Finley and Krysansky had been re-examining the debris pile. He wouldn’t have minded an engineer’s—Naomi’s—input, but realized that Klaar would have fought her to get to her son, if it came to that. It looked like the main beam, from wall to floor, bore most of the weight. Sawyer was buried, but not crushed. Now if they could just get her out without making it worse.
∞ ∞ ∞
It took considerable effort, but between the five of them, they managed first to open a passage big enough for Klaar to crawl in—over Tyrell’s objections, but she was the slimmest and Poul was her son, dammit—and both retrieve Poul and assess Sawyer’s situation. The latter wasn’t good. Aside from debris pinning her legs, she was bleeding from a head wound.
At Krysansky’s direction, and working in uncomfortably tight and precarious quarters, Klaar managed to apply a bandage to Sawyer’s head well enough to stop the blood flow from what they hoped was just a scalp wound. Getting her out from under the debris was more of a challenge. Krysansky and Klaar carefully dragged her out by her clothing, so as not to further risk further damage to any cracked or broken bones, while the other three leveraged the roof beam up with a stray log from a wall.
Krysansky immediately went to work on Sawyer, checking for signs of internal bleeding and the extent of broken bones. She was still unconscious, so concussion was certain.
Chapter 38: Aftermath
Camp Anderson, next day
Alpha Centauri A rose above the horizon to the east, glimmering off the ocean just visible beyond the distant shoreline. Closer by, but several kilometers on the far side of the river, the giranno herd was placidly grazing on the branches at the edge of a copse of trees.
The settlers—with five children amongst them, “landing party” no longer seemed appropriate—had all stayed in Maclaren and Finley’s cabin for the rest of the night, not that anyone had gotten much sleep. After carrying Sawyer up on a makeshift stretcher, she was resting in their bed. She had briefly regained consciousness, been reassured that everyone was safe, and under the doctor’s close supervision, gone back to sleep.
“How is she, Doctor?” Tyrell asked.
“Sawyer is strong woman. That and luck saved her. Blow to head was bad, lots of bleeding from scalp, but I do not think skull is cracked. No internal bleeding, thank goodness.”
With the sickbay, like the rest of the Anderson, now mostly sideways, emergency surgery would be a challenge. And might still be necessary. “What about her leg?” When they’d dragged Sawyer out from under the debris, it had looked . . . wrong.
Krysansky shook his head. “Not so good. Bad break of fibula and tibia, at a bad angle. I need to x-ray it, so high priority task is to check out sick bay.”
“The whole ship is sideways. The girannos did a number on it.” It looked like one or more of the beasts had blundered into the guy lines and the boarding ramp over the forward leg, knocking out the support for that side of the ship and the lines intended to stabilize it. The ship had toppled. It wasn’t totally sideways, the empty fuel tanks had partly crushed so the formerly vertical sides were at about a twenty degree angle from horizontal, and the decks were the same angle from vertical.
“Da. Is good thing ship was designed to function in zero-gee, then. Up, down, sideways, it doesn’t matter.”
“Zero-gee isn’t the same as one gee pointing sideways,” Tyrell said.
“You are right. But equipment should still work if fall didn’t break it. Will just be awkward to use.” Krysansky had been watching Sawyer all night and had not slept. His accent was thick this morning.
“Okay. I’ll get some help and we’ll stabilize the ship and check it out. You should get some sleep, Pavel.”
“I still have patient. As medical resident, I go days without sleep.”
Tyrell had no doubt of that, but Krysansky’s residency days were long past. He should be well-rested if—when—he had to tend to Sawyer’s leg. “Have someone else watch her, they can wake you if needed. Sorry, but you’re not in your twenties anymore.”
Krysansky sighed. “Da, is true. Perhaps is best. Wake me when you are ready to inspect sick bay.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Naomi Maclaren supervised the task of ensuring the Anderson was stable enough to let them board and examine her. Maclaren knew the ship’s construction and systems best, and her engineering knowledge had been invaluable in building the camp’s infrastructure. Infrastructure that would need considerable rebuilding after the girannos had romped through it.
The Tyrell’s cabin was clearly a write-off, it would have to be rebuilt from scratch. A ten-meter section of the aqueduct had collapsed with its support pier, that would have to be rebuilt. Most of the fences were down, and the fields had been trampled. There hadn’t been any trees close to the landing area, so there was that. Their plane, the EP03, had amazingly survived almost unscathed. A wing spar was broken and the solar film adjacent to it was torn, but they had spares for those. If she could get to the compartment on the Anderson where they were stored, Maclaren realized.
The team re-anchored the guy lines that had pulled loose. That would help keep the ship tipping any further than it already had. There was no question of righting the ship, it was far too massive for even all eight of the adults to raise it. Perhaps in the long term they could construct a wooden gantry system and raise it that way, but it was never going to return to space anyway, and the convenience of horizontal decks to walk on didn’t seem worth the effort. Instead they hastily put together a wooden cradle from the remains of the boarding ramp and timbers from Tyrell’s cabin, to keep the ship from tipping any further.
“It’s a mess in here,” Tyrell said when Maclaren finally declared the ship safe to enter. The wall that was now a tilted floor was littered with assorted debris. Several panels had popped loose from the impact, and either lay on the floor or hung at odd angles from where they normally attached. “But it’s not as bad as I expected.”
Maclaren climbed in through the hatch and peered around. “Yeah. Looks like someone forgot to secure for weightlessness.”
Tyrell had to agree. If things had been secured for zero-gee, there would still be damage, but probably not so much mess.
“Alright, lets get up, or over, to sick-bay and see what’s working.” Tyrell noticed some lights on a panel were still lit. Mostly red. “Looks like we’ve still got some power, anyway.”
“Right. Somebody should get Krysansky. I’m going to check the systems and route power where it’s needed.”
∞ ∞ ∞
It was late afternoon by the time Krysansky had finished setting Sawyer’s leg. Maneuvering her into sick-bay without causing additional injury had been a feat in itself, but they’d managed, and with Maclaren’s help, Krysansky had the medical imaging systems functioning well enough to check her out. No skull damage, but a cracked rib in addition to the badly broken leg, and lots of bruises.
“Is not perfect,” Krysansky said to Sawyer as he put the finishing touches on her leg cast. “What would be best is to open up leg and put plates and pins in, but”—he looked around at the shambled room—“is not best place for operation, and don’t have plates or pins.” The fabber could have made those, if it were still intact. But as Maclaren had pointed out, while she could probably repair it, it would take forever to get it recalibrated.
“But it will heal without those?” Sawyer asked him.
“Da, so long as you keep weight off it at first, and keep it immobile. But may not be perfect. Best thing would be, when we get back to Earth, is have hospital re-break it and fix properly. I am sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, Doctor. And we’ll worry about re-breaking it when the time comes. I just won’t plan any long hikes in the next couple of months.”
“No, is best you get plenty of rest for a while. Especially with that rib. U
nfortunately the bed here is at wrong angle, so we have to get you back to cabin. In stretcher.”
“Oh, joy. All right. Just don’t drop me.”
“Ah, they only drop you twice on way here. Nyet problem.”
“Wait, what?”
“Was joke. You would have noticed.”
“Oh. Please, no jokes. I don’t want to laugh with this rib.” Sawyer smiled as she said that. That much she could do.
∞ ∞ ∞
They carried her back to the Maclaren-Finley cabin, that was becoming the de facto town hall with the toppling of the Anderson and collapse of the Tyrells’ hut.
Sawyer was resting on the cot, trying to review some of last night’s video on her omni, but not really focusing, when Ulrika Klaar tapped at the doorway. “Yes?”
“Elizabeth, would you mind a visitor? Poul would like to say hello.”
“Sure, come on in.” She started to sit up, but a stab of pain from her cracked rib made her think better of it.
The little boy came around the doorway, clutching his mother’s hand in one of his own, and holding his teddy bear tightly to his chest with the other. He looked like he had been crying.
“Poul, what’s the matter?”
“I, I’m sorry, Aunt Elizabeth.” He stopped and sniffed back a tear. “It’s all my fault.”
“What? What do you think is your fault?”
His face wrinkled, his mouth in a sad little pout. “You’re hurt. It’s my fault.”
Sawyer’s heart melted. True, if he’d stayed with the group instead of rushing back for his Teddy, but.... “Oh, no, honey. A giranno knocked the house down. I’m just glad you’re alright.” She looked up at Ulrika, who wasn’t looking too happy herself. “Really.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen. I wanted Teddy to be safe. Then you got hurt because you wanted me to be safe.” He started crying again, quietly.
“Hey, hey. I’ll be fine.” The maturity this not yet four-year-old child showed amazed Sawyer. Had his parents said something? She looked up at Ulrika questioningly, but she just shrugged and shook her head.
“He came up with this on his own. I don’t think Fred said anything either, just that he should have stayed put, and he could have been hurt.”
And Poul had extrapolated that to Sawyer’s own injuries. Smart kid, just with the impulsiveness of any three-year-old. “Come here, Poul. Give me a hug.” The boy let go his mother’s hand and came over to Sawyer. “Carefully, my side hurts a bit.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt ‘Lizabeth. I won’t do it again.”
“Let’s hope there isn’t an again to worry about, okay?”
Poul sniffed and nodded his head. “Okay.” He paused, then frowned as though making a very serious decision. “Elizabeth?”
“Yes Poul?”
“I wanted Teddy because he makes me feel better. I want you to feel better, so I want you to have Teddy.” He held the toy bear he’d been clutching out to her.
“Oh, Poul,” Sawyer felt like she’d have to sniff back a tear of her own. “He’s yours, I can’t take him.”
“But I want him to make you feel better.”
“Alright. Tell you what, he can stay and help me feel better. But he’s still yours, if you need him you can take him back. Okay?”
He nodded, still looking sad but not as he had at first. “Okay.”
Sawyer took the proffered teddy bear. “Thank you, Poul. Now, I need to get some rest. You and your mom should probably run along and check on your sister, okay?” He nodded again. She looked up at Klaar. “That’s a good kid you’re raising there.”
Klaar, clearly holding back her own tears, just nodded. Then, as she took Poul’s hand and turned to leave, managed “Thank you. For everything. Just, thank you.”
Sawyer put the bear on the bed beside her. She really didn’t blame the boy, he was young. She had no-one to blame but herself. She was in charge. She should have made sure nobody left the cabin in the middle of the stampede in the first place.
Chapter 39: Unidentified Objects
Camp Anderson, three months later
Alpha Centauri A had set, a dim glow on the horizon, with B following it. The sky was dark and clear, the first few stars appearing. They didn’t look much different than they did from Earth, unless you were looking at the constellation Cassiopeia, where Sol shone as a very bright star, adding another leg to the W.
Klaar was pointing out constellations to the bigger kids. “There’s Orion. See how the three stars in a row make his belt? And those five stars are his head, shoulders and legs.”
“Mommy, what’s that bright star?”
“That’s Sirius. From Earth, it looks like it’s somewhere else.”
“No, over there. What are those over there,” Poul said, pointing to a different spot in the sky. “Those stars are moving.”
“What? Where?”
Tyrell turned at this, scanning the sky. “Where, son?”
“There, see?”
He did see. Three points of light, close together, moving from southwest to northeast. Far too slowly to be meteors, far too quickly and their path too straight to be high-flying birds catching the last rays of sun. The IPM was in a different orbit. Even if it had broken up, the pieces wouldn’t be moving that way, if they’d even be visible. Spacecraft!
“Where’s the telescope? And how long to get the radio working?” The Anderson’s radio gear had been damaged when the ship fell in the giranno stampede, and while they had local signals, contacting the IPM or anything else in space had been low priority in the past three months.
“I’ll get the scope,” Maclaren said, “but the radio could take a few hours.” She went off to retrieve the scope, bringing it back a minute later. “Where do you want it?”
By now, the ships, if that’s what they were, were over the horizon.
“They’re gone. Can we estimate the orbit?”
“I tracked them from there to there,” Finley said, tracing a path in the sky. “That’s about sixty to sixty-five degrees from north.”
“Sixty-three, I captured it on my omni,” said Klaar.
“Good, so we’ve got a time value too. What’s the orbital period?”
“Wait one,” Klaar tapped at her omni screen, running the calculation. “A hundred and four minutes, give or take a minute, so an altitude of 285 kilometers, inclined maybe fifty degrees.”
“So next orbit will put it a bit over fifteen hundred kilometers west of here, with the planet’s rotation. Damn.”
“On it’s northbound leg, yes, but about ten minutes after that it will be heading southeastward, we’ll see it coming from a bit north of west, if it’s still in sunlight.”
“If they’re from Earth, they’ll know where we landed. Are they looking for us?”
“If they’re from Earth? Where else would they be from?” Tyrell realized that even if they were from Earth, if the rest of Drake’s expedition hadn’t made it back, they wouldn’t know where to look. And with IPMs in orbit around both here and Kakuloa, they wouldn’t even know which planet to look on, only that not every ship left the system. But the point wasn’t worth dwelling on.
“It’s a big galaxy....”
“Exactly. What are the odds? Earth must be the only other inhabited planet within several hundred light-years.”
“Terraformers?”
“Surely long gone.”
“Yes, but where one terraformed planet can develop intelligent life—and I mean the tool-builders who used to live here, not us—so can another. We have no idea how many planets were terraformed, but in our current sample, it’s 100% of sun-like stars have Earth-like planets.”
“But that’s a sample size of two, or three.”
“Just saying.”
“Okay, but Occam’s Razor favors Earth.”
“Yeah
, and that’s why I want to take a look at them. We won’t be able to make out much detail, but if they’re 300 kilometers away, we should be able to recognize the Heinlein, or a ship like her.” The 275mm telescope could, if the seeing conditions were good, image something as big as the Heinlein, or the old NASA Space Shuttle, from the ground. Tyrell recalled that amateurs used to take pictures of the original International Space Station with equipment more primitive than what they had with them. It would be even better if they could get the radio working.
“Okay. Naomi, can you work on the radio? We’ll get the telescope ready and see if we can get an image on the next pass.”
“Uh, yes, but I need to feed Roberta. What needs doing with the radio I’ll need both hands for.”
“Pete, can you— Oh, never mind.” Roberta was a long way from being weaned. “Sorry, Naomi. Yes, take care of her first.” Otherwise neither Naomi nor Roberta would be happy.
Naomi began to head back to the cabin with Roberta, then turned and asked “Should I wake Elizabeth?”
Tyrell considered that. It had taken Sawyer weeks to get over the injuries she suffered in the giranno stampede. Her right leg wouldn’t be the same until she got to a fully equipped medical facility, and she still tired easily. “She should get her sleep, but if we don’t tell—” He was cut off by Sawyer herself, coming down the path, limping, supporting herself on a crutch.
“But if you don’t tell her, she’ll make your life a living hell. Was that what you were going to say?”
“Uh, something like that.”
“So what’s this about UFOs?” she demanded.
“I’ll just go get Roberta settled, then,” Naomi said, and turned back to the cabin.
Tyrell watched her go, wishing he also had an excuse to leave, then turned to Sawyer. “Please, sit down. We’ve got about an hour and forty-five minutes before the next orbit. I’ll fill you in.”
Alpha Centauri: Sawyer's World (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 2) Page 18