Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  Hutchins.

  “Mr. MacAllister,” she said, “are you okay?”

  “Yes.” He straightened a bit. “I’m fine.”

  There was no way to preserve the bodies, and after a series of conferences among Nicholson, Marcel, and Hutch, it was agreed that Toni and Casey be buried on the plain where they died.

  They picked a spot about thirty meters to one side of the tower, cleared away the snow, and dug two graves. An armed party consisting of Chiang, MacAllister, and Kellie trekked to the patch of forest, cut down a couple of trees, and fashioned two makeshift coffins.

  Meantime, Hutch and Nightingale collected background information from the ships. They cut three slabs of rock from the tower walls to serve as markers and engraved them. They wrapped the bodies in plastic brought originally for the artifacts. By then night had fallen, and their colleagues had returned. They stored the coffins inside the tower, posted a guard, built a fire, and slept in the open.

  There was a ghostly quality to it all. Ordinarily, Flickinger fields were invisible, but they tended to reflect light in the 6100-6400 angstrom range. Orange and red. So they all developed a mild glow whose gradations varied with the intensity of the flames. When occasionally the fire flared, golden auras became visible, providing a flavor of the angelic. Or of the demonic, if one preferred. In either case, Hutch hoped it would be more than enough to keep whatever creatures might haunt the neighborhood at a respectful distance.

  She took the first watch. They were well away from the tower, to ensure that the guard, equipped with night goggles, had a good view in all directions. Nothing moved in that vast wasteland, and after two hours she wearily turned the duty over to Nightingale and curled up in a snowbank.

  But she couldn’t sleep, and for a time she watched him pacing nervously around the camp. It was snowing lightly, and the sky was overcast.

  It had been a mistake to bring him. Even the news that help was on the way had failed to cheer him measurably. While the others had collectively taken a deep breath, and Hutch herself had shed the pall of concern that came with knowing it could easily have gone the other way. Nightingale had seemed not to react. “Good,” he’d said. “Thank God.” But his tone had been flat, as if it didn’t really make much difference.

  Nightingale wasn’t young, and the next few days, with no food, were going to be difficult. She wondered how he’d hold up. Wondered how any of them would hold up. They had nobody, as far as she knew, with the kind of background they were going to need to make themselves reasonably comfortable. They had only the donuts and a few other assorted snacks. But hell, how hungry could they get in four days? If necessary, maybe they could nibble on leaves. It would be just a matter of putting something into their stomachs.

  Nightingale stood in the glare of the fire, scanning the area. He seemed discouraged. Part of that obviously stemmed from the casualties they’d taken, and she wondered whether he was shocked by their loss, or whether he was sensing a kind of parallel with his earlier experience on this world. She also knew he had no confidence in her. He hadn’t said anything overt, but she could read his feelings in his eyes. Especially since their situation had turned difficult. Who are you, his attitude asked, to be making decisions? What’s your degree? Your level of expertise in these matters? You’re not even an archeologist.

  A mild tremor rolled through the night. It was barely discernible, but she wondered whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to head out somewhere tomorrow. Get a reading from Marcel and make for a safer place.

  Nightingale knelt close to Chiang and brushed snow away from his converter. They were in no danger even if the device did become buried, of course. If the air flow into the Flickinger field were cut off, an alarm would sound.

  Hutch’s heat exchanger put out a barely audible hum as it warmed the envelope of air circulating inside her suit. She heard it change tone and looked at her link. The outside temperature was fifteen below. A fairly constant wind was blowing out of the northwest, and the snow was getting heavier.

  Four and a quarter days until help came. It wasn’t exactly a hardship situation. The e-suits would protect them from the cold, but it would occasionally be necessary to shut them off, when eating or performing other basic functions. They’d established a privacy area behind the tower. It wasn’t very private, though, because Hutch insisted no one go back there without an escort. MacAllister, who had often remonstrated against the foolishness of puritanical ideals, seemed particularly upset by the arrangement. If one had to use the facility during the night, it was necessary to wake one of the others. It was not a circumstance that would help morale, he pointed out.

  “Getting eaten,” Hutch told him, “does nothing for morale either.”

  In the morning, under lowering skies, they held a farewell ceremony. Kellie recorded it for the next of kin.

  Toni had been a Universalist, Wetheral a Methodist. And Casey was not known to be affiliated with any religious group.

  Hutch spoke for Toni, a difficult assignment because Universalists did not believe in mantras or formal prayers. One always spoke from the heart. They all mourned the loss of one so young, she said. Nothing they could recover from the site would be worth the price they’d paid. She added that she personally would always remember Toni, who had refused to allow her to come alone to the tower.

  Captain Nicholson, using VR, performed the ceremony for Wetheral. He spoke of selfless service, dedication to duty, a willingness always to put forth extra effort. Hutch concluded that Nicholson and his officer were strangers, and it seemed to her particularly painful that the man had died with no one present who knew him as a human being. His first name, she’d discovered, was Cole. She wished, at least, that they could have recovered his body.

  The marker for Toni read Faithful Unto Death. Wetheral’s might easily have read Buried by Strangers.

  MacAllister surprised her by asking to speak for Casey.

  “I knew her only briefly,” he said. “She seems to have been an honest woman in an honest profession. Maybe no more need be said. Like Toni Hamner, she was only at the beginning of her life. I will miss her.”

  He stared down at the marker, which at his suggestion had been engraved with only her name and dates, and the single word Journalist.

  When they were finished, they put the two coffins in the graves and replaced the soil.

  “Wait a minute,” said Helm. “Tell me again what we’re going to do?”

  “Five people are stranded on the surface of Maleiva III. It’s the world that’s going to—”

  “I know about Maleiva III. Why are we going there?”

  “To rescue them,” Penkavic said.

  A chessboard was set up on his desk. Helm sat behind the black pieces, but his cold blue eyes had locked on Penkavic. He ran long fingers through thick gray hair and nodded, not to the captain, he thought, but to some inner compulsion of his own.

  They were in Helm’s private quarters. The tabletop that supported the chessboard was buried under disks, notes, schematics, printouts. “Why is that our concern?” he asked, keeping his tone polite. As if he was honestly curious. “We’re, what, several days away, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Helm was Kosmik’s chief engineer and director of the terraforming project at Quraqua. “So why do they need us?”

  “They need the lander. They don’t have any way of getting their people off the surface.”

  “What happened to their lander?”

  “It got wrecked. In a quake.”

  “That seems shortsighted.”

  “I don’t know the details. In any case, we’ve already jumped out of hyper. We’re maneuvering onto a new heading, and as soon as we have it we’ll make the jump again. The sooner we—”

  “Wait just a minute. We’re carrying a full load of equipment, supplies, people. All needed at Quraqua. We have constraints on when we have to get there, Eliot. We can’t just go wandering around the region.”

  “I unde
rstand that, sir. But there’s nobody else available to do this.”

  Helm’s tone suggested a gentle uncle trying to reason with an adolescent. “Surely that can’t be.”

  “I checked it, sir. We’re the only ship close enough. The only one with a lander.”

  “Look, Eliot.” He got up, walked around the table, sat down on it, and pointed to a chair. Penkavic stayed on his feet. “We can’t just hold up the cargo. Or the people.” He leaned forward and looked at the captain. “Tell me, if we were to do this, make the run, how late would we be getting into Quraqua?”

  “About nine days.”

  “About nine days.” Helm’s face grew rigid. “You have any idea what that would cost?”

  “Yes, sir. But I didn’t think that was a consideration.”

  “Come on, Eliot, it’s always a consideration.”

  “What I know,” Penkavic said, striving to keep his anger under control, “is that the law, and our own regulations, require us to provide assistance to anyone in distress. We can’t just ignore it. People will die.”

  “Do you think the Academy will reimburse us for what this will cost?”

  “No,” he said. “Probably not.”

  “Then maybe we should consider our options.”

  “We don’t have any options, Dr. Helm.”

  Helm stared at him for a long moment. “No,” he said, “I suppose not. All right, Eliot. Let’s go off and rescue these damned fools. Maybe we’ll get some decent press out of it.”

  After they’d finished the memorial, they trekked back to the Wildside lander and tried to salvage what they could of the artifacts. The tables and chairs were scorched, reduced to rubbish; the scrolls had burned; the pottery had melted. They couldn’t even find the pack and the garments it had contained. A couple of blowguns, some darts, and a javelin were all that had survived.

  Listlessly they returned to the tower and cleaned and bagged the few remaining artifacts.

  MacAllister glowered the whole time, and when Chiang asked him what was wrong, he looked over at Hutch with genuine anger. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that this is all just trash. It’s old trash, but that doesn’t change what it is.”

  Hutch overheard, and in fact he’d obviously intended that she should. It was more than she could take. “You have too many opinions, MacAllister,” she told him. “I’ve read some of your stuff. You’ve a talent with the language, but most of the time you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He’d looked at her with infinite patience. Poor woman.

  They inventoried their new set of artifacts, weapons, pieces of cloth that had once been clothing, cabinets, chairs, and tables, and set them aside to wait for the rescue vehicle.

  “What do we do about food?” MacAllister asked suddenly.

  “We’ll have to run it down,” said Chiang. “Anybody here a hunter?”

  MacAllister nodded. “I am. But not with this.” He glanced down at his cutter. “Anyhow, I don’t know whether anybody’s noticed or not, but there seems to be a distinct lack of game in the neighborhood. Moreover, there might not even be anything here we can eat.”

  “I doubt,” said Nightingale, “that the local wildlife would supply nutrition. We never ran any tests, but at least it would fill our bellies. Provided there are no toxins or other problems.”

  “Good,” said MacAllister. “When we catch one of them, you can sample it.”

  “Maybe there’s an easier way,” said Hutch.

  Kellie’s dark eyes narrowed. “To do what?” she asked. “Find a better guinea pig?”

  “The Star lander isn’t too deep. It might be possible to go down there and retrieve the reddimeals. They’d help get us through until the Boardman arrives.”

  “Not worth it,” said Kellie. “We’re better off trying the local menu.”

  “I doubt it,” growled MacAllister.

  “Hutch,” said Marcel, “it’s not your fault. You have to pull yourself together.” They were on the private channel.

  “You know, Marcel, it just never…” Her voice was shaking and she had to stop to collect herself. “…It just never occurred to me that anything like this could happen.” He could hear her breathing. “I didn’t ask for this. I’m a pilot. They’ve got me making life-and-death decisions.”

  “Hutch.” He made his voice as gentle as he could. “You were trying to do what you were directed to do. Everybody with you is an adult. They knew what you knew. It wasn’t just your decision.”

  “I could have canceled it after the first tremor. Put everybody in the boat and gone back to Wildside. That’s what I should have done.”

  “And if we all had hindsight up front, everybody’d be a millionaire.”

  She was quiet.

  “Hutch, listen to me. They’re going to need you until we get through this. You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Sorry for myself? You think that’s what it is?”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. Your job right now is to keep your people safe until we can get them back here. You can’t do anything about Toni. But you can see that nothing happens to anyone else.”

  She broke the connection, and he took a deep breath. He understood she’d been through a horrific experience, but he had expected more of her somehow. Had the conversation continued, he’d been prepared to suggest she retire in favor of Kellie. He wondered whether he shouldn’t call her back and advise her to do just that.

  But, no. Not yet. If everything went well, it was just a matter of biding their time until help came. He left the bridge and wandered down to project control, where a couple of technicians were trying to analyze the impossibilium.

  Bill’s image formed on a nearby screen. “Marcel? You have a text message.”

  Wendy was lingering in the area of the assembly, although Marcel would have preferred to return to orbit to be as close as possible to the stranded team. But he was helpless to do anything other than watch, so he’d indulged the researchers and granted their wish to stay near the giant artifact. They hovered within a few meters, while every instrument the ship possessed poked, scanned, and probed the shafts.

  They lacked the laboratory facilities to do extensive evaluation of the onboard samples, but they were trying to determine melting and boiling points, specific heat and thermal conductivity, density, Young’s modulus, bulk and shear modulus. They wanted to define yield and ultimate strength, electrical conductivity and magnetic permeability at varying temperatures, currents, and frequencies. They wanted to know how quickly sound moved through it, and compile an index of refraction over a range of frequencies. Beekman and his people had begun to put together a stress and strain graph. It didn’t mean much to Marcel, but the researchers took turns gaping at the results.

  “On-screen.”

  TO:

  NCA WENDY JAY

  FROM:

  NCK ATHENA BOARDMAN

  SUBJECT:

  STATUS REPORT

  FOR CAPT CLAIRVEAU. WE ARE ON SCHEDULE, MINUTES FROM MAKING OUR JUMP ONBOARD LANDER WILL BE PRIMED AND READY TO GO. MARCEL, YOU OWE ME.

  “Is there a reply?”

  “Tell him I’ll buy him lunch.”

  XII

  Nothing kills the appetite quite as effectively as a death sentence.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, “In Defense of the Godly,” The Incomplete MacAllister

  Hours to breakup (est): 252

  It was almost 1800 hours, forty-two minutes since they’d made the jump into transdimensional space, when Penkavic ordered an inspection of the lander and retired to his quarters. He had just arrived when Eve, Boardman’s AI, reported all in order.

  The ship had begun to quiet. Many of his passengers had retired for the night. The common room had pretty much emptied out, and only two or three remained in the various planning or leisure areas. A small group of technicians and climate specialists were engaged in a role-playing game in the Green Room, a contest which would probably continue well int
o the morning. Several biologists were still in project control arguing about stocking procedures, and a few individuals were gathered in the relatively intimate Apollo Porch, where they could look out at the stars.

  Penkavic was more rattled by his confrontation with Helm than he cared to admit to himself. It wasn’t just that he’d offended one of the most powerful people in the corporation. He had, after all, done the right thing, and kept both himself and Helm out of trouble. But there was a quality to Corporate’s chief engineer that unsettled Penkavic, inducing a reaction that went far beyond concern over what he might or might not do to damage the captain’s career. It was hard to pin down. Helm did not seem especially threatening or intimidating, but he invariably induced a sense that he and he alone understood the correct and reasonable course. In his presence, Penkavic inexplicably wanted very much to please him. Even when he disagreed strongly with the older man’s conclusions.

  He climbed out of his uniform, showered, and slipped into bed. But the lights had just died when Eve’s voice filtered through the room. “Captain, we have a problem.”

  He sat up. “What’s wrong, Eve?”

  “The lander is preparing to launch.”

  “Stop it.” He threw the sheet aside, put his feet on the deck, and waited for her response.

  “I can’t. I’m locked out.”

  He called for lights and threw on a robe. “Go to the red circuit,” he told her. “Shut it down. Shut everything down in the launch bay if you have to.”

  He was out the door, headed for the lower deck.

  “Negative,” she said. “Lander is sealing.”

  She put a visual on a wallscreen. He watched the vehicle rotate, saw the bay doors open. “Who’s doing it?” he demanded.

  “I can’t tell if there is a deliberate agency at work. There seems to be a partial breakdown in Delta comm.” In Eve’s ability to communicate with the various automated systems.

  He watched the lights in the launch bay brighten and dim, as they routinely did at the start of an operation, and then the lander floated out into the gray mist.