“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Is someone making these signals, or are they natural phenomena?”
“At this stage I can't tell,” Hoban said. “We have no definite data on any other ships in the area.”
“There's a lot of solar debris around, though,” Stan said. “No telling yet what it might be.”
Gill punched up another set of numbers. “The weather down there on the surface is even worse than you expected, Dr. Myakovsky.”
Julie came into the control room. She had already changed into a plasteel landing outfit The cobalt-blue plastic form-fitting clothing with its orange flashes looked stunning on her. Stan's heart was in his mouth as he watched her.
“Are we ready to go down?” Julie asked.
Captain Hoban said, “I wouldn't recommend it, Miss Lish. The surface phenomena are worse than we were led to believe. Perhaps if we give the weather time to settle down a little …”
Julie shook her head impatiently. “There's no time for that. If our worst peril is from the weather, Captain, we're doing very well indeed!”
“I suppose that's true,” Hoban said. He turned to Gill. “Are you ready to accompany the party, Gill?”
“I am, of course, ready,” the synthetic man said. “I have taken the liberty of asking for volunteers for this. There are five of them, and they are waiting for your orders.”
He stood up from the control panel. He was tall, and even with his mismatched features, he was good-looking. If he had been a true man, you would have said there was something haunted about his expression. Since he was only a synthetic, you had to figure there'd been something amiss with his facial mold.
“Captain Hoban,” said Stan, “can you show us our target in more detail?”
Hoban nodded and fine-tuned the controls. AR-32's surface sprang up into high magnification. Fractal-mapped shapes blew up in size and complexity. Hoban adjusted the magnification again. A tiny dot on the landscape grew quickly, until, at extreme magnification, it turned into a low dark earthen dome that rose up from the flat plain, showing up well against the rugged landscape.
“That's the hive,” Hoban said. “Not easy to miss it. It's the biggest thing in this part of the planet.”
“Looks pretty quiet,” Stan mused.
“We're still a long way from the surface,” Gill reminded him. Things could change by the time we get there.”
“True enough,” Stan said. “But what the hell, this is what we've come for. Julie? Are you ready?”
“Ready, Stan,” Julie said. “It's going to be a walk in the park.”
Stan wished he shared her confidence.
“Why are you going to the surface?” Hoban asked. “I thought we were coming to look for an orbiting wreck.”
“All in good time,” Stan said. “Right now we've got the hive below us and no sign of life around it. If we can get a load of royal jelly from there, we can take care of the freighter later.”
“Right on,” Julie said. “Let's go for all the marbles.”
Stan felt encouraged by the beautiful thief's cheerfulness and determination. Maybe this thing was going to go all right, after all.
29
The number-one lander was in its own bay, stacked parallel to the backup lander, just behind the big hold where Julie had made her last training run with Norbert. Now Norbert walked behind Stan and Julie, holding Mac the dog in his arms. There was something doglike about the robot's posture; in a sense he was a mechanical watchdog, ferocious when challenged, utterly loyal to his master, Stan. Behind Norbert, and keeping their distance, were the five volunteers for the landing party. They had been promised a sufficient bonus for this undertaking, enough for avarice to overcome common sense. But, of course, if they'd had common sense, they wouldn't have been in space on the Dolomite in the first place.
Captain Hoban, who was already at the number-one lander waiting for them, initiated the hatch-opening procedure. The lander, nestled in its bay, was almost a hundred feet long. It contained a miniature laboratory and was fully equipped with the telemetry needed for the mission.
Norbert was proceeding to the hatch when Mac the dog came streaking out of the corridor, the rubber hall in his jaws. He raced into the lander just ahead of Norbert.
“We'd better get that dog out of there,” Hoban said.
“Let him stay,” said Stan. “He may be of some use accompanying Norbert once we're on the surface.”
“Just as you wish, sir,” Hoban said. “I wish I were going with you.”
“I wish you were, too,” said Stan. “But we need you here on the Dolomite. If anything goes wrong, we're absolutely dependent on you for backup.”
“Don't worry, Stan, nothing's going to go wrong,” Julie said. Her smile was brilliant. “Don't you agree, Gill?”
“Optimism has not been factored into me,” Gill said. “I am constructed to understand situations, not to have feelings about them.”
“You're missing the best part,” Julie said. “Having feelings about stuff is what it's all about”
“I've often wondered about that,” Gill said.
“Maybe someday you'll find out. Are we ready?”
“After you,” Stan said.
She made a mocking little salute and stepped into the lander. The others followed. Captain Hoban waited until he heard Stan report on the voice channel that the lander was well sealed and all systems were on-line. Then he returned to the control room and initiated the takeoff procedure.
The lander fell away from the Dolomite's hull and dropped toward the swirling surface of AR-32. Stan adjusted his restraining harness and called out, “Everybody secure?”
The five volunteers from the crew were strapped down in the forward cabin. They were carrying weapons that had been issued to them by Gilclass="underline" pulse rifles and vibrators. All had been given suppressors. These state-of-the-art electronic machines, about a meter long and weighing less than a pound, were clipped to their belts. The suppressors emitted a complex waveform that confused an alien's vision, rendering the wearer invisible.
Julie and Gill were lying on deceleration couches in the main cabin behind Stan. Norbert was crouched all the way in the rear, holding a stanchion in one clawed hand and cuddling Mac with the other. There was no seat aboard the lander large enough to hold the big robot alien. But his strength was such that it was likelier the stanchion would move than his grip be torn loose.
Then Captain Hoban's face appeared on the screen. “Dr. Myakovsky, are you ready for release?”
“Ready, Captain,” Stan said. “Open up and turn us loose.”
There was a powerful humming noise from the Dolomite's interior motors, a noise that could be felt inside the lander as vibration. The Dolomite's bay doors slid open revealing the star-studded sky as seen from AR-32's upper atmosphere. There was a click as the doors locked in the open position. Then a bright green telltale on Stan's control board came to life.
“You've got control, Stan.”
Stan felt his stomach turn over as the lander pulled away from the Dolomite. G-forces twisted at his gut. Sudden sharp flashes of pain went through his chest. A haze of pinkish red enclosed his vision, with blackness beginning to form on the edges.
“Stan!” Julie called out. “We're coming down pretty fast.”
Gill said, “Hull ionization is beginning to be a factor.”
Stan got himself under control. His fingers danced on the controls. “Okay, I've got it. Gill, give me a landing vector.”
They were deep into AR-32's atmosphere. Long, thin, ragged yellow clouds, twisting and turning into fantastic shapes, whipped past the Perspex viewing window. There was a rattle of hailstones striking the hull as they passed through a temperature inversion layer in the atmosphere.