“Chasing us? You mean …” began Treet. “No, why would they?”
Crocker shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough. ETA is less than twenty minutes by my guess. Maybe we should be ready to make a run for it in any case.”
Working feverishly in the dark they struck camp, keeping one eye on the ever-growing light in the sky. They took down the tents and loaded the skimmer, then gathered at the base of the tower to sit and wait. The disk of blue-white light increased by slow degrees until it outshone every other star, and still grew brighter and larger.
Then they heard the engines, softly at first, a mere burring rumble on the night air, like distant thunder. Gradually the rumble grew into a great booming throb that pulsed in heavy waves as it echoed among the dunes. By then they could make out a great dark shape above the light—a huge, black spherical mass that blotted out the stars around it. The bright light emanated from the bottom of the craft, shining down at an oblique angle, playing across the desert as it came. They could see the light striking the crests of dunes, flaring white and sliding down the slope to disappear from view, only to flare again on the crest of the next.
“I think we should get out of the way of that light,” cried Crocker. He had to shout above the monstrous thrum of the oncoming engines to make himself heard.
They ran from the tower to lay in the sand atop a small dune near where the skimmer was parked. There they waited. Three heartbeats … four—then the mysterious craft was upon them, blacking out a fair portion of the night sky as it glided by, engines roaring, pushing the flying machine past them at a stately pace.
The light swept over the exact spot where their tent had been, flashed over the tower, and continued on. A tremendous black sphere filled the sky above them, below which dangled another, smaller shape that looked like an elongated teardrop. A row of green lights appeared near the front end of the horizontal teardrop, and a dull red glow lit up the rear.
In a matter of seconds it was gone, churning off into the night, the sound of its mighty engines dwindling rapidly, its black smoothness melting into the night once more, the light fading, leaving only the faint suggestion of a red glow behind. Then that, too, was no more.
A feeling of sadness descended over the group with the passing of the craft. No one spoke for a long time.
Finally Crocker broke silence. “What in blue blazes was that?” he asked. Awe, and the stillness of the night after the boom of the craft’s engines, made his voice sound thin. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It was an airship,” said Pizzle.
“We know that,” snapped Crocker, “but—”
“No, he means like a blimp,” Yarden offered. “Right?”
“Right. Airship—as in lighter-than. Did you see the size of that thing? Oooeee! Incredible. It must be making a good hundred k’s per hour, which for all that mass is doing all right.”
“Who were they?” asked Yarden, expressing the obvious question in everyone’s mind.
“Calin?” asked Treet, turning to the silent young woman. “I think you can tell us. They weren’t Hagemen looking for us, were they?” he said.
Calin shook her head. Her voice came soft in the darkness, touched with wonder. “No, they were not looking for us. They were … Fieri.”
“Just what I figured,” replied Treet. “They didn’t even know we were here. We just happened to stumble onto the Fieri air route.”
“Amazing, your powers of deduction,” quipped Pizzle. “I was about to say the same thing.”
“At any rate, that settles the problem of our next move,” put in Crocker. “We keep following the towers right to Fieri-land.”
“And hope the water holds out,” said Treet.
They followed the Fieri towers for three days, passing them at regular intervals every thirty minutes. The overloaded skimmer gave out toward the end of the third day. Tempers frazzled by thirst and the monotony of desert travel snapped when the skimmer lurched, chugged, and shook to a bone-rattling halt.
“That tears it all to hell,” said Pizzle, throwing a three-way wrench at the broken vehicle. He’d been tinkering with it for over three hours, and the sand was littered with skimmer pieces. “It’s probably some routine maintenance thing that we don’t know about. But it’s kaput! We’re done for.”
“Lie down, Pizzy, I’ll scoop sand over your head.”
“Drop dead!”
“Isn’t that what you’re suggesting?” Treet said snidely.
“We’re not finished yet,” said Crocker. “Not even close.”
“Oh?” Pizzle turned on him. “I’m overjoyed to hear it. I thought people usually died of thirst when they ran out of water in the desert.”
“We’re not out of water yet,” said Yarden.
“You’re right,” said Pizzle. “I forgot. We’ve got a whole half day’s ration of water. We could all take baths and wash our hair we’ve got so much. Whatever shall we do with it all?”
“Cool off, Pizzle,” said Treet. “I don’t want to hear any more of your spoiled-brat theatrics.”
“If I had a stillsuit and crysknife your water would be mine,” Pizzle muttered.
“What did he say?” asked Crocker, watching him strangely.
“He thinks he’s someone called Paul Dune or something—a character from one of his books. Thirst is warping his brain,” said Treet. “Let’s leave him here.”
Treet picked up his sling, slipped it over one shoulder, and started off. Yarden and Calin fell in behind him. Crocker watched them go, picked up the two slings at his feet, and held one out to Pizzle. “The machine’s finished. Even if you knew how to fix it, there’s nothing to fix it with. Come on or I will leave you here.”
He turned and trudged off. Pizzle glanced at the skimmer, hefted the sling onto his back, and shuffled after the others, head down, in his slope-shouldered gait.
Night found them halfway between one tower and the next. But they walked on, having decided to travel by night and therefore minimize evaporation of moisture from their bodies. The hours passed slowly as they dragged themselves over the desert, becoming more aware of the burning in their throats with each and every step.
No one said much. They mostly kept their heads down and conserved as much energy as possible, wasting neither words nor motion. An hour before dawn, the sky showing like oxidized aluminum in the east, they halted, erected the tents, and went to sleep.
Treet awoke from a dreamless sleep feeling like he’d taken a big bite out of a sand dune. He coughed and would have spat, but was afraid to waste the spit, so swallowed instead, which did nothing for the gritty dryness in his mouth. He took up his water flask, jiggled it to test how much remained—only the barest hint of a slosh at the bottom of the flask—and decided to forego the drink he’d promised himself upon waking.
Then he remembered what had awakened him: the sound of an airship’s engines.
He rolled to his feet and stumbled from the tent, almost tipping forward onto his face as he straightened. He was a little lightheaded from lack of water and thought perhaps he was hearing things—the aural hallucinations of a dying man. But he was just being melodramatic; he was nowhere near far enough gone to start having hallucinations, aural or otherwise.
He turned his eyes to the sky. It was early afternoon by the sun. A Fieri tower loomed over the dunes to the southeast about four kilometers away. The airship’s engines thrummed lightly from out of the northwest, though without its single large headlight it could not as yet be seen. Treet stood squinting into the sky, straining for a glimpse of the craft as the sound grew steadily louder.
“Wake up!” he hollered. “An airship is coming! An airship! Quick, wake up! We’ve got to try to flag it down!” he hollered, dashing from one tent to the next to rouse the others. By the time they tumbled out upon the sand, the shape of the Fieri airship could be vaguely discerned—a rustred disk in a cerulean sky.
“This is it,” said Crocker hoarsely. “We’ve got to make
them see us. It’s our only chance.”
“If we only had a signal flare—” griped Pizzle.
“Take down the tents. We’ll wave those,” commanded Crocker.
Pizzle dived into the tent, fished out his sling, and dumped it out in the sand. He grabbed up a small canister and some other objects and started fiddling with them.
“Now what are you doing?” asked Treet in exasperation. “We could use your help.”
“Shut up and leave me alone!” snapped Pizzle. “I’ve got an idea.”
The Fieri’s craft loomed closer. Now they could see its bulk casting a rippling shadow over the dunes.
“There!” said Pizzle shortly. “I hope it works.” He held up his handiwork for all to see. Attached to the canister were several wires and a broken piece of a solar cell.
“What is it?” asked Treet.
“A smoke bomb. This is from the skimmer I wrecked—it’s filled with solid fuel, and the cell ought to heat up the wires and blow the fuse inside. It might be enough of a spark to touch off the fuel. I figure it should smoke two or three minutes.”
“Pizzle, you’re a wonder,” said Treet. “Want us to do anything?”
“Yeah. Stay out of my way.”
“You better get it going right now. That airship will be here any minute.”
Pizzle climbed a dune and hunched himself over the canister, holding the solar cell by the edges, tilting it toward the sun. In a few moments a hissing sound came from inside the canister. “It’s getting hot in there.”
“Look!” cried Yarden. “The airship is almost here!”
Treet glanced skyward and noted the looming shape of the Fieri airship. “Is that thing going to work?” he hollered.
“Shh!” warned Crocker. “Give it a chance.”
The hissing grew louder. “Go baby, go-o-o-,” coaxed Pizzle. “Do it, do it, do it. Make your papa proud.”
“It’s not going to work,” said Treet.
Yarden looked at him with worried eyes. Calin stood silently, watching with a stricken expression. Crocker pounded his fists against his thighs, his face intense, looking like a gambler whose winnings were riding on a heavy-odds underdog.
“Will you shut up!” cried Pizzle. “It’ll work—just give it a second.”
“The ship is almost here!” said Yarden. “Ooo, come on, come on…”
The canister hissed loudly and gave a muffled pop. Yellow smoke erupted from the top of the canister along with sparks and a sharp sizzling sound. “There!” said Pizzle triumphantly. “I told you it would work.”
But the words were no sooner out of his mouth than the sizzling stopped. The sparks fizzled and died; the smoke evaporated. “No!” cried Pizzle, diving for the canister.
“So much for the miracles of modern science,” said Treet, already dashing away. “Get those tents!”
“I can get this going again, I know it.” Pizzle jiggled the wires and tapped the canister. He held the solar cell to the sun.
“Forget that!” barked Crocker. “Find something shiny to flash. The rest of us will signal with the tent fabric and hope to God they see us!”
The airship was almost directly overhead by the time they started waving the orange tents from the top of the tallest nearby dune. Treet could make out individual windows in the bulbous, teardrop-shaped cupola suspended below the gigantic gas-filled sphere of the airship. But if anyone aboard was watching, he couldn’t see a face. The thundering engines reverberated across the desert, bouncing sand from the dunes below, vibrating diaphragm and eardrum alike with their deep, sonorous sound.
As the giant airship’s shadow slid over them—a rusty moon eclipsing the sun—Treet shouted, “We’re too much underneath it! They’ll never see us!”
He snatched the tent from Crocker’s hands and fled into the sunlight again, sliding, slipping, rolling down the side of the dune. He ran hard, trying to keep up with the craft, waving the tent fabric over his head, yelling falling, sprawling, getting up, and running again.
The airship floated on without so much as a tip of a trailing stabilizer to them. In a little while the Fieri craft became a mere blip in the sky, leaving only the purr of the engines behind.
Treet lay panting in the sand, watching the airship disappear once again. He felt stunned and sick and foolish. To think they would die out here now after all they had been through. That airship had been their last real hope, and it had just vanished over the bleak horizon. The cursed white desert—nothing but bleached dunes beneath a waxy blue sky—would soon cradle their bones in its vast desolation.
The unfairness of it! Treet wanted to cry, but it would be a waste of precious tears and would do no good. He rose slowly and ambled back to where the others sat waiting, their expressions mirror-images of his own dejection.
“Well, we’re awake now,” Crocker was saying. “We might as well get moving.”
“Why?” grumped Pizzle. “What difference does it make whether we die here or fifty kilometers from here? It’s all the same to me.”
For once Crocker did not snap hack at him; he didn’t even bother to reply, just turned sad eyes toward him and shrugged. The resignation in that heavy lift of the pilot’s shoulders cut at Treet’s heart like a razor. Never had he witnessed such an elegant statement of despair. He looked away, a lump the size of a melon swelling in his throat.
Yarden jumped to her feet; her dark eyes narrowed in quick anger. “I defy you to give up on us!” she shouted. Treet swiveled around to see her face livid with rage, fists clenched and shaking. “It is a sacrilege!”
Crocker looked properly chastised, but Pizzle glared back defiantly. “Bitch!” he spat.
Yarden’s slap sounded like the retort of a gun. The white imprint of her hand on Pizzle’s cheek was already turning deep red before Pizzle knew what happened. A rich interplay of emotions—shock, bewilderment, outrage, innocence, guilt—pinwheeled over his homely features. He settled on an expression of unalloyed astonishment. “You hit me,” he observed softly.
Yarden’s eyes flared, but she answered coolly, “I’m not sorry. You deserved it. Get on your feet, and let’s get moving.”
Calin rose and came to stand beside her, saying nothing, but showing quiet courage in the gesture. Treet, still on his feet, took a half-step closer. The three of them waited, looking down at the two men.
“Looks like we’re bound for a little more sightseeing, Pizzy old boy,” said Crocker. He got up slowly, patting dust from his clothes.
Pizzle climbed to his feet, now contrite and apologetic. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Why’s everybody always taking these things so seriously?”
Yarden’s lips remained pressed firmly into a straight line. But the hard light in her eyes softened, and satisfaction radiated from them. She spun on her heel and stalked down the face of the dune, starting off once more across the desert.
FIFTY-TWO
Yarden’s steely determination carried them three more days. On the fourth no one got up. They lay in the tents, too weak to move, too demoralized to care, merely waiting for the end, hoping it would not be too painful.
Treet drifted in and out of consciousness. The last two days had been cruel torture. Simple thirst had ceased, only to be replaced by a most compelling agony: his tongue swelling in his mouth, every tissue giving up its stored water, internal organs shutting down for lack of moisture. He and the others had nevertheless stumbled on doggedly, dimly aware of where they were and what they were doing.
Nothing mattered. Beyond care, beyond regret, beyond every other human response, now only the slow, inexorable approach of death held any interest for him. To be alive and know you were dying and know too there was nothing you could do about it, thought Treet in one of his lucid moments, was surely the worst trick of a whole universe full of lousy tricks.
By the fevered whispers and the soft sighing moans emanating from those around him, Treet knew that he was still in the land of the living. But as the day progressed, the hours draggi
ng by in leaden succession, each one too long and too laden with the thick, foul presence of death, the moans and whispers gradually ceased.
The bright orange light inside the room was fading when Treet roused himself from a trancelike stupor in which he imaged the deep pulsing thunder of airship engines as the great spheres passed, one after another, oblivious overhead. He rolled weakly, painfully onto his side and listened. He heard a droning buzz and could not place the sound. He listened for a moment, and the sound resolved itself into voices—Yarden was talking to someone in the hallway outside. They were talking about him.
“He is dying,” she said. “We’re all dying, don’t you see. It’s okay though—really it is.” She was obviously trying to convince herself as well as her companion that death was an acceptable outcome of their ordeal. “Actually, I could have predicted it from the beginning. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of. It happens. Anyway, we all have to die sometime.”
There was more that Treet could not get. Such stupid talk, thought Treet. Odd coming from Yarden. She was the one who had used every ounce of her own stubborn will to urge them all on when nothing else would have kept them going. Now here she was telling whoever she was talking to, most matter-of-factly, that it was perfectly proper to lie down and die. That wasn’t like Yarden at all.
Tears came to Treet’s eyes, hardly more than a mist wetting his hot, dry eyes. I’ve lost her, he thought. I should have told her I loved her. Not that it would have made a difference—but no, it always made a difference. I should have told her. Now she would die without knowing … but it didn’t matter. He would die without saying it, so they were even.
“You know what burns me,” Yarden was saying to her listener. Her voice came from just outside the curtained door. “I could have sworn that Orion Treet and I were friends—more than friends, if you know what I mean. I mean, I did everything I could to let him know how I felt. A girl can only do so much though. It was up to him to meet me halfway, but he never did.”
“I can’t understand it,” the stranger’s voice replied. “It was obvious to everyone else how you felt about him. But look at it this way—you’re probably better off the way you are.”
Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra Page 38