“Worse higher up,” shouted Kelvin to Vinnie, as they lay flat on the frogsled, drenched, mud-spattered, and windblown, gripping on for dear life. “Wind’s about eighty kilometers an hour down here, double that at two thousand meters, double again at ten thousand meters.”
“It’s bad enough here,” yelled Vinnie. The frogsled had almost gone over several times, and would have if Theodore had not already deployed a kind of gripping keel that provided greater stability, again at the cost of slowing their speed even more.
“We are getting close to the eye,” Theodore called back to them. He was strapped in at the front of the sled, the reins in whatever he called his hands. “Would’ve been there hours ago if we could have cut straight across. But we’re getting close.”
How Theodore knew this was impossible to fathom, but an hour later he lifted the keel. The frogs began to jump again, short jumps that made the sled lurch forward with a sucking pop as the surface tension was broken. Kelvin raised himself up slightly, grimacing as the wind cut at the skin on his face that wasn’t protected by mask and goggles. But the wind was definitely weakening. The rushing clouds were slower ahead too, some breaking up and being sucked back behind them, into the eternal circular motion of the storm. He hadn’t noticed before, but it was getting quieter too, the noise of the Roar subsiding as they continued deeper into the eye of the storm.
“The calm center,” said Theodore. He sat up straighter and breathed in deeply, the air no longer quite so full of spray, mud, and particulate fungus. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Kelvin and Vinnie did not remove their masks to take a breath. They looked at each other, then at Mazith. She was lying at right angles to them, behind Theodore, pressed as flat as she could make herself on her stomach, with her head turned toward the clone siblings. Her eyes behind her mud-smeared goggles were shut, her breathing mask tight around her mouth.
Kelvin reached across and tapped her on the shoulder, repeating the movement a second later. Mazith stirred and sat up, grimacing as the wind smacked her wetly in the face. At that same moment, Vinnie snatched Mazith’s heat-beam from her shoulder holster and pointed it at the young officer’s head, finger next to the firing stud.
“We’ve got a few questions, Lieutenant,” said Vinnie.
“Are you really a special communicator?” asked Kelvin.
“Yes,” said Mazith. “Of course I am!”
“Why do we need a special communicator?” asked Vinnie.
“Uh, I guess, Navy HQ thought I could be useful,” replied Mazith. “I mean, there are VIPs who want to know what’s happened to their children, without delay.”
“Maybe true,” said Vinnie harshly. “But I bet there’s more to it. What’s the Rotarua doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Mazith. “Just a patrol. I’m only a lieutenant, I don’t know anything.”
“We know that’s true in general,” said Kelvin kindly. “But we think you might be an exception and actually know something. So why are you really here?”
“To communicate,” said Mazith. “That’s all.”
“How many special communicators has the Terran Navy got?”
“That’s top secret,” said Mazith. “Of course.”
“There are not that many, are there?” asked Kelvin. “Because they can’t be gengineered, right?”
“No,” said Mazith.
“So why send one of these incredibly rare special communicators into the wilds of Venus, into the Swamp, into the Roar?” asked Vinnie. “Please tell us why you’re really here, because otherwise I am—with great regret—going to shoot you, then Kelvin and I will turn around and go back right now and report that the ship was a write-off and you got killed by something along the way.”
“No!” exclaimed Mazith. “We have to keep going!”
“Why?” asked Kelvin.
“Because she … they … there are survivors.”
“Who is she?” asked Vinnie quickly. “And how do you know?”
“I … I can’t tell you,” said Mazith.
“Lieutenant Mazith,” said Vinnie. “You know that Kelvin and I are veterans of the Third Martian Intervention. You know I was an ASAP. I really will kill you if I’m not satisfied with your answers, and we definitely will not bother going any farther.”
“I’m … I’m one of a triplet,” said Mazith. “It’s top secret. Everyone thinks there can only be telepathic pairs, but there are three of us.”
“Let me guess,” said Kelvin. “Your third is on that downed ship.”
“Yes,” sobbed Mazith. “Jezeth’s in one of the survival pods. When they landed, they opened the air lock, and something got in, she said the others were careless, and now they’re … they’re … she doesn’t know what they are, not exactly dead, but not alive, there’s a fungus, she saw a little before she locked herself away … she’s hurt, she can’t send very much …”
“But why put you in a rescue party?” continued Vinnie. “Sure, they lose one communicator but then they’ve still got a pair like everyone else. Why risk that to try and rescue this Jezeth?”
Mazith didn’t answer for a moment.
“Remember what I said about answering my questions,” said Vinnie. Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact.
“Jezeth’s a made communicator,” whispered Mazith. “She’s younger than Lyman and I, eight years younger, gengineered to link up with us, and it worked. Sort of worked … there are … problems. So we have to get her back.”
“Why was she on the ship?” asked Kelvin. He paused, a nasty thought creeping into his brain. “And were there really any VIP kids on board?”
Mazith shook her head.
“All triplets,” she whispered. “Made ones. But they’re kind of … unstable, I guess … they do dumb stuff. Like steal the Jehosophat.”
“They stole the yacht?”
“Yes,” said Mazith. “I don’t know, Jezeth didn’t send to me until they were going down and they realized that they didn’t have a pilot. They had a crazy idea that they could defect to Mercury Inc., their genetic material would get them executive positions—”
“It’d get them vivisected most likely,” interrupted Vinnie. “I’ve seen some stupid young folk in my time, but …”
“Jezeth’s only fifteen,” said Mazith. “The oldest is … was … sixteen.”
“So you think we’ve really been sent here to rescue survivors?” asked Kelvin.
“Of course!” said Mazith. “What else …”
Kelvin and Vinnie looked at each other. They were thinking exactly the same thing, and it wasn’t about World Government trying to rescue a bunch of created telepaths. Far more likely that they’d want to make sure that any genetic information that could enable anyone else to duplicate the feat was destroyed. But to do that, they needed to know exactly where the ship had gone down.
“Tell me,” said Kelvin. “You said that telepathic communicators are always ‘aware’ of each other. Does that mean that you know where the others are? I mean in specific terms, like you could supply coordinates?”
“We always know where our partners are,” said Mazith. “In terms of a direction and distance. But Jezeth is injured or just too scared; I can’t link up with her properly. Otherwise, I could just tell you exactly where to go.”
“It wasn’t Jezeth I was thinking about,” said Kelvin. “Do you know where Lyman is right now, on the Rotarua?”
Mazith shut her eyes and was still for a moment. Then she pointed up at the sky at an acute angle.
“There,” she said. “About 1.2 million kilometers out, coming toward us.”
“So Lyman knows where you are too?” asked Vinnie, catching on.
“Direction and distance,” said Mazith. “But he can extrapolate that on a chart, he can use the … well, there’s a visualization system, to help us plot, that’s one of the experiments with the triplets, because you can triangulate so much better …”
“I reckon they’re on the return path of an e
longated planetary orbit perpendicular to the standard plane,” said Kelvin, looking up where Mazith had pointed. “Can you tell if they’re accelerating on that course?”
“I can only sense the direction and velocity,” said Mazith. “Is this important? I could send to Lyman and ask him.”
Kelvin did a mental calculation of attack paths, ordnance speed, and launch windows. It seemed extremely probable to him that the Rotarua was on a sneaky approach pathway to launch something targeted by courtesy of the unaware Lieutenant Mazith, and after doing that, it would then continue on into the obscurity of deep space.
“I think we’ll keep communication silence for a while,” said Kelvin. “Don’t send anything unless I say so, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mazith.
“You say the young triplet, Jezeth, she’s not sending properly,” said Vinnie. “What is she sending?”
“After she locked herself in the lifeboat, it’s just been flashes of emotion. It’s common in the made triplets; if they get unbalanced, they can’t focus properly, and I have to block out most of the terrified stuff that she does send. It’s like someone screaming all the time. Please, Major. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the program or anything, but I do know my little sister is on that ship. I’ll do whatever you say, but can we please go on and help her?”
Vinnie looked at Kelvin.
“How long have we got if they do launch something once they’ve got the target from the lieutenant here?”
“What!” exclaimed Mazith, her back suddenly rigid, her neck tensed.
“At 1.2 million klicks out, they’re probably coming in at two gees, a spread of the latest-generation tactical multis launched half a mill out …” Kelvin figured it out in his head as he talked. “I reckon we might have just short of an hour once they confirm the target.”
“But … but my orders … we’re meant to rescue the survivors and take the yacht back up!” protested Mazith. “Why would they launch missiles?”
“Figure it out,” said Vinnie. “World Gov doesn’t want anyone else to get the technology to make telepaths. They know most of them are dead already because you told them so. Better to waste a couple of communicators and some reactivated old grognards than to risk someone else’s finding the genetic trove.”
“But I wouldn’t give them my location to be a target!”
“They don’t need to ask you,” said Kelvin wearily. “Won’t your mate on the cruiser just point and say ‘There she is’ when the XO looms over him and asks? I bet you’ve been told to report in when you sight the yacht, right?”
“Yes,” said Mazith. She was quiet for about twenty seconds, then she said, “I … I suppose you’re right. What are … what are you going to do? Shoot me and go back?”
“Nope,” said Kelvin. “I think we’re going to do what they don’t expect.”
“Which is what?” asked Vinnie.
“Find that damn yacht and fly it back up,” said Kelvin. “As soon as we clear the Roar, we start squawking to Venusport, Venus Above, and everyone else about how we’ve successfully carried out the rescue. That’ll bring the picket ships over, the Rotarua won’t attack if anyone’s watching. They’ll sheer off—with all the publicity, Terran Navy has to call us heroes, we sign a few secret forms, and go back to normal life.”
“You hope!” said Vinnie, with a snort. “We have to find the ship in the first place and sort out whatever—”
“The ship’s over there,” said Theodore, who made no attempt to hide the fact he had been listening intently the whole time. “Leastways, I reckon it is, judging from the look of things.”
He did something complicated with the reins, tugging on the secondary nerve ganglions that lined the frogs’ ridged backs. They slowed, then stopped, paddling gently in the shallow water. Theodore slipped over the side and immersed his head completely underwater, the fungal filaments on his scalp waving. When he came back up, he nodded.
“There’s something over in that direction,” he affirmed. “A current of destruction flowing … a burn-off where the ship came down, I guess.”
“I don’t know …,” said Vinnie. “You reckon the Rotarua will be in a launch position an hour from when they know we’re at the location, Kelvin?”
“Yeah, give or take five minutes.”
“But I won’t report we’ve found it,” said Mazith urgently. “I promise.”
“What if Lyman checks in with you?” asked Kelvin. “Could you hold it back? You mentioned receiving emotions, images … he could tell probably, right?”
“Yes, he might,” said Mazith. “But I could ask him not to tell—”
“Don’t be stupid, Lieutenant,” said Vinnie. “He’s up there, on the bridge, surrounded by superior officers. He’d tell them. So would you if you were in his position. He won’t know why they want the location fix.”
“So we’ll have say fifty-five minutes to get into orbit and start shouting from when we see the ship and Mazith gets pinged from the Rotarua,” said Kelvin.
“Doable?” asked Vinnie.
“Yes,” said Kelvin. “If she’s not too damaged. If we can deal with whatever fungus offed the rest of the triplets. If we can—”
“Don’t break out into Kipling,” warned Vinnie. “Shakespeare’s bad enough.”
“It would be easier to shoot the lieutenant and just go back,” offered Theodore.
Kelvin and Vinnie looked at the Leper, who shrugged not so much with his shoulders but with a curious undulating movement of his fungal carapace.
“I’m just saying. It’s not a recommendation or anything.”
“You’d better come with us if we try to lift the yacht,” said Kelvin.
“Nope,” said Theodore. “I’m a Venusian now, got no business in space. I figure if there’s an hour going, I’ll hightail it on the sled. You mentioned multis, but I’m presuming low-yield microfusion, maybe a hand of eight. I reckon there’s a reasonable chance I can get clear of that.”
Vinnie gave him the look.
“Commissioned Engineer,” said Theodore. “Syrtis Spaceforce, before the amalgamation, MBF for a while afterward. Long time ago.”
“Hell of a long time!” exclaimed Kelvin. “Syrtis got subsumed, what, back in ’21 or ’22. That’s ninety years!”
“Lepers live longer,” said Theodore. “Didn’t you see the bumper sticker on the back of the sled?”
“What’s a bumper sticker?” asked Mazith, Kelvin, and Vinnie, all at the same time.
“Ancient history,” said Theodore, with a sigh. “So what are we doing?”
“Lay on, McTheodore and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’ ” said Kelvin.
“What does that mean?” asked Mazith.
“I know,” growled Theodore, and whipped up the frogs.
They found the Jumping Jehosophat three hours later, in the quiet heart of the eye of the Roar. The ship had landed well considering the circumstances, a better landing than Kelvin expected any autopilot to make. The ship was still in one piece, and was only slanted into the swamp at a gentle angle, the nose buried in mud and water some five meters or so, just past the cockpit escape hatch. Looking at it, Kelvin figured that the ship must have been flung out of the storm into the eye high enough to be able to make a series of corkscrewing turns within the calm center, and had then landed on its VTOL fans, only to discover that the apparently solid island beneath it was really loosely compacted mud.
As they sighted it, Mazith’s eyes glazed over. Vinnie had been watching for this, and immediately pushed the young woman over the side into the water, dragging her back onto the sled a moment later.
“Does he know you’ve found it?” asked Vinnie.
“Maybe,” coughed Mazith. “I … I just haven’t been trained to block, I couldn’t help answering—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kelvin. He looked at his watch, a locally made automatic winding timepiece that had no electronics at all. “We have to presume they know we’
ve found it, have the position, and will fire on it. Fifty-five minutes to get into the ship and get out of here. Theodore, you’d better leave now.”
“In a few minutes,” said Theodore. “I’m kind of curious as to what’s got inside that ship.”
“Main air-lock outer door is open,” confirmed Vinnie, as they drew closer. She slipped over the side of the sled into the waist-deep water, heat-beam in her hand. Kelvin followed suit, and a moment later, so did Mazith. “Not good.”
“Nope,” agreed Theodore.
He snapped the reins, and the frogs turned quickly, pulling the sled into position for a quick getaway. But he didn’t leave.
Kelvin looked around. Here in the center, the fog settled like it usually did, but it was thin and he could see at least fifty meters. There was no visible threat, nothing was coming out of the air-lock door, nothing moving around the ship.
“Is Jat around?” he whispered to Vinnie. “Because I don’t particularly fancy going in there myself.”
“Wimp,” said Vinnie. “She’s here. Don’t know how close.”
“Maybe I could contact Jezeth,” said Mazith eagerly.
“No!” Kelvin and Vinnie spoke together. “No contact with anyone, OK?”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Theodore with interest, from several meters back.
“We have to go in,” said Kelvin. “Time’s getting away.”
“Someone’s coming out!” exclaimed Mazith, pointing. “It’s one of the other triplets, not dead after all!”
She started to wade forward as a figure appeared in the air-lock door. A teenaged boy in a bright gold-and-black civilian flight suit, without a helmet. He stood in the air lock and waved one arm jerkily.
“Stay back,” ordered Vinnie. “Lieutenant Mazith! Halt!”
Mazith didn’t obey. She thrashed vigorously through the water toward the open air lock, calling out, “Hey!”
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