“Okay.” She turned abruptly to Kellick. “Get him some work clothes and take him to Jesus. That’s Jesus Rivera,” she told Roak. “The chief cook. He wants help in the galley.”
“Thank you!” He tried to sound happy about it. “I really thank you.”
The words were hard to say when he remembered the heat of prison kitchens where he had worked, the harsh commands, the stink of burnt grease, the haste and sweat and thankless toil. Spic work, nigger work. He could take the heat for a week if he had to, maybe two weeks, but a licensed and certified launch inspector was certainly qualified for a white man’s job.
“Give him his chance,” she told Kellick. “But tell Jesus to watch him.”
They spiraled in toward the planet, searching out a spot for a new human home. Rima wanted to name it Hope, but Glengarth shrugged the notion off, with a small sad grin.
“Stecker and his gang are in charge, in spite of the covenant. They did give me permission to set down when I’d convinced Captain Stecker we had no choice, but Hinch wants to name the place Hellfrost.”
She winced.
“We’ve got to hope. It’s all we have.”
“Hope or not, we’re setting down.” He turned to Cruzet. “Keep the radar off the ice cap. Stecker agrees that we must land on the sunward face, as far as we can from the source of that signal—if it was a signal. No use tipping off the natives to where we are.”
He glanced at the holoscreen, where the planet was still only a small blot, hardly larger than, the dead sun.
“If there are natives,” he muttered. “A notion I’m not ready to swallow.”
She joined the team at the telescope monitors as the orbits narrowed, scanning the ice for any possible living space, for any promise of soil and minerals and usable water.
“If it really is water ice,” Cruzet muttered doubtfully. “Not frozen nitrogen or methane. If it was never contaminated with something deadly to us. If soil and useful ores were ever formed.”
“I’m sure they were.” Andersen had studied geology before he turned to engineering. “From all we’ve seen, I think the planet may have been rather like our own Earth until the sun went dark.”
The ice cap, now an ice continent that covered the whole outward face, was rimmed with lofty mountain chains. Glaciers had flowed around them into a vast ocean on the sunward hemisphere. That was frozen now, a featureless plain broken only by a few chains of rocky hills that had been island groups.
Using radar now as well as telescopes, they searched a long peninsula that thrust like a narrow dagger into the frozen sea. Kilometers of ice covered half its rocky backbone but thinned toward the tip. Eroded ridges and narrow beaches looked nearly free of ice. Leaving Sternberg at the controls, Glengarth came down to study the monitors.
“Our best chance.” Andersen pointed. “Open spots there on the east coast where I think we might land. There’s a chance for soil down under the cliffs, water from glacier ice, maybe useful minerals we can mine or extract from the ocean brine.”
“We’ll touch down there,” Glengarth agreed. “If Hinch and Stecker make no trouble.”
Mondragon and Andersen took turns with Rima and Mark Senn, searching the cap again and again as their landing orbit brought it closer. Mountain peaks jutting through the ice, flow lines of old glaciers, crags and crevasses where the ice had splintered on its way to the sea. At the wide field telescope on their final pass above the cap, Mondragon caught his breath and whistled in awe.
“Un castillo!” he whispered. “La fortaleza de los gigantes!”
“Sir, we’re over the source of the flash,” Andersen called to Glengarth in the control dome above. “Even without radar, we can make out some detail by starlight. There is something with the look of a fortress city. A cluster of mountain-sized objects with very peculiar shapes. Rectangular, round, one oddly starlike, all too neatly cut out to be natural formations. And really gigantic. There’s a wall around them that must be two or three kilometers tall.”
He paused to study the monitors again.
“We’re crossing overhead now, at three hundred kilometers, and I think the whole complex stands in a hole in the cap. Tall ice cliffs all around it, a dozen kilometers out. It makes you wonder. Did they have technology to fight the cold?”
“Any activity now?” Glengarth asked. “Any sign we’ve been seen?”
“Nothing visible, sir. Thank God, nothing flashing at us.”
They glided over the peninsula. Using the radar again, Cruzet called altitude readings to the dome. Mondragon, still at the telescope, searched old beaches and the flat white waste of the frozen sea.
“Un otro destello!” He yelled the Spanish in sudden excitement. “Destello de todos colores!”
The colors flashed somewhere out on the desert of ice, far beyond the tip of the peninsula. A hot scarlet point burned against the dark, turned yellow, turned green and then blue, vanished in an instant. Cruzet and Andersen rushed to look and watched it blaze again, and yet again.
“Are you certain?” Glengarth was listening on the interphone. “Really certain?”
They were certain.
“Kill the radar.”
“Done. And I wonder—” Andersen hesitated. “Should we abort the landing? There’s fuel if we stretch it to carry us on to some ocean island. Even the far coast, with a bit of luck. We’re moving fast. Only three or four minutes to decide.”
Glengarth frowned, but only for a moment.
“I’ll consult the other leaders,” he said. “You inform the captain.”
He called Stecker’s cabin. The instrument purred a long time before he heard Jake Hinch’s impatient snarl.
“The captain’s sick. Leave us alone.”
“Tell him we’ve seen another display of spectral colors. From somewhere out on the ice, hundreds of kilometers ahead. Mr. Glengarth is considering whether to abort—”
“Captain Stecker don’t give a bleedin’ damn!” Hinch yelled, and hoarsely muttered, “We’re dead already.”
“Not yet,” Andersen told him. “This world may look grim, but with luck enough it may give us a chance—”
“What bleedin’ chance! Come back in a ruttin’ billion years, and you’ll find our bones in the ship and the ice littered with the mummies of the cowards that ran from the hunters—”
“Proceed as planned.” With half a minute to go, Glengarth announced his decision. “With no good survey of ocean islands ahead or the other shore, and no fuel margin for the unexpected, we’ve no alternative.”
They came down on a rocky headland. When the rockets were quenched and the ship secure, he called the leaders to the control dome. The holoscreens showed dark cliffs climbing toward the ice in the north and west. The dead black sky fell like a curtain to the dimly starlit waste of ancient frost that spread south and east forever.
“All unknown.” Glengarth spoke absently, staring at the black east horizon. “We’ve no such science as planetary cryonics, but I can’t imagine any sort of life here. I’d rather think the flash was some harmless natural phenomenon.”
“Maybe,” Cruzet muttered. “But don’t ask me what.”
“It happened in response to our radar search.” Andersen stood blinking into that dim and featureless flatness. “I take that as evidence of some native intelligence, aware of us. We can’t relax till we know what it is.”
“Perhaps,” Glengarth muttered. “But any approach might invite hostility. If there is any native intelligence, let it make the first move.”
“Agreed.” Rima turned to study the westward cliffs. “I think we’re here to stay. Our first concern is sheer survival. I want to search for possible resources and a site where we can build or dig a habitat.”
Jim Cheng, who had degrees in fusion and planetary engineering, had joined them in the dome. Glengarth turned to him.
“A council. Call it a council of war.” His tone was wryly grim. “With Captain Stecker indisposed, we’re in a hard spot. I want to
consider options, and I hope we can agree on a common front.”
“I took a course in terraforming.” Cheng gestured at the ancient beaches that sloped down to the ice from the ridge where they had landed. “I think we’re down in a promising location.”
“Promising?” Cruzet stared. “How?”
“Considering the planet.” He shrugged. “Of course we’ll have to begin underground. There’s water enough. Hydrogen for fusion. Sand and gravel washed down from the cliffs. Silt to make soil when we add organics. The beach looks like stuff we can excavate.”
“Frozen hard as bedrock now.” Rima frowned. “Digging won’t be easy.”
Mondragon stood near them, trying to keep his eyes away from her but still captured by her bright hair and her good shape, by the warm tones of her voice, the faint scent he caught when she was near.
The perfume was Sea Rose, which she had never been able to afford. Not until their last hectic days on Earth. Saving only enough for the taxi and a tip, she’d emptied her purse to buy new adventure cards for Kip’s Game Box, a cute red jumpsuit for Day, and the tiny vial for herself.
“We’ll have to drill a few test holes,” she was telling Cheng, “to locate a site for the habitat.”
Mondragon wanted to speak of terraforming. Andersen had showed him the laser drills in the cargo hold, powerful fusion-driven machines that could explode permafrost into steam and powdered rock. Yet he kept silent. She never seemed to see him. He longed desperately to make her know him as something more than the mojado stowaway, the worthless wetback, perhaps even the criminal saboteador.
Pero cómo? How?
“You’re getting ahead of the game,” he heard Andersen saying. “Our number one priority ought to be discovering what’s out there.” He gestured. “Why that apparent signal.”
“I’d like to know.” She turned to frown at the black eastward sky and the black sun-disk that hung low among the unfamiliar stars. “But if the planet froze and died a billion or ten billion years ago, I doubt there’s anything still alive and dangerous.”
“About those flashes?” Andersen frowned. “The colors appeared in their spectral order, red to violet. I can’t think of any natural cause. They seem to have been directed at us. I think they must have been produced by some sophisticated technology.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But those are the colors in a natural rainbow.”
“Could be.” He shrugged, rather grimly. “But there are no raindrops here. No sunlight to be refracted. I can’t help suspecting that we’re meeting something interested in us.”
“A beacon lit to welcome visitors?”
“Or to lure us into a trap?”
“In either case,” she said, “I think we should begin digging in. I see no better option.” She turned to Glengarth. “Sir, do you?”
“Others do.” She saw his jaws tighten. “Fujiwara and Krasov, in planning and logistics. They want us to get off the planet.”
“By our bootstraps?” She frowned at him, eyebrows lifted. “With the fuel tanks dry, I think we’re here to stay.”
“They’re optimists.” Wryly, he grinned. “Or idiots. Trying to convince Cheng that we can dig a new launch pit. Build a new phase converter. Take the ship back into quantum flight.”
“Ask Jim.” Glancing at the other groups, she dropped her voice. “He’ll tell you we’ve no equipment for that. We’d be crazy to try it.”
“I guess we’re all a little crazy, but a lot of our people are desperate enough to risk anything.”
“You’re in charge.” And she urged him sharply, “Don’t let them!”
“Stecker’s still the captain.” His face set harder. “If he ever decides to sober up.” He turned to Andersen. “While we’re waiting, I’ll let you and Cruzet go out to find what made that flash. If you’re really game for that.”
“We’re game!” Andersen said, and Cruzet grinned with more emotion than he often showed. “Sir, we really are!”
They had brought two scout vehicles, designed for the exploration of hostile environments. Andersen inflated a plastic shelter dome outside the main air lock and began assembling an eight-wheeled spider. Mondragon heard about it, and found him in the workshop.
“Señor, I wish to come with you.”
“Carlos, I’m sorry.” Andersen shook his head. “I like you. You’ve proved that you do know computers. But I’m afraid—”
“Por favor, Señor!” His plea tumbled out. “Soy Mexicano. They call me mojado, wetback, because I am illegal. But I can learn. I am strong. I wish very much to aid la Doctora Virili and her plan to transform the planet.”
“Siento.” Frowning, Andersen paused to study him. “I’m sorry, Carlos, but we have no notion what we’ll run into. I want men with the right skills and experience. A driver for the spider. A trained mechanic. Somebody, if I can find anybody, who has experience in the Arctic. You just don’t fit.”
He turned away, lips quivering.
“Señor—” He looked around the shop and came back, arms spread in appeal. “Let me help you here. I can carry tools. Clean the floor. Anything.”
After a moment, Andersen grinned.
“Bien, compadre. Get to work. Pick up those metal scraps and throw them in the bin.”
Ten
Day woke, shivering, and crawled into the berth with Rima.
“Hold me, Mommy!” she whimpered. “Hold me tight. I’m freezing.”
“What’s wrong, dear?” Rima cuddled her close. “You don’t feel cold.”
“I am too cold! I went to find Me Me, and something chased me.”
“You’re okay now.” Rima stroked her hair. “You must have dreamed, but you’re safe here with me.”
“But Me Me’s freezing, out there in the dark. The black things are after her.”
“Darling, please don’t fret. You know we left Me Me safe, back at home with the nice man in the taxi. He said his own little girl would take care of her for you.”
“But Mommy, Me Me knew we couldn’t come back. She came to look for me. She’s dying on the ice and the black things are hunting her.”
“It’s just a dream, dear. An ugly dream you must forget.”
“I can’t forget. Me Me needs me.”
She went back to sleep at last, but it was a troubled sleep. She huddled close to Rima. Once she started and cried out sharply.
“Me Me! Me Me! If you can hear me, try to hide. Hide till I get there.”
The spider was a huge, ungainly metal insect that carried its bright steel shell high on eight long legs with big-tired wheels for feet. A heat lamp on a tall mast shone to shield it from metal-shattering cold. They assembled it in the pressure balloon and took it out for test runs on the old beach. When Andersen declared it ready, Glengarth named Sternberg to command it.
Joseph Sternberg was the second officer. He was past fifty, five or six kilos overweight, with short-cut hair that had gone gray, but he was still erect and fit. He called them into the spider’s cabin, a narrow space between the pilot bay and the tiny private alcove at the rear. They sat on berths that folded out of the hull.
“An iffy thing,” he told them. “A planet that ought to be dead. We may meet something hostile. I hope we don’t. In any case, the effort is critical, and I’m happy to be here. I think we ought to know one another.
“Starting with myself, I had a career in the military. A test pilot for the spaceplanes till Congress axed the program. When my father’s health failed, I retired to take over our family business. We were general contractors for StarSeed, building special equipment. Designing this vehicle was one of our projects till the Mission ran up unpaid debts for machines on order and finally put us out of business before we ever got it built. Captain Alt was an old friend. He let me join the crew.” He shook his head, jaw set hard. “I miss him.”
Los Doctores Cruzet and Andersen introduced themselves. Mondragon had found Cruzet hard to know, often away among the stars, but Andersen had made himself muy simpáti
co. A red-haired Tejano engineer, he understood Chihuahua Spanish and laughed at the dangers of quantum flight.
“Now, Mr. Mondragon?” Sternberg nodded at them and paused to study him. “Mr. Glengarth wants to limit any losses. The three of us are enough to run the vehicle, but Andy says you’ve made yourself useful here. If you really want to come along, will you tell us something about yourself?”
“Gracias, Señor! Con much gusto.”
Cruzet and Andersen had never seemed to care that he was only a small brown man from a poor Chihuahua pueblito. Sternberg, however, was still un gringo extranjero who must be persuaded to let him come on this great mechanical spider, to earn his place among them and perhaps a smile from la rubia.
Eagerly, mixing Spanish words with his unaccustomed English, he spoke of Cuerno del Oro and his small computer skills, and of Don Ignacio, who had told him of the quantum craft that outran time, flying to the end of the universe in less than an instant.
“You understand the risk?” Sternberg asked him. “We don’t know where we’re going. We may not get back.”
“I understand.” He shrugged. “No le hace.”
Sternberg turned inquiringly to Andersen. “I believe he was a suspect—”
“I was accused,” Mondragon said. “But por los santos I brought no bomb.”
Sternberg frowned. “I think his case went to the captain?”
Captain Stecker had come down with el Señor Hinch to see the completed machine. Handsome as un torero, he had the grand manner of Don Alfonso Madera, who had sometimes come with Don Ignacio to the fiestas. Don Alfonso was a clever picaro, fond of women and mescal. He had stolen an ancient registro from the church and made its faded pages into maps of the lost Cuerno mine. He sold the maps to turistas, bragging in la cantina that he could persuade los gringos that baby shit was gold.
The captain, unfortunately, had never found time to consider the matter of Mondragon.
“He admits that the Fairshare pickets did help him get aboard,” Andersen said. “But there are no fingerprints. No actual evidence to connect him with the bomb. He knows computers. He has made himself useful.” Cruzet nodded. “We want him.”
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