“There is animal life here,” J’merlia translated. “And winged forms. This suggests another possible method of surviving Summertide, unmentioned by Commander Perry. By remaining in Quake’s Mandel-shadow, and always aloft, these would be safe.”
Darya could see the flying creatures — just. They were half a meter long, with dark bodies and gauzy, diaphanous wings; too delicate, surely, to survive the turbulence of Summertide. Far more likely, they had already laid their eggs and would die in the next few days. But Atvar H’sial was right about one thing: there were many facts about Quake that humans did not know, or Max Perry was not telling.
The thought came to her again: this was a whole planet, a world with its own intricate life-balance; hundreds of millions of square kilometers of land and small lakes, empty of humans or other intelligence, spread out for their inspection. Infinite diversity was possible there, but it would take a lifetime to explore and know it.
Right, her more practical side said. But we don’t have a whole lifetime. In eighty hours we’d better be finished with our exploration and on our way.
Leaving Atvar H’sial to her sightless sweep of the landscape, Darya moved around the foot of the Umbilical to the line of aircars. There were eight of them, sitting under the lee of their protective sheet of Builder material. The apron they stood on was connected by silicon fiber cables to the Umbilical itself and would lift with it at Summertide.
Darya climbed into one of the cars and inspected its controls. As Atvar H’sial had foretold, the vehicle was human-made and identical with the one that they had used for travel on Opal. It was fully charged, and Darya could fly it with no problem, provided — and at the thought, her collarbone gave a twinge of reminder — that they did not hit a storm like the one that had wiped them out last time.
She held up an open hand to test the wind. At the moment it was no more than a stiff breeze, nothing to worry about. Even allowing for the twisting pockets of dust, visibility was at least three or four kilometers. That was ample for a landing, and they could fly far above any sandstorm.
At her urging, Atvar H’sial and J’merlia climbed into the car and settled in for the flight. Darya took them up at once, heading for an altitude that would clear any turbulence. J’merlia squatted by her side in the front of the car. Darya had explained the aircar controls to him when they were flying on Opal, and if necessary he could probably pilot the craft. But apparently he would never dream of trying to do so without direction from Atvar H’sial.
Darya tried to talk with him and failed. She had imagined that he might behave differently toward her after their conversations while they were recuperating from the crash. She was wrong. When Atvar H’sial was present he refused to make an independent move, and for the first three hours of the trip he spoke only at Atvar H’sial’s direction.
But in the fourth hour J’merlia made a move of his own, unprompted by his mistress. He suddenly sat upright and pointed. “There. Above.”
They were cruising on autopilot at twenty thousand meters, far above most of Quake’s atmosphere and out of reach of surface storms. Darya had not been looking up. She had been surveying the ground ahead of them, using the car’s imaging sensors. At top resolution she could see plenty of evidence of life on Quake. The lake-dotted hill ranges bore great herds of white-backed animals, moving away from the high ground and heading for water as steadily and inexorably as a retreating wave. She watched their compact mass divide and break around bare ridges and massive boulders. A few kilometers farther on, the hill country ended, and she saw wriggling lines of dark green, following and defining the moist gravel of streambeds. The dry streams ended in dense pockets of vegetation, impenetrable from above, lining the bottom of hollows of uncertain depth.
As Darya looked up at J’merlia’s words, he leaned over her shoulder and pointed with a thin, multijointed arm into the blue-black and starlit sky.
Atvar H’sial hissed. “Another car,” J’merlia translated. “We have been pursued up the Umbilical, and much more quickly than we expected.”
The moving light was right above them, following their own ground track but at much greater altitude. It was also rapidly outdistancing them. Darya allowed the autopilot to continue the flight while she rotated the high-mag sensor to take a closer look at the newcomer.
“No,” she said after a few moments. “It’s not an aircar.” She set the car’s little on-board computer to work, computing a trajectory. “It’s too high, and it’s moving much too fast. And look — it’s growing brighter. We’re not looking at an aircar’s lights.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s a spaceship. And that bright glow means it’s entering Quake’s atmosphere.” Darya glanced at the computer output, providing a first estimate of the other ship’s final trajectory. “We’d better put down for a while and consider what we do next.”
“No.” Atvar H’sial’s thoughts came as a mutter of protest from J’merlia.
“I know; I don’t want to, either,” Darya said. “But we have to, unless you know something I don’t. The computer needs a few more points of tracking data to be sure, but it’s already giving us a preliminary result. That ship is landing. I don’t know who is in it, but it will touch down just where we don’t want it — a few kilometers from our own destination.”
Twilight on Quake — if so sudden and ominous a nightfall, red as dragon’s blood, could justify that description.
Mandel would rise in three hours. Amaranth lay low on the horizon, its ruddy face obscured by clouds of dust. Gargantua alone shone in full splendor, a banded marble of orange and salmon-pink.
The aircar stood on a level patch of gravel, readied for rapid takeoff. Darya Lang had set them down between two small water bodies, in an area shown on the map to be liberally scattered with miniature freshwater lakes.
The map had lied in at least one respect. Atvar H’sial, crouched down by one of the ponds, had sucked water noisily through her proboscis. J’merlia pronounced it potable. But Darya, tasting the same pool, spat in disgust and wondered about Cecropian metabolism. The lake water was harsh and bitter to the tongue, filled with strong alkalines. She could not drink it, and would have to rely on the car’s supplies.
Darya walked back past the car and prepared for sleep. Even with the help of the autopilot, the journey around Quake had been a strain. Harmless as the planet below her seemed, she had not dared to lower her concentration for more than a moment; and now finally free to relax, she could not do so.
There was too much to see, too much to speculate on.
According to Perry, Quake so close to Summertide should have been an inferno. The crust ought to have been heaving and shattered, surface ablaze with brush fires, plants shriveled and dying in air burning hot and close to unbreathable. The animals should have been long gone, already dead or estivating far below the surface.
Instead she could breath and walk and sit in moderate comfort, and there were ample signs all about her of energetic life. Darya had set her camp bed outside, close to one of the pools and in the shade of a thicket of horsetails. She could hear animals scuttling through them, ignoring her presence, and the ground by the water was riddled with holes of all different sizes, as a variety of small creatures tunneled underground. When the distant growl of thunder or vulcanism died away, she could hear those workers, scrabbling steadily deeper into the drying earth.
But it was warm, she would admit that. The disappearance of Mandel from the sky had brought little relief. Sweat stained her suit and ran down the hollow of her neck.
She lay down on her camp bed. Although Quake seemed safe enough, she was worried about what they should do next. That spaceship must be from Opal, and it had probably been sent to drag them back there. If they went on, they might be captured and forced to leave Quake. But if they did not keep going, they would not reach their destination.