Starhawk (27 page)

THE
BAUMBACHNER
LANDER
entered the atmosphere and rode down through clear dark skies. The lights were still there, floating lazily in the dark. They were still rippling in that same melodic way. A visual symphony. There was an elegance to it, a glowing softness, as if he were watching an HV show in which they were getting ready to roll the credits.

“Jake.”
Priscilla's voice.
“Can you make out what they are?”

“Still just lights, Priscilla. If it weren't for the wave, I'd say they were Chinese lanterns.”

“That would be a shock. Can you tell how high they are?”

“Looks like ground level. Andrea, what do you think?” Andrea was the lander AI.

“They are close to the surface, Jake. But they are not
on
the surface.”

“Can you see anything else?”
Priscilla asked.
“Anything on the ground?”

“Priscilla, I can't
see
the ground. It's pretty dark down there.”

“Are they moving at all?”

“No. As far as I can tell, there's no movement whatever.” The sensors gradually acquired the landscape. It was hilly, with a couple of ravines, and everything rimmed by a circle of mountains. He was descending into a bowl. “Priscilla, whatever the lights are, I don't see how they can be natural.
Something's
down there.”

“They seem,” said Andrea, “to be clustered over a fairly small area, Jake.”

“How small?”

“I cannot tell with precision.”

“Give me a guess.”

“I would say perhaps three kilometers in length. And they do not appear to be on the ground. But I would say they are only a few meters above it.”

 * * * 

THE BRIGHTENING AND
dimming still ran from one end of the series to the other, which he could not avoid thinking of as rear to front. Accept that logic, and the line was pointing directly at one of the hills. In fact the lead light was almost resting on the crest.

He circled the area and trained a spotlight on the hill. The top consisted of a slice of flat ground. “Something's there,” he told Priscilla.

“What, Jake?”

“Hold on.” He got one of the scopes on it. “It's the
lander
.”

“You're kidding.”

“Do I sound as if I'm kidding?”

“Okay. Good. It's the one from the
Vincenti
?”

“I can't really tell yet. But it's hard to imagine where else it might have come from.”

“What kind of shape's it in, Jake?”

“Actually, it looks okay. Except that the wings are off.” How in hell had it gotten there? There was no way a lander could have come down intact on that hilltop. Even had its wings been in place. One was lying in the snow halfway down the slope. “I don't understand this,” he said. “It looks as if it landed without incident. Except for the wrecked wings.”

He descended past the lights and looked for an area to land. He got lucky: There was an unbroken stretch of ground about a kilometer away. It was, however, covered by snow or ice, and it was surrounded by mounds and rocks. Getting into it would be a squeeze, but he could see no easy alternative. “What do you think, Andrea? Can we manage that?”

“I am not comfortable with the selection. The surface will be icy, Jake. We might easily end as part of the real estate. I recommend we abort.”

“We can do it,” he said.

“I have logged my view on this matter,” said Andrea, in a disapproving voice.

“Okay.”

“Keep in mind, Captain Loomis, that if this goes wrong,
I
will be left to shoulder the blame.” The AI, of course, was not really annoyed. It wasn't a conscious entity although it was easy sometimes to forget that. This was simply the Authority's way of warning against bad behavior.

He swung wide over the battered surface. “Priscilla,” he said, “do you see that?”

“Yes. I see it. Jake, it scares me.”

“Have a little faith, kid.”

“Are you going down?”

“No way I can't.”

“Just be careful, okay?”

He lined up for his landing and began his final descent. Gorges, rocks, crevices, and hilltops rose to meet him. He got a better look at the lights, which were only a few meters above the ground. The night was still. That was definitely good. He wouldn't have wanted to attempt this with a crosswind.

“You're approaching too fast,” said Andrea.

He eased in until the wheels touched down, but she was right and he pulled back, lifted off, and circled around for another try.

Okay. Just take it easy. He cut forward speed as much as he could, dropped down toward the rocks, and came in so close his wheels must almost have touched them. Then he was on the ground again. He went into a skid, came off the brakes, and regained control. The rocks and clumps of ice on either side raced past and gradually slowed. The other end of the field was blocked off by more rocks. They came rapidly closer, slowed, and finally stopped as the lander swung to the side and almost tipped over. He took a deep breath.
“Nice landing, boss,”
said Priscilla. Her voice had been getting weaker as the distance between them increased.

He couldn't tell whether it was her cynical side, so he played it straight. “Thanks, Priscilla.” He turned the spacecraft around and aimed it back the way he'd come. “Always a good idea to be able to leave in a hurry,” he told her. But the only reply was static. He climbed out of his seat, pinned an imager to his vest pocket, and activated his Flickinger gear. A light breeze pushed against the lander. He pulled a radio transmitter out of one of the storage cabinets, to leave at the site so a future mission, should there be one, would be able to locate the downed vehicle.

When he looked outside again, the lights that had guided him in were growing dimmer. Going dark. As he watched, they went out.

What the hell was going on?

He checked his wrist light, attached the oxygen tanks, went through the air lock, and opened the outer hatch. Carefully. He looked around to assure himself he was alone. The only movement came from the wind. After a moment's hesitation, he stepped down onto the ice.

The snowscape glittered. He left the outer hatch open and started toward the hill. He wouldn't have admitted it to Priscilla, but he was scared. Something had led him here, and he wondered if it was the same
something
that had ripped the
Vincenti
apart and brought the lander down into this godforsaken place.

Come into my parlor.

But the night seemed empty.

He was about to turn his wrist light on, but changed his mind. He didn't need it, and there was no point drawing unnecessary attention to himself.

Gravity was high. His weight had gone up by about twenty pounds. He lost his balance once and almost fell on his rear end. He recalled Tracy Blesko, an engineer whom he'd known years before. Tracy had been walking on Europa, in a Flickinger suit, of course, when he slipped and fell. He'd damaged the control unit, the power had shut down, and that had been the end of Tracy. They'd redesigned the unit since then, and claimed a recurrence wasn't possible. But Jake never trusted manufacturers' claims. So, on that icy ground, he moved cautiously.

The climb up the hill was longer than it had appeared from the ship. But eventually, and without incident, he got to the top. The downed lander lay dark and still, half-covered with snow. Nothing moved inside. One of the rear thruster tubes was missing. Cables and support rods hung loose. Jake stared at it. Add the missing wings, and there was no way this thing could have reached the ground without getting splattered.

He looked around again, but in all that wide expanse there was no movement. He walked to the air lock and pressed the pad.

 * * * 

THE INTERIOR WAS
warm, and still had power. He saw a body in the after section, lying behind the rear seats. There were no others. He was relieved to see that it wasn't Isha. Death in the lander would have been slow. He looked at the pictures of the passengers and recognized Otto Schreiber, the young man from Leipzig who'd been working on his doctorate. He was about twenty years old. Looked as if he'd been dead for two or three days.

“Hello,” said an unfamiliar voice on his commlink.

His heart almost stopped before he realized who it was. “You're the AI,” he said.

“Yes. My name is Simon. I am very happy to see you. I was afraid we would never be found.”

“You did manage to put yourself in a remote place, Simon. How did it happen?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“My name's Jake.”

“Greetings, Jake. I wish you could have gotten here in time to save Otto.”

“I do, too. Did he suffocate?”

“Yes. It was painful to watch.”

“I'm sorry.” He looked out at the landscape, still, somehow, half-expecting to see something coming toward him. “You say you don't know what happened?”

“No, Jake. We were on the
Vincenti
. Otto was loading the lander. Preparing it for a descent. They were going to go down and take some soil samples, gather rocks for mineralogical purposes. Then, suddenly, I heard strange sounds, like metal tearing, coming apart. And people began screaming. The ship lurched, first left, then right. Otto was thrown against a bulkhead. Isha got on the commlink and ordered Otto to get inside the lander. He said he
was
inside the lander. So she closed the air lock and opened the launch doors. She must have overridden the protocol that prevents opening them until the bay is depressurized. The ship sounded as if it was coming apart.”

“But you don't know what was happening?”

“I have no idea, Jake. I thought we had probably struck a piece of debris. But it felt like much more than that. I don't know how to describe it. I could see the bulkhead beginning to pull away as if something were
stretching
it. As soon as the launch doors had opened, we were propelled outside. Isha did everything from the bridge. We were spinning end over end, the lander, and maybe the
Vincenti
, too. I don't know. It was impossible to ascertain what was happening. Otto was hurled against first one bulkhead, then the other. One of our wings was torn off.”

Jake had never known an AI could be capable of near hysteria. But he heard it in Simon's voice. “You couldn't see what was happening to the ship?”

“No. I couldn't line anything up. We were tumbling the whole time. Once or twice, I caught glimpses of the
Vincenti
. But I couldn't see anything unusual except that it was out of control. The only possibility seemed to be that it had struck something. Or been attacked.”

“Okay. Simon, you have things a little confused. You said one of your wings was torn off as you came out of the
Vincenti
.”

“Actually, both were. One stayed with us, dangling by a few cables, until we came down. Then it broke loose.”

“I can't figure out how you could have landed on this hilltop even if there'd been
no
damage, let alone losing your wings. How the hell did you manage it?”

“I do not know, Jake. We did fall for one minute seventeen seconds. Then the descent stopped. The fall stopped. We continued going down. But it was as if we were under control. As if a cushion of air or something had taken hold of us and was guiding us toward the ground. I know that is hard to believe, but the evidence is here. Otto died days later, when the air ran out.”

Jake was struggling with the extra weight. He eased himself down into one of the seats. “Could another ship have taken you in tow somehow without your being aware of it? Would that have been possible?”

“I don't see how. No.”

“Okay. Am I also to assume you weren't responsible for the lights?”

“What lights?”

 * * * 

JAKE DEPRESSURIZED THE
cabin and opened both air-lock hatches. Then he lifted Otto's body and tried to prop it over his shoulder. But it was too heavy to carry in that manner. Otto wasn't particularly a lightweight to start with. He got the body into his arms and stumbled toward the air lock.

“Jake,” said the AI, “you won't leave me here, will you?”

“I wouldn't leave you here, Simon. I'll be back in a while.” He got out into the snow, staggered a few more steps, and lost his balance as he started downhill. He had to give it up. No way he could carry the corpse a kilometer across a slippery surface in this gravity. He hauled Otto back up the ladder into the lander and set him in one of the seats. “I'm sorry, pal,” he said. “They'll have to come back for you.”

“I don't think,” said Simon, “he will care one way or the other.”

Jake looked out at the icy hills, stretching away in all directions. He knew precisely where the
Baumbachner
lander was, down in that rift off to the right. But at the moment it was lost in the dark. “Simon,” he said, “during the time you've been stranded here, have you seen anything out of the ordinary? Anything at all?”

“No, Jake.”

“Your landing: From the condition of the vehicle, it was obviously a soft landing.”

“Yes, it was.”

“You must have seen whatever it was that supported you.”

“I am sorry. I did not see anything.”

“Were you still spinning during the descent?”

“No. We gained equilibrium. But I cannot explain how that happened.”

“Were your own engines on?”

“Negative, Jake.”

He sat, staring at the barren landscape. Eventually, he sighed, took the transmitter from the bag, and installed it on the control panel. He was just finishing when Priscilla came back:
“Jake,”
she said.
“What have you got?”