Starfarers (37 page)

“However, it may have helped discourage the Tahirians.”

“I doubt that. Would we humans let it deter us? I think Ajit must be right in his opinion, the society went more and more conservative for a variety of reasons. Although—”

The wind shrilled. “Yes?” prompted Nansen after several seconds.

“I don’t know.” He heard the trouble in her voice. “Something else in the equations—what they imply—Emil says en doesn’t know. It’s obviously not common knowledge, at least not in this era. As if—as if it is so terrible that none of those who do know care to speak of it.”

Nansen recalled the hint that Peter had refused to clarify. “Something not obvious to every theoretical physicist. Something we probably wouldn’t take on faith. I think we can—you and Hanny can get help, however, in working it out yourselves.”

“I have an impression the Tahirians learned it at the black hole, perhaps from the beings there.”

“And fled from it?”

“We are not sure, Ajit and I.”

He thrust uneasiness from him. “
We
can go and learn.”

“Perhaps,” she said with care. “I think we would also need Tahirian help in dealing with them, the Tahirian … feel … for quantum mechanics. Surely this … life … is a quantum-level phenomenon.”

“Oh, we’d have Tahirians happy to sign on. Emil, Esther, Fernando, Colin, Stefan, and more. We’ve infected them with dreams of a new age of discovery.” Nansen smote fist in palm. “
Dios mío
, what a discovery yonder! It could change our whole
perspectiva
on—on everything. If science finds life is not purely material—Oh, Wenji!”

He stopped in the middle of the field. She did, too. He whirled about and embraced her. A shadow flew across them. It went past and the sunlight struck blindingly.

He let go and stepped back. “I beg your pardon and Ajit’s,” he said. “Once again I do.”

She smiled. “What, shall the captain never show his feelings? Don’t freeze into that armor of yours, Ricardo Nansen. Stay ready for your own time.”

Seen by
enhanced starlight, the planet on the ground was black, gray, white, here and there a steely blue shimmer. Cleland and Kilbirnie rode over a valley buried under two kilometers of ice, a landscape riven, pocked, often tilted up in great blocks. Afar reared a conical mountain. A few kilometers behind them, a murky escarpment cut off the opposite horizon. Atop it
Herald
sheened tiny against the unnaturally brilliant constellations. A shelter dome had been erected nearby. Aboard the boat, scanning through its optics, Colin followed the humans’ progress—enviously?

The pair sat on a carrier robot. Gear secured to it hid most of the long body. A balloon bobbed overhead at the end of a three hundred-meter cable, bearing instruments to study the ghostly atmosphere, like a grotesque moon. The thud of the robot’s six feet, conducted through its metal, was the only sound that came to the riders.

They had said little since they left camp. Cleland was occupied with his visual recorder, surveyor, gravitometer, and whatever else he could wield in the saddle, or simply with gazing around. Kilbirnie lacked his professional appreciation, but the country was interesting, unique, in its stark fashion. Besides, conversation had become a bit difficult. There was a certain new tension between them, unexpressed, not unfriendly; two people and one nonhuman alone on an entire world. …

Yet when at length Cleland spoke into his radio transmitter he sounded nearly cheerful. “Whoa, Dobbin.” He
touched controls. The robot stopped. Twisting his neck to see her, he said, “You can get off now and stretch your legs.”

“Whoosh! Best word I’ve had since ‘Breakfast’s ready.’” Kilbirnie dismounted, trotted ten or twelve meters over the rough surface, and began to do limbering exercises as well as possible in a spacesuit. “Why here?”

Cleland had descended, too. “Several considerations. We don’t want to go beyond sight of the boat or ready return to her. This is a promising spot to take what measurements we can, seismic, isotopic analysis, the works, and a core down to the rock.”

“How can you tell?”

He smiled shyly at her through his helmet, across the ground between under the stars and the swaying false moon. “A hunch, based on experience. We may get some notion of where these volatiles came from. And, of course, what’s going on in the solid body. Solid-liquid, I should say. To judge by what I’ve been able to observe and guesstimate so far, the molten component of the core is huge.”

“Not so huge as my thirst for beer will be when we return to camp. Aye, let’s get busy.” Kilbirnie ceased her motions and started back to assist him.

The glacier rumbled, as if the sound going through it were a giant machine. A shock threw Cleland off his feet. He staggered up, to see the wave of ruin rush across the valley. Ice split, sundered, spun aloft in flinders, crashed down, and shattered into dust that glittered like tiny stars.

He saw it gape open at Kilbirnie’s back. She lurched and went over the edge, out of his sight.

Quake! Shouldn’t be! And just here, just now!
“Jean!” he screamed. A grinding answered.

He stumbled over frozenness that still trembled, to the verge of the cleft. Six meters wide and fifty long, it plunged into sudden gloom. He dropped on all fours and stared over.
Ten meters down
, he gauged in a part of his mind not lost in nightmare, ten meters down to a bottom covered with broken chunks. In amplified light the sides shimmered an outrageously
delicate blue. Kilbirnie was a blot of shadow and glints. “Jean!” he yelled again.

“Aye,” he heard. The mass had screened off their radios.

“Are you hurt, darling?”

“Not badly. I didn’t fall, I slid and rolled.”

“I’m coming.” He moved to crawl over the edge.

“No, you gowk!” Her shout knifed his eardrums. “Not both of us! Too steep. We canna climb back.”

Another quake growled and shuddered. It was less violent than the first, but pieces of ice cracked off and rattled into the depths. “I’ll call Colin—”

“No! En’s only learned to lift the boat into space. Trying to land here, he’d crash her. Go get a line and come haul me out.”

Numbed, he backed off. “Colin,” he said idiotically, “hang on. Tell ’em when
Envoy
comes over the horizon. Wait for me.”

The ground shook anew. More lumps broke free and fell. Riding the robot at full, reckless tilt, he’d take at least an hour to reach the scarp, climb it, and fetch a cable. And another hour to return. How much turmoil did the planet have left? It shouldn’t have had any. A molten metallic ball should quickly have reached equilibrium and spent the next few billion years quietly cooling off. But—currents in it, differential congealing, unsettled crust?—he had come here hoping to do real science, hoping to find surprises.

He ran toward the robot. The glacier groaned underfoot. The balloon swung on high against darkness at the end of its tether.

“Yes!”
For a second Cleland’s vision blurred, tears of joy.

No time to waste, though. He started the winch. While it reeled in the line, he got out a small ion torch. It was intended for assembling parts of the geophysical observatory he had meant to establish here. Too bad. No, glorious. He thanked the God in Whom he did not believe.

Ten meters, make it twenty to be sure, don’t stop to pull in any more. The torch flared, wire glowed white and parted; the balloon wobbled off, trailing a tail of the rest. The equipment
it bore away—
An offering for Jean’s life
, he thought.
Superstition? Never mind, if it works
. He uncoiled what he had retrieved, slashed it free of the winch, looped it around his shoulder, and headed back.

Again the valley shook, and again, and again. Lumps tumbled into the crevasse. A few struck Kilbirnie, glancing blows that sent her asprawl. She bounded up at once, for the wreckage on the bottom was shifting about as the temblors rolled, grabbing like jaws that could bite armor and bone in two. She danced for her life upon them, across them. She wolf-howled, half in defiance, half in glee. She was too busy for terror. But she could know that in this moment she was totally alive.

Cleland fought his way to the rim. He laid the cable down, made a loop at one end for a stirrup, secured it with a quick torch blast. “Do you see me?” he called. “I’m lowering a line to you from here; Can you find it?”

No response. The last quake ebbed away. He lay on his belly, helmet over the edge, and peered, frantic. A sob caught in his throat. She was there, crawling over the chaos in his direction. He payed out the cable, felt it slither along the ice walls and knock on the chunks below. She reached it and took hold. He backed a short distance off for safety’s sake, rose, threw a bight over his waist, and began to haul, hand over hand. It went slowly, friction and weight allied against him. He gasped. Should he have brought the robot and its winch? He’d been in too big a hurry to stop and think, and it was too late now. His arms ached, pain cut into his hands through the gloves. Still he hauled.

Over the top!

He kept stance till she had crept well clear of the gap. Then he let go and rushed to her. Once he tripped and fell. She rose as he did. He saw that her radio antenna was gone, doubtless the whole set bashed out of commission. But she stood there, swaying a bit, gripped at him through her helmet, and opened her arms to give him a hug.

A rapid star lifted over the scarp. Cleland set for relay via
Herald
. “She’s okay!” he cried to
Envoy
. “Do you hear? She’s all right!”

The ride
back to the boat was not entirely silent. They exchanged some words by touching helmets together. Mainly she assured him that no bones were broken. However, she wasn’t unhurt. Though a spacesuit resisted impacts, shock was transmitted. Also, she’d been thrown down and tossed about more than once. He rigged a harness to keep her in the saddle behind him. As they rocked along, he felt her slump forward against him, asleep.

The jolting climb up the cliff roused her. When they stopped at camp and he dismounted to help her off, he saw how she set her jaw against pain. Colin stood anxiously by in ens own suit, clasping a parleur. Kilbirnie took it from en and wrote a message. Cleland couldn’t see what it was. The Tahirian seemed to protest. Kilbirnie made an emphatic gesture. Colin yielded—nonplussed?—and set to work unloading the robot. Kilbirnie tugged Cleland’s arm and pointed at the shelter.

She leaned on him, limping, as they made their way to it. Here the ground was naked dark metal, some places jagged, some almost mirror-smooth, under the fantastic stars.
Herald
stood upright on her jacks, a shining watchtower. Beyond lay the dome of the shelter and the adjacent squat housing of its power unit—laboratory, workshop, and home for the three living creatures on the world. While they waited for the airlock to exchange atmospheres, he and she felt in their faces the infrared light that baked the skins of their spacesuits free of a cold their flesh had better not touch.

They passed through to the cramped, crowded interior. Its brightness turned viewports into circles of black. Three flimsy partitions marked off the sections where she slept, he slept, and they took care of personal hygiene. Colin’s arrangements were out amidst the assented apparatuses; privacy was irrelevant to en, here, and maybe not even a Tahirian concept. The humans took off their helmets and breathed warm, sweet-scented air. “Ahh,” Kilbirnie sighed.
“’Tis like coming in from the final exam for a pilot’s commission to a friendly pub.”

Despite the jest, her voice had been ragged. “How—how are you?” Cleland stammered.

“Bruised, battered, thirsty, and bluidy damn glad,” she laughed. “Also overdressed, both of us.”

“Yes. Let me help you—”

She accepted, though the outfits could be donned and doffed single-handedly. Sweat plastered her skinsuit to the lean body. He stared at darker stains. “You’re … wounded,” he said. “Oh, Jean, Jean.”

“Bumps and abrasions, no worse.” The blue gaze speared him. “Before you start beating your breast over how this is your fault, Tim Cleland, remember what a supersonic boom I trailed in my rush to come along. I thank you for my life. Now shuck your gear so you can be useful.”

While he scrambled free of his suit, she went to the cooler, snatched a beer, and drained it in three gulps. “Ah-h-h,
la agua verdadera de la vida
.” She saw him wince. “But how are you, Tim? Are you hurt?”

“No. No, nothing worth mentioning.” Except by hearing the Spanish from her.

“Good, oh, very good. Well, I do ache and twinge and creak. If we’d not have me disabled tomorrow—and we Sinking well want to pick up our science again, don’t we?—best treat it richt the noo. First a hot shower. Meanwhile, lay out the medicines, will you?”

Kilbirnie disappeared behind the bath partition. He heard water gush from overhead tap to recycler tank. Steam eddied forth. He racked their outfits and sought the medical cabinet Topical analgesics, hemolyte, cell-repair promoter—He arranged them on the table off which they ate their meals, mechanically, his head spinning. Over and over he read the instructions, as if he didn’t know them by heart as any spacefarer must, while the water pounded and steamed.

It stopped. A hot airstream brawled.

She emerged. The bruises were just beginning to show.
Mostly, she glowed. Still damp, the brown hair clung to her head, and droplets glistened between her thighs. She laughed aloud. “Och, the look on ye! Be practical, man. I’ve contusions in places where I canna slather on the salves myself. You may as well do them all. Enjoy.”

“You, you c-c-could have asked Colin,” he said through the roar in his ears.

“Clumsy, explaining where and how with a parleur.” She raised the tumbler of water he had filled and swallowed two of the internal medications.

“The—the general painkiller and, uh, sleeping pill …” he reminded her.

“Not yet. If at all. Numbness is so boring. Come, don’t stand there like a geological specimen.”

He put some ointment on his palm and stroked it between her shoulderblades. “Well, that’s a start,” she purred. “Harder, though. And now here.” She arched her back beneath his hand. “Rr-r-r-r, excellent. You’re a quick learner.”