by Emily
One of the screens was focused on Wendy's hull. Marcel saw movement, but it happened so quickly he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it. "Thanks, Abel," he said.
He was still watching the screen. A shadow passed across Wendy, and one of her sensors vanished. A communication pod broke open and its electronic components spilled into the void. He switched over to the AI and picked up Bill's voice in midstride: "... to several forward systems. Intensity seems to be lessening . . ." The voice failed, and the image flickered and went off. It came back, long enough for Bill to add the word assess; then it went down again.
Nicholson, in the command chair, took a report that communications with Wendy had failed.
He asked a technician whether she could restore them.
"Problem's not on this end, Captain," she said. Another technician was running the visuals backward.
Nicholson looked at Marcel. "What the hell's happening over there? Can you make it out?"
"More rocks, I think," said Marcel. "It'll get worse as Jerry gets closer.
The screen remained blank.
"What happens if we don't regain contact?"
"We don't need to. Bill knows what to do. All the AIs do. As long as there's no emergency that requires us to make adjustments."
Canyon sat in a pose one could only describe as relaxed attention. "So this was your first time outside a ship, Tom. Why don't you tell us what was running through your mind when you went through the airlock?"
Scolari willed himself to relax. "Well, August, I knew it was something that had to be done. So I just made up my mind to do it." It was a stupid response, but he had suddenly lost all capability to think. What's my name? "I mean, it wasn't something we could just walk away from. It's a life-and-death situation."
He looked over at Cleo, who was gazing innocently at the ceiling.
"And how about you, Cleo?" said Canyon. "It must have been pretty unnerving looking down and not seeing anything."
"Well, that's true, August. Although to be honest I never felt there was a 'down.' It's not like being on the side of a building."
"I understand you got hit by a storm of meteors. How did you react to that?"
"I was scared for a minute," she said. "We just hid out until it was over. Didn't really see much."
"Listen," said Scolari, "can I tell you something on my own?"
"Sure."
"Everybody was scared out there today. I never knew when part of me might just disappear. You know what I mean? And even without the rocks, I don't like not having something solid underfoot. But I'm glad I did it. And I hope to God those four people come back. If they do, it'll be nice to know I had a hand in it." He managed a smile. "Me and Cleo and the others."
Miles Chastain was cruising the shaft, moving deliberately from one ship to the next, inspecting the work of the Outsiders.
Maleiva III was framed against the gas giant. The continents and seas were no longer visible, and the entire globe appeared to be wrapped in a thick black pall.
He was impressed that so many had been wilh'ng to risk life and limb during the course of the operation. He'd heard about the other events, the complaints by passengers ob the Star and by the science people on Wendy. He'd been through crises before, and he knew they tended to unmask people, to reveal who they really were, to bring out the best or the worst, whichever way an individual personality leaned. It was almost as if trouble stripped away the pretenses of daily life, the way Jerry Morgan was stripping Maleiva.
He was somewhere between Zwick, his own ship, and the Evening Star, headed down the shaft toward the net. The actual pickup of Hutchins and her people would be made by John Drummond's shuttle. Marcel wanted them out of the lander and the net as quickly as the transfer could be made. Miles's responsibility was to stand by in case of need.
He was alone. He'd returned Phil, the shuttle pilot, the assistants, and the Outsiders to the Star and had taken over the controls himself. He was approaching Zwick, which was facing him.
When the signal came, and they began to draw the shaft out of the atmosphere, they would be moving it into orbit. Once that had been achieved, it would become possible to retrieve the MacAllister party.
His message board lit up. Transmission from Zwick. Emma. Her usually sallow features blinked on-screen, but this time she was glowing. She invariably gave the impression, when she spoke to him, that she was thinking about something else, that she needed only give out
instructions. That Miles himself was somehow inconsequential. Probably, he'd concluded on the way out, it resulted from dealing with too many VIPs. Everybody else became a peasant.
"Yes, Emma," he said, "what can I do for you?"
"Miles, where are you located now?"
"In front of you. Coming up."
"My schedule says you're headed for the pickup."
"More or less. I'm just going down there to be available."
"Good. I want you to stop and collect us."
"Why?"
"It'll only take a minute."
"Why?" he asked again.
"Are you serious? They're about to do the rescue, or not, and you ask why we want to be there?"
He sighed. She was right, of course. "Okay. I'll dock in about six minutes."
"Good. And Miles, would you do something else for me?"
He waited.
"I want you to contact the other pilot, the one who's going to make the pickup. Tell him we'd like to do a broadcast as they come on board. Ask if he'll cooperate."
"Why don't you do that yourself?"
"Well, pilot-to-pilot... You know how it is. He'll be more receptive if it comes from you. A lot of these people out here resent us. They think we're in the way. Except when they need publicity for one reason or another. I just don't want to miss this." She was at emotional high tide. "It's going to be the news story of the decade, Miles."
"Emma, did you know the shuttles can't dock with each other? You'll have to go outside to make the crossing."
"I didn't know. But that's not a problem."
"They're going to be busy. I don't think they'll want to make time for a news team."
"Miles." She came down a bit from her high. "I'd like very much for this to happen."
Frank the pilot looked up at Drummond. "John," he said, "I don't have any objection as long as they stay out of the way. How about you?"
Drummond's immediate instinct was to deny permission but of
hand. But he couldn't really give a reason why except that he disliked Canyon. Nevertheless, there was plenty of room in the shuttle, and he guessed it was prudent to get on the good side of the media. "Okay," he said. "Tell them what you just told me."
Gravity had taken hold of the sack. The net gradually lengthened and began to-tumble toward the troubled atmosphere. The collar was open and easy to see, and the people who'd rigged it had even managed to mark it with a system of lights. If there were no problems on board the lander, if the lander showed up at the time and place it was supposed to, the whole thing should be easy to pull off. Almost anti-climactic.
Frank disagreed. "The collar only looks big because we're right on top of it. And we're descending at the same rate it is. The lander's going to be approaching at a more or less constant altitude. The net goes down and it comes up. The pilot's got to time things so she hits it at precisely the right moment. If she misses, that's the ball game."
They rode quietly. The physician, Embry, stared moodily out the window. Janet Hazelhurst was thumbing through the onboard library, apparently just turning pages. Drummond was sipping coffee, lost in his thoughts.
"Eighteen minutes to rendezvous,"said the AI. "We are on schedule."
The net continued to unfurl as it dropped toward the clouds. Drummond saw no tangles.
Frank slowed their descent. "This is as low as we want to go," he said.
Drummond nodded. "So far, so good," he told Marcel.
Another shuttle appeared and drew alongside. "The media have arrived," said Frank.
; Drummond activated his e-suit and went into the airlock, from which he watched two people move clumsily out of the other spacecraft. They floated across the few meters separating the shuttles, and he took each by the hand and pulled them inside.
Canyon wasn't as tall as Drummond had expected, but there was no missing that mellifluous voice. He introduced himself with quiet modesty. "And this is Emma Constantine," he said, "my producer."
"We'll want to set up here," Emma told him, "if that's no problem." She indicated a section adjacent the airlock. "We'd like to do a quick interview with you before the rescue."
"Okay," he said.
"August will be asking you how you plan to go about this, who'll be going out with you—"
"Wait a minute," Drummond said. "I'm not going out. Frank's going to do that."
"Oh." She turned away from Drummond, and her eyes suggested he had just vanished from human memory. Canyon smiled at him and shrugged.
Frank saw something he didn't like on his navigation screen. "Everybody into their seats," he said. "Buckle down."
Nobody had to tell Canyon twice. He dived for the nearest chair. Emma was a little slower.
"What's wrong?" asked Drummond.
"Debris field." As soon as his passengers were locked in he began to accelerate.
The AI was talking to Frank, but the pilot had switched the conversation over to his earphones, obviously intending to avoid alarming the passengers. That alarmed Drummond.
"Everybody sit tight," said the pilot. "Nothing to worry about." They began to accelerate. "They're behind us," he explained. "We're going to outrun them."
"How bad is it?" asked Drummond.
Frank looked at one of the screens. "It's a pretty big swarm. Coming fast. We wouldn't want to be there when it arrives."
Behind Drummond, Canyon was talking into a microphone. He caught snatches of it:"... rescue vessel in trouble ...""... meteors ..." ". . . harm's way . . ." Suddenly the microphone was thrust in his direction. "... speaking now to John Drummond, who's done most of the planning for this effort. He's an astronomer by trade—"
"A mathematician," Drummond said.
"A mathematician. And how would you describe our situation at the moment, Dr. Drummond?"
Drummond was impressed. He was speaking to an audience of probably several hundred million. Or would be when the signal reached home. How to describe the situation? He began to talk about the dust and debris that accumulates in a gravitational field. "Especially one around a body this massive." Morgan's image was on one of the monitors. He glanced at it.
Something banged off the hull. Drummond tightened up inside and became immediately concerned that the several hundred million viewers would see that he was terrified. "Are we broadcasting pictures, too?" he asked.
Emma, seated off to one side, nodded. They were.
It seemed suddenly to be raining on the shuttle. A hard staccato rattled across the hull.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Canyon softly, in a voice that underscored Drummond's fears, "you can hear what's happening."
"How big is it?" asked Marcel.
"Big. Thousands of kilometers across. Frank's on the forward edge of it. But he's moving pretty quick and should be clear in a few seconds. I've also sent a warning to Miles."
"What about Zwick?"
Actually, he already knew the answer to that. His screens showed the swarm moving directly across the media ship's position. And, of course, unlike the shuttle, Zwick was unable to run.
After Emma and Canyon had left Zwick, the only people remaining on board were Tom Scolari, Cleo, Jack Kingsbury, and Chop. Sco-lari wasn't entirely comfortable being on a ship that was in effect nailed to a pole, with nobody else there. They knew that the shaft had been caught in the grip of Maleiva Ill's gravity well, and that it and everything attached to it was falling toward the surface.
They'd been assured there was no danger. It was a controlled fall. The AI would, at the appropriate moment, fire the engines, as would the AIs on the other three ships, and they would haul Alpha out of the well, along with the landing party.
All very simple.
Still, Scolari would have liked to see someone else on the ship, preferably someone wearing stripes on his sleeves who would know if something had gone wrong, and who'd be competent to fix things. It was why superluminals, which could be operated from the beginning to the end of a journey without human help, retained captains.
They were all in the common room. Cleo and Chop were munching on sandwiches, and Jack nursed a soft drink. Scolari would have preferred to be on the Star, where he'd have felt safer among the fifteen hundred tourists. Where people were actually on duty to make sure everything was okay.
They were reassuring one another when the AI broke in. "We have a swarm of dust and pebbles approaching at high speed," it said in its smoky female voice. "Please retire to an acceleration station at once."
They looked nervously at one another. "Are we in danger?" asked Chop.
"The danger is minimal," said the AI. "However, in accordance with standard safety procedures, please put on an e-suit."
Acceleration stations consisted of bunks installed throughout the ship. There was a rack of six against one bulkhead in the common room. They collected e-harnesses and breathers from the emergency panel and strapped them on. Then they activated the fields.
"It thinks a meteor might come through the hull," said Cleo, looking scared.
Scolari put on his most reassuring manner. "It's just a precaution."
Chop's eyes moved nervously around the interior. Kingsbury clapped a hand on Scolari's shoulder. "When this is done, lad, I'd like to buy everyone a drink."
They climbed in, and the restraints settled over them.
"Make mine Hebert's," he said.
"I'll inform you," said the AI, "when the emergency has passed." There was, he told himself, really no reason to be alarmed.
"I wonder how far away they are," said Chop. "The rocks."
A new voice spoke in his earphones: "This is Captain Clairveau. Your AI has just informed me that you folks are alone on Zwick. Are you okay?"
"Jack Kingsbury here. We're fine, Captain. I wonder if you can tell us what's happening?"
Before he could answer, there was a hammerblow forward, the ship shuddered, and Scolari's earphones clicked. The sound of the carrier wave changed.
"Captain," said Scolari, "are you still there?"
There was another clang. It echoed through the chamber.
The transmission died.
An automated voice said, "Fourteen minutes." "We've reestablished communications with Wendy," Lori told the bridge. "Zwick is still down."
Marcel was studying the situation screen, which depicted the de-
bris field as a blinking yellow glow. Some of the rocks were entering the atmosphere. But it appeared that the worst would be over in another couple of minutes.
"Lori," Marcel said, "do we have a picture of them anywhere? Of Zwick?"
"No. Only vehicle close enough is Miles, but he doesn't have an angle. I'll let you know as soon as we get something."
The comm board lit up. "Captain Clairveau." It was Drummond.
"Go ahead, John."
"Bad news..."
Marcel held his breath. Drummond was still speaking, so it couldn't be too bad. "What is it?"
"Transmitting visual."
An auxiliary screen lit up and Marcel found himself looking at the net. The bottom of the net.
The sack.
Except that the sack wasn't there anymore.
Where the net should have flared out to provide a haven for the lander, where the collar should have lighted the way, everything simply hung down toward the clouds, limp and dead.
"What happened?"
"Don't know, Marcel. It must have been hit."
He willed the image away.
"Must have been a strike directly on the collar," said Drummond. "Or the supports. Everything collapsed."
"Thirteen minutes,"said the voice.
The AI warned Scolari and the others that Zwick was about to fire its engines. The process of slowing and eventually reversing Alpha's descent phase had begun.
It also informed them that communications with the other vessels had been reestablished.
XXXV
Survival in a crisis is often a matter of sheer good fortune. The good fortune may consist of the timely arrival of a platoon of Peacekeepers, of having a power source unexpectedly kick in, of sitting in the correct part of the aircraft. Most frequently, it is being with the right people.
—Gregory MacAllister, Spiritual Guidance forTentmakers
Hours to breakup (est): 10
"... not an unbeatable problem..." Marcel's image seemed to lose definition on-screen. He was still talking, but Hutch was no longer hearing him.
"... can still maybe ease your way in ..."
She stared straight ahead, through the windscreen, into the ashen sky that went on forever. Off to her right, a huge pall of smoke trailed upward. A volcano, they were telling her. Behind her, somebody moved. But no one spoke.
"... bad luck, but we'll just have to work around it..."
She clung to the yoke as though it could save her. Move it forward, drop the flaps, the lander angled down. Nice, dependable physics.
"... still manage ..."
She killed the sound, left him mouthing the words, staring at her with empty eyes. Curiously, she felt sorry for him. He had gone far beyond what anybody could have expected, and it had simply blown up at the last second.
A meteor strike. How could they have been so unlucky?
"What now?" asked MacAllister.
She could barely hear him.
"My God," breathed Nightingale.
"How about nosing our way in?" said Kellie. "We know there's an opening. All we have to do is find it."
"Yeah." Nightingale reached forward and squeezed her shoulder. "It doesn't sound all that hard."
She brought Marcel back. "You said the collar's collapsed. But it had lights. Can you still light it up?"
"Negative," he said. "There's no response from it."
"If we can find the collar, what's to stop us from just pushing our way in?"
"Not a thing. It's not exactly what we'd planned, but you might be able to do it. If it's not too badly tangled. It's hard to tell what the precise conditions are."
