It was unlikely that they’d live long enough to enter advanced training, Terry reflected grimly, but he immediately cut off the thought, hoping Kathryn hadn’t picked it up. He couldn’t tell what she was feeling, which dismayed him until he recalled that she had been taught how to close her mind for privacy—she probably didn’t want him to know how scared she was. He tightened his arm around her, aware that he could protect her best by not intruding on her withdrawal.
You can’t force yourself into an altered state of consciousness, he remembered. Aldren had said that brain functioning can’t be changed by force of will, that willpower is actually counterproductive. You have to decide what you intend and then just let go and allow it to happen. He had grasped how to do that when subjected to pain, and had been able to apply the skill to other controls over his body. What use had all that been, if he could not do it now? Determinedly he visualized the mind-patterns he had learned, the symbolic representations of his brain’s functioning; and gradually, breathing very slowly, he lost contact with his surroundings.
Hours passed. At one point he became conscious of pain in his motionless, cramped limbs and made the mental adjustment to not be bothered by it, not rousing enough to affect his lowered metabolism. Underneath, he had a sense that Kathryn was all right, though the telepathic communication between them was no longer at the conscious level. If anything were not all right with her, he would know.
It had all been so good, he thought dreamily. Aldren, the training, his fantastic ability to end pain . . . Maclairn . . . Kathryn . . . Picard . . . Too good to be true. Perhaps it wasn’t true, but was just something that he’d imagined while dying. Such happiness couldn’t last forever. . . .
He had no idea how long it had been when he became aware of Tristan calling, Terry! Terry, come alert now, but don’t disturb Kathryn. Make your way to the tunnel, slowly. . . .
Rousing himself, Terry obeyed, willing Kathryn to remain in her semi-conscious state when he withdrew his arm from her shoulders. It was a effort to move. Vaguely he realized that oxygen deficiency was already beginning to affect him; at the Fleet academy they gave you experience with that, so if it ever happened again you would know you weren’t thinking clearly. You were supposed to change your oxygen tank—there were some in every shuttle for emergency use. If you weren’t wearing a mask you should put one on. Why couldn’t he find his mask? He was dazed, confused; but he couldn’t ignore Tristan’s call. . . .
Pull out a stone at about the level of your waist, Tristan commanded. Then if nothing falls into the space, take out another from further in.
This was senseless, Terry thought, but he did as he was told. The tunnel roof is solid, Tristan assured him. It’s a firmly-lodged boulder. We are taking the top layer of stones from the slide beneath it. We’re almost through now—you just need to remove the ones on your side.
He wondered if Tristan’s psychic viewing power was failing him. Perhaps he could see inside the tunnel clairvoyantly, but he could not be estimating the distance accurately. No matter how many stones he and Merelda had gotten out, they could not have reached beyond the length of their arms, and the tunnel was more than twice arm’s length. Was it wise to use extra oxygen in the effort of lifting heavy stones when it couldn’t possibly do any good?
No matter, Terry decided. The air wasn’t going to stay breathable much longer anyway; if a rescue team wasn’t already close—which Tristan would have told him, if it were—running out a little sooner wasn’t going to make a significant difference. He went to work on the stones, heedless of the damage to his hands, which were soon bruised and raw.
When he freed the stone at the limit of his reach, he saw daylight.
He must be hallucinating, he decided. The light was a long way off. Tristan obviously couldn’t have touched stones in the tunnel’s center. Instinctively, he pressed his face against the opening, gasping at the sudden breath of fresh air. But only for a moment; then he staggered back to Kathryn and carried her to the hole, holding her face close to it.
We’ve got the oxygen tanks from the shuttle, Tristan was telling him. We’re going to send one through; grasp it as soon as you can reach it.
The daylight was abruptly blocked again and Terry almost panicked. Then he saw the end of the tank moving toward him. He reached, and as he grasped it, he felt it move in his hands. What was pushing it? Tristan must have found a long pole of some kind, yet the area was bare; there were no trees in the wilderness on Maclairn. . . .
His hands trembled as he fumbled with the valve and regulator. The mask had been taped to the tank; he helped Kathryn put it on. Already somewhat revived by the air flow from the hole, she drew a few deep breaths and then held it out to him. We’ll take turns with it, she insisted.
Okay, for now. Tristan is sending another, though I don’t see how he propelled the first one, or even how he made so long an opening.
Terry, there’s only one way he could have. He’s a mentor, after all. A lot of the mentors have strong enough psychokinetic power to move stones. It’s no more incredible than melting metal, is it?
You mean he pulled out those unreachable stones with his mind?
He must have. But no wonder it took hours, moving so many is far more exhausting psi work than I’ve heard of anyone doing. It’s a miracle if it didn’t kill him.
Appalled, Terry burst out, Oh, my God! Tristan? Tristan, are you there?
There was no response. But a second tank was now blocking the air hole; had Tristan pushed it, and then collapsed? Had he risked himself to save them? If Tristan had been harmed he would never forgive himself, Terry knew. His remorse over Kathryn’s peril had been tempered by the fact that he would share her fate, but to live on at the cost of Tristan’s life. . . .
He pulled the tank free and put on the mask, belatedly realizing that they were still not out of danger; the oxygen wouldn’t last forever and he mustn’t expend energy on emotional turmoil. Calming his body again, he embraced Kathryn and they sat down to wait. Well before the tanks were empty, the unmistakable sound of a shuttle told them that rescue was near.
The team had been delayed because the only shuttle currently aboard Shepard was down for maintenance due to a problem on its last flight; they’d had to recall and recharge one of those engaged in deploying surveillance satellites. Once on site they were able to clear the stone slide using robotic equipment and shore up the tunnel securely enough for Terry and Kathryn to crawl out. Merelda was sitting on the ground beside Tristan, who lay motionless with his head between her hands. Terry rushed to them, his inner anguish requiring no vocal expression.
He’ll be all right, Merelda assured him. “He’s depleted. He needs time to recuperate, maybe a long time—the kind of psi he used, prolonged over hours, demands more energy than could be summoned by anything short of an extreme crisis. But he won’t be permanently harmed by it. The mind is resilient, Terry, especially for someone with a mentor’s skills.”
She was very pale, and looked near exhaustion herself. “Did you use psi on the stones, too?” he asked in dismay.
“No, I haven’t that talent. But I’m a trained healer, and right now I’m giving some of my energy to Tristan.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll recover.”
“It was all my fault,” Terry mumbled. He turned away and reluctantly submitted to examination by the rescue team’s medical officer, who proceeded to bandage his lacerated hands. He had not attempted to heal them himself, though Aldren had shown him it was possible. He was not sure, now, that he wanted anything to do with the psi powers that had led him into that cave.
~ 23 ~
Terry was taken directly to Shepard since he had been scheduled to return there the next morning. He had no chance to say goodbye to Kathryn, who went with Tristan and Merelda in the other shuttle. Several Maclairnan healers came to the Old Settlement to meet them, and were to stay with them in one of the prefabs until Tristan was strong enough to walk down to the boat landing. There was, of, course, no possibility of comm
unicating with him; Terry could only hope that Merelda would convey how sorry he was.
After debriefing by Captain Vargas, who showed no sign of blaming him for the near-disaster, he felt a little better. Corwin was harder to face, for he knew the mentor would sense the doubts he now felt about pursuing remote viewing. He had vowed that he wanted to develop his psi capabilities when Corwin had warned that it might not always be pleasant. How could he admit that his inner certainty had been shaken?
“It’s not that I’m afraid of facing danger again,” he said, “but how can I trust my own perceptions? How can I know they won’t mislead me?”
“Sometimes they will, Terry. If you’re thinking they’ll make you omniscient, you’re expecting too much.”
“Corwin . . . did I see remotely that there was water there and walls of some kind, or did I see the future precognitively?”
“That’s something we never know for sure. There isn’t any positive way to distinguish the two. I think, though, that if it were precognition you would have had some sense of foreboding. And you didn’t; you felt nothing but happy excitement at discovering your viewing was accurate.”
“Yes, that’s just it. I didn’t suspect anything could go wrong.”
“In other words, you want viewing to be precognition. You didn’t see the tunnel remotely, after all. When you saw it with your eyes, it was up to you to evaluate it, just as much as if you had never done any remote viewing of the site.”
“Oh.” It was true, Terry realized; he had felt that remote viewing ought to suggest the import of what was viewed, he had since the accident anyway. “You’re saying that I’m trying to pin the blame for my own stupidity on my psi powers.”
Corwin nodded. “The viewing you’ve done so far has involved nothing that should trouble you. But Terry, psi can get much more complicated, because precognitive viewings do happen, and you’ll rarely have any means of judging how to interpret them. Even in true ones you will see probabilities, not certainties. Precognition isn’t predestination—what you do, and what others do, will affect the outcome. If that weren’t so, free will couldn’t exist.”
“You mean I could alter the future by how I respond to what I see?”
“Of course. Who can’t, through any kind of sight? There’s no denying that viewing potential futures is a heavy responsibility, but I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”
Terry was too tired to argue, and when Corwin suggested that they schedule another remote viewing session for the next day, he shrank from the idea. He was on the verge of refusal when it occurred to him that this was another instance of what Aldren had described as getting back on a horse. “It’s important,” Corwin agreed. “because if you let yourself start thinking that you’d rather not do this, you’ll become psi-blind; impressions of what you’re trying to view simply won’t rise from your unconscious mind.” And so in the morning, with one of the other mentors aboard choosing targets elsewhere in the ship, he correctly described two out of three.
The rest of the day was devoted to planning Picard’s mission, for it had been certified as ready to fly. That evening Terry briefed the three lieutenants assigned to its crew: his roommate Drew Larssen as engineer and Mikaela Orlov as copilot—presumably the XO had not been blind to their attraction to each other—plus Zuri Kifeda as comm specialist. The first time Drew addressed him as Captain he was so startled that for a moment he didn’t respond.
A normal explorer team on a mission to catalog previously-undiscovered worlds would have included people knowledgeable about geology and exobiology. This had not been thought necessary, since there were experts aboard Shepard who could be brought back later if anything worth investigating was found. Some of the planets—and certainly the asteroids—might have resources that were valuable, Terry knew. When the solar system had been charted several hundred years ago, only potentially habitable worlds were considered. Now extraction equipment was so much more advanced that smugglers in a small ship could mine enough of scarce minerals to be worth carrying. So unlikely as it seemed that anyone would check out this system within the next few years, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.
The chances of their encountering an intruder on this or any trip in Picard were, of course, infinitesimal. Their main mission was to deploy sensor stations on the other planets of the solar system, as well as on the major asteroids most likely to attract prospectors. Satellites, some launched by AI from the cruiser and others deployed from shuttles, had already been placed in high orbit above Maclairn; these more distant ground-based stations would relay to them. That would be mere spot coverage; a jump ship could emerge from hyperspace anywhere. But it would head for a large asteroid or a planet, so sooner or later the sensitive instruments on one of the stations, if not the orbiting satellites, would pick it up. The ideal was for patrollers to reach it before it got close enough to observe that Maclairn was inhabited. They would establish contact and warn it away, saying that Fleet was conducting secret maneuvers in the area, a plausible enough story.
If an intruder wasn’t detected until after its crew had already seen signs of habitation it could not be allowed to leave the solar system. Since the crew would have no reason to suspect this, they probably wouldn’t resist capture; but if by any chance they did, the patroller would use the weapons with which it was equipped. Whether or not force proved necessary, they would be taken aboard Shepard and their ship’s hyperdrive would be disabled, resulting—unless they were Fleet explorer officers who proved qualified to share the secret—in their permanent confinement to Maclairn. Which would not, Terry thought, be an unfair outcome. If they were smugglers, they would get far better than they would if caught within the League.
“If Picard ever does meet an intruder,” Terry pointed out, “we’ll be far enough from Maclairn for a mere warning to be all that’s needed.
“Isn’t it possible that that the excuse of Fleet maneuvers won’t be believed, sir?” Drew inquired. “Patrollers couldn’t have come from anywhere but a cruiser, since they can’t land—but Picard might be suspected of smuggling.”
That was true, Terry realized. If the other ship was a legitimate Fleet explorer its crew wouldn’t attempt an arrest; explorers carried only sidearms. A civilian ship, however, might be more heavily armed. It might assume that Picard was a rival for whatever rich resources the solar system proved to offer.
“It’s too remote a possibility to worry about, at least not until far enough in the future for arrival of intruders to be more likely,” he said. “Still, if we were qualified to use beam weapons it might be a good idea to make some provision for defense.” Unlike a freighter officer he had not been trained in the use of any space-based weapons but those mounted on patrollers, nor, he assumed, had the members of his crew. Fleet was not a fighting force; its need for arms was limited to occasional police actions.
“Captain, I’m qualified,” Drew declared. “I once served on a freighter and we all had to learn fire control, though we never met any pirates.”
So, after discussion with the XO, Terry decided to have a laser cannon installed on Picard, and departure was delayed while this was done. Meanwhile, Drew took a refresher course in a simulator. By that time Terry was familiar with the crew members’ backgrounds. Drew was an excellent engineer who after his brief freighter experience had been permanently assigned to troubleshooting at Centauri Ops Center, and he had assisted Commander Linley with the overhaul of Picard. Mikaela Orlov, as a better-than-average shuttle pilot and flight instructor, was eager to learn to pilot interplanetary ships; and Zuri Kifeda was an experienced comm technician who had spent the past week readying the sensor stations they were going to deploy. None of them besides himself were trained explorers, though they had learned survival skills during basic Fleet training. Hopefully, the need for more advanced preparation wouldn’t arise.
~ 24 ~
There were five planets besides Maclairn in the system, none of which had been explored or even named. The
Maclairnans, of course, had had no time to visit them while their starship was available and no means of doing so after it was gone. Picard had not investigated them when it approached the colony two hundred years ago, although its instruments had recorded basic information about their nature, as had those aboard Shepard. Since arrival, Shepard’s AI had also been tracking the largest asteroids, starting with those closest to Maclairn.
It was with eager anticipation that the team set out for the nearest planet, known as Three since it was the third nearest the sun—Maclairn itself being the second. The plan was to stop at several asteroids on the way, those currently in a position to be intercepted. Others would be visited on later trips. The astrogation data was fed to Picard’s AI before departure; no piloting would be needed until it came time to land.
Terry had not often landed on asteroids; interstellar explorer teams generally concentrated on planets. But during flight training he’d gotten some experience with those near Earth, taking supplies to mining companies, and there was no reason to expect these would be different. It took less than eight hours to reach the first of them—a jagged chunk of rock about five kilometers across, with rough crags bristling from its surface. For some reason the sight of it chilled him, as if some deeply-buried memory were threatening to emerge. But it was, he knew, just the sort of place prospectors would head for, and therefore an ideal place for a sensor station.
Landing was going to be tricky, as there wasn’t much level area. Ordinarily that was the kind of challenge he looked forward to. Now, however, he was on edge for other reasons. It was a strange feeling to be in full charge of the mission—he had not quite realized how much in the past he had relied on the captain to handle any emergencies that arose. Captain Vargas had remarked that he would have less trouble adjusting to command than most young officers because he’d never done much socializing with his peers and so wouldn’t have to go out of his way to discourage inappropriate familiarity. For once, maybe that wasn’t a disadvantage, Terry thought grimly. But he was set apart in a different way now. His teammates’ lives depended on his decisions. They were millions of miles away from any other source of support.
The Rising Flame: Box Set: Defender of the Flame + Herald of the Flame Page 15