The Star Fox (19 page)

Jocelyn’s gasps reached him, where she crawled at his side. Half his strength was spent to help her along. Otherwise he heard nothing but the titanic forces that churned about them. Uthg-a-K’thaq’s broad shape was visible ahead, leading the way. Vadász toiled in the rear. Light waned as the sun sank behind the mountain, to end the day after they piled a cairn over their newest dead.

We’ve got to keep going
, chanted idiotically in Heim.
Got to keep going. Got to keep going
. And underneath:
Why?

For the sake of the battle he intended to fight? That had become meaningless. The only battle was here, now, against a planet. For Lisa, then? A better cause, that she should not be fatherless. But she could well survive him. Grief dies young in the young. To discharge his own responsibility to those he commanded? Better still; it touched a deep-lying nerve. Yet he was no longer in command, when his engineer saw more clearly and moved more surely than any human could.

Reasons blew away like geyser smoke. Death lured him with promises of sleep.

Animal instinct raised his hackles. He cursed the tempter and went on.

A mudpot bubbled on a level stretch. The farther bank was a precarious hill of boulders. Water rushed among them, struck the mud below, and exploded in steam. Uthg-a-K’thaq beckoned the others to wait, flopped down on his belly, and hitched himself forward. Mineral crusts were treacherous, and whoever fell into one of those kettles might be cooked alive before the rest heaved him out against gravity.

Jocelyn used the pause to lie flat. Maybe she slept, or fainted; small difference any more. Heim and Vadász remained standing. It would have been too much effort to rise again.

On the edge of visibility, among the clouds around the hilltop, Uthg-a-K’thaq waved. Heim and Vadász wrestled Jocelyn back to her legs. The captain led the way, stooped so he could make out the leader’s track through gray soft precipitate powders.

When he came to the rise, hands and feet alike must push him over the high-stacked stones. Often a lesser chunk got loose and bounced hollowly down to the mudpot. Safest would have been to go one at a time, his dimmed consciousness realized now. The least slip could—

‘
Gunnar!
’

He scrambled around, and almost went down in the same minor avalanche where Jocelyn rolled.

Somehow he was up, bounding through the hot fog as he had plunged to attack centuries ago. Stones turned under his soles, water spurted where he struck. Nothing existed but his need to stop her before she went into the cauldron below.

Her limbs flailed, her fingers clawed, dislodging more rocks that tumbled across her. He reached bottom. His boots sank in ooze. There was not too much heat on this fringe of the pot. But had there been, he would not have noticed. Those boulders which had spun downward faster than the woman and sunk immediately gave footing. He knelt and braced himself.

The mass poured at him, around him. He laid hold on Jocelyn’s air cycler and became a wall.

When the landslip was done, he pulled his smeared self clear and fell beside her. Vadász saw they would go no further than the verge of the mudsink, ended his own haste, and picked a cautious way to join them. Presently Uthg-a-K’thaq arrived too.

Heim roused some minutes later. The first he noticed was the Naqsan’s voice, weirdly akin to the voice of the kettle: ‘Wery much harm wor us. Lac-king him, can we long liwe?’

‘Joss,’ he mumbled, and fought to rise. Vadász helped him. He leaned on the Magyar a while until strength returned.

‘
Hála Istennek’
gusted from the helmet beside his. ‘You are not hurt?’

‘I’m okay,’ Heim said. His entire being seemed one bruise, and blood welled from abrasions. ‘Her?’

‘Broken leg at the minimum.’ Vadász’s fingers touched the unnatural angle between left hip and thigh of the motionless figure. ‘I don’t know what else. She is unconscious.’

‘Her suit is intact,’ Uthg-a-K’thaq said.
First silly remark I’ve heard from him
, trickled through Heim. If
the fabric had torn, we wouldn’t worry about bones
.

He shoved Vadász aside and bent over her. When the faceplate had been wiped clean, he could make out her features in
the dimming light. Eyes were closed, lips half parted, skin colorless and sweat-beaded. He was dismayed at how sunken her cheeks were. Laying an audio pickup against her speaker, he was barely able to detect breath, rapid and shallow.

He poised on his knees. To stave off the future, he asked, ‘Did anyone see what happened?’

‘A stone moved when she put her weight on,’ Vadász said. ‘She started to roll and half the hillside went with her. Some recent quake must have unstabilized it. I will never know how you got down here so fast, not falling.’

‘Who cares?’ Heim gritted. ‘She’s in shock. I don’t know if that’s due to anything more than the leg fracture, she being so weakened to begin with. Could be worse injuries, like spinal. We don’t dare move her.’

‘What then can we do?’ the engineer asked. Heim realized that command had passed back to him.

‘You two go on,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay with her.’

‘No!’ Vadász exclaimed involuntarily.

Uthg-a-K’thaq spoke in some remnant of his pedantic way. ‘You can giwe her no aid, woth sealed in airsuits. We others may well need an ex-tra wair ow hands. A diwwicult wassage is wewore us.’

‘As battered as I am, I’d hinder you more than help,’ Heim said. ‘Besides, she can’t be left alone. Suppose there’s another rockslip, or this mudpot boils higher?’

‘Cawtain, she is done already. Unconscious, she cannot take her grawanol. Without that, in shock, heart wailure comes quickly. Kindest to owen her helmet now.’

Rage and loss flew out of Heim: ‘Be quiet, you cold-blooded bastard! You goaded Bragdon to die, on purpose. One’s enough!’

‘
Gwurru
’ the Naqsan sobbed, and retreated from him.

The venom dissipated, leaving emptiness. ‘I’m sorry, C.E.,’ Heim said dully. ‘Can’t expect you to think like a Terrestrial. You mean well. I suppose men’s instincts are less practical than yours.’ Laughter shook chains in his throat. ‘Speaking about practicality, though, you’ve got something like an hour of light. Don’t waste it. March.’

Vadász considered him long before asking, ‘If she dies, what will you do?’

‘Bury her and wait. I can stretch out the water in these canteens if I sit quiet, but you’ll need the laser for your own drink.’

‘And you will then have nothing to, to fall back on. No, this is foolishness.’

‘I’ll keep the automatic, if that makes you happier. Now get going. I’ll hoist a beer with you yet.’

Vadász surrendered. ‘If not on ship,’ he said, ‘then in Valhalla. Farewell.’

Their hands clasped, pair by pair. Minstrel and engineer began to climb. A geyser spat not far off, steam blew down the wind, the two shapes were lost to sight.

Heim settled himself.

A chance for sleep
, he thought. But that desire was gone. He checked Jocelyn’s breathing – no change – and stretched out beside her, glove upon her glove.

Resting thus, he grew clearer-headed. With neither excitement nor despair he weighed the likelihood of survival. It wasn’t great. Zero for Joss, of course, barring miracles. For the other three, about fifty-fifty. The walkers should emerge from Thundersmoke tomorrow evening, more or less. Then they had perhaps two days (allowing those tough bodies one day without chemical crutches) in which to cross the high meadows towards Wenilwain’s castle. It was still distant, but the folk of the Hurst ranged widely. Doubtless they even crossed above Slaughter Land now and then, on their way to the plains and the sea.
(Hm, yes, that’s why they leave the robots alone. A free defense. Carnivore souls for sure.)
Given a break, the travelers might have been spied days ago.

Well, the break was not given. So Joss must die in this wet hell, under a sun whose light would not reach Earth for a century: Earth of the green woods where she had walked, the halls where she danced, the garden where she played her flute for him until he frightened her with babbled impossibilities. As that sun smoldered to extinction behind the fogs, Gunnar Heim pondered the riddle of his guilt toward her.

He had forced her here. But he did so because if she stayed behind she would betray his hopes for his planet.
(Are you certain of that, buck? In fact, are you certain your way is the right one?)
The choice would never have arisen except for the plot she had joined in. Yet that was evoked by his own earlier conspirings.

He gave up. There was no answer, and he was not one to agonize in unclarity. This much he knew: if the time aboard the
Quest
had not matched those dreams he buried long ago
for Connie’s sake, it had still been more dear than he deserved, and when Joss died a light would forever go out in him.

Blup-blup, said the mudpot beneath. A hot spring seethed louder. A geyser roared in thickening dusk, echoes resounded from unseen walls and water rilled among the shadow shapes of boulders. Heavy as his own flesh pressed against unyielding painful jumble, night flowed across the world.

Gloom lightened when the nearer moon rose, close to full, a shield bigger than Luna seen from Earth, iron bright and mottled with a strange heraldry. Heim dozed a while, woke, and saw it well above him. A thin glow surrounded the disc, diffusion in the upper mists. But most of the sky was open and he could make out stars. The lower fog rolled ashen through Thunder-smoke gulch.

His drowsy eyes tried to identify individual suns. Could that bright one near Lochan’s ghostlike peak be Achernar? If so, curious to look from here upon his emblem of victory. I
wonder if Cynbe could be watching it too. Wherever he is
.

Better check on Joss
. He commenced pulling his stiffened frame off the rocks.

What’s that?

WHAT’S THAT?

The sight was a lightning bolt. For a second he could not believe. A long V trailed across the moon—

Staurni, in flight home to the Hurst!

Heim soared erect. ‘Hey! Hallo-o-o! You up there, come down, help, help, help!’

The bawling filled his helmet, shivered his eardrums, tore his larynx; and was lost within meters of noise-troubled air. He flapped his arms, knew starkly that the blurring vapors made him invisible from so high above, saw the winged ones pass the disc and vanish into darkness. A beast yell broke from him, he cursed every god in the cosmos, drew his automatic and fired again and again at heaven.

That little bark was also nothing. And not even a glint from the muzzle. Heim lifted the useless thing, which could only kill Joss, to hurl it into the mud.

His hand sank. The metal moonlight seemed to pierce his skull, he was instantly cold, utterly aware, tracing the road he must follow as if on a battle map.

No time to lose. Those wings beat fast. He squatted, unbuckled his air system, hauled its packboard around in front of
him. The valve on the hose into his suit closed readily, but the coupling beyond resisted. And he had no pliers. He threw all his bear strength into his hands. The screw threads turned. The apparatus came free.

Now he was alone with whatever air his suit contained; the recycler depended on pressure from the reserve bottles. He cracked their valves. Terrestrial atmosphere, compressed more than Staurn’s own, streamed forth.

The reaction must be kindled, and he had no laser. Heedless of ricochet or shrapnel, he laid the automatic’s mouth against the cock and pulled trigger. The bang and the belling came together. Alloy shattered, the bullet screamed free, the air tanks became a lamp.

Its flame was wan blue under the moon. Heim held the pack-board steady with one hand and fanned with the other. ‘Please,’ he called, ‘please, look this way, she’ll die if you don’t.’ A far-off part of him observed that he wept.

The fire flickered out. He bent near the pressure gauge, trying to read it in the unpitying moonlight. Zero. Finished.

No, wait, that was zero net. There were still three atmospheres absolute. And hydrogen diffused inward faster than oxygen did outward. Explosive mixture? He scrambled to put the bottles behind a large rock. Leaning across, he shot straight into them and threw himself down.

Flame blossomed anew, one fury and the crash toning away, whine of flying fragments, a grating among lesser stones as they sought new rest, nothingness. Heim got carefully up.

An infinite calm descended upon him. He had done what he could. Now it was only to wait, and live or die as the chance befell. He returned to Jocelyn, listened to her breath, and lay down beside her.

I
ought to be in suspense
, he thought vaguely.
I’m not. Could my air be poisoned already?
…
No, I should last an hour or so if I don’t move. I’m just
…
fulfilled, somehow
. His eyes went to the moon, his thoughts to Connie. He had no belief in survival after death, but it was as if she had drawn close to him.

‘Hi, there,’ he whispered.

And—‘Hai-i-i-i!’ winded down the reaches of heaven, the air sang, and bat wings eclipsed the moon. Weapons flashed clear, the flock whirled around in their search for an enemy, fangs glittered, and devil shapes came to earth.

Only they didn’t act like devils, once they saw. A warrior
bayed into the midget transceiver he carried. A vehicle from the Hurst descended within minutes. Her mother could not have raised Jocelyn more tenderly onto a stretcher and into the machine. Wolf-gray Wenilwain himself connected an oxygen bottle to Heim’s suit. The flyer lifted and lanced eastward for Orling.

‘But … listen …
jangir ketleth
—’ Heim desisted. His few pidgin phrases couldn’t explain about Endre and C.E. No matter, really. He’d soon be at the yacht; Wong could interpret via radio; the last survivors would be found no later than sunrise. Heim fell asleep smiling.

H
ER
cabin was quiet. Someone had hung a new picture on the bulkhead where she could see it: a beach, probably on Tahiti. Waves came over a sapphire ocean to foam against white sands; in the foreground, palm trees nodded at Earth’s mild winds.