Echo (42 page)

Authors: Jack McDevitt

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Adventure, #Fiction

BOOK: Echo

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We continued to roll back and forth. The painting had become loose. We listened to it bang into the treads every few seconds. Conditions meantime got progressively worse as we climbed. We got driven one way, then another. We got tossed on our side. We rode up one set of air columns and down another. We got rolled over, and even turned upside down. “This thing could use bigger wings,” I said.

Belle’s lamp came on. There was a small screen at my left hand. She used it when she wanted to tell me something that she didn’t want the passengers to hear. I don’t think she’d ever used it before when Alex was the only other person in the vehicle.
“We are burning fuel,”
it read,
“at an unacceptable rate. Our effort to maintain headway and stability against the wind is draining us.”

“Orbit?” I asked, keeping my voice down.

“Not a chance.”

Rain burst over us. Then, almost immediately, it was gone.

Belle broke in again, using audio:
“If you’re concerned about the artwork, you may be worrying for no reason.”

“I can guess why.”

“I’m sure you can. It has certainly suffered major damage.”
She showed us a picture. Part of the wrapping had broken loose and spilled out into the sky. Worse, the rear section of the package was crumpling, was being pushed against the treads’ support frame.

“Unload it,” said Alex.

“We—” It was as far as I got: A gust hit us. Even Belle yelped. The lights went out, and the antigravs shut down. Suddenly, our weight was back. The ascent died, and we began to fall.

Backup power came on. We got lights, but they were dim. The engines came back, sputtered, whined, gasped.

And the automated voice—not Belle’s—spoke:
“Main power is no longer functioning. Please shut down all nonessential systems. I am trying to restore zero gee.”

I started turning off everything in sight. Control lamps, navigation lights, sensors, climate control, airlock systems, monitors.

“Chase—?” said Alex.

“We’ve got too much drag.”

“Get rid of it.”

“Doing that now.”

I retracted the treads. If we got lucky, the package would break away. Or at least it might jam into the hold. Anything to get it away from the wind.

I found myself hanging on, counting off the twelve seconds that the retraction system needed to store the treads and close the doors. The control lamps were off, so I wouldn’t get a signal that the maneuver had been successfully completed. Or not. But normally when the doors close, you can hear them. There’s a very distinct
chunk
when they lock down.

The count went past twelve and on to about fifteen, but we got no
chunk
.

Still, I had gotten
some
control back.

“Okay?” Alex asked.

“Getting there.” The wind continued to hammer us, but it had lessened. I was actually able to maintain course. Almost. “I think we’re all right,” I said.

A few minutes later, the power came back, and we were able to take a look at the underside. The doors were more or less closed, but the frame had crumpled. We were dragging it and a sizable piece of the protective covering, but if it was creating maneuvering problems, at least it was no longer playing the part of a sail.

It put Alex into a somber mood. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said. “That was as dumb as anything I’ve ever done.”

“Alex,” I said, “you asked for an opinion, and I told you it would probably be all right. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”

I should confess that, when I started putting this memoir together, I’d intended to leave this sequence out. After all, you want a narrative that makes you look good. That’s the whole point of doing the damned thing.

But a year or two earlier, when I was writing the account of our hunt for the
Seeker
, I was faced with a similar decision. Alex advised me to tell the whole story. “Once you start making stuff up,” he’d said, “everything becomes suspect. Do it as it happened. Let some other idiot write the fiction.”

THIRTY-SIX

It is a natural reaction, when a shadow comes at us out of the darkness, a thing we do not know and cannot grasp, to run. And if we cannot run, we will kill it, if we can. Nothing is more certain. Nor should it be.

—Vicki Greene,
Wish You Were Here

It was ironic. After the gaslit city, followed by three more days of riding in orbit and seeing nothing other than abandoned habitations, we would probably have given up and gone home. But that crazy assassin had been sent out to stop us. So there was something to be uncovered.

It was the middle of the night, ship time, when everything changed. I came half-awake, decided I was cold, and had started to pull the spread over my shoulders when Belle’s voice asked softly whether I could hear her.

“Yes, Belle,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“There are people on the ground. Live ones.”

That woke me up. “Where?” I said. “How many?”

“Looks like five. Possibly more. They’re in boats.”

They were indeed.

Two dories floated on a river in bright sunlight. They were manned by fishermen, using nets and traps. Unquestionably human. We scanned the countryside: It was hilly, mostly grassland with a few trees. A kilometer or so upriver, a cluster of huts, sheds, and piers, surrounded by a wall of trees, occupied the west bank.

Two hours later, we were overhead in the lander. A third boat had joined the first two. The occupants stood up as we passed, shielding their eyes from the sun. Then they all began paddling furiously for shore.

The river was wide and calm. Nine hundred kilometers to the south, it would empty into an ocean.

“Well,” I said, “let’s hope they’re friendly.”

Alex nodded. “Stay inside until we know.”

“Where do you want to land?”

He indicated a spot about fifty meters outside the wall of trees. “Give ourselves a little distance,” he said.

I started down.

Word was spreading. Heads popped out of the huts. People were pointing at us. I thought I saw arguments breaking out.

The villagers wore makeshift shirts and trousers. No hats were in evidence. Belle reported the temperature at a midsummer level. A group of children playing in a small field were being rounded up by two or three women, who herded them back to the center of the village and shooed them into the huts.

Then we slipped down out of the sky and settled onto the grass.

A half dozen villagers were coming hesitantly toward us. “I don’t see any weapons,” I said.

“Good.” He opened the inner hatch. “If anything happens, clear out.”

I put my scrambler in my belt.

He frowned. “You stay here, Chase.”

“I’m not going to let you go out there by yourself.” Actually, I wasn’t anxious to go outside, but I saw no alternative.

“I’m telling you to stay. How many times are we going to have this argument?”

“I’m the captain, Alex. You can’t tell me to do anything. Now let’s go.”

He started to say something,
did
say something, but it was under his breath, and I couldn’t make it out.

“We should have a gift for them,” I said.

Alex looked around. “Okay. You have a suggestion?”

“Hold on a second.” I looked through the storage locker. Picked out a titanium lamp. “How about this?”

“How long will it run?”

“I suspect the lifetime of anybody here.”

“Okay. Good.” He took it from me, and we walked into the airlock. I opened the outer hatch.

“Chase,”
said Belle,
“they’re starting to back away.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “They don’t really know who we are.”

“Anything happens,” Alex said, “
anything
, get back here and clear out. You understand?” I nodded or something, and he wasn’t happy. “I mean it.”

“Okay, boss.”

We were in the middle of a field. And the people were indeed backing up. Into the trees. Some kids showed up and were quickly hustled out of sight. “Not a good sign,” Alex said.

I squeezed past him to get a better look. “What do you want to do?”

“Wait. Let them come to us. We don’t want to do anything that could be interpreted as a threat.”

We stood in the open hatch and waited. They stirred and whispered to one another, and some even came forward a bit, but nobody actually got clear of the woods. I said how they didn’t look threatening and suggested that Alex stay put while I walked over and said hello. “I mean,” I said, “they’re
fishermen
.”

He told me to stay where I was, and, in almost the same breath, added, “Something’s happening now.”

An old man in a white robe advanced to the edge of the trees and stopped to study us. He had a black beard streaked with gray. It had a wild appearance, as if a strong wind had been at it. He carried a staff with something fixed to the top. A piece of wood, I thought, carved into a letter “X,” with a circle enclosing all but the top quarter. He planted the staff in the ground but had to push it down because it started to fall over every time he let go of it. He was a comical figure despite the beard. In other circumstances, it would have been hard not to laugh.

Finally, it stuck in the soil. He raised his right hand, palm facing us, and spoke. The words were indistinguishable, and had a singsong rhythm that seemed
about
us rather than directed
to
us.

Alex raised his hand to return what seemed to be a greeting and stepped out onto the top rung of the ladder. The crowd reacted by backing away even farther. Except the old man, whose only response was to raise the volume of the singsong message he was reciting.

Alex climbed down the ladder. I let him get to the ground. I had put a foot on the top rung when Alex shouted, “Get back!” Something popped in the trees. “They’ve got guns,” he said. He threw himself under the hull.

“Get clear, Alex,” I said.

“I’m clear.”

More gunfire. A bullet ricocheted off the hatch. I pulled back away from it. “Belle. Retract the treads.”

“Chase, Alex is under—”

“Do it. Now!” Retracting the treads meant of course that she was lowering the lander. Giving Alex some cover. “Alex, you okay?”

“So far.”

“Make sure you’re out from under.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Quick, Belle.”

The hull came down fast. There was a jar as we hit the ground. I remember thinking how I’d just gotten finished repairing the treads, which were probably wrecked again.

“Treads withdrawn,”
said Belle.
“Moderate damage to the compartment doors.”

They kept shooting. And it wouldn’t take long before the people in the trees circled around behind the shield that the lander was providing and picked Alex off. The blaster was stashed in one of the storage cabinets, but it tends to kill everybody in sight. It doesn’t discriminate real well, and I’d seen too many people out there who just seemed to be standing around. Not to mention some kids. I checked the setting on my scrambler, leaned out, and fired. The energy beam crackled and people screamed and ran. Some of the screams were cut short as the targets’ nervous systems shut down.

“Got to get you out of there, Alex.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”
I heard the sound of his scrambler firing.

The old man raised the rod and held it in our direction, as if it would act as a shield against Alex’s weapon.

I used the scrambler against him, and he froze and fell over. “Alex,” I said. “Hit the ground. Stay where you are. I’m going to turn the ship around.”

“Do it.”

The firing intensified. Bullets rattled against the hull.

“Don’t move, Alex.”

“Chase, get it done.”

“Belle.”

“Yes, Chase?”

“Lift off. Do a quick one-eighty and come back down so Alex has access to the airlock.”

“Will do. Say when.”

“Now would be a good time.”

The lander went up, just a few meters. The idiots followed it up with their guns, shooting at
it
instead of at Alex.