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Several years on from the DreamCraft reissue of NARC #1: Death's Head, it's now common knowledge that the book was
heavily cut for the GMP edition, and for the first ten years of its life, it circulated in an amputated form. Many
readers have already availed themselves of the restored edition, and in mid-2008 we're finally about to begin the
advertising which will put Mel Keegan back on the gay publishing map.
But was the book cut in the first place? What was taken out? More importantly, how was it restored, and what was
put back on?! At the time of the reissue, Mel Keegan gave this interview, and for the re-launch of this website,
we've brought it up to date.
WHY WAS DEATH'S HEAD CUT, ORIGINALLY?
Fundamentally, it was because of pre-press problems which bedevilled GMP in 1991. I'd sold the book to the late Richard Dipple — who was a founder member of GMP and still the managing editor when I joined the company — on the synopsis. That is to say, the contract was offered, and signed, on the basis of around 10pp of outline which looked great to us both. I promised the book at about 135,000 words, which was in fact GMP's ceiling for book lengths in those days (it was all about the intricate business of web offset printing; ask me about it some time), and the book was therefore planned at 350 pages, max.
Richard Dipple and I worked extremely well together, and he was so sure of DEATH'S HEAD being a "go," he had the full-color covers printed in advance, with a design accommodating a spine thickness for 350pp. So far, so good.
The problems began when the book was finished, and involved the ending which we had both thought worked well in the outline. I was *fairly* happy with it; Richard wasn't. The original ending pivoted on the sheer irony of fate. It came down to Jarrat looking into the business-end of his own gun for the first time ... and the gun mis-fired. It was a good scene. It wasn't a *great* scene, and Richard wanted more.
He had me take the last part of the book to pieces and restructure it, which I was delighted to do. First, it was a challenge, and I've always relished a challenge! Second, I got to write more on Jarrat and Stone ... gee, what a chore.
The 'prepress panic' cropped up when I turned in the final version of the last three or four chapters. I'd forewarned Richard: rewriting the end to get a huge 'bang' out of it would make it run long. He'd said at the time, it was going to be okay ... and then the fun began.
To this day, I have no idea why there was a problem. The book had run long on the rewrite, true, and the covers were pre-printed with the fixed spine width. So make the font size (printing) smaller! At the time I asked about this, but Richard had just fallen very ill indeed (in fact he was dying, though I didn't know it). Prepress work was set into the hands of my new editor, David Fernbach, and I can only guess that David and computers and software didn't (yet) see eye-to-eye.
Because rather than the font size being reduced, the text was cut in length to fit the existing covers. Now, this is always a problem with any book that wasn't verbose or overwritten to begin with. Some writers can be "pruned" (as one idiotic editor once referred to it) without really hurting the work (Stephen King, James A. Michener, Leon Uris, Tom Clancy, Robert Ruarch, Sydney Sheldon, Ann Rice ... I like these writers and am *not* knocking them; I'm just noting that you can edit them for narrative volume without hurting their works). However, when a writer has produced a tight, 'no frills' product from which you now want to cut around 15%, or one page in every seven... you get trouble.
Anyway, the book was cut, and that was that! But the good news was, I had a copy on disk (in loooong obsolete file format: a word processor that hasn't existed commercially since 1990).
HOW WAS THE CUT DONE?
In two stages ... with some considerable angst and drama ... and with a lot of burned midnight oil!
Stage One was performed by David Fernbach, and the most immediate result was, DEATH'S HEAD almost didn't happen. The cut (I can't call it an edit) ... left a lot to be desired. It would be true to say that David still had a lot to learn in those days, and though he did become an editor with whom I had a pleasant working relationship for several years, the DEATH'S HEAD episode was difficult. The original 'cut' was performed at editing's most 'gross' level: whole paragraphs were simply cut out, whether they were vital to the plot, or not. The technology turned into 'techno-babble,' the characters were reduced to cardboard cutouts, and the plot actually fell apart, because at least two pivot-points had been cut!
The inescapable fact was, if DEATH'S HEAD had gone to press on the version which was sent to me for galley-proofing on the first round of edits, it would have been buried, unsung and unremembered ... and Mel Keegan might easily have been buried with it. It was that bad. In fact, in many places the action was judderingly clumsy, the characters unpleasant (because you had no idea what was driving them to do and say somewhat extraordinary things), and the plot was laughable (because critical points were missing).
It was only my second book in print under the pen name of Keegan, and I was painfully aware, a disaster would spell doom. I had nothing to lose, so I wrote to David ... said I understood that the book had to be massively cut (on account of the covers, and the fact it was impossible to jiggle the font size [croaking sound]), but that it wasn't going to get cut like this, and I wanted two weeks to cut it myself! To David's credit he trusted me, gave me the time, and I worked more than sixteen hours per days for almost a week, to physically jam the book between those pesky pre-printed covers. The second week was for airmail delivery! Email didn't exist in those days.
DID THE CUTS IN ANY WAY ENHANCE THE BOOK?
I can answer that in one word: no.
What had to be cut was, quite literally, anything and everything that did not drive the story forward, and without which the book will give a visible hiccup (you'd be saying, 'wait a second, when did he get killed?' Or, 'who the heck is this character?')
The task I undertook myself was to go through the book, line by line, and find around one page in every seven that could be taken out, without crippling the characters and the story. It was a daunting exercise, and one night, around two in the morning, I found myself asking fundamental questions: What does the reader NEED to know? If it wasn't critical, it got the blue-pencil treatment! I was able to cut out one, two, three paragraphs per 'cut' in maybe forty or fifty places, and this helped a lot.
It wasn't enough, of course. Here and there I had to sacrifice whole pages, where the content was 'only' backstory on the characters, or perhaps the structure of their society. Next I cut whole scenes, between 2pp and 6pp long. It was starting to hurt a lot now...
And even this was not enough to cut the book to the required length, and eventually a whole subplot had to go. There's the last remnant of it in the GMP issue of DEATH'S HEAD ... the remnant is actually there because I had run out of time. It was three in the morning, I had to get the manuscript in the mail, and the 'stub' of the plot didn't hurt. I'd already brought the book in with about a page to spare! So I quit while I was ahead and sent it to the printer.
The end result is a very readable book, with only one or two "gaps" in the plot where you KNOW something was taken out for some reason. I've worried for ten years that one of the gaps was going to be painfully visible, but (fortunately) the patch-up job I did on it was good enough to cover a multitude of sins!
However, you're going to be amazed when you get the uncut version...
HOW WAS THE BOOK RESTORED?
I was able to go back to the original disks, and found a way to process-through the old, obsolete word processor files. It involved "washing" them through email, to get rid of miles of passenger code which caused them to go haywire in a modern word processor. Most of the original text survived ... some had existed only on paper, and has been lost for years, but luckily I have a good memory!
Once large sections of the original book had been pieced back together from fragments and backups, it was much easier to get it into shape, and my main job was in making sure it was all coherent, and giving DEATH'S HEAD the final 'fine tune' which EQUINOX had enjoyed ten months before.
The fine-tune was in the details ... specifically, technicalities. For instance, when DH was written back in 1990, you would say things like. 'We'll handle it, computer-to-computer,' because if you didn't, readers would imaging people running back and forth with physical documentation. These days, the statement seems (and is) redundant!
I was also able to restore some of the technical stuff, where the absence of details has annoyed me all along. For instance, since 1991, you may have assumed that CRT is an acronym for Cathode Ray Tube. But 'CRT' hasn't been used in decades even now, and in the Twenty Fourth Century, one hardly thinks they'll be using cathode ray technology! In fact, CRT was always the acronym for comm-relay terminal. In other words, a video repeater, where the ops room on the carrier is monitoring the pilot's displays.
All this was the tip of the iceberg!
WHAT KIND OF MATERIAL IS BEING PUT BACK IN?
The restored material falls into three categories, and they're almost like skins on an onion, or layers in a club sandwich!
First, you have the 'local color' material. This would take the form of whole paragraphs, perhaps as much as half a page, which described a place, backstoried a character, rationalized an action ... none of it drove the plot forward, so ... chop! Losing this material was actually very painful, because 'local color' is what brings a scene to life, makes it seem real. If you would like to see some "comparative texts," jump to the bottom of this page, where a wedge of material from the old 'Special Presentation' has been salvaged and 'remounted.'
Second, you have the full scenes which were either dropped or truncated. In the cutting, I would decide what was critical to the plot, express it first and fast, and drop the rest. In the restored version, the full scene plays out right to the end ... or, the scene appears, where it never appeared at all in the old issue!
Finally, you have the whole subplot which was dumped, and this is where the majority of the cut was done. In fact, I have to be very careful what I say here, because I don't want to get into "plot spoilers!" Suffice to say, there's a big, yawning plot gap at the end of the old issue which has been fixed.
Added together, all the new material in this issue works out to about 25,000 words, but it's not all in a chunk! You will start to notice new stuff in the very first paragraph!
HOW MUCH TEXT IS BEING RESTORED?
Simply stated, virtually all of it! Everything I can find on a disk or on paper, from years ago. It amounts to about 25,000 words!
You'll notice the biggest changes toward the end of the book, where the subplot has been built back in; but whole new scenes start to make their appearance much earlier, somewhere around page 130 in the DreamCraft edition. From that point on, you'll find the book taking off in some directions you never expected! But even before that, as early as the first paragraph, the restorations begin.
For example, grab your copy right now, and compare the paper version with the first page of the DreamCraft edition:
One of the big rimrunners was on prelaunch procedures. The acrid stink of the freighter's exhaust, the din of its engines, rolled about the docking bays. As the drive began to run up to launch thrust the noise reached a painful crescendo. In the thick darkness behind the trashpack, Kevin Jarrat pushed his knuckles into his ears, waited for the punishing shockwave of launch, but after almost a minute on test the engines shut back to just above idling.
-----The alley was lit only by reflected light, a confusion of red and green, reaching weakly about the curvature of Dock Row. Smog from the lifter's exhaust thickened the air to chemical soup. It was hard to see, difficult to breathe, and the acid smog made a man's lungs burn. Jarrat took his hands from his ears as the rimrunner's engines shut back and slid the Colt AP-60 out of the holster he wore concealed beneath his jacket.
-----The weapon had warmed in contact with his body. Its familiar, even reassuring weight filled his right fist while his belly churned with what he would always think of as 'stage fright.' No matter how often he found himself in situations like this it was the same. Training, simulation and hard, real-world experience honed the skills, sharpened the reflexes, but the inescapable fact was, he could die in this alley between the docking bays. His life expectancy might be measured in minutes.
-----He swallowed hard on a dry throat and pulled back the charger that ran along the top of the black steel barrel.
-----Primed, the Colt would fire ten hollow-nosed, teflon-coated rounds per second. Those rounds could pierce two centimeters of steel plate at a hundred meters range. At the kind of range in this alley on Dock Row they would fragment an unarmored civilian vehicle. The knowledge made Jarrat's heart beat a little easier.
-----Behind the trashpack, he stood with both shoulders pressed against the brickwork. At his side was a smaller man who clutched a big handgun in both fists. Roon leaned flat against the plastex side of the dumpster and, as Jarrat watched, he moved out to peer up the alley into the murk. He ducked back again fast.
-----"You see them, Roon?" Jarrat hissed. His voice just rose above the muted roar of the rimrunner's idling engines.
-----"Can't see nothing," Roon yelled over the noise, and hunched over to cough on the smog. "Too goddamned dark, isn't it?"
-----"There's no shoot hole up there," Jarrat mused. "Nowhere to hide." He knew the warren of city bottom around the spaceport well after eight weeks of living and working on the streets of Chell.
-----"But some stupid bugger's parked a Skyvan parked at the end. The shooters have to be tucked in behind." Roon gave Jarrat's dim form one glance. "Why don't you use that cannon of yours and burn it?"
End of first page! The restorations are not subtle, they're major, even here, and this early in the novel many take the form of 'amplification' of text which was, in the GMP issue, bald to the point where I was often wrestling with two-dimensionality. You're riding a fine line; on one side of it is concise writing ... on the other, the naive and callow. Bringing DEATH'S HEAD in on target was the edit from hell, and I'll be forever grateful that I was allowed to do it myself! An external editor couldn't possibly do this work unless s/he had lived and breathed the novel for months (which editors don't, and can't, do, for simple reasons related to time, money and sanity!)
THE NEW COVERS FOR THE 2008 EDITION ARE A KNOCK-OUT...
The new cover are tremendous, all of this ... these are serious covers, and actually very close to the vision of the jackets I've had in mind all along. Designing the characters yet again was enormous fun, and if you compare the Jarrat and Stone who feature on the new jacket, and in the promotional videos, with the actual descriptions of these guys, they're spot on. We got pretty close with the first DreamCraft edition of EQUINOX (Stoney was dead right), but Jarrat was never quite right. He's difficult to 'see,' sometimes. My compliments to the artist for persevering, even when I asked for so many 'tweaks' that Jade could have been forgiven for telling me where to go go. Cheers also to Dreamraft for the investment of time, effort and financing. DEATH'S HEAD is reborn, and the new NARC books are already off to a great start before the ad campaign.
Comparison texts: the early-90s GMP version and the DreamCraft restoration:
Restorations take three basic forms. The first is all those 'local color'
paragraphs (such as those given below in split-screen form, as
'comparative' texts). These can be likened to the skins on an onion or the
layers in a club sandwich. The more layers you have, the more flavor you
get. Delete the layers, and though the sandwich is still edible, it doesn't
taste as good. Likewise, on instructions from GMP, on account of
the
prepress panic they were having (see above, on this page), I cut the book, winding up with a very
readable novel, but without the side dishes and the relish!
Next come the entire restored scenes (between one and
six pages in length, each). Lastly, a whole sub-plot which contributes the
final twist to the end of the book, which was missing from GMP's ussue.
The restorations take place on every page of the book, and begin inside
the first paragraph! It's impossible to show you more than a tiny part of
the work here, but for sheer fascination's sake, there's a wedge of
'before and after' texts below, from the 'onion skin' category. The other
categories are almost impossible to address here. As an example, a whole
PAGE was cut out of the scene where Stoney appears briefly in the yards
at Roadrunner Charter and Salvage, outside Ballyntyre! Then, there's almost
a page missing from the end of the scene where Stoney and Riki Mitchell are
together in the hotel in Eldorado ... *that* missing scene gave you an
insight into Kevin Jarrat's youth, on Sheckley, before he enlisted! (No few
readers have written in, asking to know more about the characters. In fact,
a lot of their backstory was done for DEATH'S HEAD, and has been in the
desk drawer for ... how many years?
To put these examples of the
restoration in context, you'd need to have your old copy handy, and we'd
have to upload many pages here, then you'd have to sit down in front
of the PC and read both! That's probably not realistic, but what we can
do here is give a whole bundle of shorter texts which illustrate how
the book shrank in the cutting, and how it grew back in the restoration!.
For instance...
A selecion, from Chapter 1:
an example of 'local color' which was cut to save about
12 lines (around a third of a page in the GMP typset).
The restoration simply enriches the narrative. This
kind of restoration has taken place on almost every page...
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From the GMP/Millivres Issue:
Turning back toward the trashpack, Jarrat saw Roon sitting on
the concrete, moaning inarticulately. He had walked half a dozen
steps when he felt the sudden stab of pain in his left shoulder.
It raced through his nervous system like an electric shock and
cold sweat broke from every pore as his vision blurred for an
instant. Then he was in complete command of his senses again, and
spun back toward Vazell, ignoring the little blade that had lodged
in his muscles.
It was supposed to have killed him. The look on Vazell's pasty
face said as much. The obese jowls quivered in genuine terror.
Jarrat raised the Colt again. Pain spurred him to anger, and for a
moment he aimed squarely into the man's belly. Only then did he
begin to think, and he twitched the Colt aside, aimed just as
precisely but for a different target.
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After restoration:
Turning back toward the trashpack, Jarrat saw Roon sitting on the concrete, moaning inarticulately. He had walked a half-dozen steps when he felt the sudden stab of pain in his left shoulder. It raced through his nervous system like an electric shock and cold sweat broke from every pore as his vision blurred for an instant. He sucked in a breath as dread rushed through him in the wake of the pain — it could only be a quilldart.
They were stealth weapons, devious, with no iota of the city bottom warrior's perverse sense of honor: they were for murder, and most often poisoned or drugged. He should have expected it of Vazell. Jarrat knew all this and froze, feeling for his extremities, blinking hard as his senses first spun in shock and then stabilized into surreal, icy calm. Automatics kicked in, the instincts of a decade of training, simulations and experience
Nothing. So Vazell kept a pocketful of darts, and tipped them with drug or poison when he needed them. But he could not do it one-handed, and this one was 'bare,' flung out of desperation, spite or fury. It had been aimed for the back of his neck, Jarrat knew. Maimed as he was, prone in the half-dark, Vazell was no more than a hand's span off-target.
Seconds passed and Jarrat's head was still clear. He was in complete command of his senses when he spun back toward Vazell, for the moment ignoring the little barbed blade that had lodged in his muscles.
The dart was surely intended to kill. Lodged in Jarrat's neck at the base of his skull, it would have. Vazell's eyes were bulging, insectoidal in the nasty, pasty face. The obese jowls quivered now in genuine terror. Jarrat raised the Colt again. Pain spurred him to anger, and for a moment he aimed squarely into the man's belly. Only then did he begin to think, and he twitched the Colt aside, aimed just as precisely but for a different target.
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A selecion, from Chapter 3:
this is a good example of how the 'flavor' of the work was
diminished in the cutting. This textual amputation was
necessary to save around 12 lines (a third of a page):
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From the GMP/Millivres Issue:
He left Lee and jogged down the twisting stairway, out through
the back vestibule and into the gardens. The sun was low on the
horizon, blazing in the early evening. The sprinkler system
cascaded water in great arcs across the lawns, and rainbows danced
in the spray. Chell stood on the equator. Spaceports were always
situated on or near the equator so that launching ships could get
the maximum possible kick off the planet's rotation. The city had
grown up about it over two hundred years before. Now, Chell was
old and decaying. Only its neon and plate glass maintained the pretence of vigor.
Squealing echoed up from the pool...
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After restoration:
Reluctant, resigned, he left Lee and jogged down the twisting stairway, out through the back vestibule and into the gardens. He had forgotten how many times he had made friends, found lovers, in deep cover assignments, and in the end walked away. In the end, the only constant was Stone, but he was going to miss Lee. The kid deserved better.
The sun was low on the horizon, blazing in the early evening. The sprinkler system cascaded water in great arcs across the lawns, and rainbows danced in the spray. Chell stood squarely on the equator. Spaceports were always situated on or near the equator so launching ships could get the maximum possible kick off the planet's rotation.
The Rethan colony had grown fast over two hundred years since the arrival of the first fleet, the terraformers who took a promising world and beat it into shape for human habitation. Now, the city of Chell — originally named after the explorer Herman Schell, and long mispronounced, mis- spelled — had grown old and was in a process of decay. Only its neon and plate glass maintained the pretense of vigor. The truth, Jarrat thought bleakly, was down there in city bottom, where beauty and squalor lived cheek by jowl and the 'angel pack' ran wild from sunset to sunup.
Squealing echoed up from the pool...
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A selecion, from Chapter 4:
an example of an 'onion skin' layer which
was removed to save a little more space. Detail and 'color' were stripped
out and the remaining text was reworded for sheer simplicity. We lost
an overview of the technology too; the finalized text, for brevity and
simplicity, has to nominate a 'radio man,' and just say he's having trouble.
It's very bald and shallow. Cuts such as this
were made in hundreds of places, in addition to whole scenes being
removed and, finally, a whole subplot ... oddly enough, it's the multitudes
of small cuts that hurt most. They're cumulative: if you make enough of them,
and if you make the wrong ones, you can end up with a 'comic book' narrative.
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From the GMP/Millivres Issue:
The radio man had turned up the gain as far as it would go but
the voices were still indistinct, mushed. They were routed to the
computer for audio enhancement before being played back. Stone
knew what he was hearing was on a two minute delay, and his heart
beat heavily at his ribs. The voices were being picked up by the
powerful condenser mic on Jarrat's R/T, but Kevin himself was not
sending anymore. The radio relayed the whole discourse in
distorted form. The spaceport tracking gear nearly destroyed the
signal, made it impossible to get an accurate locational fix.
Stone's mouth was dry as dust.
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After restoration:
The Athena's massive aerials were ranged on Chell's spaceport sector
and the gain was cranked to maximum, but the voices were still indistinct,
mushy against an impenetrable wall of harsh white noise from the 'port's
civilian airsearch network. Incoming radio was routed to the computer for
enhancement before being played back, and a specialist tech wrestled with
the equipment. Stone knew what he was hearing was on an unavoidable two
minute delay, and his heart beat heavily at his ribs.
The voices were being picked up by the powerful condenser mic on
Jarrat's R/T, but Kevin himself was not sending anymore. The radio relayed
the whole discourse in distorted form, but the spaceport radars were so
pervasive, it was impossible to get an accurate locational fix. Stone's
mouth was dry as dust. He touched a key on the headset he had pulled on
when Kevin called home, and switched up to the encrypted ship-to-ship channel.
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A selecion, from Chapter 14:
This is a good example of how scenes were truncated to dump
material which wasn't going to make it into the final 'cut'
of the GMP issue. It's also a good example of how 'flavor'
is stripped out along with these pockets of text.
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From the GMP/Millivres Issue:
...[Curt Gable] had a point. Jarrat reined back on his temper. "Give me a
minute, Curt. I've got to make a heartfelt farewell and then you
can take me away from all this."
"Take your time," Gable sang. "You've got plenty of it."
Jarrat returned to the house, sun blind in the sudden dimness.
At the window, Simon was gaping speechlessly at the aircraft. Art
Pedley winked at Kevin, silently celebrating his return to the
land of the living. Evelyn stood at the door, admiring the sleek,
savage configuration of the military warplane. On its flank was
the NARC decal. Jarrat took her hands as she turned toward him.
"I have to leave now. I'll have the computer transfer credit
into your bank to cover the work that was done on me. Next time
you find a pulp in the gutter, pick him up. Cheat them out of
another one, on me." He took her head between gentle hands.
"I'll see you again?"
"Of course you will." He smiled. "Busting Death's Head won't
stop the Angel Trade. We'll be here for some time, and we'll be
rotated back later. This planet is notorious, you know. Big
population. I'd stick around if I could, love, I really would. But
that friend of mine who was here this morning looking for me has
just got himself shot down in the battle over Chell. Christ knows
where he is, and I owe him one. I owe him a whole bunch. He
followed me half way 'round this planet to find me here. Now I
have to find him."
She forced a smile. "I hear you talking, Captain. Damn. I just
gassed the afternoon away with a NARC Captain... The job comes second?"
"First," he corrected, "second and last." Then he sighed, an
admission of the truth. "Right after Stoney."
Evelyn frowned. "Your lover?"
"No," Jarrat said quietly. "Well, not yet. It might happen. I
hope it does. We'll be breaking every rule in the book, but what
the hell? We're not supposed to get involved, they just don't like
it when their boys get friendly. Too many of us get greased, like
I almost did." He touched her cheek. "I'll call you."
She watched him lope out to the shuttle, tall and lithe, and
shook her head over him. "No, you won't. You'll find your Stoney,
who busted his buns to find you, and you'll forget. Why the hell
should you remember?"
The twin ramjets ignited and spat sheets of flame. The
repulsion downwash hammered on the concrete, then the acceleration
shoved Jarrat back into the angled couch as Curt Gable sent the
space-to-surface shuttle spearing upward with its wings and
canards inswept. In the back, Jarrat enjoyed the ride as apassenger.
It was two months since he had seen the carrier. The ship hung
over Chell in a high geosynchronous orbit. Chell was the nucleus
of it all. If it happened, it happened in the fetid, smog-toxic
warren of the spaceport.
The carrier was a big ship, but radar transparent. Chell
Central was oblivious to it on the tracking screens. Coded radio
location was used to mark its position for the safety of incoming
traffic, but it could ride in orbit without Death's Head being
aware of it. Below, Chell sprawled about the equatorial launch
facilities.
On the fringe of space, as the stars appeared, Jarrat keyed in
his headset. Gable was about to turn the spaceplane for home when
he said, "I want to take a look at the battle zone."
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After restoration:
...[Curt Gable] made a good a point. Jarrat reined back on his temper. "Give me a minute, Curt. I've got to make a heartfelt farewell and then you can take me away from all this."
"Take your time," Gable sang. "You've got plenty of it."
Jarrat returned to the house, sun-blind in the sudden dimness. At the window, Simon was gaping speechlessly at the aircraft. Art Pedley winked at Kevin, silently celebrating his return to the land of the living. Evelyn stood at the door, admiring the sleek, savage configuration of the military warplane. On its flank was the NARC decal, the steel glove, the white dove. Jarrat took her hands as she turned toward him.
"I have to leave now. I'll transfer the credit to your bank to cover the work that was done on me. Next time you find a pulp in the gutter, pick him up. Cheat them out of another one, on me." He took her head between gentle hands.
"I'll see you again?"
"Of course you will." He smiled. "Busting Death's Head won't stop the Angel Trade. We'll be here for some time, and we'll be rotated back later. This whole colony is notorious, you know. Big population. I'd stick around if I could, love, I really would. But, you remember that friend of mine who was here this morning looking for me? He just got himself shot down in the battle over Chell. Christ knows where he is, and I owe him one. In fact, I owe him a whole bunch. He followed me half way 'round this planet to find me here. Now I have to find him."
She forced a smile. "I hear you talking, Captain. Damn. I just gassed the afternoon away with a NARC Captain ... the job comes second?"
"First," he corrected, "second and last." Then he sighed, an admission of the truth. "Right after Stoney."
Evelyn frowned. "Your lover?" It was a shrewd guess.
"No," Jarrat said quietly. "Well, not yet. It might happen. I hope it does. We'll be breaking every rule in the book, but what the hell? We're not supposed to get involved, they just don't like it when their boys get friendly. Too many of us get greased, like I almost did." He touched her cheek. "I'll call you. And I want you to call those friends of yours are Eldorado Tac, right now. Better safe than sorry. If they stall you, or if there's trouble they can't handle, call the carrier. The code is NARC-Athena."
"There's trouble, and you'll be here?"
"I owe you," Jarrat said honestly. "The only way I wouldn't be here is if something else is blowing up in our faces someplace else, in which case I'll ..." He smiled faintly. "I'll send you a gunship."
"No joke?" Evelyn sounded skeptical.
"No joke," Jarrat insisted. "But I'd rather be here myself, pay my own debts. If I can't make it personally when the trouble shows, you get your gunship to fix it fast, and I'll be along later." He gave her and Pedley a grin. "I'll be in touch."
She watched him lope out to the shuttle, tall and lithe, and shook her head over him. "No, you won't. You'll find your Stoney, who busted his buns to find you, and you'll forget. Why the hell should you remember?"
It was Art Pedley who said quietly, at her shoulder, "He'll remember because he owes you everything he has. His life. And you heard him. He pays his debts."
"I wonder," Evelyn whispered, eyes narrowed on the retreating figure.
The twin ramjets ignited and spat sheets of flame. The repulsion downwash hammered on the concrete, then the acceleration shoved Jarrat back into the angled couch as Curt Gable sent the space-to-surface shuttle spearing upward with its wings and canards inswept. In the back, Jarrat enjoyed the ride as a passenger.
It was two months since he had seen the carrier. The ship hung over Chell in a high geosynchronous orbit, sensor-shielded, invisible to civilian systems, even the spaceport radars, its radio traffic encrypted to the point where the general public in the city might not even know it was there. Coded radio location was used to mark its position for the safety of incoming traffic, but it could ride in orbit with the security of the invisible. Hal Mavvik had not known it was there for six of the seven weeks Jarrat had spent in deep cover, in the palace. Below the kilometer-long slab-shape of the ship, Chell sprawled about the equatorial launch facilities.
Chell was the nucleus of it all. If it happened, it happened in the fetid, smog-toxic warren of the spaceport. On the fringe of space, as the sky ran through mauve to black and the stars appeared, Jarrat keyed in his headset. Gable was about to turn the spaceplane for home when he said, "I want to take a look at the battle zone."
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