by Diane Duane
"So it bites you now, does it?" she said. "The hunch."
Gabriel shook his head. "Maybe."
"Then let us go."
Chapter Fourteen
THEY WERE BACK on Sunshine ten minutes later, locking her down for space. Gabriel was still swearing softly at the thought of the last towering figure in the beishen who had followed them nearly to the boarding corridor that fed down to their own airlock. After Gabriel hurried through the door after Enda, he had smacked his chip against the reading plate with considerable satisfaction, locking the boarding corridor behind them and leaving that dark shape standing and glowering from way down the curve of the docking ring.
"Now are you sure about the hull?" Enda asked. Gabriel was looking at the diagnostic yet again, liking it even less as he slapped the controls that pushed the boarding corridor free and told station control that Sunshine was going free. "It'll keep," he said, and the attitude jets pushed them up and away from the ring.
Ten more minutes saw them out in open space again and making for Grith on system drive. The run was not a long one, though it seemed a little longer than usual to Gabriel, still looking at the hull diagnostic and listening for any suspicious groans or moans-and most carefully feeling for drafts. Still air in a spacecraft was safe air unless you were standing right under a blower. A draft was the breath of serious trouble, and most spacecraft manufacturers went to a lot of trouble to make sure that their air exchange units produced no tangible drafts at all. "What is the time down there?" Enda called. Gabriel sighed, banished the diagnostic diagram from the forward tank and replaced it with a globe clock of Grith. He then reached into the tank and spun the globe until it showed the portion of the continent where Redknife lay. "Late afternoon," he said, looking to see the angle at which the terminator was approaching.
"I wonder if we should not spend a few hours more in space," Enda said. "Ondway did say 'tomorrow.' For all we know, his contacts will not be ready for us."
That was when the proximity alarm went off again, and Gabriel's head snapped up. There was nothing to see with the naked eye but the darkness and Corrivale, a bright star visibly getting brighter and larger. But the schematic in the tank, now reverting to local tactical since the alarm had gone off, showed one of those big teardrop shapes going by perhaps five kilometers away, lounging on toward the heart of the system on a course that might shortly intersect with Sunshine's. Gabriel put his hand into the tank again, this time to tweak Sunshine's course schematic and get the courses to display relative to one another. Sunshine's showed the standard approach spiral down into Grith Control space, but the big cruiser's course line was flashing. "Delta v," Gabriel muttered. "He's accelerating. Swinging around Grith to head somewhere else, the computer thinks."
Enda looked over Gabriel's shoulder into the tank and tilted her head to one side. "We can avoid them easily enough if we must."
"I wouldn't give them the satisfaction," Gabriel growled.
They held their course, and Corrivale grew brighter, its disk growing and becoming ever more blinding, sheening the inside of the cockpit with gold until the windows felt the light would be excessive and started to dim it down on their own recognizance. Gabriel sat back and looked at Hydrocus, now a good- sized disk at something like three hundred thousand kilometers, and Grith, a cabochon emerald swinging around it, glinting with red-violet at atmosphere's edge and glazing with the gleam of the sun. Its albedo was surprisingly fierce for a world with so little ocean and not much "weather" showing at the moment. Gabriel shook his head.
"It looks like such a quiet place, from up here."
Enda sat down beside him, gazing out. "So it would have been once," she said, and Gabriel nodded. For a long time, after the Silence had fallen, no one had been here but miners and pirates. But slowly others began to pass through, saw the one habitable planet in the system-though its temperature made the habitation marginal, at first-and stayed. Even after sesheyans were discovered living on Grith, that alone made little difference.
But when the Hatire had come, things sped up a great deal. VoidCorp came and killed many of them. Now the Hatire were slowly recovering their old colony on Grith, but all the time with VoidCorp looking over their shoulders. The Concord was now here as well, acting-or, as the others would probably see it- interfering. It would be a long time before this became a quiet system, if it ever could again. The schematic in the tank showed the VoidCorp cruiser now applying more drive and diving rather closer to Grith, apparently intent on using Hydrocus's gravity to slingshot her around on the way to somewhere else. It was a showy maneuver and not strictly necessary, since VoidCorp cruisers would have drive to burn. But at the same time it could also be seen as intimidation of sorts, less obvious perhaps than what Gabriel had seen at Iphus, but still a clear enough statement. Think of all the interesting things we could drop on you from this height. We won't. .. today, but tomorrow, who knows what we'll do?
The VoidCorp cruiser swung around Hydrocus's far side and out of sight. Gabriel sighed. "Good riddance," he said, "and-"
He stopped. Something touched the back of his neck and raised the fine hairs on it. A breath of air.
"Do you," Enda said suddenly, "feel a draft?"
After that, everything started to happen very fast indeed. "Floaters," Gabriel said, "and the e-suits!" He reached into the tank and tweaked it until it showed the system drive controls. Then very, very slowly he eased the throttle forward. The drive increased Sunshine's speed, and the draft increased. Gabriel looked down at the pressure readings from the seals around the accesses to the cargo bay and gulped. That low a number of hektopascals was unhealthy.
Enda wisely got their e-suits first, and Gabriel surprised himself by launching himself out of the seat and bettering his best e-suit drill time by at least three seconds. The e-suits were a variation on the basic humanoid style that Star Force had designed and that was marketed most places under their subsidiary license. You stepped into it, almost as if into a bulky overcoat, and the sideseams wrapped themselves around you, closed their gaskets down, and would not open them again until your purposeful touch reactivated them. Now Gabriel slammed the helmet down on his head and felt it home into place in its own gasketry, and he then got back into the seat again, strapping himself in and turning his attention back to the tank.
The system drive was still engaged, but the hull, which Gabriel had put on audio via the computer, was muttering. Enda was now sealed in her e-suit, having clocked a time very little less than Gabriel's, and she was already halfway back to the cabinet where the floaters were kept. She yanked the cabinet open with nothing like her usual grace, pulled the can out, pulled its pin, and sprayed the contents in the approved pattern: up and down, side to side, aft to forward.
Thousands of small plasteine bubbles filled with a lighter-than-air gas burst out of the can, solidified, and began drifting toward the back of the ship. They would congregate near any leak, making it easy to identify for patching purposes. Then the plasteine would denature and the bubbles would vanish. Enda had already tossed away the floater can and pulled out the secondary can, the emergency patcher. This would produce contour flexfilm in amounts sufficient to patch quite a large leak, long enough for Sunshine to get down into atmosphere. Gabriel's concern, though, was that the entire back of his ship might be about to fall off, a possibility about which not even the floaters and the can would be able to do much.
Via the computer, the hull was now moaning more loudly as they dropped toward Grith. "Where are you going to land?" Enda asked. "It was going to be Redknife, but-"
Gabriel reached into the tank and brought up the schematic of the planet again. It zoomed in on the central continent and northward, looking for Redknife, found it, and locked in on it. Gabriel's mouth was going dry as he saw the course the leaking rear end of Sunshine was going to force on him-not the leisurely, low-fuel spiral he had been planning, but something rather faster: system drive up full, pushing the ship hard and straight down into atmo
sphere. It was a more stress-laden landing than he would have preferred, especially when the stresses might open the leaks out further. Might open one of them up big enough to crack the hull wide open and-Gabriel swallowed, or tried to, and put that thought aside forcefully. It would do him no good. "We're going to have to make this one pretty quick," he said. "I don't want to linger and increase the stresses on the cargo bay. What about the floaters?"
"They were congregating mostly around the seal to the cargo bay," Enda replied, sitting down and strapping herself in again. "I have sprayed patcher all around there, and the floaters began to move elsewhere. But as our acceleration increases, they will no longer be much good as a diagnostic." "Just so long as they don't get in our way," Gabriel said and concentrated on what he was doing. He increased the system drive a bit and heard the hull moan a little more, but there wasn't anything they could do about that now. They were committed, and atmosphere was already beginning to bite at Sunshine's wings. "Redknife," Gabriel said, "six minutes."
He glanced over at Enda, and even through her helmet's faceplate he got a glimpse of her swallowing hard: another gesture that humans and fraal apparently shared. Gabriel wondered if her mouth was as dry as his.
"It will be just like the ore pickups on Eraklion, I am sure," Enda said, sounding completely calm.
Gabriel rolled his eyes at the thought of how simple flying had seemed then. Compared to this! The computer, of course, was ready to take this job away from him-but already Gabriel was enough of a pilot that the last thing he wanted to do was relinquish control, no matter how out of control he felt. Underneath them Grith was swelling, growing bright as they came past the terminator into the light of afternoon shading to evening. Gabriel headed straight down, gambling that the stresses would not increase too severely, that turning excessively would be worse for the hull-
Crack! He felt it more than heard it, and the hull shrieked protest as somewhere in the cargo bay a plate sprang away from its seams. A faint howling sounded from way in back, an increase in the way Sunshine was juddering as she arrowed in. Oh, this is fast, this is too fast, cut it back a little, Gabriel thought, but the computer still suggested that this was the smartest speed to hold, and for the time being Gabriel was not going to argue with it. Pressure in the cargo bay was showing 548 hPa, but that was not an unbelievable density for atmosphere. Now the question is, Gabriel thought, will the air currents lashing around in there make something else spring loose and start knocking bigger pieces out of the hull?
There was no way to tell and no time to worry about it now. Grith filled the whole of the cockpit windows, and Gabriel could see the northward-thrusting finger of green in which Redknife and its little landing facility were buried. The howling of the wind back in the cargo bay was getting louder and louder, which in its way was a good sign, but extremely unnerving. The ground was rushing up. The computer course graphic started flashing, suggesting emphatically to Gabriel that he should start flattening his glide path out now, and he agreed. He pulled her up, lowered her speed, and tried to feel for some glide.
Crack! That was something besides the cargo bay. He felt it distinctly through the tank and the control column. Not the hull, Gabriel thought, one of the control surfaces. Oh shit, oh shit! He fought with the control column, but it steadied down. The computer was compensating for the damage, whatever it was. The computer was now superimposing a graphic for Redknife's landing facility over the very faint visual Gabriel had of it, though that visual was getting clearer, and stronger, and closer by the minute as he glided toward it. This thing glides like a rock, Gabriel thought. Trouble. Sunshine was suddenly not responding as well as she had been. Gabriel could clearly see the landing flat and had done all the things the computer had told him to-had managed to decrease his speed, had cut his glide to just above stall, was coming down on landing jets. But one of the landing impellers seemed to be arguing the point with him, giving him more impulsion than he needed. "No, no," Gabriel shouted at it, "cut it out, it's all right, throttle down, back off!"
But the impeller was paying no attention. In a wide and graceful curve, Sunshine shot right past and over what should have been her landing berth on the plain concrete strip at Redknife, thoughtfully reserved for her by the computer when it settled its course, and headed out into the jungle, losing altitude all the time.
They were over the highest treetops, which could mean anything depending on where you were on Grith. A hundred feet, five hundred... Gabriel saw a spot ahead of him that looked relatively empty of trees. He made for it, dropping altitude while counting seconds in his head to estimate by how much he had overshot Redknife. The ship was trying to continue that infernal curve, but he pulled the control column right over and fought with the attitudinals in the tank. "No, no, no, no-"
The hole was right below him. He cut everything but the landing thrusters and held the column in place. "Hang on!"
Crash!
Everything went white for a moment, and Gabriel thought, That's it, I've aced out the system drive; we're both going to be reduced to talcum powder, radioactive talcum powder!
Then again, how am I having time to think these thoughts if we are talcum powder?
He opened his eyes. They were on the ground. The cockpit windows were miraculously intact. Vague, misty red late-afternoon sunlight was coming in through them. All the computer's alarms were wailing about all kinds of problems, hull integrity, fuel reserves, system drive status-that one Gabriel did do something about, reaching out immediately to shut the drive down. But as for the rest of it, they were intact. He was, anyway.
"Enda? Enda!"
As he reached out to help unstrap her, she moved. Gabriel breathed again.
"I am well enough," she said. She turned her head to him and gave him a wry look. "Oh, Gabriel, I wonder whether at this rate we are ever going to run this ship at a profit."
He laughed, and laughed harder. For a good several minutes he could do nothing else. Finally he was able to stop, unstrap himself, and get up to see what needed doing.
Sunshine was listing slightly to starboard, but there was no harm in that. She was otherwise mostly sitting flat. Gabriel got up and went to have a look at the seals to the cargo bay. They were still intact, but through the little bay-door window he could see daylight where the hull plate had sprung. He could just hear the not-entirely-regretful way in which some smallship repairman was going suck in his breath and say, "Oh, that's going to cost you."
"How is it?" Enda asked, working at her straps.
"Not too bad," Gabriel lied. "We're in one piece, anyway."
He got up to the lift, tried it experimentally. It went down and came up again. "Okay," he said, "at least we're not trapped in here."
Enda made her way back to him, undoing her helmet. "Well," she said, "there is a little daylight left. We still might get help today."
They got into the lift together and headed downward. "Maybe," Gabriel said. He found that he was feeling a little lightheaded, but regardless, he added, "Remind me to send a mail to the Delgakis people. The ship held up really well."
"Another letter," Enda said, sounding rather resigned. "But you never send any of these. You are terrible with letters."
The lift came down to the bottom and locked in place. Its door opened. Gabriel stepped out-and stopped. Standing all around them was a crowd of extremely annoyed sesheyans, cowled and goggled, many of them staring and pointing at the ship, and all of them glowering at it.
Gabriel looked around at them for a long moment, then said rather hopefully, "I don't suppose anyone here is from the Red-knife Tourist Bureau?"
At this a profound silence fell that seemed to indicate that the probability was slight. "We were told to ask for someone named Maikaf," Gabriel added. The silence got worse. Finally one sesheyan came stalking up to the door where Gabriel was standing. He was an imposing gentleman, his wings wrapped around him like a cloak. He wore very high-quality gailghe against what for sesheyans was considerable glar
e, even in the swiftly falling twilight. He pointed forcefully at the ground and said, "Though the Hunter comes from nowhere, the guest requires invitation: to invade the hosts' hospitality, few things are worse in the world: and those who come uninvited, they must earn their fruit by the sword:"
His expression did not look promising.
"At best, we have intruded," Enda said softly. "At worst, I fear they must think we are spies, and spies are not terribly welcome here. There is usually only one assumption about where they come from and what should be done with them." The crowd closed in around them.
Most people who have not been to the single moon of Hydrocus think of Grith in terms of sweeping generalizations: half rain forest inhabited by gargoyle like noble savages, half windswept polar plain inhabited by religious fundamentalists, and very little else in between. Others think of it from points of view influenced by sensationalized exposes of the local "pirate trade" along the lines of Corsair Planet, full of corrupt and ruthless tribal leaders, illicit markets and shipyards, criminal warlords and sleazy traders on the take. Still others have formed their opinions from material appearing in over-romanticized documentaries like Song of the Gandercat, filled with not very informed speculation about the "cats'" mysterious abandoned cities, and alternating haunting recordings of what might be ritual songs with images of creatures that looked like gigantic moss-covered furballs or (just after their molt) rubbery- skinned sloths not much smaller than a rhinoceros. Gabriel had seen all those images at one time or another, and all of them had seemed interesting, even amusing, at a safe distance. Now, though, Gabriel found himself wondering whether he, Enda, and Sunshine were all on the point of being sold to some corsair lord at a discount-or, equally, wondering what he would do if a gandercat wound up in the tent with them.
The local environment was much on Gabriel's mind. After he and Enda were removed from Sunshine, they were taken rather hurriedly and roughly out of the relative brightness of the clearing into the astonishingly sudden and complete gloom of the surrounding forest. The only sight Gabriel saw that gave him any reassurance was a final glimpse of Sunshine being covered up with great speed and skill, mostly with chopped-down or uprooted giant ferns. Within minutes, no amount of "overhead" surveillance from satellites would be able to see anything on the spot but a lump of artfully arranged greenery, as natural looking as any other small hillock on the planet.
