No, he was happy for Chria; she had found exactly the life and partners that she had longed for.
But he wanted what she had—only he wanted it to be Tia sitting back there in the second seat. Or Tia in the front and himself in the back; it didn't much matter who was the one in command, if he could have had her there.
The strength of his feelings had been so unexpected that he had not known what to do with them—so he had attempted, clumsily, to cover them. Fortunately, everyone involved seemed to put his surliness down to a combination of pain from his injuries and wooziness due to the pain-pills he'd gulped.
If only it had been . . .
I'm in love with someone I can't touch, can't hold, can't even tell that I love her, he thought with despair, clenching his hand tightly on the armrest of his chair. I—
"Alex?" Tia whispered, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of the ship, for she had turned even the ventilation system down to a minimum. "Alex, I've decoded the storage-mode. It's old-fashioned hard-etched binary storage and I think that it's nav directions that relate to the stellar map on the page. Once I find a reference point I recognize, I'm pretty sure I can decode it all eventually. I got some ideas, though, since I was able to match some place-name glyphs—and we were right—I'm positive that these are directions to all the EsKay bases from the homeworld! So if we could just find a base—"
"And trace it back!" This was what she'd been looking for from the beginning, and excitement for her shoved aside all other feelings for the moment. "What's the deal—why the primitive navcharts? Not that it isn't a break for us, but if they were space-going, why limit yourself to a crawl?"
"Well, the storage medium is pretty hard to damage; you wouldn't believe how strong it is. So I can see why they chose it over something like a datahedron that a strong magnetic field can wipe. As for why the charts themselves are so primitive, near as I can make out, they didn't have Singularity Drive and they could or would only warp between stars, using them as navigational stepping-stones. I don't know why; there may be something there that would give the reason, but I can't decode it." There was something odd and subdued about her voice—
"What, hopping like a Survey ship?" he asked incredulously. "You could spend years getting across space that way!"
"Maybe they didn't care. Maybe hyper made them sick." Now he recognized what the odd tone in her voice was; she didn't seem terribly excited, now that she had what she was looking for.
"Well, we don't have to do that," he pointed out. "Once we get out of here, we can backtrack to the EsKay homeworld, make a couple of jumps, and we'll be stellar celebs! All we have to do is—"
"Is forget about our responsibilities," she said, sharply. "Or else 'forget' to turn in this book with the rest of the loot until we get a long leave. Or turn it in and hope no one else beats us to the punch."
Keeping the book was out of the question, and he dismissed it out of hand. "They won't," he replied positively. "No one else has spent as much time staring at star-charts as we have. You've said as much yourself; the archeologists at the Institute get very specialized and see things in a very narrow way. I don't think that there's the slightest chance that anyone will figure out what this book means within the next four or five years. But you're right about having responsibilities; we are under a hard contract to the Institute. We'll have to wait until we can buy or earn a long leave—"
"That's not what's bothering me," she interrupted, in a very soft voice. "It's—the ethics of it. If we hold back this information, how are we any better than those pirates out there?"
"How do you mean?" he asked, startled.
"Withholding information—that's like data piracy, in a way. We're holding back, not only the data, but the career of whoever is the EsKay specialist right now—Doctor Lana Courtney-Rai, I think. In fact, if we keep this to ourselves, we'll be stealing her career advancement. I mean, we aren't even real archeologists!" There was no mistaking the distress in her voice.
"I think I see what you mean." And he did; he could understand it all too well. He'd seen both his parents passed over for promotions in favor of someone who hadn't earned the advancement but who "knew the right people." He'd seen the same thing happen at the Academy. It wasn't fair or right. "We can't do everything, can we?" he said slowly. "Not like in the holos, where the heroes can fight off pirates while performing brain surgery."
Tia made a sad little chuckle. "I'm beginning to think it's all we can do just to get our real job done right."
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. "Funny. When this quest of ours was all theoretical, it was one thing—but we really can't go shooting off by ourselves and still do our duty, the duty that people are expecting us to do."
She didn't sigh, but her voice was heavy with regret. "It's not only a question of ethics, but of priorities. We can simply go on doing what we do best—and Chria Chance really put her finger on it, when she pointed out that she and Neil and Pol wouldn't know how to recognize our plague spot, and we would. She knows when she should let the experts take over. I hate to give up on the dream—but in this case, that dream was the kind of thing a kid could have, but—"
"But it's time to grow up—and let someone else play," Alex said firmly.
"Maybe we could go pretend to be archeologists," Tia added, "but we'd steal someone else's career in the process. Become second-rate—but very, very lucky amateur pot-hunters."
He sighed for both of them. "They'd hate us, you know. Everyone we respected would hate us. And we'd be celebrities, but we wouldn't be real archeologists."
"Alex?" she said, after a long silence. "I think we should just seal that book up with our findings and what we've deduced about it. Then we should lock it up with the rest of the loot and go on being a stellar CS team. Even if it does get awfully boring running mail and supplies, sometimes."
"It's not boring now," he said ruefully, without thinking. "I kind of wish it was."
Silence for a long time, then she made a tiny sound that he would have identified as a whimper in a softperson. "I wish you hadn't reminded me," she said.
"Why?"
"Because—because it seems as if we're never going to get out of here—that they're going to find us eventually."
"Stop that," he replied sharply, reacting to the note of panic in her voice. "They can't hover up there forever. They'll run out of supplies, for one thing."
"So will we," she countered.
"And they'll run out of patience! Tia, think—these are pirates, and they don't even know there's anyone else here, not for certain, anyway! When they don't find anything, they'll give up and take their loot off to sell!" He wanted, badly, to pace—but that would make noise. "We can leave when they're gone!"
"If—we can get out."
"What?" he said, startled.
"I didn't want you to worry—but there's been two avalanches since you got back, and all the snow the blizzard dropped."
He stared at her column in numbed shock, but she wasn't finished.
"There's about eleven meters of snow above us. I don't know if I can get out. And even if CenSec shows up, I don't know if they'll hear a hail under all this ice. I lost the signals from the surface right after that last avalanche, and the satellite signals are getting too faint to read clearly."
He said the first thing that came into his head, trying to lighten the mood, but without running it past his internal censor first. "Well, at least if I'm going to be frozen into a glacier for all eternity, I've got my love to keep me warm."
He stopped himself, but not in time. Oh, brilliant. Now she thinks she's locked in an iceberg with a fixated madman!
"Do—" Her voice sounded choked, probably with shock. "Do you mean that?"
He could have shot himself. "Tia," he began babbling, "it's all right, really, I mean I'm not going to go crazy and try to crack your column or anything, I really am all right, I—"
"Did you mean that?" she persisted.
&nbs
p; "I—" Oh well. It's on the record. You can't make it worse. "Yes. I don't know, it just sort of—happened." He shrugged helplessly. "It's not anything crazy, like a fixation. But, well—I just don't want any partner of any kind but you. If that's love, then I guess I love you. And I really, really love you a lot." He sighed and rubbed his temples. "So there it is, out in the open at last. I hope I don't offend or frighten you, but you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and that's a fact. I'd rather be with you than anyone else I know, or know of." He managed a faint grin. "Holostars and stellar celebs included."
The plexy cover to Ted Bear's little "shrine" popped open, and he jumped.
"I can't touch you, and you can't touch me, but—would you like to hug Theodore?" she replied softly. "I love you, too, Alex. I think I have ever since you went out to face the Zombie Bug. You're the bravest, cleverest, most wonderful brawn I could ever imagine, and I wouldn't want to be anyone's partner but yours."
The offer of her childhood friend was the closest she could come to intimacy—and he knew it.
He got up, carefully, and took the little fellow down out of his wall-home, hugging the soft little bear once, hard, before he restored him again and closed the door.
"You have a magnificent lady, Theodore Bear," he told the solemn-faced little toy. "And I'm going to do my best to make her happy."
He turned back to her column and cleared his throat, carefully. Time, and more than time, to change the subject. "Right," he said. "Now that we've both established why we've been touchy—let's see if we can figure out what our options are."
"Options?" she replied, confused.
"Certainly." He raised his chin defiantly. "I intend to spend the rest of my life with you—and I don't intend that to be restricted to how long it takes before the pirates find us or we freeze to death! So let's figure out some options, hang it all!"
To his great joy and relief, she actually laughed. And if there was an edge of hysteria in it, he chose to ignore that little nuance.
"Right," she said. "Options. Well, we can start with the servos, I guess. . . ."
* * *
"Tia snuggled down into his arms, and turned into a big blue toy bear. The bear looked at him reproachfully.
He started to get up, but the bedcoverings had turned to snowdrifts, and he was frozen in place. The bear tried to chip him out, but its blunt arms were too soft to make an impression on the ice-covered drifts.
Then he heard rumbling—and looked up, to see an avalanche poised to crash down on him like some kind of slow-motion wave—
The avalanche rumbled, and Tia-the-bear growled back, interposing herself between him and the tumbling snow—
"Alex, wake up!"
He floundered awake, flailing at the bedclothes, hitting the light button more by accident than anything else. He blinked as the light came up full, blinding him, his legs trapped in a tangle of sheets and blankets. "What?" he said, his tongue too thick for his mouth. "Who? Where?"
"Alex," Tia said, her voice strained, but excited. "Alex, I have been trying to get you to wake up for fifteen minutes! There's a CenSec ship Upstairs, and it's beating the tail off those two pirates!"
CenSec? Spirits of space—
"What happened?" he asked, grabbing for clothing and pulling it on. "From the beginning—"
"The first I knew of it was when one of the pirates sent a warning down to the ship here to stay under cover and quiet. I got the impression that they thought it was just an ordinary Survey ship, until it locked onto one of them and started blasting." Tia had brought up all of her systems again; fresher air was moving briskly through the ventilator, all the lights and boards were up and active in the main cabin. "That was when all the scans stopped—and I started breaking loose. I ran that freeze-thaw cycle you suggested, and a couple of minutes ago, I fired the engines. I can definitely move, and I'm pretty sure I can pull out of here without too much trouble. I might lose some paint and some bits of things on my surface, but nothing that can't be repaired."
"What about Upstairs?" he asked, running for his chair without stopping for shoes or even socks, and strapping himself down.
"Good news and bad news. The CenSec ship looks like its going to take both the pirates," she replied. "The bad news is that while I can receive, I can't seem to broadcast. The ice might have jammed something, I can't tell."
"All right; we can move, and the ambush Upstairs is being taken care of." Alex clipped the last of his restraint belts in place; when Tia moved, it could be abruptly, and with little warning. "But if we can't broadcast, we can't warn CenSec that there's another ship down here—we can't even identify ourselves as a friend. And we'll be a sitting duck for the pirates if we try to rise. They can just hide in their blinds and ambush the CenSec ship, then wait to see if we come out of hiding—as soon as we clear their horizon they can pot us."
Alex considered the problem as dispassionately as he could. "Can we stay below their horizon until we're out of range?"
Tia threw up a map as an answer. If the pirate chose to pursue them, there was no way that she could stay out of range of medium guns, and they had to assume that was what the pirate had.
"There has to be a way to keep them on the ground, somehow," Alex muttered, chewing a hangnail, aware that with every second that passed their window of opportunity was closing. "What's going on Upstairs?"
"The first ship is heavily damaged. If I'm reading the tactics right, the CenSec ship is going to move in for the kill—provided the other pirate gives him a chance."
Alex turned his attention back to their own problem. "If we could just cripple them—throw enough rocks down on them or—wait a minute. Bring up the views of the building they're hiding in—the ones you got from my camera."
Tia obeyed, and Alex studied the situation carefully, matching pictures with memory. "Interesting thing about those hills—see how some of them look broken-off, as if those tips get too heavy to support after a while? I bet that's because the winds come in from different directions and scour out under the crests once in a while. Can you give me a better shot of the hills overhanging those buildings?"
"No problem." The viewpoint pulled back, displaying one of those wave-crest hills overshadowing the building with the partial roof. "Alex!" she exclaimed.
"You see it too," he said with satisfaction. "All right girl, think we can pull this off?"
For answer, she revved her engines. "Be a nice change to hit back, for once!"
"Then let's lift!"
The engines built from a quiet purr to a bone-deep, bass rumble, more felt than heard. Tia pulled in her landing gear, then began rocking herself by engaging null-grav, first on the starboard, then on the port side, each time rolling a little more. Alex did what he could, playing with the attitude jets, trying to undercut some of the ice.
Her nose rose, until Alex tilted back in his chair at about a forty-five degree angle. That was when Tia cut loose with the full power of her rear thrusters.
"We're moving!" she shouted over the roar of her own engines, engines normally reserved only for in-atmosphere flight. There was no sensation of movement, but Alex clearly heard the scrape of ice along her hull, and winced, knowing that without a long stint in dry dock, Tia would look worse than Hank's old tramp-freighter. . . .
Suddenly, they were free—
Tia killed the engines and engaged full null-gee drive, hovering just above the surface of the snow in eerie silence.
"CenSec got the first ship; the other one jumped them. It looks pretty even," Tia said shortly, as Alex heard the whine of the landing gear being dropped again. "So far, no one has noticed us. Are you braced?"
"Go for it," he replied. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Hold on," she said shortly.
She shot skyward, going for altitude. She knew the capabilities of her hull better than Alex did; he was going to leave this in her hands. The hill they wanted was less than a kilometer away—when they'd gotten high enough, Tia nosed ove
r and dove for it. She aimed straight for the crest, as if it were a target and she a projectile.
Sudden fear clutched at his throat, his heart going a million beats per second. She can't mean to ram—
Alex froze, his hands clutching the armrests.
At the last minute, Tia rolled her nose up, hitting the crest of the hill with her landing gear instead of her nose.
The shriek and crunch of agonized metal told Alex that they were not going to make port anywhere but a space station now. The impact rammed him back into his chair, the lights flickered and went out, and crash-systems deployed, cushioning him from worse shock. Even so, he blacked out for a moment.
When he came to again, the lights were back on, and Tia hovered, tilted slightly askew, above the alien city.
Below and to their right was what was left of the roofless building—now buried beneath a pile of ice, earth, and rock.
"Are you all right?" he managed, though it hurt to move his jaw.
"Space-worthy," she said, and there was no mistaking the shakiness in her voice. "Barely. I'll be as leaky as a sieve in anything but the main cabin and the passenger section, though. And I don't know about my drives—hang on, we're being hailed."
The screen flickered and filled with the image of Neil, with Chria Chance in the background. "AH-One-Oh-Three-Three, is that you? I assume you had a good reason for playing 'chicken' with a mountain?"
"It's us," Alex replied, feeling all of his energy drain out as his adrenaline level dropped. "There's another one of your playmates under that rockpile."
"Ah." Neil said nothing more, simply nodded. "All right, then. Can you come up to us?"
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