The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

by Anne McCaffrey

  “That’s possible,” Ni Morgana said thoughtfully. “He was a crafty old bugger. All along he counted on our rescuing him. And he’d know we’d have to check body weight.”

  “D’you suppose he also fooled us,” Nev asked anxiously, “about there being more survivors somewhere?”

  That thought had been like a pain in Benden’s guts since Kimmer’s duplicity had come to light. And yet . . . There had been no sign of other survivors on the southern continent. Nor had their instruments given them any positive readings as they spiraled across the snowy northern landmass. Then there was Shensu’s story, and that man had no reason to lie. Benden shook his head wearily and once again regarded the ship’s digital. The search had taken a lot longer than he’d realized.

  “Look alive,” he said, rising to his feet with as good an appearance of energy as he could muster. “Nev, try to raise the Amherst again.” He knew beforehand that the Amherst was unlikely to be receiving. He also knew that he had to alter the course now, before they went too far along the aborted trajectory. He didn’t have any option. He made his calculations for the appropriate roll to get the Erica on the new flight path. He’d worry about contacting the Amherst later. A three-second burn at one g would do it. That wouldn’t take up much fuel. And he breathed a silent prayer of thanksgiving. “Nev, Greene, Vartry, check our passengers. We’ve got to burn to our new heading in two minutes forty-five seconds.”

  He felt better after the burn. The gig was handling easily again. Like the thoroughbred she was, she had eased onto her new heading. And he had done something positive about their perilous situation.

  “Now, let’s be sure we get every last strip Kimmer added to the Erica,” he said, unbuckling his seat restraints. He’d also go through the gig with an eye to what else could be jettisoned, he decided. But they had a long trip ahead of them and precious few comforts for those on board.

  “I’ll check the women first,” Ni Morgana said, pushing herself off deftly from the back of her couch and grabbing the handhold to propel herself down the companionway. “And see about some grub. Breakfast was a long time ago.”

  Benden realized how right she was, but under stress, he never noticed hunger pangs. He did now.

  “Chow’s the best idea yet,” he said, and managed a reasonably cheerful grin for her.

  When she checked the women, she found them still shaken by the emotional prelude, and though they helped her in the galley, they were apathetic. Chio wept silently, ignoring the food Faith tried to get her to eat. She seemed wrapped in so deep a depression that Saraidh reported her condition to Benden.

  “She won’t last the journey in this condition, Ross,” Saraidh said. “She’s deeply disturbed, and I don’t think it’s losing Kimmer.”

  “Isn’t it just that she was so dependent on him? You heard what Shensu said.”

  “Well, if it is, we ought to sort it out. We can’t avoid discussing Kimmer’s demise.”

  “I know, and I don’t intend to. His demise”—he drawled out the euphemism—”was accidental. I would have preferred to have him alive and standing trial for his attempt to disable the Erica,” he replied grimly. “What I want to know is how he got those women to sabotage us. They must have known from our conversations that their extra mass would seriously burden the ship.”

  Shensu had floated down the corridor during the last sentence, and he gave them a terse nod.

  “You must explain to my sisters that the gemstones alone will provide suitably for them,” he said. “That the stones will not be confiscated by the Fleet to pay for this rescue.”

  “What?” Ni Morgana exclaimed. “Where did they get that notion?” She held up her hand. “Never mind. I know. Kimmer. What maggots had he got in his brain?”

  “The maggot of greed,” Shensu said. “Come, reassure my sisters. They are so fearful. They only cooperated with him on the metal because he said that would be the only wealth left to them.”

  “And how did Kimmer plan to remove all that platinum from the Erica?” Benden demanded, knowing that his voice was rising in frustration but unable to stifle it. “The man was deranged.”

  “Quite likely,” Shensu said with a shrug. “For decades he has clung to the hope that his message would be answered. Or else all he had accumulated, the gems, the metals, meant nothing.”

  They had reached the marines’ quarters and heard Chio’s soft weeping.

  “Get the kids out of here, Nev,” Benden told the ensign in a low voice, “and amuse them. Shensu, ask your sisters to join us here and, by whatever you hold sacred, tell them we mean them no harm.”

  It took hours to reassure the four women. Benden stuck to his matter-of-fact, commonsense approach.

  “Please believe me,” he said with genuine concern at Chio’s almost total collapse, “that the Fleet has special regulations about castaways or stranded persons. Stranded you were. It would be totally different if the Colonial Authority or Federated Headquarters had organized an official search—then there would have been staggering retrieval costs. But the Amherst only happened to be in the area and the system was orange-flagged . . .”

  “And because,” Ni Morgana took up the explanation, “I was doing research on the Oort cloud, Captain Fargoe ordered the gig to investigate. As she will tell you herself when you meet her, it saves you, the surviving colonists, any cost.”

  Chio mumbled something.

  “Say again?” Ni Morgana asked very gently, smiling reassurance.

  “Kimmer said we would be paupers.”

  “With black diamonds? The rarest kind of all?” Ni Morgana managed to convey a depth of astonishment that surprised Benden. “And you’ve kilos of them among you. And those medicines, Faith,” she went on, turning to the one sister who appeared to be really listening to what was being said. “Especially that numbweed salve of yours. Why, the patents on that alone will buy you a penthouse in any Federation city. If that’s where you want to live.”

  “The salve?” Sheer surprise animated Faith. “But it’s common—”

  “On Pern, perhaps, but I’ve a degree in alien pharmacology and I’ve never come across anything as mild and effective as that,” Ni Morgana assured her. “You did bring seed, as well as salve, because I don’t think that’s the sort of medication that can be artificially reproduced and provide the same effect.”

  “We had to gather the leaves and boil them for hours,” Hope said wonderingly. “The stink made it a miserable job, but he made us do it each year.”

  “And numbweed can make us rich?” Charity asked doubtfully.

  “I have no reason to lie to you,” Ni Morgana said with such dignity that the girl flushed.

  “But Kimmer is dead,” Chio said, a sob catching in her throat, and she turned her head away, her shoulders shaking.

  “He is dead of greed,” Kimo said in an implacable voice. “And we are alive, Chio. We can make new lives for ourselves and do what we want to do now.”

  “That would be very nice,” Faith said in a low, wistful voice.

  “We won’t be Kimmer’s slaves anymore,” Kimo added.

  “We would all have died without Kimmer after Mother died,” Chio turned back, mastering her tears, unable to stop defending the man who had dominated her for so long.

  “Died because she had too many stillborn babies,” Kimo said. “You forget that, Chio. You forget that you were pregnant two months after you became a woman. You forget how you cried. I do not.”

  Chio stared at her brother, her face a mask of sorrow. Then she turned to Benden and Ni Morgana, her eyes narrow. “And will you tell this captain of yours about Kimmer’s death?”

  “Yes, we will naturally have to mention that unfortunate incident in our report,” Benden said.

  “And who killed him?” She shot the question at them both.

  “We don’t know who killed him, or if he cycled the lock open himself.”

  Chio was startled, as if that possibility had not occurred to her until then. She p
ulled at Kimo’s sleeve. “Is that possible?”

  Kimo shrugged. “He believed his own lies, Chio. Once the metal was found, he would consider himself to be poor. He was at least honorable enough to commit suicide.”

  “Yes, honorable,” Chio murmured so softly her words were barely audible. “I am tired. I wish to sleep.” She turned herself toward the wall.

  Kimo gave the two officers a nod of triumph. Faith covered her sister and gestured for them to leave.

  Over the next several days, passengers and crew settled into an easier relationship. The youngsters sat for hours in front of the tri-d screen, going through the gig’s library of tapes. Saraidh cajoled Chio and the girls into watching some of them as well, as a gentle introduction to the marvels of modern high-tech civilization.

  “I can’t tell whether they’re reassured or scared witless,” she reported to Benden, who was standing his watch at the gig’s console. They still had not made contact with the Amherst, though he had no real cause for worry oil that score—yet. “How many times have you worked those equations, Ross?” she asked, noticing what he had on his pad.

  “Often enough to know there’s no mathematical errors,” he said with a wry grin. “We’ll only have the one chance.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said with a shrug and a smile. “Off you get. It’s my watch.” And she shooed him out of the cabin.

  “Lieutenant?” Nev’s voice reverberated excitedly down the companionway the next afternoon. “I’ve raised the Amherst!”

  There was a cheer as Ross propelled himself to the cabin.

  “Neither loud nor clear, sir, but definitely voice contact,” Nev said with a grin.

  Ross grinned back at him in relief and depressed the talk toggle on his seat arm. “Ross Benden reporting, sir. We need to make a new rendezvous.”

  Fargoe acknowledged him, and though her voice broke up in transmission, he really didn’t need to hear every syllable to know what she was saying.

  “Ma’am, we’ve had to abort our original course. We are currently aiming for a slingshot around the first planet.”

  “You want a sunburn, Benden?”

  “No, ma’am, but we have only two-point-three KPs of Delta V remaining.”

  “How did you cut it that fine?”

  “Humanitarian reasons required us to rescue the ten remaining survivors of the expedition.”

  “Ten?” There was a pause that had nothing to do with interference on the line. “I shall be very interested in your report, Benden. That is, if your humanitarianism allows you to make it. What is the total of the excess weight you’re carrying?”

  Nev handed over his pad, and Benden read off the figures.

  “Hmm. Offhand I don’t think we can match orbits. Can you make it five KPs?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Roger. Hold on while we refigure your course and rendezvous point.”

  Benden tried not to look toward Nev, or at Saraidh, who had joined them at the command console. He tried not to look nervous, but he felt various parts of himself twitching, unusual enough in gravity and damned annoying in free-fall. He clutched the edge of the console as unobtrusively and as hard as possible to keep from twitching out of the chair.

  “Erica? Captain Fargoe here. What can you jettison?”

  “How much is required?” Benden thought of the wealth they had just consigned to space.

  “You’ve got to jettison forty-nine-point-zero-five kilos. You will need to make a ten-g burn for one-point-three seconds around the first planet, commencing at ninety-one degrees right ascension. That will put you on course, speed, and direction, and we devoutly hope, in time to make a new rendezvous. Good luck, Lieutenant.” Her voice indicated that he’d need it.

  He didn’t like a 10g burn, even for 1.3 seconds. They’d all black out. It would be rough on the kids. But it would be a lot rougher to turn into cinders.

  “You heard the captain,” he said, turning first to Saraidh and then Nev. “Let’s snap to it.”

  “What’ll we toss, Lieutenant?” Nev asked.

  “Just about everything that isn’t bolted down,” Saraidh said, “and probably some of that. I’ll start in the galley.”

  In the end they made up the required kilos out of material Saraidh knew could be most easily replaced by Stores on the Amherst: extra power packs; oxygen tanks, which accounted for a good deal of the necessary weight; the messroom table; and all but one of the beacon missiles the gig carried.

  “If Captain Fargoe decides you weren’t negligent,” Saraidh told Ross, her face expressionless, as they both watched the articles sliding out of the airlock into space, “you won’t have to pay for ’em.”

  “What?” Then he saw she was teasing and grinned back at her. “I’ve enough I’ve got to account for, thank you muchly, ma’am, on this expedition without paying for it, too.” He kept trying to explain Kimmer’s demise to himself and wondering how he could have prevented it, if he could have.

  “Now, now, Ross.” Saraidh waggled a finger at him. They were alone in the corridor. “Don’t hang Kimmer about your neck. I subscribe completely to the suicide theory. Temporarily of unsound mind due to the failure of his plan. He might just have done it to be awkward, too.”

  “I’m not sure Captain Fargoe would buy that one.”

  “Ah, but she’d never met Kimmer, and I have.” Saraidh gave him an encouraging thumbs-up.

  The moment of truth came two long, weary weeks later. The temperature inside the Erica began to rise with its proximity to Rukbat, reaching an uncomfortable level. Benden was sweating heavily as he watched the ominous approach of the tiny black cinder of the system’s first planet. That poor wight hadn’t had a chance to survive. Bender intended to.

  “Burn minus sixty seconds,” he announced over the intercom. He hadn’t informed his passengers of the rigors of a slingshot maneuver. They’d all black out: if something went wrong, they’d never know it. Meanwhile, he hadn’t had to endure Chio’s suspicions or the sorrowful reproaches of the other three women. He’d done slingshot passages before, both actual and in simulation. It was mostly a matter of timing the burn properly just as the ninety-one-degree right ascension came up on the nay screen. But he hated blacking out for any reason, not being in control for those seconds or minutes.

  “Nine, eight, seven,” Nev chanted, his eyes glittering with anticipation. This was his first slingshot. “Five, four, three, two . . . one!”

  Benden pressed the Burn button, and the Erica lunged forward. As he was slammed deep into the pads of the contour seat, he knew the maneuver would be successful and surrendered to the mighty g-forces he had just initiated.

  Benden returned to consciousness, the blessed silence of space, and the relief of weightlessness. His first glance was for the expended fuel. Point-ninety-eight KPs left. It should be enough—provided the course corrections were accurate. He had one last burn to make as they bisected the Amherst’s wake and then turned back to her at a sharp vector.

  “My compliments, Lieutenant,” Ni Morgana said briskly, unsnapping her harness. “We seem to be well on our way now. I think the cook has something special for lunch today.”

  Benden blinked at her.

  She grinned. “The very same thing we had yesterday for lunch.”

  Benden wasn’t the only one who groaned. They’d added supplies at Honshu, but the fresh foods were long gone and they were down to the emergency rations: nourishing but uninspired. And that’s all they had for the next two weeks. When he was back on board the Amherst, Ross Benden was going to order up the most lavish celebratory meal in the mess’s well-stocked larder. When—and he grinned to himself. That’s positive thinking.

  When the Erica’s sensors picked up the cruiser’s unmistakable ion radiation trail, Benden was in the command cabin, teaching Alun and Pat the elements of spatial navigation. The boys were bright and so eager to prepare themselves for their new life that they were a pleasure to instruct.

  “Back to yo
ur pods, boys. We’ve got another burn.”

  “Like the last one?” Alun asked plaintively.

  “No, matey. Not like the last one. Just a touch on the button.”

  Reassured, they propelled themselves out of the cabin and down the companionway, dexterously passing Saraidh and Nev at the door.

  “A touch being all the fuel we’ve got left,” Saraidh murmured, taking her seat. She leaned forward, peering out into the blackness of space around them.

  “You won’t see anything yet,” Nev remarked.

  “I know it,” she replied, shrugging. “Just looking.”

  “It’s there, though.”

  “And not long gone,” Benden added, “judging by the strength of the ion count.” He toggled on the intercom. “Now, listen up. A short burn, not like the last, just enough to change our course to match up our final approach to the Amherst.” In an aside to Saraidh he added, “I feel like a damned leisure-liner captain.”

  “You’d make a grand one,” she replied blandly, “especially if you have to change your branch of service.”

  “My what?” Benden never knew when Lieutenant Ni Morgana’s wayward humor would erupt.

  “Lighten up, Ross. We’re nearly home and dry.”

  “Fifteen minutes to course correction.” He nodded to Nev to watch the digital while he contacted the Amherst. “Erica to Amherst. Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear,” came Captain Fargoe’s voice. “About ready to join us, Lieutenant?”

  “That’s my aim, Captain.”

  “We’ll trust it’s as accurate as ever. Fire when ready, Gridley.”

  “Captain?”

  “Roger, over and out.”

  Beside him, Saraidh was chuckling. “Where does she get them?”

  “Get what?” Nev asked.

  “Are you counting down, Ensign?”

  “Yes, sir. Coming down to ten minutes forty seconds.”

  Why was it time could be so elastic? Benden wondered as the ten minutes seemed to go on forever, clicking second by second. At the minute, he flexed

  both hands and shook his shoulders to release the tension in his neck. At zero, he depressed the burn on the last ninety-eight KPs in the tank, yawing to starboard. He felt the surge of the good gig Erica as she responded. Then all of a sudden the engines cut out with the exhausted whoosh that meant no more fuel in the tank.