They picked Kerrel up and carried him to the cruiser, and Trehearne plodded on where he was told. Inside the ship he and the others were stripped of their pressure suits and searched again for weapons. Then guards took them down a corridor, tired bitter men who had been too long on a grinding job. One of them said, "We overhauled the Mirzim. All your friends are here." And then he added, "It's a pity that we have to save the lives of men like you."
They came to a heavy door and stopped, and Shairn was standing there. She looked thin, and her eyes were shadowed, and there were lines around her mouth that had not been there before. She was not the old Shairn. She was someone new. There was no joy in that meeting. She looked at Trehearne and said, "Michael, what have you done?"
He shook his head and answered, "That's the hell of it. We may not have done anything at all."
TWENTY-TWO
The voyage was ending. They had known from the long period of deceleration that it was ending, and now the last pressures, and the small, grinding shocks as the cruiser settled into its dock, told them that they were again on Llyrdis. The bells rang, and the throb of the generators gave way to an unfamiliar silence.
They waited, then. And nothing happened. The hours went by and nothing happened.
Trehearne said finally, "They're not even going to remove us from the cruiser. They'll take us off to wherever we're bound for without even hearing us."
Edri shook his head. "No. Vardda law sentences no man without formal trial."
They could see nothing, hear nothing. Until, at last, the door was unlocked. There were officers and guards—many guards, all of them armed. Their faces told nothing.