Miller didn't anticipate a problem in any case; the Companies and their lobbyists in the CoDo Senate were powerful, to be sure, but they weren't foolish enough to confront BuReloc directly over one marginally useful world, whatever its economic potential. The Companies had the real power these days, but the CoDominium government still controlled the courts. The courts decided who was sentenced to "remedial colony support services," their euphemism for forced deportation, almost always for life, and the Companies had a lot of older executives with troublesome young children and grandchildren who frequently made the mistake of thinking themselves above the law. When he thought about it, Miller considered it a rather tawdry system of checks and balances, but it worked, and anyway, he didn't think about it much.
The ramp was locked in place, exposing the bulky ground car which had been idling within the bay for the last fifteen minutes. Ike helped Miller into the cab, and they drove it down the ramp. Miller was about to wave and drive off when Ike clambered into the seat beside him and shut the door with a grin.
Miller stared at the engineering crewman with a frown.
"You don't need to come with me."
Ike shrugged. "No work to do; th' shuttle is tota." He waved impatiently toward the mountains. "Let's take a ride."
Miller decided then that Ike was just obvious enough to be the Fast Eddie's Company spy; still, he was glad for the companionship. He set the inertial navigation computer, put the ground car in gear and rolled off east toward the foothills.
Inside the shuttle, Owens cursed. "Well, great. That Christless Spaniard just took off for a joyride with the BuReloc spook."
"Oh, terrific. That's bloody swell." Finally losing his temper, Connolly threw a fused circuit board against the wall. After a moment, he calmed down. "Well. It's not like we'd a whole lot for them to do here, I suppose."
The communications panel chimed, and Potter's voice crackled into the cabin. "Shuttle One, acknowledge."
"Yeah, Emmett, we're here," Owens answered.
"I think we've got some good news for you."
Owens and Connolly shared a brief, hunted look. "Roger that, Emmett," Owens fought to control his voice. "What's the scoop?"
"Liu's been working on the Number Two Shuttle, says he can have it ready in about eight days for a one-way trip to your site."
A strangled laugh slipped past Owens' lips. "Well-Jesus Christ, Emmett! What good is that going to do us?"
"Shut up, Owens," Connolly shouted, taking over the communications panel. "What have you got in mind, Emmett?"
Potter explained Liu's plan, and the four of them went over the details for the next eighty-five minutes. The Fast Eddie's signal was beginning to fade as Potter added: "And please, Brian; be very thorough when you take soundings of that landing area. We don't want to hit another sinkhole like you did and have two busted up elevators in the basement."
Owens laughed an acknowledgement as he signed off.
Potter's signal had been gone for a full minute before Connolly put a hand to his forhead in panic. "Oh, my God. . the sounding equipment; it's all in the ground car with Miller and Ike."
Owens began trying to raise the BuReloc man and their own engineering crewman, to no avail. "Jesus, they haven't been gone more than an hour and a half, how far could they get?"
Connolly sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"I suppose," he said finally, "that we can take some comfort in the idea that not very much more can go wrong on this trip."
Owens kept calling Miller and Ike, trying not to think about how wrong Connolly could be.
Miller and Ike were gone for five days, and the rest of the crew had given them up for dead. Owens and Connolly had begun clearing a landing area a few hundred yards north, taking soundings manually with a metal pole heated by a battery pack, for although there was snow on the ground, the ground frost beneath was quite thin. Despite the moon's miserable cold, it was extremely dry this close to the sheltering mountains that separated the valley from the sea winds. The clearing was done with no tools heavier than makeshift brooms and piled rocks to keep fresh drifts out.
Owens and Connolly had been sweeping clear the landing zone in a clockwise pattern, and had reached eight-thirty when the Navigator noticed his British First Officer staring off into the distance.
"Christ, Connolly, you're not snowblind, are you?"
Connolly dropped his broom and started running past Owens. "It's the ground car; it's Miller and Ike, come on!"
Powder clouds of dry snow puffed up around their feet as the two men ran toward the ground car, the thin, cold air of the wretched little moon raking their lungs in spite of their face masks. Owens thought that men might one day learn to run on this forsaken rock, but they would never enjoy it.
The ground car slowed and turned in their direction when they were within fifty yards, and both of them could see the carcass of some large, shaggy quadruped draped over its hood. Owens and Connolly staggered to a fast walk.
"What the hell is that?" the Navigator wheezed.
"Indigenous life form." Connolly too was panting as they closed the distance. "Herbivorous grazer, I suspect; likely inhabitant for this sort of terrain.
Owens shook his head. "First kill on the new world. Man has arrived."
Connolly threw him a sidelong glance; Owens was not the sort of fellow who made pronouncements on the morality of his species. And in any case, something about the animal carcass bothered him. Even as they approached, it looked wrong to him; too-lumpy. "Oh, bloody hell," Connolly said abruptly.
The ground car had chuffed to a halt as they reached it, and both Connolly and Owens could see all the details of the mooselike animal tied securely to its hood. And tied behind it, giving it the unnatural appearance Connolly had noted, was the body of a man wrapped in plastic. The feet protruded from one end, revealing the thick, CoDo issue explorer's boots of the engineering crewman Icaoruis, better known as Ike.
Miller popped the door and leaned out. "There was an accident, he said. "I'm sorry."
Neither Owens nor Connolly said anything, and Miller went on: "Get in, we'll drive him back to the shuttle."
Owens turned without answering and headed back for the clearing. After a moment, Connolly followed, leaving Miller standing in the open door of the ground car cab. Finally, the BuReloc man settled back into the cab and drove on to the shuttle. Owens took his hand from his pocket just long enough to casually raise his middle finger to Miller as he passed.
"What do you think happened?" Potter asked during the next communications cycle.
Connolly sighed. "I don't know, Emmett. Miller says they were up in the foothills, digging at some crystalline ore, when they saw this musk-ox-antelope thing. Ike apparently thought it would be good eating, so he shot it with one of the rifles from the ground car. Then, when he was climbing down to the carcass, some big predator jumped him out of nowhere, apparently trying to steal the kill. Ike lost his footing, and fell into a defile before Miller could do anything."
"How did Miller get the carcass away from the predator?"
"He says he drove it off with the other rifle. Possible, I suppose."
Potter's silence ate up a good deal of their precious communications time. "Do you believe him?"
"Hell, no," Owens said firmly in the background.
Connolly sighed. "I don't know, Emmett. The animal carcass looks pretty torn up, like a tiger was at it for a minute or two. Miller recovered Ike's rifle when he brought the corpse up. Both are pretty banged about."
"All right. Liu's a little ahead of schedule, he says the second shuttle will be ready in two more days. We've gotten a little sloppy in our radio contacts; that's not to happen anymore. I want you or Owens on this line every ninety minutes, clear?"
"Got it."
Owens leaned in and said: "And what if we have 'accidents,' too, Emmett?"
"Then the Fast Eddie writes off the Survey Team and heads home."
Connolly and Owens shared a l
ook. "I see," Connolly said. "So we'd best hope neither of us slips into a coma."
"You or Frank on this line, every hour and a half," Potter repeated. "And make sure our guest knows it."
Potter signed off, and leaned back against the chair. He had to prop his feet against the console edge to do it.
In low gravity, as in politics, he considered, leverage is everything.
Behind him, Chief Engineer Liu stared intently at the silent communications console. "Bad," was all he said.
Potter nodded faintly. "Yup."
Connolly coined the term "muskylope" for the grazer Miller had brought back, and despite the mood of the camp being only a little less frigid than the outside air, all three enjoyed the taste; after their forced diet of survival rations, fresh meat was a welcome relief.
But once the steaks were gone, then Owens' and Connolly's distrust of Miller settled back in. They openly refused to sleep at the same time, an insulting statement which provided great moral satisfaction at first, but which only resulted in Miller being the one man in camp who was getting a decent amount of rest during the moon's seemingly endless day.
"Look at him," Owens said after waking Connolly for his relief. "Sonofabitch sleeps like a baby.
"Why not? He knows he's safe."
"But is he?" Owens asked Connolly in a low voice.
"Yes, I am," Miller answered, and Owens turned to see the BuReloc man watching them calmly from his sleeping bag.
Owens shook his head. "You spooks are pathetic; America's in bed with the Russians in our glorious CoDominium, so there's nobody left to spy on; nobody except everybody. What did you find out there? Something too important to let poor Ike live after he'd seen it? Or was it just for practice?"
Miller lowered his eyes. "It was an accident." The BuReloc man leaned up on one elbow to look at Owens, and Connolly wondered for the hundredth time if Miller had a gun in that bag with him. "Whether you believe it or not doesn't change the fact."
"Right, then. Frank, that's enough, yes?" Connolly said from his own bag in the wall hammock. "Get some sleep; the shuttle's due in eight hours. I'll come and wake you then."
Owens stood up and pulled several blankets from a locker.
"What are you doing?" Connolly asked.
"I'm sick of the company I've been keeping." The Navigator headed aft. "I'm going back to the ground car bay to sleep."
"Frank, don't be an idiot, there's no heat back there!"
"Yeah, but there's a lock on the door." Owens stopped before Connolly, pointedly ignoring Miller almost at his feet. "Look, there's fresh batteries in the sleeping bags; you come out to get me in six hours. Check me out sooner if you get bored." He turned at the hatch, looking down at Miller. "On second thought, considering your company; don't get bored."
To Potter's surprise, the crew member who seemed most affected by Ike's death was not his brother Mike, but Farrow. The Fast Eddie's master had taken to wandering about the ship with an apparent intensity of grief that was a little frightening in a man who couldn't reasonably be kept away from air locks and orbital attitude controls.
Farrow would often look out the viewports, staring down at the moon, and speaking softly under his breath. Rarely, Mike would come up behind the master and place a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of compassion. Seeing as it was from the man whose brother had died to his employer, and that the former appeared less affected than the latter, Potter found these occasional tableaux faintly distasteful, though he couldn't be exactly sure why.
As long as it keeps Farrow out of the way 'til we can get our living back aboard, Potter told himself. How Mike dealt with his brother's death was his own affair.
"Captain Potter, we're ready." Liu had finished the preliminary systems check on the second shuttle that morning, ship time, and had spent the rest of the day loading the gear they'd need to get Shuttle One flying again.
"Fine. Well, I guess it's pretty clear who's got to go."
Liu nodded. I'll need Mike for the repair work; Owens and Connolly can keep busy, but this is drydock work, and command crew won't be much use."
Potter looked over his shoulder to be sure Farrow wasn't about. "Bill, this is going to be tricky; you need a pilot to get down there in one piece."
Liu nodded. "There's nothing for it. But we've got to take Farrow down with us; we can't leave him alone up here on the Fast Eddie. Hell, in his state he could walk out an airlock."
Potter ground a knuckle against his temple. "Yeah. Well, let's hope he doesn't wander off while we're down there. You recheck your repair estimates?"
Liu nodded. "Everybody working like coolies, worst case: three days. Most likely only two. We're up and off and back aboard Fast Eddie, headed home. The survey's scrubbed, of course; no bonus potential for a screw-up like this."
"Yeah, break my heart, why don't you." Potter looked over Liu's shoulder and out the port. "I've learned as much about this place as I care to already, Bill."
And I suspect, Potter finished to himself, that our Mister Miller has, too.
Shuttle Two drifted downward, and Potter found himself suddenly wishing there was an overhead hatch, so he could take one last look at the Fast Eddie above them. Involuntarily, he shuddered.
What a gruesome thought; unlucky, too. He began the minute adjustments that, magnified by their thirty-mile descent, would bring them into the general area of the first shuttle's landing zone. Liu was strapped in next to him, his eyes closed.
Can't say as I blame you, old friend. This is the sort of joyride that would have the Engineering and Machinists' Union howling for my blood if they knew about it. Behind them, Farrow had strapped himself in with a firm confidence that belied his earlier distress. Nevertheless, Mike continued a solicitous, if detached, attention toward his boss. Good, Potter thought. Somebody else can hold his hand for a while.
"Coming up on final, gentlemen," Potter tried to loosen his tightened throat with speech; it didn't work.
Air resistance increased around the shuttle, and the noise level from outside increased with it. In seconds the shuttle was a rock-filled washing machine of rattling pressure plates and popping seams. A giant of the air was slapping a pillow against the nose and belly, but the pillow weighed tons.
Potter saw Liu in his peripheral vision. The Chief Engineer had forced his eyes open to check his status panel. "How long, Emmett?" The vibrations made Liu's voice sound like a jackhammer was digging into his chest.
"Three minutes more."
"Have to be on the ground sooner; she's losing it."
"I meant three minutes to the landing zone. Another five to circle and land."
Liu rolled his eyes heavenward, and Potter hoped he wasn't looking for a good spot for harp playing.
When the shaking stopped, it was sudden enough to make Potter shout for a structural integrity check.
"Fine, it's fine," Liu was grinning as he checked his board. "She'll hold for that five minutes, but don't go longer than ten." Liu mumbled to himself in satisfaction, "Heyah, all gods bear witness, I can fix a rainy day!"
Potter passed over the western mountain range that sheltered the valley, their snowcapped peaks seeming barely below him despite his altitude. Shuttle Two's flat glide was taking it from one hundred thousand feet to a fifth of that in the course of their three-thousand mile flight path, and the view became spectacular.
The sun had broken through the thin cloud cover, lighting the valley from behind him, while Cat's Eye illuminated it before. And in that moment, as he looked across what would one day become known as the Shangr? — La, he suddenly felt a great peace.
It's pure, he thought. It's harsh in that purity, but it's a beautiful kind of harsh. People will come here, and they will live, and die, as Owens said they would. They'll settle it and cultivate it, fly over it and bury their dead in it, but they'll never change it, not really. In the end, like every pure place, it will change them. It will make them what it wants them to be, and they'll love it for that. The rest o
f this moon is cruel and ugly, but this valley is cruel and beautiful. Men will go to the other lands, and some will stay there, too. But those lands will never know the kind of devotion people will come to feel for this sheltered valley, this safe haven in a hard world.
The moment passed; the landing zone was beneath them, a cleared circle of dead gray wintergrass in an unrelenting sea of shifting white, the crooked shadow of the crippled shuttle nearby. Potter was getting the feel of Liu's bastard child as he flew her, and the landing would be tricky.
Tricky it was, but perfect nonetheless.
One figure stood on the snow beyond the cleared circle; it ran toward the shuttle in a kind of loping shuffle; long step, double-drag the other leg, long step. Potter cracked the hatch and pushed it open, freeing the debarkation ladder as he did so.
"Oh, my sweet Christ!" The blast of frigid air hit him in the face like a flamethrower; he actually recoiled a step, frantically gathering his parka closed as he fought to keep his balance. On the ground below, the figure that had come to meet them was struggling up the ladder. It stumbled into the shuttle and fell against the wall, sliding down to the floor plates.
Potter knelt in the howling wind, pulling back the hood of their one-man reception party. It was Connolly, and he looked half-dead.
"Mike, Bill, help me get him into a couch." Potter knew that after extended months with no more gravity than the Fast Eddie's centrifuge, it would take all three of them to lift the First Officer, and maybe Farrow besides. "And somebody close that pneumonia hole before we all wind up like Connolly."
Potter's examination told them what they all knew already. "Exposure, of course. Frostbite on all his toes and all but two fingers. I'm no doctor, but I can see those'll have to come off." Potter lightly touched the blackened digits. "Hell, he's going to lose this whole foot." He stood and shook his head, helplessly. "I don't think we can save him," he said quietly, as if to himself.
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