The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  “You’re in charge of getting us there. The silt should be back on the seabed and the water clear. If not, we go single file and hold on to each other. Bony.”

  “Right here.” Bony at least didn’t seem to be worried. The face inside the helmet was as serene as ever, and he was beaming.

  Chan felt awkward now with Bony and Liddy. He knew that was ridiculous. They had no idea that he had overheard their private conversation. He wondered if they had asked Danny how he knew where to find them.

  Why did your brain throw such irrelevancies at you, when you were trying to organize to save your life?

  “Bony, when we reach the Mood Indigo you’ll have to work faster and harder than you ever worked. We need to know if that ship can fly, and if it can stand a vacuum environment. Friday Indigo said that it could when he was here, but in his condition I’d hate to take his word for anything.”

  Bony gulped. “How long will I have?”

  “Until we’re forced to try for a takeoff. Then we’ll find out if what you did was enough — one way or another.”

  Bony gulped again, harder than before. Chan ignored him. He took a quick look around. Bony, Liddy, Deb, Danny, Tully and Elke; the suitless Angel, silent and presumably grumpy, uprooted from its precious soil pot so as to be more easily carried; the Pipe-Rilla, unconscious and coiled around itself like lengths of flexible ductwork: the whole remaining crew of the Hero’s Return , as ready as it would ever be.

  “Close helmets, and let’s go. It will be a squeeze, but we can all fit in the lock. Tully and Bony, you take Vow-of-Silence. Elke, you exit first — but wait for the rest of us before you move.”

  Chan and Danny Casement entered the lock last, carrying the Angel between them. Gressel suddenly came to life and muttered, “Farewell. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. ”

  Chan realized that Gressel must be talking to the ship’s computer. It was enormously capable and close to sentience, and maybe from the point of view of the Angel’s own sentient inner crystal the computer was less alien than humans. But with a computing system spread through the whole ship there was no possible way to take it with them.

  The lock closed and flooded. The Angel was suddenly no load at all. They would have to be careful to make sure that it did not float away from them. As the outer hatch opened, Chan saw that his guess was correct. The sediment had settled back to the bottom as the effects of the storm faded, and the ocean of Limbo was clearer than he had ever seen it.

  Communication was not possible using the suit radios underwater. It was a silent and slow-moving procession that followed Elke Siry. Chan wished that they could speed up, but he didn’t want to risk rising to the surface and using suit jets when Malacostracan guards might be watching the sea.

  Elke seemed to know exactly what she was doing. When she had traveled a certain distance she angled to the left. They had reached a drowned valley, and were walking along its center. In another few hundred meters she turned left again, this time more sharply, and began to ascend the valley slope.

  In another half minute the helmet of her suit disappeared from view. Chan realized that it must have broken the surface and was now above water. One by one, the rest followed. Helmet vanished, then shoulders, then chest. Finally it was Chan’s own turn, and he instinctively blinked as his head emerged.

  Elke was already beyond the waterline. He took one quick look at her, at the Mood Indigo on the slope right ahead — thank Heaven for Elke’s mania for precision — then up and down the shore. It was full day. There was no sign of Malacostracans. If everything could just stay the way it was for five more minutes …

  Chan heard a commotion in the line ahead. He dropped his side of the Angel and hurried forward. Tully and Bony were having trouble, trying to hold on to a suddenly animated Vow-of-Silence. In spite of its tube-like build, the Pipe-Rilla was incredibly strong. Vow-of-Silence broke free, and before anyone could manage to reach her she went bounding away along the shore of the inlet in ten-meter leaps.

  Bony was all set to follow when Chan grabbed his arm. “No. You’d never catch her. Look at her go.”

  They followed the Pipe-Rilla’s direction of travel. “Away from the Malacostracan camp,” Elke said. “If she keeps that heading at that speed, she’ll reach the line of vegetation in a few minutes. There’s a very rough area beyond it, and I’m not sure we can follow her there. But neither can anyone else.”

  “Vow-of-Silence will have to look after herself for the moment,” Chan said. “We have to get inside the Mood Indigo. Come on, up the slope.”

  Easier said than done. Lifting the ship from the sea to its present location would have been impossible if the Malacostracans had not possessed anti-gravity machines. The side of the inlet was a mess of sharp-edged rock that at first sight could not be climbed. Liddy was the one, ranging away to the left, who found a long cleft that a person could scramble up. Then it was everyone working together, to hoist the unwieldy bulk of the Angel along the narrowing crack in the rock. In any gravity field stronger than Limbo’s they could never have done it. As it was, the whole party was panting and strained when at last they levered Gressel over the lip of the rocky bowl where the Mood Indigo lay, and could scramble the rest of the way.

  Again, Chan was the last one up. He found Bony standing by the side of the stranded ship, shaking his head.

  “Looks pretty good,” Chan said, as he came up to Bony.

  That earned him a skeptical glance. “Appearances don’t tell you much,” Bony said. “The storm gave her a terrible bashing. All the external communications equipment was stripped off.”

  “How’s the hull? Was it breached?”

  “I can’t tell from here. Friday Indigo bought the best, so that should help. But there’s only one way to know. Once we’re inside we’ll change internal pressure and see what happens.”

  Bony sounded upbeat. Chan didn’t let that fool him. Rather than being terrified by their situation, the Bun was exhilarated by the chance to try his fix-up skills on a ship that back in the solar system would have been consigned to the junkyard. Even so, repairing the Mood Indigo so it could fly might need magic; and the specialist in magic, Chrissie, was not here.

  Chan paused to worry about that, too, while the others were opening the lowest hatch on the ship and putting in place the portable ladder. He watched as the Angel was lifted and stuffed unceremoniously inside.

  It was all a question of timing and distance. If The One followed her original plan, Chan had about two hours. Chrissie and Tarbush would have less than that to reach the Mood Indigo , assuming that he called them now and was able to contact them at once. Every minute he waited decreased their margin. On the other hand, once he made a call the Malacostracans might detect it, trace its point of origin, and either capture the party on the Mood Indigo or simply destroy the ship.

  Chan went to the ladder and ascended. He did not enter the ship, but simply poked his head inside the hatch. Bony already had everyone except the Angel organized and hard at work. He caught sight of Chan and called, “Come inside. I want to close the hatch and check pressurization.”

  “I’ll be outside for a while longer. Carry on with your test, and I’ll be in when it’s finished.”

  In a sense it made Chan’s decision for him. The internal pressure change and test of hull integrity would take at least half an hour. Bony had all the help that he needed. Chan was ready to duck away and descend the ladder when he realized that there was still a missing piece. He stuck his head back in and called again.

  Bony glared impatiently at Chan. As he came over to him he said, “Look, if you want me to get this thing to fly—”

  “I do. We may have to try, even if the ship isn’t ready. Have Liddy keep an eye open for any big vessel taking off from the Mallies’ field and heading out to sea. If she sees one, you lift off and follow it — whether I’m on board or not.”

  Bony looked startled. “But if you’re not here—”

  “Do it. I�
�ll explain later.” If there is a later. Chan ignored Bony and called to Elke, “Do you have the protocols you developed for moving between levels of the multiverse?”

  She was over by the little computer of the Mood Indigo , studying it. She gave Chan or the computer — it was hard to tell which — a disdainful glare. “Of course.”

  “If Bony takes off, feed him the final one of those protocols, and tell him to use it.”

  “But won’t you be at the controls? You were the one—”

  Chan was out of the hatch and down the ladder before he could hear the rest of her sentence.

  He glanced around him. He needed a location with some specific properties. It had to be high, so that it provided good line-of-sight radio transmission over a wide area. It needed to be in a position from which the Mood Indigo was not directly visible; and ideally it should be hidden from the Malacostracan encampment.

  The best he could manage was a compromise. He walked southeast for ten minutes, away from the sea and over the brow of a jutting ridge. On the other side of the hill he stopped. He couldn’t see the encampment, and he couldn’t see the ship. But would anyone hear him?

  He began transmission. “Chrissie and Tarb, are you receiving? Hello. Can you hear me?”

  He repeated the message three times at one-minute intervals. He was looking at his watch and beginning to feel that he was wasting his time when the receiver beeped. A breathless voice said, “Are you there?”

  “Chrissie?”

  “Yes. And Tarb. We’ve been sending out signals every hour, but we move around all the time because we don’t want the Malacostracans to be able to home in on our signal. We’re both fine.”

  “Good. Where are you?”

  “We’re in the area that Elke Siry marked as `badlands.’ She wasn’t kidding. When we heard your call we were only forty meters from our suits, but it took us until now to scramble back to them. This place is more up and down than sideways. It has caves and crevasses and overhangs worse than Miranda. Where are you ? My suit shows you farther south and closer than I expected.”

  “How far?”

  “About ten kilometers line-of-sight.”

  “Damn.” Chan chose his next words carefully. He had to assume that the Mallies might be listening, and that Friday Indigo would be there to interpret anything that was said. “We left the Hero’s Return. You have our heading and our distance. Can you get here in two hours?”

  He heard Chrissie’s snort of amusement. “Are you kidding? Ten kilometers line-of-sight is like fifty on the ground. We picked this place so we’d be hard to get at, and it’s just as hard to get out. If we didn’t fall over a cliff or down a sink hole — the area is full of them — we might reach you before dark. More likely it would be sometime tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. How’s your supply situation?”

  “We took care of that. Friday Indigo gets by eating native flora or fauna, but we didn’t like the look of the stuff. We raided the camp supply case and brought enough food and drink to last for weeks.”

  “Good. Now listen closely, because we don’t have much more time. The Mallies could be homing in on both of us.”

  He spoke fast for two minutes.

  “Got it,” Chrissie said cheerfully when he was finished. “Go do your thing, right now. Tarb and I will cross our fingers.”

  “So will we. For you. Oh, and keep your eyes open for Vow-of-Silence. I don’t have time to tell you what happened to her, but she’s running loose along with Eager Seeker.”

  “We saw a few Tinker components here and there in the bushes, but no sign of a Composite. We’ll be on the lookout. Scruffy is still missing, too, and I’ll never persuade Tarbush to go without her. Don’t worry about us. We’ll manage. Ready to close?”

  “Closing.”

  Chan went at once to the top of the ridge and scanned the horizon in the direction of the Malacostracan encampment. The sky was clear. No angry swarm of trifoliate aircraft was heading his way, but that might change any second.

  He hurried back to the Mood Indigo. The hatch was closed, but Tully opened it at the first knock.

  “Saw you hurrying, had us worrying,” he said. “Come in.”

  “How was the pressurization test?”

  “The ship’s all right, good and tight. We can fly.”

  The Mood Indigo had been designed for a crew of three, and the flight deck was crowded with seven humans and an Angel. Bony had gone a step beyond Chan’s order, and posted lookouts at each of the three ports. “You said to watch for anything coming from the Mallies’ field,” he said, as Chan joined him at the control console. Elke Siry was already in the copilot chair. “But I thought we ought to know about anything that flies, no matter what direction it comes from.”

  He stood up. “Here. You and Elke can handle the ship better than me. There’s a few hundred things I’d like to check before we take off.”

  “Tully said we are ready to fly.”

  “I told him that so he wouldn’t fiddle with equipment he doesn’t understand. I feel sure we can go up if we have to. But I need another hour before I’m convinced that we can stay there.”

  Bony headed for the lower levels, down to the engine room of the Mood Indigo. Chan sat down and reviewed the status panel. It was a mass of red flashing lights. Every external antenna had been swept away. Most of the imaging sensors were out of action, leaving the ship partially blind. One of the seven main engines was clogged, probably with silt, and another contained a hairline crack in its fuel feed. Neither could be used without danger of an explosion. The ship’s profile had been deformed by structural changes to one of the airlocks. Two stabilizer fins were bent, and a third had been ripped off. Atmospheric flight, if it happened at all, would be a combination of computer thrust balance and human seat-of-the-pants improvisation.

  In summary, the Mood Indigo was a mess. Bony had primed the five undamaged engines, but the whole ship needed a major overhaul. Back in the solar system it would have been declared a total loss.

  Chan was calling for a more detailed summary of engine balance problems when Liddy, over to his left, said quietly, “Something took off. A big something.”

  Chan glanced instinctively to the displays. He cursed to himself as he realized that the ones he needed were all out of action. He stood up and moved quickly to Liddy’s side. A Malacostracan vessel — one of the two big ones, labeled by Dag Korin as mother ships — floated in the sky to the northwest.

  He asked Liddy, “Is it coming this way?”

  “I don’t think so.” She was tracking the ship closely, using her hand on the glass of the port to measure relative motion. “If it keeps going the way it started, it will pass well north of us. I think it’s heading west.”

  “To sea,” Chan said. “Toward the Link.” He hurried back to the controls. One of the imaging sensors in the seaward direction was still working. It showed a flickering yellow glow on the horizon. “Bony?”

  “Here.”

  “We don’t have an hour. Stop whatever you’re doing. We’re lifting off. Now.”

  “Three more minutes—”

  “ NOW!Everybody, brace for takeoff.”

  Chan applied power to the five working engines. He did it gingerly, aware that they were not balanced, and he flinched at the creak and groan of the flexing hull. The ship had not been designed to fly with lopsided thrust. It was vibrating all over — and they had not left the ground.

  All or nothing. “Hold tight!” Chan stopped breathing and went to three-quarter power. The Mood Indigo lifted, tilted, and began to swoop sideways. The computer caught the imbalance with its inertial guidance system and applied the correction in milliseconds. The ship wobbled, straightened, and lifted again. Chan applied lateral thrust. He had to take them west, toward the sea. They must parallel the course of the Malacostracan ship, then angle in toward it once it was well away from land.

  How close dare he come? Too far, and they might miss the oppo
rtunity. Too close, and they would be noticed.

  “Another Mallie ship.” Danny Casement was stationed at another port, facing east. “One of the smaller ones. It’s coming this way.”

  Another decision had been made for Chan. He increased power again. The Mood Indigo groaned, shivered, and went racing west.

  “Elke?”

  “Ready.” She sat poised over the copilot controls. “I’ve already entered the sequence. Say when.”

  The big Malacostracan ship showed as a fleck of light in the imaging sensor. It was moving faster, beyond the shoreline now and skimming along just a couple of hundred meters above the glittering surface. Beyond it, maybe five kilometers away, the line that separated sea and sky was starting to blur and deform into a fuzzy-edged disk.

  “Link opening,” Elke said in a shaky voice. “Sequence complete. Your action.”

  Chan accelerated, narrowing the distance between the Mood Indigo and the Malacostracan ship. Timing was the key. What happened if you tried to pass through a Link that was still forming, or beginning to close? No human or Stellar Group member had ever done such a thing. Or better say, no one had done it and survived to talk about it.

  The disk ahead formed an exact semicircle on the surface of the sea. The Malacostracan ship was racing toward its geometrical center. The Mood Indigo was close enough for Chan to make out pincer-like grapples on the tri-lobed hull.

  “The ship behind is closing on us,” Danny said in a neutral voice. “It’s also changing profile. I don’t like the look of it. I suggest that this might be a very good time to hurry.”

  “Completing transfer sequence,” Chan said. Too soon? But he had no choice. And the Malacostracan ship ahead was arrowing into the glowing heart of the circle. At the moment of entry the Link flared and dissolved into fringes of multicolored light.