War World Discovery Page 4

  “We’re coming over the horizon again,” Farrow said in a low voice.

  Potter grunted acknowledgment. He had a feeling that Owens and Connolly were tiring of his demand for updates every hour and a half.

  Too bad. He began calling for the shuttle.

  “It’s just great, that’s all,” Owens’ voice was borne on a wave of interference, but the communications filters were doing their job well enough. “This place is a regular garden spot. Two hours outside in thin air with thin coats, and what’s waiting inside but thin coffee. Anyway, it looks like we put down over a frost heave covered by snow; solid ground beneath one leg and lots of air three feet under the surface beneath the other. This whole area is a swamp marsh frozen solid for the winter. The landing leg collapsed and the whole weight of the shuttle came down on the port lift thrusters. They’re half-buried, so I’d guess they’re shot. Ike shakes his head a lot when I ask him how we can repair them, then he makes lifting gestures and shrugs.”

  “I’ve got Liu working on the other shuttle,” Captain Potter said. “Can’t say for sure what we can accomplish, but we’ll keep you posted.”

  “Yeah, right. Listen, Connolly wants to talk to you.”

  “Put him on.”

  “Emmett? It’s about Miller.”

  Potter heard Owens bitching in the background at the mention of the BuReloc man’s name. “What is it? What’s he done now?”

  “Well, the damn fool’s gone off and started his bloody survey on his own. So far he’s stayed in sight of the shuttle, but that’s not the point.”

  Potter shook his head. Miller was utterly inconsequential, now, but he wanted to give Connolly and Owens something to take their minds off the strong likelihood that they would become the moon’s first permanent human residents. “Is he any use to you there?” Potter asked. “In the repairs, I mean?”

  He heard Owens shout “No!” in the background.

  “No,” Connolly admitted, “but it’s damned dangerous. It’s cold as a witch’s tit out there, with snow to boot. If he falls and kills himself, we’ll have to answer to the Bureau of Relocation for it.”

  “To hell with the Bureau right now, Brian,” Potter said. “And to hell with Miller. Let him play with his drills and ore samples. We’ll need all that data anyway, once we get you fellas orbit-capable again and ready to come home.”

  And if we don’t get you orbit-capable, you won’t be coming home, so it won’t matter then, either.

  There was a long silence. “Right,” Connolly said finally. “Got it, Emmett. See if you can’t—” Connelly’s voice faded out.

  “Orbital path,” Farrow said. “We’re losing them again.”

  Potter boosted the signal. “Passing on, guys. Talk to you again in an hour and a half. Edward V out.”

  He leaned back against the chair’s zero-G harness and tapped the console distractedly, looking out at the surreal patterns of the Cat’s Eye gas giant. “Tom, what’s the latest on that storm front?”

  Farrow turned to another screen. “Weather patterns on this rock are pretty strange, Emmett. Looks like they’re tied in closely with the long full-night cycle, when one half of the moon is without light from either the system primary or the gas giant. The valley they’re in is due for that night in about ten standard days.”

  Potter stared at the sepia-toned mass of gaseous soup outside, the horizon of the satellite a gray crescent along the top of the port. The moon’s proximity to its parent world allowed enough radiant heat to compensate for its distance from the system primary, but the heavy gravity of the gas giant denied the Fast Eddie any chance of making geosynchronous orbit over her downed shuttle. They could only circle helplessly and wait.

  “Sit and spin,” Potter said.

  And pray.

  A clipboard floated through the bridge hatch, followed by the clambering form of Chief Engineer Liu. “Emmett, we might have a solution to our problem.”

  “Well, amen, Chief.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing, go ahead.”

  “Okay, here’s a list of what’s wrong with Shuttle Two, and here’s what I can reasonably expect to fix in the next eight days.”

  Potter scrolled through the datapad screens, grunting occasionally as he passed items of interest. “That’s great, Chief, but these are all quick fixes, and none of them bring the shuttle up to full spec.”

  “Well, no. But all together, they’ll get Shuttle Two down in one piece, guaranteed.”

  “Well, hell, Chief, we’ve got one shuttle down there, practically in one piece; our problem is how to get that one back up.”

  “Relax, Emmett. The idea is we take the second shuttle down filled with as much repair equipment as it will carry, land it near Shuttle One, and then cannibalize the second shuttle for parts to fix the first. Ditch Shuttle One’s ground car to save the weight of the extra crewmen and”—Liu wafted a hand toward the ceiling—”bring our boys home before the snow falls.”

  Potter looked at the Engineer for a moment, then went back to the datapad. “Nice work, Bill,” he finally said in a small voice. He turned to Farrow. “Tom? You’re Master Aboard and we’re talking about throwing away several hundred thousand CD credits worth of equipment.”

  Farrow shook his head in dismissal. “Don’t be ridiculous. Those are our men down there.” He gave a faint smile. “Besides, the CoDominium is picking up the bill, right? Let’s think of this as an opportunity to stick them for all the taxes they’ve gouged us for over the years. Go ahead, Chief Engineer Liu and don’t spare the horses.”

  Robert Miller snatched at his flapping facemask, catching it before the wind could make off with it. He refastened it beneath his hood, and gave Ike a thumbs-up, after which both men returned to the task of lowering the shuttle’s bay ramp into the thin snow covering the alien ground.

  The shuttle had come down in the plains in the northeastern corner of a great equatorial valley. Surrounded for thousands of miles by soaring mountains, the resulting large, enclosed land mass was larger than Earth’s North American continent, and enjoyed the highest air pressure on the moon; close to that of Earth at fourteen thousand feet above sea level. That made it just about tolerable if you were a mountain climber.

  Which Miller was. He’d been on climbs on a dozen worlds, mostly on BuCorrect business, but frequently for sport. That expertise had been the major reason for his assignment as the CoDominium’s man on this survey mission. Thin air was not usually a problem for him, nor cold, but he most definitely did not wish to stay on this moon any longer than necessary; certainly not for the rest of his life. The shuttle crash had inspired his mind into a protective overdrive, and he’d thrown himself into his work with a fierce abandon.

  Still, he’d learned all he could from his samples here on the plains. He needed to get to the foothills to look for exposed ore, and that meant he needed the ground car. Owens and Connolly had shown no interest whatsoever in anything he did, and that was fine with him. This Ike fellow was less obnoxious, and had readily agreed to help him with this much, at least.

  Miller had noticed that Ike was largely unaffected by the thin air, and the cold as well. Obviously the fellow was of terrestrial mountain stock, but Miller had make very little to do with anyone on the trip out here, and still less with Ike or Mike. He’d guessed Greece, or perhaps Turkey, but unlike the rest of the crew, Miller had the connection between minor ship malfunctions and implications of Spanish ancestry for Ike and Mike. He might guess at their background, but he said nothing. He wondered if this Ike was the Kennicott Company man aboard the Fast Eddie; his control officer had warned him there was certain to be one, despite the CoDo’s efforts to get him out here on a “clean” ship.

  Miller didn’t anticipate a problem in any case; the companies and their lobbyists in the CoDominium Senate were powerful, to be sure. But they weren’t foolish enough to confront the Bureau of Correction directly over one marginally useful world, whatever its economic potential. The outworld
companies had the real power these days, but the CoDominium government still controlled the courts. The courts decided who was sentenced to “remedial colony support services,” their euphemism for forced deportation—almost always for life. The companies had a lot of older executives with troublesome young children and grandchildren who frequently made the mistake of thinking themselves above the law. When he thought about it, Miller considered it a rather tawdry system of checks and balances, but it worked, and anyway, he didn’t think about it much.

  The ramp was locked in place, exposing the bulky ground car which had been idling within the bay for the last fifteen minutes. Ike helped Miller into the cab, and they drove it down the ramp. Miller was about to drive off when Ike clambered into the seat beside him and shut the door with a grin.

  Miller stared at the engineering crewman with a frown. “You don’t need to come with me.”

  Ike shrugged. “No work to do; th’ shuttle is tota.” He waved impatiently toward the mountains. “Let’s take a ride.”

  Miller decided right then that Ike was just obvious enough to be the Fast Eddie’s Kennicott Company spy; still, he was glad for the companionship. He set the inertial navigation computer, put the ground car in gear and rolled off east toward the foothills.

  Inside the shuttle, Owens cursed. “Well, great. That Christless Spaniard just took off for a joyride with the Bureau of Intelligence spook.”

  “Oh, terrific. That’s bloody swell.” Finally losing his temper, Connolly threw a fused circuit board against the wall. After a moment, he calmed down. “Well. It’s not like we’d a had a whole lot for them to do here, I suppose.”

  The communications panel chimed, and Potter’s voice crackled into the cabin. “Shuttle One, acknowledge.”

  “Yeah, Emmett, we’re here,” Owens answered.

  “I think we’ve got some good news for you.”

  Owens and Connolly shared a brief, hunted look. “Roger that, Emmett,” Owens fought to control his voice. “What’s the scoop?”

  “Liu’s been working on the Number Two Shuttle, says he can have it ready in about eight days for a one-way trip to your site.”

  A strangled laugh slipped past Owens’ lips. “Well—Jesus Christ, Emmett! What good is that going to do us?”

  “Shut up, Owens,” Connolly shouted, taking over the communications panel. “What have you got in mind, Emmett?”

  Potter explained Liu ‘s plan, and the four of them went over the details for the next eighty-five minutes. The Fast Eddie’s signal was beginning to fade as Potter added: “And please, Brian; be very thorough when you take soundings of that landing area. We don’t want to hit another sinkhole like you did and have two busted up elevators in the basement.”

  Owens laughed an acknowledgement as he signed off.

  Potter’s signal had been gone for a full minute before Connolly put a hand to his forehead in panic. “Oh, my God…the sounding equipment; it’s all in the ground car with Miller and Ike.”

  Owens began trying to raise the BuReloc man and their own engineering crewman, to no avail. “Jesus, they haven’t been gone more than an hour and a half, how far could they get?”

  Connolly sat back in his chair and closed his eyes.

  “I suppose,” he said finally, “that we can take some comfort in the idea that not very much more can go wrong on this trip.”

  Owens kept calling Miller and Ike, trying not to think about how wrong Connolly could be.

  Miller and Ike were gone for five days, and the rest of the crew had given them up for dead. Owens and Connolly had begun clearing a landing area a few hundred yards north, taking soundings manually with a metal pole heated by a battery pack, for although there was snow on the ground, the ground frost beneath was quite thin. Despite the moon’s miserable cold, it was extremely dry this close to the sheltering mountains that separated the valley from the sea winds. The clearing was done with no tools heavier than makeshift brooms and piled rocks to keep fresh drifts out.

  Owens and Connolly had been sweeping clear the landing zone in a clockwise pattern, and had reached eight-thirty when the Navigator noticed his British First Officer staring off into the distance.

  “Christ, Connolly, you’re not snowblind, are you?”

  Connolly dropped his broom and started running past Owens. “It’s the ground car; it’s Miller and Ike, come on!”

  Powder clouds of dry snow puffed up around their feet as the two men ran toward the ground car, the thin, cold air of the wretched little moon raking their lungs in spite of their facemasks. Owens thought that men might one day learn to run on this forsaken rock, but they would never enjoy it.

  The ground car slowed and turned in their direction when they were within fifty yards, and both of them could see the carcass of some large, shaggy quadruped draped over its hood. Owens and Connolly staggered to a fast walk.

  “What the hell is that?” the Navigator wheezed.

  “Indigenous life form.” Connolly too was panting as they closed the distance. “Herbivorous grazer, I suspect; likely inhabitant for this sort of terrain.”

  Owens shook his head. “First kill on the new world. Man has arrived.”

  Connolly threw him a sidelong glance; Owens was not the sort of fellow who made pronouncements on the morality of his species. And in any, case, something about the animal carcass bothered him. Even as they approached, it looked wrong to him; too—lumpy. “Oh, bloody hell,” Connolly said abruptly.

  The ground car had chuffed to a halt as they reached it, and both Connolly and Owens could see all the details of the mooselike animal tied securely to its hood. And tied behind it, giving it the unnatural appearance Connolly had noted, was the body of a man wrapped in plastic. The feet protruded from one end, revealing the thick, CoDo issue explorer’s boots of the engineering crewman Icaorius, better known as Ike.

  Miller popped the door and leaned out. “There was an accident,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Neither Owens nor Connolly said anything, and Miller went on “Get in, we’ll drive him back to the shuttle.”

  Owens turned without answering and headed back for the clearing. After a moment, Connolly followed, leaving Miller standing in the open door of the ground car cab. Finally, the BuReloc man settled back into the cab and drove on to the shuttle. Owens took his hand from his pocket just long enough to casually raise his middle finger to Miller as he passed.

  “What do you think happened?” Captain Potter asked during the next communications cycle.

  Connolly sighed. “I don’t know, Emmett. Miller says they were up in the foothills, digging at some crystalline ore, when they saw this musk-ox-antelope thing. Ike apparently thought it would be good eating, so he shot it with one of the rifles from the ground car. Then, when he was climbing down to the carcass, some big predator jumped him out of nowhere, apparently trying to steal the kill. Ike lost his footing, and fell into a defile before Miller could do anything.

  “How did Miller get the carcass away from the predator?”

  “He says he drove it off with the other rifle. Possible, I suppose.”

  Potter’s silence ate up a good deal of their precious communications time. “Do you believe him?”

  “Hell, no,” Owens said firmly in the background.

  Connolly sighed. “I don’t know, Emmett. The animal carcass looks pretty torn up, like a tiger was at it for a minute or two. Miller recovered Ike’s rifle when he brought the corpse up. Both are pretty banged about.”

  “All right. Liu’s a little ahead of schedule and he says the shuttle will be ready in two more days. We’ve gotten a little sloppy in our radio contacts; that’s not to happen anymore. I want you or Owens on this line every ninety minutes, clear?”

  “Got it.”

  Owens leaned in and said: “And what if we have ‘accidents,’ too, Emmett?”

  “Then the Fast Eddie writes off the Survey Team and heads home.”

  Connolly and Owens shared a look.

  �
�I see,” Connolly said. “So we’d best hope neither of us slips into a coma.

  “You or Frank on this line, every hour and a half,” Potter repeated. “And make sure our guest knows it.”

  Potter signed off, and leaned back against the chair. He had to prop his feet against the console edge to do it.

  In low gravity, as in politics, he considered, leverage is everything.

  Behind him, Chief Engineer Liu stared intently at the silent communications console. “Bad,” was all he said.

  Potter nodded faintly. “Yup.”

  Connolly coined the term “muskylope” for the large four-legged grazer Miller had brought back, and despite the mood of the camp being only a little less frigid than the outside air, all three enjoyed the taste; after their forced diet of survival rations, fresh meat was a welcome relief.

  But once the steaks were gone, then Owens’ and Connolly’s distrust of Miller settled back in. They openly refused to sleep at the same time, an insulting statement which provided great moral satisfaction at first, but which only resulted in Miller being the one man in camp who was getting a decent amount of rest during the moon’s seemingly endless day.

  “Look at him,” Owens said after waking Connolly for his relief. “Son-of-a-bitch sleeps like a baby.

  “Why not? He knows he’s safe.”

  “But is he?” Owens asked Connolly in a low voice.

  “Yes, I am” Miller answered, and Owens turned to see the BuCorrect man watching them calmly from his sleeping bag.

  Owens shook his head. “You spooks are pathetic; America’s in bed with the Russians in our glorious CoDominium, so there’s nobody left to spy on; nobody except everybody. What did you find out there? Something too important to let poor Ike live after he’d seen it? Or was it just for practice?”