PART    2
OVERLAND

XIII

One of the sure signs of a moron is that he, or she, babbles about the glories of the wilderness. Moonlight. Cool crisp air. The wind in the trees. Flights of birds overhead. Be assured these people always do it virtual. That way one drags no mud into the house.

—Gregory MacAllister, “Boy Scouts and Other Aberrations,” Editor at Large

Hours to breakup (est): 240

They melted snow, boiled the water, and drank it down. There’d been water in the lander, but there had been no practical way to retrieve it. MacAllister predicted they’d all break out in hives by dinner. He added, more seriously, that they’d better start learning how to hunt They estimated that they had a six-day food supply. That means,” he added, “we’ll be traveling on empty stomachs when we get to Tess.”

Their destination lay south-southwest but they couldn’t immediately proceed in that direction because they had no way to cross the crevice that now divided the landscape as for as they could see.

They made snowshoes and put all their gear and food into sample bags and the two backpacks Hutch had salvaged from the lander. Hutch provided MacAllister with a cutter and showed him how to use it Then they took a last look at the tower and the capacitors and struck off across the plain.

“You’ll be out of the snow in a day or two,” Marcel told them. That was good news. Once they had solid earth underfoot they’d be able to move more quickly. But it was a struggle for the two older men right from the beginning. Nightingale developed a blister after they’d gone about a kilometer. Hutch treated it with ointment from the medkit. Within another hour, MacAllister was limping and grumbling.

Their first challenge was to find a way across the chasm. They walked along the northern edge, moving slowly so the two could keep up. Hutch wondered whether MacAllister had been right, that he and Nightingale should have been left behind to take their chances.

At a patch of forest, they called a halt and fashioned walking staffs for everyone. “Don’t need it,” protested Kellie.

“Use it anyhow,” Hutch insisted. “It’s good for you.”

Nightingale took his gratefully. MacAllister manfully swallowed his discomfort and smiled. “We all look good with staffs,” he said. “Adds a certain panache.”

They traveled well into the afternoon before they were able to get around the crevice. Gradually it closed, and the plain was solid again. They turned southwest.

Aside from bird sightings, all of which Nightingale treated with barely muted alarm, they encountered their first full-size native beast shortly afterward. It was about the size of a moose, shaggy, with white fur and unsettling blue eyes that gazed steadily at them with, Hutch thought, cool intelligence. For all that, it did not look particularly ferocious. Its snout was shoved into an icy stream, and it did not straighten up as they approached.

They drew their weapons nonetheless, switched on the power, and spread out.

It looked at each of them in turn, studying Hutch with special attention as if it recognized that she was directing the small party.

Hutch glanced at the worried faces and unsteady hands of her comrades, concluded she was in as much danger from them as from the creature, and moved out of MacAllister’s line of fire.

As the last of them were passing, it startled them by rearing up onto its hind legs. A collar of hard bone rose around its neck. The collar ended in two long spikes, one flanking either jaw. The creature had a wide mouth full of shark’s teeth and a permanent grin that reminded Hutch of an alligator.

“That thing’s all dental work,” whispered MacAllister.

It inspected Nightingale and showed him its teeth. Nightingale froze.

Armored ridges protected the animal’s underside and its back. Its claws looked like daggers.

“Stay cool,” said Hutch. The exobiologist stood absolutely still, his eyes wide. She slowly inserted herself between him and the creature. It swung its long jaws her way, looked back at Nightingale, and hesitated.

“We’re not in its food chain,” said Chiang.

MacAllister snorted. “By the time it discovers that, somebody’s going to have a decided limp.”

It looked at them, waiting perhaps for a hostile act.

The drawback of the cutter was its limited range. Notched up to full power, it had little effect beyond a few meters. MacAllister leveled his weapon and his thumb hovered over the punch pad. He was going to shoot.

“No.” Hutch kept her eyes on the creature. “Don’t do it, MacAllister. Everybody back away.”

“Why don’t we just kill it while we can?” the editor insisted.

“Slowly,” said Hutch.

MacAllister frowned at her. “It’s a mistake.”

Hutch made her voice cold. “Do what I say.”

The animal watched and after a few moments appeared to lose interest. It dropped back onto all fours and recommenced drinking.

After they’d gotten to what appeared to be a safe distance, Kellie let out her breath. “Shoo,” she said quietly.

Nightingale thought he’d gotten through the experience pretty well. He felt he’d stood his ground, and believed he was ready to use his weapon if need be. He found it hard, however, to control his trembling afterward.

“You all right?” Kellie asked him.

He nodded and tried a smile. “I’m fine,” he said.

They had no compass. Marcel followed their progress from Wendy and occasionally issued course corrections. The landscape remained unfailingly bleak, cold, and desolate. By late in the day they were seeing more hills. Occasional flocks of birds appeared overhead.

Nightingale was not in anything resembling the kind of physical condition required for this sort of effort. Everything he owned hurt. There was, however, consolation in the knowledge that MacAllister was having an even harder time. Hutch, who was certainly aware that she was encumbered by two people who preferred taxis wherever they went, continued to call frequent breaks.

The other four talked constantly. Chiang and the two women seemed to have accepted MacAllister in spite of his abrasiveness. Nightingale was once again hampered by his natural shyness and defensiveness. He tried to make acute observations, throw in occasional witty remarks, but it didn’t work. Nobody really seemed to listen to him. He was the outsider, and gradually he withdrew and concentrated his efforts simply on trying to keep up.

It should have been different. After all, they were the only five human beings on the planet. That fact alone should have bound them together, should have prevented the development of factions and militated against the exclusion of any single member.

It was unfair, especially in light of the fact he’d given them their one chance at survival.

By sundown, he was limping badly and was being actively assisted by Kellie. They’d arrived in a glade, and Hutch called a halt. Nightingale eased himself gratefully to the ground, killed his field, pulled off his shoes, and rubbed his soles. By God it felt good.

He applied more of the salve from the medkit. Warmth spread through his feet, and then a general sense of relief.

The others fell quiet.

And something moved in the shrubbery.

There was a scramble for weapons.

The thing looked like a big scorpion, a scorpion the size of a child’s wagon. It had a pair of antennas, which swept them in a kind of rhythm. Mandibles clicked audibly. The tail was shorter by far, and bisected. It had eight legs.

“Stay still,” said Hutch,

It didn’t matter. At the same moment, the creature charged Chiang. Chiang fell over backward, firing wildly. Hutch and Kellie burned it simultaneously. The thing let go a high keening sound, changed direction, and went for Hutch. They caught it again, and the scorpion crashed into a rock, rolled over, and lay on its back with its legs moving weakly.

“That’s the biggest bug I’ve ever seen,” Chiang said, getting to his feet.

MacAllister examined his cutter. “It’s a good weapon,” he said. “Will it run down? How much energy does it have?”

“It’ll recharge on its own,” said Hutch. “Just like your suit. But yes, there are limits. Don’t play with it.”

It wasn’t a scorpion, of course. There were major differences, other than size and the tail, which mounted no stinger. The narrowing between cephalothorax and abdomen wasn’t correct. The eyes were wrong. The segmenting was unique. Its chelae were smaller. The head was more heavily armored. Not for the first time, Nightingale mourned the lost opportunity to examine this world’s biology.

There had been some thought of stopping there for the night, but they now agreed unanimously that it would be a good idea to move on.

Nightingale had not been able to get used to the shortened days. When they finally made camp, an hour later, he was bone weary and half-starved. They were in light forest, on the crest of a long, gently curving ridge. It had gotten dark. Overhead the superluminals moved serenely among the constellations, and he would have given much to be aboard one of them. Nevertheless, he was, by God, keeping up.

They broke out the reddimeals.

Nobody was dressed for this kind of weather. The heaviest garment anyone wore was probably MacAllister’s black sweater. The two women were in jumpsuits. Chiang had only a light pullover shirt and a pair of shorts. And Nightingale’s slacks and casual shirt were designed for a far more balmy climate. None of this would have mattered much were it not that they had to shut off the e-suits to eat.

They collected some wood and built a fire. When it was up and burning steadily, they keyed the reddimeal containers, which cooked the food. Then, at a kind of prearranged signal, they got as close to the fire as they could, shut off the suits, and gobbled chicken, beef, and whatever else showed up in the dinners. Everything tasted good that night.

Kellie made coffee. Nightingale swallowed everything down and, as quickly as he could, buttoned up again. He hated having to gulp his food when he was so hungry. But it was just too cold to linger over it.

They held a council of war, and agreed it was time to think about testing some of the local food supply, in order to conserve the reddimeals. If they discovered the native stuff was inedible, they would have to resort to rationing. There should be some game in the woods, and Kellie suggested to everyone’s horror that the scorpions might make a food source. If any more showed up.

No one wanted to discuss it further.

They asked Nightingale, the resident expert. Did he know what they could expect to find? Was the local food edible?

“No idea,” he said. “Nobody knows. We terminated the mission too quickly, and what we learned was inconclusive. Deepsix biology uses levo sugars and not dextro. So that’s okay. They use DNA to make proteins, which is good. You might get some nutrition, but I doubt it. You have at least an equal chance of being poisoned. The fact is we have a supply of reddimeals, and we’re only talking about a few days.

“What I mean is ...” He paused, then plunged ahead: “We don’t have to worry about subsisting indefinitely. What we’re really interested in is satisfying our appetites. We could ration, go on half meals. But that’s not going to help old guys trying to walk long distances. There’s no real way we can be sure about toxins or allergens. If there’s, say, a poison, our immune system may not even recognize it, or if it did, it might have no defense against it. I think we’re reasonably safe, but I can’t guarantee it.”

Hutch nodded, called Embry on Wildside, and asked for advice.

“Best would be not to go near anything local,” she said.

“That’ll give us some very hungry people.”

Embry wasted no time becoming irritated. “Better hungry than dead.”

There was a long silence. “If you really have to do this,” she continued, “have someone sample the stuff first. A very small sample. Very small. Give it some time. A half hour, at least. If he doesn’t throw up, or get diarrhea—”

“Or fall over,” said MacAllister.

“—or fall over, you’re in business.” Embry took a deep breath. “Hutch,” she said, “I feel guilty about the way things turned out.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t cause the quake.”

“Still... Well, anyhow, I wanted to wish you luck. Anything I can do, I’m here.”

“I know.”

They’d covered eleven kilometers that first day. Not bad, considering they’d gotten a late start, had to detour around the crevice, and were walking through snow.

They had, of course, no bedding. Nightingale made himself as comfortable as he could, lay back in the firelight, and wondered if his body would ever feel right again.

They decided to forget trying to divide the nineteen-hour days into standard temporal terminology, because nobody was ever quite sure what nine o’clock actually meant. Instead they thought in terms of dusk and dawn, noon and midnight. There were roughly nine hours of darkness, which they divided into four watches. Midnight came when Morgan’s World rose.

Nightingale unstrapped his oxygen converter and laid it beside him, where it would continue to work, without pressing into his shoulders. He slept for a while, woke, noticed that the fire had burned down, heard someone throw a fresh branch onto it, slept some more, and eventually found himself gazing up at the stars.

Morgan had moved over into the west. It was framed within a stellar rectangle. A couple of stars lined up under the rectangle, providing it with a stand or stem. To primitive people, he thought, it would have become a constellation. A flower, perhaps. Or a tree. Or a cup.

Morgan. It was a commonplace name for a world-killer.

It glittered through the branches, the brightest star in the sky.

Clouds were approaching from the west. By the time Chiang knelt beside him and told him the watch was his, the only visible light was the fire.

He checked his cutter and put on the night goggles. They’d stopped atop a ridge where they could see for kilometers in all directions. Tomorrow they’d cross a narrow basin and begin a long uphill climb into dense forest.

A few flakes drifted onto his arm.

Nightingale glanced over at the sleepers. MacAllister had punched up a mound of snow to serve as a pillow. Kellie seemed to be dreaming, and he judged by her expression that it was not altogether unpleasant. He suspected Hutch was awake, but she lay unmoving, with her face in shadow. Chiang was still trying to get comfortable.

Ordinarily, he would have hated the guard duty assignment. Nightingale liked to keep his mind active. Time not spent in a book or doing research or attempting to solve a problem was time wasted. He had no interest hanging about in a wilderness for two hours peering into the dark. But that night, he stood atop the ridge, watching the snow come down. And he enjoyed the simple fact that he was alive and conscious.

Marcel brought Wendy back to Deepsix. He felt better if he could stay closer to the people on the ground. They were just completing their first orbit when Beekman came onto the bridge. “Marcel,” he said, “we’ve finished the analysis of the material we took from the artifact.”

“And ... ?”

“They’re enhanced carbon nanotubes.”

“Which are what?”

“Precisely the sort of material you’d want to have if you were building a skyhook. They’re extremely light and have incredible tensile strength.” Beekman lowered himself into a chair and accepted some coffee. “We’ll be taking back a whole new technology. Probably revolutionize the construction industry.” He looked quizzically at the captain. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t like the plan to get our people off the ground.”

“Why?”

“There are too many things that can go wrong. Tess may not fly. They may not even get there in time. There may be some incompatibility between the capacitors and the onboard spike. Another quake could bury the damned things beyond recovery.”

“I don’t know what we can do to change any of that.”

“I’d like a backup option.”

Beekman smiled patiently. “Of course you would. Wouldn’t we all? What do you suggest?”

“The ship going to Quraqua. The Boardman. It’s big, loaded with construction equipment. Mostly stuff they’re going to use to put together the ground stations. I looked at the manifest. It has hundreds of kilometers of cable.” Marcel laid emphasis on the last word, expecting Beekman to see immediately where he was headed.

“Go on,” Beekman said, showing no reaction.

“Okay. If we were to get some of the cable off the Boardman, and tie together about four hundred kilometers of it, we could attach one end to a shuttle.”

“And crash the shuttle,” finished Beekman.

“Right. We take it down as far as it’ll go, which would be within a couple of kilometers of the surface before we’d lose it. It crashes. But the cable’s down. On the ground.”

“And we use it to haul them out.”

Marcel thought it seemed too simple. “It won’t work?”

“No.”

“Gunther, why not?”

“How much does the cable weigh?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. Say it’s on the order of three kilograms per meter. That’s not very heavy.”

“Okay.”

“That means one kilometer of the cable would weigh in at about three metric tons.”

Marcel sighed.

“That’s one kilometer. And this thing is going to stretch down from orbit? Three hundred kilometers, you say?”

He did the math in his head. The cable would have to be able to support roughly nine hundred metric tons.

“You see the problem, Marcel.”

“How about if we went for lighter material? Maybe hemp rope? They’ve got hemp on board.”

Beekman made a noise in his throat. “I doubt the tensile strength of rope would be very high. How much do you think a piece one meter long would weigh?”

So they sat, drinking coffee, staring at one another. Once they called down and talked to Nightingale, whom Marcel knew to be the security watch. Any problems? What time did you expect to leave in the morning? How’s everybody holding up?

That last question was designed to elicit a comment from Nightingale on his own physical condition, as well. But he only said they were fine.

Marcel noticed that he was beginning to feel disconnected from those on the ground. As if they were somehow already lost.

XIV

Walking through these woods, filled with the creatures of an alternate biosystem, constitutes an unusual emotional experience. They are all extinct, or shall be within a very few days. The sum total of six billion years of evolution is about to be erased, leaving nothing behind. Not so much as a tail feather.

And good riddance, I say.

 —Gregory MacAllister, Deepsix Diary

Hours to breakup (est): 226

All the sunrises on Deepsix were oppressive. The sky was inevitably slate, and a storm was either happening or seemed imminent

Kellie Collier stood atop the ridge, surveying the woods and plains around her. In all that wilderness, nothing moved save a pair of wings so high and far as to present no detail to the naked eye. Through binoculars, she judged it to be not a bird at all. It had fur and teeth, a duckbill skull, and a long, serpentine tail. As she watched, it descended into a patch of trees and emerged moments later with something wriggling in its claws.

She turned toward the southwest. The land sloped downhill and rose again gradually and then almost precipitously toward a long spine. The spine extended from one horizon to the other. It was going to be a difficult climb with Nightingale and the great man in tow. The wind tugged at her, trying to blow her off the ridge. Reminding her that they had ground to cover and that time was short.

Hutch lay quietly near the fire, and Kellie saw that her eyes were open. “How we doing?” she asked softly.

“Time to go,” said Kellie.

She nodded. “Let’s give them a little longer.”

“I’m not sure we shouldn’t push a bit harder.”

“It won’t help us,” Hutch said, “if they start breaking down.” MacAllister snored peacefully with his head pillowed against one of the packs; Nightingale lay near the fire, his shoes off to one side.

Kellie sat down beside her. “We’ve a long way to go,” she said.

“We’ll make it,” said Hutch. “As long as no one collapses.” She looked into the fire. “I don’t want to leave anybody behind.”

“We could come back later for them.”

“If they aren’t eaten first. You really think either of those guys could stay alive on his own?”

“One of us could stay with them.”

Hutch shook her head. “We’re safer keeping our firepower concentrated. If we split up, we are absolutely going to lose somebody else.” She took a deep breath and looked at Kellie. “We’ll stay together as long as we can. And if we get behind, we’ll do what we have to.”

Kellie liked to think of herself as the last of the fighter pilots. She’d begun her career as a combat aviator for the Peacekeepers. When the Peacekeepers became effectively obsolete (as they did every half century or so), when the latest round of civil wars had been fought and the dictators put to bed, she’d learned to fly spacecraft and transferred to the Patrol. But the job had been surprisingly routine. The Patrol simply didn’t go anywhere. They patrolled. When people drank too much or neglected their maintenance or got careless, Kellie and her colleagues had shown up to rescue whoever was left.

But she never really traveled. A zone was assigned and she just went round and round, visiting the same eight or nine stations over and over. And during those years, she’d watched the Academy’s superluminals coming in from places that no one had names for yet. Or from conducting surveys of the Omega clouds. Or from examining the space-twisting properties of neutron stars and black holes.

She’d lasted less than a year before giving it up to interview for a pilot’s job with the Academy. The money was about half as much, the ships were more spartan, the fringe benefits barely existed. But the people with whom she traveled tended to have wider interests than the Patrol crews. And she loved the work.

That morning, though, she was having second thoughts. As MacAllister would have put it, there was something to be said for boredom.

Nightingale sat up, looked around, and sighed. “Love the accommodations,” he said. He struggled to his feet. “Back in a minute.”

She woke Chiang. “Duty calls,” she said. “Go with him.”

Chiang made a face, took a moment to figure out what he was being asked to do, got up, and trailed along behind the older man. Nobody went anywhere alone. The designated commode was halfway down the back side of the hill, in a gully. There was just enough ground in the way to provide a modicum of privacy.

Kellie filled a pot with snow and put it on the fire.

MacAllister rolled over and looked up at her. “What time’s the tour start?” he asked.

“Sooner the better,” said Kellie.

Hutch rubbed her eyes, closed them again, and looked at the gray sky. “Another glorious morning on Deepsix.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she fished for her cup and toothbrush.

Off to the east, something was moving. Kellie raised her binoculars and looked out across a stretch of grassland downslope. A herd of fur-bearing animals were approaching. They were big, lumbering creatures, with trunks and tusks. Their heads were extraordinarily ugly, much in the manner of rhinos. She watched them veer off and disappear into a wall of forest, but she could hear them for a long time after.

They disposed of another round of reddimeals. Kellie had bacon, eggs, and fried apples. She washed everything down with coffee.

“While we’re on the trail,” said Hutch, “let’s see what we can hunt up for lunch.”

“Right.” MacAllister raised his coffee. “I suspect we’re all anxious to taste the local fare.” Kellie wondered if he could ask for the correct time without sounding cynical.

They trekked down the south slope, into and out of patches of trees, crossed a stream at the bottom, and started up the far side. Occasional furry creatures, the local equivalent of squirrels, showed themselves, as well as a few larger animals that looked as if they might serve for a meal. If anybody could get close enough to use a cutter. But the creatures kept their distance. “We need a weapon that’ll work at long range,” said Chiang.

Hutch asked whether anybody had experience with a bow and arrow.

Nobody did.

They crossed the valley and started uphill, up the long increasingly steep slope Kellie had studied from the crest of her ridge the night before. The snow became soft, and the walking grew more difficult. Nightingale’s blisters got worse, and MacAllister struggled and grumbled. Hutch called a break.

The sun was directly overhead and they were still about an hour below the summit. A few donuts remained, which they divided. Mac insisted he was feeling fine and thought they should get going. Nightingale agreed, although he was obviously in some discomfort, and they set off.

They reached the crest and discovered that the land dipped sharply and then started uphill again, but at a more moderate angle. MacAllister observed that the entire planet seemed to run uphill.

They pressed on for another hour before they stopped, built a fire, and made coffee. “We can feed anyone who’s hungry,” Hutch said. But a nineteen-hour day was short, and lunch followed hard on breakfast. Consequently no one was anxious for an undue delay. “We’ll eat an early dinner,” she promised.

During the afternoon march Nightingale said that he was cold.

Hutch checked his gear and saw that his powerpak was failing. She replaced it with one of the units she’d pried out of the lander.

A freak thunderstorm broke over them, eliciting an observation by MacAllister that lightning wasn’t supposed to occur at low temperatures.

That brought a response from Marcel: “Some of our people here say it’s a result of Morgan’s approach. It translates into unusually severe high- and low-pressure areas. Consequently, you get screwy weather.”

They walked through a steady downpour while thunderbolts boomed overhead. The rain hissed into the snow, which turned to slush. The e-suits kept them dry, and they trudged on.

Nightingale seemed distracted, self-absorbed, remote. While they walked, his eyes were rarely focused. His gaze was directed inward, and when Kellie spoke to him, he invariably asked her to repeat herself.

He remained walled off from the others, resisting everybody’s efforts at small talk. He did not snap at anyone, showed no sign of anger. But it was as though he walked alone through those frozen forests.

She began to notice that the lamp on his commlink was constantly glowing. She could see he wasn’t talking with any of the others. Someone on Wendy, perhaps?

It gave rise to a suspicion. “Randy?” she said, using a private channel

He looked up at her and came back from someplace far away. “Yes, Kellie? Did you say something?”

“Could I ask what you’re listening to?”

“Right now? Bergdorf’s Agronomy on Qaraqua.” He looked over at her and smiled. “Might as well make the time count.”

As she’d guessed, he was tied in to one of the ships’ libraries. “Yes,” she said. “I know what you mean. But it might be a good idea if you shut it down. It’s dangerous to do what you’re doing.”

“Why is that?” He became defensive.

“Because there may be critters in the area who will mistake you for a hamburger. We’ve got five pairs of eyes, and we need them all. You don’t want to be thinking about other things while we’re moving through tiger country.”

“Kellie,” he said, “it’s not a problem. I can listen and watch—”

“Randy. Please do what I’m asking you to.”

“Or you’ll blow the whistle on me?”

“Or I’ll make off with your staff.”

He sighed visibly, a man of culture put upon by the barbarians of the world. She stayed with him until he showed her his thumb and pressed it to his commlink. The lamp went out. “Okay?” he asked. “Satisfied?”

Kellie could see Hutch talking, too. She glanced around at the others. You always knew who was conversing with whom because people inevitably look at one another during a conversation. But Chiang and MacAllister were not using their links. That probably meant Hutch was talking to Marcel.

She missed Marcel.

Kellie had not realized how much she enjoyed the company of the tall Frenchman. She’d thought he had looked at her with a touch of envy when she’d asked to make the descent to the surface.

At the moment they’d be having late night snacks on Wendy. She would have given a great deal to join him at his table, to listen to him talk about the elegance of Dupre and Proust.

After a while, the rainstorms blew off, and the sun broke through. But it was only momentary. More clouds were building in the west.

They were buffeted by rain and sleet for most of the rest of the day. Although the e-suits kept them warm and dry, a constant wind made progress difficult, and the rain tended to smear vision. In addition, Hutch knew from long experience there was a psychological factor: When the weather was cold and wet, and your eyes made it clear you were wearing no more than a jump suit, that you should be shivering and miserable, it was difficult to be entirely comfortable. It was called the McMurtrie Effect.

They cleared a ridge and finally started downhill, but the descent was steep, and they had literally to lower MacAllister from one perch to level ground. They came at last to a river. It looked deep, but the current appeared placid.

“How’re we doing for time?” Kellie asked.

Progress reports came regularly from Marcel, but they were directed to Hutch. “Thirteen so far today,” she said.

Kellie frowned. Not great. But it was enough.

“Everybody here can swim?” asked Hutch.

Surprisingly, only Chiang lacked the skill.

The river was wide, and it looked deep in midstream. Thick twisted foliage hung down along both banks. They surveyed the area, looking for a local alligator-equivalent, but saw nothing.

“We still don’t know what’s in the water,” said Nightingale. “I suggest we build a raft.”

“Don’t have time,” said Hutch. If there was anything in the river, there was a good chance that the e-suits would prevent their being perceived as prey. There would, after all, be no scent.

“I don’t think you should rely too heavily on that,” said Nightingale.

Hutch waded in until she was hip deep. Then they waited. Her heart pounded, but she tried to look calm. She watched the river and the banks for any sudden movement. But nothing came for her, and she felt more confident with each passing minute. When they were at last convinced it was safe, they found a dead limb Chiang could cling to and pushed off. MacAllister turned out to be an accomplished swimmer. Chiang said nothing while they towed him across, but Hutch saw that he felt humiliated. It would have been less difficult for him, she realized, had Kellie not been there. She was pleased to see that Kellie was also aware of the situation and made a point of staying close to him. She caught an amused smile from MacAllister, who seemed to miss none of the undercurrents among his companions.

They arrived on the far side in good order and resumed their march. Eventually the country turned uphill again. Chiang, who had been leading, fell toward the rear. Kellie moved up beside him and took him again to the front. She said something to him on a private channel.

He was replying when a snowbank rose, roared, and charged. Hutch saw only talons and green eyes and long, curved teeth while she fumbled for her laser, got it into her hand, lost the grip, then dropped it.

Kellie, directly in the thing’s path, went down and tried to scramble out of the way. MacAllister seemed to have forgotten about his cutter. Instead, he raised his staff and brought it down on the creature’s skull. The thing spat and growled and a cutter beam flashed close to Hutch’s face. The growling went high-pitched, then stopped. When Hutch stumbled to her feet, helped by Nightingale, it lay twitching. Its head was half severed, and a red-brown viscous liquid pumped out onto the snow. Its dead eyes continued to watch her.

It was about the size of a bear. Chiang was standing off to one side, his cutter held straight out. He saw Hutch, nodded, shut it off, and lowered it.

Hutch checked her parts. Everything seemed to be there. “I never saw it,” she said, patting MacAllister’s shoulder. “Hell of a job with the staff.”

Kellie embraced Chiang and kissed his cheek.

“What was it?” Chiang asked.

“Dinner,” said Hutch. “If all goes well.”

They sliced off gobs of meat and wrapped them in plastic bags.

Toward the end of the afternoon, they topped the last rise, and the land began a long gentle decline. The storms had cleared off, and they had, for the first time since leaving the tower, a bright cheerful sky. They kept on until sundown, and Kellie urged that they continue. But the pace was too much for Mac and Nightingale, so Hutch called a halt near a stand of old trees that would provide firewood and privacy. They’d logged eighteen kilometers.

Pretty good, actually.

“Especially,” said Nightingale, lowering himself onto a downed tree trunk, “when you consider this is hard country. It’ll level out soon. And we should be almost out of the snow.”

MacAllister also looked exhausted.

“Chiang,” Kellie said, “let’s get some wood.” She picked up a dead branch and, as if that were a signal, the ground shook. Just once, for a few seconds.

They built a fire and roasted the meat. It smelled good, not unlike venison.

“Who’s going to sample it?” asked Mac.

Hutch took a piece, thinking how being a leader wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She would follow Embry’s prescription and go very slowly.

“Let me cut it for you,” said Nightingale. He sliced off a narrow strip, held it so she could see it in the firelight, and surprised her by turning off his suit and taking a bite.

They watched him. “Thanks,” said Hutch.

He shrugged, chewed it methodically, commented that it was good, and swallowed. Then he reactivated the field.

Hutch wondered why he’d done it. Nightingale did not strike her as someone who was given to the gallant gesture. She suspected he was responding on some level to MacAllister’s presence. Showing him how wrong he had been.

A half hour passed. The meat looked ready. Chiang put on the coffee.

Nightingale showed no ill effect and announced that the rest of them could hang about if they liked, but that he was ready to eat. They looked at one another, killed the fields, and carved up dinner. It was quite good.

Conversation during meals was limited because of the low temperatures. Eating was strictly business on Deepsix, and if she lived through this, Hutch knew she would always recall these quick impersonal meals, nobody talking while they huddled as close to the fire as they could get, bolting food and coffee in the sting of cold air.

Happy days on the prairie.

They had no salt, no condiments of any kind, but that seemed only a detail.

Hutch made an announcement during the meal: “Marcel,” she said, “tells me that the media are only a couple of days away. They were coming to shoot the collision, but now it’s all about us.”

“Of course,” said Chiang.

“Anyhow, they’re asking whether they’ll be able to interview us when they get here.”

MacAllister was clearly enjoying his supper. “That should be intriguing,” he said, between bites. “We can have an end-of-the-world party right there on Universal News, which reports only the facts. Without bias or principle.” It was a mild reference to Universal’s Without bias or distortion credo. He looked toward the eastern sky, bright with unfamiliar constellations. It was too early yet for Morgan. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “If they play it right, they should be able to get their best numbers of the year. Except maybe for the World Bowl.”

“Hutch, we got a response from the Academy on your early reports at the tower. They congratulate you for your work and want you to keep digging. That’s the phrase they use. Look for more evidence of the state of their science, it says. They want you to let the other sites go because there isn’t time.”

“Good,” she said. “Tell them we’ll comply.”

“They also want you to be careful. They say to avoid any hazardous situations.”

“Augie, wake up.”

Emma didn’t always sleep well, and she sometimes prowled the ship at night. What she did out there he didn’t know. It was even possible she ran an occasional liaison with the captain. He didn’t really care all that much. As long as she was available when he needed her. But she had hold of his arm at the moment, and was dragging him out of a very sound sleep. His first thought was that the Edward J. Zwick had sprung a leak. “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking up at her.

She was the image of delight. “Augie, we’ve gotten a huge break.”

He tried to imagine what it could be, but utterly failed. In any case, he thought, surely it could wait until morning.

“They’ve had an accident,” she said. “Some of them are stranded down there. They’re trying to find a rescue vessel and apparently not having much luck.”

That woke him up. “What kind of accident? Was anybody killed?”

“Yep. Two or three. And you know who’s among the strandees? MacAllister.”

“My God. Is that right?”

“Absolutely.”

“How could that happen?”

“Don’t know. They’re not putting out details yet. But we’ve got a great story falling into our laps.” She pressed her lips against his cheek. “I’ve already been in touch with them. With Clairveau. And there’s no competition within light-years.” She clapped her hands and literally trembled with joy.

Canyon was still trying to grasp what she was telling him. “They’re going to get them off okay, right?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Augie. Right now it’s touch and go. But if we’re lucky, things will stay tense for a while. At least until we get there.”

“We might have a problem,” said Beekman.

The ocean and the northern coastline were on-screen. The area looked cold and gray, and the tide was very far out. Marcel wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Beekman was about to tell him.

“It’s like what happens,” said Beekman, “when a tsunami is coming.”

Marcel waited impatiently. It was hard to feel any serious alarm. The coast was a long wall of high mountains. He’d been prepared to hear that there might be disturbances at sea, but the shoreline looked pretty well protected. “Is a tsunami coming?” he asked.

“Not exactly.” They were seated in armchairs, in Beekman’s office. The project director wore a short-sleeved shirt printed with frolicking dragons that he’d bought in Hong Kong. “It’s just going to be another very high tide. The problem is that, as Morgan approaches, it’s going to keep getting higher. Every day. The water’s getting distorted by Morgan’s gravitational pull. Mounting up. It’s the first stage.”

“What’s the final stage?”

“The ocean gets ripped out of its bed.”

“Gunny,” Marcel said, “that’s not going to happen tomorrow.”

Beekman nodded. “No.”

“If it’s a problem, why didn’t we talk about it before?”

“Because it didn’t look as if it would become a factor. Because the coastal range has the ocean effectively blocked off until you get so far east it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“What’s changed?”

“There are sections of the range that might not hold. That might collapse.”

“Where?”

Beekman showed him.

“When?” he asked.

“Don’t know. They could stand up until the water has to come over the top. If that happens, there’s nothing to worry about. Or they could give way.”

“Okay. What’s the earliest it could break down?”

“We don’t know that either. We don’t have enough detailed information to be sure.”

“Make a guess.”

“Midnight, Tuesday. Our time.”

Marcel checked his calendars. “That gives them eight days. Local days.”

“Yes.”

“They’ve lost a couple of days.”

“That shouldn’t be a major problem for them. They still have adequate time. But keep in mind, Marcel. It’s only a guess.”

Marcel nodded. “I’ll alert Hutch.” He felt the bulkheads closing in on him. “Do we have any ideas for a backup plan?” he asked.

“You mean if Tess won’t work?”

“That’s right.”

He shook his head. “Short of hoping for divine intervention, no. If Tess won’t fly, they’re dead. It’s as simple as that.”

XV

One timer fully appreciates civilization until the lights go out.

—Gregory MacAllister, “Patriots in the Woodshed,” The Incomplete MacAllister

Hours to breakup (est): 210

“There’s got to be a way.”

Beekman’s eyes were bloodshot “If there is,” he said, “I’d be grateful to know how.”

“Okay.” Marcel got up and looked down at him. “You’ve been talking about the tensile strength of the stuff we cut off the assembly. How about if we removed a piece of that?”

“To do what?”

“To reach them. To give them a way off the surface.”

“Marcel, it would have to be three hundred kilometers long.”

“Gunny, we’ve got four superluminals up here to work with.”

“That’s fine. You could have forty. So you’ve also got a very long shaft. What are you going to do with it?”

“Ram it down through the atmosphere. It wouldn’t collapse under its own weight, would it?”

“No,” said Beekman. “It wouldn’t. But we’d have no control over it. Atmospheric forces would drive it along the ground at supersonic speed.” He smiled sadly. “No, you wouldn’t want to try to hitch a ride on something like that”

Marcel was just tired of all the defeatism. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I want to happen. You’ve got a brain trust of major proportions scattered around this ship. Get them together, do it now, put everything else aside. And find a way.”

“Marcel, with any luck Tess will be enough to get them off.”

“There are too many things that can go wrong. And if we wait until they do, there’ll be no time to come up with an alternative.” He leaned over and seized Beekman’s arm. “Consider it an intellectual challenge, if you want. But find a way.”

Chiang was still awake when Morgan appeared in the east. Surrounding stars faded in its glow, which seemed to have acquired a bluish tint. It was starkly brighter than it had been the previous evening. He could almost make out a disk.

He stood his watch under its baleful light. After Nightingale relieved him, he lay a long time watching it move through the trees. It seemed to him that he’d barely fallen asleep when Kellie roused him. “Time to get rolling, big fella,” she said.

While they sat wearily around the campfire, breakfasting on the leftover creature meat, Hutch announced that more news had come down from Wendy.

“Not good, I take it,” said MacAllister.

“Not good. We’ve lost a day or two,” said Hutch. “The tides are rising along the north coast. Because of Morgan. There are mountains up there, but there’s a possibility the water will break through onto the plain.”

“A couple of days?” said Kellie.

“We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“They think if it breaks through, it’ll go all the way to the tower?” asked Nightingale.

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“We need to hustle up,” said Chiang.

The short days were beginning to work on them and they debated whether they should try to switch back to a twenty-four-hour clock and simply ignore the rising and setting of the sun.

Embry advised it would not be a good idea, that their metabolisms would try to adjust to local conditions. “Anyway,” she added, “I doubt you want to be walking around down there in the dark.”

They had only about seven hours of sunlight left when they finally got moving.

“You’ll come out of the snow line later today,” Marcel told them. “Looks like relatively easy going from that point on.”

“Okay,” said Hutch.

“Oh, and you’ve got another river to cross. A wide one this time. You’ll get to it toward the end of the day.”

“Any bridges?”

“Ho, ho.”

“Seriously, can you guide us to the easiest crossing point?”

“You like wide and slow or narrow and fast?”

“We need a place where we can wade.”

“Can’t tell from up here.”

“Make it wide and slow.”

Chiang didn’t care for MacAllister. He treated Kellie and Hutch as if they were lackeys and gofers, persons whose sole purpose was to make the world comfortable for people like himself. He ignored Nightingale altogether. He behaved well enough toward Chiang, although there was a degree of condescension that probably was not personal but rather reflected the editor’s attitude toward everyone.

Even the gas giant became a target for him. While the others thought of the approaching juggernaut with a degree of awe, MacAllister took to referring to the world by the full name of its discoverer. It became Jerry Morgan at first, and eventually just plain Jerry.

“Well, I noticed Jerry was pretty bright last night.”

And, “I do believe Jerry’s become a crescent.”

Chiang understood that the great man was frightened, maybe more so than the rest of them because he had a reputation to protect, and he was probably not sure how he’d hold up if things got worse instead of better.

The snow was thinning out, and they began one by one to discard their snowshoes.

They’d broken back out onto a broad plain. It was rolling country, marked by a few scattered trees and occasional patches of thick shrubbery. Toward midafternoon, two autumn-colored bipeds that seemed to be constructed exclusively of fangs and claws tried a coordinated attack from opposite sides. They’d been hiding behind hills and charged as the company passed. But the lasers drove them off and caused MacAllister to observe that these primitive life-forms were no match for somebody with guts and a good weapon. He looked meaningfully at Nightingale, and Hutch had to step between them again.

Tough fibrous grass pushed up through the snow, which by midday disappeared altogether. Purple and yellow shrubbery appeared, with thick stalks and wide, flat-bladed leaves that looked sharp enough to draw blood. They passed through a tree line, and the sunlight faded behind a canopy of branches and leaves. Eight-legged creatures scrambled up the trunks, and Nightingale once again regretted that there was no time for inspection.

They were small and almost invisible against the woodland background, with backs that resembled walnut shells, and triangular heads. They had antennas and beaks and mandibles that twitched constantly. He noted that, when he approached them, the antennas swung in his direction. Some hurried around to the far side of a convenient tree, out of his sight. One simply withdrew into a shell, like a turtle, and clung unmoving to thick bark. When Chiang approached, it fired black spray at him. In the direction of his eyes. It splattered against the e-suit.

Startled, Chiang fell back and went down. “You were lucky,” said Nightingale, helping him up. “We don’t know these creatures at all. It’s a good idea not to be deceived by appearances. If you see something that looks like a chipmunk, don’t assume it’ll behave like one.”

“We need to keep moving,” said Hutch. “No time for admiring the critters.”

Some of the trees were hardwoods, very much like oak and maple. Others had soft fleshy stems and short prickly branches. Bulbous purple fruit hung from them. Hutch broke off a sample, scooped out a small piece, killed her field, and tried it. She looked pleased. “Not bad,” she said.

But when Chiang asked to share she shook her head. “Let’s give it a while. See what happens.”

They were pushing through heavy undergrowth when Chiang almost walked off the edge of a crag. The ground simply vanished underfoot. At first he thought he was going into a hole, but the bushes opened up, and he was looking down about six meters onto a scrabble of hard rock and tough-looking greenery. MacAllister grabbed his arm and, after a nervous moment while they struggled for balance, hauled him back.

“That’s two we owe you, Mac,” said Kellie. It was the first time anyone had used the shortened form of his name without derision.

The land became increasingly rough, scarred by gullies and ravines.

The earlier problem of getting MacAllister down some of the descents recurred. They tried using cable, but it was thin and smooth, hard to hold on to. And tying it around his waist and using it to lower him down an embankment offended his dignity.

Hutch looked around at the vines that snaked up tree trunks and hung out of the branches and tried to pull one loose. The vine resisted, and it took all of them to drag it out of the tree. When they had sufficient length she cut it, and MacAllister, by then covered with bruises and ready for any kind of solution, consented to use it. It worked fine. He could hang on while they lowered away, and even assist the operation. When the ground finally flattened out, in mid-afternoon, he threw the vine away, but Hutch retrieved it, coiled it into a loop, and draped it around one shoulder.

Chiang noticed that MacAllister was no longer volunteering to drop back in order to allow the rest of the party to move ahead more quickly. Instead, he silently endured whatever indignities he had to, and worked hard to maintain his pace.

They stopped at a pool, hidden among trees and rocks. “What do you say,” suggested Hutch, “we take a break and clean up a bit?”

Kellie was already pulling her blouse out away from her body. “I’m for it,” she said. “You guys clear out and build a fire. But guard the trail.”

“What if you get in trouble?” asked Chiang.

She laughed. “My clothes’ll be able to go for help.”

The men retreated. Hutch extracted a small piece of leftover meat and threw it into the water to see if anything would happen. When nothing did, she took up the sentry’s position. Kellie shut off her field and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth. Then she took a deep breath and removed her jumpsuit. “What’ve we got for pneumonia?” she asked.

“Same as usual,” Hutch smiled. “Coffee.”

The place looked safe. Consequently, in the interests of saving time. Hutch handed her the soap and a washcloth, laid out two towels and another washcloth, put her own weapon on a rock by the water’s edge, removed her gear and her clothes, and waded into the water. It was frigid.

“Nothing like a brisk dip,” Kellie said through lips that were chattering so badly she could barely get the words out.

An icy wind rippled the surface.

“Polar bear nudie club,” said Hutch.

“Water’s warmer than out there, though. Once you get used to it.”

“I betcha.”

In fact it was. The water shocked her system as she waded deeper, feeling the frigid tide rise past thighs and hips to her breasts. But once in its embrace, her body adjusted. She scrunched down to keep out of the cold air.

Kellie covered herself with soap and handed it to Hutch, who quickly rubbed some onto her washcloth and began to remove the accumulated dirt and sweat of several days.

Kellie cleaned herself as best she could, and submerged. She came back up into the cold air gasping and shivering. Hutch, also half frozen, moved close to her and they embraced, sharing what body heat they could. When the joint trembling got down to a reasonable level, so that she could speak again, Hutch asked whether she was okay. “Dandy,” Kellie said.

They retreated into shallower water, finished the job, grabbed the towels, and wiped themselves dry. Then, still naked, they put on their links and belts, reactivated the energy fields, and turned up the heat.

It was a luxurious moment. Hutch stood in the bright sunlight and clasped her arms to her breasts in an instinctive effort to absorb the warmth.

“That was really a thrill out there,” said Kellie. “We have to do it again.”

“Bonded forever,” said Hutch.

They gazed at one another, and Hutch wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

When feeling returned, they bent to the task of washing their clothes. From time to time Chiang called to ask whether they needed help. Kellie assured him they were doing fine, but Hutch could see the pleasure she was taking in the game.

When they’d finished they handed out their clothes to Chiang, and he passed blankets in to them. The clothes were hung over the fire, the women took up sentry duty in their blankets, and the men went into the pool. An hour later they were all dressed and on their way again.

Chiang was unsure what to do about Kellie. The extreme hazard in which they’d been placed had sharpened his desire for her. He had begun seriously considering making a marriage proposal. That notion would have been absurd a few days ago on Wendy. But now somehow it seemed like a good idea to commit himself to living his life with this extraordinary woman, and to find out whether she’d be receptive. He’d decided he wanted her, and he suspected that the opportunity would never be better.

Tonight he would ask.

It was getting dark when they filed out onto the riverbank. “Did Marcel say wide?” demanded MacAllister. “It’s the Mississippi.”

It was broad and still and lazy in the fading light. Had it been frozen, Chiang estimated they would have needed ten minutes to walk across.

“Marcel,” said Hutch, “does this thing by any chance go in our direction?”

“Negative. Sorry. You don’t get to travel by boat.”

“How do we get across?” asked MacAllister.

It had a steady current. “We don’t swim,” said Hutch.

Nightingale nodded. “That’s a good decision for several reasons.” He pointed, and Chiang saw a pair of eyes rise out of the water and look their way.

“Alligator?” Kellie asked.

“Don’t know,” said Hutch.

Nightingale repeated Hutch’s test and threw a small piece of meat well out into the stream. A fin broke the surface momentarily, and then there was a brief commotion in the water.

Something in the foliage across the river screeched. A loud racket followed, more screeching, flapping of wings. A large vulpine creature with black wings flew off, and the general stillness returned.

Chiang examined the trees. “Anybody good at raft-building?”

“Just tie some logs together, right?” said Kellie.

“This,” said MacAllister, “should be a constructive experience for us all.”

The pun provided some mock laughter.

“Let’s get to it,” Hutch said. “We’ll cut the trees now, stay here tonight, and put the raft together first thing tomorrow.”

“How’d we do today?” asked MacAlIister.

“Pretty well,” said Hutch. “Twenty kilometers.”

“Twenty?”

“Well, nineteen. But that’s not bad.”

Chiang spent the evening working up his courage. After the logs were set aside and the vines collected, Kellie sat quietly eating. When she’d finished and buttoned up her e-suit, he saw his chance. Get on her private channel and do the deed.

“Kellie.” His voice didn’t sound right.

She turned toward him, and her features were limned in the firelight. He watched shadows move across her face, and she seemed more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. “Yes, Chiang?” she said.

He started to move toward her but caught himself and decided it was best to stay where he was. “I—wanted you to know I’m in love with you.”

A long silence. The shadows moved some more.

“I’ve been looking for an opportunity to tell you.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said.

That threw him off-balance. “You know?” He had never said anything.

“Sure.”

He got to his feet, driven to some form of action, but he settled for stirring the fire. “May I ask how you feel about me?” He blurted it out, and immediately knew it sounded clumsy. But there was no way to recall it.

“I like you,” she said quietly.

He waited.

She seemed lost in thought. He wondered whether she was searching her feelings, or looking for a way to let him down gently. “I don’t know,” she said. “The circumstances we’re under ... It’s hard to see clearly.”

“I understand,” he said.

“I’m not sure you do, Chiang. Everything’s compressed now. I don’t trust my feelings. Or yours. Everything’s very emotional. Let’s wait till we’re back on Wendy. When it’s not life-and-death anymore. Then if you want to take another plunge at this, I’ll be happy to listen.”

Nightingale assumed guard duty. He surveyed the campsite, saw right away there were too many places where something could come up on them unseen, and decided to position himself near the river-bank, where the ground was clear. Chiang picked up the water container and went to the river’s edge. MacAlIister gathered some branches and started a fire. The women began trying to work out what the raft should look like.

Nightingale studied the water. It was shallow inshore, but muddy and dark. He watched Chiang make a face at it and venture out a few steps. Nightingale asked what he was doing, and Chiang explained he was after clear water. He scooped up some and it must still not have looked very good because he got rid of it and went out a bit farther.

“That’s a mistake,” said Nightingale. “Forget it. We’ll figure out something else.”

“It’s not a—” Chiang’s expression changed, and he cried out. Something yanked his feet from under him. He went down and disappeared into the current.

Nightingale whipped out the cutter, ignited it, and charged after him. He couldn’t see why Chiang had fallen, but he caught a glimpse of blue-gray tendrils.

Something caught him, whipped around his ankles, and tried to drag him down. Then it had his arm. Nightingale sliced at the water. Mud-colored fluid spurted from somewhere.

He almost dropped the laser.

MacAlIister arrived, cutter in hand, at the height of the battle. He lashed around like a wild man. The water hissed and tendrils exploded. Nightingale came loose, and then Chiang. By the time the women got there, only seconds after it had begun, it was over.

“It’s okay, ladies,” said MacAllister, blowing on his cutter as if it were an old-style six-gun. “The shooting’s over.”

That night they could see Morgan’s disk quite clearly. It resembled a tiny half-moon.

They assembled the raft in the morning. They lined up the logs and cut them to specification. Hutch, unsure of her engineering, required crosspieces to hold the craft together. They fashioned paddles and poles, and there was some talk about a sail, but Hutch dismissed it as time-consuming on the ground that they didn’t know what they were doing.

It appeared that they were at a drinking hole. A few animals wandered close from time to time, looked curiously at the newcomers, kept their distance, dipped their snouts in the current when they could, and retreated into the forest.

The sun was overhead by the time the raft was ready. Relieved to be under way again, they climbed aboard and set off across the river.

The day was unseasonably warm. In fact, it was almost warm enough to turn off the suits. MacAllister sat down in front, made himself comfortable, and prepared to enjoy the ride.

They’d scouted out a landing spot earlier. It had a beach and no rocks that they could see and was a half kilometer downstream.

Chiang and Hutch used the poles, Kellie and Nightingale paddled, and MacAllister allowed as how he would direct. They moved easily out into the current.

Nightingale watched the banks pass by. He turned at last to Hutch. “It was criminal of them,” he said, “simply to abandon this world.”

“The Academy claimed limited resources,” she said.

“That was the official story. The reality is that there was a third-floor power struggle going on. The operations decision became part of a tug-of-war. The wrong side won, so we never came back.” He gazed up at the treetops. “It never had anything to do with me, but I took the blame.”

MacAllister shielded his eyes from the sun. “Dreary wilderness,” he said.

“You didn’t know that, did you, MacAllister?” said Nightingale.

“Didn’t know what?”

“That there were internal politics involved in the decision. That I was a scapegoat.”

MacAllister heaved a long sigh. “Randall,” he said, “there are always internal politics. I don’t think anyone ever really thought you prevented further exploration. You simply made it easy for those who had other priorities.” He looked downriver. “Pity we can’t get all the way to the lander on this.”

Kellie was watching something behind them. Nightingale turned to look and saw a flock of birds hovering slowly in their rear, keeping pace. Not birds, he corrected himself. More like bats.

They were formed up in a V, pointed in their direction.

And they weren’t bats, either. He’d been misled by the size, but they actually looked more like big dragonflies.

Dragonflies? The bodies were segmented, and as long as his forearm. They had the wingspread of pelicans. But what especially alarmed him was that they were equipped with proboscises that looked like daggers.

“Heads up,” he said.

All eyes turned to the rear.

MacAllister was getting to his feet, getting his cutter out. “Good,” he said. “Welcome to Deepsix, where the gnats knock you down first and then bite.”

“They do seem to be interested in us,” Hutch said.

There might be another problem: They were well toward the middle of the river, and the current was carrying them faster than anyone had anticipated. It was obvious they were going to miss their selected landing place.

The river had become too deep for the poles. Chiang and MacAllister took over the paddles and worked furiously, but they made little headway and could only watch helplessly as they floated past their beach.

The dragonflies stayed with them.

They were operating in sync, riding the wind, their wings only occasionally giving vent to a flurry of movement. “You think they could be meat-eaters?” Hutch asked Nightingale.

“Sure,” he said. “But it’s more likely they’re bloodsuckers.”

“Ugly critters,” said MacAllister.

Hutch agreed. “If they get within range, we’re going to take some of them out.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” said Chiang, “that this world is going down the tube.”

MacAllister laughed. It was a booming sound, and it echoed off the river. “That’s not a very scientific attitude,” he said. “But I’m with you, lad.”

“Oh, shut up, Mac,” said Nightingale. “It’s the efficiency of these creatures that makes them interesting. This is the only really old world we know of, the only one that can show us the results of six billion years of evolution. I’d kill to have some serious time here.”

“Or be killed.” MacAllister shook his head, and his eyes gleamed with good humor. “Your basic mad scientist,” he added.

Chiang drew his paddle out of the water and laid it on the deck. “They’re getting ready.”

Nightingale saw it, too. They’d been flying in that loose V, spread out across maybe forty meters. Now they closed up, almost wingtip to wingtip.

MacAllister watched Nightingale draw his cutter. “I’m not sure,” he said, “that’s the best weapon at the moment.” He put his own back into his pocket and hefted the paddle. “Yeah.” He tried a practice swing. “This should do fine.”

The dragonflies advanced steadily, approaching to within a few meters. Then they did a remarkable thing: They divided into three separate squadrons, like miniature fighter planes. One stayed aft, the others broke left and right and moved toward the beams.

Hutch held up her hand. Wait

They began to close.

The boat was completely adrift now, headed downriver.

“Wait.”

The ones in the rear moved within range. Kellie and Chiang were in back, facing them.

“Not yet,” said Hutch. “If they come at us, be careful where you fire. We don’t want to take any of our own people out.”

Hutch was on the port side, MacAllister to starboard. Nightingale dropped to one knee beside Hutch.

The flanking squadrons moved within range.

“On three,” she said. “One ...”

“You know,” said Nightingale, “this isn’t necessarily aggressive behavior.”

“Two...”

“As long as they don’t actually attack, there’s no way to know. They seem to be intelligent. They might be trying to make contact.”

MacAllister shifted his position to face the threat. “Say hello, Randy,” he said.

Three,”she said. “Hit ‘em.”

The ruby beams licked out.

Several of the creatures immediately spasmed and spiraled into the water, wings smoking. One landed in what appeared to be a pair of waiting jaws and was snatched beneath the surface.

The others swept in to attack. The air was filled with the beat of wings and a cacophony of clicks and squeals. One of the creatures buried its proboscis in the meaty part of Hutch’s arm. MacAllister threw himself at it, knocked her down and almost into the water, but he grabbed the thing, pulled it out, and rammed it against the side of the boat. Laser beams cut the creatures out of the air. Nightingale took a position at MacAllister’s back and killed two of them in a single swipe.

Mac meantime stood over the fallen Hutchins like a Praetorian, swinging his paddle, and bashing the brains out of any and all attackers. Amid all the blood, shouts, screams, and fury, and the electric hiss of the weapons, Nightingale grudgingly realized that the big dummy was emerging as the hero of the hour.

And quite suddenly it was over. The dragonflies drew off. Nightingale could count only five survivors. They lined up again, and for a moment he thought there would be a second assault. But they lifted away on the wind, wings barely moving, and turned inshore.

He looked around, assured himself that no one had been seriously injured, and listened to Hutch reassure Marcel. She was sitting on the deck of the raft, holding her injured shoulder.

“Hurts,” she said.

Marcel listened to it all and never said a word. When it was over he took a seat near one of the wallscreens where he could look down on Maleiva III’s surface.

He had never felt so utterly helpless.

XVI

If there is one characteristic that marks all sentient creatures, it is their conviction of their own individual significance. One sees this in their insistence on leaving whatever marks they can of their passing. Thus the only race of starfaring extraterrestrials we know about distributes monuments dedicated to themselves in all sorts of unlikely places. The Noks, with their late-nineteenth-century technology, put their likeness in every park they have. Earth has its pyramids. And we pay schools and churches to name wings, awards and parking areas after us. Every nitwit who gets promoted to supervisor thinks the rest of creation will eventually happen by and want breathlesssfy to know everything about him that can possibly be gathered.

 —Gregory MacAllister, “The Moron in the Saddle,” Editor at Large

Hours to breakup: 180

There was no single space on board Wendy that was large enough to accommodate everyone. So Beekman compromised by inviting a half dozen of his senior people to the project director’s meeting room. Once they were assembled a technician put them on-line to the rest of the ship.

Beekman started by thanking them for coming. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued. “You’re all aware of the situation on the surface. If we’re fortunate, there’ll be no need for an alternative course of action. But if we don’t have one, and we need it, five people will die.

“We were invited to make this flight because somebody thinks we’re creative. This is an opportunity to demonstrate the validity of that proposition. I’ve been telling the captain all along that, if the plan to retrieve and install the capacitors doesn’t work, there is no alternative to saving the lives of our people. I’d like you to prove me wrong.

“I don’t need to tell you that we’re running out of time. And I also don’t need to tell you that I personally see no way to do it. That’s why we need you. Stretch what’s possible. Devise a course of action. Find a solution.

“I won’t waste any more of your time here. But I’ll be standing by. Let me know when you have something.”

They beached the raft, limped ashore, and collapsed. Kellie got the medkit out and Nightingale set to work repairing the wounded. No toxin or biological agent could penetrate the field, so the only problem was loss of blood.

Despite the optimistic report that had gone up to Wendy, Nightingale alone had come away uninjured.

Fortunately, the wounds were superficial, but Kellie and MacAllister had both lost too much blood to continue.

The attackers had gotten Kellie twice in the right leg. Hutch in the shoulder, MacAllister in the neck. That one looked painful, but Mac just grimaced and did the kind of thing he usually did, commenting on the ancestry of the dragonflies. Chiang had taken bite wounds to the stomach and an arm.

They felt entitled to a rest and, once safely away from the river, they took it. Everyone fretted about losing time, but there was simply no help for it. Nightingale felt emotionally exhausted and would have liked to sleep, but as the only member of the group who hadn’t been injured, he was assigned the watch.

They rested for four hours. Then Hutch roused them and got them on the road again.

The forest was filled with insects and blossoms and barbed bushes and creeper vines. Insects buzzed flowers, transferring pollen in the time-honored manner they’d found in every other biosphere. It was evidence once again that nature always took the simplest way. The external appearance of many of the creatures was different, but only in detail. Animals that resembled monkeys and wolves put in brief appearances. They were remarkably similar to kindred creatures elsewhere. The monkeys had long ears and hairless faces and looked very much like tiny humans. The wolves were bigger than their distant cousins, and were equipped with tusks. There was even an equine creature that came very close to qualifying as a unicorn.

The differences weren’t limited to appearance. They watched a group of wolves give wide berth to a long-necked pseudo-giraffe which was munching contentedly on a tree limb and paying them no attention. Was the animal’s meat toxic? Did the creature possess a long-range sting? Or perhaps skunk scent? They didn’t know and there was neither time nor (except for Nightingale) inclination to linger long enough to find out.

Two more potential threats emerged. One was a python-sized serpent with green-and-gray coloring. It watched them with its black marble eyes. But it was not hungry, or it sensed that the oversized monkeys would not prove an easy quarry.

The other was a duplicate of the feline they’d seen from the tower. This one walked casually out of the shrubbery and strolled up to them as if they were old friends. It must have expected them to run. When they didn’t, it hesitated momentarily, then showed them a jaw full of incisors. That was enough, and they cut it down with little trouble or regret.

Plants everywhere react to light, and a patient observer can watch them turning their petals toward the sun in its journey across the sky. There were occasional shadings here, structures, odd organs, that led Nightingale to suspect that this forest had eyes. That it was possibly aware, in some vegetative manner, of their passage. And that it followed them with a kind of divine equanimity.

In another few centuries, give or take, Maleiva and its attendant worlds would be out of the cloud and conditions would return to normal. Or they would if the land was still going to be here. The woods felt timeless.

He wondered if the forest, in some indefinable way, knew what was coming.

And whether, if it did, it cared?

“Hey, Hutch.” Chiang’s voice. “Look at this.”

Chiang and Kellie had gone out to gather firewood. Hutch was seated on a log, rotating her shoulder. She got up and disappeared into the woods. MacAllister, who was security, stayed nearby, but his eyes strayed toward Nightingale, and there was a weariness in them, suggesting he had little patience left for anyone’s enthusiasm. They could find a brontosaurus out there, and he wasn’t going to care. The only thing that mattered to him was getting home. Everything else was irrelevant.

“It’s a wall,” said Kellie. Nightingale could see their lights moving out in the darkness.

MacAllister looked at the time, as if it had any relation to the current progress of days and nights. It was almost twelve o’clock back in orbit, but whether noon or midnight, Nightingale had no idea. Nor probably had MacAllister.

Nightingale was desperately weary. He sat with his eyes closed, letting the voices wash over him. A wall just did not seem all that significant.

There was nothing more for several minutes, although he could hear them moving around. Finally, unable to restrain his curiosity, he asked what they’d found.

“Just a wall,” said Chiang. “Shoulder-high.”

“A building?”

“A wall.”

There was a brief commotion in the trees. Animals fighting over something.

“Lot of heavy growth around it,” said Kellie. “It’s been here a long time.”

Nightingale thought about getting to his feet. “Is it stone?”

“More like bricks.”

“Anybody see the end of it?”

“Over here. It turns a corner.”

“There’s a gate. With an arch.”

For several minutes they clumped around in the underbrush with no sound other than an occasional grunt. Then Chiang spoke again, excited: “I think there’s a building back there.”

They had not seen any kind of structure since leaving the tower. Nightingale gave up and reached for his staff. MacAllister saw that he was having difficulty and started over to help. “It’s okay, Gregory,” he said. “I can manage.”

MacAllister stopped midway. “My friends call me Mac.”

“I didn’t know you had any friends.” He collected a lamp and turned it on.

Mac looked at him with a half smile, but there was no sign of anger.

“What kind of arch?” Nightingale asked Kellie.

“Curved. Over a pair of iron gates. Small ones. Pretty much rusted away. But there are some symbols carved into it. Into the arch.”

Nightingale, leaning on his staff, started for the woods. “Do they look like the ones back at the tower?”

“Could be,” said Hutch. “Hard to tell.”

Metal squealed. Somebody had opened the gate. “Why don’t we see what’s inside?” said Chiang.

It hurt to walk. MacAllister sighed loudly. “You ought to just take it easy. They find anything important, they’ll let us know.”

“They already found something important, Gregory. Maybe this thing was a country estate of some sort. Who knows what’s inside?”

“Why do you care? It’s not your field.”

“I’d like very much to know who the original inhabitants were. Wouldn’t you?”

“You want an honest answer?”

“I can guess.”

“I’m sure you can. I know who the original inhabitants were. They were very likely little hawk-faced guys with blowguns. They murdered one another in wars, and, judging from that tower back there, they were right out of our Middle Ages. Hutch would like to know what gods they worshiped and what their alphabet looked like. I say, who gives a damn? They were just another pack of savages.”

Nightingale arrived at the wall, and it was indeed brickwork. It was low, plain, worn, buried in shrubbery and vines. He wondered what kind of hands had constructed it.

He advanced until he’d reached the gates. They were made of iron, originally painted black, he thought, although now they were heavily corroded and it was hard to be sure. Nevertheless, one of them still moved on its hinges.

They were designed for ornamentation rather than security. Individual bars were molded in the shape of leaves and branches. The artwork seemed mundane, something Nightingale’s grandmother might have appreciated. Still, it was decorative, and he supposed that told them something more about the inhabitants.

He heard MacAllister coming up behind him. He sounded like an elephant in deep grass. The light from his lamp fell across the arch.

It was curved brickwork. The symbols that Kellie had mentioned were engraved on a flat piece of stone mounted on the front. Nightingale thought it was probably the name of the estate. “Abandon hope,” he said.

“Keep out,” offered MacAllister.

The ground was completely overgrown. If there’d ever been a trail or pathway, nothing was left of it now.

They passed through the gate and saw the others inspecting a small intact building, not much larger, Nightingale thought, than a children’s playhouse. It was wheel-shaped, constructed entirely of gray stone, with a roof that angled down from a raised center.

He could see a doorway and a window. Both were thick with vegetation.

Chiang cut his way through to the entrance. He cleared away some of the shrubbery, and they filed in, under the usual low ceiling. First the women, then Chiang, and then Nightingale.

The interior consisted of a single chamber and an alcove. In both, vegetative emblems, flowers and branches and blossoms, were carved into baked clay panels that covered the walls. A stone table dominated the far end of the chamber.

The place smelled of decay. MacAllister finally squeezed through the door and squatted so he wouldn’t have to stand bent over. “It doesn’t look all that old,” he said. He put one hand on the floor to steady himself.

Chiang stood by the table. “What do you think?” he asked, pressing his fingers against it. “Is it an altar?”

The other races of whom humans had knowledge had all established religions early in their history. Nightingale recalled reading Barashko’s classic treatise, Aspects of Intelligence, in which he’d argued that certain types of iconography were wired into all of the known intelligent species. Sun-symbols and stars, for example, inevitably showed up, as did wings and blood-symbols. There was often a martyred god. and almost everyone seemed to have developed the altar. “Yes,” Hutch said. “I don’t think there’s any question that’s what it is.” It was rough-hewn, a pair of solid blocks fastened together with bolts. Hutch played her lamp on it, wiped down the surface, and studied it.

“What are you looking for?” asked Nightingale.

“Stains. Altars imply sacrifices.”

“Oh.”

“Like here.”

Everyone moved forward to look. Nightingale walked into a hole, but Kellie caught him before he fell. There were stains. “Could be water,” he said.

Hutch scraped off a sample, bagged it, and put it in her vest.

MacAllister shifted his weight uncomfortably and looked around. He was bored.

“It’s on a dais,” said Kellie. Three very small steps led up to the altar.

MacAllister stood, more or less, and walked closer. “The chapel in the woods,” he said. “What do you suppose became of the god-in-residence?”

Hutch flashed her light into a corner. “Over here.” She got down on a knee, scooped at the debris and dirt, and lifted a fragment of blue stone. “Looks like part of a statue.”

“Here’s more,” said Chiang.

A score of pieces were scattered about. They set them on the altar and took pictures from a variety of angles, which would allow Bill to put them together.

“The fragments are from several distinct figures,” the AI reported back a few minutes later. “We have one that’s approximately complete.”

“Okay,” said Hutch. “Can we take a look?”

Marcel sent the image through Kellie’s link and it blinked on.

Nightingale had seen right away that the statuary had not depicted the hawk-image they’d seen back at the tower. In fact the figure that appeared could hardly have been more different: it had no feathers. It did have stalked eyes. A long throat. Long narrow hands ending in claws. Four digits. Eggshell skull. Ridged forehead. No ears or nostrils. Lipless mouth. Green skin texture, if the coloring had not faded. And a blue robe.

It looked somewhat like a cricket.

“What happened to the hawks?” asked Nightingale.

“One or the other is probably mythical,” said Hutch.

“Which? Which is mythical and which represents the locals?”

She frowned at the image. “I’d say the hawk is mythical.”

“Why?” asked Chiang.

“Because,” said MacAllister, “the hawk has some grandeur. You wouldn’t catch hawks imagining heroes or gods who looked like crickets”

Nightingale exhaled audibly. “Isn’t that a cultural prejudice?”

“Doesn’t make it any less valid. Prejudices aren’t always invalid, Randy.”

The robe was cinctured down the middle, open at the breast. Its owner wore sandals, and it carried a rod whose top was broken off. A staff. The right arm was also broken, at the elbow. Had it been there, Nightingale was certain, it would have been lifted toward the sky. In prayer. In an effort to invoke divine aid. In a signal to carry on.

Among the missing pieces were an antenna, a leg, a chunk of what could only have been a thorax. But the head was intact. And it struck Nightingale that, despite MacAllister’s comment, the creature did possess a certain dignity.

“What do you think?” asked Hutch.

The question was directed at him, but MacAllister answered it. “It’s not bad workmanship,” he said.

There was much in the image that spoke to Nightingale. The creature had endured loss and was making its appeal, or perhaps was simply resigning itself. To what? he wondered. To the common death, which is the starting point for all religions? To the everlasting cold, which had become part of the natural order?

“They would have been worth knowing,” said Hutch.

Nightingale agreed.

He was the last to leave.

They’d put a couple of the pieces into artifact bags, taken a final look around, and filed out. Hutch paused at the doorway and turned back toward him. “Coming?” she asked.

“They’ve probably been dead a few centuries,” he said.

She gazed at him and seemed worried. He suspected he looked pale and gray. “There may be a few survivors left. Out in the hills somewhere.”

Nightingale nodded. “But their civilization’s gone. Everything of consequence that they ever did is lost. Every piece of knowledge. Every act of generosity or courage. Every philosophical debate. It’s as if none of it ever happened.”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

He had no answer. He walked slowly out of the chapel and paused in the doorway. “I guess not. But I’d prefer to think it’s only a pile of rock and water that’s going to get swallowed next week by Jerry. And not a history.”

Hutch nodded. “I know.”

He looked at the artifact bag. “The god. Who’s here to rescue the god?”

She gazed at him and he saw a sad, pensive smile. “We are,” she said. “We’re taking him home with us.”

“Where he’ll have no believers.”

“Careful, Randy. Keep talking like that and people will think you’re an archeologist.”

A few minutes later, as they walked under the arch, a temblor hit. They stopped and waited for it to pass.

Beekman appeared on-screen wearing a triumphant smile. “We were right, Marcel,” he said. “It’s there.”

Marcel, wrapped in his own dark thoughts, had been staring down at the planetary surface. “What’s where, Gunther?”

“The skyhook base.”

“You found it!”

“Yes. It was right where we thought.”

“On the west coast.”

“Mt. Blue. There’s a large structure on top. Six-sided. About two hundred meters across. It’s enormous.”

“How high is it?”

“It’s about six, seven stories. Looks as if it was broken off at the top.”

“And the rest of it?”

“In the ocean. It’s all over the sea bottom. Hundreds of square kilometers of wreckage.” He brought up pictures.

Marcel looked at the outline of the mountaintop structure, and then at vast agglomerations of underwater debris. Some pieces even jutted above the surface.

“It’s been a while since it happened,” said Beekman. “The fragments that stick up out of the water look like rocky islands.” That had in fact been the assessment during Wendy’s original hasty survey. “We really don’t have the right people or the equipment to do an analysis, but we think that if we reassembled the pieces on the bottom, we’d have a piece of the skyhook approximately a hundred kilometers high.”

“I wonder where the station itself is?” said Marcel.

Beekman shrugged. “Who knows? We don’t even know how long ago it broke up. But once we get through this, it would be worth the Academy’s time to send another mission out here to look for it.”

Marcel studied the images. “I don’t understand,” he said, “how these people could build a skyhook, but not leave anything in the way of a skyscraper. Or any other kind of technological artifact. Is everything buried under the glaciers?”

“Nobody has any idea,” said Beekman. “And we have neither time nor equipment to conduct a survey. I suggest we just gather as much evidence as we can. And keep an open mind.”

“What you’re telling me is that we may never get the answers to any of this.”

Beekman could not have agreed more completely. “That’s exactly right,” he said.

Marcel sighed. “There should be something. Structures of some sort. I mean, you can’t just have a lot of walled candlelit cities, and at the same time run equipment into orbit.” He flipped a pen across his console. “They did check for that, right? The tower had no electrical capability? No real power source?”

He meant Hutch and her team. “She was asked to look for technology,” said Beekman. “But I think they assumed there was none. I think we all assumed it.”

“Well, there you go then. Maybe we were just not looking closely enough.”

“I don’t think that could be. I mean, this was a blowgun culture.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Marcel said, “that maybe the tower was a museum? Maybe our artifacts were somebody else’s artifacts first.”

“That would require a fairly unlikely coincidence.”

“Gunther, when will we get back a reading on the skyhook’s dates?”

“Shouldn’t take long. We scanned the samples and sent the results. The Academy will have them by now. We asked for a quick turnaround, so we should get them in a few days.” He crossed his arms. “It’s really sad. I know damned well there are people back at the Academy who’d do anything to get a look at the base of the skyhook.”

Marcel said nothing.

“Maybe if the lander works okay,” Beekman suggested, “we could ask Hutch to take a peek. Before they come back to orbit.”

“Not a chance,” said Marcel. “If the lander works, we’re bringing them home. No side stops.”

Captain Nicholson had carefully assigned full responsibility for the lander accident to Wetheral who, he’d reported, had taken the vehicile without permission. Probably, he suggested, the passengers had offered him a substantial sum for the service. He added that they were not likely to be aware that the flight was unauthorized. Because one of the passengers was the renowned editor and essayist Gregory MacAllister, he advised Corporate to find a way to overlook the incident. If he survives, Nicholson had argued, MacAllister would be a dangerous adversary should TransGalactic assume he was in some way responsible and try to take legal action against him. If he does not, there would be little advantage to pursuing him beyond the grave. Undoubtedly Corporate could collect damages from his estate, but the cost in public relations would be enormous. Best call it an unfortunate incident.

He’d been eating a listless breakfast, trying to maintain a conversation with the frivolous guests at his table, receiving periodk updates from Clairveau. The landing party had been attacked by giant flying bugs, and they’d discovered a chapel of some sort in the forest. The important thing was that they were still on schedule to reach Tess. At this point, that was all that mattered.

The experience had driven a lesson home: He would never again allow himself to be talked into violating procedure. Not ever. Not for any reason. Periodically one or another of his guests jerked him back to the table With a question about the gift shop on the Starlight Deck or the collision parties planned for Saturday night. He moved his eggs around on his plate and answered as best he could.

One bad decision, allowing MacAllister to have his way, threatened to negate the solid performance of a lifetime. And it had not been his idea at all. He had in fact been pressured. Placed in a no-win situation by a pushy passenger with power and a management that wouldn’t have backed him had MacAllister become offended.

It was an outrage.

His link vibrated against his wrist. He raised it casually to his ear. “Captain,” said his officer of the deck. “Eyes only for you. From Corporate.”

This would be management’s first response to the debacle.

“Be there in a minute,” he whispered. Please, Lord, let me survive this one time. He drew the cloth napkin to his lips and rose, apologizing for the interruption but explaining he had to make a command decision. He smiled charmingly at the ladies, shook hands firmly with their escorts, and heard himself referred to as a good man as he hurried away.

He went directly to the bridge, heart pounding. The OOD, who could not have missed the gravity of the situation, greeted him with a polite nod. Nicholson returned the gesture, sat down in his chair, and directed the AI to put the message through.

FROM: DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS TO:                 CAPTAIN, EVENING STAR DTG              11/281625 CONFIDENTIAL // EYES ONLY

ERIK,

YOU UNDERSTAND MAJOR LIABILITY POTENTIAL HERE.

DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO EFFECT MACALLISTER’S RESCUE. KEEP ADVISED.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONTACT PRESCOTT.

BAKER

Contact Prescott.

Prescott was a law firm that specialized in defending off-world nonjurisdictional cases. They were telling him he could expect to be held accountable. That signaled the end of his career, at the very feast. If they elected to prosecute, God knew what might happen to him.

He sat miserably staring at the message. And he envied MacAllister.

XVII

Watching Harcourt die taught me a theological lesson: Life is short; never fail to do something you really want to do simply because you’re afraid of being caught.

—Gregory MacAllister, “The Last Hours of Abbey Harcourt,” Show Me the Money

Hours to breakup (est): 153

The news that the mission had found the skyhook base didn’t cheer anybody on the ground. They were far too engaged worrying about their skins.

“Pity it’s not up and working,” said Chiang. “We could use a skyhook.”

“Actually,” said Hutch, “it is nearby.”

“Really? Where?”

“On the western side of the continent. It’s on a mountaintop on the coast.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing it before we go,” said Nightingale.

MacAllister shook his head. Do these people never learn? “I think,” he said, “we should not tempt fate. Let’s concentrate on getting our rear ends out of here.”

“There might be a way.” The grayness that had settled about Beekman had lifted slightly. Only slightly, but Marcel caught a glimpse of hope.

Marcel had been convinced by the intensity of Beekman’s consistent position that no alternate method of rescue was possible. The captain had been standing on the bridge for two hours staring out at the spectacle of the approaching giant, thinking how it had all been bravado, challenge the best minds they had, come up with something, when it was quite dear there was nothing anybody could come up with.

Now he was confronted by this same man, gone partly mad, perhaps. Marcel did not believe him. “How?” he asked.

“Actually, it was your idea.”

“My idea.”

“Yes. I repeated our conversation to several of them. John thinks you might be on to something.”

“John Drummond?”

“Yes.”

“What am I on to?”

“Lowering a rope. Cutting off a piece of the assembly. We’ve been looking at the possibility of constructing a scoop.”

“Could we actually do something like that? You said it was impossible.”

“Well, we can’t get it down to the ground. They’re going to have to make some altitude. But if they can do that, if they can get Tess into the air, get up a bit, then yes, it might be possible.” He sat down and pushed his palms together. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m not even saying it’ll be anything but a long shot. But yes, if we set things up, and we get lucky, it might be made to work.”

“How? What do we have to do?”

Beekman explained the idea they’d worked out. He drew diagrams and answered questions. He brought up computer images and ran schematics across the displays. “The critical thing,” he concluded, “is time. We may not have enough time for all this.”

“Then let’s get started. What do you want me to do?”

“First, we need a lot of help. We need people who can go outside and work.”

“I can do that. So can Mira.”

“I’m not talking two people. I’m talking whole squadrons.”

“Okay. So we ask for volunteers. Do a little basic training.”

“This is stuff that’s going to take people with some coordination. Our folks are all theorists. They’d kill themselves out there.”

“So what kind of coordinated types do we need?”

“To start with, welders.”

“Welders.”

“Right. And I have to tell you, I have no idea where we’d be able to get them.”

“Welding? How hard can it be?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

“It seems to me we only need one person who knows how to do it. I mean, he can teach the others.”

“So where do we find the one person?”

“Nobody here?”

“I’ve already looked.”

“All right. Then we go to the Star. There are fifteen hundred people over there. Somebody ought to know something about it.” He was already scratching notes. Suddenly he looked up and frowned. “It won’t work,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You’re talking about a lot of e-suits. We have four on board. Maybe a few more on the other ships.”

“We already checked it out. Hutch was hauling a shipment of them. They’re on board Wildside, generators, boots, everything we need.”

“Okay.” Marcel felt a fresh surge of hope. “What about the welds? Will they actually hold? We’re putting a lot of weight on them.”

Beekman nodded. “We’re confident. That’s the best I can tell you. We have four ships to work with, and that’s a lot of lock-down space. The material is superlight. So yes, if you ask me will it hold, I’m sure it will, if we do a good job.”

“All right. What else do we need?”

“We’re still working on it.”

“Okay,” he said. “Put together a complete list. Get it to me as soon as you have it. And, Gunther—”

“Yes?”

“Assume we’re going to have to use it.”

Nicholson was loitering in the dining room with several of his passengers when his commlink vibrated. “Command call, sir,” said the AI’s voice.

He excused himself and retreated to a private inner lounge. “Put it through, Lori.”

Marcel Clairveau materialized. “Erik,” he said, “I need your help.”

“Of course. What can I do for you?”

“You’re aware that we have no assurances the people on the ground will ever be able to reach orbit.”

“I understand the situation completely.” To Nicholson, facing ruin and disgrace whatever he did, it was hard to get emotionally worked up. So he had to make an effort to show that he was dismayed.

“There might be another way to go. If we have to. It would be on the desperate side, but it would be prudent for us to be prepared.” He paused, looking steadily into Nicholson’s eyes. “We’ll require your assistance.”

“You know I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. We need some volunteers, especially anyone with experience working in space, any engineers, anybody who has helped with large-scale construction. And a welder. Or several welders. But we have to have at least one.”

Nicholson shook his head, puzzled. “May I ask why, Captain?”

“Some of them, the ones who are willing, will be given a couple of days’ training. Then, if we need to go ahead with the alternative plan, most of them will go outside.”

“My God, Marcel.” Nicholson’s pulse began to pound. “Have you lost your mind?”

“We’ll be very careful, Erik. We’ll do it only as a last resort.”

“I don’t care how careful you plan to be. I’m not going to permit my passengers to be sent outside. You have any idea how Corporate would react if I allowed something like that?”

“Corporate might not be too upset if you succeeded in rescuing MacAllister.”

“No,” he said. “It’s out of the question.”

Marcel’s image gazed at him. “You understand there’ll be an investigation when it’s over. I’d have no choice but to file a complaint against you.”

“File and be damned!” he said. “I won’t let you risk my passengers.”

When darkness fell Wendy reported that they’d covered another twenty-four kilometers. By far their best day yet. That was attributable largely to the fact that the ground had become easier, and both MacAllister and Nightingale seemed to be growing accustomed to the routine.

They stopped by a stream, caught some fish, and cooked them. MacAllister acted as taster this time. He swallowed a small piece and became almost immediately violently ill. They threw the rest back and used the last of the reddimeals.

MacAllister was still retching at midnight, when Jerry rose. (They’d all picked up his habit of referring to it by Morgan’s first name. It seemed less threatening that way.) The disk was quite clear. It was in a half-moon phase.

The gas giant was well above the trees before his stomach settled down enough to let him sleep. By dawn he was back to his normal abrasive self. He refused Hutch’s offer to give him a couple more hours to rest.

“No time,” he said, directing their attention toward Morgan. “Clock’s running.”

They set off at a good pace. The assorted wounds from the battle on the river were healing. Nightingale had soaked his blisters in warm water and medications, so even he was feeling better.

The land was flat and the walking easy. During the late afternoon, they broke by the side of a stream, and Marcel told them they were within seventy-five kilometers of the lander.

Plenty of time. “What’s the northern coast look like?” Hutch asked.

“It’s holding.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s touch-and-go,” he said. “We think you’ll be all right.”

Despite the good news, they pushed hard. Hutch shortened their breaks, and they literally ate on the march. Twice they were attacked, once by a group of things that looked like tumbleweeds, but which tried to sting and take down Hutch; and later, toward the end of the afternoon, by a flock of redbirds.

Nightingale recognized the redbirds as the same creatures that had overwhelmed the original expedition. This time there were fewer of them, and they were beaten off with relative ease. Kellie and Chiang were gouged during the incidents, but neither injury was severe.

Late that afternoon, they came across a field of magnificent purple blossoms. The flowers resembled giant orchids, supported by thick green stalks. They were within sixty-three kilometers of the lander, with four days remaining.

They hoped.

Nightingale looked exhausted, so Hutch decided to quit for an hour. They were, she thought in good shape.

They’d sampled several different types of fruit by then and had found a couple they enjoyed. Mostly they were berries of a fairly tough nature, inured to the climate, but edible (and almost tasty) all the same. They located some, passed them around, and were glad to get off their feet.

Hutch wasn’t hungry, and ate only enough to satisfy her conscience. Then she got up.

“Where you going?” asked Chiang.

“Washroom,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Wait.” Kellie jumped up. “I’ll ride shotgun.”

Hutch waved her away. The orchid patch was isolated, and beyond it they could see for a long distance. Nothing could approach unnoticed. “It’s okay. I’ll yell if I need help.” She walked into the shrubbery.

After she’d finished, lured by the exquisite beauty of the giant blossoms, she took a few minutes in seclusion to enjoy the sense of well-being attendant on the forest. The day had grown uncharacteristically warm, and she liked the scent of the woods, mint and musk and pine and maybe orange. Consequently she left the e-suit off.

She approached one of the blossoms and stood before it. She stroked the petal, which was erotically soft.

Hutch regretted that these magnificent flowers were about to go extinct, and wondered whether it might be possible to rescue some pollen, take it back, and reproduce them at home. She walked from one to the next, gazing at each. At the fragile gold stamen and the long green shaft of the pistil, surging up from the receptacle. She stopped in front of one. The woods grew utterly still. She glanced around to be sure no one was watching, wondered why she cared, and stroked the pistil with her fingertips. Caressed it and felt it throb gently under her touch.

“You okay, Hutch?”

She jumped, thinking that Kellie had come up behind her, but the voice was on the link.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Be back in a minute.”

A tide of inexpressible well-being rose through her. She took the pistil in her hands, drew it against her cheek, and luxuriated in its warmth.

The flower moved.

The soft sheaths of the petals brushed her face. She inhaled the sweet green scent, and the burden of the last few days dropped away.

She rubbed her shoulders and cheek against the blossom. Closed her eyes. Wished that she could stop time. Felt a tide of ecstasy sweep through her. She came thoroughly alive, rode some sort of wave, understood she was living through a moment she would remember forever.

She rocked slowly in the flower’s embrace. Fondled the pistil. Felt the last of her inhibitions melt.

The blossom moved with her. Entwined her. Caressed her.

She got out of her blouse.

The outside world faded.

And she gave herself to it.

She was drowning when the voices pulled her back. But they were on the link and far away. Of no concern. She let them go.

Everything seemed far away. She drank the sensations of the moment, and laughed because there was something perverted about all this, but she couldn’t quite pin it down and didn’t really care. She just hoped nobody walked out of the woods and saw what she was doing.

And then she didn’t care about that either.

She wasn’t sure precisely when the light grew harsh, when the erotics switched off and the sheer joy vanished and she was simply looking out of a cave, as if she were buried somewhere back in her brain, unable to feel, unable to control her body. She thought she was in danger, but she couldn’t rouse herself to care. Then something was tugging at her, and the voices became urgent. There was a great deal of pulling and shoving. The petals gave way to the hard earth, and she was on the ground. They were all kneeling around her and Kellie was applying ointment, telling her to keep still, assuring her she’d be okay. “Trying to punch out a tree?” asked MacAllister, using the coital expression of the moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

The blossom lay blackened and torn. Its fragile petals were scattered, and the pistil was broken. She was sorry for that.

“Come on, Hutch, talk to me.”

The other flowers swayed in sync. Or was it a breeze causing the effect?

Her neck, arms, and face burned. “That’s quite a ride,” she said. And giggled.

Kellie looked at her disapprovingly. “At your age, you should know better.”

“It must put out an allergen,” said Nightingale. “Apparently pretty strong stuff.”

“I guess.” Hutch still felt detached. As if she were curled up inside her brain. And she was resentful.

“I think you’re a little too big for it,” Nightingale explained. “But it was doing its damnedest when we got here.”

“Why do I hurt?” she asked.

“It tried to digest you, Hutch.”

Kellie was finished with the medication, so they activated her suit. That had the effect of getting her a supply of air with the peculiarities added by the environment filtered out. The sense that everything was funny and that they should have let her alone began to fade. She held out her arms and looked at dark patches of skin.

“Enzymes were already working when we took you out,” said Kellie.

“Psychotic flower,” she said.

Chiang laughed. “And oversexed Earth babes.”

Her clothing was in tatters, and Nightingale produced one of the Star jumpsuits they’d recovered from the lander. “It looks big, but it’s the smallest we have.”

She was shivering now. And embarrassed. My God, what had she been doing when they found her? “I can’t believe that happened,” she said.

“Do you remember your first rule?” asked Nightingale.

“Yeah.” Nobody goes off alone.

She couldn’t walk. “Some pretty good burns there,” said Kellie. “We’d better stop here for the night. See how you are tomorrow.”

She didn’t object when they carried her back. They laid her down and built a fire. She closed her eyes and recalled an incident when she’d been about thirteen, the first time she’d allowed a boy to get inside her blouse. It had been in a utility shed out back of the house, and her mother had walked in on them. The boy had tried to brazen it out, to pretend nothing had happened, but Hutch had been humiliated, had gone to her room and thought the world was about to end, even though she’d extracted a promise that her father would not be told. This in return for a guarantee that it would not happen again. It hadn’t. At least not during that summer.

She felt a similar level of humiliation. Lying with her eyes closed, hearing no conversation because everyone was off-channel so as not to disturb her, she listened to the fire and to the occasional sound of footsteps, and wished she could disappear somewhere. Her reputation was demolished. And with MacAllister here, of all people. He’d eventually write an account of all this, and Hutch and the blossom could expect to show up on Universal News.

Was there anybody else, she wondered, in the whole history of the species, who had tried to make it with a plant?

It was dark when she woke. The fire had died down, and she could see Kellie seated on a log nearby. The flickering light threw moving shadows across her features.

The giant blossom had shown up in her dreams, part terrifying, part exhilarating. For a while she lay quietly, thinking about it, hoping to assign the entire experience to fantasy. But it had happened.

She decided that she would sue the Academy when she got home.

“You awake?” Kellie asked.

“Reluctantly.”

She smiled and kept her voice low. “Don’t worry about it.” And, after a moment: “Was it really that good?”

“How do you mean?”

“You looked as if you were having a great time.”

“Yeah. I guess I was.” She pulled herself up. “How late is it?” Morgan was directly overhead, getting bigger all the time. Half the giant world was in shadow.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“What can I tell you, Kellie? I just lost control of everything.”

Kellie stirred the fire. Sparks rose into the night. “A big pitcher plant. It’s a strange place.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“It could have happened to either of us. But everyone understands.” She looked at Hutch’s right arm. “You should be all right in the morning.” Apparently during the encounter Hutch had succeeded in getting altogether out of her clothes. She had burns on both legs, her right arm, her pelvic area, waist, breasts, throat, and face. “You were a mess when we brought you back here,” Kellie added with a smile.

Hutch wanted to change the subject. “We lost a little time today.”

“Not really. We did all right. Randy was done for the day anyhow.”

Hutch stared off into the darkness. She could see the outlines of the giant blossoms against the sky. “Randy thinks they have eyes,” Kellie said.

She shuddered. Hutch had been assigning the experience to a simple programmed force of nature. But eyes. That made it personal.

“Maybe not exactly eyes,” she continued, “but light receptors that are pretty sophisticated. He says he thinks the local plant life is far beyond anything we’ve seen elsewhere.”

Hutch didn’t like being so close to them. She felt violated.

“He thinks they may even have a kind of nervous system. He’s looked at a couple of the smaller ones. They don’t like being uprooted or dissected.”

“How do you mean, they don’t like it?”

“The parts move.”

“They sure do,” she said.

The Edward J. Zwick arrived in the Maleiva area without fanfare. Canyon looked at Morgan’s World through the scopes, and at Deep-six, and felt sorry for the people trapped on the ground.

Zwick was named for a journalist who’d been killed while covering one of the numerous border wars in South America at the end of the century. Its captain was a thirty-eight-year-old former Peacekeeper named Miles Chastain. Miles was tall, lean, quiet. Something in his manner made Canyon uncomfortable. The man always seemed so serious.

He was, Canyon thought, the sort of person to have on your side if war broke out, but not someone you’d routinely invite for dinner. He had never been able to get close to the captain on the long voyage from Earth.

Emma had complained that Wilfrid, the AI, was better company. Certainly he was friendlier. Her attitude suggested the absurdity of his earlier suspicion that an affair of the heart was being conducted in the midnight corridors of the Zwick.

The captain spent most of his time in the cockpit or in his private quarters. He never initiated conversation unless business called for it. And once they arrived in orbit around Deepsix, there was really little for him to do except await the collision.

His commlink vibrated. It was Emma. “August,” she said, “I just overheard an odd conversation between Kellie Collier and Clairveau.”

“Really? What about?”

“Clairveau was wondering why they were late getting started. Kellie Collier told him that Hutchins was resting. That she’d been attacked by a plant.”

“By a plant?”

“That’s what she said.”

XVIII

Put men and women in the same room and everyone’s IQ drops thirty-six points. Psychologists have recorded it, tests have shown it, studies leave no doubt. Passion doth make fools of us all.

—Gregory MacAllister, “Love and Chocolate,” Targets of Opportunity

Hours to breakup (est): 140

Lori’s matronly image appeared on Nicholson’s command screen. The AI was wearing a formal black suit with a white scarf. That was designed to impress him that the business she wished to transact was quite serious. Of course, he knew what it was.

“I think it’s a mistake to refuse to help,” she said.

“My first duty is the safety of my passengers, Lori.”

“The regulations are a bit murky in this situation. In any case, one of your passengers is in extremis. In addition, you have instructions from Corporate to cooperate with any rescue effort.”

“That transmission won’t be worth a damn if somebody volunteers and gets killed.”

“I quite agree, Captain. But I have to point out that if the current situation does not change, and Mr. MacAllister loses his life, you will be in severe difficulty for having withheld assistance.”

“I know.”

“The only course that might get you through undamaged is to help where you can and hope no one is injured. If that happens...”

Nicholson ran his fingers through his hair. He could not see which course was safer.

“It is not my decision, Captain,” she said. “But it is my responsibility to offer counsel. Do you wish me to contact Captain Clairveau?”

Marcel had instructed Beekman to continue working on the extraction plan. He intended to have another try at persuading Nicholson to help. But he needed to give him time to think about the decision he’d made. Time to fret.

The auxiliary screen began to blink. CAPTAIN NICHOLSON WANTS TO SPEAK WITH YOU.

It was quicker than he’d expected.

“We also need somebody who can rig a remote pump.”

“A remote pump?”

“Listen, Erik, I know how all this sounds. But I don’t have time to go over everything at the moment. We started late and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Please just trust me for now.”

“All right, Marcel. I’ll make an announcement at dinner this evening.”

“No. Not this evening. That’ll be too late. Round up whatever volunteers you can get now. I’ll want to talk to them, too. The ones who will help, and that we can use, will come over forthwith.”

“My God, Marcel, that’s pressing it a bit, isn’t it? Are we talking this minute?”

“Yes, we are.”

“At least tell me what you’re planning to do?”

“ We are going to make a skyhook, Erik.”

“Bill.”

“Yes, Marcel.”

“Tomorrow morning we’ll take all four ships out to the assembly. Coordinate with the other AIs.”

Nicholson got on the Star’s public address system, informed his passengers and crew that he knew everyone was aware of the difficulties that had been encountered extracting the landing party from Maleiva  III, but went on to describe them anyway. “We are still endeavoring,” he said, “to mount a rescue.” He gazed steadily into the lens, imagining himself as an old warrior rallying the troops to victory. “To provide insurance that we succeed,” he continued, “we need your help.

“Let me now introduce Captain Clairveau of the Wendy Jay, who’ll explain what we hope to be able to do. I urge you to listen carefully, and if you feel you can assist, please volunteer.

“Captain Clairveau.”

Marcel explained the general plan and made an emotional plea for passengers and crew to come forward, even those who possessed no special skills. “We’re going to have to train people, and we have only a couple of days to get it done. Most of the volunteers may be asked to go outside. That will depend on what happens on the ground.

“I’d like to underscore the fact that while going outside entails a degree of risk, it is not innately dangerous. The suits are safe. But I wanted you to know that up front. And I’d like to thank you in advance for listening.”

Within ten minutes after he signed off, Nicholson found himself awash with volunteers.

“There’s one more thing, Erik.”

My God. What else could the man want?

“We both know this operation is going to require extremely close coordination among the four vessels. There is simply no margin for error.”

“I understand that. What do you need?”

Marcel looked down from the overhead screen. It struck Nicholson that the man was aging before his eyes. “During the operation, I’ll want you to turn control of the Star over to us. We’ll run everything from here.”

“I can’t do that, Marcel. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It’s against the regs.”

Marcel took a moment before responding. “If we don’t do it this way, we can’t possibly succeed.”

Nicholson shook his head. “There’s no way I can comply. That’s too much. No matter how the operation turned out, they’d hang me.”

Marcel stared at him a few moments. “Tell you what,” he said. “How about if we come over there? And run the operation from the Star?”

An hour seldom passed that Embry didn’t thank her good sense for passing on Hutch’s offer to go on the mission. She had mourned Toni’s death, and she wished she could do something for the others.

But if she’d learned anything from this experience, it was that you didn’t undertake potentially lethal assignments on the fly. These things required adequate preparation and planning. The sober truth was that a few people at the Academy hadn’t done their jobs, they’d tried to compensate by rushing Hutchins in, and now poor Hutch was stuck with paying the price.

During the first couple of days, before things went wrong, both she and Tom had simply been annoyed at the delay. She’d sent messages off to people at home, complaining about having to spend an extra month or so floating around in the middle of nowhere. She’d even told several of her friends that she was considering legal action against Hutchins and the Academy.

Tom had been more tolerant. He was apparently accustomed to Academy mismanagement and didn’t seem to expect them to be organized. He was not at all surprised that the original survey had missed the presence of ruins on Deepsix. “A planet’s a big place,” he’d told her. If the civilization had been in an early stage of development when the ice age hit, as was apparently the case, there would have been few cities to find. It was no wonder, he argued, that they hadn’t realized what they had. He’d have been impressed, he said, if they had detected it.

The turmoil on the ground was reflected in the apprehension onboard Wildside. Embry had experienced pangs of guilt when she realized the implication of the lost landers. She could not see how she was in any way responsible for any of this, and yet she was trying to take it on her own shoulders. Ridiculous.

She and Tom had from the beginning been sitting by the monitors listening to the conversations between the landing party and the command people on Wendy. When Clairveau had contacted them to let them know that a rescue vessel was on the way, she’d demanded to know how such a thing could be allowed to happen in the first place. He’d apologized, but explained that they simply could not provide for all contingencies. How could anyone have foreseen that both landers would be destroyed?

She might have replied that the second lander, the vehicle from the Evening Star, should not even have been there. It hadn’t been part of what passed for Academy planning. There’d been only one lander really available, so the risk had been considerable right from the start.

Circumstances. It all came down to circumstances. After her conversation with the captain of the Wendy Jay, Tom had argued that it just wasn’t always possible to eliminate the element of danger. It didn’t matter, he said, what someone had done or not done twenty years earlier. The only thing that mattered was the present situation. Hutchins had been given a directive, she’d decided the payoff was worth whatever risk might be involved, and she’d consequently chosen to accept the assignment. You couldn’t fault her for that.

But people had died, and more people might follow. It was hard for Embry to accept the position that nobody was responsible. When things went wrong, in her view, someone was always responsible.

But something positive was coming out of the wreckage. She and Scolari, left alone and forgotten on Wildside, save when somebody needed medical advice, had taken comfort in each other’s arms.

They listened to Canyon’s periodic reports on the news link, she with contempt, Tom with his usual tolerance. “He probably feels it just as much as we do,” he told her. “It’s just that for public consumption he has to let his feelings show. That’s what’s distasteful.”

She didn’t believe it. Canyon was exploiting the disaster, profiting by it, and was probably thanking his lucky stars he’d been sent out here.

She was sitting with Tom, talking about future plans, how they would handle things when they got home. They lived on opposite sides of the North American continent, and would be forced to conduct a virtual relationship for a while. Neither was quite ready yet to make a permanent commitment. But that was not necessarily a major detriment. In an age of sophisticated technology, there was little even of an intimate nature that could not be carried out at long range.

Tom was describing how they should get together during their vacations when the monitor buzzed. Incoming.

“Put it up, Bill,” he told the AI.

Clairveau’s image blinked on. He looked tired, she thought. Worn-out. “Tom,” he said, “I understand you have some lasers on board? Portables?”

“Yes. They have some back there somewhere.”

“Good. I need you to break them out. I’ll send a shuttle for them.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Embry. “Why do you need lasers?”

“To rescue your captain.”

“Really?” asked Tom. “How?”

“Later. I’m on the run at the moment.”

“Do you need help?”

“By all means,” said Clairveau. “We need all the help we can get.” When he’d signed off, she could feel the tension in the compartment. “Tom,” she said finally, “you don’t know anything about welding.”

“I know,” he said. “But how hard can it be?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Nicholson. As you’re aware, the original schedule called for us to leave our present position in two days, on Monday, and to withdraw approximately seventy million kilometers in order to be well out of the way when the collision occurs Saturday evening.

“We have, however, offered to assist in the rescue effort. That means we’ll be staying in the immediate area somewhat longer. I want to stress that the Evening Star will at no time be at hazard. Let me repeat that, there will be absolutely no danger to this ship. We’ll be away long before anyone need be concerned.

“You may wonder what part the Evening Star will play in rescuing the stranded scientists. We’re making a detailed explanation available on the ship’s net. Simply go to the Rescue site. A specially produced and embossed copy of the plan, which you may wish to keep as a souvenir of the occasion, will be distributed later today.

“We also intend to present everyone on board with a skyhook pin as a special memento.

“Ship’s meals this evening will be served compliments of Inter-Galactic Lines. Happy hour will begin, as usual, at five. If you have any questions, my officers will be available throughout the ship.

“Thank you very much for your patience during a difficult period. Be assured we will keep you informed as matters develop.”

Within minutes after the captain’s address, Marcel arrived with several people in tow. They were the team of mathematicians and physicists who were planning the backup mission. They were escorted to the temporary command center Nicholson had set up.

Nicholson sat quietly while they talked of releasing the asteroid, detaching a shaft and the net from the rest of the assembly, rotating it almost 360 degrees, and putting it on a trajectory for Deepsix. They traced the anticipated changes in stress on the shaft when the rest of the assembly was removed. They calculated how they could use four superluminals to rotate the shaft without breaking it.

The ideal length .for the shaft, they determined, would be 420 kilometers. The shaft would be removed from the asteroid end, said a tall, athletic-looking man introduced as John Something-or-Other, smiling at his feeble attempt to make a joke.

When they’d finished, there were several questions. Nicholson himself asked one: “Are we sure that a weld between the shaft, which must be made of a substance none of us has ever heard of, and the hull of a starship, will take?”

“It’ll work,” said a small, waspish young man. “We’ve already tried it.”

The conversation became sufficiently technical that Nicholson couldn’t follow it any longer, and after a while he slipped out. They all seemed to know what they were doing. Maybe there’d be a reasonably happy ending at that. Maybe he could even emerge as a hero.

They sent a shuttle for Tom, and he hadn’t been gone twenty minutes before Embry discovered she did not like being alone on Wildside. The ship was full of echoes and vokes. Of systems clicking on and shutting off. Of the sound of warm air flowing through blowers and ducts. Of the onboard electronic systems talking incessantly to themselves. Bill the AI inquired whether she was okay, and she had to say yes or he’d want to diagnose her problem. She couldn’t even ignore him because he would simply repeat the query, and he had endless patience.

It had endless patience. Best to keep the details straight.

She was not among those people who could entertain herself carrying on a conversation with an AI. Bill was, after all, only a simulation, not a real person. A lot of people tended to lose sight of that fact, and she’d had to refer several of them to the shrinks.

She was up front on the flight deck, seated in the pilot’s chair. Deepsix lay below her, a mass of oceans and glaciers save for the narrow green-brown belt along the equator. A huge snowstorm blanketed the continent they called Northern Tempus.

None of the other three ships was in the sky. She felt utterly alone. They’d invited her to move over to Wendy, but she’d declined. Packing was inconvenient, and anyhow she’d have to come back here if the rescue was successful. After all, it would only be a matter of a few days.

If things went badly, on the other hand, God knew when she could expect to get home. She didn’t want to seem indifferent, or cold-hearted, but she also didn’t want to spend the winter out here. If Hutch and the others were lost, another long delay would be likely, lasting probably several more weeks, while a new pilot came to Maleiva to recover Wildside.

Her link vibrated. She was grateful for the interruption. “Yes?” she said.

“Embry.” Marcel’s image popped up on one of the auxiliary screens. “How are you making out?”

“Okay.”

“I need a favor.”

“What can I do for you?”

“If we have to go to the backup operation, we’ll need all four ships. And we have to get set up so we’ll be ready to launch if needed. What I’m trying to tell you is that Wildside is going to be doing some maneuvering.”

“There’s no pilot over here, Marcel.”

“I know. We’re going to have Lori operate her.”

“Who’s Lori?”

“The Star’s AI.”

“The Star’s AI? What’s wrong with Bill?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll be happy to tell you about it when we get time.”

“Is it safe?”

“Sure. Now, can I get you to punch a code into the command console? It’s right in front of the pilot’s seat.”

“The black panel with the blinking lamps?”

“That’s it.” He gave her a string of numbers, and she dutifully entered them. “That allows me to talk directly with the AI,” he said. His eyes narrowed somewhat. “Now, you’re sure you’re doing okay?”

“I’m fine, Captain.”

“Good. So you know: Tomorrow we’re going to take Wildside out of orbit. You’ll be going out to the skyhook assembly with the rest of us. There’ll be a lot of activity when we get there, and we’ll be putting some people aboard your ship. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit tight. There’s no danger.”

“You mean to me. What about Hutch? What are her chances?”

“The truth?”

“Of course.”

“I’d say the chances are decent.”

He blinked off, and she sat staring at the blank screen. Then she opened a channel to the Evening Star, A young, female, redheaded simulation in the ship’s uniform appeared. “Good morning,” it said. “How may I help you?”

“When is the Star returning to Earth?”

“We are scheduled to depart Sunday the tenth, ma’am.” The day after the collision.

“Would it be possible to book passage?”

The simulation appeared to glance at a monitor, although Embry knew that was not necessary. “Yes, it would,” she said. “We have several excellent staterooms on our Festival Deck. Can I reserve one for you?”

With luck, she’d be able to bully the Academy into picking up the tab. “How much?” she asked.

“One-ten.”

Steep. “I’ll get back to you if I decide to do it,” she said. No need to commit now. If everything went well, and the rescue worked, she wouldn’t need it. And it would be a little embarrassing to be sitting over on the Star when Hutch and the others came back on board.