The Sky People

by S. M. Stirling

  "Well, that's the word," Marc pointed out. "As far as we can tell. How many thousands of rock hounds have been collecting fossils all over Earth for how long now? Whereas we've had six or seven people doing it for six years on Venus. That makes 'sampling error' pretty well automatic."

  She shot him a look that made him regret speaking. "But what they don't have on Earth is this," she said, pointing to the shiny rock that underlay the whole limestone formation. "That's metamorphic. Sort of a sulfur-rich basalt. And it's goddamned everywhere we've been able to look, at about the same age."

  "So what do you and Dr. Feldman think it means?" Blair asked, as they packed the samples in shamboo caskets and lugged them back to the campsite.

  The native hunters gave them an incurious glance and went about their work: Everyone knew that the Sky People, while wizards of great power, were raving mad. Filling a sack with useless rocks and treating it like a treasure was typical of them.

  Cynthia was silent until the task was done; Marc was startled when she finally answered. "Sam thinks… and I think… that two hundred million years ago, in the earliest Jurassic… this planet was different. Radically different from what we have now; as far as we can tell, it didn't have life at all. And we don't have any idea what changed it."

  Venus, EastBloc Shuttle Riga—Low Venus Orbit, Surface

  It isn't being dead that is so bad, Captain Binkis thought, as the shuttle Riga began its unplanned reentry.

  His father had been a teenaged partisan in the war, and had always told him that. He ought to know, as many as he'd seen go and helped on the way.

  No, it's the dying that hurts.

  At least he didn't have to wait too quietly. The Riga was beginning to shudder as they struck denser air—still a vacuum by ordinary definitions, but when you were traveling at orbital velocities, it didn't take much.

  "We're going to skip," Li said. Her short hair was plastered to her forehead in little black rat-tails, the lilt stronger in her Russian. "The angle of approach is too shallow."

  Lights winked. "I have the controls!" Binkis said, half a shout of triumph.

  He did, at least the manual ones. Much good it will do us. But whatever had frozen them out was gone, at least for the present. The shuddering grew worse; he fought with brief bursts of the altitude jets to keep the Riga from tumbling, which would smear them in glowing fragments over half a hemisphere. Deceleration slammed them savagely into their couches, and he felt the world go gray and vision narrow to a tunnel; something warm and salty ran down over his upper lip, tasting like iron as he reflexively opened his mouth.

  If he breathed blood back through his sinuses and choked on it, they would all certainly die. Gently, gently, keep the ablative plating on her belly at maximum aspect to their path of descent…

  Weight lessened; in an instant they would be in zero-G again… for a very short while, as they bounced off the atmosphere like a flat rock thrown along the surface of a pond. Li was still conscious, though blood flowed from her nose, too, and from the corners of her eyes like red tears. Nininze hung limp in his harness, and might have been dead except for the bubbles in the blood that trickled out of his loose mouth.

  "Get me a descent vector," Binkis said to Li in a voice like an ancient rusted gate opening, wrung beyond exhaustion by the mental effort that had saved them.

  "Where?" she asked faintly, her voice dull and flat.

  "One that we can survive, kale!" he rasped. "We're not going to the Cosmograd landing field anyway!"

  He could see the curving cone of possible trajectories on one of the screens, one that hadn't been affected by whatever-it-was. Already the whole east-central part of Gagarin was out-of-bounds, impossible for something with their speed and position, forbidden by Newton. Hands moved on the console. The schematic of the Riga turned on the central screen, and a course appeared, with the alphanumeric bars beside it listing the rate of descent and angle. He forced his hands to suppleness on the control joystick. A series of blows hit the underside of the craft as the vast white-blue disk steadied ahead of them. Then they merged into a juddering rumble, a toning harmonic that made the stainless-steel fillings in his back teeth ache. Flickers of incandescence began to show around the edges of the blunt, wedge-shaped prow ahead of them; he ignored them in favor of the instruments as the heat built in the little cabin.

  "Here, sir."

  Binkis' lips skinned back. "That is in the Prohibited Zone." He shook his head. "No matter. It is not nearly as prohibitive as death."

  Figures, figures of life and death, edging up towards the redline limits. He could feel the air begin to take fire—

  And they were through it. His whole body shuddered, and sweat washed the dried blood down until thick drops fell off his chin. The rudders began to bite air, a little mushy at first, then more definitely, and the ceramic underbelly of the shuttle started to generate lift as well as shielding them from kinetic energy turned into heat.

  "Now get us down, you keshke shunsnukis, you dog-faced whore," he begged the craft he'd piloted so many times. "My sweet Riga, you can do it!"

  They were still at better than ten kilometers up, but descending steeply. He wrestled the clumsy craft into its optimum glide, which wasn't much. As an aircraft it had all the grace and nimbleness of a cow falling off a cliff, particularly under manual control. The radar showed tangled mountains ahead, and a hint of flat sea off to his right, to the north; at least they hadn't overshot the whole continent and wouldn't be forced to come down in the open ocean. Drifting in a rubber raft fifteen thousand kilometers from base… that would just make an interesting bit of foreign food for the plesiosaurs. And they had seagoing crocodiles here twenty meters long. Of course, coming down on dry land that far from Cosmograd, assuming they lived, wouldn't be much better. He'd seen an allosaurus snap up a saber-tooth once, toss it in the air like a tidbit, and then bite the massive predator in half as it fell and pace on like a lizard from Hell, bits dropping from its jaws…

  Focus. If you die in the next five minutes, there won't be pieces big enough for anything but bacteria to squabble over.

  Li spoke, startling him. "Captain, the radio is still dead. I think I could trigger the distress beacon, though."

  "Do it. At this altitude, they may be able to track where we go down."

  And walk all the way to get us? his mind gibed at him. Then: For our cargo, possibly, they would, if it is what I think it is.

  Down, down. The land ahead becoming less and less of a map, less a blue blur and more mountains, plains, rivers. The Riga would come in hot, faster than a speeding car; it needed a long runway or they'd smash and roll. Nothing would be smooth enough except water.

  There. A long lake, like an L with a tiny, shorter arm. Kilometers of it, like a fjord between high country, and smooth, smooth to the radar eye. He shouted in triumph and increased the rate of descent.

  I will flare her up to kill speed just before we strike and then nose down

  before we stall, he thought. That meant handling the heavy, low-lift rocket-plane like a light aircraft. Since the alternative is death, I am sure that I can do it.

  Lower and closer, and suddenly it was a real world out there, not an abstract painting. Through the layer of haze-cloud, and then the forested hills just south of the coastal plain were below them, shockingly close. The lake had low, rolling downs on one side, higher, shaggy heights to his left. No islands, no obvious reefs, and kilometers of water.

  But fast, much too fast, he thought. If we touch down at this speed we will spin like a tossed coin.

  "Li," he said, over the thuttering of cloven air. "Get ready to help me with Nininze if we have to evacuate quickly."

  And… now.

  He hit the override button to cut out the subsystem that usually prevented suicide moves, and then hauled back on the joystick, unconsciously straining at it as if it were connected to the control surfaces by something besides electrical impulses. The blunt wedge of the Riga turned its nose up an
d up, as if it were trying to climb back to orbit. Speed was transformed into altitude in a few instants of savage deceleration, and his abused body screamed to him in protest. Adrenaline overrode it as he fought for life. There would be a precise instant when the Riga was about to stall and acquire the aerodynamics of a large brick tossed into the sky.

  Now.

  He pushed the joystick forward. There was a heart-stopping moment of zero-G when it seemed the craft would fall hopelessly stern-first.

  "Shudas!" he blurted.

  They were going to stall. Then the controls moved, and the Riga lurched. The nose went down. Potential energy became speed once more as they fell. The lifting-body shape of the Riga functioned once more, and the rudders bit the air. But the speeds were lower now, much lower—still too high for a wheels-up landing, but not certain death. The lake grew to a long blue bar before him.

  "Velniai griebtu!" he swore exultantly, and then they struck.

  The ceramic belly of the Riga was still hotter than molten lead, glowing white and red, just below its certified failure state. A huge cloud of steam exploded out from it as they hit, along with the spray. It wasn't—quite—enough to flip the shuttle on its back. It did mean they rode forward for better than a kilometer on a pillow of superheated water vapor, an almost frictionless bed that sent the Riga squirting forward like a bead of mercury sliding over dry ice. That meant they were traveling fast enough to let the fins bite, and he was able to keep the Riga pointed west in a swooping, side-to-side, snake-track way. Just when the hilly western shore was starting to look uncomfortably close, the belly dropped into the water proper with an ominous series of crackling noises—the heat-shield snapping as differential cooling stressed it beyond its parameters. The ride became rougher as well, like a sled traveling over dried corrugated mud.

  "Here we go!" Binkis shouted.

  The shore loomed up. He steered for a cove with a sloping muddy shore and waving swamp reeds behind it, throwing a huge rooster tail of spray as the flat-bottomed craft careened across the calm blue water.

  Then they struck. A feeling of huge inertia, pushing him forward intolerably against the straps… and blackness.

  BOOM!

  The first thing Binkis was conscious of was the smell, something like burnt sewage with an undertone of rank greenery. The noise that had awoken him was the explosive bolts throwing up the emergency escape hatch; it stood up now like the lid of a box, and smoke poured in, making him cough with the thick rankness. The Riga had run through the swamp and up onto the edge of firm land. The nose was canted up over a massive root and a towering tree overhung the cockpit; the angle made the acceleration couch seem like a bed. Every inch of his body ached as if it had been stretched out to twice its proper length and beaten with oak rods, and dried blood coated the lower half of his face like a sticky mask. He managed to wipe some of the sludge away and gasped for breath, but the effort was too much for him, and he slipped gratefully back into the velvet darkness.

  When he woke again, Li was flipping water from a canteen on his face. He saw that Nininze had been laid out on the narrow strip of floor between the workstations, resting on an inflatable mattress.

  "Thanks," Binkis croaked, and took the canteen, gulping hastily and then coughing before a steadier drink. "How long?"

  "I came to about twenty minutes ago," Li said. "It is four hours since we crashed."

  "Landed, Li. Landed. We're alive, so it was a landing."

  She nodded with her usual expressionless calm; he had to admit she looked better than he felt, moving fairly gingerly but with her face washed clean of blood.

  "It was an inspired piece of piloting, sir," she said.

  Binkis nodded. Although…for a moment there, it was if Someone Else was at the controls. He groped at his waist for the first-aid pouch, but Li silently held out two painkiller tablets. The pilot washed them down with more water, coughed again, wiped his face, and went on:

  "What's our situation?"

  Surprising him, she smiled. "We are stranded a very long way from home, Captain." Then, serious once more: "We grounded on a spur of firm land—relatively firm land—near the western end of the lake, where the short arm running north-south meets the long east-west one. There are cliffs about two kilometers south of here and extensive swamps to the north and west. I saw plentiful wildlife but no large sauroids. Lieutenant Nininze remains unconscious and is apparently concussed."

  Binkis swatted at something on his neck; it squished unpleasantly against his skin. "We'll have to get out of the Riga and set up a camp on dry land," he said. "Then we can see about cobbling together a radio and getting in touch with Cosmograd."

  They set to work. There was a spring not far south where a rocky shelf about twelve feet high rose from the soft ground, with a small clearing surrounded by huge evergreen oaks. They unpacked the survival kit, which included machetes, and chopped a way through the undergrowth of tall ferns to a game trail that led to the clearing, set up their tent, and then began the difficult business of hoisting the unconscious Nininze out without hurting him still more. Everything was slowed by the battering and bruising their own bodies had taken; neither of them was technically concussed, but you didn't get knocked unconscious without feeling well and truly miserable. The air wasn't too hot, around twenty degrees, and the extra oxygen helped, but it was thick, humid, and still, and insects buzzed about their ears ceaselessly. After a while, the sweat seemed to help, as if Binkis were sweating out the poisons of fear and pain.

  Halfway through the process, Nininze began to come to, but was semiconscious and weak, not seeming to know where he was or able to talk coherently.

  "Prakeikimas!" Binkis swore mildly. "Damn!"

  "Shall we sedate him, Captain?" Li called through the roof-hatch. "I've already given him the painkillers."

  "No, I don't want to waste drugs unless we absolutely must," Binkis said. "It's not a good idea with a concussion, anyway."

  There were loops along the edges of the inflated mattress. He used his belt-knife to cut a set of restraints free of one of the acceleration couches and improvised a set that would immobilize the injured man at shoulders and waist and legs; then they rigged a block and tackle from the overhanging branch. Binkis stripped off his shirt to pad his hands and braced himself beside the semiconscious man.

  "I'll hoist him," he said. "You swing him out on the top of the hull—make sure he doesn't land facedown."

  "I will be careful to orient him properly," Li said. "Laying him facedown would aggravate his injuries."

  As usual, Binkis couldn't quite tell if she was completely serious. He snorted and took a careful strain on the rope until the mattress began to lift, raising the Georgian's head and shoulders first. When the tail of the mattress had cleared the perforated metal plates of the deck, Li took up the slack on her secondary line, which prevented it from swinging like a pendulum bob.

  "Carefully… carefully… carefully!"

  Binkis shouted it the last time; the weight had come right off the rope suddenly. Then it burned through his hands, almost fast enough to burn through the cloth wrapping.

  "To the devils!" he shouted. "What are you doing, Li, you kumele!"

  There was silence above, then a scuffling, and an earsplitting shriek of agony—beneath it a rumbling bellow, and a snarl like dogs. An instant later something fell through the hatch. It took him a moment to realize it was Nininze's foot, still in its boot, raggedly hacked free of the leg. Binkis froze for a fraction of a second, then snatched up the assault rifle, leaped for the back of an acceleration couch and up onto the roof of the Riga.

  Two dozen brutish figures had swarmed up onto the upper surface of the shuttle, massive, hairy, slope-browed, snarling, with thin-lipped chinless mouths full of tombstone teeth; more dropped down from the tree as he landed. Several were dragging Li away; her eyes bulged over a great hand clamped across her face. Another knelt with a mouthful of Nininze's thigh in his mouth, straining backward with powerful n
eck-muscles while he sawed his sharp-edged obsidian knife back and forth to free the gobbet of flesh; half a dozen others waited to feed.

  Binkis screamed and shot, the long chattering burst from the AK-47 sending a bright spearhead of flame into the olive gloom under the tree, the strobing light flashing on the startled faces of the savages and their painted, mud-streaked bodies. Two of them fell dead; another screamed and sprattled before the bolt clicked open. A score of the apish shapes scattered in panic flight, leaping outward into the swamp in huge bounds from the shuttle or running up the tree with the agility of monstrous giant squirrels, but more screamed and crowded closer, brandishing weapons. The pilot fumbled for another magazine and clicked it home just as a thrown club struck him in the knee. He heard the crack of breaking bone an instant before the pain doubled him over, and then he fell as the smashed joint buckled beneath him.

  Binkis waited for death. One of the Neanderthaloids stooped over him: an older specimen, the hair-beard on his face and the tall topknot of reddish locks streaked with gray, the left eye an empty mass of scars. Tall feathers were tucked into his hair, and the mobile lips elongated into an 0 of astonishment as he examined the human's gear. The Neanderthaloid plucked the assault rifle from across Binkis' chest and brought it up to his broad blobby nose, sniffing and grimacing.

  Another quasi-human pushed close, snarling; he was younger and stronger, with a knob-headed club in one hand. He pointed at Binkis and swung his bludgeon up. The older one made a gesture of negation and continued to examine the rifle. Somewhere Li was screaming again. Binkis choked a little on the rancid musk-stink of the figures around him, and watched stolidly as the length of hardwood rose to crush out his brains for the feasters.

  Braaappp!

  The AK-47 fired off most of its magazine before the older Neanderthaloid released the trigger. Five of the rounds blasted into the one about to kill Binkis, a row of black holes turning instantly red from crotch to sloping forehead. The sixth took the top off the head of one of the ones sitting chewing around Nininze's body, and the rest clipped down bark and twigs from the trees.