Resurgence

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The price of rescue

They did not wish to change their precisely calculated velocity vector, so the push to take them outside the Have-It-All’s airlock was a gentle one. Sinara, Torran, and Teri drifted slowly away from the hull, keeping pace with it. The tiniest thrust from their suit jets could take them back into the air lock.

And then that was no longer true. The Have-It-All was gliding ahead, increasing speed as though it intended to plunge into the broad disk of debris. Within half a minute, Sinara could see another change. The ship was turning, thrusting itself away from the dangerous whirlpool and beginning the long drive out to and around the far-off bulk of the gas-giant M-2. She watched the pale-blue exhaust of relativistic particles until the wake of the Have-It-All’s drive faded to nothing against the background of stars.

She, Teri, and Torran hovered in space with only each other for company. Except that they were not hovering. They were heading for the danger zone of Marglot’s remains, a kilometer closer every few seconds.

Inside a ship you could feel a sense of security, no matter how threatening the situation. You were surrounded by older people, experienced people who had seen a thousand dangers and found a way to live through them. That sense of security, false as it may have been, vanished when you had no protection but your suit and were exposed to the enormous openness that made up even the smallest planetary system.

As they approached the whirlpool of matter that had once been Marglot, Sinara’s feeling of discomfort increased. She steered her suit close to Torran and Teri, and noticed they were edging toward her.

“Still a long way to go.” Teri’s voice came over the suit radio. “Two and a half thousand kilometers to the nearest piece with a long-range radar reflectance. Seventeen thousand to Ben, according to his beacon.”

That was half a day’s journey, given the slow speed at which they were closing in on him. Their suits could pick up his distress beacon, but not his vital indicators. The Have-It-All, despite its distance, could monitor those, and Sinara had access to that information if she wanted it. She did not ask. Nor, she noticed, did Teri or Torran.

Half a day’s journey, but not a second of it in which they could afford to relax. Sinara had proof of that when her suit’s collision avoidance radar gave a loud beep and a great boulder rushed silently past. It appeared and disappeared so fast that her eyes scarcely had time to register its presence.

“I guess I was an optimist.” If Teri felt nervous, she hid it well. “The belt of debris is wider than I thought, and our long-distance radar registers only big fragments. Some of the really huge lumps in the belt must still be colliding and fragmenting and ejecting parts of themselves. Look out! Here’s another!”

This one was smaller, but Sinara saw it coming. She had time for a sudden spurt to the right, placing herself well out of harm’s way.

“Seems as though Julian Graves was right.” Teri had made the same sideways jump. “If we were as big and massive as the Have-It-All, that lump of rock wouldn’t have missed.”

“It wouldn’t have hit you,” Torran said. “It would have cleared you by at least ten meters. We don’t want to go hopping around if we can avoid it. We could lose our original velocity vector.”

“It wouldn’t matter. We can pick up the signal from Ben’s suit, and home in on that.”

“Not if it cuts off, we can’t.”

That had unpleasant implications which Torran did not need to spell out. Ben’s suit had ample power for the distress beacon. The signal would be lost only if the suit itself was damaged by impact. Ben’s chances of surviving in that case were slight.

Torran said suddenly, “Something’s wrong. My inertial guidance system shows me shifting away to the right.”

Sinara checked her own monitor. “Not just you. All of us. It’s a change of direction, but we’re not heading off course. E.C. Tally predicted this, and he allowed for it in his calculations of our original vector. The most massive chunks of Marglot still have a hefty gravitational pull, and we are responding to one. Unless there are chaotic effects which Tally couldn’t anticipate—”

A rattle on her suit like hard hail cut her off in mid-sentence. It took a few moments to realize that she was being bombarded with small particles. They must be low-speed, because her suit remained intact.

“Lucky this time.” Teri Dahl had been hit by the same volley of space-gravel. “If that lot had been travelling twenty or thirty times as fast, we would be riddled.”

“That’s bound to happen as we get farther in,” Torran added. “I don’t know about you, but I’m recording Doppler velocity readings that are all over the place. We have material approaching us at ten kilometers a second, other stuff receding at the same speed. If we keep on as we are, we won’t stay lucky. Something fast will hit us. Help me out, the two of you. Look for an object ahead that holds its distance from us—the bigger the better, but the main thing is a good match to our velocity vector.”

It was a frightening ten minutes, with two more storms of low-speed gravel and pebbles, until at last Teri said, “Got one, I think. Azimuth eighteen, declination minus twelve.”

Torran added, “And just about zero relative velocity. Seems perfect. Let’s go take a close-up.”

The fragment was several hundred meters across, a rough ellipsoid rotating slowly about its shortest axis. They could tuck in close behind it and be shielded from everything in the forward direction. There was still the danger of a hit from behind, but those fragments should be arriving at a lower relative speed.

“Not too close,” Teri warned. “I’m reading a temperature of five hundred degrees. This is one hot rock.”

“A piece of Marglot’s deep interior, by the look of it.” Torran was using his suit’s light to study the surface. “See the bubbles from out-gassing into vacuum? But I think that phase is over.”

“This is only a temporary hiding place,” Sinara said. “Once we are close to Ben we’ll have to risk open space again.”

“If you can call it open space, when it’s this big a mess.” Teri had turned to keep watch behind them, relying on the other two to warn her if she came too close to the rock. “What I’m seeing is more violent and more random than it was. Everything from sand grains to molten planetoids, all with higher speeds. But for the moment, we take what we can get.”

Sinara said to herself, And after the moment, when we are close to Ben? But she saw no point in starting a discussion with so few facts.

The three of them huddled as close to the shielding rock and to each other as they could get. After a silence that seemed to last forever, Torran said, “It’s no good. We’ve been holding off, all of us, but I have to know. I’m going to call the Have-It-All and make sure that Ben is still alive. If he’s not, we’ll have to make a tough call. Do we risk dying, trying to pick up Ben’s body? Or do we leave him where he is, hang in behind this lump of rock, and hope to ride it all the way out through the debris belt to safety?”

Teri said, “You know what Ben would say. The same as we were taught in survival school. Unless you propose to eat it, a dead body is worth only the cost of its chemicals. But my bet is that Ben is alive. Call the Have-It-All and find out—if you can. They may be out of range, or they may be screened from us.”

Sinara heard the query signal in her suit. It was loud to her, but would it be strong enough to be picked up by the Have-It-All? The ship should be a million kilometers away, perhaps already shielded by the great bulk of M-2.

For another three minutes it seemed her worries were justified. Sinara’s suit, tuned to the ship’s frequency, offered nothing but static. At last she heard, faint and scratchy and barely intelligible, Hans Rebka’s voice: “Ben Blesh is alive, but unconscious. He’s weaker, but not much. Blood pressure sixty-five over forty, pulse forty-two. Why didn’t you report in before? We’ve been picking up your beacons and vital signs, and that was all.”

“Nothing to say. We’re fine, all three. We found a rock to hide behind. It shields us.”

Sinara recognized in Torran’s laconic reply an echo of Hans Rebka. It was probably happening to all of the survival specialists. They were picking their heroes and imitating them. So who did Sinara herself sound like now?

Torran went on, “Don’t expect to hear from us again until after our rendezvous with Ben. We’ll have our hands full.”

“Don’t expect to hear from us for a while, either. We’re ready to loop around M-2. Tell us when you know your outbound trajectory.”

When, not if. Boundless confidence in their survival, which Sinara did not share. But at least the suspense would not go on much longer. The signal from Ben’s suit indicated that he was less than a hundred kilometers away. In four more minutes they had to leave the shelter of the rock and make an exact velocity match with Ben.

Teri was already drifting away to Sinara’s right, with Torran following her. They wanted to take a peek around the edge of their shield before venturing out into the open. Sinara turned to look back the way they had come. They were now so deep in the belt of debris that the stars beyond were hidden. All she saw was a sea of moving fragments, some white-hot, some glowing a dull brick-red. Without the aid of her collision avoidance radar she would have no idea of their distances—they could be moving mountains, kilometers away, or fist-sized fireballs close enough to reach out and touch. There would be many others, too dark to see and most dangerous of all.

Sinara turned again and saw Torran gesturing to her to join them.

“We’ve had a good free ride,” he said, “but it won’t work much longer. Closest approach of this rock to Ben will be more than ten kilometers. We’ll have to fly free.”

“Can you see him?”

“Not his actual suit. His signal shows he’s floating along in the middle of a big mass of rubble and boulders. It must all have been thrown off the surface of Marglot together. He’s had partial shielding from all the other junk out here. It explains why he’s still alive at all—I couldn’t understand how anybody could float free for so long and not get zapped a hundred times.”

Teri added, “We should be so lucky.”

“We may not be. We’ll stay sheltered here as long as we can, and once we reach Ben we can hide in among the same cluster of rocks. But first we have to get there. That gives us an open space run of more than ten kilometers.”

“Together, or separately?” Sinara had moved close to the other two. It was a trade-off. Travel alone, and you tripled the odds that one of you would get through to help Ben. You also tripled the odds that one of you would be hurt on the way.

“Together.” Teri and Torran spoke at once. Torran added, “If I get whacked, I like the idea that you two might be close enough to do something about it. And if we all get whacked—well, we tried. I’d say our present position is close to optimum for a move. I’m biggest, so I should go first. You two follow behind me in line, and stay as close as you can.”

Sinara realized very well what Torran was leaving unsaid. By taking the lead position, he was partly shielding her and Teri—and increasing the probability that he would be hit himself.

She noticed that he was not heading straight for Ben’s suit beacon. Instead, Torran was following a clump of materials with zero radar Doppler shift. Since it was moving ahead of them, it provided some protection. Even so, the rattle of lower-speed gravel and pebbles on her suit was non-stop. One lump of rock, fist-sized or bigger, cannoned off the back of her hardened suit helmet with enough force to make her ears ring.

She heard a grunt from Torran, then, “All right back there?”

“Doing fine.”

“We’re about ready for another course change. Hold your breath. This will be the last one, and I don’t see any way to shield us.”

He veered away, and in the moments before Sinara followed she could at last see their target. The rocks and rubble formed an untidy splotch of black against the ruddy background of Marglot’s remains. Somewhere inside that mess floated Ben Blesh.

Torran had increased his speed, diving in on an all-or-nothing approach. Sinara did the same until he said, “All right. Time to turn and decelerate—hard!”

She saw the front of his suit, briefly, until her own suit’s rotation sent her feet-first toward the floating pile of rock. The backpack on her suit whined in protest as it was called upon to exert maximum thrust. Her proximity radar added its warning, as four hands grabbed her.

“Picture perfect,” Teri said. “One for the record books.” Then, “Torran! You’ve been hit!”

The left shoulder of his suit showed a fist-sized bulge of black sealant.

“You mean, you weren’t?” He held up his right arm, to show two more dark patches. “I was pinged three times, but only the one on my shoulder got all the way through past my skin. I compressed that area of my suit to stop the bleeding, but one of you will have to dig out the pebble once we’re back aboard the Have-It-All.”

Was he understating his injury? Out here, Sinara had no way to tell. But he certainly wasn’t letting it stop him. She and the others pawed their way through the untidy pile of space rocks, using their suit headlights. They followed Ben Blesh’s signal and paid little attention to the heat of the rocks.

When they finally came to Ben he seemed like just another misshapen lump of gray space debris. His knees were lifted up toward his chest, his head bent forward, and his arms were folded. Sinara, with Teri’s help, eased Ben’s head back far enough for her to peer in through the faceplate.

“Hemorrhaging around his eyes. He went through high acceleration somewhere along the way.”

“Think that’s why he’s unconscious now?”

“It’s only part of the reason. There were impacts, too. Look at the lower half of his suit, and at his right side. The transport vortex must have returned him to the surface of Marglot just when the whole planet was coming apart.”

Teri said, “He should never have left the Have-It-All, so soon after his treatment.”

“If he hadn’t, not one of us would be alive.” Torran ran his gloved hand over Ben’s rib cage. “Any response? That should hurt like hell.”

“Nothing. He’s under deep.”

“That answers one question. He won’t be able to help by flying his own suit. We’ll have to tow him.”

“Why go anywhere?” Teri said. “This is just a horrible jumble of rocks, but it did well for Ben.”

Sinara was still examining the unconscious figure. “Depends how long it would take us to reach a place where we might be picked up. Ben’s condition is stable, but how long are we talking about if we hang in here? Torran, do you have our vector?”

“Close to it. We’re talking forty hours, give or take five. That would bring us to a point far enough out of the main plane of debris for Julian Graves to agree to pick us up. Can Ben stand that?”

Sinara said, “I don’t think that’s the issue. If we leave here, we’re sure to need some fancy jumping and dodging to avoid being hit by debris. I said Ben seems stable, but I think those kinds of acceleration would kill him.”

“That settles it. Teri, do you agree? We stay?”

“We stay. Sinara?”

“We stay.”

For forty more hours. That was going to feel like eternity. Arabella Lund had made the point during survival training: “If you want to learn what a person is really like, arrange to be with her in two special situations. The first is when you have to make rapid decisions based on pure instinct. The second is when you are forced to spend a day or two together, with nothing to do but wait.”

Sinara had seen Torran and Teri in the first setting. Now she would have a chance to observe them in the second. Within the first couple of hours both of them became restless. First they calculated and re-calculated their velocity vector, estimating the earliest time that they might hope to be picked up. After that they went wandering around, wasting—in Sinara’s opinion—suit fuel. They explored the jumble of rocks and fragments surrounding them, moving large pieces to provide better protection from incoming debris.

Sinara did not join them; nor, after the first hour or two, did she watch them closely. She had her own preoccupation. Her suit, like every decent suit designed for use by humans, contained information on the species’ physiology and medical treatments based on ten thousand years of theory and practice. Of course, only a tiny fraction of that volume of data applied to Ben, but Sinara studied that fraction as intensively as she could. Sometimes sheer fatigue made her close her eyes for a few minutes, but each time that she awoke she at once checked Ben’s condition and ran a new prognosis.

Her task was made more complicated by Ben’s suit. It was not sitting idle. It monitored his condition second by second, and provided appropriate medications. Sinara could override it at any time, but she did so only once. She drastically reduced the narcotic dose, in the hope that it would return him to consciousness. When after twenty minutes it did not, she fed that information into her own suit and received confirmation that Ben had suffered a severe concussion. There was also edema, a brain swelling that was being controlled by anti-inflammatories. The cause was probably that same concussion.

Sinara’s actions absorbed her completely. She was more irritated than interested when Teri came floating over to halt on the other side of Ben.

“We need your opinion.”

“I’m looking after Ben.”

“He doesn’t seem any different now than he was when we first found him. He’ll be fine for five minutes. That’s all we need.”

“What’s the problem?”

“A little disagreement. Come and look at something.”

As a result of Teri and Torran’s continued labors, the barrier of protective rock fragments had steadily become more complete. Teri led Sinara to six great overlapping basalt wedges that offered between them only an irregular narrow slit through which to see beyond.

Torran was waiting a few meters away from it. “Take a look,” he said, “but don’t get too close. Sometimes little bits and pieces fly in—though we’ve not had anything with much speed.”

Teri added, “Tell us what you think. Torran and I don’t agree.”

“No hints, Teri.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

Sinara approached within arm’s length of the ragged barrier of rocks. There was no such thing as a safe distance. Any second, a high-speed fragment could fly in through the slit and hit her. She peered cautiously out past one of the slabs.

The same kaleidoscopic litter of debris, large and small, near and far, filled the sky. It was a little less densely packed than before, thinning out as their distance from the sometime planet increased.

Nothing out there seemed worthy of a second look. Had Sinara not in effect been told to expect something, she would have returned at once to her vigil at Ben Blesh’s side. Instead, she scanned the scene before her a second time, focusing on each area of the sky in turn before moving on. Her attention finally returned to one small region. Something was different there, some oddity that was difficult to pin down.

She used her suit’s image intensifiers and narrowed the field of view. She made out a small disk, an oval shape brighter than its surroundings. As she stared, it thinned and dwindled. It lost width until it was no more than a bright line, then vanished completely.

She stared and stared, but now she could find nothing unusual. “That’s strange,” she began. “I thought there was—”

She paused. Here it came again, a thin bright line that slowly expanded to a fat silvery oval. Just as steadily, it then thinned and disappeared.

This time Sinara had some idea what to expect. She waited patiently for another half minute. Right on cue, the silver line appeared and swelled.

“I see it,” she said. “Or at least, I see something, over in the upper right quadrant.”

“That’s the place,” Teri said eagerly. “What do you think it is?”

“Well, it could be just a flat rock, a lot brighter on one side than the other. It’s rotating, so sometimes we see it edgeways and sometimes we don’t see it at all.”

“Exactly what I told her. See, Teri, Sinara agrees with me.”

“Except that it’s nothing like any of the other rocks,” Sinara went on slowly. “One side is really bright, like silver. We could be looking at one of the beetlebacks. They would have been thrown out into space with everything else when Marglot disintegrated.”

“Told you!”

“So what if it is?” Torran was defensive. “I hate to quote Julian Graves to you, but getting back alive to the Orion Arm is our main concern. Saving Ben was one thing, we were right to insist on that. But worrying about some dumb beetleback is another matter entirely.”

“Returning to the Orion Arm alive, with information. Didn’t you hear E.C. Tally complaining during our take-off from Marglot? One beetleback, with all the data it contains, could make a huge difference to what we know.” Teri moved away from the other two. “Torran, I don’t care what you think. I’m going out there to try to snag it.”

“Suppose it snags you?”

“That will be my problem. I don’t expect you to come after me if I get in trouble—I don’t want you to come after me. Your priority is the same now as when we started: getting yourselves and Ben back to the Have-It-All.”

Teri didn’t hang around for more debate. Already she was moving toward a gap in their primitive protective barrier.

“No, Torran.” Sinara had seen his reaction. She grabbed hold of his arm. “Teri is right, and this isn’t like Ben. She’s taking a risk, but she wants it to be her risk.”

“She’s crazy.” Torran shook his arm free.

“If you believe Julian Graves, we’re all crazy. And if you believe E.C. Tally, one beetleback could be worth the price of this whole expedition.”

Torran hardly seemed to be listening. His attention, like Sinara’s, was focused on the diminishing figure of Teri. He muttered again, “She’s crazy.” But his comment was drowned out by Teri’s exultant cry. “It is a beetleback. Badly damaged, with most of its legs gone. But since Atvar H’sial says it’s inorganic, that should make no difference at all to its information content. I have it, and I’m towing it. Five minutes and we’ll be back there with the rest of you.”

Five minutes, after all the hours that had passed since they left the Have-It-All. That seemed like nothing. It was a total shock when Teri suddenly cried out, “Oh God. I’m hit!”

Torran said, “Where?” and Sinara, “How bad?”

“Not good. Something hit me hard, in my lower back.” Teri did not sound the same at all. “My suit sealed itself, but I have no feeling in my legs. Don’t do anything silly. I’ll still try to return with the beetleback.”

“Anything silly.” Torran was already accelerating. “Didn’t I tell you she’s crazy? You stay here.”

Sinara, all ready to race off after Torran, hesitated. The trade-offs were difficult to compute. Help Torran, and so improve the chances of recovering Teri and the beetleback? Or stay with Ben Blesh, to make sure that he remained alive long enough to reach the Have-It-All?

Torran’s voice steadied her. “Sinara, Teri and I did too good a job moving rocks. I’ll be hauling Teri and the beetleback but I don’t see a gap big enough for us all to fly through. Teri is losing consciousness. Can you work from the inside? Once we’re in, I’ll help you close the hole.”

Dragging rocks out of the way was the easy part. Much harder was looking at Teri’s chalk-white face and half-closed eyes as Torran pulled her through after him. Sinara took charge at once, moving the second body into place beside Ben Blesh. She gave the beetleback one quick glance. It was legless, one side of the scarlet head was mashed in, and the silver back was crumpled along the central line. More to the point, the creature was crippled and immobilized. That was good enough for her.

Was it worth the effort, to capture a beetleback? Well, to Teri it had been, and Torran had gone to the trouble of finishing the job.

He was at Sinara’s side. “I didn’t have time to check all the suit readings. How is she?”

“Her suit reports a problem between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae. Her spinal column there is either cut or severely damaged. The regrowth of nerve tissue would be an easy job back on Miranda, but the robodoc on the Have-It-All was stripped out and dumped, nothing left but the bare essentials.”

“Will she live?”

“She will, if any of us do.” Sinara glanced at the time read-out in her own suit. “Survival training, Torran.” She gestured at the two bodies in front of them. “We all had it. But tell me the truth, did you ever imagine the real thing might be anything like this?”

“I didn’t, but Arabella Lund pegged it exactly. Remember what she told us? ’Survival is ninety-eight percent boredom, and two percent panic.’ How many hours to rendezvous?”

“Eighteen, if the Have-It-All is on time.”

“Will Ben and Teri be in danger of dying during that period?”

“Not according to all the signs.”

Torran blew out a long, gusty breath. “Then I say, bring on the ninety-eight percent boredom. I’m more than ready for it.”

“You don’t want to look at the beetleback?”

“To hell with the beetleback. That’s Tally’s area, not mine.” Torran moved so that he was stretched out next to Teri. “I’m done. Wake me if a rock flies in and kills me. Otherwise, I’m gone.”

Sinara could hardly believe her ears. With eighteen hours to go, and with the primitive defense of rocks around them needing constant attention, Torran Veck was proposing to go to sleep?

Her feeling of outrage lasted less than one minute. She went across to peer in through his visor, and saw that his face was as pale and drawn as Teri’s or Ben’s. She examined the suit’s report of his vital signs. He wasn’t sleeping, he was out cold. The shoulder wound that he had dismissed so casually was far worse than she had realized. The effort to bring Teri back, and the beetleback with her, had pushed Torran past the point of exhaustion.

Sinara examined, in turn and in as much detail as she could, each of her three companions. She was beginning to understand something else about survival training—something that Arabella Lund had not mentioned. You trusted your teammates to do whatever was necessary to keep you alive. And you in turn did the same for them. Whatever.

Seventeen and a half hours to go.

Sinara moved the others so that each of them would always be in her sight. Then she floated away to examine the condition of their protective shield of rocks, and began the tedious and endless task of filling in gaps as they appeared.