She noticed that he was not heading straight for Ben's suit beacon. Instead, Torran was following a clump of materials with zero radar Doppler shift. Since it was moving ahead of them, it provided some protection. Even so, the rattle of lower-speed gravel and pebbles on her suit was non-stop. One lump of rock, fist-sized or bigger, cannoned off the back of her hardened suit helmet with enough force to make her ears ring.
She heard a grunt from Torran, then, "All right back there?"
"Doing fine."
"We're about ready for another course change. Hold your breath. This will be the last one, and I don't see any way to shield us."
He veered away, and in the moments before Sinara followed she could at last see their target. The rocks and rubble formed an untidy splotch of black against the ruddy background of Marglot's remains. Somewhere inside that mess floated Ben Blesh.
Torran had increased his speed, diving in on an all-or-nothing approach. Sinara did the same until he said, "All right. Time to turn and decelerate—hard!"
She saw the front of his suit, briefly, until her own suit's rotation sent her feet-first toward the floating pile of rock. The backpack on her suit whined in protest as it was called upon to exert maximum thrust. Her proximity radar added its warning, as four hands grabbed her.
"Picture perfect," Teri said. "One for the record books." Then, "Torran! You've been hit!"
The left shoulder of his suit showed a fist-sized bulge of black sealant.
"You mean, you weren't?" He held up his right arm, to show two more dark patches. "I was pinged three times, but only the one on my shoulder got all the way through past my skin. I compressed that area of my suit to stop the bleeding, but one of you will have to dig out the pebble once we're back aboard the Have-It-All."
Was he understating his injury? Out here, Sinara had no way to tell. But he certainly wasn't letting it stop him. She and the others pawed their way through the untidy pile of space rocks, using their suit headlights. They followed Ben Blesh's signal and paid little attention to the heat of the rocks.
When they finally came to Ben he seemed like just another misshapen lump of gray space debris. His knees were lifted up toward his chest, his head bent forward, and his arms were folded. Sinara, with Teri's help, eased Ben's head back far enough for her to peer in through the faceplate.
"Hemorrhaging around his eyes. He went through high acceleration somewhere along the way."
"Think that's why he's unconscious now?"
"It's only part of the reason. There were impacts, too. Look at the lower half of his suit, and at his right side. The transport vortex must have returned him to the surface of Marglot just when the whole planet was coming apart."
Teri said, "He should never have left the Have-It-All, so soon after his treatment."
"If he hadn't, not one of us would be alive." Torran ran his gloved hand over Ben's rib cage. "Any response? That should hurt like hell."
"Nothing. He's under deep."
"That answers one question. He won't be able to help by flying his own suit. We'll have to tow him."
"Why go anywhere?" Teri said. "This is just a horrible jumble of rocks, but it did well for Ben."
Sinara was still examining the unconscious figure. "Depends how long it would take us to reach a place where we might be picked up. Ben's condition is stable, but how long are we talking about if we hang in here? Torran, do you have our vector?"
"Close to it. We're talking forty hours, give or take five. That would bring us to a point far enough out of the main plane of debris for Julian Graves to agree to pick us up. Can Ben stand that?"
Sinara said, "I don't think that's the issue. If we leave here, we're sure to need some fancy jumping and dodging to avoid being hit by debris. I said Ben seems stable, but I think those kinds of acceleration would kill him."
"That settles it. Teri, do you agree? We stay?"
"We stay. Sinara?"
"We stay."
For forty more hours. That was going to feel like eternity. Arabella Lund had made the point during survival training: "If you want to learn what a person is really like, arrange to be with her in two special situations. The first is when you have to make rapid decisions based on pure instinct. The second is when you are forced to spend a day or two together, with nothing to do but wait."
Sinara had seen Torran and Teri in the first setting. Now she would have a chance to observe them in the second. Within the first couple of hours both of them became restless. First they calculated and re-calculated their velocity vector, estimating the earliest time that they might hope to be picked up. After that they went wandering around, wasting—in Sinara's opinion—suit fuel. They explored the jumble of rocks and fragments surrounding them, moving large pieces to provide better protection from incoming debris.
Sinara did not join them; nor, after the first hour or two, did she watch them closely. She had her own preoccupation. Her suit, like every decent suit designed for use by humans, contained information on the species' physiology and medical treatments based on ten thousand years of theory and practice. Of course, only a tiny fraction of that volume of data applied to Ben, but Sinara studied that fraction as intensively as she could. Sometimes sheer fatigue made her close her eyes for a few minutes, but each time that she awoke she at once checked Ben's condition and ran a new prognosis.
Her task was made more complicated by Ben's suit. It was not sitting idle. It monitored his condition second by second, and provided appropriate medications. Sinara could override it at any time, but she did so only once. She drastically reduced the narcotic dose, in the hope that it would return him to consciousness. When after twenty minutes it did not, she fed that information into her own suit and received confirmation that Ben had suffered a severe concussion. There was also edema, a brain swelling that was being controlled by anti-inflammatories. The cause was probably that same concussion.
Sinara's actions absorbed her completely. She was more irritated than interested when Teri came floating over to halt on the other side of Ben.
"We need your opinion."
"I'm looking after Ben."
"He doesn't seem any different now than he was when we first found him. He'll be fine for five minutes. That's all we need."
"What's the problem?"
"A little disagreement. Come and look at something."
As a result of Teri and Torran's continued labors, the barrier of protective rock fragments had steadily become more complete. Teri led Sinara to six great overlapping basalt wedges that offered between them only an irregular narrow slit through which to see beyond.
Torran was waiting a few meters away from it. "Take a look," he said, "but don't get too close. Sometimes little bits and pieces fly in—though we've not had anything with much speed."
Teri added, "Tell us what you think. Torran and I don't agree."
"No hints, Teri."
"I wasn't going to."
Sinara approached within arm's length of the ragged barrier of rocks. There was no such thing as a safe distance. Any second, a high-speed fragment could fly in through the slit and hit her. She peered cautiously out past one of the slabs.
The same kaleidoscopic litter of debris, large and small, near and far, filled the sky. It was a little less densely packed than before, thinning out as their distance from the sometime planet increased.
Nothing out there seemed worthy of a second look. Had Sinara not in effect been told to expect something, she would have returned at once to her vigil at Ben Blesh's side. Instead, she scanned the scene before her a second time, focusing on each area of the sky in turn before moving on. Her attention finally returned to one small region. Something was different there, some oddity that was difficult to pin down.
She used her suit's image intensifiers and narrowed the field of view. She made out a small disk, an oval shape brighter than its surroundings. As she stared, it thinned and dwindled. It lost width until it was no more than a bright line, then vanished completely.
>
She stared and stared, but now she could find nothing unusual. "That's strange," she began. "I thought there was—"
She paused. Here it came again, a thin bright line that slowly expanded to a fat silvery oval. Just as steadily, it then thinned and disappeared.
This time Sinara had some idea what to expect. She waited patiently for another half minute. Right on cue, the silver line appeared and swelled.
"I see it," she said. "Or at least, I see something, over in the upper right quadrant."
"That's the place," Teri said eagerly. "What do you think it is?"
"Well, it could be just a flat rock, a lot brighter on one side than the other. It's rotating, so sometimes we see it edgeways and sometimes we don't see it at all."
"Exactly what I told her. See, Teri, Sinara agrees with me."
"Except that it's nothing like any of the other rocks," Sinara went on slowly. "One side is really bright, like silver. We could be looking at one of the beetlebacks. They would have been thrown out into space with everything else when Marglot disintegrated."
"Told you!"
"So what if it is?" Torran was defensive. "I hate to quote Julian Graves to you, but getting back alive to the Orion Arm is our main concern. Saving Ben was one thing, we were right to insist on that. But worrying about some dumb beetleback is another matter entirely."
"Returning to the Orion Arm alive, with information. Didn't you hear E.C. Tally complaining during our take-off from Marglot? One beetleback, with all the data it contains, could make a huge difference to what we know." Teri moved away from the other two. "Torran, I don't care what you think. I'm going out there to try to snag it."
"Suppose it snags you?"
"That will be my problem. I don't expect you to come after me if I get in trouble—I don't want you to come after me. Your priority is the same now as when we started: getting yourselves and Ben back to the Have-It-All."
Teri didn't hang around for more debate. Already she was moving toward a gap in their primitive protective barrier.
"No, Torran." Sinara had seen his reaction. She grabbed hold of his arm. "Teri is right, and this isn't like Ben. She's taking a risk, but she wants it to be her risk."
"She's crazy." Torran shook his arm free.
"If you believe Julian Graves, we're all crazy. And if you believe E.C. Tally, one beetleback could be worth the price of this whole expedition."
Torran hardly seemed to be listening. His attention, like Sinara's, was focused on the diminishing figure of Teri. He muttered again, "She's crazy." But his comment was drowned out by Teri's exultant cry. "It is a beetleback. Badly damaged, with most of its legs gone. But since Atvar H'sial says it's inorganic, that should make no difference at all to its information content. I have it, and I'm towing it. Five minutes and we'll be back there with the rest of you."
Five minutes, after all the hours that had passed since they left the Have-It-All. That seemed like nothing. It was a total shock when Teri suddenly cried out, "Oh God. I'm hit!"
Torran said, "Where?" and Sinara, "How bad?"
"Not good. Something hit me hard, in my lower back." Teri did not sound the same at all. "My suit sealed itself, but I have no feeling in my legs. Don't do anything silly. I'll still try to return with the beetleback."
"Anything silly." Torran was already accelerating. "Didn't I tell you she's crazy? You stay here."
Sinara, all ready to race off after Torran, hesitated. The trade-offs were difficult to compute. Help Torran, and so improve the chances of recovering Teri and the beetleback? Or stay with Ben Blesh, to make sure that he remained alive long enough to reach the Have-It-All?
Torran's voice steadied her. "Sinara, Teri and I did too good a job moving rocks. I'll be hauling Teri and the beetleback but I don't see a gap big enough for us all to fly through. Teri is losing consciousness. Can you work from the inside? Once we're in, I'll help you close the hole."
Dragging rocks out of the way was the easy part. Much harder was looking at Teri's chalk-white face and half-closed eyes as Torran pulled her through after him. Sinara took charge at once, moving the second body into place beside Ben Blesh. She gave the beetleback one quick glance. It was legless, one side of the scarlet head was mashed in, and the silver back was crumpled along the central line. More to the point, the creature was crippled and immobilized. That was good enough for her.
Was it worth the effort, to capture a beetleback? Well, to Teri it had been, and Torran had gone to the trouble of finishing the job.
He was at Sinara's side. "I didn't have time to check all the suit readings. How is she?"
"Her suit reports a problem between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. Her spinal column there is either cut or severely damaged. The regrowth of nerve tissue would be an easy job back on Miranda, but the robodoc on the Have-It-All was stripped out and dumped, nothing left but the bare essentials."
"Will she live?"
"She will, if any of us do." Sinara glanced at the time read-out in her own suit. "Survival training, Torran." She gestured at the two bodies in front of them. "We all had it. But tell me the truth, did you ever imagine the real thing might be anything like this?"
"I didn't, but Arabella Lund pegged it exactly. Remember what she told us? 'Survival is ninety-eight percent boredom, and two percent panic.' How many hours to rendezvous?"
"Eighteen, if the Have-It-All is on time."
"Will Ben and Teri be in danger of dying during that period?"
"Not according to all the signs."
Torran blew out a long, gusty breath. "Then I say, bring on the ninety-eight percent boredom. I'm more than ready for it."
"You don't want to look at the beetleback?"
"To hell with the beetleback. That's Tally's area, not mine." Torran moved so that he was stretched out next to Teri. "I'm done. Wake me if a rock flies in and kills me. Otherwise, I'm gone."
Sinara could hardly believe her ears. With eighteen hours to go, and with the primitive defense of rocks around them needing constant attention, Torran Veck was proposing to go to sleep?
Her feeling of outrage lasted less than one minute. She went across to peer in through his visor, and saw that his face was as pale and drawn as Teri's or Ben's. She examined the suit's report of his vital signs. He wasn't sleeping, he was out cold. The shoulder wound that he had dismissed so casually was far worse than she had realized. The effort to bring Teri back, and the beetleback with her, had pushed Torran past the point of exhaustion.
Sinara examined, in turn and in as much detail as she could, each of her three companions. She was beginning to understand something else about survival training—something that Arabella Lund had not mentioned. You trusted your teammates to do whatever was necessary to keep you alive. And you in turn did the same for them. Whatever.
Seventeen and a half hours to go.
Sinara moved the others so that each of them would always be in her sight. Then she floated away to examine the condition of their protective shield of rocks, and began the tedious and endless task of filling in gaps as they appeared.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Starting over.
The Have-It-All had started its journey as a luxury ship. In its equipment and its fittings—even in its weapons—it served as a symbol of the best that the Orion Arm could provide. Louis Nenda had worked for many years to make it that way.
Now the ship was a stripped-down hulk, a fleshless skeleton of a vessel barely able to support the life that travelled within it. Nonetheless, Louis Nenda whistled cheerfully as he sat in the ruined control cabin of the derelict and made final adjustments before Bose node entry.
"Louis, I sense a contradiction." Atvar H'sial was crouched a couple of meters away on the bare metal floor. "To one who sees as I do, your vocal utterances are extremely ugly. Yet your pheromones display an uncommon happiness."
"Sure I'm happy. Who wouldn't be? We're goin' home."
"This ship is a wreck."
"It is. But we're not
dead. As long as you're not dead, you can start over. Also, Julian Graves says that the inter-clade council will pay to restore the ship to the way it was."
"Do you believe that?"
" 'Course not. They're a bunch of idiot bureaucrats. We'll be lucky if we can squeeze two cents out of 'em. But the other side of that is, while they're jawing about what fine people we are, only they don't have any money to reward us, we'll have things easy. They won't be tryin' to kill us off or stick us in jail. Graves says we'll get some kind of award. Even Archimedes, for hangin' outside the ship without a suit an' draggin' in Sinara and the other survival team members. Graves says he's amazed that Archie didn't die doin' it."
"You appear less confounded."
"Hell, it takes more than that to kill a Zardalu. Archie keeps goin' on about how he's afraid I'll disembowel him, but if I did it wouldn't do him in. He'd just go ahead an' grow another set of guts. Graves doesn't know any of that, though, so Archie's up for an award along with the rest of us."
"Do not trust Ethical Councilors bearing gifts."
"At, you're gettin' cynical. It don't become you." They had passed through the node, and Nenda stared with satisfaction at the view on his one remaining display. It revealed an almost total absence of stars. The ship was floating in the empty spaces of the Gulf. "We have a few hours to spare before the next node entry. Want to go hear what E.C. Tally has to offer? He's been workin' non-stop with the damaged beetleback, an' Hans Rebka says there'll be somethin' worth hearin'."
"It was always my impression that you disliked and distrusted Captain Rebka."
"I do. But I never said he was an idiot. If what Tally has found out is good enough to interest Rebka, it's probably worth a listen."
"Do I detect admiration for Hans Rebka?"
"No."
"Respect, then, which is separated from admiration by a thin olfactory boundary?"
"At, stop playin' pheromonal word games. Let's go."
Nenda led the way along the ravaged upper corridor of the ship. Without circulation or temperature control equipment, the air was stale, hot, and humid. At the doorless entrance of the conference room, Louis paused and sniffed. Everyone on board was packed into the chamber. This was the way that hard-worked crew members should be. Sweaty, and smelly, and with clothes that could not be changed or washed for another couple of weeks.
Resurgence Page 34