He really liked this world. Snow-hooded peaks to the north, as he reckoned north, an orange forest to the south — aquamarine badlands in between. Vegetation was strange not only in color. He passed a bush with diamond-like nodules depending from thin stalks. Another plant looked like an avant-garde sculpture constructed of clear plastic tubing.
He stopped to take a compass heading. His directional guesses were fairly true. The mountains lay to the magnetic north. He’d head toward them and try to find that crystal mountain lake. He probably wouldn’t be able to eat the fish in the lake, though he had brought tackle and hand-line. This was hardly an Earth-like world, and the plant and animal proteins here probably didn’t match his body chemistry. In other words, most everything that might appear edible would not be. He’d be living out of his backpack for a week. But that he was perfectly willing to do. He’d brought the best in freeze-dried comestibles.
The air was temperate, but it would likely get cold at night. That was no problem, however, as he had a high-tech wonder of a one-man tent and a mylar-lined sleeping bag that was rated down to minus 35 degrees Celsius.
He hiked along for about ten minutes, keeping the sun to his left as he threaded his way around upthrusting strata of greenish-blue. Yellow streaking ran through the rocks.
As he was coming down into a shallow canyon, a loud report shattered the air and made him jump. It was quite unexpected.
He looked up. No thunderclouds, and he was momentarily mystified until he saw the contrail of a fast-moving object in the sky. The noise had been a sonic boom.
“Oh, damn.”
He’d have to head back. Despite his intuitions to the contrary, this world was not only inhabited but technologically sophisticated.
Nevertheless, for the moment he stayed, watching the thing make a harrowing high-g turn away from the sun and head back in his direction. It was an aircraft of some sort, and as it neared it looked rather like a small space shuttle. Silver-colored, compact and delta-winged, it was convincingly futuristic yet appeared eminently practicable.
But how was it going to set down? From his vantage point, Gene surveyed the available landing area. There wasn’t nearly enough. Not unless the thing had vertical-landing capability.
The craft was floating along now, circling the canyon, staying airborne against all aerodynamic odds, when by rights it should have gone plunging groundward in a stall. Its flight path looked wobbly. After making a complete circuit of the canyon, the silvery vehicle began its approach for a landing. The only sound it made was the faint whoosh of air over its gracefully curving surfaces.
At the last second, the craft went out of control and hit the floor of the canyon hard — and flipped over. Gene dove behind a rock. But there was no explosion.
He got up, slapped his pants clean, and looked toward the crash site. The craft was silent and still except for a cloud of dust rising from the wreckage. Nothing else moved in the canyon. He jogged toward the downed craft.
As he neared, he slowed to a cautious walk. No telling who the survivors — if any — were. There was no way of knowing what they were, human or nonhuman, or how they would react. The plane said “human” to him, somehow, but that didn’t make him any the less wary, it perhaps made him more so.
An oval hatch opened near the craft’s blunt nose, dilating like an iris. A sigh of escaping air came to Gene’s ears. He stopped. No one came out. He edged closer.
He peered into the interior. It was dark, and what was visible looked cramped and crowded with instrumentation. But there was room for him to enter, if he so decided.
He decided. He dropped his backpack and climbed through the hatch. Wires dangled in front of his face. He brushed them aside. Squeezing toward the nose, he walked gingerly over banks of instruments on the inverted overhead bulkhead.
Ahead, a human form hung upside down, snared in a tangle of straps, cables, and tubes. The pilot, he surmised, in a blue-and-silver pressure suit and transparent helmet. He got closer and bent over the still form.
It was a woman. And a very unusual-looking one. The hair, ghostly albino white, was cropped short. Her skin was suntan-dark, a Palm Beach mulatto. Her features were regular and broad, high cheekbones. Quite a striking face. A beautiful one, once you got used to the contrasts. He put his face close to hers and peered through the helmet. Her eyelids opened slightly.
She was no albino. Her eyes were the darkest blue he had ever seen. They were purplish-blue besides, and he thought he detected flecks of green. He looked her over. There was a bloodied rip in her suit along the rib cage.
He didn’t know quite what to do. He could not move her without risk of further serious injury, but he was reluctant to leave her hanging like this. She was obviously bleeding inside that suit. It would take at least twenty minutes to run back to the castle to get help, and a further twenty, minimum, before help arrived. He’d best get her down very gently, somehow, and then see what he could do to stabilize her with the first-aid stuff in the backpack. When he was sure she would last, he’d make a run to the castle.
He struggled out of the cabin, got the backpack, and went back inside, batting the same dangling wires out of the way. He went to her, knelt, and began unpacking.
Presently, he found the first-aid kit. He looked up and froze. He was staring into the business-end of a formidable-looking handgun.
Gene tilted his head to read her face. She was wide-eyed but not fearful. She looked angry. She said something in a language that sounded a cross between German and Latin, with a bit of Spanish thrown in for spice. When he didn’t answer she spoke again, barking some kind of order.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
She scowled. Then her eyelids fluttered. The barrel of the gun dropped, as did her head to the deck. She relapsed into semiconsciousness.
Slowly, he reached for the weapon. She let go of it easily, and he exhaled and put the thing aside after giving it a glance and marveling. It looked like what a laser gun should look like.
He drew his knife and set himself to the task of untangling her. It was a rough job. He resorted to sawing at the hoses with his hunting knife. The straps were made of even tougher material, but he finally managed to clear her of those and had to react quickly when her legs dropped.
He eased her to the deck and straightened up, took a breath. It was hot inside and getter hotter. He worried about spilling fuel and the possibility of a sudden fire, and had a sudden flash of imagining what it would be like to be trapped inside.
He would have to risk moving her. She could move, and that meant her spinal cord was intact; he’d have to gamble that the spine itself wasn’t broken.
He realized that her air supply had been interrupted and bent to the chore of getting her helmet off. There were fairly straightforward lugs on either side of the collar, and he undid these. He tried rotating the helmet clockwise, and when it wouldn’t budge, tried the other way. It came of easily.
The fresh air seemed to bring her around.
She tried to get up, mumbling something.
“Can you walk?”
She grumbled something in reply.
“Let me help you.”
He got her up. With difficulty, they struggled out of the craft. Outside, she collapsed to her knees, then sat with her head hung low.
He wanted to try something. He was no magician, like Linda and some few other castle Guests, but he could work a spell with a little luck. After you’d lived in the castle for a while, some of the magic rubbed off and stayed with you, even when you left the castle. Linda had taught him a trick that took advantage of this effect. It was a short incantation that invoked the castle’s pervasive language-translation spell. Gene often used it when exploring inhabited aspects. Sometimes it worked for him, sometimes not. It was always worth a try.