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the Sultan 's hull. The muzzle of a plasma cannon poked through the nearest opening.
    Ricimer looked at the Molts, milling slowly in the midst of the crewmen. Some of the aliens were rubbing their torsos with wads of moss they'd plucked. "Move them into the woods," Ricimer ordered. "Now! Nobody'd better be in the clearing if the heavy ordnance fires."
    Gregg focused in the direction of the settlement. The sound of motors was very close, though nothing was visible over the trees at the edge of the clearing. He aimed his flashgun at the expected target and shouted, "Don't fire until Master Ricimer orders!" to prevent anyone from mistaking his intent.
    The Sultan carried ten plasma cannon, but she was pierced with over forty gunports so that the heavy weapons could be moved to where they were needed. Even in weightlessness, the weapons' mass made them difficult to shift through the strait confines of the vessel. When the crews were working here on the ground, they'd be lucky if scrapes and bruises were the only injuries before the start of the fighting.
    If there was going to be fighting.
    Two aircraft crossed the edge of the clearing and banked in opposite directions. They were one- or two-place autogyros, moving at 100 kph or slower.
    Nobody fired at them, but one of the crewmen screamed, "Federation dog-mothers!" and waved his cutting bar. Leon grabbed the man's arm and growled at him before Ricimer could react.
    The first aircraft vanished beneath the treetops again. Three more autogyros appeared. One of them settled into the clearing. It bounced twice on the rocky soil but came to a halt within fifteen meters. Its four consorts began to circle the starship slowly at a hundred meters.
    Choransky, Bivens, and several other officers stamped down the Cargo Three ramp. They were all armed. Martre wore the helmet and torso of a hard suit and carried another flashgun. He nodded as Gregg fell in step to one side of the command group and Ricimer joined on the other.
    The autogyro's four-bladed support rotor slowed to a halt. The passenger getting out of the tandem seat to the rear was male, but Gregg noticed with distaste that the pilot was a woman. Gregg wasn't a religious zealot, but the way the North American Federation put women in positions of danger—women even served in the crews of Federation starships—would be offensive to any decent man.
    The autogyro was powered by an air-cooled diesel. Gregg didn't realize how noisy it was until the passenger shouted an order and his pilot shut the clattering motor off.
    "What do you mean shooting at us?" Captain Choransky shouted while he was still twenty meters from the aircraft. "Look at that!"
    He pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of the Sultan. Through air at such long range, the plasma bolt had only scoured away a patch of yellow-brown corrosion the Venerian atmosphere had left on the starship's white hull. Even such a relatively light weapon could have been fatal if it hit the thrusters during the descent, or if the Sultan 's hull was crazed by long vibration.
    "You have no right to be here!" the Federation envoy said shrilly. "The Administration of Humanity has awarded exploitation of this sector to America!"
    The envoy was a tall, thin man with a full beard but almost no hair above the line of his ears. He wore a gray tunic over blue trousers, perhaps a uniform, with gaudy decorations on his left breast. His holstered pistol was for show rather than use, and he looked extremely apprehensive of the heavily-armed Venerians.
    "Brisbane's authority is a farce!" Choransky said. He stopped directly in front of the envoy and stood with his arms akimbo, emphasizing the breadth of his chest. "The Secretary General can't fart unless President Pleyal tells him to."
    The envoy swallowed. He met Choransky's glare, but Gregg had the feeling that was to avoid having to admit the presence of the other murderous-looking Venerians surrounding him. The Fed's courage wasn't in