Dirge (24 page)

“I’m not disoriented!” Seeing her flinch behind the faceplate he hastened to apologize. “Really, I know exactly where I am. Sometimes my words still get all mixed up, but not my actions. Everything is just as I remembered it.” Turning, he indicated the location and position of the repair craft, the jagged hilltop looming in the distance, the shallow circular crater. “This is all correct. Everything is where it should be. Except for that damn rock.”

“Which damn rock?” she inquired quietly. “I’ll help you look for it.” Turning her head, she glanced back in the direction of the assembled group. “We’ll all help.”

Mallory hesitated. It was his rock, his potential vindication, and he wanted to find the damn thing. But it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Maybe he was forgetting something. Or maybe he was imagining it after the fact. Maybe…maybe the Pitar who had visited him in the hospital room had been right all along and his brain was inventing elaborate cover-ups for his debased memory. Panic threatened to rise in his throat like vomit.

“Okay, sure. Why not? Everyone can have a look. The important thing is not who finds the rock but finding it, right?” Smiling tenderly behind her faceplate, Tse nodded encouragement. The others gathered around.

“We’re looking for a flat stone about this big.” Mallory used his hands to trace size and shape in the vacuum. “About eight centimeters thick. No other distinguishing features.”

“What color is it?” asked one of the techs from the ship.

Mallory had to laugh. “Look around. You’ve got a choice of two: dark gray and darker gray. It’s the shape that’s significant.”

The party split, half searching to the left, the other half marching methodically in the opposite direction. When they met unsuccessfully on the other side of the crater they passed each other and kept going. By the time they met again, back at the original starting point, discouragement and the first flickerings of serious mistrust were beginning to make their psychological presence felt among several of the searchers.

“Are there any other identifying landmarks?” Nadurovina probed as gently as she could. It would not do to challenge the patient too forcefully or say anything accusatory. Upsetting him could only have deleterious mental consequences.

She need not have worried. Mallory was already actively upsetting himself. The strain showed clearly on his face.

If he had imagined burying the mollysphere, then maybe he had imagined having it. If he had imagined having it, who knows what else his mind had invented? The presence of the Pitar? Not the devastation of Treetrunk—that was real enough. All too much proof of the atrocity was hanging in the sky on the other side of the small moon. Under incredible psychological pressure and mental stress, had he written on the blank sheet of his memory an elaborate scenario that had never taken place, that was the product of an overheated imagination instead of cold, composed reportage?

He could see the faces of his companions through the transparencies of their faceplates, could see the skepticism stirring in their expressions. Outwardly they remained committed and supportive, but within themselves they were beginning to question, to wonder, and he lay square at the nexus of their mounting uncertainties.

Where was that damn rock? A man could contrive any number of chimeras, but a rock was a real thing: solid and unforgiving, a piece of stellar matter made hard and cold. Ignoring the accusing stares, he focused on the surface on both sides of the crater: scanning, searching, scrutinizing. There were plenty of rocks, hundreds of rocks. Some were the right size, but none were quite the proper shape, and not one was where it had been when he’d first decided on the hiding spot.

“We have to go back.” The voice of the tech reverberated like a bell in Mallory’s helmet: tolling failure, ringing fiasco. He was studying a gauge. “Overall, group air is down to fifteen percent. Return to ship is standard security procedure.”

Tse remained at Mallory’s side. “It’s okay, Alwyn. While the suits are recharged we’ll have something to eat and drink. We’ll talk about it, and you can collect your thoughts. Then we’ll try again.” She smiled hopefully. “Maybe all you need is a fresh start.”

“That’s right.” Though it was not required of her, Nadurovina did her best to encourage him. “If you stepped out of the ship facing the wrong way, you could have started off on the wrong tangent right at the beginning.”

“We’ll recheck the location and orientation of the repair boat, too.” Rothenburg’s tone belied the helpfulness of his words. “If it’s off even a few degrees it would mess everything up.”

Everything was already messed up, Mallory thought apprehensively. The repair craft was properly positioned. He knew that was the case because the cracked hill stood exactly where it ought to be. So did the crater. He knew it was the right crater not only because it was situated precisely where it belonged, but because it was the proper size, shape, and depth. He
remembered
. There was nothing wrong with his memory—unless he was so seriously impaired that his imaginings had become that real to him. If that was the case, then maybe what he thought was reality was in fact the foundation of his madness. Maybe he wasn’t even here, on this runt rock of a satellite. Maybe he was lying in a hospital somewhere back on Earth, with a solicitous but otherwise disinterested Tse bending over him. He’d been given a lot of medication, he knew. Maybe his return to Treetrunk was drug-induced instead of Kurita-Kinoshita powered.

“Alwyn, don’t look like that!” Tse was at his side, gripping his suit and shaking him. “You’re scaring me.”

Blinking, he nodded slowly as he met her gaze. “It’s nice to have company. I’m scaring me, too.” Gently disengaging his arm, he turned to look at and past the crater rim. “This is
right
. Everything is right. It’s just as I remember it. The rock should be here. The recording should be under it.”

He became aware that the two techs were now flanking him. “Mr. Mallory, sir,” one of them was saying inside his helmet, “we’re running low on air. Regulations require that we return to the ship for recharging.”

Angry and confused, he allowed himself to be led back toward the waiting repair boat. Aware that their words were common currency via the suit channel, none of his companions voiced their thoughts or feelings. Vacuum helped to dissipate the growing tension, but could not banish it entirely.

Halfway back to the ship, Mallory halted as if shot. When he whirled to confront Rothenburg, the officer recoiled slightly but held his ground. He did not care for the look on the patient’s face.

“When the technicians from the
Ronin
retrieved my lifeboat, what method did they use?”

“Excuse me?” Taken aback by the abruptness of the question as well as the confrontation, Rothenburg stalled for time.

“How did they reclaim it?” Mallory was in a fit of impatience, not madness. “Did they use a tractor beam from the big ship, did service personnel adjust its position before signaling for it to be taken aboard, did they try to fire the boat’s engine? What recovery techniques were employed?”

“I don’t know,” the major admitted. “But I can find out.” Switching to suit to boat to mothership relay, Rothenburg conveyed the query while Mallory and the rest of the party waited. Not in silence, though, or in contentment.

“Really, Mr. Mallory,” the tech standing on his right declared. “Suit air is approaching ten percent. We absolutely must return to the boat.”

“You go on if you want to.” All of Mallory’s attention was focused on Rothenburg, waiting for a reply, waiting for an explanation. “I’m not finished here yet. Ten percent is more than I need.” At his side, a hesitant but supportive Tse stood with him. With an effort of will, she avoided looking down at her own suit gauge.

Rothenburg finally switched back to suit-to-suit. “Two manned repair craft were used to move your old boat from here to the
Ronin
. They were smaller than the one we came down on, but larger than your lifeboat.”

“Propulsion systems.” With that Mallory turned and began to retrace their original line from the repair ship, not walking deliberately this time but moving in long, bounding strides through the low gravity. Each time he touched down his feet kicked up a cloud of slow-settling dust—dust and small rocks.

Nadurovina was visibly concerned, and Tse’s expression bordered on the frantic; but Rothenburg saw and understood. By running Mallory was not just returning as rapidly as possible to the crater: He was delivering a lesson in physics. Ignoring the rising plaints of the technicians, the major raced after the retreating patient.

Arriving at the crater’s edge he found Mallory once more searching the terrain. Not along the crater’s rim this time, but beyond. Well beyond. Without a word he moved off to one side and commenced hunting on his own. He heard Nadurovina long before she reached him.

“What’s going on? You heard the tech. We have to return to the ship!”

“Five minutes,” the excited officer told her. “Another five minutes. Then we’ll all go back together. Right, Mallory?”

“Right,” the spirited reply came. Some private epiphany had restored the patient’s spirits even as they had revived Rothenburg’s enthusiasm for the mission. “Five minutes. And if we don’t find it then, we’ll come back and spend some real time looking for it. Everybody, five minutes! Look for the rock.”

Tse fell to searching alongside him. “I thought you told us that you placed it on the rim of the little crater, Alwyn. In a line between your lifeboat and the broken hill.”

“I did.” Not looking up, he continued moving methodically over the airless landscape, head down, searching, searching. “But when repair craft came from the
Ronin
to recover my lifeboat, one of them might have positioned itself with its grapplers facing that way.” He rose just long enough to point directly behind them, back toward the waiting boat. “When it fired its thrusters to commence the return to the cruiser, the exhaust blast would have come
this
way.” One arm swept around in a wide, swooping arc that terminated with his hand pointed toward the ragged promontory. “It would have blown dust and debris in the direction of the hill.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “And rocks.”

He nodded vigorously. “Maybe even a few big rocks. Maybe even one shaped like a triangle.”

They found it with six percent air remaining in their suits. There was nothing under it. Another man might have been crushed by the sphere’s absence, but not Mallory. He recognized every rill in the stone, every pore, every crack. It was his rock, the one he had positioned as a marker over the container holding the recording. Half mad at the time he might have been, but the sane half had known what it was doing. Of that infinitely priceless little sealtight there was no sign.

“It’s here.” Carefully he put the rock down. “For God’s sake, everyone watch where you step.” His head was in constant motion, minutely scrutinizing the surface around the feet of his companions as well as his own.

Nadurovina studied the gently rolling, dust-and grit-covered terrain. “We’ll need dozens of searchers. Even with numbers it could take months to find anything in this.”

“If the exhaust blast from the repair vehicle blew a rock this size so far from the crater’s rim, the container holding the recording would have been blown ten times as far.” Rothenburg was looking not at his feet, but off in the distance.

“Not necessarily,” Mallory argued. “It could have been blasted down into the dust, or become caught up against another rock, or the rim of one of these smaller craters. It could be an arm’s length from here, or a hundred.”

The major was nodding. He was doing what he did best, what he most enjoyed: organizing. “Everyone will be properly instructed. We’ll bring shape sensors in, and have some simple mesh boxes made up for sifting dust. We’ll find it.” His tone was decisive.

“Unless it was blown off into space,” one of the techs contended. “The gravity here is so weak.”

“That is a possibility.” The ever-rational Rothenburg was compelled to entertain the unthinkable. “But to push away from the surface the thrusters on the repair craft that retrieved his lifeboat would have been directed downward. I would lay odds that the container is still here somewhere, buried in the dust or jammed up against a redeeming rock.” The muscles of his face were tight. “We have to believe that.”

Had the Unop-Patha chanced to return to the inner moon of Argus V they would have been astonished to find more than a hundred space-suited humans busying themselves like ants on a portion of the insignificant satellite’s surface. Finding humans more than a little baffling anyway, the frenetic activity being carried out in the complete silence of the void would only have added to their bewilderment.

Responding to Rothenburg’s directive, the task force was prepared to remain on station for a month. Settling in for a long, monotonous stay proved unnecessary.

The young ensign who entered the cafeteria two days later had not even taken the time to remove her sweat-stained undersuit. Accompanied by two companions and a senior officer she made her way to the table in the far corner and presented herself to a questioning Nadurovina with a crisp salute. Without further ado she swung a small metallic bag from her side to her front, unsealed it, reached inside, and removed an object that she placed gently on the table.

“Is this it?” she asked without preamble.

Resting on the table, between a chicken sandwich on cracked wheat and a rangeweed salad, was the most important single object in the Arm. It did not look like much. The tumble it had taken from the back blast of the rescuing repair craft’s thrusters had left its surface pitted and one corner crumpled. The seal, however, was intact.

Mallory was surprised at how steady his fingers were as he reached across table and food to pick it up. Almost casually, he disregarded the seal. The lid flipped open. Inside lay a small, gleaming, one-centimeter-in-diameter silvery sphere that glistened metallically beneath the overhead lights of the cafeteria, even though there was no metal in it.