ATTN: GUNTHER BEEKMAN. WE HAVE DIVERTED WILDSIDE TO ESTABLISH ARCHEOLOGICAL INSPECTION T?AM ON DEEPSIX PRISCILLA HUTCHINS WILL LEAD EFFORT. REQUEST YOU AND CAPT. CLAIRVEAU RENDER EVERY ASSISTANCE.
GOMEZ
IV
At the critical moment of a critical mission, when his people most needed him, Randall Nightingale fainted dead away. He was rescued by Sabina Coldfield, and dragged to safety by that estimable woman at the cost of her own life. Everyone now seems shocked that the mission failed, and that no further attempt will be made to examine the mosquitoes and marsh grass ofMalena III. They say it costs too much, but they're talking about money. It does cost too much. It costs people like Cold field, who was worth a dozen Nightingales
— GREGORY MACALLISTER, "Straight and Narrow," Reminiscences
Marcel no longer believed the inhabitants of Deepsix were long dead. Or maybe dead at all.
"I think you might be right," said Kellie. She buried her chin in her palm and stared at the screen. They were examining visuals taken earlier in the day.
When this mission was completed, Marcel would certify Kellie Collier as fully qualified for her own command. She was only twenty-eight, young for that kind of responsibility, but she was all business, and he saw no point requiring her to sit second seat anymore. Especially with star travel beginning to boom. There were a multitude of superluminals out there begging for command officers, commercial carriers and private yachts and executive and corporate vessels. Not to mention the recent expansion of the Patrol, which had been fueled by the losses last year of the Marigold and the Rancocas, with their crews. The former had simply disintegrated as it prepared to jump into hyperspace; its crew had made it into the lifepods but had exhausted their air supply while waiting for a dilatory Patrol to respond.
The Rancocas had suffered a power failure and gone adrift. Communications had failed, and no one had noticed until it was too late.
As people moved out to the newly terraformed worlds, where land was unlimited, the public was demanding a commitment to safety. Consequently the Patrol had entered an era of expansion. It was hard to know how far a young hotshot like Collier might go.
Kellie was studying the foothills of one of the mountain ranges in central Transitoria. "I don't think there's any question about it," she said. "It's a road. Or it used to-be."
Marcel thought she was seeing what she wanted to see. "It's overgrown." He sat down beside her. "Hard to tell. It might be an old riverbed."
"Look over here. It goes uphill. That was never a watercourse." She squinted at the screen. "But I'd say it's been a long time since anyone used it."
They had, during the five days that had passed since the first discovery, seen widely scattered evidence of habitation. More than that, they'd seen the remnants of cities on three continents. The cities were long dead, buried, crushed beneath glaciers. It also appeared they had been preindustrial. Further elucidation would have to wait until Hutchins arrived and took her team down for a close look. But there were no structures that could be said to dominate the surrounding landscape, and the snow wasn't so deep as to bury major engineering work. There were no bridges, no dams, no skyscrapers, no signs of construction on a large scale. Just here and there a fragment in the snow. A rooftop, a post, a pier.
On an island they'd named Freezover, there was a ring of stones. A cart waited in the middle of a barren field near Bad News Bay, near the place at which Nightingale's mission had come to grief; and an object that might have been a plow had been sighted at Cape Chagrin in the Tempis.
But the road-
It was approximately thirty kilometers long, and they could trace it from its beginnings in a river valley, cross-country along the boundary of a small lake, onto a rise at the foot of one of the mountains. (Kellie was right: It could not be a watercourse.) It disappeared briefly into a tangle of forest before emerging again near the ocean.
The road ran past the base of one of the taller mountains. It towered almost seven thousand meters over the forest. Its northern side was sheared away, creating an unbroken drop from the cloud-shrouded summit down onto a gradual slope. When the sunlight hit the rock wall at dawn, they detected a cobalt tint, and so they called it Mt. Blue.
"The sightseer route," said Marcel. Kellie shrugged. "Maybe. I wish we could go down and look."
"The Wildside should be able to settle things when it gets here."
She folded her arms and let him see she was about to ask for something. Instead: "It's lucky there was an archeologist within range."
"Hutch?" Marcel allowed himself a smile. "She's no archeologist. Actually, she's in our line of work."
"A pilot?"
"Yeah. I guess she's all they had. But she's been down on some sites."
Kellie nodded, stood, and looked at him carefully. "You think she'd let me go down with her?"
"If you asked, she probably would. Probably be glad to get the help. The real question is whether I'd allow it."
Kellie was attractive, tall, with dark bedroom eyes, sleek bkck skin, and soft shoulder-length hair. Marcel knew that she found no difficulty having her way with men, and that she tried not to use her charms on him. Bad form, she'd told him once. But it came as natural to her as breathing. Her eyelids fluttered and she contrived to gaze-up at him even though he was still seated. "Marcel, they said we should render all assistance."
"I don't think they meant personnel."
She held him in her gaze. "I'd like very much to go. You don't really need me here."
Marcel considered it. "The lander's probably going to fill up with the science people," he said. "We'll have to give them priority."
"Okay." She nodded. "That's not unreasonable. But if there's room…"
Marcel was uneasy. He knew Hutch, not well, but enough to trust her. The experts weren't sure when Deepsix would start coming apart. And there was dangerous animal life down there. Still, Kellie was a grown woman, and he could see no reason to refuse the request. "I'll check with her, see what she says."
Beekman was lost in thought when Marcel took a seat beside him. He was frowning, his gaze turned inward, his brow wrinkled. Then he jerked into awareness and looked unsteadily at the captain. "Marcel," he said, "I have a question for you."
"All right." They were in project control.
"If there's really something, somebody, down there capable of building a house or laying a road, should we be thinking about a rescue operation?"
Marcel had been thinking about little else, but he could see no practical way to approach the problem. How did one rescue aliens? "Wildside only has one lander," he said. "That's it. How many do you think we could bring off? Where would we put them? How do you think they'd react to a bunch of cowboys rolling in and trying to round them up?"
"But if there are intelligent creatures down there, it seems as if we'd have a moral obligation to try to save a few. Don't you think?"
"How much experience have you with ET life-forms?" asked Marcel.
Beekman shook his head. "Not much, really."
"They might be people-eaters."
"That's unlikely. We're talking about something that makes roads." Beekman looked seriously uncomfortable. "I know the lander's small, and we've got only one. But we could take a few. It's what the Academy would want us to do." He was wearing a gray vest, which he pulled tightly about him as if he were cold. "How many does it hold? The Wildside lander?"
Marcel asked Bill. The numbers popped up on the screen. Eleven plus a pilot. "Maybe we should wait until we're confronted by the problem," he said.
Beekman nodded slowly. "I suppose."
"Taking off a handful," pursued Marcel, "might not be a kind act. We'd be rescuing them so they could watch their world die." He shook his head. "It would be dangerous. We'd have no way of knowing what they would do when we walked up and said hello. We wouldn't be able to communicate. And then there's the gene pool."