Chapter 30

Travancore from five thousand kilometers: it was even better than Travancore from half a million. A dream world, a soft-edged emerald ball, colors muted by a deep atmosphere, outlines touched with a misty impressionist palette. Peaceful. Beautiful.

Dangerous.

In Chan’s opinion, if no one else’s.

He stared down at the endless jungle and wondered what it would take to shake the Lotos-eater calm of the rest of the team. The closer they came to the planet, the more their enthusiasm grew. With S’greela saying that Travancore reminded her of the best Pipe-Rilla abstract paintings, while Shikari babbled of misty mornings on Mercantor, how would Chan ever ruffle that complacency?

They referred to him as the junior member of team. S’greela was ninety Earth-years old, and Angel much more than that; but in some ways they were the innocent babies, and he was the wary oldster.

He turned to the other three. They were preparing to enter the landing capsule — the final step before leaving the massive safety of the Q-ship and beginning the spiralling descent to the planet. “What are your impressions after a closer look?”

“Magnificent!” S’greela spoke first, her voice bubbling with enthusiasm. “This is a beautiful world. We are looking forward to seeing it more closely.”

“Don’t judge by what you see. Team Alpha was destroyed down there.”

The other three exchanged looks — smug looks, Chan felt sure of it. They had not been devastated by the news of the first pursuit team’s fate, as he had. He still found that news hard to believe, still expected to see Leah’s face on the communication channel, still wondered when he would hear her voice again.

“We have to be very careful,” he said. “If we’re not, the same thing can happen to us.”

“But it will not happen to us,” said Shikari. “It cannot. For although we are sure that Team Alpha was composed of beings of exceptional talent and intelligence, they could not have made a complete team, as we are a team.”

And there you had it. Nothing that Chan said could influence the opinions of the other three. They had moved in a few days from nervous diffidence to an unshakable conviction that together they would face any situation — and win!

There had been progress, even Chan admitted that. In communication with each other they were reaching the point where he could read the messages in a single wave of Angel’s side fronds, a ripple in Shikari’s base, or one head movement from S’greela. But what the others didn’t know about was Leah’s message to Chan. She too had spoken of an extraordinary level of communication achieved by Team Alpha. Yet her team had failed, disastrously. Chan had other problems that he had so far not mentioned to the other three. He was having blackout periods, times when he could not recall afterwards where he had been or what he had been doing. The attacks came without warning and lasted anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. So far they seemed to have hit only in leisure spells, when he was relaxing with the other team members. But suppose that one came along at a more critical time — even during their possible clash with Nimrod?.

Chan had sent a message to Kubo Flammarion over the Link connection from the Q-ship. Might he be feeling an after-effect of the Stimulator? Flammarion’s reply was no comfort. No one knew enough about the Tolkov Stimulator to predict the side-effects of a successful treatment on humans.

Ought the others to be told what was happening to Chan? At the very least it might knock a hole in their wall of self-confidence. They were staring down at the approaching orb of Travancore with the cheerful curiosity of vacationing visitors.

He gave it one more try. “That’s not Barchan down there, and a Simmie Artefact isn’t a Morgan Construct. The Construct is smarter, better-armed, and murderous. I know we handled the Simulacrum, but this job will be ten times harder.”

“And we are a hundred times more of a unit than we were then,” replied S’greela. “Chan, it is normally the role of a Pipe-Rilla to be the principal worrier in a group. But now I feel totally at ease. We have become — a team!”

That was the end of it. They would not budge. They imagined the destruction of Nimrod, if they bothered to think of it at all, as some brief, painless encounter. Maybe an actual video scene, showing the first pursuit team as it was blasted or burned to extinction, would have made them think differently. Chan hated the idea of viewing that murderous meeting, yet he would have endured it, if its showing could drag the other team members to some understanding of their coming danger.

But that was not an option. All the sounds and images from Team Alpha’s descent to Travancore were tucked away in Angels capacious memory, available for recall and analysis in moments — except that the encounter itself was not there. The final video in the Anabasis files showed Nimrod drifting down the shaft toward the waiting team. It did not appear belligerent, or even particularly powerful.

The fight that had followed was not shown. The transmission equipment must have been destroyed with the team itself. But the disaster on Cobweb Station had proved that the Construct was anything but peaceful, and now it had more battle experience. On Travancore it must have destroyed the first pursuit team in a fraction of a second.

That, at least, was Chan’s own preferred version of the event. He could not bear the idea of the team members — of Leah — lingering on horribly wounded beneath that thatch of vegetation for hours or days.

The Team Alpha recording served one other possible purpose. It indicated the location of Nimrod, during at least the brief period of time of the encounter. When Shikari performed a muon survey from orbit, a nearby site at Travancore’s equator seemed to Chan’s eyes slightly brighter on the images. But there were half a dozen other candidates, and he could not decide among them.

“What do you think, Angel?” Chan indicated his favored bright spot. “Isn’t that the point where we are most likely to find Nimrod?”

“Possibly, possibly.” There was a slow wave of mid-fronds, Angels equivalent of polite skepticism. “But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We must descend before we really know. In the words of the great Sherlock, it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

S’greela and Shikari had done their own analysis of Team Alpha’s descent into the surface shafts. They had concluded that in Travancore’s light gravity the tunnels would be navigable by Angel without assistance, provided that a lift pack could be strapped around the tubby mid-section. And S’greela, unhampered by Angel, would have far better mobility.

That conclusion was the only positive result that Chan could see from two days of analysis from high orbit. He drew a conclusion — reluctantly: they could look down at Travancore from afar forever, and not know much more than they knew now. Like it or not, it was time to stick their necks out and get down to the surface.

As they prepared to enter the landing capsule Chan gave the others one more warning. “Make sure you have everything that you’ll need on Travancore before we leave the Q-ship. We’ve had clear instructions from the Anabasis, we will not be allowed back on board unless we can prove that we’ve destroyed Nimrod. We won’t even be given drop shipments from orbit, unless it’s clear that they can’t be used by Nimrod if things go wrong. We’ll be on our own.”

“Until we return triumphant to the Q-ship…” said S’greela.

“…our team victorious, happy and glorious,” added Angel.

“One for all, and all for one,” added Shikari.

If the Tinker was starting that, too, Chan couldn’t stand it. He went across to the Q-ship communicator one last time and initiated a Link sequence to Anabasis Headquarters on Ceres. Mondrian was alone in the control room. He nodded a greeting, and did not speak.