Ship Who Searched

by Mercedes Lackey

  Tia spent some time reprogramming the satellite, killing the warn-off broadcast, turning all the near-space scanners on and recording. Then she turned her attention to the recordings it had already made.

  “So, what have we got?” he asked, wriggling to get the suit down over his hips. “Had any luck?”

  “There’s quite a few of those ruins,” she said carefully, noting with a bit of jealousy that the survey satellite array was actually capable of producing sharper and more detailed images than her own. Then again, what it produced was rather limited.

  “Well, that’s actually kind of promising.” He slid out of the suit and into the chair, leaving the pressure-suit in a crumpled heap on the floor. She waited a moment until he was engrossed in the screen, then discreetly sent a servo to pick it and the abandoned helmet up.

  “I’d say here or here,” he said at last, pointing out two of the ruins in or near one of the mountain ranges. “That would give us the rain-snow pattern the first victim raved about. Look, even in the same day you’d get snow in the morning, rain in the afternoon, and snow after dark during some seasons.”

  She highlighted those—but spotted three more possibilities, all three in areas where the tilt would have had the same effect on the climate. She marked them as well, and was rewarded by his nod of agreement.

  “All right. This has to be the planet. There’s no reason for anyone to have disabled the satellite otherwise. Even if Survey or the Institute were sending someone here for a more detailed look, they’d simply have changed the warn-off message; they wouldn’t have taken the satellite off-line.” He took a deep breath and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “Now it’s just going to be finding the right place.”

  This was work the computers could do while Tia slept, comparing their marked areas and looking for changes that were not due to the seasons or the presence or absence of snow. Highest on the priority list was to look for changes that indicated disturbance while there was snow on the ground. Digging and tramping about in the snow would darken it, no matter how carefully the looters tried to hide the signs of their presence. That was a sign that only the work of sentients or herd-beasts would produce, and herd-beasts were not likely to search ruins for food.

  Within the hour, they had their site—there was no doubt whatsoever that it was being visited and disturbed regularly. Some of the buildings had even been meddled with.

  “Now why would they do that?” Tia wondered out loud, as she increased the magnification to show that one of the larger buildings had mysteriously grown a repaired roof. “They can’t need that much space—and how did they fix the roof within twenty-four hours?”

  “They didn’t,” Alex said flatly. “That’s plastic stretched over the hole. As to why—the hole is just about big enough to let a twenty-man ship land inside. Hangar and hiding place all in one.”

  They changed their position to put them in geosynchronous orbit over their prize—and detailed scans of the spot seemed to indicate that no one had visited it very recently. The snow was still pristine and white, and the building she had noted had a major portion of its roof missing again.

  “That’s it,” Alex said with finality.

  Tia groaned. “We know—and we can’t prove it. We know for a fact that someone is meddling with the site, but we can’t prove the site is the one with the plague. Not without going down.”

  “Oh, come on, Tia, where’s your sense of adventure?” Alex asked, feebly. “We knew we were probably going to have to go down on the surface. All we have to do is go down and get some holos of the area just like the ones Hank took. Then we have our proof.”

  “My sense of adventure got left back when I was nearly hijacked,” she replied firmly. “I can do without adventure, thank you.”

  And she couldn’t help herself; she kept figuratively glancing over her shoulder, watching for a ship—

  Would it be armed? She couldn’t help but think of Pol, bristling with weaponry, and picturing those weapons aimed at her.

  Unarmed. Unarmored. Not even particularly fast.

  On the other hand, she was a brainship, wasn’t she? The product of extensive training. Surely if she couldn’t outrun or outshoot these people, she could out-think them—

  Surely.

  Well, if she was going to out-think them, the first thing she should do would be to find a way to keep them from spotting her. So it was time to use those enhanced systems on the satellite to their advantage.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked, when she remained silent for several minutes, sending the manual-override signal to the satellite so that she could use the scanners.

  “I’m looking for a place to hide,” she told him. “Two can play that game. And I’m smaller than their ship; I shouldn’t need a building to hide me. I’ll warn you, though, I may have to park a fair hike away from the cache sites.”

  It took a while; several hours of intense searching, while Alex did what he could to get himself prepared for the trip below. That amounted mostly to readying his pressure-suit for a long stay; stocking it with condensed food and water, making certain the suit systems were up to a week-long tour, if it came to that. Recharging the power-cells, triple-checking the seals—putting tape on places that tended to rub and a bit of padding on places that didn’t quite fit—everything that could be done to his suit, Alex was doing. They both knew that from the time he left her airlock to the time he returned and she could purge him and the lock with hard vacuum, he was going to have to stay in it.

  Finally, in mid-afternoon by the “local” time at the site below them, she found what she was looking for.

  “I found my hiding place,” she said into the silence, startling him into jumping. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, a little too jauntily. Was it her imagination, or did he turn a little pale? Well, if she had been capable of it, she’d have done the same. As it was, she was so jittery that she finally had to alter her blood-chemistry a little to deal with it.

  “Then strap down,” she told him soberly. “We’re heading right into a major weather system and there’s no getting around it. This is going to be tricky, and the ride is likely to be pretty rough.”

  Alex took the time to strap down more than himself; he made a circuit of the interior, ensuring that anything loose had been properly stowed before he took his place in the comchair. Only then, when he was double-strapped in, did Tia make the burn that began their descent.

  Their entry was fairly smooth until they were on final approach and hit thick atmosphere and the weather that rode the mid-levels. The wild storm winds of a blizzard buffeted her with heavy blows; gusts that came out of nowhere and flung her up, down, in any direction but the one she wanted. She fought her way through them with grim determination, wondering how on earth the looters had gotten this far. Surely with winds like this, the controls would be torn right out of the grip of a softperson’s hands!

  Of course, they could be coming down under the control of an AI. Once the course had been programmed in, the AI would hold to it. And within limits, it would deal with unexpected conditions all the way to the surface.

  Within limits: that was the catch. Throw it too far off the programmed course, and it wouldn’t know what to do.

  Never mind, she told herself. You need to get down there yourself!

  A little lower, and it wasn’t just wind she was dealing with, it was snow. A howling blizzard, to be precise—one that chilled her skin and caked snow on every surface, throwing off her balance by tiny increments, forcing her to recalculate her descent all the way to the ground. A strange irony—she who had never seen weather as a child was now having to deal with weather at its wildest. . . .

  Then suddenly, as she approached the valley she had chosen, the wind died to a mere zephyr. Snow drifted down in picture perfect curtains—totally obscuring visuals, of course, but that was why she was on instruments anyway. She killed forward thrusters and went into null-grav;
terribly draining of power, but the only way she could have the control she needed at this point. She inched her way into her chosen valley, using the utmost of care. The spot where she wanted to set down was just big enough to hold her—and right above it, if the readings she’d gotten from above were holding true, there was a big buildup of snow. Just enough to avalanche down and cover her, if she was very careful not to set it off prematurely.

  She eased her way into place with the walls of the valley less than a hand-span away from her skin; a brief look at Alex showed him clenching teeth and holding armrests with hands that were white-knuckled. He could read the instruments as well as she could. Well, she’d never set down into a place that was quite this narrow before. And certainly she had never set down under conditions that might change in the next moment. . . .

  If that blizzard behind them came howling up this valley, it could catch her and send her right into the valley wall.

  There. She tucked herself into the bottom of the valley and felt her “feet” sink through the snow to the rock beneath. Nice, solid rock. Snow-covered rocks on either side.

  And above—the snowcrest. Waiting. Here goes—

  She activated an external speaker and blasted the landscape with shatter-rock, bass turned to max.

  And the world fell in.

  “Are you going to be able to blast free of this?” Alex asked for the tenth time, as another servo came in from the airlock to recharge.

  “It’s not that bad,” she said confidently. She was much happier with four meters of snow between her and the naked sky. Avalanches happened all the time; there was nothing about this valley to signal to the looters that they’d been discovered, and that a ship was hiding here. Not only that, but the looters could prance around on top of her and never guess she was there unless they found the tunnel her servos were cutting to the surface. And she didn’t think any of them would have the temerity to crawl down what might be the den-tunnel of a large predator.

  “If it’s not that bad,” Alex said fretfully, “then why is it taking forever to melt a tunnel up and out?”

  “Because no one ever intended these little servos to have to do something like that,” she replied, as patiently as she could. “They’re welders, not snow clearers. And they have to reinforce the tunnel with plastic shoring-posts so it doesn’t fall in and trap you.” He shook his head; she gave up trying to explain it. “They’re almost through, anyway,” she told him. “It’s about time to get into your suit.”

  That would keep him occupied.

  “This thing is getting depressingly familiar,” he complained. “I see more of the inside of this suit than I do my cabin.”

  “No one promised you first-class accommodations on this ride,” she teased, trying to keep from showing her own nervousness. “I’ll tell you what; how about if I have one of the servos make a nice set of curtains for your helmet?”

  “Thanks. I think.” He made a face at her. “Well, I’ll tell you this much; if I have to keep spending this much time in the blasted thing, I’m going to have some comforts built into it—or demand they get me a better model.” He twisted and turned, making sure he still had full mobility. “The sanitary facilities leave a lot to be desired.”

  “I’ll report your complaints to the ship’s steward,” she told him. “Meanwhile—we have breakout.”

  “Sounds like my cue.” Alex sighed. “I hope this isn’t going to be as cold as it looks.”

  Alex crawled up the long, slanting tunnel to the surface, lighting his way with the work-lamp on the front of his helmet. Not that there was much to see—just a white, shiny tunnel that seemed to go on forever, reaching into the cold darkness . . . as if, with no warning, he would find himself entombed in ice forever. The plastic reinforcements were as white as the snow; invisible unless you were looking for them. Which was the point, he supposed. But he was glad they were there. Without them, tons of snow and ice could come crashing down on him at any moment. . . .

  Stop that, he told himself sharply. Now is not the time to get claustrophobia.

  Still, there didn’t seem to be any end to the tunnel—and he was cold, chilled right down to the soul. Not physically cold, or so his readouts claimed. Just chilled by the emptiness, the sterility. The loneliness . . .

  You’re doing it again. Stop it.

  Was the surrounding snow getting lighter? He turned off his helmet light—and it was true, there was a kind of cool, blue light filtering down through the ice and snow! And up ahead—yes, there was the mouth of the tunnel, as promised, a round, white “eye” staring down at him!

  He picked up his pace, eager to get out of there. The return trip would be nothing compared to this long, tedious crawl—just sit down and push away, and he would be able to slide all the way down to the airlock!

  He emerged into thickly falling snow and saw that the servos had wrought better than he and Tia had guessed, for the mouth of the tunnel was outside the area of avalanche, just under an overhanging ridge of stone. That must have been what the snow had built up upon; small wonder it buried Tia four meters under when she triggered it! Fortunately, snow could be melted; when they needed to leave, she could fire up her thrusters and increase the surface temperature of her skin, and turn it all to water and steam. Well, that was the theory, anyway.

  That was assuming it didn’t rain and melt away her cover before then.

  By Tia’s best guess, it was late afternoon, and he should be able to get to the site and look around a little before dark fell. At that point, the best thing he could do would be to get under cover somewhere and curl up for the night. This time he had padded all the uncomfortable spots in the suit, and he’d worn soft, old, exercise clothing. It shouldn’t be any less comfortable than some of his bunks as a cadet.

  He took a bearing from the heads-up display inside his helmet and headed for the site.

  “Tia,” he called. “Tia, come in.”

  “Reading you loud and clear, Alex,” she responded immediately. Funny how easy it was to think of her as a person sitting back in that ship, eyes glued to the screens that showed his location, hands steady on the com controls—

  Stop that. Maybe it’s a nice picture, but it’s one that can get you in more trouble than you already have. “Tia, we have the right place, all right.” He toggled his external suit-camera and gave her a panoramic sweep from his vantage point above the valley holding the site. It was fairly obvious that this place was subject to some pretty heavy-duty windstorms; the buildings were all built into the lee of the hills, and the hills themselves had been sculpted by the prevailing winds until they looked like cresting waves. No doubt either why the entities who built this place used rounded forms; less for the winds to catch on.

  “Does this look like any architecture in your banks?” he asked, panning across the buildings. “I sure as heck don’t recognize it.”

  “Nothing here,” she replied, fascination evident in her voice. “This is amazing! That’s not metal, I don’t think—could it be ceramic?”

  “Maybe some kind of synthetic,” Alex hazarded. “Plague or not, there are going to be murders done over the right to excavate this place. How in the name of the spirits of space did that Survey tech just dismiss this with ‘presence of structures’?”

  “We’ll never know,” Tia responded. “Well, since there can’t be two sites like this in this area, and since these buildings match the ones in Hank’s holos, we can at least assume that we have the right planet. Now—about the caches—”

  “I’m going down,” he said, feeling for footholds in the snow. It crunched under his feet as he eased down sideways, one careful step at a time. Now that he was out of Tia’s valley, there were signs everywhere of freeze-thaw cycles. Under the most recent layer of snow, the stuff was dirty and covered with a crust of granular ice. It made for perilous walking. “The wind is picking up, by the way. I think that blizzard followed us in.”

  “That certainly figures,” she said with resignation. />
  As he eased over the lip of the valley, he saw the caves—or rather, storage areas—cut into the protected side of the face of a lower level canyon cutting through the middle of the valley. There were more buildings down there, too, and some kind of strange pylons—but it was the “caves” that interested him most. Regular, ovoid holes cut into the earth and rock that were then plugged with something rather like cement, a substance slightly different in color from the surrounding earth and stone. Those nearest him were still sealed; those nearest the building with the appearing–disappearing roof were open.

  He worked his way down the valley to the buildings and found to his relief that there was actually a kind of staircase cut into the rock, going down to the second level. Protected from the worst of the weather by the building in front of it, while it was a bit slippery, it wasn’t as hazardous as his descent into the valley had been.

  It was a good thing that the contents of Hank’s cabin and the holos the man had taken had prepared him for what he saw.

  The wall of the valley where the storage caves had been opened looked like the inside of Ali Baba’s cave. The storage caches proved to be much smaller than Alex had thought; the “window” slits in the nearby building were tiny, as might have been expected in a place with the kind of punishing weather this planet had. That had made the caches themselves appear much larger in the holos. In reality, they were about as tall as his waist and no deeper than two or three meters. That was more than enough to hold a king’s ransom in treasure. . . .

  Much hadn’t even been taken. In one of the nearest, ceramic statuary and pottery had been left behind as worthless—some had been broken by careless handling, and Alex winced.

  There were dozens of caches that had been opened and cleaned out; perhaps a dozen more with less-desirable objects still inside. There were dozens more, still sealed, running down the length of the canyon wall—

  And one whose entrance had been sealed with some kind of a heat-weapon, a weapon that had been turned on the entrance until the rock slagged and melted metal ran with it, mingling and forming a new, permanent plug.