Patriots

19. The Home Front

The starship landing system for the Spiker was housed in a rough stone-and-concrete hut between the tavern compound and the magnetic mass. Beside the hut was an internally braced antenna thrusting up a hundred feet like a silvery needle. The four modules in the hut included a flat-plate display, keyboard, and output/input ports under latched flaps. The designers had built a gooseneck light into the terminal module, though the screen alone could have provided enough illumination to work by.

Mark suspected he was the first person to call up the unit's embedded menu and take a look at what the equipment could really do. Default mode was fully-automated operation: a ship in orbit engaged the landing system, which brought the vessel down without anybody on the ground being involved or even aware of what was happening. That had been good enough for Greenwood up till now.

The situation had changed with the Zenith trouble, Mark figured. This equipment was the same as that installed in major ports where a human operator oversaw traffic movements. It cost less to build the full capabilities into every set than it did to degrade individual units to minimum local needs.

Mark wasn't an electronics technician, but the landing system was meant to be installed by construction workers with only the most rudimentary knowledge of anything more complex than a backhoe. For three years Mark had used teaching software of a much higher degree of sophistication. By now he'd enabled the identification and tracking functions. His next job was to set parameters so that he could switch the whole system whenever he wanted to remote-control from the standard VHF radio in Yerby's compound.

Yerby's bulk darkened the doorway. "Morning, lad," the big man said. "Blaney said you were out here."

Mark laughed. "I wouldn't call three in the afternoon morning," he said. "Did you and Amy just get back?"

"Ah, the trip to Bottomless Pool," Yerby said with a slight frown. "No, to tell the truth, I spent the night here, lad. Met a few of my friends last night and, you know, partied some."

Mark felt his expression harden. "Amy's been looking forward all week to seeing the fish in Bottomless Pool," he said. "I'm sorry to hear that you missed the appointment again, Yerby."

Dr. Jesilind had visited the site with Yerby. According to him, the Bottomless Pool was the vent of an ancient volcano that siphoned salt water from the ocean at least a hundred miles away. The crater lake was rich in brilliantly colored plant life and fish with no resemblance to shallow-water forms.

Mark didn't wholly accept the doctor's claim of a unique ecology, but the pool certainly sounded interesting. He'd have asked to go with the Bannocks except for the overhanging threat of Zenith invasion. It was more important to finish his work with the landing system.

Besides, Mark had the vague thought that maybe after Yerby showed his sister where the pool was, Mark and Amy would go by themselves.

"Oh, well, that's all right," Yerby said. He sounded a trifle uncomfortable. "The doc knows where the place is, so he offered to take Amy there. I know, she don't get along with Doc the way you'd like, but she wanted to go so bad and me, well, I just wasn't up to coming home last night for another dustup with Desiree."

"I see," said Mark. Actually, Amy got along with Jesilind exactly the way Mark liked, which was just barely. But as Yerby said, she'd really wanted to see the pool.

"To tell the truth, though," Yerby said, "I'd sorta thought they'd be back before now. They're off in the blimp, but the guidance beacon isn't working real good and, you know, I can't seem to raise them on radio."

"They're not back at the compound?" Mark asked, feeling suddenly cold.

Yerby scratched his ribs with a look of great concentration. "Desiree says not," he admitted, glaring at his fingers. "Says they went off at first light and that's the last anybody's seen of them. Desiree said some other things too."

He raised his eyes to Mark. "Might be she was right about some of those things," Yerby said. "Not that I really think there's a problem, but if you ain't seen her like I hoped you had, maybe I'll take my flyer out to the Pool. Want to come along?"

A series of possibilities clicked through Mark's mind. His face remained frozen. Turning from Yerby, he called a movement chart up on the landing system's screen. The unit had to be able to track aircraft also in order to bring ships down safely in busy environments.

"The Pool's south of here, isn't it?" he asked sharply.

"South-southwest of the Spiker, south from the house," Yerby said. "What's wrong, lad?"

"Nothing," Mark lied. He could almost hear his father's voice saying, "Generally, almost always, there's a better way than charging straight in."

"Yerby," he said, facing the big frontiersman again, "I've got to pick up some tools at the compound right now. It's important to get this system working so that we at least know who's landing here before they arrive. I'm sure you can take care of any little problem the blimp has by yourself."

Yerby's head jerked back in surprise. "Sure, I see that, Mr. Maxwell," he said. "Well, I'll leave you to your business, then."

Yerby ducked out of the hut and jogged toward the compound where he must have left his flyer the day before. His arms pumped more vigorously than his pace seemed to justify.

Mark got into his own flyer beside the hut. His guts felt heavy and frozen by Yerby's shocked disapproval; but Mark knew that if he'd told Yerby the truth, the result would have been as violent and certain as pulling the trigger of a gun.

Yerby's compound lay at the northern edge of the circle the system's plotting lidar swept. The dirigible's track from the compound at 6:47 in the morning was clearly marked, and as the vehicle rose to a thousand feet it stayed on the screen for another twenty miles.

Dr. Jesilind was headed northwest, not south toward the Bottomless Pool. There were a number of reasons Jesilind might have gone off with Amy in a direction nobody would think to search for them.

But all of them added up to Mark wanting very much to join the pair as fast as he could.