Shadow World (19 page)

127

Cara reached out to him in the same instant as the Elpind.
Screaming won't
help,
she told herself sternly as the three of them briefly clung together.

Screaming won't help at all. Think of something practical to do.

It occurred to her then that the authorities would need a complete record.

Activating the camera steadied her.

"I guess we should search the ship ... try to locate any other survivors ..."

Cara attempted to swallow. Sometime during the crash she must've

screamed--only that would explain how raw her throat felt. She stared at her human companion. Even in this light, he was pale. "Mark, are
you
okay?"

He nodded, taking a deep breath, and she could sense him doing the same thing she was: trying to push away the emotional reaction to this carnage until there was time to deal with it.

"Hin wil examine these units for survivors," Eerin said.

"I'll check the lounge." Mark's voice was a little steadier. "Everyone watch for first-aid kits. Or any of the crew."

"I'll come with you," Cara told him, reluctant, for the moment, to let Mark out of her sight.

"Wish I could remember that layout ... up near the crew quarters, I think, but maybe near the storage lockers ..." He was mumbling almost to himself, and Cara realized he was still talking about the medical kits. She waited for him to move, but he didn't. Finally she took his arm.

"Mark," she said, "let's go."

"Yeah ..." But still he didn't move. Cara realized that he was afraid to leave the chamber. She thought she could guess why. "Do you think it'll be worse out there than in here?"

He nodded somberly. "This compartment is supposed to be the safest, strongest part of the ship. If the hiber chamber looks like this ..."

"We'd better find out the worst," she said after a moment.

Mark nodded and led the way, stooping low to get through the doorway's distorted frame. Cara followed, and found his fears well-founded. The destruction in the hibernation chamber had been only a preview. What she saw as she emerged into the remains of the
Asimov's
forward lounge was the real thing.

A blast of hot, dry wind blew into the lounge from a huge rip in the bulkhead.

Outside they could see a patch of naked

128

rock and sand, sizzling beneath a pale, greenish blue sky. Cara stepped to the lip of the tear and gazed out.
This is Elseemar,
she thought dazedly.
I'm
on an alien planet.

Loosely packed soil, dark brown and sandy-looking, streaked with red, stretched away as far as she could see. Boulders, some of them nearly as large as she was, studded the uneven ground.

It's a desert,
she realized.
Eerin said Elseemar had them.

Deep gouges scored the desert floor. The
Asimov
had slid a long way, a careening, crooked slide as first one side of the diamond, then the other, had grated along the ground. Shading her eyes against the harsh daylight glare, Cara let her eyes follow the tortuous path the ship had taken. Scattered everywhere, like confetti along a parade route, were bright colors: cushions from the lounge furniture, bed coverings, luggage and clothes from the wrecked cabins, tapes in their glossy containers, shoes, toys.

Cara squinted, staring harder, then abruptly closed her eyes, swallowing against nausea. Some of those bright bundles were
people,
flung out on the desert as carelessly as their belongings. Faces of the people she'd met at the Captain's Night party flashed through her memory, and she shuddered.

Which ones would she find out there on the sand?

Mark had taken a quick look over her shoulder out the torn side, then moved away. Cara knew what he was doing behind her--searching for survivors in the destroyed lounge. Steeling herself, she turned to help him.

A ragged line of people, those lucky enough to ride out the crash in the padded, undamaged units, were by now trickling out of the hiber room into the lounge. A brawny male Simiu headed the line.

Cara stepped out of the way as he moved toward the giant fissure in the side of the ship, then gracefully leaped over the ragged plas-steel rip, landing effortlessly on the desert floor. He stood on all fours, looked around, then he turned and waved, beckoning the next being in line, an Apis. Spreading her wings, she flew through the hole to land beside him.

Ignoring the humans and other beings from the hiber chamber who now crowded to see out, the big alien and his small companion moved away, out of sight.

129

"Cara! Over here!" Mark was across from her on the port side of the lounge, with Eerin beside him. The two were struggling to move aside a metal storage locker that had been full of holo-vid cassettes. The bolts holding it against the bulkhead had ripped loose, and it had fallen over.

From the urgency of their movements, Cara guessed that someone was trapped beneath it, and she dashed across the uneven deck to help.

Grunting with effort, they managed to shift the huge thing to the side slightly.

Their shoving uncovered two beings wedged into the corner made by the fallen cabinet--two male Wospind in red tunics. One heen lay facedown and obviously dead, the back of his head crushed to a bloody ruin. Biting her lip, Cara looked away, watching Eerin as hin crouched down in the newly cleared space by the other one.

The other male Wopind lay on his side, half across the dead one's legs, his own legs and the whole lower half of his body still trapped beneath the heavy metal cabinet. Cara saw his back move as heen breathed.

"It looks like most everyone got out of the lounge before we crashed, or else they were thrown out during it," reported Mark quickly. "I only found four people. Well, five, counting heen." He pointed at the dead Wopind. "This one"--nodding at the second Wopind--"makes six, but he's different--still alive."

"Should we try again to get this cabinet off him?"

"I don't think we can. And even if we could ..." He shrugged and shook his head.

Cara nodded. The Wopind surely had serious internal injuries and bleeding, not to mention the obviously broken bones.

Eerin said something in Elspindlor, and incredibly, the Wopind opened huge sea-green eyes. They were unfocused and cloudy with pain, but after a moment, heen spoke in a weak, raspy croak. "Heen-see ..." he gasped--or that's what the word sounded like to Cara.

Eerin repeated the word, sounding upset. Moving quickly but carefully, hin unhooked the fastenings on the Wopind's loose tunic, then laid back the flap.

Cara stared incredulously.

"A

baby! Damn!" Mark exclaimed. "I never saw any of them with a baby!"

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Cara's heart lurched with pity. "It's so little," she breathed. The alien infant, softly fuzzy and the same light honey-brown color as its parent, was about the same size as a kitten, though longer and thinner. The baby clung to the wiry mat of its father's chest hair with its hands and feet just the way Cara's kitten back home had hung from her clothes by its sharp little claws.

And it was just as hard to get loose. At Eerin's touch it uttered a series of piercing wails and dug in deeper. Eerin hastily let go. The baby whimpered pitifully.

"Hin's afraid," said Mark.

Eerin looked up at them, speaking English for Cara's benefit. "This one is a hinsi, because it is so small it is still nourished by the father's feeding glands.

The child appears to be six or seven of your weeks in age."

Feeding glands? The males suckle the infants?
Cara's eyes flicked to the hijacker's hairy chest. She didn't see anything that looked like nipples, but the tunic and the baby itself obscured part of her view.

The Wopind stroked his child, making soft, crooning sounds. Clearly the effort was costing him. He paused a moment to look up at Eerin with those huge, pain-filled eyes and uttered a few more gasping words.

Eerin reached across the injured hijacker and beneath the dead one's tunic, groping under the body between chest and floor. Cara realized immediately what hin was searching for.

There was no trouble plucking this baby off its parent. Eerin's hand emerged with a tiny, fuzzy white creature dangling from it, totally limp.

"Is hinsi ... dead?" She could hardly say the word.

"No. Hinsi breathes." But Eerin looked grave as hin examined the little creature, gently moving its limbs with a forefinger. "Hin believes hinsi is hurt."

"I'll hold hinsi," Cara offered, reaching down. Eerin hesitated a moment, then handed the baby to her.

Warm and silky soft, the infant felt incredibly fragile in Cara's hands. She could feel its rib cage and even its sharp little hipbones. Sudden tears stung her eyes. Carefully she eased it up to cuddle in the crook of her elbow.

The other child had quieted. Weakly, the father disentangled

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the fierce grip of its tiny orange hands and feet. Eerin reached to help, then lifted the baby away from the Wopind's chest. The child began wailing immediately.

The Wopind spoke in that low, weak voice again.

Eerin, trying vainly to soothe the sobbing baby, looked up. "The father says this one's name is Terris and the other is Misir. This one knows death is close, and heen begs us to take and care for the hinsi."

Mark sighed, edging around until he was able to kneel in the small space next to his pair partner. Absently, he reached out to run a gentle finger down the spine of Terris' narrow back. "Of
course
we'll look after them. We won't just leave them lying on the deck! We'll take care of them until help comes."

Cara was surprised by Terris' reaction to Mark's touch. Shivering all over, the baby swiveled hinsi's little head to regard him with big green eyes like its father's. Hinsi's crying ceased, until it was just a soft whimper. Mark didn't notice the infant's sudden fascination with him.

Eerin shook hin's head, looking dubious. "Heen wishes us to take them to a settlement," hin explained, "where we can find a nursing male to care for them."

"We happen to be in the middle of a desert, thanks to heen and heen's bunch." Sudden bitterness colored Mark's voice. "The babies are stuck here with us. All we can do is--"

He broke off, surprised, because the hijacker reached out a long-fingered, trembling hand to tug at his pants leg. The dying alien whispered a word, gasping with the small exertion.

"Pocket," translated Mark, leaning over to check the Wopind's tunic.

The baby began to cry again. Cara saw the father give it a worried look, but he made no move to take the child back.

"He's got a plotting map!" Mark drew forth a small, wafer- thin instrument and quickly activated it. "With the whole planet in memory! Let me see if the location sensor's working. Where'd he get this thing, anyway?"

"The CLS has placed satellites in orbit around Elseemar, and maps were made from the images they produced," Eerin explained over the baby's crying. "The researchers all have them."

132

"Then I'll bet he took it off the kidnapped Heeyoon, the one the Wospind forced into piloting for them."

Terris' steady cries were bothering Cara. She reached around Mark with her free arm, intending to pet the child, as he had done, to quiet it, but at the approach of her hand, it went into a yelping fit.

"Eerin, are you sure that baby's not hurt, too?" Mark asked, giving Terris a concerned look. Then the tiny light he'd been waiting for blinked on, and his attention returned to the map.

"Hey, all right! The sensor's working. Here's where we are." He pointed.

"Thank God we're not in the middle of the desert; we're about fifty kilometers from its edge. There are mountains not too far away, and settlements all through them."

The young man glanced down at the injured hijacker. "Maybe there's one close enough to make your request possible-- and get us some help for the survivors. Eerin, look at this map and see if you recognize the names of any of the closest settlements." He held the instrument, since Eerin's hands were full with the squirming baby, where both hin and the hijacker could see the small square display.

Eerin began to question the Wopind.

Hin's questions, Cara decided, watching the exchange without

understanding a word, were designed to spare the fading alien as much as possible; the questions were long while the whispered answers from the hijacker were extremely short.
Yes or no answers,
thought Cara.
Maybe a
coordinate here and there.

Whatever they were, Eerin, and Mark, too, seemed satisfied each time.

Bright flickers leaped from point to point on the map's tiny grids as Mark's fingers carefully touched one programmed key after another.

After several questions they paused to let the injured Wopind rest a moment.

He was noticeably weaker. Mark looked up at Cara.

"There are three settlements within reasonable walking distance," he told her. "Two of them were founded by Wospind leaving the cities and moving deeper into the mountains. In fact, he says the group that took this ship was using the larger of the two for a base camp for a while. Then they moved closer to Lalcipind where they could take action against the WirElspind, 133

keep an eye on activities at the medical research lab--"

"You mean destroy it," Cara interrupted.

"Eventually, yes." Mark frowned. "We don't know what kind of communication Orim might have maintained with hin's former base camp.

Even if none, it would hardly be a good idea to walk into a Wopind settlement and ask for help."

"I agree. What about the third place you mentioned?"

"He called it a 'nahah.' That's the Elpind word for a very small, walled settlement. They cultivate sestel, wilbre vines, and mreto nuts. Sometimes the population is no more than one big extended family."

Eerin indicated hin had another question to ask, and Mark broke off to listen.

The hijacker started to answer, then his face twisted in a spasm of intense pain. He tried to speak, but choked instead. Then he began to cough in hard, painful spasms. By the time the attack ended, the Wopind was limp. His eyes were closed, and his breath came in wheezing gasps.