Darya looked at Hans Rebka. He was obviously exhausted, but he was still their best hope. He had deep red lines on his face, scored by his mask and respirator, and there were owlish pale circles of dust around his eyes. But when he caught her look he managed a grin and a wink.
Darya squeezed in and had just enough room to slide the door closed. She had never expected to see so many beings, human or alien, in one small aircar. The official capacity was four people. The Carmel twins had managed to fit into one seat, but J’merlia was crouched on the floor where he could see or hear little, and Darya Lang and Max Perry had been left standing.
“What’s the time?” Rebka asked unexpectedly. “I mean, how many hours to Summertide?”
“Fifteen.” Perry’s voice was expressionless.
“So what’s next? We can’t just sit here and wait to die. Anything’s easier than that. Let’s look at our options. We can’t reach the Umbilical, even if it goes no higher. And there’s no place on Quake that we can go to be safe. Suppose we fly as high as we can and ride it out in this car?”
Kallik gave a series of whistling snorts that sounded to Darya Lang very like derision, while Perry roused himself from his reverie and shook his head. “I went through all those ideas, long ago,” he said gloomily. “We’re down to an eight-hour power supply for the aircar, and that’s with normal load. If we get off the ground — it’s not clear that we can, with so many on board — we’ll be down again before Summertide Maximum.”
“Suppose we sit here and wait until four or five hours before Summertide,” Rebka suggested. “And then take off? We’d be clear of the surface during the worst time.”
“Sorry. That won’t work, either.” Perry glared at Kallik, who was bobbing up and down to an accompaniment of clicks and whistles. “We’d never manage to stay in the air. The volcanoes and earthquakes turn the whole atmosphere into one mass of turbulence.” He turned to the Lo’tfian. “J’merlia, tell Kallik to keep quiet. It’s hard enough to think without that noise.”
The Hymenopt bobbed even higher and whistled, “Sh-sh-sheep.”
“Kallik asks me to point out,” J’merlia said, “with great respect, you are all forgetting the ship.”
“Louis Nenda’s ship?” Rebka asked. “The one that Kallik came in? We don’t know where it is. Anyway, Nenda and Atvar H’sial will have taken it.”
Kallik let loose a louder series of whistles and wriggled her body in anguish.
“No, no. Kallik says humbly, she is talking about the Summer Dreamboat, the ship that the Carmel twins came in to Quake. We know exactly where that is.”
“But its drive is exhausted,” Perry said. “Remember, Kallik looked at it when we first found it.”
“One moment, please.” J’merlia wriggled his way past Julius Graves and the Carmel twins, until he was crouched close to the Hymenopt. The two of them grunted and whistled at each other for half a minute. Finally J’merlia bobbed his head and straightened up.
“Kallik apologizes to everyone for her extreme stupidity, but she did not make herself sufficiently clear when she examined the ship. The power for the Bose Drive is certainly exhausted, and the ship cannot be used for star travel. But there could be just enough power for one local journey — maybe for one jump to orbit.”
Rebka was maneuvering past Julius Graves to the pilot’s seat before J’merlia had finished speaking. “How far to that starship, and where is it?” He was examining the car’s status board.
“Seven thousand kilometers, on a great circle path to the Pentacline Depression.” Perry had emerged from his gloom and was pushing past the Carmel twins to join Rebka. “But this close to Summertide we can expect a sidewind all the way, strong and getting worse. That will knock at least a thousand off our range.”
“So there’s no margin.” Rebka was doing a quick calculation. “We have enough power for about eight thousand, but not if we try for full speed. And if we slow down, we’ll be flying closer to Summertide, and conditions will be worse.”
“It is our best chance.” Graves spoke for the first time since entering the aircar. “But can we get off the ground with this much load? We had a hard time getting here, and that was with two people less.”
“And can we stay in the air, so close to Summertide?” Perry added. “The winds will be incredible.”
“And even if Kallik is right,” Graves said, “and there is a little power still in the starship, can the Summer Dreamboat make it to orbit?”
But Rebka was already starting the engine. “It’s not our best chance, Councilor,” he said as the downjets blew a cloud of white dust up to cover the windows. “It’s our only chance. What do you want, a written guarantee? Get set and hold your breath. Unless someone has a better idea in the next five seconds, I’m going to push this car to the limit. Hold tight, and let’s hope the engine wants to cooperate.”
CHAPTER 20
Summertide minus one
As the aircar lurched from the ground and struggled upward, Darya Lang felt useless. She was supercargo, added load, a dumb weight unable to help the pilot or navigator in front of her. Helpless to contribute and unable to relax, she took a new look at her fellow passengers.
This was the group who would live or die together — and soon, before the rotating dumbbell of Quake and Opal had completed one more turn.
She studied them as the car droned onward. They were a depressed and depressing sight. The situation had turned back the clock, revealing them to Lang as they must have been long years earlier, before Quake entered their lives.
Elena and Geni Carmel, sitting cheek to cheek, were little girls lost. Unable to find their way out of the wood, they waited to be saved; or, far more likely, for the monster to arrive. In front of them Hans Rebka was crouched over the controls, a small, worried boy trying to play a game that was too grown-up for him. Next to him sat Max Perry, lost in some old, unhappy dream that he would share with no one.
Only Julius Graves, to Perry’s right, failed to fit the pattern of backward-turning time. The councilor’s face when he turned to the rear of the car had never been young. Thousands of years of misery were carved in its lines and roughened surface; human history, written dark and angry and desperate.
She stared at him in bewilderment. This was not the Council member of Alliance legend. Where was the kindness, the optimism, the crackling manic energy?
She knew the answer: snuffed out, by simple exhaustion.
For the first time, Darya realized the importance of fatigue in deciding human affairs. She had noticed her own gradual loss of interest in deciphering the riddle of Quake and the Builders, and she had attributed it to her concentration on simple survival. But now she blamed the enervating poisons of weariness and tension.
The same slow drain of energy was affecting all of them. At a time when thought and prompt action could make the difference between life and death, they were mentally and physically flat. Every one — she was surely no exception — looked like a zombie. They might rise for a few seconds to full attention and alertness, as she had at the moment of takeoff, but as soon as the panic was over they would slump back to lethargy. The faces that turned to her, even with all the white dust wiped off them, were pale and drawn.
She knew how they were feeling. Her own emotions were on ice. She could not feel terror, or love, or anger. That was the most frightening development, the new indifference to living or dying. She hardly cared what happened next. Over the past few days Quake had not struck her down with its violence, but it had drained her, bled her of all human passions.
Even the two aliens had lost their usual bounce. Kallik had produced a small computer and was busy with obscure calculations of her own. J’merlia seemed lost and bewildered without Atvar H’sial. He swiveled his head around constantly, as though seeking his lost master, and kept rubbing his hand-pads obsessively over his hard-shelled body.