Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5

by Gillian Andrews

  “I know.” Six appeared to find this attitude logical.

  “He’s rude!”

  “And now you know why.”

  She lowered her head. “Yes. Now I know why.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Not exactly a ray of sunshine yourself, are you, Diva?”

  She drew in a haughty breath. “I am not rude!”

  “Whatever.”

  She put her chin up. “Take that back!”

  “I only said ‘whatever’.”

  “Yes, but it was the way that you said it - with a grin on your face. Take it back.”

  He shook his head in mock despair. “I take it back,” he said, making sure that she couldn’t see that he was rolling his eyes.

  “You are impossible!”

  “Hah! Look who’s talking.”

  Diva glared. “I am nothing like the Namuri,” she snapped.

  For once Tallen seemed in complete agreement with her. “I have nothing in common with the meritocrat,” he said.

  Six looked from one mutinous face to the other, and couldn’t avoid smiling to himself. “Nothing at all,” he murmured, exchanging an ironic look with Bennel.

  Chapter 5

  AS THEY APPROACHED the planet, they realized that their task wouldn’t be easy. The planet already showed some degree of tidal distortion, being pulled distinctly out of shape by the passage around the black hole, so close by. It bulged outwards on the side of the black hole, and the computer on board the New Independence was predicting grave destruction probability at the next periapsis pass, only days away. The planet had managed to cling on to its meagre existence through continual near misses with the billion star graveyard, but it looked suspiciously as if its journey were nearly over.

  “If there is anything alive down there, it has only a short time to live,” said Six. “The computer thinks that this whole system is about to be destroyed by the tidal forces. Maybe even at this pass. It will be closest to the black hole in one or two days.”

  “Do you think anything could have survived this far?” Diva pointed to the bright aura surrounding the black hole. “Surely that must be giving off dangerous radiation?”

  Six shook his head. “This singularity is quiescent; it hasn’t eaten anything except light gas and the odd planet for millions of years. Even so it is still giving off some X rays and other radiation. But, since there is quite a heavy atmosphere around the planet, I think some species might just have hung on. I wonder if we will be able to help them.”

  “Are there any readings for composition?”

  Six turned to the console. Then he sat back. “Instellite,” he said bluntly.

  “Instellite? You mean the rock found on Pictoria? On Valhai? That’s odd, surely?”

  Six nodded, but tried to collect more information. It took a few minutes, but then the console began to shine with the data it had collected. The planet was still clinging, against all odds, to most of an old atmosphere rich in oxygen. The surface temperature had not resisted change so well, and what would once have been comparable to summer on Xiantha was now irregular, showing pockets of extreme heat due to volcanic activity mixed with isolated pockets of relative cold. The weather patterns, however, had suffered more from the parent star’s capture by the black hole. Temperature differences were causing wind patterns which would make travel highly uncomfortable. The tidal forces due to proximity to the black hole had caused geysers of hot lava, containing shrapnel of molten rocks. These could apparently spring up anywhere on the planet’s surface without warning, although most were concentrated in the plains.

  Apart from this, there was no day; the planet no longer belonged to a sun, even though it still spun on its axis. Instead the whole world was suffused with a silvery light from the close stars surrounding it on all sides, and from the aura of the black hole behind it.

  “Are you reading any life signs?” asked Diva.

  Six shook his head. “There don’t seem to be any markers for organic life, and I am not reading any buildings or anything. I suppose if there had been any they might have been demolished by the closeness to the gravity well of the black hole. In any case, these readings may not be all that reliable.”

  He accelerated the trader as much as he could. At the speed it was traveling, he would have no chance of catching up if he missed this opportunity to drop into orbit. After a few minutes, he signaled to Diva. It was going to need continual corrections, because spacetime so near the singularity was heavily distorted, and one pilot was not enough. He made room for her on the seat, and she began to help him.

  “Can you two get down to the hold?” he shouted to Bennel and Tallen. “The g force when we try to drop into orbit and get swept up by the planet’s gravity is going to be quite something! The canths will need to be secured, or they will be hurt. Let me know when I can continue.”

  Bennel and Tallen looked at each other. This was turning into an even more perilous mission than the last one they had faced. Both their faces became taut as they hurried down to the hold, to help the canth keeper. Once there, they struggled to box the canths securely into tight stalls, undoing bale upon bale of hay, and throwing it below and around them as buffers to any sudden jerks. The canths seemed to have some understanding of the problem; they submitted to the indignities of heavy handling with only the minimum showing of the whites of their eyes.

  At last they were ready. Bennel punched at the nearest intercommunicator. “Go ahead.”

  “Strap yourselves in, then.”

  Diva and Six continued to struggle with the controls. Both were perspiring freely; it was one of the hardest things that they had ever had to do as pilots.

  Six had already accelerated the space trader to its maximum safe velocity, but now he piled on even more thrust. Whatever speed he gained now, would mean less g force as they were swept up into the planet’s gravity, and less chance that they would bounce heavily off the atmosphere. The New Independence leapt through the skies obediently, proving at least that the Sellites had allowed a prudent margin of safety when they built the ship.

  Six looked worriedly at the trajectory of the planet. It would be like trying to circle a moving bullet, he felt. It was coming at him at an incredible speed.

  “That’s the nearest thing to a fire planet that I have ever seen!” he said.

  Diva nodded. The planet shone with a silvery light against the background of space, but its surface showed innumerable orange spots of burning lava, and one or two extended volcanic vents along the surface, which also gave off a reddish glow.

  “—Coming into the planetary gravity well!” Six warned her. “Brace yourself!”

  The New Independence began to vibrate, and they were aware of an immense force pulling at them. The ship lurched, then seemed to quiver, before starting to shake from the deck plates to the engine struts. Every single part of the trader was juddering as the gravity tried to latch on to them, tried to grab them in its clutches. Their very teeth began to rattle in their heads.

  “This vibration is too much!” shouted Diva. “She will break up!”

  “Compensate for the heavy-duty shuttle, Diva!” shouted back Six.

  “What do you think I am trying to do, nomus!” she snapped, the heat of the moment making her forget she had promised not to use that form of address.

  “It is creating instability and oscillation. If you don’t DO something about it the engines will start to overheat.” Six dragged on the controls vainly, trying to slow the careering passage of the trader into the sphere of influence of the planet. Still the shuddering continued, and for quite three minutes it seemed as if the whole ship must be torn apart.

  Diva bit her lip, “We might get in, no-name, but I can’t see how we could ever get out again!”

  “We will have to worry about that when the time comes!” Six told her. “One step at a time, I think. We knew this wasn’t going to be easy!” He didn’t tell her that he had already com
e to the same conclusion.

  Down in the hold, the three men were staring at each other. There was little to be said, and Bennel doubted that the others would hear him over the screaming of the ship’s metalwork as it fought against the immense force which was threatening to tear the New Independence apart. The canths were terrified; little rings of white sweat were staining their coats, and their eyes had turned completely white with panic.

  The man who spoke to canths had his eyes closed; he seemed to be trying to transmit serenity to his charges, but these were circumstances so extreme that it seemed an impossible task.

  Bennel found it suddenly hard to breathe. The g force was so strong that it was curtailing his automatic body functions. He gasped as a black wall seemed to take hold of him and press him insistently against the straps. His eyes met those of Tallen, and he tried to smile at the Namuri boy. But his lips were forced back from his teeth, and he knew it must look more like a death rictus than a smile. He then found it impossible to bring his lips back together again, and was left with this travesty of a grin on his face all the time the ship was dragged forward inexorably to catch up with the planet.

  It must have lasted for perhaps ten minutes, and then Six and Diva noticed that the ship was beginning to stabilize. They worked at the controls for what seemed like even longer, but finally managed to get the ship to respond. They stared suspiciously at the control panel, and then their shoulders both dropped back into a more relaxed posture.

  Six blew air out slowly, and closed his eyes. “Phew! I thought we weren’t going to make it, for a moment there. I hope I never have to do anything like that again. Are we in stable orbit?”

  Diva gave a brief nod. “It will do. Though we can’t stay in this orbit for many days – it will become unstable very quickly with all the forces acting on the trader. Our only hope is to teach the canth keeper how to compensate for deviations. And he might find that impossible.”

  “That shouldn’t take long. Let’s do that before we go down to the planet’s surface.” Diva went back to the intercommunicators. The man who spoke to canths immediately agreed to come up to the bridge.

  “The canths are telling me that this is the place the trimorphs were pulled to,” he told her, “but they are very jittery from the transition into orbit. They seem to be trying to tell me something about it, but I can’t understand them because of the nervous state they are in. They will need at least ten hours to calm down before you can even think about going planetside. Give me time to tend to them, and then, once I have them rubbed down, and made them more comfortable I will make my way up to the bridge.”

  He was good to his word, appearing on the bridge some time later, but once there, it was anything but a simple task to teach the canth keeper how to microcorrect the orbit of the New Independence. He turned out to be a quick and intuitive learner, and was eager to prove himself in a field so far away from his own, but the technical difficulties of such a complicated orbit were far above his possibilities. In the end, Six just taught him the simplest of the controls he could alter. There wasn’t time for more.

  They practiced until the canth keeper was reasonably at home with the console, and Six considered him to be competent at least at reading the input data. By that time it was a new day, although unheralded by any changes in light below them, and the canths were judged fit to continue.

  “Can the canths tell us where to go?” Diva asked.

  The canth keeper gave her a strange look. “They seem to think that they will know how to find their way about once they are on the surface of the planet. I am sensing that they expect to be taken down to the plain, the one directly alongside the northern mountain range.”

  Six nodded, and began to work out the trajectory. “Diva, you should take the shuttle. I can take the canths to the surface in the heavy-duty module, if you take Bennel and Tallen with you, in the normal shuttle.”

  Diva nodded, and began to usher the two Coriolans in front of her towards the docking bay area. As they were leaving, she turned back to the canth keeper. “Good luck, Man who speaks to canths.”

  He inclined his middle section carefully. “And good luck to you, Girl who glares.”

  The girl who glared glared. “Who gave me that name?” Her eyebrows nearly met in the middle. Three of the men took a step back, but Six just grinned.

  “I believe I first heard it from one of the members of staff at the donor headquarters,” the canth keeper told her. “Why? Is it not a name you like?”

  Diva bit back harsher words. “Of course not!”

  The man who spoke to canths tilted his head to one side. “Then why do you glare?” he asked, very reasonably.

  Diva was speechless.

  Six was having trouble standing upright.

  AFTER DIVA AND the two Coriolans had vanished, Six made his way to the hold with the canth keeper. The three canths had settled down and were standing placidly in the hold.

  The canth keeper began to put a headcollar on one of the two canths who were to travel to the surface. He gave another to Six, to put on his own dapple grey equine. Then they led them gingerly along the metallic corridors and into the heavy-duty shuttle, where Six left the canth keeper to settle them in, as he went back twice to carry the necessary tack for them.

  When he had finished, the animals were ready to travel. Each was boxed firmly in once again, this time in the freight shuttle. The man who spoke to canths had been pleased to find stalls available. He had secured the partitions firmly around them, and strewn hay thickly on the floor. Now Six found him surveying his handiwork with a satisfied expression.

  “They’ll do,” he said. “I wish you all a successful journey of colour.”

  Six nodded, and clapped him on the back. “You too!”

  “I will keep my own canth quiet until you return,” he was told. “And I will make sure that the Independence stays in orbit. You needn’t worry.”

  Six made his way up into the small control bridge of the large shuttle.

  “Needn’t worry!” He repeated to himself, with a shake of his head. “Xenon and Atheron had a higher chance of survival when they went around Lightning Corner with the cage door open! I have no idea how to get out of orbit again, even if we do survive the journey down bare planet.”

  But he looked out of the porthole, to where the stars orbiting the black hole were glistening against the pitch darkness of the singularity itself, and felt the familiar rush of adrenaline which sparked through his veins and made him feel prepared to face anything. “All the same, we are going to be the first people to set foot on a hypervelocity planet, and see a black hole close up!”

  A buzz of anticipation ran through the canths too. The silvery light seemed to be calling them. As the heavy engine started up, they tossed their heads and began to quiver.

  Chapter 6

  BACK ON VALHAI, Grace had been called into Mandalon 50’s office in the Valhai Voting Dome. She was curious to see why he wanted to talk to her; she was still theoretically a repudiated Sellite, and it was hard to see what he thought she might add to his already extremely complicated life.

  Even stranger, he had not asked Arcan to accompany her. She found herself flushing slightly as she waited to be shown into his presence. The Second Valhai Votation was less than a month away now, and he had doubled his security contingent; several burly Sellite guards were staring down at her with impassive faces. Grace unwittingly touched her catana, and there was a spine-chilling metallic unsheathing sound as the guards all drew their own weapons. She shivered, and moved her hand cautiously away again. It seemed that Mandalon 50 was taking his own safety very seriously indeed. She wondered that she had not been required to hand in her own weapon at the entry.

  Then the head of Sell was standing in front of her, and she found herself obliged to hold up her mangled hands in the standard Sellite salute.

  “May the perfect triangle remain stable!” he intoned.

  “And may the flares on Almagest remain quiesc
ent.” she replied, exactly as Sell custom required.

  Mandalon seemed to relax, and smiled at her. “It is good to see you. How was your journey of colour?”

  “Very pleasant, thank you. It ... err ... cleared up some things.”

  “Then the man who speaks to canths was correct in his estimate?” The young leader had raised his eyebrows in some surprise. “I think I should visit Xiantha one of these days.”

  Grace nodded. “I am sure that you should. Xiantha is not only a beautiful planet; its people have a unique vision of the world. You should visit the Emerald Lake; it is one of the wonders of Xiantha.” Then she thought for a moment. “And the Xianthes, of course,” she added.

  Mandalon’s eyes tracked down to her hands. “You saw rather more of them than you anticipated, I believe.”

  Grace gave an involuntary shudder. “I did. I think I saw more than I need for the rest of my lifetime. But they are still worth seeing, and any visitor should travel up the dark Xianthe if they can.”

  Mandalon looked wistful. “One day, perhaps.” Then his eyes flickered around the stolid guards and he made a small moue with his mouth. “Perhaps you would be interested in seeing the gold-weave robe which has been prepared for the Second Valhai Votation?”

  Grace blinked. “Oh ... err ... of course.”

  The head of Sell led her out of the reception chamber, through two enormous cupboard doors, and into a large room leading off the small sleeping chamber. The room was chilled to an appropriate temperature, and there were several mannequins dotted around the impressive closet. As the guards made to follow, Mandalon raised his hand.

  “No more than two people in here at a time,” he told them. “You know the rules. Otherwise the thread could suffer deterioration.”

  The guards made an obeisance, and stationed themselves with their backs to Mandalon and Grace, just outside the double doors. Mandalon took hold of Grace’s elbow, and moved her well to the back of the huge wardrobe, where nobody could overhear him.