There was a large weather system, clearly visible in infrared, roiling with power. He flew toward it as fast as he could, his pursuers getting closer and closer with every moment. It was going to be close. A sudden gust of wind buffeted his elderly craft, taking Caliban by surprise. The aircar twisted and dove, nearly flipping over on its back before he could regain control.
Another gust caught at his craft from another direction, but Caliban was ready for it this time. The storm wall was dead ahead. He could hear its roaring power, see the flickering traces of lightning that flashed across its interior. Now the buffeting was almost constant, and hard sprays of rain and hail clattered against the aircar, peppering Caliban as well. Suddenly the winds and the rain and the clouds seemed to gather him in, the ‘powerful storm swallowing him up.
His aircar was thrown forward by a following wind, lifted up on high by a violent updraft, cast down again with equal violence. Sparks flew as something shorted out, and half the control panel went dead. The aircar was thrown sideways and nearly flipped over on its side before Caliban could force the protesting craft back to level flight. The noise and the force of the storm were incredible, the thunder crashing everywhere, the roaring impact of the rain against his body all-encompassing, devouring Caliban, making him one with the rain and the wind and the dark and the flares of lightning. The aircar was caught by a backdraft and thrown into a dive, heeling over to head groundward at tremendous speed. He struggled to pull up the nose, slamming over the lift control to maximum, the old car groaning and protesting, a deep, angry throbbing vibration suddenly coming up from somewhere in the drive section. There was a shuddering bang that rattled the whole car, and an abrupt drop-off in the vibration, as if something has broken clean off.
Caliban ignored it all, struggling to bring the nose up, straining to slow his headlong fall toward the unseen ground below. Slowly, slowly the protesting craft lifted its nose, groaning and shuddering in protest.
With shocking abruptness, the aircar broke through the base of the storm clouds, revealing the rough ground rushing up to meet it. Now at least the rain was pelting straight down on him, instead of smashing in from all directions, but even so, he had almost no visibility at all.
With a last heroic effort, the tortured aircar finally achieved level flight. But smoke was burgeoning up from under the floorboards, a thick cloud that would have blinded him if the rains had not kept it beaten down. The controls were balky and getting worse. The last of the status indicators flickered once, twice, and went out. The power was gone, and the aircar was suddenly a glider, and not a very good one. The aircar was going down, and there was nothing he could do about it. He struggled to slow the craft, to bring the nose up, trading speed for range and glide angle. But there was nothing left, nothing more he could do.
The car smashed into the ground, bouncing and crashing and skidding across boulders and sand of the rain-torn blackness of the desert.
ALVAR Kresh and Donald stepped out onto the rooftop landing pad of Kresh’s house to discover they had rather unwelcome company just arriving. Tonya Welton was getting out of her own aircar, her robot, Ariel, right behind her.
“I’m going with you,” Tonya announced. “You spotted Caliban. You are going after him. And I have the right, the power, the authority, to attach myself to any area of this investigation. I have the legal rights, and I will stand by them.”
“How the hell do you know where we’re going?” Kresh demanded, though he had figured out the humiliating answer even before he was done asking the question. Damn the Settlers and their arrogant technology.
“Your secure hyperwave communications aren’t all that secure,” Tonya said. “We monitor them.”
“Didmonitor them,” Kresh growled. “There will be a few changes madevery quickly. You seem to have blown your cover.”
Tonya shook her head, dismissing a minor concern. “That is of no consequence. Not compared to the danger we are all in right now. There are any number of ways this case could touch off a political backlash and sabotage the terraforming project, and then this world would die. We wouldall die.”
“We? Since when is it your world?”
Tonya looked up at him. Her eyes were bright and wide with fear and worry. “Since Gubber is in it. I am not going to abandon him, or let the world he lives on die. I intend to remain on Inferno, whatever happens.”
“Lady Welton, I must suggest most strongly that you not come with us,” said Donald. “There is no polite way of saying this, but you are a suspect in the case.”
“All the old gods damn it! Of course I am! Don ‘t you think I know that Gubber and I are both suspects?” She stopped, her chest heaving, tears running down her face. “Damn it, don’t you see? If he did it, and Caliban can tell us that, I have to be there.I have to know. I can accept it, either way. But Ican’t pretend anymore in front of him. I have to know.”
Alvar Kresh stared at Tonya Welton in frank astonishment. She was the last person in the known universe he would have expected to have such an outburst. It was hard not to think it would serve as a first-rate cover if Tonya were determined to come along for the purpose of silencing Caliban with a quick blaster shot.
But damn it, she had the legal authority to come along, and even if she did not, there was little he could do to stop her following along in her own aircar, short of shooting it out of the sky. But he did not have to make it easier on her.
“Very well,” Alvar said. “You may come with us. But you will leave all your weapons and other devices behind, and submit to Donald performing a search to confirm this. You will wear clothing I will provide to prevent any attempt at smuggling of illicit hardware or weaponry.”
Tonya Welton seemed about to protest, but then she thought better of it. “I am carrying no weapon, but I will submit to a search and clothes change.”
It was Kresh ‘ s turn to be taken aback. Maybe she was in earnest after all. “Donald, get moving. Get her searched and dressedfast.”
“Yes, sir. Though I would suggest there will be little point to haste.” He pointed up into the northern sky.
Alvar Kresh looked and swore. The storm was coming on, moving south, huge and violent. Already the winds were whipping up. Damnation! No robot would allow a human to go up in that, and for once, Kresh was forced to admit that the robots had a point. It would be suicide to fly into that. Though he didn’t like to think about that., For Caliban, his last hope of making sense out of this case, had flown into that very storm minutes before.
19
NOTHING. There was absolutely nothing they could do. Fredda Leving paced back and forth down the length of her lab, Jomaine slouched down in a chair at her desk, Gubber perched disconsolate on a stool at one of the worktables. No information, no word, no clue. Yes, finding Caliban was an absolute imperative. But it was also absolutely impossible. The city was awash in rumors and allegedly factual news reports, but none of them were of the slightest use.
Even Alvar Kresh and Tonya Welton seemed to have vanished off the face of the planet. Fredda had tried repeatedly to reach both of them, to no avail. Where were they? Out searching for Caliban in that blasted storm, or holed up somewhere? Were they working together, or just both out of reach at the same moment?
Tonya Welton. Fredda looked again at Gubber and shook her head in amazement.That piece of news had utterly astonished her. It was slightly galling to realize she had been close to the last person on the planet to know about it all.
Though, in all fairness, she couldn’t blame Gubber for that. If she had known about this at the time, she would have been furious, seething, massively distrustful of Gubber. Now, as this sleepless, storming night thundered into a lightless dawn, the question of who slept with whom paled into utter insignificance. Well, perhaps that was overstating the case. The heavens might tumble, but that would not stop people being fascinated by news of a torrid affair. And, speaking for herself, at least, shestill couldn’t see it, but never mind that now.