by Emily
When they got back to the tower, they found Hutch sitting stone-faced by Toni. They laid Casey beside her.
"What about the Star boat?" Kellie asked her. "Did you look for it?"
She nodded. Kellie saw no hope in her expression. After a minute, she walked out to the chasm.
The lander hadn't fallen far. Only about fifteen meters. It was wedged between the rock walls, over a long drop to a snow-filled bottom. There was no trace of Wetheral.
Eliot Penkavic was captain of the Athena Boardman, outbound for Quraqua, hauling solar mirrors, DNA samples of over eleven thousand species of fish, birds, plants, grasses, and trees; and of more than thirty thousand assorted insect types. He had a full manifest of equipment for the ongoing effort to terraform Quraqua, and sixty-four experts and technicians of various stripes. He was three days away from his destination when the distress call arrived from the Wendy jay.
It was not a side trip he wanted to make. But the code of conduct, and the law, was quite clear. When an emergency was formally declared, when lives were reported in jeopardy, vessels were compelled to assist. After several weeks on Boardman, no one was going to be happy about his extending the flight by another nine days or so. Especially lan Helm, who was going out to the new world to take over as director of operations.
He checked his database, looking for another ship that could go in and bail out the Academy group. There were a couple in the area that could get there, but nobody with a lander. Except the Boardman.
Unfortunate.
How could the nitwits possibly have gotten themselves into such a situation?
He wrote out his reply, and then read it to the AI: Sit tight. Cavalry coming. Boardman will be there in four days, six hours. Penkavic.
"I think that sums things up nicely, sir," said the AI.
"As do I, Eve, Send it."
"It is done, Captain."
"Good." Penkavic pushed himself out of his chair. "Now for the hard part."
"Explaining it to Dr. Helm?"
"Precisely."
XI
Living well is a high-wire act without a net. It is a matter of locating one's proper place and balancing it against the programming imposed by society. We're surrounded by the wrecks of those who have crashed, the reformers, the upright, the various militants and the true believers who think the rest of us need their guidance.
—Gregory MacAllister, "The Best Revenge," Lost at Moonbase
Hours to breakup (est): 252
"Marcel," said the AI, "we have a response from the Boardman. They say they understand our problem and are on their way."
Marcel breathed an audible sigh of relief.
"They anticipate arrival in four days and six hours."
He informed Hutch, who tried to conceal the fact that she'd been holding her breath. Then he called the Star. Nicholson, who'd been delighted to hear that MacAllister was still alive, raised a fist in an unlikely gesture of exultant thanksgiving at this second piece of good news. He notified Beekman, so he could announce it to his people. When that had been done, he passed the word to the two passengers waiting on Wildside. He spoke to a woman, who commented that she was delighted help was on the way, that they'd been very lucky, and that she'd been against the mission from the start She implied that Marcel was at least partly responsible for a situation that had clearly gotten out of hand.
Captain Nicholson reached for another trank and watched his wallscreen convert itself into a hologram of a woodland scene. Thank God that at least there'd be no more deaths. Maleiva was remote from the travel lanes, and it could easily have turned out that nothing would have been close enough to come to their rescue.
Of course the damage already done was enough to ruin him. A dead passenger and a dead crewman. A wrecked lander. On a flight that violated regulations. How would he ever explain it?
It was the darkest moment in a life that had been relatively free of trouble and disappointment. But he knew that regardless of what happened now, he could not survive. He'd be hauled before a disciplinary panel, where it would be made quite plain to him and to the world what a scoundrel he was. He would be reprimanded, and he would be terminated. In the full glow of the worldwide media.
Subsequently, he could expect to be sued, held liable for any damages accruing to the families of the two victims, and for the loss of the lander. He might even be prosecuted. Not that TransGalactic would hunger and thirst after justice, but they could be expected to take every opportunity to disassociate themselves from him in an atmosphere rife with legal action.
How could he have been so dumb?
Scarcely three minutes had passed after his conversation with Clairveau when word came from the duty officer that the surviving passenger, Mr. MacAllister, desired to speak with him.
The transmission came in, audio only. "You know what's happened here?" the great man asked.
Here was the person responsible for the captain's plight. You'll be able to set up a small shrine to a lost world, he'd said. People will love it Management will admire your foresight. Your audacity. "Yes, I've heard." He tried to keep his tone level. "Are you all right, Mr. MacAllister?"
"Fine, thank you." He seemed subdued. The charming arrogance that had informed his manner was gone. "I assume you're in some difficulty as a result of this—incident."
"I don't expect any explanation I can offer will satisfy my superiors."
"No, I thought not. I wanted to apologize, Captain."
"Yes. Of course. Thank you."
"It never occurred to me that anything like this could happen."
"Nor to me. Captain Clairveau informs me you are temporarily stranded."
"Yes. I'm afraid so. Until the rescue vehicle gets here."
"It's on its way. Now, I hesitate to ask, but there's something you can do for me."
"I understand, Captain. There's no need for any of us to go publicly into the details of this unfortunate business."
"Yes. Precisely." Nicholson hesitated. There was always the possibility that someone somewhere was listening. Maybe even recording the conversation. He had no secure channel with MacAllister. "That's probably best."
When he'd signed off, the captain retired to his quarters and contemplated the dress uniform jacket he traditionally wore to meals with the passengers.
There might be a way.
He could delete the pertinent log entry and declare the flight unauthorized. That would leave Wetheral responsible.
That was not exactly to his taste, and it did not play well to his self-image. But Wetheral was dead and couldn't be harmed by any conclusion a board of inquiry might draw. Moreover, the only other living party to the conspiracy had given his word not to reveal what he knew. And he would be motivated to keep that word, since he, too, could become legally liable should the truth get out. No one else was in a position to deny that Wetheral had taken the lander down on his own. All that would be necessary was to agree on a story explaining how MacAllister and Hayes came to be on board. And that was child's play.
Maybe, he thought, he could come out of this unscathed after all.
MacAllister's associates would never have accused him of possessing an overbearing conscience. Disagree with the great man on literary standards or on a matter of historical interpretation, and one was likely to find his or her judgment and taste questioned and possibly his or her native intelligence held up to ridicule in full view of the general public. He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back.
Yet he stood a long time at the edge of the chasm, staring down at the Evening Star's crippled lander, thinking about the dead pilot, who had struck him as not particularly bright; and about Casey, who'd been too young to develop whatever talent she might have had. That they were dead was not directly due to any fault of his. But he
und
erstood clearly that had he not given in to the dark impulse that had prompted him to want to visit this godforsaken place, they would be alive. It would be an exaggeration to suggest he contemplated, even for a moment, throwing himself in. But it was true that for the first time in his adult existence, he questioned whether the world was better for his being in it.
The lander was wedged tight. Below it, the chasm fell away probably another hundred meters. It was a long way down. Heaps of snow lay at the bottom, if indeed it was the bottom. And somewhere down there, beyond reach, Wetheral had come to rest.
He was still staring when he became aware that someone was speaking to him.
Hutchins.
"Mr. MacAllister," she said, "are you okay?"
"Yes." He straightened a bit. "I'm fine."
There was no way to preserve the bodies, and after a series of conferences among Nicholson, Marcel, and Hutch, it was agreed that Ton! and Casey be buried on the plain where they died.
They picked a spot about thirty meters to one side of the tower, cleared away the snow, and dug two graves. An armed party consisting of Chiang, MacAllister, and Kellie trekked to the patch of forest, cut down a couple of trees, and fashioned two makeshift coffins.
Meantime, Hutch and Nightingale collected background information from the ships. They cut three slabs of rock from the tower walls to serve as markers and engraved them. They wrapped the bodies in plastic brought originally for the artifacts. By then night had fallen, and their colleagues had returned. They stored the coffins inside the tower, posted a guard, built a fire, and slept in the open.
There was a ghostly quality to it all. Ordinarily, Flickinger fields were invisible, but they tended to reflect light in the 6100-6400 angstrom range. Orange and red. So they all developed a mild glow whose gradations varied with the intensity of the flames. When occasionally the fire flared, golden auras became visible, providing a flavor of the angelic. Or of the demonic, if one preferred. In either case, Hutch hoped it would be more than enough to keep whatever creatures might haunt the neighborhood at a respectful distance.
She took the first watch. They were well away from the tower, to ensure that the guard, equipped with night goggles, had a good view
in all directions. Nothing moved in that vast wasteland, and after two hours she wearily turned the duty over to Nightingale and curled up in a snowbank.
But she couldn't sleep, and for a time she watched him pacing nervously around the camp. It was snowing lightly, and the sky was overcast.
It had been a mistake to bring him. Even the news that help was on the way had failed to cheer him measurably. While the others had collectively taken a deep breath, and Hutch herself had shed the pall of concern that came with knowing it could easily have gone the other way. Nightingale had seemed not to react. "Good," he'd said. "Thank God." But his tone had been flat, as if it didn't really make much difference.
Nightingale wasn't young, and the next few days, with no food, were going to be difficult. She wondered how he'd hold up. Wondered how any of them would hold up. They had nobody, as far as she knew, with the kind of background they were going to need to make themselves reasonably comfortable. They had only the donuts and a few other assorted snacks. But hell, how hungry could they get in four days? If necessary, maybe they could nibble on leaves. It would be just a matter of putting something into their stomachs.
Nightingale stood in the glare of the fire, scanning the area. He seemed discouraged. Part of that obviously stemmed from the casual-ties they'd taken, and she wondered whether he was shocked by their loss, or whether he was sensing a kind of parallel with his earlier ex-perience on this world. She also knew he had no confidence in her. He hadn't said anything overt, but she could read his feelings in his eyes. Especially since their situation had turned difficult. Who are you, his attitude asked, to be making decisions? What's your de-gree? Your level of expertise in these matters? You're not even an archeologist.
A mild tremor rolled through the night. It was barely discernible, but she wondered whether it wouldn't be a good idea to head out somewhere tomorrow. Get a reading from Marcel and make for a safer place.
Nightingale knelt close to Chiang and brushed snow away from his converter. They were in no danger even if the device did become buried, of course. If the air flow into the Flickinger field were cut off, an alarm would sound.
Hutch's heat exchanger put out a barely audible hum as it warmed the envelope of air circulating inside her suit. She heard it change tone and looked at her link. The outside temperature was fifteen below. A fairly constant wind was blowing out of the northwest, and the snow was getting heavier.
Four and a quarter days until help came. It wasn't exactly a hardship situation. The e-suits would protect them from the cold, but it would occasionally be necessary to shut them off, when eating or performing other basic functions. They'd established a privacy area behind the tower. It wasn't very private, though, because Hutch insisted no one go back there without an escort. MacAllister, who had often remonstrated against the foolishness of puritanical ideals, seemed particularly upset by the arrangement. If one had to use the facility during the night, it was necessary to wake one of the others. It was not a circumstance that would help morale, he pointed out.
"Getting eaten," Hutch told him, "does nothing for morale either."
In the morning, under lowering skies, they held a farewell ceremony. Kellie recorded it for the next of kin.
Toni had been a Universalist, Wetheral a Methodist. And Casey was not known to be affiliated with any religious group.
Hutch spoke for Toni, a difficult assignment because Universalists did not believe in mantras or formal prayers. One always spoke from the heart. They all mourned the loss of one so young, she said. Nothing they could recover from the site would be worth the price they'd paid. She added that she personally would always remember Toni, who had refused to allow her to come alone to the tower.
Captain Nicholson, using VR, performed the ceremony for Wetheral. He spoke of selfless service, dedication to duty, a willingness always to put forth extra effort. Hutch concluded that Nicholson and his officer were strangers, and it seemed to her particularly painful that the man had died with no one present who knew him as a human being. His first name, she'd discovered, was Cole. She wished, at least, that they could have recovered his body.
The marker for Toni read Faithful Unto Death. Wetheral's might easily have read Buried by Strangers.
MacAllister surprised her by asking to speak for Casey.
"I knew her only briefly," he said. "She seems to have been an honest woman in an honest profession. Maybe no more need be said. Like Toni Hamner, she was only at the beginning of her life. I will miss her."
He stared down at the marker, which at his suggestion had been engraved with only her name and dates, and the single word Journalist.
When they were finished, they put the two coffins in the graves and replaced the soil.
"Wait a minute," said Helm. "Tell me again what we're going to do?"
"Five people are stranded on the surface of Maleiva III. It's the world that's going to—"
"I know about Maleiva HI. Why are we going there?"
"To rescue them," Penkavic said.
A chessboard was set up on his desk. Helm sat behind the black pieces, but his cold blue eyes had locked on Penkavic. He ran long fingers through thick gray hair and nodded, not to the captain, he thought, but to some inner compulsion of his own.
They were in Helm's private quarters. The tabletop that supported the chessboard was buried under disks, notes, schematics, printouts. "Why is that our concern?" he asked, keeping his tone polite. As if he was honestly curious. "We're, what, several days away, aren't we?"
"Yes, sir."
Helm was Kosmik's chief engineer and director of the terraform-ing project at Quraqua. "So why do they need us?"
"They need the lander. They don't have any way of getting their people off the surface."
"What happened to their lander?"
"It got wrecked. In a quake."
"That seems shortsighted."
"I don't know the details. In any case, we've already jumped out of hyper. We're maneuvering onto a new heading, and as soon as we have it we'll make the jump again. The sooner we—"
"Wait just a minute. We're carrying a full load of equipment, supplies, people. All needed at Quraqua. We have constraints on when we have to get there, Eliot. We can't just go wandering around the region."
"I understand that, sir. But there's nobody else available to do this."
Helm's tone suggested a gentle uncle trying to reason with an adolescent. "Surely that can't be."
"I checked it, sir. We're the only ship close enough. The only one with a lander."
"Look, Eliot." He got up, walked around the table, sat down on it, and pointed to a chair. Penkavk stayed on his feet. "We can't just hold up the cargo. Or the people." He leaned forward and looked at the captain. "Tell me, if we were to do this, make the run, how late would we be getting into Quraqua?"
"About nine days."
"About nine days." Helm's face grew rigid. "You have any idea what that would cost?"
"Yes, sir. But I didn't think that was a consideration."
"Come on, Eliot, it's always a consideration."
"What I know," Penkavic said, striving to keep his anger under control, "is that the law, and our own regulations, require us to provide assistance to anyone in distress. We can't just ignore it. People will die."
"Do you think the Academy will reimburse us for what this will cost?"
"No," he said. "Probably not."
"Then maybe we should consider our options."
"We don't have any options, Dr. Helm."
Helm stared at him for a long moment. "No," he said, "I suppose not. All right, Eliot. Let's go off and rescue these damned fools. Maybe we'll get some decent press out of it."