Coyote Horizon (33 page)

I nodded, but Carlos seemed skeptical. “That’s a pretty long distance, especially if you aim to go around the mountain,” he said, leaning forward to peer at the screen. “Isn’t that going to drain your fuel reserves?”

“Yes, sir, it’ll be a stretch . . . but it’s either this or try to fly through that thing.” Charlie gave Carlos a sidelong stare. “Of course, if you’re in a hurry, Mr. President . . .”

“No, no. You’re the driver. You know what you’re doing.” Carlos settled back in his seat, then looked at me. He didn’t say it aloud, but I knew what he was thinking:
Better
hope
he knows what he’s doing.

That pretty much settled the issue. The pilot turned the yoke, and the gyro peeled off to the right, putting us on a new course that would take us almost due north, straight across the river toward Vulcan. Now that the aircraft was broadside to the wind, the turbulence became more violent. The gyro bucked like a young shag that had been saddled for the first time, and I pulled Lynn closer to me, putting her head against my chest as I clutched an armrest with my free hand.

The gyro made it across the river in a fraction of the time it had taken the
LeMare
to make the same trip. A little more than an hour after we left Cherokee, we were past the equator and approaching land again. Charlie shed altitude as we came upon Squanto; through my porthole, I caught a glimpse of its dense rain forest, and briefly wondered if the island’s birds and animals were aware that a hurricane was bearing down on them. The sun had disappeared behind swollen clouds, and rain-drops were already beginning to spatter the cockpit windows and drool across the portholes.

We passed over the Vulcan Channel, and suddenly Mt. Pesek loomed directly before us, its broad flanks completely filling the windshield. There was no way the gyro could fly over the summit—it was too high for unpressurized aircraft—so Charlie decreased altitude again until we were flying parallel to its lower slopes, then made the northwest turn that would begin our orbit of the volcano. Once we had the mountain between us and the hurricane, the ride became less choppy; the gyro settled down, and gradually Lynn raised her head from my chest to peer cautiously through the porthole.

Seen from above, Mt. Pesek was astonishing. Although only its steppes were visible, what lay below us was a vast forest, with trees clinging precariously to granite bluffs hundreds of feet tall. As the gyro circled the northwest side, we caught sight of an enormous waterfall, higher than even Johnson Falls on Midland, spilling water from a glacial plateau into a deep gorge. Here and there were clearings where wildfires, spawned by lightning storms, had burned away woodlands to expose the rocky ground beneath, yet even these bare places showed evidence of regrowth; the volcanic topsoil, rich in nutrients, was responsible for the lushness of the forest.

“This is amazing.” From his seat on the other side of the gyro, Carlos stared down at the volcano’s northern slopes. “We have got to come back here again. There’s a whole world down there we haven’t seen before.”

“Maybe . . . but not by boat.” It had been a while since I’d lost sight of water; the Vulcan Channel lay many miles behind us. “And I sure wouldn’t want to bushwhack my way through all that.”

“Why not? Where’s your sense of . . . ?”

“Holy crap!” Charlie yelled. “What the hell is . . . ?”

I looked up just in time to see a mammoth winged shape directly before us. I barely had time to realize that it was a thunderbird before the creature slammed straight into the gyro, colliding with the cockpit so hard that it was as if the windshield had been hit by a giant hammer. Lynn yelped as both Carlos and I instinctively threw up our arms to cover our faces; the windshield remained intact, but as the thunderbird tumbled away, it left behind a spiderweb of shattered glass.

A half second later, there was a sudden jolt from the left side of the aircraft. For a moment, I thought another thunderbird had hit us. Then the master alarm began to shriek and the gyro pitched to the left.

“Dammit to hell!” Charlie shouted. “That goddamn thing just took out the port engine!”

My porthole was streaked with gore, but nonetheless I could see smoke billowing from the nacelle. In an instant, I knew what had happened. The thunderbird had been chopped to pieces by the rotors, but nonetheless it was large enough that most of its carcass had entered the air intake and jammed the turbine.

“We’re gonna crash!” Lynn screamed.

“Shut up!” Charlie clenched the yoke with both hands, fighting for control of his craft. “We’re not going to crash!” He reached forward to flip a switch on his dashboard, and the grinding clatter of the stricken engine abruptly died. “We’re not going to crash,” he repeated, a little more calmly now. “So long as we’ve still got one engine, we can make it to the ground.”

Over his shoulder, I could see the altimeter. Its needle was rapidly moving from the right side to the left. “But we’re not going to make it to Hammerhead either, are we?”

“Nope.” He stole a hand away from the yoke to reach for the wireless. “Mayday, mayday. All stations, this is Mary Zulu Foxtrot five-two, reporting a flight emergency. Midair collision with unknown object, going down on Vulcan. Please respond. Mayday, mayday, calling all stations, this is Mary Zulu Foxtrot five-two . . .”

As he spoke, Charlie pulled back the lever that rotated the nacelles to vertical landing position. The gyro shuddered, its fuselage creaking against the strain, and I looked out my porthole again. The port rotors had gone still, but oily black smoke continued to pour from beneath the cowling, with the nacelle itself still frozen in horizontal cruise mode. Absurdly, part of one of the thunderbird’s wings remained stuck to the air intake, its dark brown feathers fluttering in the slipstream, almost if the creature was trying to help keep the gyro aloft.

Lynn was almost hysterical. She was certain that it was the last minute of her life. I kept an arm around her, telling her again and again that everything was going to be all right, even as the gyro spiraled toward the ground, the pilot continuing to radio for help even as he struggled with the yoke. Through the shattered windshield, I could see treetops racing toward us. If we went down in all that . . .

“You know,” Carlos said all of a sudden, his voice weirdly calm, “perhaps we should reconsider how we explore this planet.”

I stared at him, my jaw sagging open in amazement . . . and then I broke out laughing. He gazed back at me, a wry grin on his face. “You might have something there,” I managed to say. “Maybe next time . . .”

“Get your heads down!” Charlie yelled. “We’re going in!”

I barely had time to catch a glimpse of the small clearing that had miraculously appeared below us. Then I bent double in my seat, pulling Lynn down with me. My head was between my knees when the gyro hit the ground. The windshield broke apart, spraying glass across my back and neck. Charlie cried out in pain, and Lynn screamed, and then it was all over.

Charlie Banks got the worst of it. His forehead was lacerated by flying glass, and his neck was badly sprained from being whiplashed against the back of his seat, but otherwise he was okay. When Lynn raised her head, I saw blood on her lips, and thought for a moment she’d suffered internal injuries, but all she’d done was bite her tongue. Both Carlos and I were unhurt, although my hands trembled for a long time.

The gyro was totaled. Carlos managed to pry open the side hatch, and we climbed out, with Charlie using our point of exit since his own hatch was staved in. We saw then that, although the landing gear had buckled, at least it had absorbed most of the impact. We hastened to get away from the aircraft, but there was no danger of explosion; Charlie later told us that he’d voided the hydrogen cells in the last few seconds we were still airborne, a precaution that probably prevented the aircraft from blowing up when we crashed. But one look at the ruined nacelle, with its twisted rotors and burned-out engine, and I knew that the gyro had just become a permanent human landmark on this little part of Coyote.

I had to hand it to Charlie. In the couple of minutes between the thunderbird colliding with us and the gyro hitting the ground, he’d located what was probably the only clear and relatively level place within a couple of square miles. The clearing was about a third of the way up the mountain, a few thousand vertical feet below the tree line, one of those places we’d noticed earlier where the vegetation had been burned away by a wildfire and hadn’t yet regrown, leaving a bare, rock-strewn patch just large enough for a gyro to make an emergency landing.

A hard rain was coming down on us; the hurricane may have missed Vulcan, but nonetheless Mt. Pesek was receiving squalls from its blowoff. We still had seven hours of daylight left, but there was no telling how long it would be before we were rescued. Charlie had radioed our position on the way down, yet no one had responded before we crashed; with the wireless out of commission, we didn’t have any way of getting in touch with Fort Lopez. However, once Carlos found a survival pack beneath one of the passenger seats, we discovered that it contained a satellite transponder. Although we couldn’t use it to send or receive verbal messages, the instrument was able to transmit a repeating signal, including our coordinates. I carried it to the center of the clearing and unfolded its dish, using my watch’s electronic compass to align the dish along the proper azimuth for its signal to be received by one of Coyote’s geostationary comsats. I held my breath when I turned it on, but a red diode on its panel showed me that the instrument was still in good working order.

That done, we went about setting up camp. While Carlos used the first-aid kit to tend to Charlie, Lynn and I unfolded a tarp from the survival pack and lashed it between some trees on the uphill side of the clearing. Once we had shelter from the rain, she and I gathered fallen branches and twigs, digging beneath leaves to locate ones that hadn’t been soaked. A few feet from the shelter, I carefully arranged the wood as a small teepee and surrounded it with loose stones, then used a fire-starter from the pack; a few minutes later, we had a campfire. The pack also contained a small supply of ration bars, but I hoped that we wouldn’t be there long enough to have to rely on them.

Carlos cut up a seat cushion to fashion a neck brace for Charlie; as soon as Lynn and I set up the tarp, he moved the pilot beneath it and made him lie down, propping his head up on the empty pack. Charlie soon went to sleep, and although Lynn volunteered to watch over him, it wasn’t long before she’d dozed off herself, her head cradled between her knees. I was content to let her; the crash had scared her out of her wits, and she needed rest just as much as Charlie did.

That left Carlos and me to stand watch. The rain had let up by then, so we sat on the ground next to the fire, where we could keep an eye out for a rescue gyro. Although we hadn’t spotted any animals other than the occasional glidemunk, just to be on the safe side I reloaded my rifle and kept it by my side. After that, there wasn’t much left for us to do but hope that we wouldn’t have to spend the night on Mt. Pesek.

As it turned out, we had a good view of the mountainside. Beyond the edge of the clearing, the northern slope stretched away as a vast, unexplored forest, a thin mist hanging above the treetops. Just beyond the visible horizon lay the North Sea, the widest point of the North Circumpolar River. Every so often, we caught sight of thunderbirds soaring overhead; now that we could see them a little better, it was evident that they had a wingspan of nearly eight feet, and their circling patterns indicated that they were raptors, possibly related to swoops. Despite our circumstances, Carlos was fascinated by the vista. If we hadn’t been awaiting rescue, I think he might’ve packed up his gear and wandered down the mountain, just to see what he could see.

“I’m going to have come back here sometime,” he murmured, his arms crossed together upon his knees as he warmed his boots by the fire. “I just think I’d like to do it differently, though.”

I recalled that he’d said much the same thing just before we crashed. “Uh-huh. Next time, we gotta watch out for high-flying birds. Especially the big ones.”

“Well, yeah . . . but that’s not what I mean.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking about the ExEx, especially about what happened to you. I couldn’t say so while we were still aboard ship, but that shouldn’t have happened. You were careless . . .”

“I know, I know.” Using a branch to stir the fire, I shook my head. “I’m really sorry about that. If I hadn’t . . .”

“Let me finish.” He raised a hand to shush me. “Yes, you were negligent . . . but, hell, my grandson shouldn’t have even been on board in the first place. An expedition like this is no place for a kid his age. In fact, I’m not even sure if half of the scientists on the
LeMare
should be there. They’re book-smart, sure . . . but how many of them would know how to handle a situation like this?”

“You’ve got a point.” I remembered the number of times I’d had to stop naturalists from blindly charging off into rain forests without first considering what might be lurking out there. Scientific interest is no excuse for lack of common sense, but that seldom occurred to a lot of the university students aboard the
LeMare
. “Maybe survival training . . .”

“No. Not just that. Something more . . . knowledge of how to live in the wild, without having to rely on a guide to keep them out of harm’s way. Without even having a ship as home base. Just the clothes on your back, and being able to use a rifle as well as a microscope. That’s what we’re going to need if we’re going to explore the rest of this world.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Charlie. “Kind of like the Militia, you mean, only with a different set of skills.”

“No. Same skills . . . just different priorities.” Carlos seemed to think about it for a moment. “Sort of an exploration corps,” he added, then he grinned. “In fact, that’d be a good name for them . . . the Corps of Exploration.”