XIX

There’s not much to differentiate one savage from another, whether you find him in a jungle or on the streets of a modem city. They are best left to themselves, and are worth serious study only by those interested in manufacturing a better blowgun.

—Gregory MacAllister, The Modern World and Good Luck

Hours to breakup (est): 129

“Evening Star. How may we be of service?”

“This is John Drummond. On the Wendy Jay. I wonder if you could provide thrust information for the Star?”

“That would be no problem. Ship specifications are available. Please submit a transmission code.”

The electronics wizard they were looking for turned out to be little more than an adolescent. His name was Philip Zossimov. He was a product of the University of Moscow who served as a consultant to the British firm Technical Applications, Ltd. He had thick brown hair, a quiet demeanor, and an expression that implied he could do anything.

Beekman explained how they planned to manage the rescue. “But,” he said, “we need to find a way to hold the mouth of the net open.”

Zossimov asked to see pictures of the asteroid. “How are you arranging to get rid of it?” he asked. “The asteroid?”

“After we cut through the net,” Beekman said, “it will drift off on its own. We can make adjustments if it would help you in your task.”

“No,” he said. “Go ahead as you intend. But you’ll need a ring-shaped collar. I don’t suppose you happen to have one?”

“No. That’s why we needed you.”

“Yes. Very good. All right, we’ll have to make one.” He looked around at the working staff, obviously unimpressed. “It’s a two-part problem,” he said. “We install the collar at the front of the net to hold it open, and then, once the lander is inside, we have to close it to make sure it stays inside.”

“That’s correct.”

“All right. I’ll want to see the specs.”

“For...?”

“The ships. All of them.”

“Okay,” said Beekman. “I’ll arrange it.” He directed Bill to make them available. Then he turned back to Zossimov. “Philip,” he said, “can you do it?”

“Oh, yes, I can do it. We’ll need some parts, of course.”

“Cannibalize anything. Katie here will work with you. She’s a physicist with a specialty in quantum gravity. You don’t care about that. What’s important is that she knows Wendy. Do what you have to. But make it work.”

“There’s a possibility,” he said, “we may have to shut down one of the ships.”

“You can’t do that. We need all four for the maneuvers.”

“I see. What about life support?”

“We can evacuate one, if need be.”

Hutch was still showing the aftereffects of her bout with the blossom. They’d given her an extra hour and a half to sleep.

“We don’t have that kind of time,” she complained when they finally woke her.

“Randy needed the time, too,” Kellie said. “And this looked like a good way to provide it without laying more guilt on him for holding us up.”

They fed her a quick breakfast and got on the road.

While they walked, Hutch talked to Marcel, who seemed unduly irritable. He denied that he was feeling out of sorts, but she recognized that he was worried because they were falling behind schedule. She did what she could to allay his concerns. We’re close now, she told him. There don’t seem to be any problems we can’t handle. Try not to worry.

He asked about the orchid. Hutch looked accusingly at Kellie.

“I provided no details,” Kellie said privately.

“Just a minor skirmish with a man-eating plant,” Hutch told him.

“A plant? You mean an oversize Venus flytrap? Something like that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s close enough.”

When she’d signed off a few minutes later, Kellie grinned at her. “More like a woman-eating plant.”

They’d gone only a few more steps when MacAllister got a call. Incoming visual.

“Somebody wants to talk,” he told the others.

The image took shape, projected by MacAllister’s link. They were looking at a young man. Brushed-back attractive. Lean, angular jaw. Good smile. Dark brown hair neatly cut. He wore a white pullover shirt and gray slacks, and his expression suggested he understood he was intruding but hoped no one would mind.

“August Canyon,” said MacAllister.

The visitor looked pleased. “Good morning, Mr. MacAllister. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” He was seated on a fabric chair, which floated a meter or so above the ground, as they walked. “I know this is a difficult time for you. But I’m sure you’re aware that the entire world is following this. I wonder if you’d care to comment for the interglobal audience?”

“About Deepsix?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. This place is a pit. And I’ll admit to being scared half out of my mind.”

“Well. I’m sure you are.” He smiled pleasantly. “But help is on the way, of course?”

“No. As I understand it, no help is available.” MacAllister was falling behind the others, so he picked up his pace a bit. Canyon, of course, stayed right with him. “Tell me, you don’t happen to have a lander on board, I don’t suppose?”

“I’m afraid not. Wish we did. We thought we were just coming out here to record an astronomical event. Never occurred to anybody there might be a story on the ground, too.”

“Yes.” MacAllister looked over at Hutch. Hutch had also felt for a moment that they might have gotten lucky. But Marcel would have had the media vessel in his database, and would have known. Still, there was always human oversight. Common enough, and one hoped.

“Are we on now?” MacAllister asked. “Is this being broadcast somewhere?”

“No,” Canyon said. “We’re recording, but we wouldn’t broadcast. Not without your permission. But the public knows what’s happening here. And they’re concerned. Did you know that churches all over the world have been praying you’d come through this? There was a prayer meeting on the New White House lawn the other day.”

“They’re praying for me?” MacAllister looked shocked. “Most of them have damned me for an atheist.”

Canyon squirmed. “Everyone wants you to come out of this, Mr. MacAllister. All of you, that is.”

“Well, August, I have to tell you that I think that’s all goosefeathers. If you follow my meaning.”

Canyon smiled. “I don’t think you realize how much interest there is. Did you know that Parabola’s already started making a sim?”

“Really. How does it come out?”

Canyon put an aw shucks expression on his well-scrubbed features. “I guess they’re waiting to see.”

Kellie made a noise deep in her throat.

“August,” MacAllister said, “if you want to find out how we’re doing, you’re talking to the wrong person. Priscilla Hutchins over there is in charge. She knows more about the situation than I do.”

The image turned her way, and Hutch stepped into range of the scan so he could see her. Canyon kept her in view, but suddenly began speaking to his audience in a hushed, urgent tone. “This is Priscilla Hutchins, who was attacked last night by a killer plant. Priscilla, I wonder if you’d care to tell us precisely what happened.”

“It grabbed me from behind,” she said.

“What kind of plant was it?”

“Big.” Hutch glanced over at Kellie. “August, I don’t want to seem uncooperative, but time’s pressing.”

“I understand, Priscilla. And if you like, I’ll get out of your way until we can find a more auspicious moment. We’d like very much to set up a live interview, though. At your convenience. If we could just sit and talk for a while. About your feelings. What it’s like being on the ground under these circumstances.” He put on an expression that was intended to be sympathetic. “Whether you’re confident you’ll be able to get clear before, you know—” He showed a lot of teeth, suggesting he understood that he was being insensitive to their situation, but that his job required it.

“He’s a jerk,” Kellie said on a private channel. “Don’t give him anything.”

“Do what he asks,” said Nightingale, also privately. “There’s a lot in this for all of us. If we play our cards right. Why not cooperate with him?”

That had been Hutch’s thought. She could end up talking to management groups for eight thousand a throw. Maybe hire a ghostwriter to do her memoirs. That wasn’t bad. Her old friend Janet Allegri had recently published her account of the Omega mission, The Engines of God, and had made very good money.

And what the hell: Canyon had to make a living. Why should she make problems for him? Moreover, it would give them all something else to think about for a while. “Okay, August,” she said. “We’ll do it. Tonight. After dinner.”

XX

That anyone could believe the human animal was designed by a divine being defies all logic. The average human is little more than an ambitious monkey. He is moronic, self-centred, cowardly, bullied by his fellows, terrified that others will see him for what he is. One can only assume his creator was in something of a hurry, or was perhaps a member of an Olympian bureaucracy. The more pious among us should pray that next time he does the job right. But we might in justice concede that there is one virtue to be found in the beast: he is persistent.

 —Gregory MacAllister, Bridge with the Polynesians

Hours to breakup (est): 123

“Can we really do it?”

John Drummond nodded. He was actually on Wendy, virtually in the Star planning room. “Marcel, it depends on the altitude they can reach with the lander.”

“How high does it have to go?”

“At least ten thousand meters. Below that, we can’t hope to control events.”

Beekman indicated his agreement. “The higher they can take the lander, the better our chances,” he said.

“We have to know in advance,” continued Drummond, “how high they can go so we can plan the insertion.”

“We have no way to determine—”

“Marcel, it would be a considerable help.”

“I don’t really care how much help it would be. There’s no way to find out. Assume they can make ten thousand. And proceed accordingly.”

Drummond looked pained. “You’re sure? We can’t have them do a test run when they get to the lander? If we knew what we were dealing with—”

“We can’t do a test run because to make the test valid, she’d have to exhaust the spike. That would mean a very hard bounce going down.”

“How about a computer simulation?”

“The data stream from the lander is very likely going to be unreliable. Let’s just make the assumption at ten thousand and get it done. Okay?” He was trying to keep the irritation out of his voice but not having much luck.

Drummond sighed. “This is becoming a speculative exercise, Marcel.”

“Of course it is, John. We can do only what we can do. What about getting the shaft away from the assembly and aimed in the right direction? Can we do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “We have to turn it around. I can’t see that it’ll be a problem. But it will be a delicate maneuver.

“You have only four vessels. One of them can pour it on—”

“The Evening Star.”

“The Evening Star” said Beekman. “But it’s still only four ships trying to wrestle a four-hundred-kilometer-long shaft onto a vector. Without breaking anything. That’s the real risk. Put any strain at all on the shaft and it’s going to snap and that’ll be the end of the project. But we can do it.”

“All right, then.” Marcel felt better than he had since the quake. “Let’s make it happen. John, I want you to help set up the timetable. We’ve got a couple of systems designers coming over with the people from the Star. Use them as you need them. Get Bill to coordinate with the AIs in the other ships.” He looked over at Beekman. “How about our welder?”

“We’ve got one. Name’s Janet Hazelhurst. She spent a few years doing orbital construction until she got married. Says she knows what it’s about, but it’s been a while and she’ll step aside if we have anybody better. She claims, though, that she can do whatever has to be done.”

“Do we have anybody better?”

“No, Captain, we do not.”

“All right. Let’s hope she’s a good teacher. Assign forty volunteers to her and have her show them the fine points of welding. Get them started right away.”

“Who’s going to do the instruction on the e-suits?”

“Miles Chastain is on Zwick. He’s a good man, and I’m sure he’ll help. We’ll get him over here right away.” Marcel checked his notes. “Gunther, we’re going to need some clips to hold the net together. Do we have a metal worker?”

They had two. One was a retiree from Hamburg, the other a Chinese entrepreneur. Marcel brought them in and explained what was needed. Could it be done?

How much time did they have?

Three days. Tops.

Yes. It should be sufficient. But they would need help. Marcel assigned them a couple of world-class physicists as gofers.

And they would need metal. Lots of metal.

That could be a problem. Starships did not carry much expendable metal.

Bill broke in: “Captain, the people from the Evening Star have been assembled in the Bryant Auditorium and await your pleasure.”

Marcel acknowledged. “Let’s go say hello to our volunteers.”

Within the hour, teams were going through Wendy, compartment by compartment, dismantling side panels from beds, wall sections, and anything else that was metallic. In the meantime, the retiree and the entrepreneur began to jury-rig their equipment. It was a challenge, but they would, by God, make it happen.

At about the time Beekman’s bed was being taken apart, all four superluminals left orbit.

Canyon’s commlink vibrated. It was Chastain. He brought the image up. The captain was seated in the cockpit. “August,” he said, “in case you’re wondering, we’re headed out to the assembly. You might be able to get some good visuals.”

“Yes,” said Canyon. “I’ve done a few interviews on it. I’ll tell you, Miles, I wish it had turned out to be an alien ship. It’s a long piece of metal, but it’s still just a piece of metal.”

“I know. I’ve also received a request from Captain Clairveau on Wendy. They’re still working on ways to bail out their people, and they want our help. So I’m putting Zwick at their disposal.”

“Good,” said Canyon, thinking how well that would play. UNN to the rescue. “But why do they need us? What do they want us to do?”

“I don’t have the details.” He glanced at the time. “There’s a briefing in four minutes. I’ll pipe it in. You might want to inform Emma.”

Canyon nodded. However the scenario went, it couldn’t help but translate into a huge boost in the ratings. Who out there would be so jaded as not to watch?

Janet Hazelhursf took control of her volunteers in the Bryant Auditorium. They were required to sign a document holding Trans-Galactic harmless in the event of misadventure. When that had been accomplished, Captain Clairveau of the Wendy Jay talked to them about the dangers of the situation. “We hope that you won’t have to go outside,” he said. “I want to emphasize that your training is precautionary only.”

Janet noted that some of the volunteers looked disappointed to hear it. That, she thought, was an encouraging start.

“If you do have to go out,” Clairveau continued, “we’ll do everything possible to minimize the risk. But to be honest, it’ll be in your hands. The real danger arises because of your lack of experience in what we’ll be asking you to do. You’ll be functioning in a zero-gee environment, and you’ll be using lasers.

“The e-suit that you’ll be wearing will be comfortable. It’ll keep you warm, and it is almost foolproof. But it will not withstand a laser, so we’ll expect you to be careful. We’re going to show you how to use the lasers, how to weld, and how to do it in zero gee. And how to do it safely. You’ll have an opportunity to practice under zero-gee conditions inside the ship. You’ll do nothing for the next three days except practice.”

Clairveau was tall, good-looking, confident. Janet was inclined to trust him. “As you know,” he continued, “Morgan’s World is getting close. That means there’ll be some debris floating around out there. Rocks. Dust. Ice. Who knows—

“We’ll have sensors on the lookout constantly. But there’s no way to be absolutely safe. Consequently, if any of you want to rethink doing this, we’ll understand.”

A few did.

“I have people at home who depend on me.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to help, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”

“I have kids.”

“Sometimes I have a problem with heights.”

Most stayed.

Janet was newly widowed. Not that she minded. Her ex had always been something of a bore. He’d had no imagination, had spent a lifetime watching himself portray Robin Hood and George Washington and Leonidas at Thermopylae (except that in his version the Spartans won), and his idea of a romantic evening out consisted of having dinner at the lodge with his buddies.

She’d considered not renewing every time extension came up. But she’d never taken that fatal step because her husband had loved her. He’d remained faithful, God help her, and had always remembered birthdays and anniversaries. They’d had two good children, and he had been an exemplar of a father. She could not have failed to renew without devastating him, and there was no way she could have brought herself to do that. So she’d stayed with him, bored and yearning for excitement, through all those long years.

Everyone thought they were an ideal couple. I wish my George were more like your Will. Will had even retained his good looks, although the smile had lost some of the old electricity. When an undetected aneurysm killed him, she’d mourned for an appropriate period, and then boarded the Evening Star, as she told her friends, to try to get past her loss.

Her fellow passengers knew nothing of all this. Janet had discovered that she loved her newfound freedom, and she’d been having a pretty good time.

Now she had an opportunity to call on an old skill and do something heroic. She was charged with the responsibility to train the volunteers in welding and cutting techniques. Marcel had sat with her, and they’d planned how they would handle the operation. She started by asking who knew what a weld was. She demonstrated by joining two pieces of metal.

“Simple,” she said.

She let one of the volunteers do it.

The trick to achieving a proper weld, she informed her students, was to get intimate contact between the two surfaces. Expose clean metal. Then the atoms can be joined properly. Intimately. It was her favorite term. When we’re finished, the atoms in the two pieces will be as close to each other as the atoms in either piece are to each other. That was the goal.

She explained proper technique, demonstrated, let them try it, and kept them at it until they could do it without thinking. They practiced cutting up shelving that was no longer in use, taking apart storage bins and slicing cabinets. Then they put everything back together.

“It’s easy to do in here,” she warned them. “When you get outside, you’ll find you have a lot to think about. But the job is the same, and the technique is the same. Just do not allow yourself to be distracted.”

She had some pieces of what they all called impossibilium, the material from which the assembly was made. They practiced cutting it and welding it back together. She emphasized safety, and booted three who were too casual in their approach. “Mistakes will cost,” she told them. “Careless will get you killed. Or will kill someone else.” And later: “It’s really not hard. But you have to keep your mind on what you’re doing.”

She sent them off to dinner and brought them back for another round.

This time, when she gave them a chance to leave, everyone stayed.

They worked until almost 11:00 p.m. Then she thanked them for their attention, dismissed them, and told them they would start next day at six. “We’ll be working in our e-suits tomorrow,” she said. “I want you to get used to them.”

Someone wanted to know whether that meant they were going outside after all.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.” And she was pleased to hear them grumble.

The Evening Star offered a handful of compartments to Marcel’s team. Unfortunately, no VIP accommodation remained available for the captain himself. Nicholson offered, in the time-honored tradition, to donate his own quarters to his visitor. Marcel, as was expected, replied that would never do, and that he would be pleased to take whatever could be had. A cot by the forward mixer, he said, would serve the purpose. He received a unit on the port side amidships that was far more comfortable, and more spacious by half, than his quarters on Wendy.

It was late morning when he left the welders, and he’d been up all night. He climbed out of his uniform and lay down, planning to nap for a half hour before returning to Nicholson’s bridge. He’d barely closed his eyes when his link chimed.

“Marcel?” It was Abel Kinder’s voice. Abel was the senior climatologist on Wendy. He was heading a team monitoring conditions around Deepsix for signs of planetary disintegration.

“Hello, Abel,” he said. “What do you have?”

“Some serious storms, looks like. And an intensification of seismic activity.”

“Any of it in the tower area?”

“They’re going to have some movement, but the worst of it should be northeast of them. At sea.”

“What about the storms?”

“Big ones are developing. What’s happening is that the atmosphere responds to Morgan’s gravitational pull just the way the oceans do. So you have big slugs of air and water moving around the planet. Everything heats up from the tidal activity. The normal scheme of things is becoming unhinged. Cold water shows up in warm latitudes, the high-pressure areas over the poles get disrupted ...”

“Bottom line, Abel?”

“Hard to say. The weather machine is being turned to soup. Anything can happen. You’ll want to warn your people to be on the lookout for hurricanes, tornadoes, God knows what. We don’t have enough sensors on the ground to be able to monitor everything, so we can’t even promise an advance warning.”

“Okay.”

“They’re just going to have to stay loose.”

“Thanks, Abel.”

“One more thing. These storms’ll be big. Unlike anything anybody’s ever seen at home. Category seventeen stuff.”

XXI

Memorials are polite fictions erected in the general pretense that we are selfless and generous, compassionate to those in need, brave in a just cause, faithful unto death. To establish the absurdity of these conceits, one need only glance at the conditions which inevitably erupt whenever police protection, however briefly, fails.

 —Gregory MacAllister, Gone to Glory

Hours to breakup (est): 107

They recorded eighteen kilometers before quitting for the day. When Canyon reappeared to conduct his interview, he told them to relax, that he’d do all the work, and that when they got home they’d discover they were all celebrities.

It was in fact simple enough. He tossed them softballs. Were they scared? What had they seen that most impressed them? Were there things on Deepsix worth saving? Who was this astronomer in the tower he’d heard about? What was the biggest surprise they’d seen on this world?

Hutch knew what hers had been, but she talked instead about the giant dragonflies.

He asked about their injuries. None major, said MacAllister. Just a few cuts and scratches. But he admitted to having learned a bitter lesson about keeping in decent physical condition. “You just never know,” he said, “when you’re going to be dumped into a forest on a strange world and made to walk two hundred kilometers. I recommend jogging for everyone.”

Later, when Jerry Morgan rose, it was almost the size of Earth’s moon. It was, of course, still at half phase, where it would remain. The upper and lower cloud belts, somber and autumn-colored, were flecked with gold. A broad dark band lay at the equator. Hutch could pick out the altitude in the northern hemisphere where Maleiva  III, Transitoria, and the tower would make their fatal plunge.

Under other circumstances, it would have been a strikingly lovely object.

NEWSLINE WITH AUGUST CANYON

“Earlier today, I spent some. time with the five brave people who are stranded on Maleiva III while the giant planet named for Jeremy Morgan bears down on them. Four are scientists. The fifth is the celebrated writer and editor, Gregory MacAllister. They’re trekking overland in a desperate effort to find a spacecraft left here twenty years ago. It’s their only hope for getting off the surface before this world ends, which it will do in six days.

“Will they succeed? Nobody knows, of course. But we’ll be talking to them in a special broadcast this evening. And after you’ve met them, I think you’II feel as I do, that if it can be done at all, these five people will bring it off-”

Marcel and Beekman increasingly gave way on the radio to surrogates, who kept them on course. Left to themselves, traveling through unfamiliar country, without identifiable landmarks or indeed landmarks of any kind, they’d have become hopelessly lost. There were jokes about Hutch’s ability to guide them by the position of the sun, which was nil. Even at night, with clear skies and rivers of stars, she’d have been helpless. If there was a marker star, either north or south, she couldn’t find it. She doubted that such a star would even be visible from the equator.

But it didn’t matter. Somebody was always on the circuit. Guide right.

Angle left.

No. Not around the hill. Go over it.

Then, without warning, Marcel had a mission for them: “There’s something up ahead. It’s not at all out of your way, and we’d like you to take a quick look.”

“What is it?”

“We don’t know. A structure.”

Hutch begrudged every minute spent off-trail. She glanced at the others, soliciting opinions. They were willing to indulge a minute. But only a minute. Nightingale thought it was a good idea. So long as it was indeed nearby. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll take a peek, let you know what it is. But then we’re moving on.”

It was on the shore of a lake, tangled deep in old-growth trees and shrubbery. They could see only a few glints of metal, and were unsure it was a structure at all, so completely had the forest embraced it.

They cut down some bushes, and Hutch’s first impression was that they’d found a storage dome. Until they uncovered a line of windows. Most were still intact. Kellie walked around to the rear. “It’s got a tail,” she reported..

“A tail?”

“Twin tails, in fact. It’s an aircraft.”

It had a flared bottom. Symbols were stenciled on one side, so faint as to be barely noticeable. There was a windscreen up front. The vehicle was about the size of a commuter airbus. But it had no wings. Ground transportation, decided Hutch, despite the tail. Unless they had antigravity.

Judging by the trees that had engulfed it, it had been there for centuries. Hutch paced it off, and they relayed visuals back to Wendy. Thirty-eight meters along its length, probably six in diameter. Crumpled severely to starboard, somewhat less on the port side.

Chiang climbed a tree, produced a lamp, and tried to look inside. “Nothing,” he said. “Get me a wet cloth.”

Kellie broke off a few flat-bladed leaves, soaked them cautiously at the edge of the lake, and handed them up. Chiang wiped the glass.

“You know,” said Kellie, “wings or not, this thing does have an aerodynamic design. Look at it.”

She was right. It had flowing lines and was tapered front and rear.

“What’s happening?” asked Canyon. They knew he habitually listened in on the allcom, and on conversations between the ground party and the orbiting ships.

Hutch brought him up to date. “I’ll give you the rest when we know what it is,” she said. “If it’s anything.”

Chiang had his lamp pressed against the glass. “There are rows of seats inside. Little ones. They look a bit thrown about.”

“Little seats?” asked MacAllister. “Same gauge as back at the tower?”

“Yes. Looks like.”

“Now that’s really odd.”

“Why?” asked Hutch.

“Look at the door.” It was hard to see behind the tangle of growth, but it was there. Hutch saw what was odd: the door was about the right size for her.

It was almost at ground level, and it even had a handle, but when MacAllister tried to open it the handle broke off. So they cut a hole through it.

The interior was dark. Hutch turned on her lamp and looked at roughly thirty rows of the small seats divided by a center aisle, five on either side. Some had been torn up and lay scattered around the cabin. She saw no sign of organic remains.

The floor creaked. It was covered by a black fabric that was still reasonably intact.

The bulkheads were slightly curved. They were water-stained and, toward the front, broken open. There were scorch marks.

The cockpit supported two seats. But unlike those in the body of the craft, they were full-size, large enough to accommodate her. One was broken, twisted off its mount. There was also some damage to the frame that supported the windscreen. She looked down at what had once been an instrument panel.

“Crashed and abandoned,” said Kellie, behind her.

“I think so.”

“What’s with the big seats?” asked MacAllister. “Who sat in them?”

Nightingale swept his light from front to rear. “It’s pretty clear we have two separate species here,” he said.

“Hawks and crickets?” suggested Hutch. “They’re both real?”

“Is that possible? On the same world?”

“We have more than one intelligent species on our world. What I wouldn’t expect to see is two technological species. But who knows?”

They examined a lower compartment that must have been used for cargo, but it was empty. And the power plant. It had employed liquid fuel to power a jet thrust. Air intakes. Plastic skirts around the base. Hutch got Beekman back on the circuit. “Are we sure,” she asked, “the locals never went high-tech?”

“That’s what the Academy says.”

“Okay. When you talk to the Academy again, you can tell them there’s a hovercraft down here.”

“Let’s go,” said MacAllister. “No more time to dawdle.”

Hutch stripped off a piece of a seat and put it into a sample bag.

They removed a few gauges from the instrument panel and bagged those as well. None had legible symbols, but it should be possible eventually to enhance them.

Chiang took Hutch aside. “There’s something else for you to look at. Over here.” In the woods.

He’d found a black stone wall.

It was about six meters long. And engraved. It had several rows of symbols, and a likeness of the hovercraft.

Hutch could assume that the rock had once been polished, that its edges had been sharp, that the inscription had been crisp and clear. But the weather had worn it down. And the inscription ran into the ground.

She checked the time.

“It’ll only take a minute,” said Chiang.

She nodded, and they dug it out while MacAllister urged them to move on. Two deeply etched parallel lines of symbols were engraved across the top, over the likeness of the wrecked vehicle. But this one was lean and powerful, undamaged, and she knew that the sculptor intended that it be perceived as hurtling through the sunlight.

Below the image of the hovercraft, two groups of characters, side by side, had been carved using block bold symbols. And beneath those two, another series, much more numerous, smaller, ten lines deep. Four across except the last line, which had only three. These might in fact have been using a different alphabet altogether. It was impossible to know because they were not block letters. Rather they had a delicate, complex character.

“What do you think?” Hutch asked. “What’s it say?”

“ ‘Ajax Hovercraft,’“ said MacAllister, who was fidgeting off to one side. “The two groups near the top constitute regional distribution centers, and these”—the smaller groups—”are local offices.”

“Anybody else want to try?” asked Kellie.

“We really should get moving,” said MacAllister.

Nightingale joined them. “Its proximity to the wreck,” he said, “suggests it’s a memorial.” He stared thoughtfully at it. “These”—the lines at the top—”are the names of the pilots. And the others are those of the passengers.”

“What about the top line?” asked Kellie.

“If it’s a memorial,” said MacAllister, “then it’s a salutary phrase, Stranger, Tell the Spartans, something on that order.”

“So what was going on here?” asked Chiang.

“Pretty obviously a traffic accident,” said Nightingale. “A wreck.”

“Of course. But where were they going?”

“Maybe,” said MacAllister, “they were migrant workers of some sort. Farmhands. Indentured labor.”

“Slaves?” suggested Chiang.

Nightingale nodded. “Maybe.”

“Do you put the names of slaves on a memorial?” Hutch shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“In human history,” said MacAllister, “people sometimes had great affection for their slaves.” He shrugged. “Who knows what an alien culture might be up to?”

They pressed forward late into the evening. When at last they’d made camp for the night, they did more interviews with Canyon. Chiang enjoyed the opportunity to perform on an international stage, to look heroic, to say the things that were expected of him. We’ll get home. Smile into the scanner. There are a lot of people rooting for us. But every time he glanced over at Kellie he thought he detected a trace of mockery in her smile.

When he’d finished he was embarrassed.

The others were just as shameless. Nightingale’s voice got deeper, MacAllister tried to suck his belly in, Kellie talked as if they didn’t have a care in the world. And even Hutchins, their forthright captain, couldn’t resist preening. They were for the moment famous, and it was affecting them.

Canyon talked to them individually. As he finished with them they drew around the fire and tried to pretend that nothing unusual had just happened. He was still on the circuit with Kellie, getting what he liked to call context.

Chiang disliked the forest at night. There was no way to maintain security. It would have required three guards to keep the possibility of a surprise attack to a minimum.

This was their eighth night out. He thought the count was right, but everything was beginning to run together and he was no longer sure. To date, no predator had tried a night assault. The probability, therefore, was that, if it were going to happen, it would have already occurred. Nevertheless, Chiang worried and fretted, as was his nature.

He could see Canyon’s image seated on a log facing Kellie. He was asking his questions, and she listened attentively, sometimes nodding, sometimes growing thoughtful. “Oh, yes,” she might be saying, “we’re confident we can get the lander working once we get there.” Or: “No, we really haven’t discussed that possibility. We don’t expect it to happen that way.” Although there was no logical basis for jealousy, Chiang was irritated anyhow. There was something in Canyon’s manner that seemed like a clumsy attempt at seduction.

In addition, Canyon couldn’t hide the fact that he really had no idea what the people on the ground were feeling. And he also revealed that his primary concern in all this was to ring up high numbers back home, to please his bosses, to move up the food chain. Taking pictures of a collision between two worlds had been precisely the right assignment for him. He could have delivered himself of a few generalities, It looks as if it’s going to be an incredible smash-up, call in, say, a couple of the astrophysicists on Wendy for color commentary, and it would all have worked fine.

But he just wasn’t the person to talk to people in trouble.

This was Chiang’s last thought. He’d been standing at the edge of the firelight, surveying the surrounding darkness, occasionally flashing his lamp into the night. And suddenly the world vanished, as if someone had folded it up and put it away.

MacAllister was also bored with Canyon. The previous night’s interviews had been transmitted a few hours later to Earth. It was a long ride, even at hypercom, and they would not appear on anybody’s screen for another day and a half. By then, probably, they would have found Tess, and the issue of survival would have been resolved. In their favor, he hoped. He imagined them spotting the abandoned spacecraft, hurrying toward it, climbing inside, pumping power into it, and flying back in the luxurious comfort of its passenger cabin to the tower. He could see them setting down and recovering the capacitors. Hutch and Kellie would install them with a minimum of fuss. Then they’d cheer as Tess lifted off and soared into orbit.

The trees sighed in the wind, and the fire crackled. He watched Kellie talking with Canyon, saw her pause, saw Canyon ask another question. He knew precisely what it would be.

“What are your thoughts when Morgan’s World rises every night, and you see that it keeps getting bigger?” (Tonight it would, he suspected, look like a Chinese balloon.)

“Is there anything you’d like to say to the folks back home?”

Yes, thought MacAllister. In spades, there is. Life is sweet.

The image of the newsman appeared solid, and even a trifle back-woodsy by firelight. He leaned toward Kellie, apparently listening intently, although MacAllister knew he was formulating his next question.

And in the middle of this pacific, sleepy scene, there came a sudden shriek.

Something sailed past MacAllister’s head. A few days earlier he’d have sat dumbfounded, wondering what was happening. But his reflexes had improved considerably. He shouted a warning and threw himself on the ground.

Rocks whipped past them. One hit his shoulder, and another struck his skull. There were more screams, high-pitched, rather like those of angry children. He was fumbling for his cutter. Somebody’s laser blazed out, and bushes erupted in fire. A tree, ripped through by a cutter beam, crashed to the ground.

A dart thunked into one of the fire logs. MacAllister saw movement in the trees; then crickets in furs charged into the camp. They were impossibly ugly savages, not at all like the robed figure who’d occupied the country chapel.

He got his weapon up just in time. Two of them were after him, with javelins. He cut them in half, the crickets and the javelins. He took out another, who was about to stab Kellie from behind. Hutch directed them to back into a tight circle, but MacAllister was too busy defending himself to try to get into a formation. Everything was utter confusion.

The crickets never stopped shrieking. Somebody cut one in two, from skull to sternum. Nightingale stepped into the middle of a charge and swung his cutter left and right. Limbs flew and the attack disintegrated. As suddenly as they’d come, the crickets broke and melted back into the forest.

Several bushes were ablaze. Something fell out of a tree and crashed beside him. It was carrying a javelin. It tried to get up and run, but MacAllister, enraged, slashed it anyhow, and the creature screamed and lay still.

Hutch and Kellie pursued the fight to the edge of the trees. Nightingale stood among those he’d killed, legs spread, cutter raised, like a modern Hector. The heroic stance was a bit much, but MacAllister was nonetheless impressed by his behavior. Well, put a man’s life on the line, he thought, and most of us can perform at a fairly high level.

The attack had disintegrated, and the sounds of battle seemed to be receding. Through it all, unfazed, Canyon remained seated in his armchair. He couldn’t see beyond the narrow range of the link, which had been set up on a stump. He simply kept demanding over and over to be told what was happening.

Universal News Network on the spot, thought MacAllister.

Nightingale finally explained they were being attacked.

Canyon kept talking, asking for details. Attacked by whom? Had anyone been hurt? MacAllister shut off the sound feed from the newsman and rubbed his head. It hurt, but he couldn’t tell through the field whether he was bleeding. Otherwise, he thought he was okay. Couple bumps, nothing more.

Marcel was back on the circuit, asking the same questions. “Crickets,” Kellie responded, although he couldn’t see her. “Talk in a minute.”

MacAllister was swept up in a curious combination of horror and exhilaration. By God, that had felt good. We’re all savages at heart, he thought.

Hutch came back into the camp, looked at him, and glanced around. “Everybody okay?” she asked.

Nightingale signaled he was fine. He was shining his lamp into the trees, assuring himself they were gone. “I guess we just met the locals.”

“How about you, Mac?”

“Alive and well,” said MacAllister. “I don’t think those little sons of bitches will be back soon.”

“Where’s Chiang?” she asked.

MacAllister stared down at one of the bodies. It had sickly pale skin with a greenish tint and a hairy ridged skull. Its eyes were open, but it seemed dead.

It would have stood not quite as high as his hip. When he poked it, the creature stirred and made a sad mewling sound.

Kellie’s voice broke in, subdued. “Over here,” she said. “I found him.”

Chiang lay still. Blood poured down inside his e-suit, leaking out of half a dozen wounds.

“Kill the suit,” said MacAllister.

“No.” Kellie had thrown herself on the ground beside him. Her voice was low and strange. “It’s all that’s holding him together.”

Hutch knelt and picked up his wrist. “Mac,” she said, “get the medkit.”

MacAllister turned and hurried over to Hutch’s backpack. “No pulse,” Hutch said.

“He’s not breathing.” Kellie’s voice was thick.

Reluctantly, they punched off the suit and Hutch tried direct administration of his air supply.

Somebody must have spoken Embry’s code because her voice came on the circuit. “Don’t move him,” she said.

And Marcel: “Put out guards. They may come back.”

“I got it,” said Nightingale.

Kellie said, “Burn anything that moves.”

“Do you have the kit yet?” Embry again.

“Mac’s getting it.”

“Mac, hurry up. What’s the bleeding look like? Let me see it.”

MacAllister returned with the medkit. Hutch took it and signaled for him to help Nightingale. Kellie pulled out a couple of pressure bandages and began applying them. Mac stood for a moment, staring down at Chiang. Then he turned away.

Nightingale was checking another dead attacker. MacAllister hoped Chiang’s assailant was among the corpses.

They stayed together and circled the campsite. The exobiologist looked drained. MacAllister wondered for the first time whether he might have been unfair years before to Nightingale. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Randy?” he said.

“Yeah.” Nightingale made a face like someone who’d just bitten into bad fruit. “There’s a little bit of deja vu about this.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I really hate this place.”

MacAllister nodded. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he meant by the phrase.

“Yeah. Me too.” Nightingale’s features hardened. He looked as if he were going to say more. But he only shrugged and looked away.

MacAllister listened to the conversation on the allcom.

“Give him the R.O.”

“Doing it now.”

“Kellie, you need to stop the blood. Clamp down tighter.”

“It’s not working, Embry.”

“Stay with it. Any pulse yet?”

“A trace.”

“Don’t give up. Kellie, get a blanket or something on him.” MacAllister looked toward the east, toward Deneb, while Chiang slipped away.

They buried him where he fell, during a ceremony at dawn. MacAllister, whose reputation ordinarily denied him the luxury of sentiment, found a stone, cut Chiang’s name and dates into it, and added the comment: DIED DEFENDING HIS FRIENDS.

They dug the grave deep and lowered him in. Kellie wanted to conduct the ceremony, but she kept choking up, and finally she asked Hutch to finish.

He did not belong to an organized church, Kellie said, although he had a strong faith. Hutch nodded, didn’t try to sort it out, and simply consigned him to the ground—she could no longer bring herself to say earth—observed that he had died too soon, and asked whatever god might be to take charge of him and to remember him.

Kellie stood paralyzed, resisting all offers of support, as they filled in the grave.

Nightingale announced that the attackers were vertebrates, but that their bones were hollow. “Birds?” asked MacAllister.

“At one time,” he said, “I think so.” He described filaments between arms and ribs that seemed to indicate that the species had only recently lost its flight capabilities.

They went through the creatures’ garments. There were pockets, which contained fruits and nuts and a few smooth rocks. Ammunition.

“Let’s get moving,” said Hutch.

“What about these things?” asked Nightingale. “Shouldn’t we bury them, too?”

Kellie’s face hardened. “Let their own take care of them.”

NEWSLINE WITH AUGUST CANYON

“Tonight we have bad news. An hour ago, the landing party was attacked— “

Beekman was looking out from a virtual cliff top over a turbulent ocean when Marcel arrived. Snow whipped across the crest and fell into the night, but it was a ground blizzard stirred up by fierce winds, and had nothing to do with the skies, which were clear. Morgan was high overhead.

The tides on Maleiva III were, as a matter of course, gentle. There was no moon, so the only visible effects were generated by the distant sun. But tonight, with the gas giant approaching, the sea was monstrous. Huge waves pounded the cliffs on Transitoria’s north coast.

“Tomorrow night,” he said, without turning toward Marcel.

Marcel sank against a bulkhead. “My God, Gunny. That’s still another day they’ve lost.”

“There are weaknesses in the range. Fault lines, Harry tells me. Worse than we thought. They’re going to give way tomorrow night.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. We’re sure.” He turned sad eyes toward Marcel. “There was no way we could know—”

“It’s okay. Not anybody’s fault.” A cold hand gripped his spine. “They’re still thirty klicks away.”

Beekman nodded. “I’d say they better get moving.”

XXII

Tides are like politics. They come andgo with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarefy good news.

 —Attributed to Gregory MacAllister by Henry Kilbum, Gregory MacAllister: Life and Times

Hours to breakup (est): 78

In fact, Canyon had belatedly realized there was still another big story developing: the reaction of the people on board the other ships to the plight of the ground team.

He’d become uncomfortable interviewing Hutchins and her other trapped rabbits. It was too much like talking to dead people. So he’d switched over and done human-interest stories on the other superluminals. He’d found a young woman who’d been the traveling companion of the reporter who’d died in the Evening Star lander. She’d wept and struggled to hold back a case of galloping hysteria, and on the whole it had just made for a marvelous show. There were several people who’d been personally skewered or whose fondest beliefs had been shredded by MacAllister. How did they feel now that MacAllister was in danger of his life? For the record, they delivered pieties, expressing their fondest hope that he could be brought safely out. Even when the interview had formally ended, most said they wished him well, that nobody deserved what was happening to him, but something in their voices belied the sentiments. Only one, a retired politician who’d run a campaign on the need for moral reform, damned him outright. “Nothing against the man personally,” he’d said, “but I think it’s a judgment. We’ll be better off without him.”

Everyone on the Wendy Jay had been hit by Chiang’s death. There was, he reflected, nothing like losing one of your own to bring home reality. Now they were worried about Kellie, and several of the younger males seemed stricken at the possibility of losing her, too. Her boss, Marcel Clairveau, regretted that he’d allowed her to go down to the surface. Occasionally, when he spoke of her, his voice trembled. That also made good copy.

He’d interviewed the physician left on Wildside about Nightingale. She expressed sorrow, of course, but it was a perfunctory response. He was quiet, she said, very reserved. Never got to know him. Canyon had done his homework and knew Nightingale’s background. There was a dark irony, he thought, that every time Nightingale touched down on this world, people died.

Canyon hadn’t said anything like that, at least not for public consumption. But the observation would show up in his broadcast after the situation had sorted itself out. He was putting a great deal of time into writing the spontaneous observations that he would make in the wake of the event.

Canyon knew the right questions to ask, and he was able to work most of his subjects up to a state of near hysteria. If Hutchins and her friends came out of this, he thought, they’d be heroes of the first order.

His own career prospects looked brighter than ever. What had begun as routine coverage of a planetary collision that was of interest primarily because the event was so rare and people liked fireworks, was instead turning into one of the human-interest stories of the decade. And it was all his.

“Marcel, you need to get some rest.” Worry lined Beekman’s eyes.

“I’m all right,” Marcel said. Too many things were happening just then.

“There’s no point exhausting yourself. Do that and you won’t be there when we need you.” Marcel had slept only intermittently during the past few days, and it had always been a jumpy kind of rest. “There’s nothing more for you to do at the moment. Why don’t you get off the bridge for a while? Go lie down.”

Marcel thought about it. The various elements of the extraction were going forward, and maybe he’d become little more than a kibitzer anyhow. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I will.” He propped his chin on his hands. “Gunny, what have we overlooked?”

“We’re in good shape. For the moment, there’s nothing more to be done.” He folded his arms and stood waiting for Marcel to retire.

Embry was sitting up front in the pilot’s seat, listening to the occasional crackle of conversation between the ground, Marcel, and Augie Canyon, who was interviewing Randy Nightingale. They sounded, she thought, in surprisingly good spirits, and she wondered how that could be.

Wildside had completed its movement, with the other three vessels, to a rendezvous near the assembly. Sitting in an empty ship while it fired thrusters and changed course had underscored her solitude. AIs were AIs and God knew she worked with them on a regular basis, as any practicing physician did. But somehow the voices that diagnosed a spinal problem or suggested a rejuvenation procedure were fundamentally different from an intelligent superluminal that made all its own decisions and on which she was the only passenger.

The message light blinked and an unfamiliar female face appeared on one of her screens. “Embry?” She was wearing an Academy arm patch.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“Embry, my name’s Katie Robinson.” Her diction was precise, and Embry wondered if she’d had theatrical experience. “We’re about to leave Wendy. We’re coming over and will be there in a few minutes. I’d like you to pack a bag. Get all your belongings. We’re going to bring you back with us.”

“May I ask why?” said Embry.

“Because we’re going to remove your life support.”

They arrived within thirty minutes and went directly to work. There were eight of them. They went down into the storage bay and stripped most of the metal from the bins, containers, cabinets, storage units, and dividers. Then they came topside and went through the compartments and the common room, doing much the same sort of thing.

Katie helped her clear out her own quarters. When she was finished they repeated the process, taking most of the metal: the bed panels, the lamps, a foldout table, a built-in cabinet. They thanked her, apologized for the inconvenience, loaded everything into their shuttle, including her, and left.

The trank hadn’t worked. Kellie listened to the sound of distant tides—they had finally camped near Bad News Bay—and watched Jerry Morgan, a vast swollen moon, sink toward the hills. The eastern sky had already begun to lighten. Hutch was their sentry, and her slim form leaned against a tree, just beyond the fire’s glow.

She gave up finally, pulled herself into a sitting position, and wrapped her arms around her knees.

“Did you love him, Kellie?” The voice startled her. It was MacAllister. He was lying with his back to her, but he rolled over now. His face was in shadow, and she couldn’t make out his expression.

“No,” she said. And, after a moment: “I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry.” He sat up and reached for the coffeepot.

“I know,” she said. “We’re all sorry.”

He poured a cup and offered her some. But she declined. She didn’t really want to put anything in her stomach.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think life is just one long series of blown opportunities.”

She nodded. “You know what I really hate,” she said. “Leaving him here. In this godforsaken place.”

“It’s no worse than any other, Kellie. He’ll never know the difference.”

She felt empty. “He was a good guy,” she said, biting down a wave of anger and tears. Suddenly the grief rose in her, and she couldn’t contain it. She clamped her teeth together and tried to hold on. MacAllister took her in his arms. “Let it come,” he said.

Hutch was talking to someone. Kellie had collected herself, tamped down the storm, and was feeling drained. She pour herself some water.

Hutch stiffened. Lifted her arms in frustration. Kellie knew the gesture, and it raised the hair on her scalp.

The conversation ended, and Hutch strode swiftly into the ring of the campfire. “Let’s move, folks. We’re down to our last day.” She knelt beside Nightingale and gently shook him.

“That can’t be right,” said MacAllister. “They told us we had until tomorrow night.”

“They’ve changed their minds. Come on, we have to get rolling.”

Mac needed no further prompting. He was searching for his toothbrush. “How far do we still have to go?” he asked.

“Thirty klicks,” she said. “Give or take.”

“In one day? We’ll never make it.”

“Yeah, we will.”

“Hutch,” Mac said privately, “it’s not as if we’re going to get there and you can turn the key and start the damned thing. How long’s it going to take to get it up and running? Assuming we can do it at all?”

“A few hours,” she admitted.

He looked at the approaching sunrise and rubbed his feet. “Then we have to get back to the tower and recover the capacitors. By what time?”

“Late tonight. Around midnight.”

He held out his hands helplessly. “We need to go to Plan B.”

Nightingale was watching while he tried to pull himself together. “What’s going on?” he asked.

She explained.

“I’ll be with you in a minute.” He limped down to the creek to wash his face in icy water and brush his teeth. Mac went with him.

“You okay?” she asked Kellie.

Kellie was fine. Kellie would never be better. “You and I are going to have to do a sprint,” she said.

“I know,” said Hutch.

“We’ll have to leave them.”

“Mac’s already been suggesting that.”

The tides were loud in Bad News Bay. They came out onto a promontory and looked out over the water. It was a vast inland sea, the far shore lost in the distance.

“Ground gets rough to the south,” Marcel told them. “Angle off your present course and head southwest for about a kilometer. There’s a small lake. Circle the lake and keep going, same direction. It looks like easier country.”

“Okay.”

Far below, the bay was peaceful. Gulls skimmed along the surface, and Hutch saw something that looked like a large turtle basking in the rising sun.

They turned and faced each other. “We’ll wait for you here,” said Nightingale.

Hutch nodded.

Kellie was looking from one of them to the other. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

They had checked with Marcel. They were on high ground, and should be safe from the tides.

The four of them walked together along the rim until they found an open area that would be wide enough to set the spacecraft down. “Since time’s pressing,” Hutch said, “we’re going to go to the tower first. Then we’ll be back for you.”

Kellie looked down the face of the cliff. “Don’t wander around in the dark,” she added.

“We won’t.”

Mac shook himself and rubbed his spine against a tree, not unlike an elephant, Hutch thought.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I love this plan. Anything that gets me off my feet.” He extended his hand and his voice softened. Became personal. “Good luck, ladies.”

Kellie pushed past the hand, embraced him, and planted a large wet kiss on his lips. “You’re a jerk, MacAllister,” she said. “But you’re worth saving.”

Hutch looked at Nightingale, hesitated, told herself what the hell, and repeated the ceremony.

Kellie, amused, shook her head. “Love fest,” she said. “Who’d’ve thought?”

Kellie and Hutch followed the shoreline for a time, angled away from it when Marcel told them to, and struck off again to the southwest. The land was heavily forested, marked with ravines and ridges, with rocky bluffs and narrow waterways, and with occasional mountains.

A herd of gray creatures with faces like camels and long floppy ears rumbled past in great ground-eating leaps and disappeared behind a line of hills.

Marcel sent them around a mountain and across a trail. Animal or something else? Of course, in a world in which flying creatures attacked in synchronized squadrons and hunting cats walked erect, the line between sentience and pure animal behavior had grown a bit murky.

They kept moving.

At about noon, in the middle of a forest, they came upon a balustrade. Above it, Hutch saw a coved dome. Two domes. Twins.

“By God,” said Kellie. “Look at that thing.”

The domes were connected by a cornice.

“It’s a temple.” Hutch stopped in her tracks and stared.

It had six columns. They were fluted and supported a triangular pediment, on which a frieze had been carved. The frieze depicted two crickets, one seated in a shell of some sort, the other standing. The one in the shell was handing something, a cylinder, to the other.

No. On closer inspection Hutch saw it was a scroll.

“Lovely,” said Kellie.

Hutch was glad for the excuse to stop moving for a minute. “It’s baroque,” she said. “Very close to eighteenth-century Parisian. Who would have thought...”

She could see an entrance hidden among the columns, and marble steps leading up to it. Kellie started toward them.

“No time,” said Hutch.

“There’s more over here.”

A cylindrical structure was set at right angles to the temple. Pedestals projected every few meters, and a sculpted frieze circled as much of the building as she could see. It had a polyhedral roof supported by braces, and was adorned by roll molding and a small dome. The figures in the frieze seemed to show crickets in various poses, talking, reading, picking fruit from trees, playing with their young. Some were on their knees before a sun symbol.

There might have been an entire city hidden within the trees. She caught the outlines of majestic buildings, resplendent with arches and rounded windows and parabolic roofs. With galleries and buttresses and spires. And overgrown courts and abandoned fountains.

It was not a city that had ever known artificial lighting or, probably, a printing press. But it was lovely beyond any comparable complex Hutch had seen before. The detritus of centuries had blown across it, burying it, encasing it within a tangle of branches and bushes and leaves. But it nevertheless made her blood run to stand before the silent structures.

It might have been that the unearthly beauty of the place was enhanced by the encroaching forest, or by the sense of timelessness, or by its diminutive scale.

They stood entranced, relaying the visuals to Wendy. This time only silence came back. No one was asking them to take a moment to explore.

They spent less than two minutes at the site. Then they hurried on. A rainstorm washed over them. Black clouds rolled in, and lightning bolts rippled down the sky.

They lost contact with Marcel for almost two hours. The rain continued steadily, then changed to sleet. Tremors periodically shook the ground, severely enough to throw both women off their feet.

“Lovely day for a stroll,” Kellie commented.

A line of trees appeared ahead. They plunged in. Something in the shrubbery went into a series of frenzied clicks. Hutch, in no mood for problems, and not wanting to give anything a clear shot at them at short range, cleared out the section with her laser. There were screeches, crashing around, animals charging off into the bush. They never got a good look at anything.

Marcel came back. “Bad weather?”

“Electrical storms.”

“We see them. But you’re doing fine. You should be there by early evening.”

“I hope so.”

“Hutch, I have another message for you from the Academy.”

“What’s it say?”

He hesitated. “It says they want you to take all precautions to avoid any further loss of life.”

“Good. Tell them I’d never have thought of it myself.”

“Hutch.”

“Tell them whatever you like. I don’t really care, Marcel.”

The sun broke through. The sky cleared, and they hurried on. Something they couldn’t quite make out tracked them for a while from the tops of a series of ridges. It ambled in the manner of an ape, but it apparently thought better of attempting an attack and eventually dropped out of sight.

“Scares me a little,” said Kellie.

“Why’s that?”

“At home, a cougar or a tiger or a gator, if it was hungry, would go for you. Most of these critters keep their distance.”

“You’re suggesting ...”

“They’re bright enough to know we’re more dangerous than we look.”

By late afternoon, when the light began to change, they were out in open country again. “Almost there,” Marcel said. “Five klicks.”

The ground was uneven and covered with thick grass. Hutch was spent. Kellie, with her longer legs, was managing a bit better. But she, too, looked weary.

Periodically they talked to Mac and Nightingale. They were, they said, enjoying the view. There’d been a high tide at about midday, and the water had come well up the cliff face. But they believed they had a substantial safety margin. MacAllister commented that he was more comfortable than he’d been since leaving the Star and didn’t know whether he’d ever get up on his feet again.

The sky turned purple and threatening.

“Three klicks.”

It was impossible to miss the worry in Marcel’s voice.

“If you can move a little quicker, it would be a good idea.”

The splotch of light that represented the sun sank toward a line of hills. Rain began to fall.

The lander, cold and silent, stood on the banks of a river so narrow it scarcely deserved the name. It was, in fact, an idyllic scene: a line of trees, a few rocks, the river, and the dying light. The trees marked the edge of the forest into which Tess’s crew had disappeared on that long-ago morning.

It seemed almost to be waiting for them. Hutch was pleased to see the old logo, the scroll within the orbiting star still defiantly crisp on the hatch. The lander was green and white, the colors all the Academy’s vehicles had worn in the early days. And the legend academy of science and technology shone proudly on its hull.

They jogged across the remaining ground, not all-out because they couldn’t see the holes and furrows. But Hutch remembered the voracious redbirds and glanced uneasily at the woods. “We’ve got Tess,” she told Marcel.

Marcel acknowledged, and she heard applause in the background.

Fortunately the hatch was closed. The ladder was still in place. Hutch climbed it, opened the manual control panel beside the airlock, pulled out the handle, and twisted it. The hatch clicked, and she pulled it open.

So far, so good.

They wasted no time getting through the inner door into the cabin. A layer of film and dirt covered the ports and windscreen, darkening the interior. Hutch sat down in the pilot’s seat and scanned the console. Everything appeared to have been properly shut down.

In back, Kellie opened the engine panel in the deck and exposed the reactor. “Do we know what we’re doing?” she asked.

“Find the boron. I’ll be right there.”

“Where are you going?”

She held up the collapsible container she’d taken from the Star lander. “Down to the river to get some water. You look for the boron.”

Hutch wished that the pilot twenty years ago had had the foresight to land at the water’s edge. The river was fifty meters away. She hurried down to it, filled the container, and dragged it back. When she got to the lander, Kellie showed her a canister.

“White powder?” she asked.

“That’s it.”

“So what now?”

“We start the reactor.” A metal cylinder about the size of her arm was attached to the side of the device. The cylinder was equipped with a small crank.

“How do we do that? Is there a switch?”

“We’ll have to jump-start it,” Hutch said. She shut down her e-suit and removed the Flickinger generator. “I’ll need yours, too.”

Kellie complied, turned off the power, and handed it over.

Hutch dug into her pack. “I have a connector cable here somewhere.”

Kellie disappeared in back for a moment and returned with one. She held it up for inspection. “Two inputs?” she asked.

“Perfect.” Hutch tied it to both generators and attached the other end to a post on the reactor. Then she detached the cylinder and poured a half cup of water into it. She turned the crank several times and reconnected the cylinder to the reactor. Then she added a spoonful of boron. “Okay,” she said at last. “I think we’re ready to go.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“The system has a built-in Ligon roaster. All we have to do is start it.” She pressed her thumbs against the ignition switches for the Flickinger generators and pushed.

A yellow lamp on the reactor began to glow. Hutch’s spirits went up a notch.

“Now what?” asked Kellie.

“Be patient. It’s going to roast off a few impurities and give us enough hydrogen to run the reactor.” She closed her eyes and added, to the god within, I hope.

Kellie poked her. “Hate to wake you, Hutch. But we’ve got a green light.”

The reactor was running on its own.

Hutch squeezed Kellie’s arm, went back into the washroom, poured some river water into her hands, and washed her face. “It has to charge,” she said. “That’s going to take a while. And there’s nothing we can do to speed things up. But so far we’re doing pretty well.”

She went outside, and Kellie boosted her up onto the hull. Hutch knelt beside the comm pod. The laser cut was clean, but she was able to replace damaged parts with the pieces she’d recovered from the Star lander. She rewired everything and, when she was satisfied it would work, climbed back down and returned to the pilot’s seat.

She waited a few more minutes. Kellie paced the cabin nervously. “We don’t have a lot of time, Hutch,” she said. It was getting dark.

“I know.” Hutch propped her chin on her palm and scanned her instruments. “All right, Collier, if you’re feeling lucky, let’s see if we’ve got some power.” She put the vehicle into a test mode. Indicators and gauges jumped. “That’s my baby. Internal systems look good.”

“What’s next?”

“Fuel.”

The rain had stopped, but the sky was still thick with clouds.

Hutch emptied the rest of the water into the fuel tank. They found a pump and hose for the tank, but the hose was only twenty meters long. “A bit short to reach the river,” said Kellie.

Hutch handed her the collapsible container. “File a complaint when we get home.” She removed the lander’s drinking water tank, which was not collapsible, and cradled it in her arms. “We need a lot,” she said.

“What’s the reactor actually do to the water?” Kellie asked as they hurried toward the river.

“It electrolyzes it. Separates the hydrogen and oxygen and gets rid of the oxygen.” And of course the lander would then run on the hydrogen.

They hauled water through the dark for the better part of three hours. They emptied each container into the fuel tank, hurried back to the river, refilled, and unloaded again.

When they had enough power to get some lift out of the spike, Hutch eased into her seat, murmured a prayer, and pressed a stud. Her control panel came to life, and she raised a joyous fist. “On our way, baby,” she said.

She opened the command menu and pressed the green field marked Tess. Nothing happened except that the charge level dipped.

“Tess?” Hutch said. “Are you there?”

A status line appeared on the AI monitor. It was flat.

“Looks as if Tess has gone to a happier world,” said Kellie.

“I’d say.”

“Try again?”

“No point. It just eats up power.” She extracted the control yoke from its bin and locked it into position.

Now she took a deep breath and started the turbines.

They sputtered, coughed, tried again, and finally staggered into life. She talked to them and coaxed them along until the power flow became smooth. “I do believe we’re in business,” she said.

“Do we have any lift?”

“Let’s find out.” Hutch directed power into the spike. The gauges quivered and moved up a few notches. They were getting about twenty percent. Actually not bad, considering the age and probable condition of the capacitors. Not enough to get them into orbit, of course. Not nearly enough. But enough to get them off the ground.

Hutch opened the manual start-up compartment and activated the flight systems. Several lamps blinked on, gauges that would indicate airspeed, altitude, fuel mixture, engine temperature.

She couldn’t taxi across the field and take off like twenty-first-century aircraft because she had no wheels. But the spike would get her up a couple of meters, and she could take it from there.

She drew her harness down and locked it in place. The spike activator was an illuminated gold panel. She pushed on it. Lamps changed color, and the word engaged appeared on her screen. Hutch felt her weight diminish somewhat. She put the thrusters into the lift mode and fired them. The vehicle rose.

It didn’t go high. She could have jumped out without fear. But it was sufficient unto the day.

Kellie planted her lips on her cheek.

She maneuvered the spacecraft toward the river and brought it down on the bank. Then she shut everything off and they hustled outside.

Marcel chose that moment of absolute joy to break in. “Bad news. The water’s breaking through.”

“What are prospects?”

“It’s not major yet. But it’s going to get worse in a hurry.”

They attached the hose to the reactor tank, dropped the other end into the river, and started the pump. Twenty minutes later, they had full tanks.

They retrieved the pump and hose, waited patiently for another half hour while the reactor did its work. Then they lifted into the air and turned toward the northeast. Hutch raised her flaps and gunned it.

XXIII

Despite all these years, we have not yet found anyone smarter than homosapiens. The Noks remain caught up in their endless wars. Everyone else is dead, missing, or gone back to the woods. We are winning by default.

—Gregory MacAllister, Is Anyone Listening?

Hours to breakup (est): 75

After Hutch and Kellie disappeared into the forest. Nightingale and MacAllister built a fire. Whatever adrenaline had been keeping MacAllister going now deserted him, and he sat almost motionless, eyes closed, propped against a tree. Nightingale had also reached the limits of his endurance, but he was frightened at the prospect of falling asleep, leaving nobody on watch.

He made coffee, drank it down, and felt marginally better.

Thank God the ordeal was almost over. This time tomorrow, if everything went well, he’d be out of it, back on Wildside, enjoying a hot shower, sleeping in a real bunk, ordering up whatever meals might cross his mind.

MacAllister mumbled something. His breathing fell to a regular pattern, and Nightingale listened to the wind in the trees and the hum of insects.

He looked out over the bay. Far below, large sea-colored birds flew in wide lazy circles, occasionally diving toward the water. He refilled his mug, sipped from it, put it down, dozed off, and snapped awake again when something touched his leg. It was a big bug with ten or twelve pairs of segmented legs and a vicious-looking set of claws.

About the size of a lobster. He screamed, rolled away, and watched it scuttle back into the shrubbery.

Big bug. Hell of a reaction from a professional.

MacAllister never stirred.

But the incident had the effect of bringing him thoroughly awake. He talked to Hutch and Kellie, left the circuit on so he could listen in on their conversation, and occasionally traded comments with the Wendy mathematician who was their current contact. Then he began to sink again. “Trouble staying awake,” he eventually told the mathematician.

“Okay.” She had a burgundy voice. “Take off your link, set it for wide-angle visual, and let’s aim it back into the woods. I’ll try to keep watch for you.”

They wouldn’t be able to see everything, she explained, but it would be better than nothing. He killed his field, removed the link, and set it on a rock. Then he buttoned up again.

“If we see anything,” she told him, “I’ll give a yell.”

Nightingale lay back, listening to the sullen roar of the tide. Then he closed his eyes.

He was vaguely aware of rain. Later he heard thunder. Another quake woke him briefly. And eventually he noticed that it had grown dark. MacAllister had apparently wakened long enough to throw a couple more logs on the fire. But he was fast asleep at the moment.

The tide was coming in. MacAllister sat gazing bleakly out over the bay.

“How’re we doing?” Nightingale asked. “Did they find the lander?”

“Ah.” MacAllister poured himself a fresh cup of coffee. “You’re awake.” He reached out and patted him on the shoulder, the way one might a pet collie. “Yes,” he said, “I’m happy to report they got there okay.” He made a second cup for Nightingale. “Far as I can tell, they’re doing fine.”

“Did they get it started?”

“Yes they did. A couple of hours ago, in fact.” Broad smile. “They’re loading up on fuel now. Randy, I do believe we’re going to get away from this place with our skins after all.”

“I hope so.”

It was too cold to leave the suit off long, so Nightingale drank the coffee down and reactivated the field. That was something else he was looking forward to: being able to do basic physical maintenance without getting half-frozen.

A scattering sound drifted up over the lip of the precipice. They looked at each other and drew their cutters from their vests. Nightingale walked to the edge and looked down. The entire face of the cliff was moving.

Coming this way.

“Heads up!” he told MacAllister.

Two pairs of jointed limbs appeared over the edge, scrabbled for a hold, and then a hardshell black creature, with somewhat the appearance of an ant about the size of a guard dog, climbed up onto flat ground. It weaved momentarily, righted itself, and clacked off past them into the dark.

But not before Nightingale had assessed it. The thing had claws like a garden shears, eight thin segmented legs, and several sets of stalks.

A second one cleared the crest and lurched past them. Several more were scratching wildly for a grip on the bare rock.

Chittering and clacking, they hoisted themselves up, crossed through the firelight, and kept going.

“Mac?”

MacAllister had backed against a tree. “Yes,” he said in a small voice. “I’m here.”

“I think we’re going to get lots of these things.” More were scrambling onto the summit. Mac’s cutter flashed on.

Nightingale was looking frantically for a refuge. “They’re trying to get away from the rising tide.”

“What are they?”

“Big and clumsy. And dangerous.”

The numbers coming over the lip of the cliff seemed endless. “What do we do, Randy? Get behind the fire?”

“No! That’s not safe. If there’s a stampede, they’ll run right over it. Over us. Find yourself a tree.”

“I’m not sure ...” He was gazing uncertainly at a tall hardwood. “They’re too big to climb.”

“Get back of one.”

Hordes of the creatures wobbled past them. They ran in a pseudo-mechanical fashion, legs synchronized, mandibles pointed front as if they were expecting resistance. Those that moved too slowly or got in the way of bigger animals had their legs or antennas sheared off. One crashed into Nightingale, went down, and before it could get to its feet, was trampled. Another blundered into the fire, whistled pitifully, and ran on, trailing smoke.

When the panic was over, the dead and dying hardshells were heaped on all sides.

A straggler appeared. It was having a hard time getting onto level ground. After an interminable struggle, it succeeded, and they saw why: Two of its legs and several antennas were gone.

“What happens when they come back?” asked MacAllister.

“It won’t be the same,” said Nightingale. “It won’t be a stampede.”

“That doesn’t mean they won’t be dangerous.”

“That’s true. Also, they could be looking for a snack by then. It might be prudent to clear out of the area.”

Mac was looking both ways along the rim. “I agree. Which direction? Back the way we came?”

“That doesn’t sound like Gregory MacAllister.”

Mac laughed and shouldered his pack. “All right then,” he said, “onward it is.”

Both were refreshed by their long rest at the summit, and they set out at a steady pace. The arc of the gas giant was rising behind them, and the forest grew so bright they didn’t need their lamps. Not much longer.

A fresh voice broke into his thoughts. Canyon.

“I hear things are happening, Dr. Nightingale,” he said. “I wonder if you’d care to describe them for us?”

“This is not a good time, August,” Nightingale said, and severed the connection.

“Exactly the right way to deal with the media,” said MacAllister.

“Hell, Mac, I thought you were the media.”

“I am indeed,” he said.

They stayed close to the rim of the escarpment. The bay spread out below them, a vast arm of the sea, smooth and hazy in Morgan’s light. Along the shore, large tracts of woodland were in the water.

“Tide’s come pretty far in,” said Nightingale.

It was rising visibly as they watched. “You figure we’re really high enough, Randy?”

Nightingale laughed. They were a long way up. “I have to think that’s the celebrated MacAllister wit.”

“Oh, yes. It is that.”

The forest literally went over the edge of the summit in some areas, and they were often so close to the precipice that a misstep could have ended in disaster. But occasionally the foliage opened out as much as a half kilometer. The glare of the giant planet had become so bright they were able to switch off their lamps.

MacAllister touched Nightingale’s shoulder and pointed out over the water. A light was burning.

“It just came on,” he said.

And while they watched, it went off.

They peered into the semi-dark, but could make out nothing.

The light came back on.

“What do you think it is?” asked MacAllister.

“Marine life.”

It went off. Nightingale lifted his lamp, pointed it out to sea, and blinked it.

The light in the water blinked back.

Mac frowned. “I do believe somebody’s saying hello.”

That hardly seemed possible. “It’s a luminous squid or something,” he said. “We’re looking at a mating call.”

“It wants to mate with us?”

“It wants to mate with the lamp.” Nightingale blinked again. A complicated series of longs, shorts, and mediums flashed back.

Mac got dangerously close to the edge. “It looks like a code.”

“Did you know,” asked Nightingale, “that some of the fireflies back home are really imitating other species of fireflies? Mimicking a desire to mate? When the recipient shows up for a big time, he gets eaten.” He narrowed his eyes, trying to pierce the darkness. It appeared to be simply a light on the surface. He imagined a hand raising a lantern from the depths.

“Can you make it out, Randy?”

“Just water.”

MacAllister blinked his light and looked expectantly seaward. There was, Nightingale thought, an element of play in his manner. He was enjoying this.

A reply came back, another complicated series.

“I can’t tell what’s doing it,” Nightingale said. “It looks as if the light’s in the water.” He stared at it. “We should record it.”

MacAllister nodded. “It almost seems like a fishing boat out there trying to talk to us.”

The ground shook. Somewhere below, a piece of rock broke off and fell down the face of the cliff into the bay.

Nightingale caught his breath, moved well back from the precipice, and waited for more shocks. When none came, he directed his scanner to record. At his signal, MacAllister blinked a couple of times, and again the lights flashed. One. Followed by two. Followed by three.

Nightingale felt a chill run down his back.

“Your squid can count,” said Mac. “Do you think that intelligent life might have developed at sea?”

Well, it had back home. But it had taken a long time to recognize because it was nontechnological. Dolphins and whales were clever. And squids. But they didn’t take to mathematics without prodding. “It’s had a long time to evolve,” Nightingale said.

Mac flashed once.

The answer came back: Two.

Nightingale pushed Mac’s lantern down, and raised his own. He sent Three.

It answered: Four.

He looked through the glasses again. “My God,” he said. “We’re going to come back with this story and no answers and people are going to scream.”

The ground trembled again, more intensely this time. “Randy,” said Mac, “this is not a good place to be right now.”

“I know.”

MacAllister took his shoulder. “Come on. Before we both go into the pond.”

Nightingale nodded, pointed his lamp at the light source, and blinked again. Once. Good-bye.

The offshore light blinked back. Twice.

“They’re still counting,” said Nightingale.

“How you guys doing?” Kellie’s voice, sounding cheerful and relieved.

“Okay,” said Nightingale, who could not take his eyes off the bay.

“Good. I thought you’d want to know. We’ll be in the air in a few minutes.”

Thank God,

“They’re good babes,” MacAllister told him on the private channel.

XXIV

Good fortune is less a product of talent or energy than it is a matter of timing. Being at the right place when the watermelon truck flips. This is how promotions happen, and how fortunes are made. Arrive at the intersection a minute behind, when the police are on the scene, and everything is undone.

—Gregory MacAllister, Lost in Babylon .

Hours to breakup (est): 63

Kellie looked down at Bad News Bay and sucked in her breath. The entire lower coastline had gone underwater, and the cliff top along which they’d walked was now not much more than a promontory.

“What do you think?” asked Hutch. She was referring to the diagnostic, and not the state of the bay.

“I don’t know why the Al is disabled. Probably general degradation.”

“Okay. What else?”

“We’ve got problems with temp controls. Onboard communications are okay. Capacitors are at max, but we’ve only got twenty-one percent That’s all they’ll take, apparently. Sensors are out. Forward dampers are down. We’re getting a warning on the electrical system.”

Hutch made a face. “Not imminent shutdown, I hope?”

“Negative.”

“Okay. When we get time I’ll take a look at it. We’ve got plenty of spare parts on board.”

Normally, the pilot would run the diagnostic herself, but normally the AI would be operating the spacecraft. Hutch was busy.

Kellie ticked off a series of other problems, mostly minor, others potential rather than actual. “We wouldn’t want to do a lot of flying in this buggy. But it should get us to the tower.”

Hutch leveled off at two thousand meters, informed Marcel’s surrogate they had no sensors, and with her help set course. The surrogate asked whether there was any chance they could ride this lander back to Wendy? As it was at the moment?

“Negative,” Hutch said. “We can lift off and set down. We can even hover for a bit. But take it to orbit? That’s not going to happen.”

Kellie took a minute to call Nightingale. “How you guys doing?” she asked.

“Okay.”

“Good. We’re overhead.” Then, to the surrogate: “Allie, do we have time to pick up the rest of our crew?”

She nodded and throttled up. “Negative. The plain is flooding as we speak. Lots of water.”

In the illumination cast by Jerry Morgan, the countryside was ghastly. Kellie saw the area where Chiang had died, and thought she could pick out the spot where the hovercraft was located. They soared over the dragonfly river.

Marcel came on the circuit. “Hutch,” he said, “there’s a lot of water cascading into the valley. A lot. The tide keeps getting higher, and a long section of ridge has simply collapsed.”

It would continue to do so as Morgan moved across the sky. To the south, they saw roiling smoke.

“Volcano,” Marcel said. “They’re erupting all over the globe tonight.”

“What’s the situation at the tower?”

“The water hasn’t gotten there yet in any quantity. But it won’t be long. Run your afterburners.”

“Afterburners,” said Hutch. “Aye.” A joke, of course. She was already at maximum thrust.

Marcel continued: “The tower’s in a wide plain. There’s a funnel of sorts that empties into it from the north. The water’s coming through the funnel. When it hits the plain, it spreads out a bit. That’s kept us out of the soup. But it won’t contain things forever.”

“Any guesses on time?”

“How long’s it going to take you to get there?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“It might be enough,” he said. “You’ll want to hit the ground running.”

“Mac.”

“Yes, Priscilla.”

“Mac, be careful. We’ll be back as quickly as we can.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

“You and Randy’ll be okay?”

“We won’t be if you don’t get those batteries.”

“Capacitors, Mac.”

“Bear with me. I was never much of a technician. But by all means go get them. We’ll leave a light on for you here.”

Marcel came up again. “Hutch.” And she read everything in his voice, all the futility and despair and exasperation that had been building for days. “You might as well break it off. Go back and—”

“What do you mean, break it off?”

“Just what I said. You don’t have time to do this.”

Kellie cut in. “Goddammit, Marcel, we can’t just break it off. We’ve got nowhere else to go here.”

“We’re working on a backup plan. Forget the capacitors.”

“What’s the backup plan?”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Kellie. “Give it to me in a couple of words.”

“We’re going to try to take you right out of the sky.”

“You’re what?”

“Pick you up in flight. I can’t explain now.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“We’re building a device that might work.”

“Marcel,” said Hutch, “what’s your level of confidence in this scheme?”

He apparently had to think about it. “Look. Nobody’s ever tried anything like this before. I can’t promise success. But it’s a chance.”

“Right.” Kellie stared at Hutch. “Go for the tower.”

Hutch agreed. “I think we better get the capacitors.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could urge the spacecraft to more acceleration.

“Hutch—” He sounded desperate.

Kellie shook her head. Get there or nothing else matters.

They were already at full throttle, had been since leaving the river.

“How much time do we have?” asked Kellie. “Before the water reaches the tower?”

“The tower’s getting its feet wet now.”

“How deep? How bad is it?”

“It’s deep enough. You simply don’t have time for this.”

“We’re out over the plain,” said Hutch, “and we don’t see any water yet.”

“Take my word for it.”

“We’re going to look, Marcel. We’ll let you know.”

Kellie went private. “We’re not over the plain, Hutch,” she said. They were in fact passing over forest and ridges.

“We’re only a couple of minutes away.” Hutch went back to Marcel. “If it looks at all possible, we’re going to try it.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I wish we didn’t have to. Now tell me about the water: What are we going to see? Waves? A gradual rise? What?”

“There’s a wave on its way. Actually, a series of waves, running close together.”

“How far are they? From the tower? How high?”

“High enough to submerge the capacitors. They’re at ground level, right?”

“Yes. On a table.”

“They’re probably already in the water.”

“Any chance we can beat the waves? Any chance at all?”

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes.”

They were ten minutes away. Give or take. “Okay, Marcel. All or nothing.”

“Speaking of which: You’re off course. Come twelve points to port.”

Hutch moved the yoke to the left, and watched the guidance indicators. “Okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said despondently. “Looks fine.”

Kellie listened to the steady roar of the jets and watched snow-covered ridges sweep past.

“We did a minimum charge,” Hutch told her. “That means there’s a possibility we may have to install the new capacitors before we can get off the ground. That could get interesting. You might take a look in back. Make sure we have everything close to hand in case we have to do the connections.”

“We going to do this in the backseat?”

“If things get tight, yes. We won’t take time to remove the onboard capacitors. Just pull the connectors. We’ll load the new ones in back as best we can, tie them in, and get the hell away. So we’ll need electrical cable and wrenches ready to go.”

Kellie went back and began laying everything out.

The lander passed over the last line of hills and came out over the plain. They picked up the snow cover and the ground became ethereal, a spectral countryside of glistening trees and silver-etched shadows. Then the tones changed, and they were over water.

It looked shallow. Shin-high, knee-high. They could still see ground shrubbery. Kellie reported everything ready in the backseat.

Hutch watched the time and looked for the tower. “Can’t be far now.” And to Marcel: “What happens if they get wet? The capacitors?”

“They aren’t designed to be waterproof, Hutch. If they get wet, they will have to be dried out. Maybe they’d still be usable. I really can’t say for certain, and we can’t find the information in the database. But it’s a circumstance we should have tried harder to avoid.”

Hutch understood what he was saying. They should have walked faster. She cut fuel and dropped close to the ground. The lander slowed. “Kellie, keep an eye open.”

Trees and hills were creating wakes. A few animals fled before the current, and a pack of the wolflike creatures they’d seen early in their trek were moving southwest toward higher country, only their heads visible above water. They weren’t going to make it.

“Hutch.” Marcel again. “You’re coming up on the tower. Three points to port, directly ahead, about two thousand meters.”

She killed the jets. The lander coasted through the silver light. “It might be shallow enough that we can still do this,” said Kellie.

“I see it.” Hutch bent over the controls. “I’m going to try to set down with as little help from the spike as we can manage. We want to save enough to get us out of here.”

She had no choice, however, but to use the system to stay aloft. power levels were therefore falling. The reactor automatically shut down while they were in flight, so available power consisted of what-ever had been stored in batteries or capacitors. And to save time they’d stored an absolute minimum.

Marcel’s voice: “You’ve got about six minutes before the ocean gets there.”

“How big’s the first wave?”

“It’s spreading out. Diminishing. But at the moment it’s maybe ten meters.” Almost as high as the tower.

“There’s our baby.” Kellie pointed. There was no sign of the chasm.

The tower rose out of the floodwaters, bleak and cold and desolate, but still standing. It seemed to Hutch almost biblical, last trace of a vanished civilization, a final defiant rocky digit raised against the unforgiving skies.

“Going down.” She lowered the treads.

“We might be okay,” said Kellie.

The lander’s lights reflected off running water. Hutch went to reverse thrust, brought the vehicle almost to a standstill, and lowered it gently toward the ground.

To the north, she could make out a moving gray wall. “Here comes the wave,” she said, activating her e-suit.

Hutch pushed the yoke forward and felt a mild jar as they touched down. Kellie opened the airlock and splashed out into the surge.

The current tried to drag her off her feet.

Hutch started out behind her, but she stopped in the airlock and watched the mountainous wave bearing down on them. Abruptly, to Kellie’s dismay, she called her back. “Forget it,” Hutch said. “There isn’t time.”

Marcel broke in. “Let it pass,” he said. “Then try it.”

“No!” Kellie fought to stay on her feet. The current was moving north in the direction of the oncoming wave.

Hutch sounded cold and calm in her receiver: “It won’t do any good if we lose the lander.”

“We won’t be able to find them afterward,” Kellie said. “Dead now or dead later: What’s the difference?” She was only steps away from the entrance, and she kept going.

“Won’t improve things if we can’t find you either,” Hutch said.

The wave was enormous, rising high and rising higher. A huge crest folded over and crashed down. Kellie stumbled into the tower. The capacitors lay on the worktable where they’d left them, covered by the tarp.

The water swirled around her ankles. The roar of the onrushing sea was deafening.

“Come on!” Hutch let her hear a cold flat tone. “Kellie, I have to pull out.”

She actually touched one of the capacitors through the cloth. She couldn’t leave without them. Couldn’t possibly leave without them. Just pick the thing up and hustle back with it. But she needed Hutch. Couldn’t get both of them alone.

“... get the lander clear.”

Kellie and the wave. It had a nice ring.

“God.”

She couldn’t hope to carry it, though. Not in time—

She broke away finally and stumbled back through the muck. It was hard going, and she fell at the entrance, rolled, and came up running. Hutch stood in Tess’s hatch looking back past her shoulder. Looking up. Kellie splashed across the few meters as Hutch ducked inside. She heard the engines turn over, felt the shadow of the wave. The lander began to lift. The hatch was still open, but she had to jump for the ladder. She caught the bottom rung, hung on, dangled while Tess went up, watched the wall of water engulf the tower. It crashed over it. Submerged it. They were rising too slowly and then the vertically positioned jets cut in and they soared. She clung desperately, suddenly as heavy as a load of iron. She screamed, and the wave thundered beneath her.

The jets died, and Hutch let the lander sink a few meters. Kellie scrambled for a better grip, dragged herself up a couple more rungs, and got a foot on the ladder.

The tower was gone. She could smell seawater.

She fell in through the hatch and looked for something to throw at Hutchins, seated at the controls, not even looking back.

“You were going to leave me,” she said. “You were actually going to leave me down there.”

“I’m responsible for two more people.” Hutch’s voice simmered with anger. “If you want to kill yourself, that’s one thing. But I wasn’t going to let you kill all of us.”

“We could have done it, goddam you.” She closed the hatch.

Hutch finally turned and looked at her. “You had your hands full getting back as it was. What makes you think you could have done it carrying one of the capacitors?”

“We were too slow getting out of the lander. If we’d gone in as soon as we got here. No hesitation. Just done it—”

“We’d both be dead.”

Hutch circled around, and they flew over a sea of rampaging water. There was no sign of the tower. And a second wave was becoming visible.

They watched it in silence. It rolled in and swept past, higher than the first.

“We should have tried” said Kellie.

She saw the tower, rising out of the flood, water pouring from its windows. Incredibly, it was still intact, other than a couple of pieces missing from its roof.

“Next one’s three minutes away,” said Hutch.

The third wave was the giant. It kept building, and Hutch took them higher. A few trees had managed to keep their uppermost branches out of the water. But this one rolled over them and over the tower.

They waited, watching for the stone roof to reappear.

Marcel asked what had happened.

“Don’t know yet,” said Hutch.

MacAllister and Nightingale also called in. “We may have gotten here too late,” Hutch told them.

Hutch thought there was still a chance.

She engaged the jets, moved into a wide arc around the place where the tower had been, and shut down the spike, conserving energy.

“It’s over,” said Kellie. Her voice shook.

“No. When the water subsides, we’ll go down and look.”

But the site was now located at the bottom of a turbulent lake. The water level rose and sank as they watched. More waves thundered in. Sometimes the newly formed sea exposed large swatches of ground. But Hutch was no longer sure where the tower had even been.

“Hutch.” Marcel’s voice. “It should start to recede in an hour or so.”

“We’ve got an ocean at the moment,” she said. “You say recede. Is the water going to go back out?”

“Well, not really. Some of it will. But a lot of it’s going to stay right where it is. At least for the next few days.”

“Good,” said Kellie. “We don’t have anything better to do. We’ll just—”

“That’s enough,” said Hutch. She continued to circle.

MacAllister called again. “Listen, you did your best. Don’t worry about it.”

All these people depending on her.

Kellie gave Hutch a withering look, and Hutch was getting tired of that, too.

Over the next forty-five minutes, more waves, large and small, swept through the area. Morgan moved silently across the sky into the west, enormous and bright and lovely.

At last the water began to ebb, running back the other way. A wake appeared off their starboard side. It was the tower, broken and shattered.

Cautiously, Hutch set the lander down in the retreating current and began recharging the reactor. They sat in strained silence almost an hour, until the force of the runoff had subsided. Then they climbed out into the current. The water came to their waists.

The top of the tower and the upper chambers had been ripped off. The worktable was gone, as were the capacitors. They looked carefully at the ground floor. They even took lamps and swam down the staircase to the level below. But there was nothing.

They searched the surrounding area, marking off sections and walking and swimming through them as thoroughly as they could.

Jerry set, and the sun rose.

XXV

Luck does not come out of a vacuum. It is manufactured by organization.

 —Gregory MacAllister, “The Art of Julio Agostino,” Editor at Large

Hours to breakup (est): 60

NEWSLINE WITH AUGUST CANYON

“The small landing party marooned on Maleiva III lost a race with the sea hours ago when the giant tides being stirred up by the approach of Morgan’s World flooded extensive northern tracts of the continent everyone here calls Transitoria, and washed away two capacitors that would have lifted the stranded explorers into orbit. Nevertheless, authorities on board the Evening Star insist they have not given up.

“It’s the middle of the day here, Tuesday, December 5. Inside sources expect that conditions on Maleiva III will deteriorate tomorrow, and grow much worse Thursday. They are predicting that the planet will begin to break up Thursday night. A last-ditch effort is being mounted to construct a kind of sky scoop. Universal personnel will be closely involved in the attempt, and I’ll be back with details on a special broadcast later today.

“This is August Canyon, in orbit around Deepsix.”

Janet’s volunteers were near the end of their third day of training when word came. They would be going outside.

Tonight.

The reaction was mixed. The news was accompanied by a sober moment while they digested the fact that the stakes, for them, had just gone up. Janet detected a trace of apprehension, now that a serious commitment had been made. But they went back to work with a will.

As to herself? She was delighted she’d come.

Chastain stopped by the Bryant Auditorium to talk to the volunteers about the Flickinger field. They were now calling themselves the Outsiders.

Only one of the thirty-odd volunteers had ever worn an e-suit before entering the training program. He reviewed how the systems worked, took questions, played a sim, and inspected harnesses. They talked about the Flickinger field, what it could do, what it could not do. He laid down some basic safety procedures, like not losing physical contact with the ship or with the alien assembly on which they’d be working.

After dinner the outsiders were called back for an evening session, during which Janet introduced Mercedes Dellamonica, Nicholson’s executive officer. She was a cool, unemotional native of Mexico City. She, Marcel, and Janet accompanied the trainees outside in groups of fifteen, each taking five. They walked around on the hull, got used to conditions, got used to the systems, acquired enough skill with the communications package to get by, and received once again all the appropriate warnings, including a demonstration by Mercedes, who deliberately lost contact with the surface, floated off, and had to be rescued.

They did some zero-gee welding. Afterward they were required to give a final demonstration of their skills. When they’d finished, two more were excused.

A few tennis nets had been strung together outside, courtesy of Captain Nicholson, and those who were scheduled to work on the asteroid net got some practice climbing around on them.

At the end of the session, around eleven, they were herded into a dining room adjoining the captain’s own. An assortment of snacks was served, compliments of the Star. Their instructors were present, and when everyone was assembled, Captains Nicholson and Clairveau filed in. Nicholson made a short speech, thanking them for their effort, and expressing his confidence that they would succeed. Afterward they were called forward individually and awarded certificates emblazoned with an image of a woman dressed apparently for an afternoon on the links, carrying a welding torch, and sitting confidently atop two of the assembly shafts.

Behind the two captains, stretched across the bulkhead, was a banner carrying the same image. Below the woman, dark green script spelled out Evening Star. Above was the legend The Outsiders.

Pindar Koliescu was delighted with himself. He’d gone outside with the rest, had handled the e-suit with aplomb, had shown a decent adroitness wielding the laser. He felt he understood enough to cut and weld with the best of them. Not bad after only three days’ practice. But then he’d always been a quick study.

He was the founder of Harbinger Management Systems, which specialized in teaching people how to supervise subordinates and oversee resources. It was mundane stuff, but it was sorely needed in the commercial world of the early twenty-third century. Harbinger had made him wealthy and allowed him to indulge his principal hobby: cruising into the unknown with beautiful women.

His partner on this tour was Antonia Luciana, an exquisite and insatiable young Roman who had kept him in quite a good mood since the start of the voyage. Antonia had tried to discourage him from joining the rescue effort, had struggled to hold back tears when he insisted, had then suggested she would have liked to go along too but doubted her ability to learn the requisite skills within the time frame. She had also admitted that the prospect of going outside terrified her.

In the manner of the excellent manager he was, he understood, and left her to applaud his pending heroics.

Pindar was enjoying himself thoroughly. He’d gotten caught up in the emotional swirl surrounding the rescue effort, he had come to feel a kinship with the four people on the surface, and he understood that no display of courage and skill on his part, however memorable it might be, would be satisfying unless the rescue succeeded.

The ceremony was short. “You’ll all want to get a good night’s sleep,” Captain Clairveau told them at its conclusion. “We’ve set up special quarters for you. I’m told you already know about that, and you know where they are. We’ll escort you there anyhow when we’ve finished here.” He grinned. “Consider yourselves in the military for the duration. Your morning will start early. I’d like to remind you that after you leave this room everything becomes real.”

They gave Janet the last word. She thanked her fellow Outsiders, assured them she’d be with them throughout the operation, and gave them their final instructions.

Pity. Antonia would have been thoroughly aroused by his pending exploit. Pindar consoled himself that he was making a magnanimous sacrifice and trooped off with the others.

Before bedding down for the night he called her. Her lovely image took shape and shimmered in front of him. She’d adapted her signal to present herself with precisely the degree of insubstantiality that enhanced her natural beauty. “It’s going fine,” he assured her. “They’re breaking us into groups of two and three. I’ve been assigned as a team leader. Can you imagine that? Me, a-skyhog?”

“You will be careful?” said Antonia. “I want you to come back to me.” She tried to purr, but it didn’t work because she was really worried for him, and that knowledge stirred him, demonstrated it was not just his position and power that had won her over. It forced him to recognize once again that he must be an extraordinary person to command such affection from one so lovely.

“Have no fear, Amante,” he said. “You just relax and enjoy the rescue.”

“Pindar.” She peered at him closely, as though to see into him. “You’re really not afraid?”

“No,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”

“Will I be able to see you?” She meant on the viewscreens.

“I’m sure you will.”

She tilted her head and smiled. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

In the morning, they were awakened early, at about five, and marched back to the same dining room, where they received a light breakfast. Afterward he met his partner, an attractive brunette whose name was Shira DeBecque. He and Shira boarded a shuttle headed for Wendy. They talked over their tasks en route, and arrived on the science ship in good spirits. There they met the shuttle pilot who’d be working with them during the balance of the morning, received their schedules, and set up their gear.

Marcel could see the dismay in Ali Hamir’s eyes. Ali was Wendy’s lead technician. He’d thought there was a decent chance to reconfigure the scanners and conduct a successful search for the capacitors. But resolution below the surface of objects smaller than a human being had not proved possible. The wave action had picked up and re-deposited millions of rocks and other pieces of debris. There was no way to determine which two, if any, might be the missing units.

Marcel blamed himself for the failure at the tower. There’d been time to get to Tess and recover the capacitors had he not relied on the wave projections. He should have hustled them along. He should have insisted they do what they had finally done: split up and make best time for the lander. He and Hutch had discussed it, but she’d believed the danger too great to leave anyone behind. Marcel had gone along with her, reluctantly. Now he saw the magnitude of his error.

Several of Ali’s people were seated in front of the operational screens, forlornly watching hundreds of markers blinking. Rubble in the muck beneath the newly created inland sea.

“Hopeless,” said Beekman.

Moose Trotter, a mathematician from the University of Toronto and, at 106, the senior member of the mission, had always seemed unfailingly optimistic. But Moose now looked like a man in pain, wandering from station to station, neglecting the work that had brought him there.

Marcel had been asked whether, if the sky-scoop initiative didn’t work out, communication with the ground party should be cut off as conditions worsened. Benny Juarez, a close friend of Kellie’s, thought anything less than granting the victims their privacy during their last hours, if it came to that, would be indecent.

Nicholson was getting an update from his engineer when Mercedes Dellamonica called him. “What have you got, Meche?” he asked.

“A delegation,” she said. “Maybe a dozen people at the moment, but it looks like more coming. They’re unhappy about the rescue effort.”

The locator put her on the bridge. “On my way,” he said. He called the kitchen and ordered several cartloads of refreshments sent up and then left the operations center and took the elevator topside. He rehearsed his comments on the way. But he was taken aback by the sheer number of angry passengers. More were trying to push into the area from outside.

The exec was standing behind a table trying to talk into a microphone. He strode through, got to Mercedes, and turned to face the crowd.

They got louder. Nicholson knew many of them. He was almost an ideal cruise-ship captain. One of his strengths was that he never forgot a name. Laramie Payton, a building contractor from the American Northwest, asked the question Nicholson knew would be at the top of the agenda: “What’s this about our being welded to that alien thing?”

“Laramie,” he said smoothly, “I’ve explained all that already. There’s no danger. You can rest assured I wouldn’t do anything that would put the Evening Star at risk. We will be welded, but keep in mind this is a very big ship. If we need to, at any time, we’ll be able to break away from the assembly as easily as you could break an egg. So you just don’t have to worry about that at all.”

Hopkin McCullough, a British communications tycoon, demanded to know how he could be so sure. “They’re talking about pushing that thing down into the atmosphere. How do we know we won’t go down with it?”

Nicholson raised his hands. “We have engines, Hop. The fact that we’re helping push isn’t going to affect our ability to maneuver if we have to. It’s just not a problem. Anybody else?”

He gave a few more reassurances. The donuts and coffee arrived. The disorder subsided, and the captain strolled out among his patrons, clapping some on the back, and chatting idly with others. “I can understand why you’d be worried, Mrs. Belmont,” he’d say, “but there’s really no cause for concern. We’re going to rescue those people tomorrow and then we’ll be on our way.”