The Long Mars

31

Earth West 182,674,101. Another world of the Bonsai Belt, with roughly the same suite of dual-origin life.

And a crashed airship.

The Cernan had detected it through a radio beacon, picked up as it had sailed through this world in the course of its explorations. Maggie had ordered the comms teams to check for radio signals, routinely, at each step, even under fifty-steps-per-second cruise; a fraction of a second was enough to detect if such a signal was present. As far as the geographers could tell, the Armstrong had come down in a scrap of continental terrain that, on other worlds, would underpin much of Washington State. The Cernan, and now the Armstrong II, had had to travel a thousand miles laterally to reach the site.

The profile of the Armstrong I, an airship of the same class as the Benjamin Franklin, was unmistakable from the air.

“It looks like a whale carcass, dropped from the sky,” Mac said.

The crew were fascinated by the huge wreck, as they hadn’t been by any of the natural wonders they’d seen so far. That was the Navy for you.

“And there are survivors,” Maggie pointed out.

You could tell that immediately. Near the fallen ship, rect angular fields had been scraped in the loamy ground, though the crops looked sparse. There were structures like tepees, evidently assembled from scavenged components of the Armstrong. And Maggie could see people, down there on the ground, looking up and waving. Among them were recently landed crew from the Cernan in their distinctive uniforms.

“Come on down, Captain,” Cutler called up. “The air’s fine in this world, the water’s clean, the hospitality’s great, and the potato fritters are cooking already.”

That made Maggie grin, but at her side Mac frowned. “Is he for real? That doesn’t sound like Ed Cutler.”

“Isn’t he allowed to be pleased with himself? Finding the Armstrong was one of our mission goals, remember. And if there are survivors—”

“Maggie, my eyes are kind of rheumy these days. But those guys don’t look to be wearing anything like Navy uniforms, or marine gear.”

“Well, they evidently turned into farmers, Mac.”

“Maybe. But I would dig out the old rig when Navy ships came calling. Wouldn’t you? If only to avoid being shot at. And besides, Cutler hasn’t sent up any identification of those characters with him. You’d think he would have; we have the Armstrong’s crew roster.”

“Hmm.” “Look, we don’t know anything about how the Armstrong got here, who these guys are.” “OK, you old spoilsport. We’ll take precautions. But I think you’re being over-cautious. Hey, Nathan.”

“Captain?”

“Do we have any Fourth-of-July fireworks on this tub?”

The XO grinned. “We have multicolour flares.”

“Break them out.”

“My name is David.”

Maggie led her party in from the set-down site, past the wreck of the Armstrong and towards the little habitation. The man who greeted them was young, no more than twenty-five, twenty-six. Good-looking, confident, with an accent she couldn’t quite place, he walked boldly up to her and shook her hand. With him were four others, three women, one man, all about the same age. All very impressive, was Maggie’s first take, even if the clothes they wore were pretty ragged.

And none of them had been crew of the Armstrong.

Maggie introduced her own team, drawn from both Armstrong II and Cernan: Mac, Snowy, Nathan, Wu Yue-Sai, others. The strangers stared at the beagle, but did not seem alarmed.

Cutler was beaming from ear to ear, like he’d found Santa Claus. He introduced David’s companions. “Let me see if I remember.” He pointed. “Rosalind, Michael, Anne, Rachel. All with the same surname—Spencer—not siblings, but from one extended family, Captain.”

David patted him on the back. “Well remembered, sir!” They broke away into a huddle of friendly chatter.

Maggie murmured to Mac, “You’re right. That’s not like Ed Cutler. Is he blushing to be praised by that boy?”

Mac said, “These characters are somewhat—what’s the word? Charismatic. That’s my first impression. My mother once took me to Houston, when they were still flying astronauts on the shuttle. Place full of functionaries, office workers. But when an astronaut walked through the room, every head turned…”

Maggie was aware of a soft friction at her leg. It was Shi-mi, rubbing her face on Maggie’s trouser, hiding behind her legs.

Maggie knelt down and whispered, “I thought you didn’t come out when Snowy’s around. Or Mac, in fact.”

“The dog smells me. I know he smells me… But this is important. Danger, Maggie Kauffman. Danger!”

“What, from these shipwrecked characters? What kind of danger?”

“I’m not sure. Not yet. Listen, Captain. Post a guard. Set up your men around a perimeter so they can’t all be taken out at once. Have the airships monitor your movements. If I were you I’d send one ship over the horizon, or step it away… Take precautions. Whatever you think best.”

Maggie frowned. But she remembered Mac’s cautious appraisal. “OK. Against my better judgement.” She summoned Nathan and gave orders to pass on to the crew, and McKibben’s marines.

“Please, be our guests. We are so pleased you found us at last…”

David and his companions led the party of officers past the wreck, through the fields, towards the tepees. Maggie could see that the tepees were indeed built of materials scavenged from the Armstrong, aluminium struts, fabric from the broken envelope. As they walked, two of the women were talking quietly. Their speech was fast, fluid, as if speeded up, and Maggie couldn’t make out a word.

Gerry Hemingway slowed, his attention evidently snagged by what he saw in the fields. They didn’t look too impressive to Maggie, just scratches in the dirt, but there were potatoes and beets growing. However, what caught Gerry’s eye was a field in which some of the native life was growing, like a display of bonsais. Their colours were strange, their scent unfamiliar, exotic. And the tiny trees seemed to be wired up in a kind of net of fine cables, no doubt more salvage from the airship, that were fixed to their roots. The cables led to a bank of batteries, and glass jars of water that bubbled languidly. “You go on, Skip,” he said. “Let me take a look at what they’re doing here.”

She nodded. “OK. But don’t be alone. Santorini, stay with him.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The largest tepee was spacious enough for a dozen people to sit on blankets in the dirt. The day was warm, mild, still, and a heavy sheet that covered the door was thrown back. In a hearth in the middle of the floor a small fire burned. Maggie, Mac, Cutler, Nathan Boss, Wu Yue-Sai crowded in. Rachel had gone off with the rest of the crew, while Michael prepared some kind of hot drink on a frame over the fire.

David sat on a box, overlooking his guests, with Rosalind and Anne at his side.

Mac grunted at the layout. “Guy’s like a Saxon king with his thanes.”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “But he has the character for it, you have to admit.”

“Hmm. And look how Wu is staring at him. Like she’d have his babies here and now…”

David said now, “As I said—we are so glad you came. You can see we are stranded here, just the five of us, the only survivors of the Armstrong. Of course we could all step away. But we aren’t even sure how far we are from home.”

Nathan Boss rattled off the number of the world for him. David thanked him, and to Maggie’s chagrin Nathan looked pleased to be favoured, just like Cutler.

David said, “But the number scarcely matters. Even if we could step so far we could not walk through the lethal worlds you have crossed already—worlds without oxygen, worlds whose whole biospheres are soaked in sulphuric acid. And we could not contact you. We had to wait for rescue.” He grinned. “Now you can bring us home.”

And what an honour that would be for her, Maggie thought helplessly. Like she’d found Elvis. The guy really did have an air of command.

She tried to snap out of it. “So tell us what happened.”

Mac grunted. “In fact, you can start by telling us how the hell you came to be aboard the Armstrong in the first place.”

David appraised the two of them. “You are skilful, Captain. You ask the soft questions, while allowing the Doctor to wield the baton.”

“If only we were that smart,” Maggie said ruefully. “And anyhow this isn’t an interrogation, David. Please just answer the questions.”

“We are from a community you know as Happy Landings. You would be able to determine that much from the Armstrong’s log.”

Mac nodded. “I know of it. Somewhere around a million and a half steps from Datum, right? Kind of a peculiar place, Captain. Explains the accent, I suppose.”

David said smoothly, “The first Armstrong called there, on its own journey to the far stepwise West. We five were selected as passengers, guests, for the next leg of the journey. We were thrilled. Off to the far Long Earth, aboard a military twain! But things went badly wrong. The engines—the crew lost control…”

Maggie left it to Mac to question them closely about the details of the incident. David and the others were vague about places and times—what precisely the engineering problem was, where exactly in the greater Long Earth they were when the crew lost control, what their stepping rate was, how the crew tried to handle the situation.

After a time, while Mac continued the question-and-answer, Nathan Boss tugged Maggie’s sleeve. “Captain—does Mac have to interrogate them so hard? They survived a wreck. They’ve been stranded here, cut off from the rest of mankind, for years. In the middle of an alien ecosystem too. They’re damned impressive to have survived at all, let alone to be so—composed.”

“They are, aren’t they?”

“Of course they aren’t going to know the engineering details of the crash. The crew will have kept them isolated, as safe as possible, protected from the crisis…”

Yue-Sai was on Maggie’s other side. She seemed to have got over her first star-struck reaction. “But even so they seem very vague about it all, for individuals evidently so intelligent.”

Maggie noticed that Rosalind and Anne were observing this sidebar discussion. Again they whispered to each other, and again Maggie strained to catch that peculiar high-speed talk of theirs.

Yue-Sai said, “Captain, if I may, I would like to go inspect more of this little colony for myself.”

“You do that.”

As Yue-Sai stood up, David smiled and held out a hand to her. “Please, don’t leave us.”

It was a request, not a command. Yet it seemed to have a peculiar effect on Yue-Sai. She stood frozen, as if unwilling to disobey him. But then she shook her head, turned away, and left the tepee.

“And you say there were no survivors,” Mac pressed now. “From the crew, I mean. None but the five of you.”

David spread his hands. “What can I say? They kept us safe—in an inner cabin, far from the gondola walls—while they struggled to save the ship. We broke out later, after the crash. I can show you the cabin if you like.”

“I’m sure you can.”

David described how over the following days, weeks, they had taken the bodies, bagged up, to a burial site some distance away. “We needed to stay here, by the wreck. We needed its raw materials for our survival, and we knew any rescue attempt would be drawn here. We buried the bodies decently.”

Mac pressed him on exactly where. David was vague, as if distressed to be pushed to recall such a difficult time.

“All the questions you ask, Doctor Mackenzie—look, the Armstrong crew saved us. They gave their lives to do so. This is the noblest sacrifice imaginable. Really, is there anything else to be said?”

Even Maggie felt there wasn’t. “Let’s take a break.”

Quietly, however, she detailed Nathan to keep David and the others as busy as possible. “The rest of you, spread out. There are only five of them, they can’t tag us all.” Then she turned to Mac, who remained expressionless. “I don’t know if anything’s wrong here. But—”

Mac said, “These kids are just too damn likeable. Right?”

“Something like that. I’d prefer to take a look around myself…”