Orbit Unlimited

by Poul Anderson

  Svoboda’s glance went to his wife, and the mayor, and back to his wife. She stood with one hand to her mouth, watching him from enormous eyes. His own countenance went blank and he said without tone: ‘So you want me to come along with you, down into the Cleft? But if the boy went that way, he’s dead by now. I hate to put it so cruelly, but he is.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ asked Coffin. ‘Can you stay home and be convinced you might not have saved him?’

  ‘But —’ Svoboda jammed hands in pockets, stared at the floor and back again. A muscle jumped at the angle of his jaw. ‘Let’s keep on being brutally honest,’ he said. ‘In my opinion, the probability that the boy can be found alive is vanishingly slight, while the probability that one or more of the searchers will be injured, or killed, is quite large. It seems poor economy on Rustum, where every hand is needed.’

  Anger sprang within Coffin: ‘Yes, Mr. Svoboda, I would call that kind of honesty brutal.’

  ‘Like your argument during the Year of Sickness that we shouldn’t put cairns on the dead, but let the carrion devils dig them up and eat them?’

  ‘We were far more shorthanded then. And it didn’t matter to the dead.’

  ‘It did to their families. Why pick on me, anyhow, for Christ’s sake? I’m busy.’

  ‘Preparing for a wedding!’ Coffin snorted.

  ‘It can be postponed … if you must go,’ Judith whispered.

  Svoboda went over to her, took both her hands in his and asked most softly, ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘I don’t know. You have to decide, Jan.’ She pulled free of him. ‘I’m not brave enough to decide.’ Suddenly she went out of the room. They heard her run down the hall toward the bed chamber.

  Svoboda started to follow, halted, and turned on the others. ‘I stand by my judgment,’ he snapped. ‘Has anyone got the nerve to call me a coward?’

  ‘I think you should reconsider, Jan,’ said Wolfe.

  ‘You?’ Svoboda was astonished.

  Coffin almost echoed him. Both men stared at the portly form on the couch. This was the mayor who had voted against burial cairns in the evil year; who had talked the farmers out of a hornbeetle extermination program on the ground that it was more expedient they suffer known crop damage than future generations suffer the unknown consequences of a possibly upset ecology; who had bribed Gonzales to drop an impractical scheme to dam the Smoky River by finding for Gonzales in a lawsuit; who had kept young Tregennis from starting a washing-machine factory he felt would at this stage use too many of the colony’s resources, by acquiring Tregennis’ capital in an astronomical poker game — ‘I don’t believe your chances would be that bad,’ said Wolfe.

  Svoboda rumpled his hair. Sweat began to glisten beneath it. ‘I’m not abandoning the kid,’ he protested. If I thought his chances – of being alive – were any good, of course I’d go. But they aren’t. And I’ve got a wife, and two of my own children’are still small, and— No. I’m sorry as hell. I won’t sleep decently for a long time to come. But I am not going down into the Cleft. I haven’t the right.’

  Coffin dragged the admission from himself: ‘If that’s the way you want it, I’ll have to believe you’re acting in good conscience.’ Weariness settled on his shoulders like a block of iron. ‘Let’s go, Mr. Wolfe.’

  The mayor rose. ‘I’d like a word with Jan in private, if neither of you mind,’ he said. He took his host’s arm, led him into the hall and closed the door behind them.

  Coffin flopped into a chair. His knees had been about to give way. O God, to be in space again! His head rolled loosely against the chair back and he closed his eyes, which were burning in their sockets.

  His hearing was better than average. When the lowered voice of Wolfe still reached him through the door, he tried to stand up and go out of earshot, but will and strength had left. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He heard the mayor say:

  ‘Jan, you’ve got to do this. I’m sorry to postpone your daughter’s marriage and sorrier yet to hazard your life, but you’re damn near the only man who might rescue that boy – or find his body – and get back alive. It has to be you.’

  ‘It won’t be.’ Svoboda spoke sullenly. ‘You can’t compel me. The group has no constitutional claim on the individual except in case of clear and present public danger. Which this is not.’

  ‘Your reputation, though —’

  ‘Nonsense. You must know yourself, every man in High America will understand me.’ Svoboda’s control began to crack. ‘Jesus, Theron! Lay off! We’ve come such a long way together … since we first started organizing people on Earth— You wouldn’t ruin it now, would you?’ – ‘Of course not. I meant the reputation I want you to get: a hero. Which, apart from egotism and the pleasure given your family, can be very useful With our labor shortage, a boss who wants workers must be a popular figure. You’ve told me you want to expand your operations.’

  ‘I don’t want to that much. Theron, the answer is no, and it hurts too much for me to keep repeating it. Go home.’

  Wolfe sighed. ‘You force my hand. I don’t always enjoy blackmailing people.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I know about you and Helga Dahlquist, one night last summer.’

  ‘Wha-wha-what – You’re lying!’

  ‘Whoa, son. Information that reaches me stays there … most of the time. But I’ve got ways to prove what I claim. Now naturally I’d hate to hurt your wife —’

  ‘You lousy fat slug! It didn’t mean anything. We were both drunk and – and – her husband too. You’d hurt him still worse than Judy. You know that? He’s a good fellow. I’ve been sorrier on his account, even, than on my wife’s. It was just one of those damned impulses – Helga and I — You’ll keep your flapping mouth shut!’

  ‘Certainly. If you agree to try and rescue Danny.’

  Coffin attempted once more to rise. This time he succeeded. He should not have heard that conversation. He went over to the window and stared out, hating Rustum, despising Svoboda, tasting the full measure of his own blood guiltiness,

  The door opened at his back. Svoboda came through. He was saying, with a touch of merriment that completely baffled Coffin: ‘- and thanks. You’re a rat, but I’m not too sorry you are.’ He paused. I’ll be at your house an hour before sunrise, Mr. Coffin.’

  5

  The east side of the tableland called High America did not slope off like the other edges, but fell with an unscalable abruptness. Kilometer after kilometer the palisades marched, a sheer hundred meters down to talus slopes which in turn were cut off by a rank of precipices, and so on till clouds hid the lower steeps. Only where a fault had split the mountains and a hundred million years had eroded the resulting gash could men find a way. Few had tried it, and none had gone far.

  Where it notched the plateau rim, the Cleft was five kilometers wide. As it slanted down, it broadened. Though he had often seen the view, Svoboda parted a screen of cinnabar bush and looked with awe.

  Overhead arched the dawn sky, purple in the west where a last few stars blinked above the hump of the Centaurs, clear blue at the zenith which a now waning Raksh had approached, almost white in the east. The upland behind him lay huge, shadowy, and still; treetops were hoar where they caught the light. The cliff toppled at his feet, gray-blue streaked with mineral reds and yellows, spotted with bushes that had somehow rooted themselves fast, down and down to the sharded rock of a slope which itself tumbled downward. Directly across from him lay nothing but cold air, until the eye found a crag upreared on the opposite verge and saw the first sunbeams throw shadows of infinite complexity over its face. A spear-fowl, big as an Earthly condor, hovered out there. Its feathers were like shining steel.

  This way,’ said Coffin. His voice was too loud, ugly in that silence. Pebbles kicked from his boots went rattling and bouncing to the cliff brink, and over.

  Svoboda trudged behind. The pack on his shoulders and the gun at his hip seemed to weigh him down already. Like the other man,
he was clad for a rough hike, in homesewn shirt and pants of drab green; but his messkit and sleeping gear would have made Daniel Boone envious. The first expedition and the subsequent colonists had developed certain wilderness techniques.

  The trouble was, they were only appropriate to the plateau. Men had taken quick peeks at the forest beneath the clouds, shuddered, and returned. There was more than enough to do on the heights, without pushing into lands where you could scarcely breathe. Last year John O’Malley had taken an aircraft down to sea level and come back with nothing worse than a severe headache; but few people had that much tolerance to such pressures of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. O’Malley himself doubted he could have survived many days.

  And so Danny – Svoboda grimaced. He didn’t want to see the boy’s corpse. It would be rotten, probably, if the carrion devils or the corvines hadn’t found it.

  ‘Here,’ said Coffin. The dogs traced him this far.’

  Svoboda looked closely. They had reached the middle of the notch. Boulder-strewn, it wound steeply downward, its slant sides rising to form cliffs. At the bottom of vision were the clouds.

  He had ignored them when he first gazed over the Cleft. They were nothing but a whiteness far under his feet. But now they lay ahead. The first semicircle of e Eridani was visible, blinding in the east above a billowing snowlike plain. Blue shadows crawled toward him, kilometers in length. Mist began to pour up the canyon, filling it from side to side, a gray wall whose top faded to gold smoke. Svoboda caught his breath. He hadn’t watched sunrise over the Cleft for years. It brought back to him how much else was beautiful here, the summer forests, Elvenveil Falls, Lake Royal turquoise in the morning and amethyst in the evening, a double moonglade shivering on the Emperor River … in spite of everything, he was glad he had come to Rustum.

  He did not want to end his days in the Cleft.

  ‘Daniel used to sit on that rock overgrown with lyco-poid,’ Coffin pointed. ‘I think he must have developed some wild ideas of what lay back of the clouds. At least, he used to spin such fantasies when he was little. Naturally, I discouraged that.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Svoboda.

  ‘What?’ Coffin blinked. ‘Why discour— But that sort of thing, it isn’t truthful! You, as a Constitutionalist—’

  ‘Anker never said fun and fantasy were untruthful,’ Svoboda snapped. He reined in his temper. ‘Well, let’s not argue theories of child rearing. Have you been this way before?’

  Coffin’s long gaunt head nodded. ‘I’ve explored a couple of kilometers down in detail, and went about twice that far yesterday, searching. Beyond—’ He shrugged. ‘We’ll have to see.’ He took a location bracelet from his pocket and laid it on the rock from which Danny had watched the golden smoke. A series of such radio markers would enable them to find their way back, and to orient themselves. ‘Let’s go.’

  He started along the bottom of the gorge. Svoboda followed. The fog poured like a river to meet them, hiding the sun again. Drawn upward by the warming of the air, the vapors would hang around the plateau brim for hours. The men couldn’t wait that long. In any event, they would probably have to penetrate such mists. Hotter than Earth and with a larger ocean surface, Rustum had a semi-permanent cloud layer in its atmosphere. The uplands which poked beyond this were a special climatic zone, normally arid. High America was fortunate in getting the runoff from the still taller peaks of Centaur and Hercules, and thus a decent amount of moisture. What scanty information was available suggested that the cloud stratum also separated two distinct life zones.

  Svoboda concentrated on keeping his feet. Stones twisted beneath his soles and materialized in front of his toes with fiendish precision. Huge drifts of boulders must be scrambled across; crags must be gone around; spike-hedge must be pushed through; bluffs must be slid down. The air closed in until he walked through dripping, swirling gray, where Coffin was a shadow ahead of him and pinnacles were briefly seen to right and left like hooded ghosts.

  After a long while he called: ‘Any trace on the locator?’

  Automatically Coffin glanced at the black box strapped on his pack. Tuned to the wavelength of Danny’s bracelet, the directional antenna wobbled randomly about on its swivel. ‘Certainly not,’ he answered. ‘We haven’t even come as far as I did yesterday. I’ll tell you if I get a signal, never fear.’

  ‘You needn’t take that tone,’ bridled Svoboda. ‘You asked me for help.’

  ‘Danny asked both of us for help.’

  ‘This is no time for sentimentalism. Especially as sticky as that.’

  Coffin halted and turned around. For a moment his face was thrust livid out of the fog, and one fist doubled. Svoboda’s heart lost a beat. I’d better aplogize —

  ‘Strengthen me, God,’ said Coffin. He resumed walking.

  Not to that prig, Svoboda decided.

  As they went on, quick violent winds boomed in their ears and dashed the fog against them, without being able to blow it away. The ground grew wetter until it gleamed in the thick twilight. Trickles ran down every stone, rivulets coursed between, springs welled forth within meters of each other. The loud ringing noise of waterfalls could be heard from cliff walls invisible in the roiled vapors. But there were no more plants. The men seemed to be the only life remaining.

  ‘Stop a minute,’ said Svoboda at last.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Coffin’s voice sounded muffled by the dankness.

  ‘We’re into the permanent clouds. You ever been this far?’

  ‘No. What of it?’

  ‘Well, my own digging is at a slightly higher altitude than this, thank fortune. But occasionally, for one reason or another, I have to come down to this level or a bit lower. And then there are the reports of the previous exploratory descents. We’re entering the dangerous area.’

  ‘What’s there to be afraid of? This region is dead.’

  ‘Not quite. In any event, the footing will be slippery, the wind gusts terrific, the gradient steeper yet, and ourselves half blind. We’d better plan our next moves in advance. Also, it’s time for a rest and a snack.’

  ‘While Danny may be dying?’

  ‘Use your brains. We can’t help him if we wear ourselves out.’ Svoboda hunkered down and removed his pack. After a moment Coffin joined him, grudgingly. They spread a pliosheet to sit on, broke out a chocolate bar, and ignited a therm capsule under the tea-kettle.

  There was no medical reason to boil water here – or, probably, in the most fetid lowland swamp. The few native diseases to which humans were subject all seemed to be airborne. It was the good side of the biochemical coin, the bad side being that little native vegetation had been found which was edible by man. A number of animals were, since the stomach can break down most exotic proteins, but none met the complete requirements of nutrition and many were as poisonous as the average plant. The bad of the meat coin was, obviously, that some Rustumite carnivores had discovered they liked human flesh.

  Svoboda wanted tea because he was cold and wet and tired.

  ‘There’s considerable water erosion in the cloud belt,’ he said. ‘Crumbly rock. We’d better clamp on our spike soles and rope ourselves together.’ He sighed. ‘No offense, but I wish I had a more experienced partner than you.’

  ‘You could have co-opted Hirayama, could you not?’

  ‘I didn’t. He’d have come if I’d asked, but I didn’t ask. Haven’t even told him.’

  Coffin clamped his jaws. There was stillness except for the rush and whistle of wind, the dripping and chuckling of water. When he had himself under control, he said in a flat voice, ‘Why? The more in this party, and the more skilled they are at mountain climbing, the better our chances.’

  ‘Yeh. But Saburo is a family man too. And if I should die, he’d keep the mine going, and thus provide my own family with an income.’

  ‘Your survivors could work. Jobs go begging on this planet.’

  ‘I don’t intend that Judy should have to get a job. Nor my kids till they’r
e grown.’

  ‘In other words, you’d rather have them be parasites?’

  ‘By God —!’ Svoboda half rose. ‘You take that back or I start home this minute.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Coffin snarled.

  ‘The hell I can’t.’

  ‘You and Mayor Wolfe — Be glad your sin isn’t punished worse than this.’

  ‘Why, you bluenosed, keyhole-peeping— Put up your fists! Go on, get up and fight before I kick you in the belly!’

  Coffin shook his head. ‘No. This is no place for a fight.’

  The mist swirled and eddied. The tea-kettle began to boil. Coffin charged the pot. Svoboda stood over him, breathing hard.

  Slowly, Coffin’s head drooped. Shame stained his cheeks. ‘I apologize,’ he muttered. ‘I didn’t intend to eavesdrop. I couldn’t help overhearing. None of my business. I certainly ought not to have mentioned it. I won’t, ever again.’

  Svoboda struck a cigaret, squatted, and did not speak until the tea was ready and a full cup in his hand. Then, his eyes avoiding the other man, he said: ‘Okay, agreed, this is no place to quarrel. But don’t call my family parasites. Is it parasitic for a woman – a widow – to keep house and raise the kids? Is a school child or a student a parasite?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Coffin without great sincerity.

  ‘Quasi-cultural conflict between us,’ Svoboda remarked, trying to smile and ease the atmosphere. ‘You farmers tend to be at loggerheads with us entrepreneurs because we compete with you for machinery, which is still at a premium. But there’s a basic difference of attitude developing, too. Inevitably so, I guess. By and large, the most scientifically oriented people have tended to go into non-agricultural lines of work. And they’re a touch more pragmatic and hedonistic, I suppose. I’ve often heard farmers and ranchers worry about High America evolving into another mechanical, proletarianized Earth.’

  ‘That’s one reason I chose to farm, in spite of my earlier background,’ Coffin admitted.

  Svoboda stared into the blowing blindness. ‘We needn’t worry about that for centuries yet,’ he said. ‘Not with a whole world to spread into.’