Echo

THIRTY-SIX

It was ironic. After the gaslit city, followed by three more days of riding in orbit and seeing nothing other than abandoned habitations, we would probably have given up and gone home. But that crazy assassin had been sent out to stop us. So there was something to be uncovered.

It was the middle of the night, ship time, when everything changed. I came half-awake, decided I was cold, and had started to pull the spread over my shoulders when Belle’s voice asked softly whether I could hear her.

“Yes, Belle,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“There are people on the ground. Live ones.”

That woke me up. “Where?” I said. “How many?”

“Looks like five. Possibly more. They’re in boats.”

They were indeed.

Two dories floated on a river in bright sunlight. They were manned by fishermen, using nets and traps. Unquestionably human. We scanned the countryside: It was hilly, mostly grassland with a few trees. A kilometer or so upriver, a cluster of huts, sheds, and piers, surrounded by a wall of trees, occupied the west bank.

Two hours later, we were overhead in the lander. A third boat had joined the first two. The occupants stood up as we passed, shielding their eyes from the sun. Then they all began paddling furiously for shore.

The river was wide and calm. Nine hundred kilometers to the south, it would empty into an ocean.

“Well,” I said, “let’s hope they’re friendly.”

Alex nodded. “Stay inside until we know.”

“Where do you want to land?”

He indicated a spot about fifty meters outside the wall of trees. “Give ourselves a little distance,” he said.

I started down.

Word was spreading. Heads popped out of the huts. People were pointing at us. I thought I saw arguments breaking out.

The villagers wore makeshift shirts and trousers. No hats were in evidence. Belle reported the temperature at a midsummer level. A group of children playing in a small field were being rounded up by two or three women, who herded them back to the center of the village and shooed them into the huts.

Then we slipped down out of the sky and settled onto the grass.

A half dozen villagers were coming hesitantly toward us. “I don’t see any weapons,” I said.

“Good.” He opened the inner hatch. “If anything happens, clear out.”

I put my scrambler in my belt.

He frowned. “You stay here, Chase.”

“I’m not going to let you go out there by yourself.” Actually, I wasn’t anxious to go outside, but I saw no alternative.

“I’m telling you to stay. How many times are we going to have this argument?”

“I’m the captain, Alex. You can’t tell me to do anything. Now let’s go.”

He started to say something, did say something, but it was under his breath, and I couldn’t make it out.

“We should have a gift for them,” I said.

Alex looked around. “Okay. You have a suggestion?”

“Hold on a second.” I looked through the storage locker. Picked out a titanium lamp. “How about this?”

“How long will it run?”

“I suspect the lifetime of anybody here.”

“Okay. Good.” He took it from me, and we walked into the airlock. I opened the outer hatch.

“Chase,” said Belle, “they’re starting to back away.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “They don’t really know who we are.”

“Anything happens,” Alex said, “anything, get back here and clear out. You understand?” I nodded or something, and he wasn’t happy. “I mean it.”

“Okay, boss.”

We were in the middle of a field. And the people were indeed backing up. Into the trees. Some kids showed up and were quickly hustled out of sight. “Not a good sign,” Alex said.

I squeezed past him to get a better look. “What do you want to do?”

“Wait. Let them come to us. We don’t want to do anything that could be interpreted as a threat.”

We stood in the open hatch and waited. They stirred and whispered to one another, and some even came forward a bit, but nobody actually got clear of the woods. I said how they didn’t look threatening and suggested that Alex stay put while I walked over and said hello. “I mean,” I said, “they’re fishermen.”

He told me to stay where I was, and, in almost the same breath, added, “Something’s happening now.”

An old man in a white robe advanced to the edge of the trees and stopped to study us. He had a black beard streaked with gray. It had a wild appearance, as if a strong wind had been at it. He carried a staff with something fixed to the top. A piece of wood, I thought, carved into a letter “X,” with a circle enclosing all but the top quarter. He planted the staff in the ground but had to push it down because it started to fall over every time he let go of it. He was a comical figure despite the beard. In other circumstances, it would have been hard not to laugh.

Finally, it stuck in the soil. He raised his right hand, palm facing us, and spoke. The words were indistinguishable, and had a singsong rhythm that seemed about us rather than directed to us.

Alex raised his hand to return what seemed to be a greeting and stepped out onto the top rung of the ladder. The crowd reacted by backing away even farther. Except the old man, whose only response was to raise the volume of the singsong message he was reciting.

Alex climbed down the ladder. I let him get to the ground. I had put a foot on the top rung when Alex shouted, “Get back!” Something popped in the trees. “They’ve got guns,” he said. He threw himself under the hull.

“Get clear, Alex,” I said.

“I’m clear.”

More gunfire. A bullet ricocheted off the hatch. I pulled back away from it. “Belle. Retract the treads.”

“Chase, Alex is under—”

“Do it. Now!” Retracting the treads meant of course that she was lowering the lander. Giving Alex some cover. “Alex, you okay?”

“So far.”

“Make sure you’re out from under.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Quick, Belle.”

The hull came down fast. There was a jar as we hit the ground. I remember thinking how I’d just gotten finished repairing the treads, which were probably wrecked again.

“Treads withdrawn,” said Belle. “Moderate damage to the compartment doors.”

They kept shooting. And it wouldn’t take long before the people in the trees circled around behind the shield that the lander was providing and picked Alex off. The blaster was stashed in one of the storage cabinets, but it tends to kill everybody in sight. It doesn’t discriminate real well, and I’d seen too many people out there who just seemed to be standing around. Not to mention some kids. I checked the setting on my scrambler, leaned out, and fired. The energy beam crackled and people screamed and ran. Some of the screams were cut short as the targets’ nervous systems shut down.

“Got to get you out of there, Alex.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” I heard the sound of his scrambler firing.

The old man raised the rod and held it in our direction, as if it would act as a shield against Alex’s weapon.

I used the scrambler against him, and he froze and fell over. “Alex,” I said. “Hit the ground. Stay where you are. I’m going to turn the ship around.”

“Do it.”

The firing intensified. Bullets rattled against the hull.

“Don’t move, Alex.”

“Chase, get it done.”

“Belle.”

“Yes, Chase?”

“Lift off. Do a quick one-eighty and come back down so Alex has access to the airlock.”

“Will do. Say when.”

“Now would be a good time.”

The lander went up, just a few meters. The idiots followed it up with their guns, shooting at it instead of at Alex.

We swung around 180 degrees and went back down again, hitting the ground with a jarring thud. Alex was lying down there, firing into the woods.

Then he was scrambling up the ladder. I reached out to give him a hand, but he literally threw himself past me, tumbling into the airlock. I closed the hatch. “Okay, Belle,” I said, “get us out of here.”

“Well,” he said, lying faceup on the deck, “that worked out pretty well.”

They kept shooting while we lifted off. I jumped back into my seat and pulled hard on the yoke. But the lander kept trying to go to starboard, a sure sign we’d sustained major damage.

“Chase.” Belle’s voice. Unnaturally calm. “They’ve blown the right wing.” She didn’t mean the right wing literally; she was referring to the starboard-side antigrav pod. “It’s at sixty percent.” Which meant we had forty percent normal weight out there. Wings on a lander are short and stubby. When you have an antigrav unit, you don’t need much in the way of additional lift. But wings do stabilize the vehicle in flight. And if something goes wrong, they don’t provide much lift. “Belle, get a message back to StarCorps.” That, of course, is the IEAA, the Interstellar Emergency Assistance Agency. “Tell them where we are and what happened.”

“Will do, Chase.”

“How serious is the damage?” asked Alex.

“We won’t be able to get into orbit. I can’t even control the damned thing.”

“All right. We’ll just have to wait for StarCorps.”

StarCorps was good, but they were far away. “Maybe we should take out some insurance,” he said.

“And do what?”

“Send the same message to Audree. Ask her to rent a ship and a pilot. Give her Rainbow’s account number. And ask her to hustle.”

“Chase,” said Belle, “we’re leaking fuel. Rupture in the lines. I’ve tried to seal it off, but I’m getting no response.”

“Alex,” I said, “get into your seat and belt down.”

“How bad is it?”

As if in reply, something blew, and we rolled right. Alex was thrown against a bulkhead.

“It’s the correlator,” said Belle.

We were still climbing but losing momentum. “We’ll be going down in a minute,” I said.

“Okay.” Alex shook his head. “Just get as far from those lunatics as you can.”

I wasn’t going to wait until we lost power to start back down. I leveled off and, moments later, started a descent. I stayed with the river, which provided landing sites on both banks.

I stayed airborne as long as I could. Maybe twenty minutes. That brought a series of escalating warnings from Belle. Finally: “Too much stress. Engine failure imminent.”

“Better set down,” I said. But the wide riverbanks had gone away. The trees pushed out literally into the water. We passed a set of rapids. Watched the river dive into a canyon. Then more forest. Away from the river, it looked like trees and mountains all the way to the horizon.

“Get us on the ground, Chase,” said Belle.

The river broadened again. And both banks went largely clear of trees, but they were littered with rocks and boulders.

“Prepare to set down, Belle.”

“Opening tread doors.”

We were getting lucky: The riverbanks were showing open space again. Then a red light went on.

“Treads are not working. Will only lower halfway, Chase.”

“Okay. Retract.”

A group of buildings showed up on-screen. On the north side of the river.

“Negative that. Cannot retract. Treads are stuck.”

We were losing altitude quickly. “One minute, Alex.”

“Nice timing, babe.”

“Can’t help it. We’ll come down on the south side. That’ll give us a little—” Another red light stopped me cold.

“Engine failure,” said Belle. “Warning: I am almost out of range.”

I saw open space away from the river and made for that. It was about a kilometer from the buildings. We had no power, of course, and not much glide capability. “Hang on,” I told Alex.

We came down, brushed some treetops, and hit the ground. Then I think the treads tangled us and flipped the vehicle. We rolled, bounced, and slammed into something. I got thrown against the harness, then against the back of the chair. I heard Alex getting tossed around.

“Fuel has ignited, Chase,” said Belle. “Get out as quickly as you can.”

The control panel flared. The lights went off, and smoke poured out of the air vents. “Shut it down, Belle,” I said.

She didn’t answer.

I called Alex, but got no reply there either.

I was hanging upside down. I asked Belle to release the harness and, when nothing happened, reached back to do it myself. But the release didn’t work. The cabin began to fill with smoke. I was breathing burning plastene and God knew what else. “Alex?” I said.

Still no response.

I tried again. Yanked at the restraints. Pulled.

I tugged on the shoulder strap, drew it forward, leaned to one side, and put it behind me. That freed up some space in the lap belt. I pushed the seat back to get some room, lifted the lap belt, and slid out under it. It wasn’t dignified, but it worked.

Just as I got clear, something banged on the outer hatch.

I ignored it. Alex first. He was breathing, but he wasn’t conscious. I lifted his head. “Alex, come on, lover. I need you.”

He coughed. But I got nothing else.

And again, I heard the banging on the hatch. And someone yelling, though I couldn’t understand any of it. I snatched up the scrambler and shoved it into my belt.

The control panel began to burn.

I had to get Alex out of there. But I couldn’t have lifted him in ordinary gravity, let alone what passed for normal gravity in that hellish place.

The smoke was making my eyes tear. I needed some air, then I could come back and try again to move him. I got to the airlock. The outer hatch was, of course, closed, but the hole Alex had cut into it was still there. Since the lander was upside down, the opening was now at about knee level. I got down and looked out. An eye was on the other side, looking in.

I remember thinking how it might have been worse. It could have been a gun barrel.

I hesitated, but not being able to breathe has a way of cutting indecision short. I hit the panel, and the hatch opened.