"There doesn't seem to be any clear idea. It's mainly a demonstration—to get away."
Zeigler turned it over for a while. "And how far are they likely to get?" he said finally. "There was enough trouble getting to Joburg overland." He tilted his jaw. "We do nothing at this stage. Let them proceed. Just follow their progress for the time being. If they get into trouble, it will serve as a warning to the rest."
"We're happy about letting the vehicle go?" Kelm queried.
"It was only used for scientific work. That's low on the list. And it will be a dozen less for us to watch for now. Let them go." Zeigler thought for a moment longer, then added, "And in any case, why reveal that we have our information sources out there to no useful purpose?"
* * *
Keene learned about it from Shayle later that evening, when they were having supper in the dorm blocks cafeteria. "He went out himself to see them off? And Jorff went with them?"
"Plus two troopers and the girl who's been their translator. A couple of welders who were working on the annex roof watched them go. They left in a GP personnel flyer."
Keene chewed on his food and frowned as he tried to divine some meaning from it. Supper was Kronian chicken-flavored soy compound and reconstituted vegetables with a salad from the Varuna's hydroponics unit. Although he should have been used to such fare by now, he hoped it wouldn't be long before Serengeti got some tilling and stock-rearing of its own under way. "What do you make of it?" he asked when he'd swallowed finally.
"It seems like the flattery and camaraderie line. The only thing I can think of is that he has plans on recruiting them."
"For what?"
"Presumably, to add to his troops."
"Rakki's Tribe? But there aren't enough of them to make a difference that would be worthwhile."
"What about the others to the east, where Rakki and his band came from? Weren't there supposed to be a lot more there?" But even as Shayle said it, she was shaking her head. "No, that couldn't work, could it? Rakki and their chief are sworn-to-the-death enemies."
"It seems that way, doesn't—" Keene halted in midsentence. "Unless . . ."
"What?"
"The idea is to remove the other guy and put Rakki in charge of the whole roost. That would be an old enough trick. You couldn't get a more devoted follower than that. And that would add significantly to the number of soldiers Zeigler could expect." Keene stared distantly at the wall as further implications opened up. "More soldiers not just for now, but for later too, maybe . . ." His voice trailed away.
Was Zeigler playing a longer and more complex gamble—to strengthen his hand for when potential rivals arrived, perhaps? But what quality of recruit could he expect to produce in the time he had available? Keene thought back to the first contact with the Tribe at Joburg, their total unfamiliarity with even the rudiments of an advanced technology, the near panic that merely a low pass of the probe over their heads had caused. . . .
And then, suddenly, a completely different light came into Keene's eyes as everything he had been thinking about a moment ago was forgotten. He turned his face back and stared at Shayle with the expression of someone who had just received a beatific vision.
She stopped eating and waited. Finally, she invited, "Lan, what is it?"
"The probe," Keene answered distantly. "That probe that sucked in an arrow and was grounded the first time we went to Joburg. It's still there, somewhere up over that ridge up above the place. Owen Erskine was supposed to be arranging for its retrieval, but he's been having other problems lately. . . . It's still up there, Shayle, up on that ridge. And it has its own independent emergency channel to Survey Mission Control up in the Varuna!"
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Sariena found Charlie Hu in one of the cubicles in the Lab block, contemplating a screen showing analyses of atmospheric samples that the probes had collected from various places. He seemed to have detached himself from recent events by turning inward and immersing himself in his work. "This is interesting," he said, inclining his head. "Athena has changed the isotope mixes of carbon, argon, nitrogen . . . all of the elements we've studied. If the same thing happened with the earlier Venus and Mars encounters, it would invalidate the assumptions that most conventional dating was based on. . . ." He turned his head finally and registered the look on Sariena's face, saying that other matters were preoccupying her just at the moment. "What?"
She kept her voice low. "Lan and Shayle came to talk to me. Lan's had one of his ideas again."
Charlie pushed himself back from the worktop where he had been writing. "What about?"
"Did you know that a probe was disabled at Joburg on the day the Scout made the first contact there?" Sariena asked.
"Was it? No, I didn't. I was still up in the ship then."
"It's still there, grounded somewhere up above the Joburg settlement. With everything that's been going on, nobody has done anything to retrieve it. Apparently, the probes are equipped to function as mobile emergency relief posts. More to the point, they have a communications system that bypasses the regular net and uses a special band to link via the circling airmobiles to the probe control section up in the Varuna."
"How do you know all this?" Charlie asked.
"From Lan. Owen and one of the controllers showed him the system when he was up there."
"Owen Erskine? The guy who got shot?"
Sariena nodded. "Yes. But the thing right now is that Lan's talking about using it for another try at getting a warning out to Aztec."
Charlie looked perplexed. "But how can he, if it's at Joburg?"
"That's the whole point. He thinks he can get there. But it isn't like getting from California to Texas and Mexico this time. Everything has changed since then. And he had others with him then. He'll get his chance, but he needs better odds than these. Shayle agrees. But we're not Terrans, Charlie. How can we try to tell him what he'd be taking on? It needs someone from Earth, and who was with him then. We want you to try and talk him out of it."
* * *
"How do you think you're going to get there?" Charlie demanded. They were standing with Keene on the edge of the pad area, outside the Agni's shielding wall. Farther away, in front of the silo and pad constructions, a shuttle was being elevated in readiness for launch. Keene turned to gesture back toward the excavations on the far side of Agni, where various vehicles and machines were working.
"One of the general-purpose runabouts. They've got the right torque and speed for the terrain, wide wheels to get through the sticky patches, and you could turn one on a dime. Given the kind of going I'd estimate from what I saw with the Scout, I'd say a day, maybe a day and a half."
"But they're electric. They don't have the range."
"Rig one up like the Scouts. You put a diesel-generator set in the truckbed and drive the motors off that. I figure that thirty-eight gallons of diesel fuel should do it. A regular drum holds over fifty. I plan on taking two."
"Wouldn't the generator set need to be secured somehow?"
Keene shrugged. "Drive out for an hour on the fuel cells—which will also mean a quiet start. Then drill a few holes and bolt the set on before switching over to the generator. Okay, so add another couple of hours."
"You think you're just going to load up a runabout and drive away? Like no one's going to notice or say anything? And even if you managed to just disappear, they'd have probes out searching within hours."
"There are always some runabouts left out at the pad workings. Naarmegen's group are leaving from there tonight. If I arrange to disappear at the same time, it will seem that I decided to join them at the last minute. Any probes will be looking for the Scout. A runabout's a lot smaller. And visibility from anywhere above a few hundred feet tends to be pretty hazy and patchy in any case." Keene nodded decisively. "I think there's a good enough chance of making it." He waited, watching the contortions following each other across Charlie's face, as if somehow able to read from them the thoughts forming within. Finally he
emitted a knowing sigh. "Okay, Charlie, I'll spare you the agony," he said. "Shayle and Sariena think it hasn't got a chance, and they asked you to try and stop me because you're someone that I'll listen to. Is that close enough?"
Charlie nodded. "Yes, that's about it, Lan," he admitted.
"Okay, then, let's hear it. There are just too many hazards and unknowns out there. Zeigler's too far gone now to stop at anything. If the Aztec hasn't been taken over already, it will have been by the time I get there." Keene listed the alternatives in a weary voice. "What's the line, Charlie?"
"As a matter of fact, I wasn't thinking anything like that at all," Charlie said. "What I was thinking was that Kronians found this world intimidating even before any of this happened. Four hands are better than two for things like bolting generator sets to trucks. And that anyone getting hurt on their own out there is going to be in real trouble." He tugged at his tuft of a beard and met Keene's eyes squarely. "The only thing I'd try and talk you out of is this crazy idea of doing it alone. I'm coming too."
* * *
Keene's position of running the primary power system for the base made him responsible for overseeing backup arrangements too, so there was no difficulty in acquiring a generator set. He had Shayle collect one from the stores in a GP runabout, along with an assortment of tools, and then ferry it out to the construction area, ostensibly for a standby installation to be located there. She then came back with a returning work crew in a site bus. Keene and Charlie took the rest of their gear and supplies out at intervals through the remainder of the day. It really was as straightforward as that.
Shortly before midnight, a transformer located in the rear part of the base experienced a mysterious short circuit to the accompaniment of spectacular arcs, clouds of white smoke, and considerable noise. The diversion had been requested by Naarmegen, but there was no reason for Keene and Charlie not to take advantage of it too. While guards ran around hurrying the on-duty technicians from the power house, and searchlights that normally wove desultory patterns around the pad area were turned rearward to illuminate the scene, the two escapees slipped away from the main complex and followed a roundabout route along the side of the pad area. Keene had arranged for Shayle to leave the runabout at a remote spot on the outskirts of the construction workings, which was also well away from the storage sheds for unloaded shuttle freight, where Naarmegen's Scout was concealed. There was no point in taking a larger than necessary risk of getting involved if the other group encountered trouble. Another reason why Keene had chosen to stay apart and not reveal his own intentions was the possibility that Naarmegen's approaches in recruiting for the larger group, despite his best attempts to exercise discretion, might have been picked up by informers.
They lay low, watching for a while, but the surroundings remained quiet and undisturbed. Keene concluded that his fears had been groundless. By this time, a pump was running over in the base complex to clean up the foam from the transformer fire—and also to cover any sound from across the pad area of the Scout starting up and leaving. It was also as good a time as any for Keene and Charlie to be on their way too, they decided. They emerged from cover to climb into the cab, Keene taking the driver's seat.
He had equipped himself with night-vision goggles to help navigate through the darkness, since they wouldn't be able to use the runabout's headlamps until they were well clear of the base. However, there had been no time to put them to any practical test, and as things turned out their value proved limited. They operated by intensifying the images produced by low-level sources like starlight, but in the near total blackness below the post-Athena clouds there was precious little of anything to intensify.
As soon as they left the cleared area of the base, Keene found himself running into rocks and sliding down slopes of soft-formed sediments. He knew straightaway that this was going to be a very different affair from traveling overland in a Scout, which with its balloon-tire wheels and swiveling axles could traverse just about anything. After a particularly violent lurch off a clump of boulders that felt for a moment as if the runabout was turning over, they resorted to the expedient of Charlie shining a flashlight ahead through the windshield, waved in response to Keene's hasty directions. But at best it could reveal only incoherent glimpses of what lay in a few tens of feet immediately in front, keeping their progress down to a crawl. Already, Keene was finding himself forced to revise his estimates of how they could expect to fare tomorrow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
As dawn approached, they were still on the ridge leading down from the plateau, following the same route that the Scout had taken on the first contact journey, but having covered less than half the distance that Keene had estimated. With the runabout's fuel cells almost exhausted and its yellow-black marking designed for easy visibility, they couldn't afford to stay up on such exposed ground any longer. It was imperative to find some kind of concealment where the diesel generator could be fitted without inviting detection from search probes.
The ridge ran roughly north-south, and consisted for the most part of heavy flood deposits laid over the scarp of a tilted crustal block falling gradually in the westward direction toward the coastal plains of the newly forming African Sea. Naarmegen's plan had been to head that way, seeking some kind of temporary haven in the valleys lower down. The eastern side, by contrast, formed the edge of the uplift and was steep and rugged, with faces shaped by immense fractures marking the line of the fault, and breaking lower down into a chaos of rock falls, fissures, and volcanic extrusions. But Joburg lay that way, farther south among the hills beyond the end of the ridge.
As the first light began filtering through the overcast, Keene steered toward the east, looking for a way down. "Why don't we give that a try?" He waved his hand, indicating ahead and to the left. From the shelf that they were following, a ramp of loose rock and shale, with a steep drop on one side, sloped down toward a broad, gravely basin. The far side of the basin was lost in banks of early mist, and whether or not it offered any continuation on down was anyone's guess.
"Looks pretty slippery and flaky," Charlie said.
"It's probably the last chance we're going to get before the power runs out."
"I guess that decides it, then. Go for it."
Charlie's caution about the descent being slippery turned out to be too true. The rocks were covered in an algal slime, which with the morning condensation turned them into skating skids. Before they were a quarter of the way down, the runabout was sliding and swerving on a moving wave of scree, its steering alternating between intermittent and nonexistent. The ramp narrowed alarmingly between the drop to the left and a bulge above, but they were carried on through by the tide of rocks converging into a funnel, while Keene wrestled the wheel without effect. Then the ramp widened but tipped outward, sweeping them toward the edge. Keene had lost all control and could do nothing but hold on and let whatever was going to happen, happen. But at the last moment the wheels grounded on the solid rock forming the rim of the drop, and he was able to crash to a juddering halt, slamming the heavy generator set into the rear of the cab behind them. Charlie let go of the hand grips to wipe his palms on the thighs of his jump suit, emitted a long, shaky breath, and managed, magnificently, to say nothing. Keene licked his lips, reengaged drive, and kicked them off back toward the ramp's inner side.
They reached the basin to find it cut into a maze-like confusion of sandy ridges and fissures, causing frequent changes of direction and doubling back. Some parts of the depression became miniature canyons, with slopes of greasy clay giving treacherous passage past pools of oily sludge, and cracks of unknown depth. By this time Keene was watching the charge indicator anxiously. If they had to, they could have tried rigging the generator here, but the whole area was a trap for sulfurous fumes venting from belowground, stinging in the nose and eyes, and catching the back of the throat. It wasn't a place to stop, so long as there was any choice.
By now, the ridge they had come down from was no more t
han a darkening of the mists behind them. The general incline of the basin floor was increasing, but more rapidly in the center which fell toward what turned out to be the head coomb of a valley. The lower reaches narrowed to a chute, while the sides rose to become walls, depositing them finally in a long, sloping amphitheater that ended in a pool fringed by banks of rocks, reeds, and mud. Keene steered gingerly along one side of the pool and halted. Before them, the pool emptied as a waterfall between rock shoulders into a boulder-choked ravine falling away below. There was clearly no way farther down from here. The only course would be back up to the basin, and to try for another route from there.
"We'll probably be better off out on the ridges than trying to follow the streams, anyway," Keene said. "Water takes the steepest way down."
"As long as the ridges don't end in cliffs," Charlie agreed.
But for the time being, it was as good a place as any to stop and mount the generator—not that there was much option in any case, since the cells were about done.
In fact, this place was better than many they might have picked. An updraft from below the waterfall played against the vapors drifting down from the basin to create an enhanced haze above, which also helped keep the air around the pool breathable; and in its position between the rock walls, the runabout would only be visible from directly overhead. But before they would be in a condition to do anything, they needed to rest. They snacked from the supplies they had brought with them and a flask of coffee, still refreshingly warm, and then settled down to doze in the cramped cab as best they could, improvising padding and pillows from packs and folded parkas.
* * *
"A fraction more to the right . . . Okay, hold it right there." Keene tapped the last bolt through the lug in the mounting frame and the hole he had drilled in the bed of the truck, while Charlie applied pressure to keep them aligned, and checked that it was sitting squarely. The generator set looked okay, although it had dented the rear wall of the cab enough to tear the metal when it had been flung forward. "That'll do it."
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