IX
When the boat had come to rest, thundering and shuddering ended, only bake-oven heat and scorched smells remaining, Rochefort let go of awareness.
He swam up from the nothing some minutes later. Helu stood over him, “Are you okay, skipper?” At first the engineer’s voice seemed to come across a whining distance, and the sweat and soot on his face blurred into the haze which grayed all vision.
“Okay,” Rochefort mumbled. “Get me… ’nother stimpill…”
Helu did, with a glass of water that wrought a miracle on wooden tongue and parchment palate. “Hand of Fatima, what a ride!” he said unevenly. “I thought for certain we were finished. How did you ever get us down?”
“I don’t remember,” Rochefort answered.
The drug took hold, giving him back clarity of mind and senses, plus a measure of energy. He could reconstruct what he must have done in those last wild minutes. The ergs stored in the capacitors had not been adequate to kill the boat’s entire velocity relative to the planetary surface. He had used them for control, for keeping the hull from being boiled off by the atmospheric friction that braked it. Hooting Star had skipped halfway around the globe on the tropopause, as a stone may be skipped over a lake, then screamed down on a long slant which would have ended in drowning — for the hole aft could not be patched, and a sealed-off engine room would have weighed too much when flooded — except that somehow he, Philippe Rochefort, had spotted (he recollected now) a chain of islands and achieved a crash landing on one…
He spent a while in the awe of being alive. Afterward he unharnessed, and in their separate fashions he and Helu gave thanks; and they added a wish for the soul of Wa Chaou. By that time the hull had cooled to a point where they dared touch the lock. They found its outer valve had been torn loose when the boat plowed across ground.
“Good air,” Helu said.
Rochefort inhaled gratefully. It was not just that the cabin was hot and stinking. No regeneration system on any spacecraft could do the entire work of a living world. This atmosphere that streamed to meet him smelted of ozone, iodine, greenery, flower fragrances; it was mild but brisk with breezes.
“Must be about Terran standard pressure,” Helu went on. “How does a planet like this keep so much gas?”
“Surely you’ve met the type before,” Rochefort said.
“Yes, but never stopped to wonder. Now that I’ve had the universe given back to me, I’d, uh, I’d like to know it better.”
“Well, magnetism helps,” Rochefort explained absently. “The core is small, but on the other hand the rotation is rapid, making for a reasonable value of H. Besides, the field has fewer charged particles to keep off, therefore fewer get by it to bounce off gas molecules. Likewise, the total ultraviolet and X radiation received is less. That sun’s fairly close — we’re getting about 10 percent more illumination than Terra does — but it’s cooler than Sol. The energy distribution curve peaks at a lower frequency and the stellar wind is weak.”
Meanwhile he sensed the gravity. His weight was four-fifths what it had been when the boat’s interior field was set at standard pull. When you dropped sixteen kilos you noticed it at first — a bounciness, an exuberance of the body which the loss of a friend and the likelihood of captivity did not entirely quench — though you soon came to take the feeling for granted.
He stepped forth and looked around. Those viewscreens which remained functional had shown him this area was unpeopled. Inland it rose steeply. On the other side it sloped down to a beach where surf tumbled in a white violence whose noise reached him across more than a kilometer. Beyond, a syenite sea rolled to a horizon which, in spite of Avalon’s radius, did not seem appreciably nearer than on Terra or Esperance. The sky above was a blue more bright and deep than he was used to. The sun was low, sinking twice as fast as on man’s home. Its disk showed a bit larger, its hue was tinged golden. A sickle moon trailed, a fourth again the angular diameter of Luna seen from the ground. Rochefort knew it was actually smaller but, being close, raised twice the tides.
Occasional sparks and streaks blinked up there — monstrous explosions in space. Rochefort turned his mind from them. For him the war was presumably over. Let it be over for everybody, soon, before more consciousnesses died.
He gave his attention to the life encircling him. His vessel had gouged and charred through a dense mat of low-growing, beryl-green stuff which covered the island. “I suppose this, explains why the planet has no native forests,” he murmured, “which may in turn help explain why animal fife is underevolved.”
“Dinosaur stage?” Helu asked, watching a flock of clumsy, winged creatures go by. They each had four legs; the basic vertebrate design on Avalon was hexapodal.
“Well reptiloid, though some have developed features like hair or an efficient heart. By and large, they don’t stand a chance against mammalian or avian life forms. The colonists had to do quite a lot of work to establish a stable mixed colony, and they keep a good deal of land reserved, including the whole equatorial continent.”
“You’ve really studied them up, haven’t you?”
“I was interested. And… seemed wrong to let them be only my targets. Seemed as if I ought to have some reality on the people I was going to fight.”
Helu peered inland. Scattered shrubs and trees did exist. The latter were either low and thick or slim and supple, to survive the high winds that rapid rotation must often create. Autumn or no, many flowers continued in bloom, flamboyant scarlets and yellows and purples. Fruits clustered thick on several other kinds of plant.
“Can we eat local food?” Helu asked.
“Yes, of course,” Rochefort said. “They’d never have made the success they did, colonizing, in the time they’ve had, if they couldn’t draw on native resources. Some essentials are missing, assorted vitamins and whatnot. Imported domestic animals had to be revamped genetically on that account. We’d come down with deficiency diseases if we tried to eat Avalonian material exclusively. However, that wouldn’t happen fast, and I’ve read that much of it is tasty. Unfortunately, I’ve read that much is poisonous, too, and I don’t know which is which.”
“Hm.” Helu tugged his mustache and scowled. “We’d better call for somebody to come get us.”
“No rush,” said Rochefort. “Let’s first learn what we can. The boat has supplies for weeks, remember. We just might be able to—” He stopped. Knowledge stung him. “Right now we’ve a duty.”
Perforce they began by making a spade and pick out of scrap; and then the plant cover was tough and the soil beneath a stubborn clay. Sunset had perished in flame before they got Wa Chaou buried.
A full moon would have cast ample light; higher albedo as well as angular size and illumination gave it more than thrice the brilliance of Luna. Tonight’s thin crescent was soon down. But the service could be read by two lamp-white companion planets and to numberless stars. Most of their constellations were the same as those Rochefort had shared with Eve Davisson on Esperance. Three or four parsecs hardly count in the galaxy.
Does a life? I must believe so. “—Father, unto You in what form he did dream You, we commit this being our comrade; and we pray that You grant him rest, even as we pray, for ourselves. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.” The gruesome little flashes overhead were dying away.
“Disengage,” Cajal said. “Withdraw. Regroup in wide orbits.”
“But, but, Admiral,” protested a captain of his staff, their ships — they’ll use the chance to escape — disappear into deep space.”
Cajal’s glance traveled from screen to screen on the comboard. Faces looked out, some human, some non-human, but each belonging to an officer of Imperial Terra. He found it hard to meet those eyes.