Fire Season

by David Weber

  “Cannot connect at this time,” the device replied. “Unable to sync with planetary net.”

  “Huh?” Anders tried again, this time hand-keying in the information. The response was the same. He spoke into the device again. “Get me SFS headquarters.”

  “Cannot connect at this time,” came the reply. “Unable to sync with planetary net.”

  The chatter of excited voices told Anders that others were coming. Glancing over, he saw Virgil Iwamoto and his dad in the lead. Kesia Guyen and Dr. Emberly weren’t far behind. Dacey Emberly, a sketch pad still held in one hand, was looking anxiously after.

  Dr. Whittaker thundered up. “Did you get the door open?”

  “Electronic lock is jammed,” Dr. Nez said, his voice tight with effort. “I think the sensor is blocked. The override is on the inside.”

  He didn’t ask if Dr. Whittaker had called for help. Anders wondered how much he had overheard of Anders’ attempts to use the uni-link.

  Dr. Whittaker assessed the situation. “You’re not going to manage to pry it open,” he said. “Anders, run fast and grab a stone or something else hard. Maybe we can break a window.”

  Virgil said, “I have a rock hammer with me.”

  Anders dropped back a few paces to give the others room. Dr. Emberly had her uni-link out. Clearly, she’d assessed the situation for herself and didn’t fear Dr. Whittaker’s wrath. Anders felt relieved—until he saw a puzzled expression spread over her hawk-nosed countenance and her fingers move to input a command.

  “Not working?” he asked softly. “Mine wouldn’t either. It’s strange. These should be fine. Dad ordered new models for the whole expedition.”

  Behind them, there was a sound of breaking crystoplast.

  “Got it!” Virgil crowed.

  Anders looked. Virgil had bashed a hole through one of the large front windows and was now enlarging the opening with his hammer.

  “Bradford!” Dr. Emberly called, her lack of formality a sign of her urgency—while working, Dr. Whittaker always insisted on titles. “My uni-link isn’t working.”

  “Mine either,” said Kesia Guyen, her tone slightly embarrassed, as if hoping she wasn’t going to get yelled at for violating the tacit communication ban.

  Dr. Whittaker frowned. “We’ll use the com unit in the van. Are you through yet, Virgil?”

  Iwamoto pulled back. “I’ve got a good-sized hole.”

  “Fine. Let me through. I’ll call for aid. I’m sure…”

  What Dad was sure of, he didn’t say, but Anders would have bet the entirety of the tuition fund his grandparents had set up for him that it had something to do with what his mom called “spin control”—putting the best slant on a bad situation.

  Dr. Whittaker was not a small man. When he set his bulk on the front of the van, what they all should have expected happened. The front of the van tilted forward, the nose of the craft vanishing beneath the wet ground within moments, the hole in the front window sliding under almost before Dr. Whittaker could pull himself free.

  “Marshes,” Dr. Emberly said, her tone acid, “often contain air pockets as well as damp soil and water. I’m guessing that when a great deal of weight was suddenly added, the nose encountered one of those. Take care…”

  The van had stopped sliding forward as soon as Dr. Whittaker jumped back and now resumed its slower sinking, nose down. Com unit down. There would be no calling for help that way.

  “Virgil, give me the hammer,” Dr. Nez said. “We’ve got to smash one of the rear windows and pull out some of the luggage and food. It may take a while for rescue to reach us.”

  Virgil nodded, but he didn’t release his tool. Instead, he bashed at the rear window with all of his strength. The words that slipped from his lips revealed the reason for the violence of his attack at the innocent piece of crystoplast.

  “Peony Rose is going to worry,” he said, in a staccato cadence. “Has everyone tried their uni-links?”

  Everyone had, even old Dacey Emberly, who had remained back by the picketwood. The failure of the uni-links was a mystery to be delved into later. Right now, they had to get out as many supplies as possible.

  Dr. Whittaker had learned the hard way that his bulk was of no advantage in this situation. Dr. Nez moved up and almost pushed Virgil to one side.

  “I’ll go in,” he said. “I’m smaller than you. Give me a boost.”

  Kesia Guyen worked her way forward.

  “I’m smaller,” she said, her voice tight.

  Dr. Nez already had his head through the hole in the crystoplast, but his voice came back clearly as he pulled himself into the van. “Shorter, maybe. We can argue later on who weighs more. Anyhow, you and Virgil have people waiting for you…”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Kesia said, her voice rising, then breaking. “We don’t need tents or anything. Its not worth the risk!”

  “Really,” Dr. Nez was handing out packages as fast as he could. “How long before rescue comes? We’re going to need water purification at least, a med kit. Dacey’s medications…”

  Anders joined the line relaying materials back. Dacey had come out to join them. Now her voice, suddenly quavery and old as it had never been before, said, “I think the van’s sinking faster! Langston, you’ve got to get out of there!”

  Virgil Iwamoto clearly agreed with her assessment, because the next time Langston Nez’s hands emerged through the hole with a package, he grabbed him by the wrists.

  “Somebody,” Virgil shouted, “help me get a hold on him!”

  “It’s sinking!” came Dacey’s shrill scream. “Oh, bright stars! It’s sinking!”

  Dr. Whittaker shoved forward, almost knocking Kesia Guyen onto her round rump, and joined Virgil. There wasn’t much room, but both men managed to get a hold on Langston Nez and hauled with all their might. However, even as they did so, the bog gasped and gulped, taking into itself the huge bulk of the van as if it was nothing more than a bug.

  Anders stood transfixed in horror as Dad and Virgil were pulled forward by the suction, falling to their knees as they strove to keep their hold on the man who had just been buried alive.

  Behind him, someone was sobbing—Kesia, from the sound. Anders flung himself forward and began scrabbling like a dog in the mud, throwing out great gobs of the wet, sticky stuff in an effort to break the sucking hold. On the other side of where Dad and Virgil maintained their life-and-death grip, he saw Calida Emberly also digging, her silver hair streaked with mud. Then Kesia Guyen—still sobbing—joined them in their efforts.

  Water that reeked of rotting vegetation seeped down Anders’ sleeves. Gritty mud sanded his fingers raw, but Anders kept digging. Was it his imagination or was the sucking pull weakening?

  Slowly, horribly slowly, first Dad, then Virgil began to rock back on their heels. For an agonizing moment, Anders thought that meant they had lost their hold on Dr. Nez. He began to dig more frantically, slime and filth splashing into his face. If they’d given up, he wasn’t going to. He’d dig to the planet’s core if he had to, if that was the only way to bring Dr. Nez up from this sudden grave.

  Feeling himself tiring, Anders fueled his frantic digging with memories of Dr. Nez—no, Langston, at this moment only the human being called Langston—and his many kindnesses, not just on this trip but over the years when he’d been Dad’s assistant. They weren’t going to leave him here, a body in the mud of an alien world. They weren’t! They weren’t!

  Then Virgil gasped. “He’s coming up. We’ve got him!”

  Dr. Whittaker said nothing, only grunted with effort, straining to get his feet under him so he could use his full strength and height to pull the buried man free of the grasping muck. He flung himself upwards, bringing Langston Nez, sleek with mud, hanging like a dead man, into the air and light.

  “Is he breathing?” Dacey asked.

  Exhausted by their efforts, Dad and Virgil had fallen to their knees. Anders half-rolled, half-crawled to look at Langston Nez. Wiping his hands
on the seat of his trousers, he cleared mud from the drowned man’s nose and mouth, then held his ear low against lips and chest. He’d taken life-saving only the term before. Now he went through the check routine.

  “He’s breathing,” he said. The ground beneath him shuddered. “But we’ve got to get out of here or we’re down going after the van!”

  “You and I will carry Langston,” Dr. Emberly said. “Mother, help Kesia get the supplies that haven’t already been relayed to solid ground. It may be enough for Virgil and Bradford to move themselves.”

  Anders obeyed. Dr. Emberly was about his own height. When she took Langston’s feet, Anders raised the mud-covered man’s head and shoulders. The unconscious man might not be overly tall, but covered with mud and soaking wet, he was astonishingly heavy.

  Dr. Emberly reached and checked the controls on Dr. Nez’s counter-grav unit.

  “Ruined,” she said. “These are basic units, not meant to be sunk in the mud.

  She stripped off her own unit and wrapped it around Dr. Nez, then adjusted the dial. “Go! He’s light enough for one person to move now. I’ll get myself back to shore.”

  Anders obeyed, but remembering how he had felt the couple of times he’d tried to move around Sphinx’s 1.35 gravity without his unit, he could only admire the older woman for her tenacity.

  Eventually, they got themselves and their gear to what they now all thought of as “shore.” Kesia located a freshwater spring near the lace willows, and brought back water. With this, Anders carefully cleared Langston’s mouth and nose, periodically turning him and thumping him gently on the back in the hope that he would cough up any mud that had lodged in his lungs. However, although Dr. Nez’s heart beat and he was breathing, that breath came shallow and rasping.

  In the background, Anders heard someone say something about “oxygen starvation” and “brain damage,” but he wasn’t giving up. Dr. Emberly reclaimed her counter-grav belt and went to assist in setting up camp. Dacey Emberly came over to join Anders.

  “I’m going to give Langston my belt,” she said softly, “but don’t tell Calida. She’ll worry. My heart isn’t what it used to be, but I’m sure I’ll be fine if I sit quietly. That poor man doesn’t need to fight the gravity along with everything else.”

  Anders forced a smile. He didn’t know when he’d last felt so tired, but for some reason the image of Stephanie Harrington kept coming to him. She’d saved Lionheart from the hexapuma after, not before, she’d broken her arm, seriously banged up her knee, and cracked a bunch of ribs when her hang glider had crashed in that storm. If Stephanie could do that, surely he could keep going when all he’d done was move some mud.

  Inspired by this, he got Dr. Nez comfortable, then, leaving him under Dacey Emberly’s watch, he went to see what he could do to help with setting up camp. He found Dad—more or less clean now—arguing with Dr. Emberly.

  “I think you’re overdoing it. Yes, we’re out of communication with base. Yes, we won’t be expected back until tomorrow—we were set to camp tonight, but eventually someone will come looking.”

  “And where will they search?” came Dr. Emberly’s icy reply. “At various picketwood groves to the north—not here. I seem to recall you ‘overlooked’ telling them about your intention to stop here.”

  Dad was temporarily silenced, then he said, “When they can’t find us, they’ll search for the air van. The crash beacon will bring them right to us.”

  Anders—tired, fed-up, angry that Dad had taken time to change and get clean while others tried to help Langston, while poor old Dacey was sitting carefully over there so her counter-grav unit could be used to ease the injured man’s suffering—lost control. Forgetting everything he’d ever been taught about not embarrassing his parents in public, he exploded.

  “Crash beacon! Crash beacon? There isn’t going to be any crash beacon. We didn’t crash. You landed us very neatly, right on the edge of a bog. The van sank very slowly. There was no crash to set the beacon off. No one is going to be able to find us because no one knows where to look—and it’s all your fault!”

  Chapter Nine

  “What do you mean, ‘they’re missing’?” Stephanie exclaimed.

  Karl frowned. “I mean exactly what I said, Steph. You know Frank and Ainsley are both close friends of Uncle Scott. Well, they stopped by yesterday to update him on someone he’d treated for them—a hiker who slipped and broke a leg.”

  I don’t care about any stupid hiker, Stephanie thought. Is Anders missing?

  “Then Frank went on to say, ‘I wish there was some way we could ask everyone who leaves town to wear a tracking beacon. Chief Ranger Shelton hasn’t made an official announcement, but those off-planet anthropologists may have gone missing.’

  “I came in then,” Karl went on. “I mean, this had to be Anders’ group, and I’ve gotten to like him. First I confirmed whether or not Anders was with his dad’s team. He was.”

  A faint flicker of hope died in Stephanie’s breast. “Go on.”

  “Then I got what details they’d give me—but I had to swear that I wouldn’t tell anyone but you. I think,” Karl grinned, “they knew you’d kill me if I didn’t tell you.”

  Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Go on, Karl, or I’ll do worse than kill you.”

  “Okay. Here’s the short form. Four days ago, Dr. Whittaker logged that he and his crew—which included Anders and that older lady, the painter, Dacey Emberly—were going to view several picketwood groves north of Twin Forks, ones that, as far as anyone knows, have not been used by treecats. They were covering a wide region, since the idea was to lay in data about picketwood groves for later comparison to treecat dwellings.

  “The trip was supposed to take two full days. That is, they would be back at their base on the evening of the second day. That evening, Peony Rose Iwamoto and Jon Qin—spouses of two of the crew members—commed Dr. Hobbard to ask if she knew where Dr. Whittaker’s crew was. Apparently, they’d tried to com the team and had not been able to make contact. These two were a little worried, but not panicked, since they weren’t certain how complete the Sphinx com-net is.”

  “It bugs me,” Stephanie said, trying to sound normal, “how off-worlders seem to assume that because this is a colony planet, we’re primitive or something.”

  “Yeah. Well, Dr. Hobbard said some stuff that calmed their worries, but she also got in touch with Chief Ranger Shelton. She went right to the top, because she didn’t want the newsies to get a hold of this and embarrass the Forestry Service.”

  “Nice of her,” Stephanie said, but even her high opinion of Dr. Hobbard couldn’t stop a building sense of apprehension. “You say they were reported missing after only two days, but they’ve been missing four? What’s happened since?”

  Karl raised a hand on which four fingers were extended, then folded down the first two. “Okay. Here’s the end of Day Two. Chief Ranger Shelton wouldn’t have been too worried, but he didn’t like the fact that the anthropologists hadn’t answered their uni-links. He himself went to the picketwood grove that should have been their last stop, but they weren’t there. There wasn’t any sign they’d been there.

  “Without making a huge fuss, he couldn’t send search teams out—these areas were in different ecological zones, but still within a ‘night’ time zone, and sending out search parties would have raised the exact sort of fuss Dr. Hobbard hoped to avoid.”

  Stephanie wanted to protest—after all, this was Anders they were talking about—but she forced herself to be rational.

  “I suppose,” she said, “that Chief Ranger Shelton thought it was possible the anthropologists decided to go back to one of the other areas or something. Did they have camping gear with them?”

  “They did. They planned to camp the one night rather than return to base.” Karl folded down his third finger. “On Day Three, Chief Ranger Shelton got a few tight-lipped rangers to check the various sites Dr. Whittaker had noted the team was going to inspect. They did. Again, the
re was no hint they’d ever been there. Seven people, even if trying for minimal impact, should have left something trained eyes could find.”

  Karl folded down his fourth finger. “That takes us to today—Day Four. SFS is expanding the search now, checking along the flight path the anthropologists would have taken going out to the first site, then between the sites. They’re figuring that the air van must have gone down somewhere in there.”

  “They think the van crashed?” Stephanie said. “No. That wouldn’t work. If the van crashed, then a beacon would have gone off immediately. I bet even the junker Jessica pilots has a crash beacon—and it’s really old model.”

  Karl nodded. “I asked about that. Frank said they’re operating on the theory that the van didn’t crash. They’re figuring that the team landed it safely, but somehow did something to disable the van so they couldn’t take off again.”

  “What would they do that would disable the van and its com-unit?” Stephanie protested. “And their uni-links?”

  Karl grinned, but it was a tired grin. “‘You get your Sherlock Holmes badge,’ to quote what Frank said when I asked the same questions. No one knows what could have happened to the com-unit—although there has been speculation that the van suffered a complete electronics failure. However, we do have a solution to the Mystery of the Uni-Links.”

  “Oh?”

  “Both Peony Rose Iwamoto and John Qin had uni-links to match those being used by Dr. Whittaker’s crew. Chief Ranger Shelton had these checked over. Turns out that Dr. Whittaker’s crew is using units manufactured off-world. The operating system worked fine when it only needed to mesh with the local com-net. However, it’s all wrong for longer distances. Basically, it won’t link to the correct programs in the communication satellites. The crew had experienced a few minor problems already, but since they were mostly communicating with members of their own team who were local, maybe making a few calls to SFS personnel and Dr. Hobbard, they worked around them.”