"Oh?" he managed. What was this, an apology for last night? He cleared his throat thoughtfully. He spent a good ten seconds doing that, and by then Alo had disappeared again.
She was back a minute later, with two mugs. "Do you want coffee?" she asked. "I found some real coffee in the stores, and thought I'd make some."
Panglor nodded grudgingly. He did love real coffee and had been saving it for either celebration or cheering up. It seemed to fit the occasion. Alo watched anxiously as he blew on it. "Don't stare!" he complained. She nodded and continued watching him surreptitiously. He sipped and suppressed a choke. It was gritty and tasted like charred toast. Swallowing with difficulty, he looked up to see her staring. He made a bold effort to smile; then his will collapsed. "Oh, hell!" he said, grimacing. "It's awful! Don't you know how to make coffee?" he worked his tongue, trying to get rid of the taste.
Her eyes darkened. For an instant he thought she was going to cry. Her face twisted, she stomped angrily out of the control bay.
"Oh—" he grumbled. He went after her and stopped, amazed, at the galley entrance. Instead of crying, she was bent over the counter, concentrating furiously on the outmoded brewer that was part of the Cur's galley equipment. He quietly poured his coffee into the disposal and then leaned on the counter. "You figure Deerfield won't see us?" he said. "You think maybe we'll look like something else to them?"
"Shh!" she said. She frowned at the brewer, tracing the mechanisms with one finger.
"Look," said Panglor. "That thing is so obsolete you'll never get it figured out. Especially not if you use logic. I don't even know if it works right."
Alo didn't look up.
Panglor sighed. He found an instant-pack of moke, added water, and snapped it hot. He poured it into a clean mug. "Okay. But would you do it later?" Alo made no reply. He rested the side of his head on his knuckles, in exasperation. After watching a few moments later he said, "How old are you?"
That time she looked up—but only for a moment. Then she stared at the machine again. "Hard to say." She put a finger to her lip thoughtfully.
"I know. How about if you make it easier for me to say, by telling me."
"Well," she said. And she stopped and pursed her lips. "Think I've got it. The water runs through here, to the roast coffee there, and—"
"Age."
She glanced up. "Well, if you need to know exactly, I can't tell you." She hesitated, licking her lips. He arched his eyebrows. Finally she said, "It would be several people's best guess. One of them is mine, but my best guess is no better than anyone else's."
He turned his palms upward in exasperation.
She peered at the brewer. "Somewhere between seventeen and twenty-two standard, we figure."
"We figure?"
"Yes, Captain Panglor, Pinglor sir," she said, trembling. "Yes, Captain Puglor. We figure. Me, Urula, and the meds. Based on tentative adjustments due to relativism in space travel, time inaccurately recorded in locations of nonstandard local year, and the hypothetical contents of destroyed documentation. Also on physiological measurements by the meds—rendered uncertain by the factors mentioned above—as well as by unknown environmental exposures to radiation, gravitation, and respiratory and dietary chemistries."
"But—"
"And based upon my own memories, which are not accurate because of—because of, b-blocks caused by unresol-unresolved—" She stopped and focused very hard on some point behind Panglor. "Un—" she started again. Then she hit the counter. Then her thigh. She grimaced, and got control. "You can read my report on D3, if it's so important to you," she snapped.
Panglor struggled with an obstruction in his throat. LePiep ran into the galley and hopped up onto the counter, and looked back and forth between the two. She rumbled, radiating bewilderment and fear, caught between them and unable to help. Panglor thought desperately. Say something useful. "So," he tried, "since you're not sure . . . is that why . . . you were . . . the way you were . . . last night?"
Alo's head jerked up. Her eyes smoldered with rage.
Wrong. Said it all wrong! "What I mean is—"
"Sure," she said, her voice icy steel. She opened the storage compartment and took out a wrapped lunch.
"I think—" he stammered.
"No, you don't think," she snapped, and she stormed out of the galley.
"Wait!" he yelled. She didn't stop. She went straight to the airlock and slammed the port behind her. "Hey!" he shouted. There was no answer. He dithered in the passageway and finally went back to the galley, furious. The damn witch—grown woman or not. Neurotic little twit. He'd be better off without her.
A man can't make a mistake—can't choose his words wrong?
Grabbing his cooling mug of brew, he said, "Come on, Peep," and stumped back to the control bay. The viewscreen was still on, but there was no sigh of Alo. He gulped his moke grimly. LePiep radiated alarm, and he tried to soothe her. Finally he started fiddling with the viewscreen controls. Might as well find her and see that she stayed out of trouble.
There was no sign of her. Probably she was already in trouble. Well, to hell with her.
He went and mistshowered hurriedly, put on a clean jumpsuit, and returned to the bridge with a flatcake and a fresh mug of brew. Immediately he saw Alo in the screen, walking away from the Cur in the same direction they had taken earlier. He watched tensely. LePiep perched on the console, staring at him, wide-eyed and nervous. Alo disappeared behind a limb of rock. Panglor took a sip and waited for her to emerge. He strained his eyes. A curious twilight still lay over the land, making visibility uncertain, but he did not see how she could have moved off in either direction without crossing his line of sight. Probably hiding, he thought. Sulking. Or looking at the pond.
LePiep hopped onto his shoulder and began sniffing unhappily at his hair. "Hey, bud, you figure she'll be all right out there?" he asked, patting the ou-ralot uneasily. "Sure she will. What could hurt her?"
LePiep muttered, radiating anxiety.
When was that girl going to show up?
Chapter 8
Setting out in search of her, Panglor picked his way among the boulders, LePiep on his shoulder. He noted that certain features of the landscape seemed altered. It was more a feeling than a specific observation, but the angles and dimensions of the ridges jarred with his memory. Daylight was approaching. The sky behind the ship glowed with a lemon-orange light, which somehow imbued the landscape with ghostly illumination without actually chasing away the darkness.
He intended to return to the gas-pond, figuring that it was probably what Alo had done. Following essentially the same route they had taken last night, he looked for the pond—and instead found himself standing on unfamiliar ground, where he thought the pond should have been. The ridges behind him were familiar, but the land ahead was not; it was all carved channels and ravines. An anxious feeling crept through him, and LePiep murmured nervously in his ear. Frowning, he turned to look back at the ship, to doublecheck his bearings.
What he saw was an empty plain, beyond the ridges, and in the far distance a rocky-rimmed horizon—and above the horizon, a pale, yellow sun. The ship was no longer visible. He stared at the sun with wide eyes. LePiep grumbled throatily; his own heart-rate surged. Cradling the ou-ralot, he scrambled up onto one of the ridges for a higher view. The plain was still empty. No spaceship. He swallowed tightly, controlling his emotions. LePiep, though, squirmed and whimpered softly. "Easy, babe," he muttered, unnerved by her waves of fear. He turned carefully, and saw a tumbled and confusing terrain, glinting here and there with what appeared to be crystals—or perhaps water—but no signs of the vapor-pool.
Something was dreadfully wrong here.
Taking a deep breath, he yelled: "Heyyyy!"
There was no answer, not even an echo. He squinted. His forehead buzzed. His heart raced.
He climbed down from the ridge and continued walking in his original direction, away from where the ship had been. Well . . . where did it say that
things had to make sense? Perhaps the ship would be there when he turned back. But what about Alo?
Pausing in his tracks, he hazarded another glance back—and was startled badly. The sun had changed; it was now a smoky disk, rimmed with fire, giving the appearance of a yellow sun being perfectly eclipsed by a darkly translucent body. The sun flamed coolly against a dark sky, lighting the landscape but not the heavens.
Panglor blinked hard and moved on, but he was aware of waves of increasing anxiety, and for a moment was unsure whether he was radiating or receiving from LePiep. Or being amplified by LePiep. The ou-ralot peered to and fro nervously, and looked up into his eyes in fear. She was worried; but was she worried about Alo? Panglor's insides twisted just a little as he realized that he was afraid for her. And afraid of being left alone. Where was that girl?
He yelled again, with more lungpower: "Hey!" As he walked, he called repeatedly. Finally it occurred to him that Alo probably would not answer to hey even if she heard him, and he began calling, "Alo! Hey—Alo!" But there was still no answer.
The terrain gradually changed, becoming even more confusing. Though the ground seemed level enough, his feet carried him into deepening ravines among the ridges. He realized that he was in danger of becoming lost in a labyrinth; and by the time he realized it, he was already lost. Turning back, he could not even say which of several pathways he had just stepped out of; none of them looked right to him. The steeply chiseled walls of all three passages were partially lost in shadow; but the angles of the shadows were bizarre and contradictory. Sweating, Panglor tried to decide on a course of action and found that he could not. Nothing he had done so far had produced a logical consequence.
Where logic failed, then, guesswork would have to take over. Intuition. "What do you think, Peep?" he said softly, turning to look all around the tricky landscape, unsure of his directional sense, unsure of what he would do even if he knew which way he was facing. He was here to find the girl, but of what use would that be if he was hopelessly lost himself?
"Hwup," murmured LePiep disconsolately.
"Yah," he said, feeling his fear begin to creep out of control. He shivered involuntarily, and for an instant loosened his hold on the ou-ralot.
A sudden wave of joy flooded him. "Hrruu!" LePiep cried, and as he started in surprise, she leaped from his arms and scampered across an open flat. She vanished into shadow at the foot of another ridge.
"Peep!" he screamed in horror and lunged after her. By the time he reached the spot where she had disappeared, she had scampered on. He spotted her darting down a narrow ravine, visible for a moment in a beam of sunlight, then gone. What was she doing? He realized dizzily that the ou-ralot was running as though to greet someone she knew. Could she have seen Alo? "Wait, Peep! Come back!" He heard LePiep's whistle echo back through the convoluted rocks, but she was gone, through the ravine and off in heaven knew what direction.
Frantic, knowing it was probably no use, he stumbled down the length of the ravine; when he reached the end he peered about and sagged in despair. He faced a choice of at least five paths through the labyrinthine terrain, with no sign of which LePiep had taken. He called the ou-ralot, called again . . . and finally chose a path at random. Fear weighed heavily on him as he walked. He tried not to think about aloneness, because when he thought about it he began to tremble. His companions gone; his ship gone. Alone and lost.
After a time, he emerged into a large hollow among the intertwining ridges. The light of the sun fell strangely across the basin; the far side was in deep, inky shadow. He stared nervously at the area of shadow. It seemed unnatural: too dark, too absolute. He raised his eyes, and was startled to see LePiep running across the top of a ridge beyond the shadowy area. He caught faintly echoing waves of confusion.
Shouting, he dashed across the basin to intercept her. One moment he was in sunlight, the next in shadow, and then . . . he was somewhere else. He saw pale light in darkness, gleaming ghostly walls like stone but not stone. There were too many walls; they intersected and crossed around him, and he blinked until he realized that he could see through one to another, and if they were truly walls, he could not see which way it was possible to walk. Edging sideways, he tripped and fell down a sloping pathway, and regained his balance as he stumbled out between two quite solid boulders onto an open ledge. He jerked to a stop, facing a body of water, and shook his head. What the hell was going on? LePiep . . . where was she? . . . what was this?
The water before him was turquoise-green, under an invisible sun. Its surface was wisped with mist, but when he cocked his head he caught a glimpse into the depths. He was standing at the edge of what appeared to be a small inlet on a large bay; but the horizon was blocked by low-lying clouds, and it was impossible to see far from shore.
"This is crazy," he muttered, other thoughts driven momentarily from his mind. The sight before him was compellingly, stunningly beautiful. He stepped to the edge of the bank. He looked into the water and up into the sky, which was blue—the first blue sky he had seen on this world—and gazed along the shore. A breeze stirred the mist, but nothing else moved.
This planet was playing tricks on him, and doing a damn good job of it. "Well, why not?" he muttered, rubbing his chin. "Every other goddamn thing is crazy." Strangely, he felt sure that what he was seeing was really there; he did not think he was hallucinating, or suffering illusions. Which was, itself, crazy. An intuition.
He cocked his head and peered again into the water. Had he seen something moving? The surface shined and danced with mirrors for several moments, then cleared suddenly. He found himself staring down through many meters of water to the shadowy seafloor. What he saw made his face twitch. Sitting upright on the bottom, its image shimmering with the distortion of the water, was a spaceship, all silver and shadow. It was The Fighting Cur. It looked rather like a large toy in the misty gloom, suggesting that the water was far deeper than he had thought. He stood dumbly, his stomach kinking like twisted rope. The Cur, sunk? He'd been wrong, then; he was hallucinating.
But no. He couldn't believe that.
Several tiny-looking fish moved in the gloomy depths, and he watched them maneuver around the structure of the ship. The Cur really was there, on the seafloor. But how? He felt his chest and arm muscles lock against one another with tension; he felt sweat form on his forehead. Okay, he thought grimly, as though someone might be listening—sink my ship. Take my friends. Go ahead and do what you want.
He blinked. The water rippled, and the angle of visibility changed. He saw something else on the bottom—another spaceship, not the Cur. And not Deerfield. A wrecked ship, broken in half, its insides exposed to the green depths. Panglor trembled, feeling excited and confused and more fearful than ever. Other people had crashed here, then. This planet had already taken lives.
He wrenched his gaze from the water and looked around frantically. His heart pounded. "LePiep!" he bawled. "Alo!" His voice rang out across the water and returned. The echoes died.
Grimly he turned to his left—and saw Alo.
Some distance off, a natural stone bridge arched out over the water, extending from the bank at an impossibly shallow angle and then curving back to the same bank. What supported its weight, Panglor couldn't imagine. But at its outermost point, Alo stood looking across the water. She seemed not to have noticed him. He shouted at the top of his lungs: "Alo! Over here!" His heart beat mercilessly as he skirted along the bank, looking for a clear path to the bridge. Alo, meanwhile, turned and began walking away from him, toward the far end of the bridge. She gave no sign of having heard his shout.
Panglor broke into a headlong dash to catch her. Several massive obstacles of stone forced him to jog inland from the bank; he ran in and out among rocks and ledges and gullies, trying to keep close to the water. He jumped up onto an elevated slab to search anxiously for Alo—and he clenched his fists in excitement. Alo was walking toward him on the bridge, and trotting at her feet was LePiep. Panglor yelled joyfully.
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br /> Alo still showed no reaction. But he caught a wave of emotion from LePiep—satisfaction, determination. (Why couldn't they hear him? It didn't matter; they would soon be reunited.) He leaped down and dashed the final fifty meters. Rounding a precariously balanced boulder, he trotted out onto the foot of the curious stone bridge. And cursed miserably.
The bridge was empty. The full sky covered it like a luminous bowl, and the water below glowed emerald. But Alo and LePiep were gone. He shouted. He ran out to the extremity of the bridge's curved midsection. He called and turned in every direction—to no avail. There was no sign that either the girl or the ou-ralot had ever stood here.
God no, he thought, and then all of his thoughts were lost in a rush of dizziness. Numbly, he walked the entire arch of the stone bridge, looking forward, looking down, staring at the mistily mirrored water. Sighing leadenly, he turned and walked back along the bridge, scanning the shore with half-focused eyes.
He sat down, letting his feet hang over the water, and gazed into the depths. He saw shadows and slanting rays of light, but no spaceships. Only deepening color, hinting at the hidden seafloor. Despair and bewilderment were all bound up in his chest, and he found it impossible to think in a linear fashion.
The sky overhead took on a warmer hue, with a blazing white sun in the center of a growing orange aura.
Clearing his throat, and blinking at tears that were not quite yet in his eyes, he struggled to get to his feet. A wave of hysterical desperation washed over him, almost knocking him back down. It was an instant before he recognized that the emotion was not coming from him, but from LePiep. He gasped weakly, turning.
The ou-ralot was running along the bridge, whistling mournfully and radiating waves of lonely desperation. "Peep!" he cried hoarsely. The ou-ralot sped up, scampering toward him. Waves of hope cascaded from her. She approached—leaped. "Here, babe!" he called with a stunning rush of happiness, and reached to catch her.
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