Descent time allocation is 32 seconds; reenter lock and perform closing sequence, 25 seconds.
He headed down the steps blind and fast, risking a fall. He knew from experience the possible fates. If the Remouleur hit when he was on the top few steps, he would be carried out of the canyon like a dry leaf and no one would ever see him again. That had happened to Rosamunde. Halfway down, the dawn wind was less strong, but it blew its victims right down the canyon and dashed them against the rock chimneys. They had retrieved Joshua's body from there, what was left of it after the day predators were finished. If he almost made it, say to the bottom three or four steps, the wind could not carry him away completely. But it still would rip away his respirator, break his grip no matter how he clung to the rocks or the support rail, and roll him into the poisonous, boiling-water cauldron that seethed and churned below the spring. Lee had floated there for nine hours before she could be retrieved. Some of her had been lost forever. The cooked flesh had flaked from her bones and escaped the nets.
Twelve steps to go. And the Remouleur is coming, no more than twenty seconds away, and the dust devils are stirring along the canyon, and now there is the preliminary scream of far-off wind and the chatter of torrential rain. The steps feel greasy under your feet.
If someone was actually in the lock when the wind hit, he might have a chance. Teufel lore said that if one dropped the water containers and flattened oneself to the floor, one might—just might—keep the respirator on and survive until the lock closed all the way. But Rebka had never met anyone who had actually done it. And the penalty for returning without water—or, worse, without containers—was severe.
But not as severe as death.
Six steps to go.
Time had run out. He dropped the water containers.
There was a strange, moaning cry in his ears, and his body was lifted and pulled across a rocky surface. Cold water drenched his exposed arms and legs. His respirator was pulled away from his face. Death would at least be quick.
But he was not ready to die. He writhed against the force that held him, reaching up to grab the respirator straps and hold it in position.
His clawing fingers met human hands. The shock was so great that for a couple of seconds he could do nothing.
"Hans! Hans Rebka!" The cry came again, and this time he could understand it.
He opened his eyes for a last look at Teufel's dark skies. Instead of rosy streaks of wind-torn cloud he found himself staring at a shimmering blur of running water. Framed in front of the torrent, mouth open and panting with effort, was a dusty and droplet-streaked face.
It was Darya Lang.
When she realized what she had done, Darya was ready to sit down and start weeping again.
She had crawled out and hurried over to check the beacon as soon as she woke up. And when she peered through the shrouding dust and saw a figure huddled over the cairn, her first reaction was pure delight. That would teach Atvar H'sial a lesson! The Cecropian would not do that again, callously leaving someone to live or die without even telling her why.
And then as Darya came closer she realized that it was not a Cecropian. It was a human—it was a man—dear God, it was Hans Rebka!
Darya screamed and ran forward. The dust of Quake was as lethal to him as it would be to her. If he were dead, she would never forgive herself.
"Hans. Oh Hans, I'm sorry . . ."
He was unconscious and not listening. But it was unconsciousness, not death. Darya found the strength to hoist him over her shoulder—he weighed less than she did—and carry him back through the waterfall. And as she laid him gently on the rock, his eyes opened. That puzzled look up at her was the most satisfying expression she had ever seen on a human face.
For twenty minutes she had the pleasure of tending him, watching him curse and spit up dust and snort out gray powder through his nose. It was delight, simply to know he was alive. And then, before she could believe that he was able to function, he was on his feet and forcing her back out onto the surface.
"You're not safe here, even if you think you are." He was still wringing his hand and arm at the pain that the neural convolver had left in the nerves. "Another few hours, and that waterfall might be steam. Summertide's coming, Darya, and there's only one road to safety. Come on."
He hurried her across the arid surface, and at the aircar he made a quick inspection. Within a couple of minutes he shook his head and sat back on his haunches. "It doesn't matter where Atvar H'sial went, or if she's coming back. We won't go far in this." He leaned in under the car to rub his hand over the intake units. "See for yourself."
The dust storm was easing, but the inside of the vents was still clogged. Worse than that, where Rebka brushed the dust away the liner metal showed bright and eroded.
"That was from flying in and landing here." He placed the grille back in position. "I think we ought to be able to make one more trip without major servicing and overhaul, but I wouldn't want to try beyond that. And we can't risk flying in any more dust storms. If we run into one, we'll have to go up and over and bide our time coming down. Assuming we don't run out of power, too—no extreme head winds, or we're done for."
"But what about the Carmel twins? You were supposed to be looking for them." Darya Lang remained crouched by the aircar's intakes. She had explained to Rebka why she had set her trap, and how Atvar H'sial had deserted her. He seemed to accept what she said, brushing it all off as an unimportant detail. But she had trouble looking him in the eye.
She knew why. That trap had been more than a desire to protect herself when Atvar H'sial came back. She had been looking for revenge for what Atvar H'sial had done. And then her unguided missile had gone astray and hit the wrong person.
"We can't do anything to help the twins," Rebka replied. "We'll have to hope that Graves and Perry had better luck than I did. Maybe they'll find them, or maybe the spaceship that you and J'merlia saw will be able to help them. I doubt it, though, if it's who I think it is."
"Louis Nenda?"
He nodded and turned away. He had his own reasons for wanting to appear calm and casual. First, he had fallen into Darya Lang's trap so easily that it dismayed him. He was supposed to be the smart and cautious one, but he had become soft and casual. Five years ago he would have tested everything for traps. This one he had fallen into like a baby.
Second, over the years he had found that dreams of his childhood on Teufel were a useful indicator. They were his own unconscious, trying to tell him something important. He had experienced those dreams only when he was in desperate trouble, and always when he did not know what that trouble might be.
Third—and maybe the driving force for the other two worries—Quake had changed since he had landed at the radio beacon. Superficially it was a change for the better. The winds had dropped, the blown sand was reduced to no more than an irritating half-centimeter blanket that lay over everything, and even the distant grumble of volcanic action was quiet.
But that was impossible. It was less than forty hours to Summertide. Amaranth was directly overhead, a huge, bloodshot eye glaring across five degrees of sky; Mandel, off to the west, was half as big again, and Gargantua was bright enough to be seen at Mandel-noon. The tidal energies pouring into the interiors of Quake and Opal were prodigious, enough to produce continuous and severe planetary distortions.
So where were they?
Energy had to be conserved, even on Quake, but it might be changed to another form. Was it being accumulated by some unknown physical process in the planet's deep interior?
"I guess we could stay here and tough it out," Darya Lang was saying, staring around them. "This is as quiet as it's been for a long time. If it doesn't get much worse than it was . . ."
"No. It will get a lot worse."
"How bad?"
"I'm not sure."
That was an understatement. He had no idea how bad, and it did not matter. We have to get off Quake, a tiny voice was saying in his ear, or we are dead. H
e was glad that Darya could not hear that voice, but he had learned never to ignore it.
"We have to leave," he added. "This minute, if you're ready."
"And go where?"
"To the Umbilical, and then to Midway Station. We'll be safe there. But we can't wait too long. The Umbilical is programmed to lift away from the surface before Summertide."
She climbed into the car and consulted the chronometer. "It lifts twelve hours before Summertide Maximum. That's twenty-seven hours from now. And we can be over there in one Dobelle day. We have plenty of time."
Rebka closed the car door. "I like to have plenty of time. Let's go."
"All right." She smiled at him. "But you've seen more of Quake than I have. What do you think will happen here at Summertide?"
Rebka took a deep breath. She was trying to be nice to him, but worse than that, she assumed that he was tense and needed to be calmed down. And the trouble was, she was right. He was too tense. He could not explain it—except that he had been badly fooled once on Quake, by assuming that something was safe when it was not. He did not want to do it again. And every nerve in his body urged him to get away from Quake soon.
"Darya, I'd love to compare notes about Summertide." He was not annoyed that she had trapped him, he told himself; he was impressed. "But I'd rather do it when we're on the Umbilical, and well on our way to Midway Station. You may think I'm a coward, but this place scares me. So if you'll just move over, and let me get at those controls . . ."
CHAPTER 18
Summertide
minus five.
The Summer Dreamboat was well hidden.
The Pentacline Depression formed the most highly visible feature on the surface of Quake. One hundred and fifty kilometers across, packed with a riot of vivid and strongly growing vegetation, it could be seen from half a million kilometers away in space as a starfish splash of lurid green on Quake's dusty gray surface. The Pentacline was also the lowest point on the planet. Its five valleys, radiating up and out like stretching arms from the central low, had to rise over eight hundred meters to reach the level of the surrounding plain.
The little starship had landed close to the middle of the Pentacline's north-pointing arm, at a point where dense vegetation was broken by a small flat island of black basalt. But the ship had flown in to the bare outcrop on an angled descent and skated to its very edge. It was shielded from overhead inspection by vigorous new growth. Scarcely bigger than an aircar, the Summer Dreamboat was tucked neatly away under a canopy of five-meter leaf cover. It was empty, with all its life-support systems turned off. Only residual radiation from the Bose Drive betrayed its presence.
Max Perry stood inside the abandoned ship and stared around him with amazement. His head nearly touched the roof, and the whole living space was no more than three meters across. One step took him from the main hatch to the tiny galley; another, and he was at the control console.
He inspected the panel's simple displays, with their couple of dozen brightly colored switches and indicators, and shook his head. "This is a damned toy. I didn't know you could even get into the Bose Network with something this small."
"You are not supposed to." Graves had himself under firm control. He did not look quite sane, but the twitching of his fingers was less, and his bony face no longer boiled in a turmoil of emotion. "This was built as a small tourist vessel, for in-system hops. The designers didn't expect a Bose Drive to be added, and certainly no one ever thought it might be used for so many Bose Transitions. But that's Shasta for you—the children rule the planet. The Carmel twins talked their parents into it." He turned to J'merlia. "Would you kindly tell Kallik to stop that, before she does something dangerous?"
The little Hymenopt was over by the ship's drive. She had removed the cover and was peering inside. She turned at Graves's words.
"It is not dangerous," J'merlia interpreted, listening to the series of clicks and whistles. "With great respect, Kallik says that it is the opposite of dangerous. She is aware that someone as ignorant as she can know little about anything so difficult as the Bose Drive, but she is quite sure that this one's power unit is exhausted. It cannot be used again. It is debatable that this ship could even make it from here to low orbit. She already suspected this, from the weak signal that her master's ship received in its survey of the surface."
"Which explains why the twins never left Quake." Perry had turned on the display and was examining the computer log. "It makes sense of their peculiar itinerary, too. This shows a continued Bose Network sequence that brings them to Dobelle and then takes them right into Zardalu territory in two more transitions; but they couldn't do that without a new Bose power source. They could have picked one up at Midway Station, but naturally they didn't know it. So the only other place they could have gone in this system would have been Opal, and we'd have tracked their arrival there at once."
"Which is unfortunately not the case here. So how will we find them?" Graves walked across to the door and peered out, snapping his finger joints. "I deserve censure, you know. I assumed that once we found the ship they came in, the hard task was over. It never occurred to me that they might be foolhardy enough to leave the ship and roam the planet's surface."
"I can help with that. But even if you find them, how will you handle the twins themselves?"
"Leave that to me. It is the area of my experience. We are creatures of conditioning, Commander. We assume that what we know is easy, and we find mysterious whatever we do not." Graves waved a skinny, black-clad arm out toward the Pentacline. "All that to me is mysterious. They are hidden somewhere out there. But why would they leave this ship, and relative safety, to go to that?"
What could be seen from the ship was a green mass of vines, lush and intertwined. They trembled continuously to ground tremors, giving an illusion of self-awareness and nervous movement.
"They went there because they thought it was safe, and so they wouldn't be found. But I can find them." Perry glanced at his watch. "We have to be quick. It's already hours since we left the beacon. J'merlia." He turned to the apprehensive Lo'tfian. "We promised we'd have you back where we came from in four hours. And we will. Come on, Councilor. I know where they'll be—alive or dead."
Outside the ship the atmosphere of the depression felt thicker and more oppressive, ten degrees hotter than the plain. Black basalt quivered underfoot, hot and pulsing like the scaly hide of a vast beast. Perry walked along the edge of the rock, carefully examining it.
Graves followed, mopping at his perspiring brow. "If you are hoping to see footprints I hate to be discouraging, but—"
"No. Water prints." Perry knelt down. "Runoff patterns. Quake has a lot of small lakes and ponds. The native animals manage fine, but they make do with water that you or I couldn't drink. And once the Carmel twins left their ship, they'd need a supply of fresh water."
"They might have had a purifier."
"They would have, and they'd need it—fresh water on Quake is a relative term. You and I couldn't drink it, nor could Geni and Elena Carmel." Perry ran his hand over a smooth indented wedge in the rock. "If they're alive, they'll be within reach of water. And it doesn't matter where they headed first, if they started out from this rock—and they must have, because the Summer Dreamboat is here—they'll finish up along one of the runoff lines. Here's one of them, a good strong one. There's another over there, just about as well defined. But this rock slab is tilted and we're on the lower side. We'll try this one first."
He lowered himself carefully over the edge. Graves followed, wincing as his hand met the basalt. The bare rock was beyond blood heat, almost hot enough to blister. Perry was moving away fast, scrambling along on his backside down a thirty-degree slope that plunged through a trailing curtain of purple-veined creepers.
"Wait for me!" Graves raised one arm to protect his eyes. Saw-edged leaves cut into the back of his hand and left their scratch marks along the top of his unprotected skull. Then he was through, under the tree-floor of vegetat
ion that marked the first level of the Pentacline.
The light of Mandel and Amaranth was muted here to a blue-green shadow. Small creatures flew at them. Julius Graves thought at first that they were insects or birds, but a query to Steven brought the information that they were pseudocoelenterates, more like flying jellyfish than any other Earth or Miranda form. The creatures chittered in panic and flew away from Graves into the gloom. He hurried on after Max Perry. Within a few meters the air temperature beneath the canopy had jumped another few degrees.
Perry was following the rocky watercourse, squeezing his way past sticky yellow trunks and upthrusting mushroom structures two meters high. Clouds of minute winged creatures burst from the overhead leaves and flew for his unprotected face and hands.
"They don't bite," Perry said over his shoulder. "Just keep going."
Graves swatted at them anyway, trying to keep them out of his eyes. He wondered why Perry had not brought masks and respirators with them. In his concentration he was not looking where he was going, and he walked into the other man's back.
"Found something?"
Perry shook his head and pointed down. Two steps ahead the streambed dropped into a vertical hole. Graves leaned recklessly forward and could see no sign of the bottom.
"Let's hope they're not down there." Perry was already turning back. "Come on."
"What if the other one dead-ends, too?" Graves was snapping his finger joints again.
"Bad news. We'll need a new idea, but we won't have time for one even if we think of it. We'll have to worry about ourselves."
Rather than climbing back up the rock face, he led the way to one side, working his way slowly around the foot of the outcropping to where a second runoff flowed. Away from the watercourse the lower-level vegetation grew more strongly. Tough bamboo spears jutted up to knee level, scoring their boots and cutting through the cloth of their trousers. Irritant sap from broken leaves created lines of stinging cuts along their calves. Perry swore, but did not lessen his pace.
Convergent Series Page 19
