companion in sympathy. "Your eyes are bloodshot. You could use some new life."
    We landed. When Wendy knelt near the stream, I splashed a wave of water at her. "Stop that," she said mournfully.
    "Only if you promise to worry about what's going to happen to you now. It's too late to worry about the people we left behind." Ha, how ironic it was that I should play this part. I would mourn for Sharyn in my own self-destructive way, at a later time. For the moment, Wendy needed uplifting. Sorrow looked terrible on one so young.
    "I don't know what will happen to me. All my friends . . ."
    I hugged her. "It's all right. You and I, we'll do fine."
    "We'll kill Bardon!"
    Revenge is not a pretty thing; but it has kept more than one person alive when all other meaning has been stripped from them. "Yes, we'll kill Bardon. He's the man responsible for Sharyn's murder, right?"
    Wendy looked puzzled. "I—I'm not sure. I would have sworn it was, until Sharyn and I talked just a few minutes before—" she looked away, "the attack."
    "What? What happened then?"
    "Sharyn said, she was afraid that the apparent leaders of Forma were not really the powers of Forma. She suspected there was someone behind the scenes: a 'Playmaster.' " Wendy looked into my eyes. "Does that mean anything to you?"
    A Playmaster? I knew what it meant—or rather, what it had once meant, in the time of Earthjump, just after the hawking Stardrive was developed. Playmasters were writer/producer/director/actors, who toured with small bands of actors from planet to planet, showing the great plays of history, developing updates suitable for the times. I myself had, for a nonce, been a Playmaster.
    Could there be some one person on Forma controlling all the strings? The idea wasn't testable in an important sense: you couldn't prove that there wasn't such a person. Yet I couldn't believe that Sharyn would just imagine something like that. "Wendy, do you