Dragons Dawn

by Anne McCaffrey

  When Sallah finally tapped the “return” tab, she became aware of Avril’s intense interest in the flickering console. She chanced a look at what the woman had been fondling. It was a homemade capsule. Not a homer – they were thicker and longer – but something more like the standard beacon. Suddenly she clearly saw Avril’s plan.

  Avril would take the Mariposa as far away from the Rukbat system as possible and then direct the distress beacon toward shipping lanes. Every planetary system involved with the Federated Sentient Planets and some life-forms who were not, traced distress beacons to origin. The devices, automatically released when a ship was destroyed, were often traced by those who wished to turn whatever profit they could on the flotsam.

  Avril’s plan was not as insane as it seemed. Sallah felt certain that Stev Kimmer had intended to take the trip with her, to be rescued by the distress beacon he had made for her.

  Words flashed on the screen. NO ACCESS WITHOUT STANDARD FCP/1 20/GM.

  “Fuck it! That’s all I could get out of it. Try again, Telgar.” Avril pressed Sallah’s foot against the base of the console module, increasing the pain to the point where Sallah felt herself losing consciousness. Avril viciously pinched her left breast. “You don’t pass out on me, Telgar!”

  “Look,” Sallah said, her voice rather more shaken than she liked. “I’ve tried twice, you’ve tried. I’ve tried the fail-safe I was taught. Someone anticipated you, Bitra. Open up this panel and I’ll tell you if we’ve been wasting effort.” She was trembling not only with pain but with the effort not to relieve her bladder. But she did not dare to ask even that favor.

  Swearing, her face livid with frustration and rage, Avril deftly removed the panel, kicking the console in her frenzy. Sallah leaned as far away as her bonds permitted, hoping to escape any stray blows.

  How did they do it? What did they take, Telgar, or I’ll start carving you up.” Avril flattened Sallah’s left hand over the exposed chips, and her knife blade cut through the little finger to the bone. Pain and shock lanced through Sallah’s body. “You don’t need this one at all!”

  “Blood hangs in the air just like vomit and urine, Bitra. And if you don’t stop, you’ll have both in free-fall!”

  They locked eyes in a contest of wills.

  “What . . . did . . . they . . . remove?” With each word Avril sawed against the little finger. Sallah screamed. It felt good to scream, and she knew that it would complete the picture of her in Avril’s mind: soft. Sallah had never felt harder in her life.

  “Guidance. They removed the guidance chip. You can’t go anywhere.”

  The blade left her finger, and Sallah stared in fascination at the drops of blood that formed and floated. The contemplation took her mind off Avril’s ranting until the woman snagged her shoulder.

  “Are all the spare parts on the planet? Did they strip everything from the Yoko?”

  Sallah forced her attention away from the blood and the pain, clamping down on all but the important consideration: how to thwart Avril without seeming to. “I’d say that there would be guidance chips left in the main board that could be substituted.”

  “There’d better be.” Avril slipped the knife through the cord that bound Sallah to the pilot’s seat. “Okay. We suit up and head for the bridge.

  “Not before I go to the head, Avril,” Sallah replied. She nodded to her hand. “And attend to this. You don’t want blood on the chips, you know.” She let herself scream with the pain of the jerk to her foot.” She felt she had handled her submission well. Avril would have suspected a more immediate capitulation. “And another boot.”

  Finally Sallah could spare a dispassionate look at her foot. Half her heel was missing, and a puddle of blood rocked slowly back and forth, moved by the agitation of Avril’s kicks.

  “Wait!” Avril had also noticed the blood. She spun away to the lockers by the hatch and came back with a space suit and a dirty cloth. “There! Strip!”

  Sallah tied up her finger with the least soiled strip of cloth and used the rest to bind her foot. It hurt badly, and she could feel that fragments of her work boot had been jammed into the flesh. She was allowed the use of the head, while Avril watched and made snide cracks about maternal changes in a woman’s body. Sallah pretended to be more humiliated than she actually felt. It made Avril feel superior. The higher the summit, the harder the fall, Sallah thought grimly. She struggled into the space suit.

  “She’s left the gig, Admiral, Ezra said suddenly into the tense silence in the crowded interface chamber. Tarvi had been called in. Silent tears streamed down his face. “She’s passed the sensors at the docking area. No,” he corrected himself, “two bodies have passed the sensors.” Tarvi let out a ragged sob but said nothing.

  Bit by bit, the pieces had been put together to solve the puzzle of Sallah’s disappearance and Avril Bitra’s reappearance.

  A technician, working on a remount job on the sled nearest Sallah’s, remembered seeing her leave her task and wander toward the scrap pile at the edge of the grid. He had also noticed Kenjo and Ongola walking to the Mariposa. He had not seen anyone else in the vicinity. Shortly afterward he had seen the Mariposa lift off.

  Once someone thought to look for it, the sled Avril had used was easily spotted. It carried none of the modifications that all other Pernese sleds bore; it had been left at the edge of the grid, among others that had been called in for servicing. Stev Kimmer was called in to identify it. She had removed every trace of her occupancy, although Stev pointed to scrape marks that were new to him. He also kept his personal comments about his erstwhile partner to himself though his expression had been sufficiently grim for Paul and Emily to suspect that he had been double-crossed. For one moment he had hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he had answered every question they asked him.

  “She won’t get anywhere,” Emily said, firmly, striving for optimism.

  “No, she won’t.” Paul looked at the guidance cartridge, not daring to glance in Tarvi’s direction.

  “Couldn’t she replace it from similar chips on the bridge?” Tarvi asked, his face an odd shade, his lips dry, and his liquid eyes tormented.

  “Not the right size,” Ezra said, his expression infinitely sad. “The Mariposa was more modern, used smaller, more sophisticated crystals.”

  “Besides,” Paul added heavily, “the chip she really needs is the one Ongola replaced with a blank. Oh, she can probably set a course and it will appear to be accepted. The ship will reverse out of the dock, but the moment she touches the firing pin, it’ll just go straight ahead.”

  “But Sallah!” Tarvi demanded in an anguished voice. “What will happen to my wife?”

  Sallah waited until Avril had reversed the Mariposa from the dock, let it drift away from the Yokohama’s bulk, and ignited the Mariposa’s tailflame before she operated the comm unit. Avril had done as much damage to the circuitry in the bridge console as she could, but she had forgotten the override at the admiral’s position. As soon as she left the bridge, Sallah accessed it.

  “Yokohama to Landing. Come in, Ezra. You must be there!”

  “Keroon here, Telgar! What’s your position?”

  “Sitting,” Sallah said.

  “Goddamn it, Telgar, don’t be facetious at a time like this,” Ezra cried.

  “Sorry, sir,” Sallah said. “I don’t have visuals.” That was a lie, but she did not wish anyone to see her condition. “I’m accessing the probe garage. There is no damage report for that area. You’ve three probes left. How I shall program them?”

  “Hellfire, girl, don’t talk about probes now! How’re we going to get you down?”

  “I don’t think you are, sir,” she said cheerfully. “Tarvi?”

  “Sal-lah!” The two syllables were said in a tone that brought her heart to her mouth and tears to her eyes. Why had he never spoke her name that way before? Did it mean the long-awaited avowal of his love? The anguish in his voice evoked a spirit tortured and distress

  “Tarv
i, my love.” She kept her voice level though her throat kept closing. “Tarvi, who’s with you there?”

  “Paul, Emily, Ezra,” he replied in broken tones. “Sallah! You must return!”

  On the wings of a prayer? No. Go to Cara! Get out of the room. I’ve got some business to do, Pern business. Paul, make him leave. I can’t think if I know he’s listening.”

  “Sallah!” Her name echoed and reechoed in her ears.

  “Okay, Ezra, tell me where you want them.”

  There was a choking, throat-clearing noise. “I want one to go to the body of the cometary, the second to circumnavigate.” Ezra cleared his throat again. “I want the other to follow the spiral curve of that nebulosity. If the big scope is operable, I’d like bridge readings all along that damned thing. We can’t track it with the telescope we have here – not powerful enough for the definition we need. Never thought we’d need the big one, so we didn’t dismantle it.” He was maundering, Sallah thought affectionately, to get himself under control. Did she hear someone crying through that conversation? Surely Governor Boll or the admiral would have been kind enough to get Tarvi out of the room.

  Then she needed to concentrate on the information Ezra was giving her to encode the duties and destinations of the individual probes.

  “Probes away, sir,” she said, remembering the last time she had given that response. She saw Pern on the big screen; she had never thought that she would again see from space the world she had come to know as her home. “Now I’m sending some data for Dieter to decipher. Avril said she’d killed both Ongola and Kenjo. Has she?”

  “Kenjo, yes. Ongola will pull through.”

  “Old soldiers don’t die easy. Look, Ezra, what I’m sending for Dieter are some notations I made on available fuel. Ongola will know what I mean. And I’ve sent down Avril’s course. She went off in the right direction, but I saw a very odd-looking crystal in that guidance system, one I never saw on the Mariposa when I was driving her. Am I right? She won’t go anywhere?”

  “Once Bitra hits the engine button, she goes in a straight line.”

  “Very good,” Sallah said with a feeling of immense satisfaction. “The straight and narrow for our dear departed friend. Now, I’m activating the big scope. I’ll program it to report through the interface to you. All right?”

  “Give me the readings yourself, Mister Telgar,” Ezra ordered gruffly.

  “I don’t think so, Captain,” she said, glad to rely on the impersonal address. She visualized Ezra Keroon’s thin frame hunched over the interface. “I don’t have that much time. Only the oxygen in my tanks. They were full when Avril let me put them on, but she told me she was switching off the bridge’s independent system. I have no reason to doubt her. That’s another reason why I’m switching the scope’s readings to you. Space gloves are good, but they don’t allow for fine tunings. I just about managed some repairs to the mess Avril made of the console. Jury rig at least, so . . . when someone gets a chance to get up here, most everything will work.”

  “How much time do you have, Sallah?”

  “I don’t know.” She could feel the blood reaching to her calf in the big boot, and her left glove was full. How much blood did a person have? She felt weak, too, and she was aware that it was getting harder to breathe. It was all of a piece. She would miss knowing Cara better.

  “Sallah?” Ezra’s voice was very kind. “Sallah, talk to Tarvi. We can’t keep him out of here. He’s like a madman. He just wants to talk to you.”

  “Oh, sure, fine. I want to talk to him,” she said, her voice sounding funny even to herself

  “Sallah!” Tarvi had managed to get his voice under control. “Get out of here, all of you! She’s mine now. Sallah, jewel in my night, my golden girl, my emerald-eyed ranee, why did I never tell you before how much you mean to me? I was too proud. I was too vain. But you taught me to love, taught me by your sacrifice when I was too engrossed in my other love – my work love – to see the inestimable gift of your affection and kindness. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have failed to see that you were more than just a body to receive my seed, more than an ear to hear my ambitions, more than hands to – Sallah? Sallah? Answer me, Sallah!”

  “You – loved – me?”

  “I do love you, Sallah. I do! Sallah? Sallah! Salllllaaaaah!”

  “What do you think, Dieter?” Paul asked the programmer as he consulted the figures Ezra had given them.

  “Well, this first lot of figures gives us over two thousand liters of fuel. The second is a guesstimate of how much Kenjo used on the four missions he flew and what was used by the Mariposa today. There’s a substantial quantity unused somewhere down here on the surface. The third set is evidently what was left in the Yoko’s tanks and is now in the Mariposa’s. But, I do point out, as Sallah does, that there’s enough in the Yoko’s sump tank for centuries of minor orbital corrections.”

  Paul nodded brusquely. “Go on.”

  “Now this section is the course Bitra tried to set. The first course correction should have been initiated about now.” Dieter frowned at the equations on his monitor. “In fact, she should be plunging straight toward our eccentric planet. Maybe we’ll find out sooner than we knew what the surface is like.”

  “Not that Avril is likely to stand by and give us any useful information as – as Sallah did.” Dieter looked up at the savage tone of the admiral’s voice. “Sorry. C’mon. You’ve the right. And if something goes wrong . . .” Paul left the sentence dangling as he led Dieter down the corridor to the interface room.

  Emily had gone with Tarvi to give him what comfort she could, and Ezra was manning the room alone. He looked as old as Paul felt after the wringing emotions of the day.

  “Any word?”

  “None of it for polite company,” Ezra said with a snort. “She’s just discovered that the first course correction hasn’t occurred.” He turned the dial so that the low snarl of vindictive curses was plainly audible.

  Paul grinned maliciously at Dieter. “So you said.” He turned on the speakers.

  “Avril, can you hear me?”

  “Benden! What the hell did that bitch of yours do?” How did she do it? The override is locked. I can’t even maneuver. I knew I should have sawn her foot off.”

  Ezra blanched and Dieter looked ill, but Paul’s smile was vindictive. So Avril had underestimated Sallah. He took a deep breath of pride in the valiant woman.

  “You’re going to explore the plutonic planet, Avril darling. Why can’t you be a decent thing and give us a running account?”

  “Shove it, Benden. You know where! You’ll get nothing out of me. Oh, shit! Oh, shit! it’s not the – oh, shiiiitt.”

  The sound of her final expletive was drowned by a sizzling roar that made Ezra grab for the volume dial.

  “Shit!” Paul echoed very softly. “It’s not the . . .” – the what? Damn you, Avril, to eternity! It’s not the what?”

  Emily and Pierre, along with Chio-Chio Yoritomo, who had been Kenjo’s wife’s cabinmate on the Buenos Aires and her housemate on Irish Square, took the fast sled to Kenjo’s Honshu Stake. While most of Landing knew about Kenjo’s death and Ongola’s serious illness. There had been no public announcement. Rumor had been busy discussing the “unknown” assailant.

  When Emily returned that night, she brought a sealed message to the admiral.

  “She told us,” Emily said dryly, “that she would prefer to stay on at Honshu to work the stake herself for her four children. She has few needs and would not trouble us.”

  “She is very traditional,” Chio-Chio told the admiral breathlessly. “She would not show grief, for that belittles the dead.” She shrugged. eyes down her hands clenching and unclenching. Then she looked up, almost defiant in her anger. “She was like that. Kenjo married her because she would not question what he did. He asked me first, but I had more sense, even if he was a war ace. Oh!” She brought her arm up to hide her face. “But to die like that! Struck from behin
d. An ignominious death for one who had cheated it so often!” Then she turned and fled from the room, her sobbing audible as she ran out into the night.

  Emily gestured for Paul to open the small note, which was sealed by wax and stamped with some kind of marking. He broke it open and unfolded the thick, beautiful, handmade paper. Then, mystified, he handed it to Emily and Pierre.

  “There were two caves cut, to judge by the amount of fuel used and rubble spilled. One cave housed the plane. ‘I do not know where the other was,’ ” Emily read. “So he did manage to remove some of the fuel? How much?”

  “We’ll see if Ezra can figure it out – or Ongola, when he recovers. “Pierre?” Paul asked the chef for a pledge of silence.

  “Of course. Discretion was bred in my family for generations, Admiral.”

  “Paul,” the admiral corrected him.

  “For something like this, old friend, you are the admiral!” Pierre clicked his heels together and inclined his body slightly from the waist, smiling with a brief reassurance. “Emily, you are tired. You should rest now. Paul, tell her!”

  Paul laid one hand on Pierre de Courci’s shoulder and took Emily’s arm with the other. “There is one more duty for the day, Pierre, and you’d best be with us.”

  “The bonfire! “ Emily pulled back against Paul’s arm. “I’m not sure I – ”

  “Who can?” Paul broke in when she faltered. “Tarvi has asked it.” All three walked with reluctant steps, joining the trickle of others going in the same direction, down to the dark Bonfire Square. Each house had left one light burning. The thinly scattered stars were brilliant, and the first moon, Timor, was barely a crescent on the eastern skyline.

  By the pyramid of thicket and fern, Tarvi stood, his head down, a man as gaunt as some of the branches that had been cast into the pile. Suddenly, as if he knew that all were there who would come, he lit the brand. It flared up to light a face haggard with grief, with hair that straggled across tear-wet cheeks.