“Find him? In that?” Sven demanded in a voice rasped harsh by smoke.
“There’s no alternative, man!” Torkel was getting agitated as he looked from Sven to Connelly and then to the other two, the stocky O’Neill and the stammering woman. “You did see the shuttle go down, right?”
Sven and Connelly both nodded.
“Well, where did it go down? Point me out the direction from here. I’ve coordinates, but they’re only good in a copter.”
Sven gave Connelly a long look and then, angling himself, he faced in a west-northwest position. “Near as I can remember it. We were scrambling ourselves by then.”
“Why bother?” O’Neill asked, a trace of exasperation in his voice. “Captain, the shuttle was trying to land just as the volcano blew. The shock wave hit it like a ton of fraggin’ bricks. I saw the craft knocked out of the sky with my own eyes. There’s nobody could survive that.” He obviously felt his own survival was miracle enough for one day.
“That’s not true!” Torkel said, his voice suddenly wild with denial as he grabbed O’Neill’s coat front and began shaking him. “My father has to have survived, you bloody idiot!” Then he realized what he was doing and loosed O’Neill with one more plea. “Don’t discourage me, man. Help me, for pity’s sake.”
Yana had been watching this, also making certain that neither Giancarlo nor Ornery made any sudden moves toward her. She thought maybe Torkel’s emotional display was genuine, but the man was devious—it could as well be a diversionary tactic. She couldn’t take any chances. “Chill out, Torkel,” she said. “These people are exhausted and in shock. They’re not going to be fool enough to risk their lives going back in there.”
But if Torkel was acting, he was doing it with enough conviction that he ignored her waving the gun. “You didn’t actually see the volcanic blast destroy the shuttle, did you?” he demanded of O’Neill.
“No,” O’Neill said tiredly. “It was intact when the force of the blast blew it off course.”
“Ah, but it blew it away from the path of the debris, right?”
“Well, yes. It was debris, too, as far as the volcano was concerned,” O’Neill told him.
“But there could have been survivors of the crash?”
Connelly, who Yana sensed was slowly being convinced by Torkel’s insistence, told him in a weary but not unsympathetic voice, “That was three hours ago, Captain, and that volcano’s been raining down and spitting mud out . . .”
Torkel heard the sympathy in the man’s voice and pounced on it. “Will you guide me?”
But he had pushed too hard. Connelly withdrew and favored him with a disbelieving look, shaking his head. “The only one I’m guiding is me, out of here, when the copter gets back.”
“Listen up, Connelly, and the rest of you, too,” Giancarlo said. “Captain Fiske is not just any military captain. As son of Boardmember Fiske, he also holds the position of ranking executive on this planet at this time. Failure to cooperate with him and with this mission will have serious repercussions on your career.”
“So,” Connelly said, “will death. I’m not sticking around here waiting for that mountain to blow again for the chairman of the board. Besides, in these flying conditions”—he waved his hand off to the north—“no copter, any copter, would stay airborne for more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes.” He snorted. “You’d do better using your feet.”
When Giancarlo started toward him angrily, Yana spoke up again.
“I wouldn’t, were I you, Colonel,” she said. “They’ve done enough just making it here. And you both should know,” she added, flicking a glance at Torkel, “how useless it would be to fly a copter in there!”
“Then, by all that’s holy”—Abandoning his frantic make-’em-see-reason attitude, Torkel drew himself up into a noble-against-adversity stance. —“I’ll make it on foot. Your packs there,” he said, pointing to the pile slowly accumulating a cover of ash, “can be replaced at company expense when you get back to base. They won’t be of much future use to you considering their present condition, but I would very much appreciate being able to scrounge what I need from them.”
Connelly and Sven exchanged looks and shrugged. The woman, with an anxious look at Yana’s gun hand, darted over and extracted a small sack from the pile, skittering back to the protection of her colleagues.
“Might as well. There’s not that much there,” Connelly said, “and if the company’ll make good . . .”
“Of course the company will make good,” Giancarlo snapped. “Your equipment was company issue to begin with. Who else do you think would replace it?”
“I promise you it won’t be debited from your pay,” Torkel said quickly. “And any personal effects you’ve lost will be replaced, as well. The company takes care of its own.”
O’Neill flicked him a resentful glance. “The way you were going to take care of the wounded?”
“Frag it all, O’Neill, I’m not some kind of a monster,” Torkel said, even as he gestured for Giancarlo and Ornery to help him collect the packs. “I told O’Shay to radio for another bird for your wounded and for yourselves. A few minutes would have made no difference to them. You’ll all get out safely. My father, and the crew of that shuttle, are still out there in that inferno.”
Yana couldn’t believe Torkel’s gall, trying to guilt-trip the survivors. He sure was a company man: give with one hand, shuffle the shells, and take with the other! But she had no objections to him going after his father, as long as he didn’t force anyone else to do it, too.
“Knowing how important it is, won’t even one of you guide us?” he implored one more time as the air began throbbing with the sound of an approaching copter.
“Captain,” Connelly said, “we really couldn’t help you. All landmarks will have been destroyed by now, and none of us saw where your father’s craft actually crashed. You’ve got the compass and the coordinates of where it was originally supposed to land.” He scanned the sky anxiously with reddened eyes. “I hope you find him.”
The unmistakable sound of the approaching copter grew louder: it was a Sparrowhawk, if Yana read the sound of it right. Those usually had room to seat the crew members and three more, but there was ample room for others to sit on the floor. Maybe, with a little luck, she could just manage to squeeze herself on board, too.
She relaxed her guard just enough to glance up at the sky, and that was when she was jumped. She had been so busy watching Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery that she hadn’t paid any attention to the survivors, and Sven used the distraction of the chopper to grab her gun hand and twist. Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the weapon, nursing a numb wrist.
“Good man!” Torkel cried, leaping forward to relieve Sven of the gun, only to be waved to a standstill.
“He is that,” O’Neill said. “Too good to let you get the drop on us again and try to get this helicopter away from us as well, for all the good it would do you.”
Sven was evidently in agreement, for he backed over to the rest of his colleagues in a show of solidarity.
“I wouldn’t have let them do that,” Yana told Sven. “I made them surrender the other copter, didn’t I?”
Sven grunted and shook his head, waving her back to the others.
“We’re sorry, dama,” O’Neill said. “You did help before and we’re that grateful, but maybe you were only doin’ it to get clear of them? Maybe you’d be after commandeerin’ this bird for yourself to make your getaway. We can’t chance it, and we don’t need any more trouble today.”
“At least take me with you,” Yana urged.
But at that moment Giancarlo hooked her left arm and whipped it around and up under her shoulder blade, leaving her far more occupied with pain than argument.
“You’re not going anywhere, Maddock,” he murmured in her ear. “We haven’t finished with you yet.”
O’Neill and Connelly looked as if they were about to jump in and defend her, but Torkel spoke up again.
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“You people go on. Take the copter, but leave her with us. She knows more than she’s telling, and maybe when she sees what her rebel friends have unleashed, she’ll have the good sense to help us save this planet.”
“If she knows where other charges are planted, we’ll get it out of her,” Giancarlo said grimly.
“It is true that there wasn’t supposed to be any natural seismic activity where we were setting up the mine,” Connelly replied cautiously, with a glance first at Sven and then at the approaching copter.
“Right!” Torkel said, yelling over the copter’s noise. “Everything that’s happened is unnatural. You tell them at SpaceBase that there’s a massive conspiracy afoot on Petaybee, and that Maddock’s changed sides. She’s in league now with the perpetrators. If you hadn’t disarmed her, she would have gotten away, and who knows what trouble she would have caused.”
The copter was slowly settling to the ground a discreet distance from the knot of humans. The survivors began backing toward it, Sven keeping the weapon trained on the company tableau of Torkel, Giancarlo holding Yana prisoner, and Ornery.
“They’re nuts,” Yana yelled, appealing to O’Neill. “You said yourself, nobody can jumpstart a volcano!”
O’Neill shot her a guilty glance, and he and Connelly exchanged looks, but the woman laid her hand fearfully on Sven’s arm and he shook his head.
“No,” he hollered. “We’ve risked our butts enough for one day. I’m not risking my job any further for someone in trouble with the management. You got into this mess, dama, you get yourself out without our help. You people sort it out among yourselves.”
When the survivors were aboard the copter, Torkel leaned in the open door to yell at the pilot.
“You tell them at SpaceBase that I said this volcanic eruption is part of a plot to undermine our investigation and to kill a member of the board. And you get them to send out ground transport as soon as possible. Get it to the volcano site! We’ll meet them there! Tell them that my father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, is out there and it’s vital we rescue him. Absolutely vital!” The pilot began lifting off and Torkel jumped down and backed off slightly, but repeated himself, yelling through cupped hands. “Tell them we’ve gone ahead to rescue my father. They’re to follow us!”
The pilot gave him a thumbs-up signal and waved him away from the rising aircraft.
They all watched as the copter whisked away, disappearing into a maelstrom of wind, ash, and smoke. Giancarlo released Yana abruptly when it was out of sight, and she fell to her knees. As she rose, she gingerly worked her shoulder to be sure Giancarlo’s enthusiasm hadn’t wrenched muscles. As near as she could tell, she was still in good functioning order—at least for now.
Without so much as an eye blink, Torkel tossed her one of the packs he had been filling.
“Grab the rest of those ration bars, Maddock,” he ordered.
She didn’t mind. It gave her the chance to get something in her own belly. She couldn’t fault the survivors, but she sure hoped they didn’t believe the crap Fiske had been shoveling in their ears: that she was “in league with the perpetrators,” “had caused all these unnatural phenomena.” Trouble was, she thought with a snort, those poor devils were shocked enough to believe every word. Rather ungrateful of them, though, especially when O’Shay had made it plain that she was the only reason the copter had been able to land to pick up their wounded. Whatever! Torkel had turned them against her sufficiently to banjax her one chance of getting free. Free—and she had a private grin—to foment riot and rebellion back at the SpaceBase, or even with all those dangerous allies she had joined forces with.
She hoped they were all right at Kilcoole. Then Giancarlo brought her back to the present with a shove in the direction of the valley filled with blistering mud and smoking ash. Torkel was leading, then Ornery with Giancarlo behind her: not exactly where she preferred him, but she was in no position to make requests, was she?
Although there were still safe places to walk where the mud hadn’t yet spread, Yana wondered how far in toward the volcanic site they could get, where the damage was fresh and the flow still boiling hot. If the planet decided to set off its new volcano again, they would be right under it. Actually, she thought, smiling to herself, the planet was doing such a complete job of dividing and routing the “enemy,” that she wouldn’t mind going under to such an admirable opponent.
“We’ll be okay,” Torkel said to no one in particular as he trudged forward. “But Dad won’t if we don’t reach him soon.”
His voice was still taut with anxiety, though it projected less heart-wrenching filial devotion than it had when he had spoken to the survivors. Yana wondered why he was really risking their necks—but the answer was fairly obvious. Torkel was a pretty good company spy and a fair administrator, but he was not a creative scientist like his father, and without the elder Fiske, he was not apt to carry the same weight in the corporate structure. Of course he wanted to find old Whittaker. He was once again protecting his interests.
She was thinking about that as she kept a close eye on where she was putting her feet. She tried not to cough in the ash-laden, sulfury-smelling smoke. She hadn’t had her lungs healed just to mess them up again inhaling this sort of crud. She tore off a piece of her shirttail and tied it across her mouth. The others did likewise, but cloth was a flimsy filter against the thickly laden wind, unlike the protective masks the company would have issued if such conditions had been anticipated.
Their progress was slow. They could not see the sun at all, and when Yana checked her watch, she had to rub the face clear of clinging ash to read it, but even then the face remained dark and empty; the ash no doubt had worked its way into the mechanism and clogged it. Fortunately, the compass was better shielded and more reliable. For hours, they picked their way forward through the maze of paths that terminated abruptly in mudflow, forcing them to double back and find a new path, then following that one forward until it, too, gave out. Occasionally the volcano would spew forth a gout of fiery red and orange matter, giving them a terrible beacon to their progress. The air was also getting closer, hotter, and that slowed them down, too. All were perspiring heavily, and the three men had torn shirttails into sweat bands around neck or forehead.
Just about the time Yana was beginning to wonder if the crash site was a myth to lure them into the certain death of the volcano field, Giancarlo yelled and pointed. There, ash-dusted and protruding from what looked like an ocean of the gray muddy guck, was unmistakably a delta wingtip that had to be part of the downed shuttle. They rushed forward, stopping just on the edge of the bubbling mud.
Yana looked up at Torkel and saw his eyes harden and his mouth twist in pain. That sort of anguish was not generated by a career anxiety alone, she realized. Whatever personally pragmatic motives he might have for this search, he truly did care for his father.
They had to spend a long time circling the crash site, looking for any sign that someone might have escaped. Torkel circled and paced like a crazy man, trying to find a way across the mudflow to that protruding wingtip, though what good that would do, Yana didn’t know. They had no rope or cable to secure the tip to keep it from sliding farther into the mud, and the four of them certainly couldn’t have pulled it, and the rest of the shuttle, free. Then Torkel obviously realized that this activity was futile and began methodically inspecting every inch of what solid ground there was for traces that survivors had exited the shuttle before the mud had drowned it.
The world was silent, except for the men’s harsh breathing, and even that was muffled. Yana tried not to hold her breath, but she hated every ounce of contaminated air she had to drag into her lungs. When would Torkel give up this useless search? If there had been survivors, they ought to have had sense enough to get out of this vicinity with all possible speed. The likeliest explanation for the lack of traces leading away from the crash site was that there had been no one to make them. Surely Torkel had to admit that possibility. And it was eq
ually unlikely that their tracks would be discernible with mud and ash constantly falling to cover such traces. Meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating from minute to minute as the mud and ash built up. If they weren’t awfully careful, someone was going to take the wrong step and end up mud-baked.
She felt the ground flutter beneath her feet and took a step backward.
And quite unexpectedly she found herself touched by an amazing sensation. It was similar to what she had felt in the cave: staunch, reassuring, welcoming. She swiveled around, not knowing what she might find in such an unlikely place. There was only the giant boulder she had just stepped around. It was shaped like an enormous top, the point plunged deep into the ground. Its mass had separated the flow of the mud, leaving a wide, clear, somewhat sheltered space.
The mud around her gave a mighty heave and she shot an apprehensive glance at the boulder for fear it might topple over onto her. But it didn’t move an inch. Was that what the planet had been reassuring her about? That the boulder was safe? Then Ornery shouted, and whipping around, she was just in time to see the wingtip slowly sinking out of sight into the mud. Torkel, standing a few paces beyond her, yelled in anguish and reached out as if to grab the wing. He was off balance when the surface heaved once more, and he was thrown sideways. Instinctively, she leapt forward, catching the fluttering edge of his torn shirt with one hand. With a second desperate lurch, she caught hold of his pack strap with the other and hauled him into the shelter of the top-shaped boulder.
The tremors were the prelude to another eruption of the volcano. Particles of ash rained down faster, ever faster, rapidly developing into a deluge of red-hot flying stones. Then, with a roar much louder than a ship blasting from a launchpad, scalding mud, scouring ash, and rock-strewn dust flew past them. Yana cried out, whipping her left arm under cover as the downpour ignited the fabric of her sleeve. She beat out the sparks and crouched down as tightly as she could against what protection the boulder gave. Beside her, Torkel let out a yowl as his vulnerable right side was also lashed by burning embers. The hot ash was pervasive, and there seemed to be no way to avoid it. In desperation, she unslung her pack and covered her head with it. Squeezing tight against the boulder, she felt the ground tremble again. Fleetingly she wondered about the advisability of clinging to a boulder, no matter what the planet suggested. At any moment the huge stone could roll over and crush them. But alternatives were not available. She let the pack slip farther down to protect her back from the hot and painful dusting.
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