Arcan materialized inside the cabin, much to everybody’s relief. “I am very sorry,” he said, ripples of apologetic dark green traveling up and down his shape. “It turns out that the visitor and I made a mistake.”
“No!” said Six in a fake voice of amazement. “We didn’t notice!”
“Didn’t you? You surprise me!”
Six looked heavenwards. “Of course we noticed, you stupid lump of jelly – you nearly killed us all!”
Grace gave Six a look. She wasn’t too sure he ought to call Arcan things like that. He ignored it.
“So the visitor got it wrong, did he? What happened? Memory fail him or what?”
“I omitted to take into account the time lapse,” the visitor de-blended in front of them, making Grace jump. “It turns out that the ship which came here did so many thousands of years ago.” It made an embarrassed sort of chirruping sound. “I hadn’t realized that it was so long ago. There have been some major changes in the system since then. Perturbations – orbital changes due to gravitational instabilities. I am sorry.”
“Well maybe you will all just listen to me now, and we can take a bit of time to get some data in about the planet before we bowl down there? In any case, Grace needs at least a couple of days to get over the gas giant.”
“I don’t!”
“You certainly do! You nearly died out there, and your eyes are still so red that I am surprised you can see out of them. Of course, you should have known better than to open your eyes!”
“How was I supposed to know it was a gas giant? I wanted to see where I was!”
“Yes, well neither Diva nor I opened our eyes. And you were the only one to breathe the atmosphere too. We knew better than that – comes from our experience on being dropped into the orthobubbles.”
Arcan seemed to shimmer slightly. “Actually it took me a little more time to find Grace,” he said apologetically. “She was exposed for longer. Of course we will spend a couple of days in orbit. There is no point taking any more risks.” A shadow of regret shivered through him.
“Good. Then Grace, you get to bed and get better, while the rest of us sort out some reliable data about this system. Diva – go with her, will you? I think we should all go through the old-fashioned detox showers – I am not completely convinced about that new-fangled cabin thing, and then you should make sure she gets some rest. I’ll take a detox shower once you two are finished.”
Diva led Grace out of the control chamber firmly, ignoring all Grace’s claims that she was perfectly all right. “You look ghastly.”
“Well, thanks!”
“And it will be much better if we spend some time getting data about that planet before we set foot on it, so just behave yourself, and get some rest. There is no point us going down to the surface until we all feel a hundred percent.”
“I don’t want to hold you back!”
“Actually, Grace, I don’t feel so good myself,” Diva told her mendaciously. “So I’d rather not go down just yet.”
“All right.” Grace gave in. As a matter of fact, she did feel pretty unwell. She allowed herself to be led through the detox showers, and then fell into one of the bunk beds available in the sleeping quarters of the new trader, and slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
IT WAS NOT until four days later that they decided they were ready to go down to the new planet. They had charted the whole of the Pictoris system, and had documented as much as they could about the planet surface underneath the Independence. It was a strange place. There were violent winds which whistled over the planet’s surface, but always in the north-south axis, and only from dusk to dawn. The winds were so strong that the planet’s surface reflected them; from space it looked like patches of vertical stripes interrupted by huge blotches, like a gold-weave print on a ceremonial robe. They deduced ridges which ran the whole length of the planet, interspersed occasionally with larger areas which looked as if they sustained some vegetation. They could see extensive patches of mottled colour dotted unevenly around the planet. These seemed centred on some rocky mounts, which rose high into the sky.
The visitor was suitably chastened by his mistake, because the information he had retrieved was woefully out of date, and not much help. It turned out that the Dessite ship which had visited this system had only sent a video camera down to the surface for a short time, deeming any further investigation unnecessary because of the lack of intelligent life forms. It had merely documented a few type 3d animals.
In the end, they decided to go down at dawn on the morning of the fifth day. That way they would have enough time to explore before the evening wind started to blast across the planet. Although the shuttle would come to no harm, it would not be a good idea for them to be out in the open during the winds.
They had decided that, since Arcan couldn’t transport anywhere he couldn’t ‘see’, it would be better in the beginning if he accompanied them through the orthogel bracelets. Then he could manifest himself whenever he felt that it was necessary. They all felt the soft touch of orthogel as slim bracelets appeared, one on Six’s ankle, one around Diva’s arm, and the other around Grace’s neck. The video camera was already hovering in the shuttle. It was to come with them too, but had agreed to remain blended once on the surface. They had detected life signs on the planet, but they were still unsure exactly what those life signs belonged to.
The three friends made their way to the space shuttle, and fastened themselves firmly into their seats. Grace looked at the other two. Neither Diva nor Six showed any outward signs of stress. In fact, Six gave a yawn on the way down to the planet’s surface.
“More first contact,” he said. “All this trail-blazing is making me tired!”
Diva simply laughed.
The space shuttle came down vertically onto the planet’s surface. They had decided to put on bodywraps and mask packs for safety, even if they weren’t strictly necessary. If nothing else, they would help to attenuate the cold and rather thin air. Diva stopped at the hatch. “Who should go first?”
Six shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters, Six. Grace is from Valhai, I am Coriolan, and you are a Kwaidian. It might be important who steps first on the planet.”
Six bent to tug the orthogel bracelet around his ankle loose, and threw it out of the hatch. “There,” he said. “That makes Arcan the first to step onto the planet, so if anybody is going to claim it, he can. Since he is the only entity that can actually travel here, it seems fair, don’t you think?”
Diva inclined her head. “Absolutely.” She turned to Grace. “You go next, Grace. You deserve it.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because Kwaide wouldn’t be independent if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Oh, put a sock in it will you?” Six was getting edgy. “It doesn’t matter who goes next, but if you don’t get a move on it will be me!”
A whirr reminded them that the visitor was still there, blended. “I shall be the second entity to go outside,” it said sternly. “That is only fit.”
“Fat lot of good that will do you!” Six told him. “You are not actually here at all, you know! Not physically. That is only a machine, and doesn’t count!”
“It does count!”
“Of course it doesn’t!” Six shook his head in wonder. “What a huge fuss about something which doesn’t matter at all!”
“Well, it might!” Diva asserted. “You never know!”
“Bah! Load of rubbish!”
They quickly disembarked and Six bent to pull the bracelet around his ankle again. Then they looked up at the new planet.
“Sacras!” Six stared around him. The planet was so different from anything he had ever seen before. It was covered with coarse-grain particulates which lay between jagged ridges of reddish rock. They had decided that the ridged area looked the most stable for landing, but had chosen a landing site reasonably near one of the mottled patches with its centre mountain. From the shuttle they had be
en able to see each crest running parallel to the next, disappearing into the distance both to the north and to the south, and now they saw that the nearest ridge was about the height of two stories of a Sellite skyrise. The space between ridges must have been about as wide as two space traders. The formations seemed to cover perhaps two-thirds of the surface of the planet, and as they had thought, there was no vegetation in the dips or peaks. Each ridge was marked by steps and risers which ran along its side, cut into the wind-sculpted softstone every metre or so. It gave an artificial look to the landscape. Above them the sky was multicoloured. Wisps of an electric green mingled with royal blue threads on a faintly yellow background. The huge gas giant was visible too, looming purple beyond the atmosphere, half hidden by the reddish-golden sun.
“Wow!” Grace opened her eyes wide.
Diva gave a jump, and then squeaked. “I can almost float,” she said. “Gravity is much less than we are used to.”
“Cool!” Six turned to the ridge behind him, broke into a run to get momentum and then pushed off into a terrific leap. He shot up towards the sky, landing moments later on one of the steps which ran the length of the hill, about a quarter of the way to the top of the ridge. “Hah!” His voice wafted down to them. “Come on up here!”
Diva and Grace grabbed each other’s hands and pushed into a run. Their leap took them so far that they nearly overshot the first step, and Diva had to steady herself by grabbing hold of the following ridge up.
“Great!” They examined their surroundings again. The steps and risers continued to the top of the ridge, and the only distinguishing feature they could see was the nearby mountain, which turned out to be more a butte than a mountain. It was a very large, eroded, steep-sided monolith of rock which tapered off at its summit into a small, flat top. They knew there were many of these twisted buttes, towering up above the rest of the planet, but because of the terrain could only make out the nearest one; two others were faint blurs in the far distance. Apart from these rocky structures there was no change in the landscape, no other mountains or valleys, and no break in the unrelenting ridges.
“Hmm. No sign of your ancestors, then, Arcan,” Six said. Then he bent down and picked up a small, loose lump of the russet rock which made up the ridges. “But those buttes certainly contain instellite, according to our surveys, so we must have come to the right place.”
Grace was worried. “If we go too far away we will never find the shuttle again,” she pointed out. “Everything looks alike on this place. It is either enormous clumps of rock, or stripe after stripe of ridges. I suppose the ridges are made of softer stone, and the buttes haven’t eroded so much. They are strange convoluted shapes though.”
“We have to reach one of them,” said Diva. “If there is any life on this planet they offer the only shelter from the hurricane-strength winds that blow up every afternoon.”
“As long as we can find our way back …” Grace was still doubtful.
Six shook his head, pitying her lack of knowledge. “Of course we can! All we have to do is take sightings along our path. Easy to see you haven’t had to camp out in the wild!”
“Sellites don’t go outside,” Grace reminded him.
“That’s right. They live and die in their gilded prisons, don’t they?”
“Except for me.” Grace lowered her head. She still felt guilty about all the problems she had brought down on her family and her planet.
“That will change now, Grace. Mandalon 50 seems to be a pretty innovative leader. I hope he revolutionizes that planet,” Six said with conviction, “it sure needs it!” He looked around, carefully evaluating their surroundings. “Well, I can’t see any animals around here. Come on, let’s head for the nearest butte!”
They turned as the visitor buzzed, just behind their heads. “I am going to look around the planet,” it said. “I can be finding out much data while you travel to the base and find a way into the structure. I will find you later.”
“Fine by me!” Six told it, happy not to have the visitor along with them.
THEY MADE THEIR way over to the nearest agglomeration of rocks, the girls following Six, who was having fun leaping in a few jumps from ridge to ridge, whooping with glee, and totally uncaring of his own safety. It was the first time they had seen him so exuberant since the independence ceremony on Kwaide, and was a good sign. He had taken his sisters’ defection very hard. To see him springing from ridge to ridge raised all their spirits.
Despite their decreased weight due to the low gravity, it took a long time to reach the outcrop of rocks. As they came up to it they realized that it was in fact much bigger than it had seemed to them before, at least as wide as the spaceport at Kwaide, and reaching hundreds of metres into the sky in a pyramidal shape. In fact some parts of the top of the structure were swathed in strands of some of the yellowy clouds. Long before they reached the rocks, Six removed his mask pack.
“I can’t keep up this speed with a mask pack on!” He shouted back over his shoulder. “The air is perfectly all right in any case, so we don’t really need them.”
Grace opened her mouth, but saw that Diva had instantly removed hers too, so she closed it again, and took her own mask pack off. She wasn’t about to be the only one to be prudent. An engulfing sensation of freedom overtook her and she took a deep and eager breath of air that was so cold it felt as if it were burning her lungs. She really was 30,000 light years from home! She began to run faster and faster, until she and Diva were racing each other, laughing and shouting with exhilaration.
Suddenly Six came to an abrupt halt. “Yow!” He teetered and seemed about to fall, and the girls came up behind him with more caution. They were on the edge of one of the mottled patches on the surface which had been clearly visible from space. Here, the ground proved to be pitted with openings to a warren of caves and caverns, making the ground look like a honeycomb. They peered warily into a few of the holes, and could see that they plummeted down far below the limit of the light. Six dropped a stone down one, and they were unable to hear it hit any bottom.
Grace gave a shiver, and pointed to an enormous spider which appeared to be enjoying a spot of sunlight near the edge of the largest of the potholes. It was red, with white splashes of colour along its legs. It was bigger than a man’s hand.
“I hope we don’t meet any of those close up!”
“Or those!” Six pointed to what looked like a scorpion, but was a lighter brown. It was crawling over the body of a horned beetle, and looked to be quite proprietorial about its prey.
Grace gave an eloquent shudder. “You know,” she said as she looked over her shoulder, “I think we should go up, rather than down.”
Diva nodded. She was convinced too.
Six grinned. “Don’t like creepy-crawlies?” he taunted. “Easy to see neither of you two had to survive in the uninhabitable zone.”
He lead the way towards the soaring pinnacle, taking much care to test the ground before putting his weight on it. Some parts of the place looked anything but safe. Still, at least there was vegetation at the mouths of these openings and in the shelter of the butte: nothing very big, just shrubs and grasses. Enough to have led to an oxidizing atmosphere, he thought gratefully.
Finally they came right up to the face of the butte and gazed above them, marveled by it. The weather had made inroads in the hard instellite, and although this had resisted total erosion, it was pockmarked with tunnels and crannies, where millions of years of hurricane winds had forced their way inside it like a corkscrew in a Mesteta wine bottle. The outside of the bluff was worn completely smooth, too. The only possible way to climb the thing was from inside, and the only conceivable entrance was through two huge boulders which were balanced rather precariously like praying hands, but left a gap big enough to crawl through. Unfortunately the gap became a tunnel through what looked like solid rock.
Six eyed the gap askance. “What do you think?” he asked.
“We came here to find things out
,” Diva told him. “We won’t do that if we are too scared to investigate.”
“I am NOT scared,” Six said indignantly. “Just asking your opinion – being democratic.”
“It looks pretty dark in there,” said Grace cautiously. “And it is going to be a really tight squeeze for us to get through. There is no room to turn round if it doesn’t go well. We could easily get stuck. Maybe we should wait for the visitor to join us. He could go first and check it is all right.”
“Come on Grace! You went through far worse in the battle for Kwaide. You went through the water tank, remember, and the fuel pipe.” Then he could have bitten his tongue, because he knew that Grace did remember that day only too well.
“I don’t really need another day like that,” she said hastily, her voice shaky.
Six gave her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. “No, I know. I’m sorry.”
“I will go first,” Diva told her.
“You will not!” Six looked offended, and propelled himself head-first into the tunnel. It was just wide enough to take him, and the girls followed the soles of his feet as he pulled himself along. They watched until a curve in the tunnel took his feet out of their sight.
Diva gave a sigh. “Oh well. Might as well go after him, I suppose.” She looked up at the millions of tons of rock above them. “Hope it doesn’t choose now to fall down.” The Coriolan girl wriggled between the massive boulders and into the tube-like tunnel, and then disappeared.
Grace shivered. Her heart was already pounding away in panic, and she hadn’t even entered the place. She made herself take slow breaths, to try to calm herself down. It wasn’t particularly successful. The tunnel reminded her all too well of the fuel pipe back on Kwaide, and the memory wasn’t pleasant. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and she wondered if she would be able to pluck up the courage to go through. She felt icy-cold all over. And she couldn’t help thinking of those huge insects they had just seen. She wasn’t particularly happy at the thought that one of them might walk over her.
Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 Page 60