Mighty Good Road

CHAPTER 5

The two Iadarans were waiting at the airfield, just outside the entrance to the control tower in the fitful shade of a canvas awning. The same hot wind that tossed the canvas up and sideways, snapping it against its grommets, sent little swirls of dust across the hard-metalled field. Heikki saw Nkosi pause, assessing its course and strength, then nod to himself and go on.

Alexieva lifted her hand in greeting as they approached, but did not otherwise move. Sebasten-Januarias, who had been squatting on the paving to her right, rose easily to his feet, Firster coat resettling in folds around his thin body. He wore the headscarf, too, spilling loosely across his shoulders, and Heikki saw Alexieva’s grim face shift slightly, unreadably, as the younger man came forward to greet them. Oh, Christ, Heikki thought, not that trouble again.

Nkosi had seen that change of expression, too, and nodded to both Iadarans. “Let’s get the pre-flight, Jan, shall we?” he said, and drew the younger man into the building in his wake.

“Is this everything you need?” Heikki stared at the single metal strapped crate that sat at Alexieva’s feet.

“My mapping console and my disks,” Alexieva answered. “I figured you’d have anything else I wanted.”

Let’s hope so, Heikki thought. I wouldn’t want to rely so obviously on the kindness of strangers. She said aloud, “Load it with our stuff, then, and we’ll start loading the jumper.”

Alexieva obeyed without speaking, and perched herself and the crate on top of the equipment already piled on the ho-crawl’s tow. Heikki glanced at Djuro, who said, “I’ll bring the jumper around to the ramp.”

“Coward,” Heikki said, under her breath, and surprised a wry grin from the little man. She swung herself into the cab of the ho-crawl and turned it cautiously toward the access road, one hand on the brake to compensate for the drag of the tow. In the side mirror, she could see Alexieva balancing on top of the crates, and wondered why the guide had chosen such an awkward position. But then, the woman seemed uncomfortable around other people; Heikki shrugged to herself, and concentrated on bringing the ho-crawl and its tow to a stop alongside the waiting ramp. It was ready for use, locking legs down, conveyor belt already pointing into the sky at what looked to be the proper angle. Heikki smiled, and cut the engine. Its shrill whine faded, to be replaced by the deeper pulse of the jumper’s multiple power plants as it nosed its way out of the hangar. Heikki swung herself out of the cab again, pulling her cups over her ears, and saw Alexieva wince at the growing noise.

“Get in the cab,” Heikki called, and pointed broadly. The other woman frowned for a moment, then did as she was told. Heikki walked out onto the hard-metalled strip, squinting a little from the dust and the sun, and stood hands on hips, watching the big machine’s approach. Djuro handled it well, for all he was not primarily a pilot—probably better than I could, she admitted. He had only two of the engines going, the baby nacelles at the end of each wing, but even so the power they developed was more than he needed just to pull the machine along the ground. Heikki could hear the notes of stress under the engines’ steady beat. She could just make out Djuro’s face behind the windscreen’s tinted glass.

The jumper was coming in a little crooked. She pointed to her right, then, as the machine corrected its course, nodded approval and gestured for him to keep coming. Djuro was already slowing before she signaled the stop; the machine slid neatly into place with its belly hatch directly opposite the loading ramp. Djuro shut down the engines—Heikki could almost hear relief in the dying sound—then popped the canopy and slid down the jumper’s side without touching the recessed handholds.

“What do you think, Heikki?” he asked, and there was a note of pride in his voice.

“The ship or the docking?” Heikki asked, and beckoned for Alexieva to come out of the ho-crawl. Then she relented. “They both look pretty good, actually. What’s the interior volume like?”

“See for yourself,” Djuro answered, still smiling, and started up the side of the ramp to unlock the belly hatch.

Heikki stood for a moment, staring up at the jumper. It was a standard six-engined biplane, of a design long renowned for its stability as a survey platform and—not incidentally—for its ability to survive a crash landing. It was not a fast machine, by any means, but it was both efficient and practical: it would more than do, for this trip.

Djuro had the hatch open now. Heikki swung herself up the ramp after him, leaving Alexieva standing silent on the metalled ground behind her, and ducked through the hatch into the belly of the ship. The work lights were on, casting a dull orange light through the empty space, and a solid wedge of light fell into the hold from the clear-roofed pilot’s bubble.

“What do you think?” Djuro said again, out of the shadows.

Heikki took her time answering, turning slowly on her heel to survey the compartment. It was a standard set-up, with anchor points for equipment and crew fittings jutting from the beige-padded walls.

“Looks good,” she said. “Let’s get our stuff aboard.”

She and Djuro had fitted out similar craft a hundred times before, and Alexieva proved more than willing to take orders. They had all the crates aboard by the time Nkosi and Sebasten-Januarias returned from the control tower, and were already fitting the first of the control consoles into place against the forward bulkhead. With two more pairs of hands, the rest of the procedure went quickly, the other consoles, the main and secondary sensor suites, the topographical scanner, Alexieva’s maps, even the seats and padded benches that would double as bunks slotting into place with expected ease. When they had finished, Heikki stood for a moment, surveying the changed cabin, and then nodded to herself.

“It looks good,” she said aloud. “I think we’re ready, boys and girls.”

Sebasten-Januarias let out a cheer, quickly suppressed. He looked at Nkosi instead, and said, “Do you want to lift on hover, or will you fly her out?”

“Fly,” Nkosi answered instantly. “Why waste the chance, when we have all this space just waiting for us to use it?”

He did not say, did not need to say, that the heavy jumpers were notoriously less stable under the restricted power of the two variable-function engines. Heikki nodded her approval, and seated herself at the master console. It was set almost against the bulkhead separating the pilot’s bubble from the main compartment, so that both pilots had to squeeze past her to reach their seats. However, the position gave her an unimpeded view of the other consoles, and of the projection tank laid out on the floor of the compartment. When that was lit, it would give her a realtime image of the terrain in range of the jumper’s scanners. She ran her hands across her equipment, watching the checklights flicker, and slipped on the filament mike that would be her link with the rest of her crew.

“Does everyone hear me all right?” she said, on the general frequency, and heard the answers in her earphones as well as in the air around her. “Then we’re ready when you are, Jock.”

“I am getting clearance from the tower now,” Nkosi answered. There was a moment’s pause. “And we are cleared. All secure in the bay?”

Heikki glanced around one final time, making sure that all the seals were complete, that no telltale flash of red or emergency orange betrayed an incomplete connection, then looked at Djuro and Alexieva. Both nodded, and she said, “All secure in the bay, Jock. She’s all yours.”

“Then we are off,” Nkosi said lightly, and a second later the first of the engines coughed to life. The jumper was well-screened against the outside noises; even so, by the time the sixth engine wound up to speed, Heikki had to swallow hard, and was grateful even for the minimal protection of her light earpieces. In an hour or two, she knew, the noise would fade into the background of her consciousness, but until then, it was an annoyance to be endured. The jumper lurched forward, then turned slow and reluctant, trundling toward its assigned runway. Heikki adjusted her frequency control until she had the tower, and listened idly while Nkosi ran through the final checkout procedure.

“Goodbye and good luck,” the tower said at last, sounding almost indecently cheerful, and its last words were swallowed in the sudden roar as Nkosi opened the throttles. The jumper started forward, swaying on its heavy wheels, jouncing along the metalled runway for what always seemed a dangerously long time. Even though she knew from years of experience just how long it took one of these craft to become airborne, Heikki found her hands growing white-knuckled on the arms of her seat.

Then, reluctantly, the jumper lumbered into the air. Nkosi’s voice sounded in the headpiece, “Everything looks green from here. We are starting our flight plan now.”

“Good luck,” Control said again, and the headpiece hissed with empty static.

Heikki winced, and adjusted her controls. The jumper still had a distinct angle—Nkosi had not yet brought it to their cruising altitude—but she switched on her console anyway. “I’m going to start calibrating now, Sten, Alexieva—do people call you anything for short?”

Even across the dim compartment, Heikki could see the one-shoulder shrug. “Not really.”

“All right.” Heikki looked down at her board. “I’m lighting the tank.”

“Sensor input ready,” Djuro answered.

“Then let’s go.” Heikki touched keys and the floor of the jumper seemed to disappear in front of her, to be replaced by a fuzzy, tilted image of the land over which they were passing. She frowned in concentration, touching buttons, and slowly the picture became clearer, until she could make out individual trees and the occasional building. “How does this match your maps?” she said, to Alexieva.

The dark woman bent over her console, her expression unreadable. “It matches my map 5b,” she said, and an instant later bright red grid lines popped into being, hovering over the apparent countryside. “Which is as it should be. Of course, you won’t get such a precise fit once we get into the ‘wayback.”

I know that, Heikki thought, and barely kept herself from saying it aloud. “Enhancements, Sten?” she asked, instead.

“This is infrared,” Djuro answered promptly, and the image shifted, the buildings standing out in stark contrast to the land around them. “Metal concentrations, ionization, subsoil minerals—” He ran down a list of options, the image shifting with each new possibility. “Composite.”

Heikki blinked at the chaotic image, and said, “Everything looks good on my board.”

“Same here,” Djuro answered, and returned to the real light projection. After a moment, Alexieva echoed him.

“So now we wait,” Heikki said. This was the worst part of any job, the interminable travel—usually by slow-flying jumper—to get from the main base to the place where she could do the actual work. She curbed her impatience easily—both the impatience and her control of it were habits now—and leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out into the aisle. There was nothing to do but wait.

The ground crept by in the tank’s image, the clumps of thick-leafed small-jades that dominated the area around Lowlands gradually giving way to stands of giant jade and tree-tall reed grass. There were fewer farmsteads here, what few there were huddled along the lakes, bright as silver coins that dotted the landscape. Alexieva muttered to herself at the map console, identifying each one. The lakes were linked by a network of little rivers, barely visible from this height, but drawn on Alexieva’s maps like a filigree fan. Gradually, the lines of the fan drew together into three thicker lines, more clearly visible from the air: the Three Rivers that flowed from the Asilas, spilling around the enormous outcropping of Castle Knob. Centuries of wear, of the Asilas’s water rushing past, had done little more than chip the edges of the volcanic plug; rather than carving a hole through it, the river had split around it, forming three new channels. A light was flashing from the top of the knob, and Heikki could see a light on her own console flashing in perfect synchronicity. She was receiving the beacon at Weather Station Green perfectly. She touched keys, checking her own course plot, and was not surprised to see the numbers match precisely.

There was a stirring behind her, and Nkosi stepped off the ladder and into the instrument bay. “We are just passing Castle Knob Beacon,” he began, and then broke off, looking at the tank. “Ah, I see you have it. Good.”

“Who’s minding the store, Jock?” Djuro called.

“Jan, of course,” Nkosi answered, managing to sound regally surprised.

“I’m glad you trust him,” Djuro retorted.

“He has been flying us for the past hour,” Nkosi answered. “Do you have any complaints?”

“Not me,” Djuro answered, and bent his head over the controls. Nkosi nodded, and started for the toilet at the back of the compartment, walking straight through the image in the tank. It was a startling effect, as though he’d stepped through an empty space. Even Heikki, who’d seen the illusion more than once, caught her breath as he stepped into apparent nothingness, walking through and over the image of the beacon and the verdant hills as though they weren’t there. And of course they’re not, Heikki thought, not really, but she could not help holding her breath until he was safely on the other side. At the map console, Alexieva shook her head slowly, but said nothing.

Heikki cleared her throat as Nkosi emerged from the little compartment, made herself not watch as the pilot waded back through the image. “We’re coming up on our first marker,” she said, on the general frequency, and Alexieva nodded in hasty agreement.

“Yes, the falls, where the Asilas comes off the massif.”

Nkosi paused at Heikki’s console, staring over the woman’s shoulder at the shifting image. “We do not actually make a course change here, do we?”

Heikki shook her head. “No, this is just to calibrate my instruments and Alexieva’s maps. We follow the river another three hundred kilometers or so—” She touched keys again. “Three hundred seven point five, actually, and then turn onto the new heading. We’ll cross the latac’s verified course about an hour after that.”

Nkosi nodded, still watching the tank, and then turned away. “I will let Jan fly us for a while, then,” he said, over his shoulder, and disappeared into the bubble.

Heikki nodded back, and bent her attention to her console. So far, at least, Alexieva’s maps and the terrain below seemed to match with better than average precision. She checked the last set of numbers, then leaned back in her chair. “It looks good, Alexieva. Everything checks out perfectly.”

Unexpectedly, Alexieva smiled, the expression transforming her rather grim features. “Thanks. I spent about three years in the massif, mapping.” Her face clouded again. “I didn’t get very far, though.”

“Grant money run out?” Heikki asked, not quite idly, and Alexieva shook her head.

“No, Lo-Moth ended the project. They were really only interested in mapping the edges of the massif— still are, for that matter. God knows, I’ve tried to get them to sponsor a trip to the center! But they say their flights don’t cross the core, so there’s no point in spending money on a really detailed survey.”

“That sounds damn shortsighted of them,” Djuro said.

Alexieva shrugged. “They’ve been pretty reluctant to spend money, ever since the home office changed management.”

“Home office?” Heikki said. “Do you mean Tremoth, or the higher-ups at Lo-Moth?”

Alexieva looked down at her console as though she regretted having said even that much. “Tremoth, I guess. I don’t really know—I only worked for them the once.”

Heikki did not pursue the point, saying instead, “You’d think somebody would put up the money.”

Alexieva shrugged again, the same sullen, one-shouldered movement Heikki had seen before. “Who’s got it to spend?” She fingered her keyboard. “I’m switching maps.”

Which was an effective end to the conversation, Heikki thought. She said nothing, however, merely noting the shift in her own records, and settled back in her chair to wait for the next course correction. The Asilas, a silver band almost two fingers wide, wound past in the tank, seeming to curve in time to the rhythmic drone of the engines. There was a flurry of movement on her board as they passed the Falls, looking from the air like a plume of smoke, and the jumper banked slightly, following the river’s northeasterly curve. Heikki checked her calculations again, matching her course with the latac’s last three position readings. They would intercept the first of those in a little more than two hours.

She sighed then, stretching, and pushed herself up out of her chair.

“Keep an eye on things, Sten,” she said, and Djuro nodded. Satisfied, Heikki turned forward, pulling herself up the short ladder into the pilot’s bubble.

Nkosi had the controls, and sat slumped in his chair, hands loose on the steering yoke, his eyes seemingly fixed on nothing at all. Sebasten-Januarias, in the left-hand seat, had his head turned toward the side of the bubble, but the direction of his gaze was hidden by his dark goggles. Iadara’s sky curved overhead, its brassy blue darkened by altitude, touched here and there by thin wisps of cloud. The trees of the massif formed a dense and dark green floor beyond the jumper’s nose, looking from the air like a coarsely knotted carpet. A lake flashed like a beacon as the sun caught it, and then disappeared again as the jumper slid forward. Heikki blinked, blinded as much by the lush beauty of the scene as by the brilliant sun, then cleared her throat.

“How’s it going?” she asked, as much to let the pilots know she was there as to hear an answer to her question.

Sebasten-Januarias turned toward her quickly, then looked away again without answering. Nkosi said, without turning his head, “Not badly at all. I do not like the look of those, however.”

He nodded toward the southeast, where a line of clouds showed like mountains on the horizon. Heikki leaned forward against the back of his chair, squinting past his shoulder at the distant shapes.

“What do you think, Jan?” she asked, after a moment.

The younger man shrugged, the goggles effectively hiding any changes of expression. “It’s hard to tell. We don’t usually get rain in the afternoon in the massif, not like you get around Lowlands.”

“Is Station Green saying anything?” Heikki asked, and was not surprised when Sebasten-Januarias shook his head.

“Not yet.”

“If we have to fly through them,” Nkosi said, delicately stressing the word “if,” “it will make it hard to hold a low altitude search. Of course, we can always work through the clouds.”

I know that, Heikki thought, scowling. She realized she was tapping the back of Nkosi’s chair, and stilled her fingers with an effort. “Sten,” she said, on the general frequency, “I know you’re tapping into Weather Station Green, but I want you to see if you can pick up Station Red Six as well. There’s bit of cloud in the southeast I want to keep an eye on.”

“No problem,” Djuro answered promptly.

Heikki stayed in the bubble for a few moments longer, lulled by the sunlight and the steady drone of the engines. The ground, darker and less defined than its image in the tank, slid past almost imperceptibly, without many breaks in the vegetation by which she could gauge their progress. To the southeast, the clouds hung steady on the horizon, while the occasional thread of cloud whipped past overhead, borne on the high air currents.

“Heikki?” Djuro’s voice in the headpiece woke her from her daze. “I’m monitoring Station Red Six like you asked. They’re showing a line of rain, all right, which they predict will pass us to the south.”

“Good enough,” Heikki said, and was aware of Sebasten-Januarias’s slow stare. He would have the right to say he told me so, she conceded silently, but to her surprise, the younger man said instead, “About how much longer till we turn onto the latac’s course?”

Heikki glanced at the chronometer set into the control board. “About another hour,” she said, and pushed herself away from Nkosi’s chair. “We’ll let you know, don’t worry. Yell if you need anything, Jock.”

“I will do that,” Nkosi said, tranquilly, not taking his eyes from the distant horizon. Heikki, satisfied, slid back down the ladder into the bay, and reseated herself behind her console.

The last hour passed excruciatingly slowly, until Heikki found herself rerunning tests that had been redundant the first time. At last the flashing light that marked their position steadied into an amber circle, and a warning tone sounded in her ear. She touched the frequency selector, tuning her microphone to the general channel, and said, “Time, Jock.”

“I see it,” Nkosi answered. “Coming up on it—now.” The jumper banked lazily, the image in the tank flickering briefly before the machinery adjusted to the new angle. “We are now on the new heading, flying by your wire, Heikki.”

“You can start the descent to the search altitude whenever you’re ready,” Heikki said, and felt the jumper tilt forward slightly even before Nkosi acknowledged her order. She bent over her console, slaving the sensor array directly to her console, following the craft’s progress on her line map as well as in the tank.

“We’re coming up on the last reported position,” Alexieva announced, and an instant later, Nkosi said, “We are steady at optimum search, Heikki. Cross winds are minimal.”

“I confirm that,” Djuro said.

His instruments were more sophisticated than the pilot’s. Heikki nodded to herself, and took a last look at the array of lights covering her board. “Start scanning,” she said aloud. “Full array. Alexieva, let me know if we deviate from the projected course. Take visual, Sten.”

“We’re right on the line,” the surveyor answered.

“Scanners are on,” Djuro announced. “And we’re recording. I have the sight display.”

Heikki did not bother to answer, watching her board flip from the array of green to the spectrum of brighter colors that displayed the sensors’ readings of the terrain below. From this height, they could cover about a kilometer of ground with better than eighty-five percent accuracy; readings on the fringes of the web could extend almost three kilometers from the source, and occasionally as far as five, but with sharply decreasing accuracy. She frowned a little, studying the familiar pattern, spikes of blues and greens and almost-invisible purples, and adjusted her controls to sharpen the focus. It was a typical pattern, changed only slightly by local conditions, the fleshy leaves and trunks and the loam-covered forest floor providing a good contrast for any metal readings. And metal there would be, if—when— they found the latac: even if the craft had landed deliberately, retracting its enormous envelope, there was still the metal-ribbed gondola to betray the site to the probing beams. And if it had not, if it really had crashed, there would be strips of reflecting foil from the envelope to guide them in. Delicately, she played her controls, hunting along the narrow bandwidth that would show metal, fine tuning the machines so that even the fringes of the web would work at optimum resolution. In the tank, the forest floor crept by undisturbed.

“Jock, we’re sliding off course, half a degree, now one degree to the south southeast,” Alexieva said.

“Correcting,” Nkosi answered, and the jumper tipped slightly. “Sorry about that, Heikki.”

“No problem.” Heikki’s eyes were still on her console, flicking from the main readout, with its spiked lines of blue and green, to the course display and the tank and then to the spot analysis as it flashed its next string of symbols.

“How’s it going?” Sebasten-Januarias’s voice in her headpiece sounded rather lost.

“Nothing so far,” Heikki answered, and was surprised to see how far they’d come along the latac’s projected course. Even as she thought that, Alexieva cleared her throat.

“We’re coming up on the projected crash site.”

That was an elipse perhaps four kilometers long and three wide, the computers’ best estimate of the latac’s position when the full force of the storm hit it. Without waiting for orders, Nkosi swung the jumper into a slow search pattern, spiralling out from one focus of the elipse. Heikki frowned, and adjusted her sensors again, sending the fine-scan ghosting ahead of the jumper to probe the forest.

“I don’t see anything,” Djuro said. “What about you, Jock? Jan?”

“Not a thing,” Nkosi said. “There is not a break in the canopy for kilometers.”

“Same here,” Sebasten-Januarias said.

Heikki glanced at her chronometer. The warning light had just begun to flash above the current time: two hours to sunset. “I’m not inclined to waste the time going back to Lowlands and then flying back out tomorrow,” she said aloud. “Alexieva, is there any place nearby that we could set down for the night?”

There was a momentary silence while Alexieva worked her console, and then the surveyor answered, “There’s a storm clearing about a hundred-twenty-five kilometers to the north. The last flyby was three months ago, and it was clear then. You’ll have to land on rotors, though.”

“Jock?” Heikki asked.

“I would prefer to land in daylight, if possible. Since we have to go to the rotors, that is.”

“Right.” Heikki adjusted her controls. “Flip me the coordinates, Alexieva.”

The surveyor complied without speaking, and Heikki stared for a moment at the numbers flashing on her screen. It would take them about an hour to reach the storm clearing, a patch of land deliberately deforested to provide a safe harbor for any craft caught by bad weather while crossing the massif. That left them perhaps half an hour’s further search, allowing for a safety cushion…. She sighed, and keyed a new course into her machines. It would take them to the clearing in a series of arcs, covering as much territory as possible before they were forced to set down for the night.

“Jock, I’ve got the new course for you.” Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the numbers to his navigation computer.

“Very good, Heikki,” Nkosi answered.

The land beneath the jumper changed slightly as they made their way slowly north, the giant-jades that dominated the massifs rim giving way to taller, needle-leaved blackwoods. Their trunks were more solid, the scalelike bark impregnated with minerals leached from the soil. Heikki scowled as her readings shifted, little peaks of red flashing up from the background, and adjusted the sensitivity of the analysands until the red no longer showed. It was necessary, she knew, but it cut her effective range back to three kilometers from the source. Frowning still, she began to swing her most sensitive instrument slowly through three hundred sixty degrees, trying to compensate for the loss of the general scan. Her display screen copied the movement faithfully, a wedge bright with detail sweeping steadily over the cooler general readings.

For what seemed an eternity, nothing changed. The chronometer ticked slowly forward, the warning light pulsing more strongly as sunset approached. In the tank, the visual display took on an odd, distorted quality as the ground shadows lengthened, and Djuro adjusted his instruments to compensate. The wedge of the fine-scan swept around the screen, bringing momentary detail to the picture. Then, at the far edge of the screen, metal flashed. For all that she had been anticipating just that, Heikki’s reflexes were slowed by the afternoon of waiting. The red peak, almost off the scale in that single pulse, vanished. She swore, and worked her controls until she got it back. The intensity had already faded, as though the object were already out of range. She swore again, but managed to fix the coordinates precisely before the signal failed.

“Got something?” Djuro asked, and did not bother to keep his tone casual.

“I think so,” Heikki answered, busy feeding coordinates to her navigation program. “Something, anyway. Jock, can we reach this spot before nightfall?”

It had been a forlorn hope at best, and she was not surprised when Nkosi answered, “No, Heikki, not a chance.”

“We’ll hit it in the morning, then,” Heikki said, and kept an iron control over her voice.

“Do you think it’s the latac?” Sebasten-Januarias asked.

“I didn’t get much of a reading on it,” Heikki answered. “I can’t tell.” But it was metal, and a lot of it, concentrated in one small area. Unless it’s another wreck, I don’t know what else it could be. She curbed her enthusiasm sternly, forcing herself to pay attention to the console in front of her. Already, she had missed the chance to fine-scan a dozen kilometers. She made a face, and applied herself to the work.

As predicted, the jumper came in sight of the storm clearing with the sun still a few degrees above the horizon. It was not an especially inviting place, just a break in the trees barely large enough to land a latac. As Nkosi circled slowly, assessing the difficulties, the tank in the main bay showed thin shoots of new trees already breaking through the dark ground.

“How’s it look?” Heikki asked, after what seemed an interminable silence.

“We can land,” Nkosi answered. “On rotors, of course, as you said, Alexieva, but we can land.”

“Go ahead,” Heikki said, and heard the engine note change as Nkosi began the switchover. The servos whined shrilly as the outboard nacelles tilted to their new positions, and the jumper shuddered under the new drag. There was a heartstopping moment when everything seemed to go silent, and the jumper seemed to hang suspended, held up only by momentum, and then the harsher sound of the rotors cut in. Slowly Nkosi increased their power, until forward motion stopped and the jumper was hovering a hundred meters above the floor of the clearing.

“Anything on the sensors, Sten?” Heikki asked.

Djuro shook his head. “Nothing of interest. Very small, mobile life—”

“Gerriks, probably,” Alexieva said.

“—but nothing any bigger.”

“You can take her down, Jock,” Heikki said.

To her surprise, it was Sebasten-Januarias who answered, “Going down.”

There was no reason Sebasten-Januarias shouldn’t land the craft, Heikki knew—he had almost certainly made this kind of landing a hundred times, and it was for just that reason that she had hired him—but she found herself holding her breath anyway, until at last the jumper came to rest with a gentle thump. Sebasten-Januarias cut the engines, and announced, over the descending whine of the rotors, “Well, here we are.”

After the steady noise of the engines, the silence was almost oppressive. Heikki pushed herself up from her console and stood stretching, trying to shake off the irrational sense of unease. She heard footsteps on the ladder behind her, and then Nkosi slipped past her into the bay. A moment later, Sebasten-Januarias followed, still smiling with the pleasure of having completed a tricky maneuver. Heikki smiled back in spite of herself, and looked at Alexieva.

“What do we need to do here to secure the camp?”

The surveyor shrugged, both shoulders, this time, a freer, more relaxed gesture. “You didn’t pick up any orcs on the way in, and they tend to avoid the clearings anyway. I’d want to put out barrier lights, though, just to discourage creepers.”

Heikki nodded her agreement, and Nkosi said, “I will help you, if you like.”

Alexieva looked momentarily startled, and then as though she were seeing the pilot for the first time. “Thanks,” she said, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. “The lights are at the back.”

Nkosi followed her toward the jumper’s tail, walking blithely through the image in the tank, frozen now in an off-balance picture of the clearing, and they both vanished into the shadows outside the main lights. Heikki leaned back to her console to seal the day’s recordings, and a moment later the tank vanished as Djuro finished closing down the console.

“That’s that,” he said, unnecessarily, and Heikki nodded. “I assume we’re sleeping in the ship?”

“Absolutely,” Heikki said, and saw Sebasten-Januarias grin.

“Pop the hatch, please,” Alexieva called, and came back into the light, moving stiff shouldered under the weight of the barrier light units. Nkosi followed, four more units wedged into his enormous hands. Djuro worked the release, and the belly hatch sagged outward; at his nod, Sebasten-Januarias hurried to push it fully open. The ramp extended automatically, and the two headed down it into the clearing.

The air blowing in through the open hatch was very warm, and smelled sharp and green. Heikki breathed deep, teased by a vague memory, the suspicion that she had smelled that scent before, in some unpleasant context, but the thought faded before she could track it down. She shook herself, and crossed to the hatch, leaning out into the warm evening air.

The sun was down now, and the sky was fading rapidly toward night. The wind hissed through the blackwood needles with a noise like a dozen women whispering together in a distant room. The thin grass had been blown into tangles by their landing, and lay in knotted whorls; beyond the area affected by the rotors down-wash, it lay in sleek waves, shaped by the prevailing winds. There were flowers, too, slender dark orange blossoms that grew four or five together from a cuplike circle of leaves. One lay almost at her feet, snapped by the ramp. Death-trumpets, she thought, and that was the smell, too, that had tugged at her memory. Death-trumpets, the lovely insect-eater, perfect example of form and function: she could still remember a company biologist, a friend of her parents’, extolling the plant’s virtues over dinner. The idea had frightened her, though she had understood that the death-trumpets could not consume a human being; Galler had seen a weakness, and grown pots of them on his windowsill, until overfeeding—there were too many insects in Lowlands— had killed them. She could still remember the mix of pleasure and disgust with which she’d watched their leaves turn yellow, their strong verdant odor giving way to the sicky stench of decaying, half digested strawflies.

She pushed the thought away, angry at its irrelevance, and made herself walk down the ramp and into the clearing. She made a quick circuit of the jumper, forcing herself to concentrate on checking the external systems while the light lasted, then turned back toward the hatch. Nkosi and Alexieva were there before her, the surveyor squatting over a junction box while Nkosi looked over her shoulder.

“Watch your eyes,” Alexieva called, and Heikki looked obediently toward the jumper, one hand raised to shield her sight. Light flared behind her, forming a solid-seeming wall around the jumper. Heikki winced despite her protecting hand. Alexieva grimaced, and hastily adjusted the controls. The worst of the brilliance faded, refocussed outward; now the jumper was ringed with light no more dazzling than a fire, a light that cast multiple shadows across the tangled grass.

“Pretty impressive,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was standing in the hatch, a portable stove in his hands.

“I think the rations are self-heating,” Alexieva said.

Sebasten-Januarias shrugged and came on down the ramp. At the bottom, he looked around for a moment before finding an almost bare spot of ground, then kicked at the bits of vegetation until he’d cleared a space for the stove. Setting it down, he said, “So? It’s nice to have a fire.”

“That is certainly true,” Nkosi agreed, and moved to help him collect bits of debris for fuel. Alexieva eyed them expressionlessly, Heikki saw with some amusement, then went to join them, catching up a handful of dry grass as she passed. Then Djuro appeared in the hatch, balancing a stack of steaming ration trays. They ate in an oddly companionable silence, sitting cross-legged on the ground or on the edge of the ramp, while Sebasten-Januarias’ fire crackled and spat in the open stove. It was full dark now, but the barrier units provided more than enough light. Looking up, Heikki saw that they drowned all but the brightest stars.

She stooped and picked up her emptied tray, suddenly aware of her own exhaustion. “I think I’ll turn in,” she said, to no one in particular, and saw Djuro nod in answer.

“Me, too.”

“I think I will stay out for a while,” Nkosi said. Alexieva looked up silently, and looked away.

“Seal the hatch and put on the monitors when you come in,” Heikki said, and started up the ramp into the main bay.

Sebasten-Januarias was there before them, already curled into a light-weight sleeping bag on one of the benches, his face turned to the jumper wall. Heikki grinned—it was funny how often the youngest members of her teams were the first to surrender to sleep— and threaded her way past the shut down consoles to the narrow storage rack at the back of the bay. She reached for her bag, twisting it deftly out of the clamps, and glanced along the bay wall. The best of the bunks was toward the nose, partially shielded by Djuro’s console. Boss’s privilege, she thought, and unrolled the bag onto the narrow pad. Djuro turned his back politely as she stripped off her four-panel shift, leaving herself in the loosely concealing undershirt. She tugged off her boots, rolling them up carefully so that nothing would crawl inside overnight—hardly necessary, inside the jumper, but a precaution so habitual that she would not sleep if she omitted it—and slid into the sleeping bag. The thermopack purred softly at her feet, adjusting itself to her body temperature and her sleeping preferences. She fell asleep listening to its gentle hum.

The hiss of the ramp jacks and the blast of sunlight from the newly opened hatch woke her the next morning. She swore, blinking balefully into the brightness, and heard Djuro echo her curse from the bunk behind hers.

“So sorry,” Nkosi said, with patent insincerity. Heikki struggled upright in time to see him vanish into the light. She muttered another malediction, and reached for her shift, wriggling it ungracefully over her head. She ran her hands hastily through her hair, pushing it into a semblance of order, and slid out of the bag.

“Rise and shine,” she said, not without malice, and prodded the nearest still-occupied bunk. Sebasten-Januarias emerged, looking rumpled, scrubbing at his eyes like a schoolboy.

“Breakfast,” Alexieva announced, too cheerfully, and held out a stack of trays. Heikki accepted hers in decent silence—the premade coffee, for once, smelled almost drinkable—and retreated to her bunk. By the time she had eaten half of it, Nkosi had returned, carrying the first of the barrier lights. Alexieva fetched the rest, and then collected the ration trays and fed them into the compactor.

“What is the plan today, Heikki?” Nkosi asked, perching on the edge of the map console. Alexieva gave him a look, but did not order him away.

Heikki crossed to her own console and switched it on, calling up the metal reading she had gotten at the end of the previous day. “We got one sharp echo yesterday, just before we set down. First thing, I want to check that out; if it’s nothing, then we’ll proceed with the original search plan.”

“What kind of reading?” Sebasten-Januarias asked. Three cups of coffee, downed in quick succession, had restored his good humor remarkably.

“I can’t really tell,” Heikki answered, and beckoned him over to see for himself. The young man squinted at the reddish spikes, and shook his head.

“Doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Djuro said. “It doesn’t say much. Just that there’s something metal out there.” He looked at Heikki. “Want to give odds?”

It was an old game between them. Heikki paused, considering, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she began, and then, seeing disappointment on the little man’s face, made herself think. “Two to one against? It’d be too damn easy, Sten.”

“Two to one against,” Djuro echoed. “Bear witness, all of you.”

Nkosi laughed. “And what are the stakes, this time?”

Heikki shrugged. Djuro said, “Dinner?”

“No, how can that be two for one?” Nkosi objected.

“Heikki pays food and drink,” Djuro said.

“Done,” Heikki said. They shook hands, the Iadarans watching stonefaced. Heikki felt strangely foolish, especially under Alexieva’s faintly disapproving stare, and was glad when Nkosi drew the surveyor aside, saying, “Please, Alex, show me the approximate course.”

It took little time to stow the remaining sleeping bags and prepare the jumper for flight. Nkosi lifted ship, this time, easing the juniper into the air on the whining rotors. He circled the clearing once, cautiously, before switching to the main plant, then swung the jumper onto a course that would bring them into scanning range of the metallic contact in little over an hour. Heikki, for all that she had given pessimistic odds, found herself holding her breath as they came up on the contact site, hoping in spite of herself.

Red spikes lanced across her board, shooting off the scale, and she hastily adjusted the scanner to a lower sensitivity. In the same instant, Djuro said, “Contact— Jesus. I think you owe me dinner, Heikki.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Heikki said, more calmly than she felt. She switched screens, watching the numbers shift across her board: the contact resolved itself into a large, relatively solid mass, and several larger but far less massive objects. I think you may be right, she thought, but a caution as ingrained as superstition kept her from voicing the thought aloud.

“There!” Alexieva said, pointing into the tank, and at the same time both Sebasten-Januarias and Nkosi said, “Balloon fabric!”

The tank flashed like lightning as sunlight was reflected off the shreds of the latac’s envelope into the cameras. Djuro adjusted his equipment, muttering to himself.

“Hold this position,” Heikki said, sliding out from behind her console, and swung herself up to the pilot’s bubble.

“Go to rotors?” Sebasten-Januarias asked, as she arrived, and Nkosi hesitated.

“Heikki, what do you think?”

“You’re the pilot,” Heikki answered, and Nkosi looked again at his controls.

“Go ahead, make the changeover,” he said, after a moment. Heikki waited until they had completed the maneuver and the jumper was steady, hovering over the first tattered strip of thinmetal envelope, before asking the crucial question. Already, she could see— they could all see—the break in the forest up ahead that must mark the gondola’s resting place. She nodded to it, saying, “See if you can set us down there, Jock.”

“I will do my best,” Nkosi said. The jumper swung slowly toward the new clearing, turning to use the wind to help hold the craft steady in the air, and now they could all see the second and third scraps of envelope snagged in the treetops, the edges browned and ragged as though touched by fire.

“Christ,” Sebasten-Januarias said, his face very pale. “That looks….” He let his words trail off as though he could not bring himself to voice his suspicions.

Alexieva said it for him, hard-voiced. “That’s blaster fire did that.”

“Heikki,” Djuro said, cutting through the younger pilot’s confused protest, “I’m picking up lifesign, a lot of blips—I think it may be orcs.”

“Let me see,” Alexieva said, and there was a silence. Heikki imagined her peering over Djuro’s shoulder, judging the numbers and the vague shapes on the little screen. “I think it is orcs, Heikki. About two kilometers off, and milling around. Something’s upset them, that’s for sure.”

Heikki made a face, but did not answer at once, looking instead at Nkosi. “Can you land here?”

The pilot’s answer was reassuringly prompt. “And take off again, too.”

“Alexieva, will sonics keep off the orcs?” It was a long shot, Heikki knew: the old sonics had never been enough, but there was a chance that the newer models might do some good.

“It’s possible,” Alexieva said, after a moment, and Heikki could almost hear the shrug in her voice. “It’s worth a try.”

“Drop a pattern,” Heikki said, “and once they’re down—” She touched Nkosi’s shoulder lightly. “—bring us in.”

Nkosi circled the clearing twice before they dropped the sonics, giving them all time to study the wreck. The gondola lay at the far end of what had been a natural break in the forest, its rounded nose half buried in the ground at the foot of a well-grown blackwood. The tree was canted at a forty-five degree angle, half of its root system jutting into the air; two other trees, barely more than saplings, lay snapped in the gondola’s wake. The ground in the clearing itself was churned and muddy, disturbed, Heikki thought suddenly, by more than the crash.

“I guess they were trying to land and overshot,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was still very pale, but his voice was under control.

“It looks that way,” Heikki agreed. “What are the orcs doing, Sten?”

“Still holding off,” Djuro answered.

Heikki made a face, studying the ground below as they swung past again. “Inform Lowlands tower that we’ve found the wreck,” she said slowly, “broadcast the map coordinates and our official claim number. Make sure it goes out on a wide band, Sten.”

“You got it,” Djuro answered, his voice neutral.

Nkosi risked a glance over his shoulder. “You are taking chances.”

“Am I?” Heikki said, stonefaced, and then relented. “Look, if this was a hijack, I want to be very sure everybody and their half-brother knows we found it, just so nobody decides to try the same trick on us on the way home.”

“Lowlands control has acknowledged our claim,” Djuro said. “I did a quick aerial scan, there’s nothing up here within range except a scheduled commercial flight.”

It was nice to work with people who anticipated her orders, Heikki thought. “You took the words right out of my mouth,” she said aloud, and took a deep breath. “Let’s drop the sonics, Alexieva, and then we’ll go down.”

The surveyor answered indistinctly, and a few moments later a light flared red on the central status board.

“The chute’s open,” Alexieva announced, almost in the same instant, sounding rather breathless, and then added, “First sonic’s away. Dropping the second. And the third.”

Heikki studied the pattern blossoming on Nkosi’s small-scale display, her imagination transforming the throbbing points of light into bright orange parachutes supporting the half-meter cubes of the sonic deflectors. She watched them down—Alexieva’s aim had been good; the cubes landed in a ragged line across the end of the clearing, falling between the wreck and the orcs—and rested a hand on Nkosi’s shoulder.

“No more movement from the orcs,” Djuro reported.

“Take her down, Jock,” Heikki said, quietly. “But don’t shut down till I tell you.”

Nkosi grinned, clearly enjoying the challenge, his big hands easy on the controls. He brought the jumper down slowly, easing it into the space between the wall of trees to the west and the debris of the wreck, so that the craft seemed almost to float toward the ground. The wheels touched at last with a barely perceptible thump, so that Heikki had to look at the contact indicators to be sure they were down.

“Nice job,” she said, and saw her admiration reflected in Sebasten-Januarias’s eyes. “We’re here,” she went on, more loudly, and looked at Nkosi. “Jock, I want you to stay at the controls. Keep the engines running and ready to lift, just in case the sonics don’t work. Jan, Sten, Alexieva, you’ll come with me. Rig the detectors to warn us if the orcs start this way, Sten, and patch that into Jock’s console.”

“Do we go armed?” Alexieva asked flatly, and Heikki paused. She hadn’t really considered the question, had simply assumed that the wreck would be what it so obviously appeared to be, abandoned and empty—and that, she thought irritably, could’ve been a really stupid mistake.

“Yes,” she said aloud. “See to it, Sten. And break out the full-scan cameras.”

“Right,” Djuro answered.

The whine of the rotos eased a little, steadying on a note half an octave lower than its normal pitch. “I have us stabilized,” Nkosi announced. “Shall I open the forward hatch?”

“Yes,” Heikki answered, “and close it again—leave it on the latch—when we’re gone.” It wasn’t much protection for the pilot, but at least it should be good enough to keep out orcs—if it came to that. She put the thought aside, and scrambled back down the ladder to the main bay. Sebasten-Januarias followed silently, wrapping his headscarf around his face as if to hide his thoughts.

Djuro was waiting with the two full-scan cameras and the heavy gunbelts, Alexieva at his side. The surveyor was carrying a blast-rifle at portarms—not part of my equipment, Heikki thought, and glanced at Djuro. Before the little man could answer, Alexieva said, “I figured it’d be safer.”

“All right,” Heikki said. Like most salvage operators, she was not fond of heavy weaponry—too often, it caused the very trouble a glib tongue could easily avert— but in this case she had to admit that the other woman was right. She accepted her own belt, and fastened it around her waist, very aware of the warmth of the blaster against her hip. She checked the spare power packs automatically, then shrugged on the camera harness. Djuro plugged the leads into the power pack, and turned for her to do the same for him.

“All set,” he said, and Heikki nodded.

“Let’s go.”

The downdraft from the rotos raised a low cloud of dust even from the heavy soil, and swirled what was left of the grass into twisted knots. Heikki ducked through the blasting wind, then turned slowly, letting the camera record the clearing and the jumper. The row of lights glowed green in her lens: all the systems were running, recording the scene at half a dozen levels. She nodded to herself, and switched the camera to automatic, leaving her right hand free for her blaster.

“Crawler tracks!”

Heikki looked up quickly at the sound of Sebasten-Januarias’s voice. The younger man was standing to one side of the clearing, almost inside the range of the nearest sonic. He made an eloquent face, but he did not move away. Heikki moved to join him, wincing as she, too, came within the sonic’s arc. The beam was inaudible, tuned as it was to affect a nonhuman nervous system, but she could feel the almost-vibration, an unpleasant pins-and-needles tingling, on her exposed skin.

“See? There,” Sebasten-Januarias said, and pointed.

To his right, running from the forest into the clearing, the familiar marks of a track-crawler showed stark against the dark mud. Automatically, Heikki turned the camera on them, panning slowly along their entire length, then crouched to examine the tread patterns more closely.

“It looks like a standard machine,” she said aloud, as much for the record as for the others’ benefit. “An Isu, maybe, or a Tormacher.”

“Lo-Moth uses both of them,” Sebasten-Januarias said.

Heikki looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

The pilot shrugged. “The company uses them, and then sells them used. There’s a lot of them on planet.”

No, Heikki thought, that may be true, but that’s not what you mean. That I’m sure of. She filed her questions, grimly determined not to let them go this time, and stood up, grunting under the weight of the camera. “We’ll check out the gondola.”

The metal teardrop lay crumpled against the half uprooted tree, the once-smooth curve of its nose smashed inward. Heikki made a face, dreading what she would find, but kept the camera running as she circled the tail and its broken rudders to the main hatch. The thin skin around it was scored by drill beams; the hatch itself dangled from a single exploded hinge.

“Christ—” Djuro began, and bit off whatever he would have said.

Heikki took a deep breath, a familiar coldness settling over her. She had dealt with sabotage before, with hijackings, violence, and death; it could be no worse than the job on Galilee, or the time on Kavanaugh when she’d had to kill the poacher. She swept the camera over the burn marks, lingering on each one, and then on the broken hatch, saying in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, “I note for the record evidence of forced entry, probably effected by means of a standard issue laser drill.”

Behind her, she heard Alexieva say something choked and inarticulate, but ignored it. She braced herself instead, hooking her hand carefully over the rough metal, and pulled herself up into the gondola. The floorplates, left unsecured to allow access to the cargo and ballast in an emergency, had been jarred loose by the crash, and lay at crazy angles like smashed paving stones. She balanced herself on the solid plate just inside the hatch, and panned slowly across the compartment. This had been an ordinary cargo latac; she was standing in what had been the main hold, between the tanks that should have held the gas for the envelope. That meant the distillery was underfoot, in the lower curve of the hull. The tanks had not ruptured, despite the gondola’s dented frame. She glanced at the dials, and saw her guess confirmed: both the tanks had been almost empty at the time of the crash. They must’ve been trying to keep the envelope inflated, she thought. With those holes burned in it, meters-long, they could run the distillery at full, and still go through both tanks in no time, and crash…. She stopped that train of thought abruptly. There was still no proof that the ripped envelope had been destroyed before the crash; it was just as possible that it had been destroyed to help hide any sign of the wreck.

“I’m going forward,” she said aloud, hearing still the coldness in her voice. “Jan, see if you can find the matrix.”

“What’s it look like?” Sebasten-Januarias asked. He made no protest at being left behind, and Heikki was remotely grateful.

“It should be in a quarter-crate,” she answered, and at the same time Alexieva sketched a shape a meter or so square. “It’ll be heavily padded.” Sebasten-Januarias nodded, and Heikki turned away, starting across the rocking floorplates before she could change her mind.

The midships hatch was intact, dogged open against the unbroken bulkhead. She studied it for a moment, then methodically turned the camera on it.

“You think it was opened after the crash?” Djuro said, coming up behind her.

“I don’t know,” Heikki answered. “The stress analysis will tell us.” But I’d bet it was, she thought, and stooped to examine the hatch frame more closely. Sure enough, the dull beige paint was scuffed and chipped, as though the hatch had been levered out of its seating. She recorded those marks as well, and ducked through the hatchway.

The technical compartment was as empty as the rest of the ship, though the buckled floorplates and broken screens betrayed that the frame had been twisted out of true. The crews’ seats stood empty, trailing webs of safety harness; papers had blown around the compartment like leaves, and lay drifted in one downhill corner. The only other sign of life was a canvas shoe lying beside the hatch that led to the control room. She bent to pick it up, curious, and saw the glint of bone and the purpling flesh still in it. She straightened, her emotions shutting down completely, and heard Djuro say, “Heikki, look at this.”

She turned as slowly as a sleepwalker. Djuro held up two pieces of a safety harness. “This was cut.”

“Record it,” Heikki said, and turned toward the control room. Remotely, she dreaded what she would find there, and so she did not hesitate, leaning through the crumpled frame into what was left of the compartment. The windscreen, which should have formed a quarter-sphere above the twin pilot stations, was bowed inward, almost on top of the twisted chairs. The heavy safety glass was crazed to transluscence, but had not shattered: a very minor mercy, Heikki thought. There were marks of fire along the forward walls, and smears of yellowing foam from the automatic extinguishers that had put it out. Probably short circuits in the consoles, she thought, automatically adjusting the camera to capture as much information as possible. There might be bits of bodies in the crumpled metal, but nothing larger, and she did not look too closely.

“Heikki.” Nkosi’s voice sounded in her earpiece, and she turned away from the burn-marked metal.

“Yes, Jock?”

“The orcs are moving back toward the clearing. I thought you would want to know.”

That was an understatement, Heikki thought. “Are the sonics having any effect?”

“They are still on the fringe of the effective zone,” Nkosi answered, “but I would say not. They are still coming toward us.”

“How long?” Heikki asked.

Nkosi’s voice was carefully casual. “Unless they slow down considerably, they will be here in about half an hour.”

“You waited a while before letting us know,” Heikki said, and could almost hear the pilot’s shrug as he answered.

“I did not see any point in worrying you before it was necessary. And I thought you should have as much time as possible in the wreck.”

“Right,” Heikki said, grimly, and turned back to the technical compartment. “You heard that?” she began, and Djuro nodded.

“We heard.”

“I think the orcs probably got the bodies,” Alexieva said, her face pale but composed. Sebasten-Januarias was nowhere in sight. Still back in the cargo section, Heikki thought. I hope.

“They can tolerate a certain amount of human flesh in their diet,” Alexieva went on, staring at the shoe that still lay against the forward bulkhead, “and they seem to like the taste. It’s happened before, a breeding group using a wreck site as a secondary food source. They’ll be sorry later, though, the young generally have problems on a long-term diet.”

She was talking to stave off the horrors, Heikki knew, but there was no time for that now. “We’ve got twenty minutes,” she said, riding over the other woman’s words. “We need to find the crystal matrix—or be sure it’s not on board.” She lifted her voice to carry to the cargo bay. “Jan, found anything?”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Sebasten-Januarias leaned into the hatchway. “I think you should see this.” His voice was tightly controlled. Oh, God, more bodies, Heikki thought, and followed him back into the bay.

Sebasten-Januarias had levered aside half a dozen of the distorted floor plates, stood now on the edge of the opening, the beam from his handlight playing on something in the wreckage below. Heikki glanced at Djuro, and saw the same mix of fear and disgust in his expression.

“What’ve you got?” she said aloud, keeping her voice deliberately neutral, and undipped her own light from her belt. Sebasten-Januarias did not answer, and she stepped up beside him, training her own light on the hole. Light flared back at her, glittering as though from a hundred, a thousand tiny mirrors. She blinked, dazzled, and then realized what she was seeing. Someone— and who else could it have been but the hijackers?—had smashed everything in sight, everything moveable, and swept the fragments into the lower hull on top of the distillery. She swept her light slowly across the glinting field, picking out bits that might have been part of the instrumentation, something that might have been a tape player, something that gleamed white as picked bone…. She swallowed hard, and swung the light away again.

“Sten, get your camera over here, too,” she said flatly, and trained her own machine on the field of debris. “Jan, Alexieva, I need more light.”

The others obeyed without speaking, and for a long moment there was no sound in the compartment except the faint whisper of the cameras. “Full reel, Heikki,” Djuro said at last, and Heikki glanced at her own indicator in some surprise. Ten seconds of disk left, she thought, and kept the machine going until the very end. She lowered the camera then, just as Sebasten-Januarias said, “Heikki, shouldn’t we, I don’t know, bring some of it back—?

Heikki shook her head. “There’s no time,” she said, and tried to speak gently.

“We’ll be back,” Djuro said, “probably lift the whole thing out, right, Heikki?”

“Probably,” Heikki agreed, and glanced at her lens. Almost in the same instant, Nkosi’s voice said in her ears, “Heikki, you had best come back right now.”

“On our way,” Heikki answered, and collected the others with a glance. “You heard the man. Let’s move.”

The clearing seemed deceptively peaceful, empty except for the jumper at the far end, its rotos beating steadily against the breeze. Alexieva threw back her head, unslinging the blast-rifle she had been carrying across her shoulders; as if in answer, a sound like a throaty cough sounded from beyond the trees to their left.

“They’re circling around the sonics,” the surveyor said, quite calmly now. “Go on, I’ll cover you.”

“Right,” Heikki said, and waved the others forward. She drew her own blaster and started after them, checking the charge as she moved. Alexieva backed after her, the blast-rifle levelled. They had covered perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the jumper when there was a movement in the trees to the left.

“Damnation,” Alexieva said, quite distinctly, and fired twice. The short bursts kicked up smoke and dirt at the forest edge—she had fired quite deliberately into the ground, Heikki thought, with a sort of remote surprise.

“Keep moving,” Alexieva called, and the first of the orcs edged out into the open. It was deceptively thin-limbed, a gangling biped, covered in mottled grey-green fur only a little lighter than the trees around it. It didn’t look very impressive, Heikki thought, lifting her own blaster, and then the creature coughed again, baring enormous yellow tusks. Alexieva fired again, still into the ground, but the orc hesitated only for an instant before slipping sideways past the little plume of smoke. It moved very fast, limbs blurring. Heikki fired twice, and missed both times. A second orc appeared, and then a third, fanning out to try and get between the humans and their ship. More shapes moved behind them, slipping between the trees. Alexieva took careful aim then, and fired twice more. The leading orc dropped. The survivors shrieked, enraged, and then the nearer of the two dropped to all fours beside the corpse, sniffing at the body.

Alexieva let out a sigh of relief. “Let’s go,” she said, not taking her eyes off the orcs. The second survivor was sniffing at the corpse now; with a snarl, the first cuffed it away and began to feed.

Heikki lowered her blaster, and sprinted for the hatch, Alexieva at her heels. Djuro hauled them both into the jumper, and dogged the hatch behind them. “Get us out of here, Jock,” he ordered, and Heikki echoed him, “Yeah, do it.”

The engines whined up to lifting pitch, the sound rising a little more quickly than usual. Heikki, starting to struggle to her feet, felt the jumper lurch into the air, and sank back onto the padded floor plates until Nkosi had stabilized the craft. The jumper shot upward, tipped at a slight sideways angle, and did not steady until they were well above the forest canopy.

“Is everything all right down there?” Nkosi said, after a moment.

“Just fine, Jock,” Heikki said, rather sourly, and Alexieva said, “I’m all right.”

“Good,” Nkosi answered. Heikki sighed, only too aware that she was shaking, and was glad to accept Djuro’s hand to help her to her feet.

“Back to Lowlands, Jock,” she said, and was too tired to care if the others heard the revulsion in her voice. “Take us home.”