by Pam Uphoff
"It's breathable, let's take it." Xaero swung over and started down the ladder.
"Have you ever considered thinking before acting?" Traveler asked, following suit, stopping only to shut the door behind him. An emergency exit light gave a pale glow to his face.
"I'm about out of oxygen, and you're on the last bottle."
"Well, when you put it like that . . . " He stopped to spit out the strap, and shut off the oxy flow. She did likewise.
"If this was a novel, you would have come to depend on and trust me, you know." Xaero started down the ladder into the dark.
"Don't forget the part where, inflamed by the sight of a fem muffled in a bulky coat with twelve collars, I would have seduced you at least twice during the trip."
"Sand! I knew I was missing something!" She started counting and figured they had climbed down a hundred strides before they reached the bottom.
"Oh, in an actual novel we would have had at least three close calls and I would have saved your life at least once." Traveler climbed down beside her, and flicked on a small handlight.
"More likely a deadly sandstorm would have blown up, and only my Dry Scale instincts would have kept us on course, even though everyone knows that even Dry Scales went underground to wait out major sandstorms."
The ladder ended in a dimly lit room with outdoor equipment and tools on belts. The door out was locked. She stood back respectfully as he got it open in moments.
"Interesting stuff they teach you Dims. I had no idea."
He check outside the door then stepped out. "Undercover people need a few practical skills like picking locks."
Peeking around him she saw they were at the edge of a monorail tube. "Hmph. I don't hear anything coming."
"Me neither, but we should probably hurry."
"Dump your shoes," she recommended.
He glared but complied, wincing as he rubbed his abraded ankles. "Yes, Mother. I'll have to get some tall boots like those," he said, "I'll never think of you as lacking fashion sense again."
"Tsk. I hadn't realized your idea of fashion was defined as 'impractical as possible'. But then I suppose you haven't had a lot of experience with the surface."
"Half a tenth of survival school, fifteen years ago," he admitted, rebuckling his shoes.
"Umm, Traveler." She hesitated, was this in bad taste? "Am I allowed to know your name?"
"No. Perhaps later you can call me, umm, drat. Being a trumale is going to really mess things up." He set off up the tunnel.
"Why? I thought trumales had more opportunities than pseudos? Unlike fems. I mean, it's easy to see why fems prefer to be treated like pseudos, stupid sandy customs, but guys, too? I hadn't realized."
"Oh shut up. I don't want to talk about it." He stretched his stride, and she had to trot to keep up.
It was nearly two thousand strides to the monorail platform. Quiet and abandoned. "Where the rust are the guards?" Traveler muttered, heading for the pedestrian tunnel to the Base.
"Either the space base has really sloppy security, or something happened and the perimeter guards all got pulled in for it. What about that vater powder you were talking about the other day?"
He nearly tripped, turning to look at her.
"I eavesdropped."
"No kidding." He scowled and pulled his mask back around. "We may need these, I think the filter is fine enough. The vater powder, very finely ground raw pollen, was in pressurized tanks in one of the carts."
"One of the troopers mentioned oxy bottles in one of the carts they took."
"Definitely going to need these masks." He strapped his over his nostrils and Xaero followed suit.
The tunnel split ahead, with directories and arrows.
"Executive offices?" she suggested, "Or communications?"
"Mission Control?" He pondered. "They're all this way. Let's go."
They found the first body outside the executive offices. "Breathing all right. Vater for sure," he said, poking his head into a random assortment of offices. "Nothing here, let's keep going."
Several more unconscious bodies were sprawled further down the tunnel, two wearing imperial guard uniforms. "Here are the guards," Xaero pointed out glumly. "I hope you weren't expecting help from them?"
He ignored her, running down the tunnel. She sprinted to catch up, hoping he was right about the filters and breathing very carefully through her nose.
Another imperial trooper was decorating the floor in the intersection of the tunnel to mission control, two of his fellows beyond him. The imperials made good pointers. Xaero wondered what had gone wrong that L'azlod had had to knock out his own bodyguards. Had they finally figured out he wasn't the Prince?
Traveler slowed as he approached the doors to Mission Control. He pushed gently on them, then pulled out his lock picks.
"Freeze!" the voice was cold as ice. Xaero froze and saw that Traveler had done likewise.
"All right, now take off the masks."
Traveler reached slowly up and took his off turning to look at the voice, then calmly replaced it. "Colonel D'sil. Do you realize you've been guarding Metini L'azlod?"
"Yeah, I was beginning to think that had to be what was going on."
Xaero turned to finally look at the owner of that very scary voice. The angry eyes over the mask appeared to be those of the Imperial officer she'd released from the dungeon. He seemed to believe Traveler without question. And Traveler had recognized the imperial guard officer by name. And he looked a whole lot like Crown Prince Fensteri. And the crown prince had a whole passel of pseudomale sibs and nephews.
Like, say, the empress's youngest chick, who'd been such a ham as a little kid. Prince Fatty. She bit down on a claw and did not ask, but a smirk did leak, just a bit. Traveler was the right age to be Prince Fatty. But he was also the right age range to be one of Princess Ferita's oldest sons.
Prince Fatty. Oh, Sand. She choked down a couple of snickers. She looked at the tall, muscular, broad shouldered lizard and told herself this wasn't the time for humor. Prince Fatty.
"I sent Fenni off with Gergi yesterday, heading for Herster, figuring they'd be harder to find that way, and you sent that Dim Captain G'sele toward Daeda. Either of them should have had troops down on Sun Town within a day." He scowled at the Colonel. "Where they ought to have found you lot and L'azlod all locked up and—in his case—ready to be arrested so some lawyer could fast talk him out of jail." He glared at Xaero then turned back to the officer. "What the Sand is he doing, and what set off," he waved at the unconscious bodies, "this?"
"The Director of the Icy Body Project invited him in to see something they were doing. He insisted on being on the working floor, not the VIP suite in the balcony, and it just sounded . . . off. He sent me off to notify headquarters of our location, and set a guard. Next thing I know, everyone is falling over. I whipped my mask back on and, well, when I woke up I staggered back this way." D'sil suddenly straightened. "Can you open this door, m'lord?"
M'lord. Yep. He's a royal. With an unusual job. The colonel slung his massive whatever-kind-of-weapon-it-was and drew what even Xaero recognized as a sonic stunner. She shrugged off her backpack briefcase as they prepared to rush the door. The colonel glared at Traveler, who scowled again and yielded first place.
The colonel went through fast and low, Traveler just behind him. Xaero caught the door before it closed, and slid her briefcase into the gap to hold it open. She flinched as the sonic stunner screamed once, then slid through the door very very quietly.
There were bodies everywhere. Breathing, she hoped. Ranks of instrument panels and desks arced around the room all more or less facing away from her toward a wall screen containing a diagram that rather reminded her of the public broadcasts from here, where they had been explaining orbital dynamics and course corrections for the Third Planet Survey.
Traveler and the colonel were standing by the center controls, L'azlod unconscious on the floor.
"What was he doing?" she asked, stud
ying the diagram. There were the moons and their orbits, so the planet was Mars. Whatever was being maneuvered seemed to be incoming. The dotted line seemed to indicate that it was being slowed to an orbit well outside both moons. Except the solid line was diverging from the dotted. "Whatever that is they are maneuvering, it seems to be getting closer to Mars than planned," she said. Both lizards turned to study the display. "We don't have any Martianed missions in space right now, do we?"
"No, they're all robotic." Traveler said, reading the display title. "Project Jeskic. Can't they name these things logically instead of after half forgotten gods? I thought that was a demonstration project, testing the feasibility of moving icy bodies from the outer system to Mars. They didn't actually bring one back did they?"
The display flashed, updating with Jeskic even further from the intended path.
"He can't have intended to hit Mars with it," Xaero said nervously, "He didn't want more water on Mars."
"He didn't give a rock for Mars one way or the other." Traveler said. "Just his own power and prestige."
"So he's going to bring water to Mars?" the Colonel looked skeptical.
"If he brings it fast enough, he can reign over a disaster," Traveler told him. "We'd better try to wake some of these scientists up."
Looking around, Xaero realized that not all of the bodies were sleeping. The few imperial troopers wearing masks had all been shot.
She carefully removed the mask from the nearest, and looking around, picked the old lizard nearest the center controls to put it on.
Traveler and the colonel followed her example.
She wasn't about to touch the science-type controls, but she did find some room specific air controls. She shoved the fans to maximum, hoping the filters could remove the powder.
"How long have these guys been breathing vater?" she asked the colonel.
He looked at his wrist chron. "We've been here about twenty splits." He winced, thinking about it. "I thought Fenni was being so prudent, saying we should keep the masks and oxy bottles. That's where it was, eh?" Traveler nodded. "I'll try to raise some outside help. We're going to need lots of medical assistance." The colonel stumped out.
Xaero retrieved her briefcase, letting the door close. She fished out the bottle of water and took a swig, before offering it to Traveler. "Would dampening anything help these guys?"
"It's not really water soluble . . . but it might wipe off," he said.
Xaero went back to the air controls and dialed up maximum humidity. Maybe it would help the powder clump or something. She rejoined Traveler watching the screen. It was regularly, automatically, updated. The solid line was curving. "Is it under power? It shouldn't curve like that, should it?"
"That seems a bit excessive for gravity, doesn't it?" He fluffed his spines a bit. "You were, umm, quite impressive out there. I guess your grandfather took you out on the surface regularly?"
She looked at him in surprise."Yeah. I like it outside. I go out regularly, much to the dismay of my relatives."
"Hmm, the L'svages's have a reputation for conservatism."
"Well earned, I assure you."
He grinned, but further chat was cut off by a moaning at their feet. The old scientist was waking up.
"Sir, sir?" She prodded him hopefully. "Please wake up. I think there is a problem here."
He looked muzzily around and frowned uncertainly, reaching for the mask.
"You have to leave that on, the air's bad," she told him.
He was waking up rapidly, looking around now with alarm. Traveler grabbed his arm and helped him stand.
Traveler gestured at the screen. "What is that and should we do something about it?"
"Jeskic. It's horribly off course. How did that . . . " He staggered over to the controls. "Some fool has reprogrammed the thrusters. What are they trying to do?" His fingers flew over the keyboard. A new, bright purple dotted line sprang up on the screen. It ended on the tiny circle representing Mars. A larger scale diagram sprang up. "Oh, Sand," the old lizard said weakly. "It's going to hit Imperial City."
"How dangerous is it?"
The old lizard blinked at him. "It's three thousand strides in diameter. It will leave a crater ten times that diameter when it hits. Or more. There's no way the cavern could hold up under the shock. In fact, it could collapse half the caverns in the region."
Traverler spun, raising his weapon, then lowering it as the colonel entered. "Troops and medics are on the way, m'lord. The ones coming on from Sun Town will be here in eight splits." He looked relieved and cheerful. "Crown Prince Fensteri has just reached Imperial City, and is sending the medics from there."
"Oh." Traveler turned back to the scientist. "Can you change the trajectory?"
The old lizard nodded absently as he tapped at the computer. "I've just shut the thrusters down manually, so it won't hit the City. Stopping it . . . I don't think we have enough fuel to get it back into orbit, and it's going to have worldwide effects no matter where it hits."
The colonel got real still at the word "hits".
Xaero thought quickly. "Can you break it up? You said it was an icy body. If it comes in in pieces, won't it burn up in the atmosphere?"
"The small pieces, certainly, but how can we . . . oh, yes, there's the fuel in the boosters If we . . . " he trailed off, tapping away.
Some of the other bodies were stirring and Xaero turned away to help them. Maybe some of them knew something. In fact . . . "Sir? Who do you most need awake?"
Some shuffling of masks resulted. Xaero winced guiltily as she took the mask from one drowsy male to place it on another. "And I absolutely must have Doctor W'terp," the old lizard finished. They exchanged looks and Xaero reluctantly handed over her own mask. She left strapping it on its lucky recipient to Traveler, and went and stood directly in the strongest draft from the air system she could find. The colonel muttered something about good idea, and dragged some of the semi-conscious over to her. And then his own troops from the corridor.
Xaero felt a bit dizzy, but it didn't get any worse. Perhaps the dust was settling, or oxidizing, or the humidity was helping or the filter worked. Whatever. She dragged her circling attention back to the screen. The solid line was now diverging from the purple dashes, which was good. She couldn't think of anywhere that would have worse consequences than a direct hit on Imperial City. The woozy scientist at her feet shoved himself to a sitting position. "What?" Some of the others were starting to stir as well.
"You've been drugged, and the Jeskic ice body is going to hit the planet."
"Oh, Sand . . . " He grabbed the nearest desk and pulled himself to his feet, staggering off to try and help. She watched carefully, and when he didn't collapse again, ventured out herself. Not that it really made any difference how close to Traveler she stood. Really.
"If this was a popular novel, you'd turn out to be an astronaut trainee and there would just happen to be a Martianed rocket ready to launch sitting there begging to be appropriated," she told him.
He grinned. "Of course, and the explosion when I blew up the asteroid would be presumed to have killed me for a suitably long tearjerker segment, then the re-entry vehicle would be spotted and you would rush off into the desert to throw yourself into my arms."
"The End." She looked around. "Is it safe to leave the fate of the world in the hands of these drugged out experts?"
"I hope so. I am not, in case you were wondering, an astronaut trainee."
She bit a claw and did not ask him. Prince Fatty. No wonder he wasn't telling anyone his name.
A slowly increasing mass of woozy scientists and engineers couldn't come up with anything better than "blow it up and pray". The simultaneous explosion of the remaining fuel of all six maneuvering rockets was quickly programmed and implemented. Then debugged and reimplemented. From their point of view, there were no spectacular explosions, but the radar tracking stations were suddenly detecting multiple returns. As the fragments closed in, they tracked several of the la
rger pieces, but to everyone's relief they looked to be on a trajectory to open desert.
The colonel kept the authorities updated and as the first icy chunks neared the atmosphere, Xaero walked outside to watch. Traveler joined her, wearing a mask and offering her another.
"There." She pointed to a sudden streak of white across the sky. More followed, until dozens of meteors had sliced through overhead. The rumbling roar of their high speed collision with the atmosphere washed over her, followed by a series of loud booms that were probably the meteors shattering from the heat differential between their interior and exterior. Some of the trails disappeared over the horizon, some just stopped, more exploded. The vapor trails they had left behind spread and drifted in the high altitude winds, coalescing into thicker clouds than she'd ever seen.
The first drop startled her, cold on the skin of her muzzle. "Water?" she asked, puzzled, fingering it, tasting it. Another drop hit her, and another. Then water was falling out of the sky all over. She held up her hands, laughing in astonishment.
"You know that hydrological cycle you talked about?" she asked. "I've read articles about it and it described something like this."
"Yes, water vapor condensing and just falling out of the sky," Traveler agreed. "I didn't picture anything like this!"
"I don't think it could possibly have been like this normally. Surely surface evaporation wouldn't get that high." She shed her fancy coat and pranced around, getting soaking wet.
"True," he said. "I suppose it would just condense on rocks and the ground at night."
"Yeah."
"My friends call me Trev." He glanced cautiously at her. Glared as he saw her repressing a grin. "Do not use my former nickname."
"Trev. I like it." She started shivering and, feeling herself going acid, donned the mask and turned on the oxy.
The water from the sky trailed off to nothing, and they reluctantly went inside to the warmth and dryness.