Korin picked up a bottle, opened it, and began to pour Santory single-malt whiskey into a line of small rounded glasses.
As he did so, a loud buzzing drone rang through the whole ship. Once again it signaled for emergency action. Something, it said, was in the main airlock of the Hero’s Return.
28: DEB’S DILEMMA
Deb had listened to Chrissie and Tarbush’s logic for their being the advance scouts. She had been unable to refute it, but that didn’t mean she was happy with the situation.
When they left, crawling cautiously away through the waist-high ground cover, her need to see , to know where they were and what was happening to them, grew stronger.
Vow-of-Silence was lucky. She could look through the periscope. Eager Seeker was more fortunate yet. The Tinker could release inconspicuous individual components, each one able to fly high, examine the situation, and return to integrate its findings into the Composite. Deb and Danny alone were information starved. Even if Deb grabbed the periscope she was not tall enough to look over the top of the ridge.
She stood it for about five minutes, during which Vow-of-Silence’s remarks were basically one comment repeated over and over: “There is no sign of them. They must be proceeding through the vegetation.” Finally she could take it no longer.
She said to Danny, “Stay here and keep your eyes and ears open. I’m going to creep along to the ridge, and just take a peek over.”
He raised his eyebrows, and his wrinkled face looked far from happy; but he nodded, and before he could offer any other reaction she was off, snaking into the brush along the line marked by Chrissie and Tarbush. She came to the band of lurid green that spanned the way ahead, with its assortment of dead and dying animals strung along it like beads on a necklace. She followed Chrissie’s lead in detouring to pass well clear.
She was keeping her head well down and she sensed rather than saw when she crossed the brow of the ridge. Ahead of her, if Vow-of-Silence’s report was correct, the ground sloped down toward the encampment. Thirty yards in front of Deb the vegetation cover would end and be replaced by bare and sterile rock.
That was as far as Chrissie and Tarbush were supposed to go. If Deb peeked out over the top of the plants she should be able to see them.
She parted the ferny top growth as delicately as her suit gloves would permit, wrinkled her nose at the smell of lavender gone rotten, and slowly raised her head.
And gasped.
What were those two idiots playing at? They were far beyond the cover of the plants, walking toward the fenced encampment. Hadn’t they listened to one word of her orders?
Then she saw the third one, way in front of them. It was a human male, and he was wearing the same kind of suit as Bony Rombelle. Friday Indigo, it had to be — there was no other candidate in this whole universe. Indigo was waving, and now Deb could tell that he was speaking though she couldn’t make out any words. Chrissie was talking back to him — and she and Tarbush were still walking, nearer and nearer to the fence around the alien camp.
Deb wanted to shout a warning, but if she did that her own position would be revealed. She watched, gloved hand over her mouth, as Chrissie and Tarbush and Friday Indigo went on, to the gate in the fence and through it. At that point Tarbush and Chrissie stopped. Chrissie took a step backward. Friday Indigo raised his arm and pointed, toward the encampment and the buildings that bordered the airstrip.
Deb saw three creatures, each as big as Tarbush — and he was a very big man. They had broad, blue-black carapaces, held almost level, and lots of legs. Deb didn’t have time to count them, because one pair of the aliens’ formidable front claws were lifting high. They held thick black sticks whose highly polished curved surfaces gleamed in the bright sunlight.
Tarbush and Chrissie were moving, racing away from the fence and back across the bare rocky plain. They were almost at the edge of the dense plant cover when the air between them and the crouching aliens shimmered like a heat haze.
Chrissie went down. Tarbush was already diving forward into the plants, but he fell a few feet short. Neither one moved as the armed aliens cautiously approached and bent over them. Friday Indigo stood as still as a statue, back by the fence. Deb did the same, hidden by the covering fringe of ferns. She heard a strange wailing cry from behind her. Danny, or Vow-of-Silence? Fortunately, the aliens took no notice. Two of them squatted down by folding their supporting legs — ten each, Deb counted — and easily lifted the unconscious humans.
They headed for the encampment. The third alien lagged behind with its black cane still raised. As they passed through the fence, Friday Indigo moved at last. He followed them into one of the buildings, a windowless half-cylinder of dull yellow that seemed to crouch and merge into the black rock.
Deb was desperate to do something. Vow-of-Silence and Eager Seeker did not know it, but she was far from weaponless. She had enough firepower concealed inside her suit to handle a dozen unfriendly aliens. But she was rational enough to know that attacking the building with Chrissie and Tarbush inside would be the worst possible thing to do. If they were dead, delay could not further harm them. If they were unconscious and had been taken as prisoners, an attack by Deb would be a sure way to put all their lives in greater danger.
Even so, it took enormous self-control for Deb to retreat slowly and quietly through the thick scrub, over the line of the ridge and back to their own primitive camp. She did not like what she found there. Danny was bending over the knotted body of the Pipe-Rilla, and there was no sign of the Tinker Composite.
He shrugged when she asked him. “Nowhere, everywhere. When Vow-of-Silence screamed, Eager Seeker came apart. It was like being in the middle of a hailstorm. I felt components banging into me and rattling off my suit just like they had no idea where they were or where they were going. Then Vow-of-Silence keeled over. She almost knocked me flat and landed just the way you see her now. I can’t wake her. And I’ve not seen a Tinker component since they all flew away.”
Deb bent down at Danny’s side. The Pipe-Rilla’s long, gangly body had contorted until her head touched the end of her abdomen, and her slender jointed legs were tight-wrapped around the narrow body. Deb tugged at one, and it did not move a millimeter.
“What happened over the other side of the ridge?” asked Danny. “What made Vow-of-Silence scream, and where are Chrissie and Tarbush?”
“Captured. Unconscious. Maybe dead.”
Deb gave a summary of what she had seen, making it as unemotional as possible. At the end, Danny simply nodded and said, “What do we do now?”
It was a relief to have a team member able to understand the implications of a disaster without going hysterical. Deb glanced up at the sky.
“Good question. We have maybe four more hours of light. I would say we ought to settle down here for the night, but we daren’t do that. I don’t think the aliens know where we are, but if they think at all like us they’ll assume that Chrissie and Tarbush didn’t come here alone. If they head our way, we’ll have to run. But this” — she pointed to Vow-of-Silence’s unconscious body — “will make a quiet escape impossible. And then there’s the Tinker. Eager Seeker’s components could come back any time. So we ought to stay here, but I think that’s too risky.”
Deb looked at Danny. He was small, but he was wiry. “Can you lift Vow-of-Silence?”
“Lift her?” His face wrinkled in perplexity.
“Can you pick her up? Can you carry her?”
“Of course I can. In this low gravity, it’s dead easy.” To prove his point, Danny placed his arms around the tight ball of the Pipe-Rilla and lifted her to waist height. “See? No problem picking her up. Trouble is, if I have to run with her through the scrub I’m going to make a devil of a noise.”