— whatever.
This time he'd failed in a more visible way. In a way he could rationalize neither to others nor to himself. When it was over, if he survived, he'd make for Scotland. And hide.
"Marcel, this is Abel. Deepsix is beginning to disintegrate."
Marcel put the climatologist on-screen. "How? What's going on?"
"Major rifts opening in the oceans and on two of the continents. Several volcanoes have been born on Endtime. There's a fault line east of Gloriamundi. One side of it has been shoved six thousand meters into the air. It's still coming up. There are massive quakes in both hemispheres. We've got eruptions everywhere. A couple have even shown up in the Misty Sea, not far from the lander's last position."
"They should be safe. They're pretty high."
"You think so? One just let go in Gloriamundi. Some of the ejecta will go into orbit."
"Show me where they are," he said. "The Misty Sea volcanoes."
Kinder was right: Two were close to the lander's flight path. But he couldn't reroute them in any significant way. Not if they were going to be in place when the net arrived. Best just to ride it out and hope.
"Thanks, Abel."
Kinder grunted, one of those pained sounds. Then someone pressed his shoulder, handed him a note. He frowned.
"What?" asked Marcel.
"Hold on." The climatologist looked off to one side, nodded, frowned again, talked to the individual. Marcel couldn't hear. Then he came back to the monitor. "Northern Tempus is doing an Atlantis."
"Sinking?"
"Yes."
One of the screens was focused on Wendy's hull. Marcel saw movement, but it happened so quickly he wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it. "Thanks, Abel," he said.
He was still watching the screen. A shadow passed across Wendy, and one of her sensors vanished. A communication pod broke open and its electronic components spilled into the void. He switched over to the AI and picked up Bill's voice in midstride: "… to several forward systems. Intensity seems to be lessening…" The voice failed, and the image flickered and went off. It came back, long enough for Bill to add the word assess; then it went down again.
Nicholson, in the command chair, took a report that communications with Wendy had failed.
He asked a technician whether she could restore them.
"Problem's not on this end, Captain," she said. Another technician was running the visuals backward.
Nicholson looked at Marcel. "What the hell's happening over there? Can you make it out?"
"More rocks, I think," said Marcel. "It'll get worse as Jerry gets closer.
The screen remained blank.
"What happens if we don't regain contact?"
"We don't need to. Bill knows what to do. All the AIs do. As long as there's no emergency that requires us to make adjustments."
Canyon sat in a pose one could only describe as relaxed attention. "So this was your first time outside a ship, Tom. Why don't you tell us what was running through your mind when you went through the airlock?"
Scolari willed himself to relax. "Well, August, I knew it was something that had to be done. So I just made up my mind to do it." It was a stupid response, but he had suddenly lost all capability to think. What's my name? "I mean, it wasn't something we could just walk away from. It's a life-and-death situation."
He looked over at Cleo, who was gazing innocently at the ceiling.
"And how about you, Cleo?" said Canyon. "It must have been pretty unnerving looking down and not seeing anything."
"Well, that's true, August. Although to be honest I never felt there was a 'down. It's not like being on the side of a building."
"I understand you got hit by a storm of meteors. How did you react to that?"
"I was scared for a minute," she said. "We just hid out until it was over. Didn't really see much."
"Listen," said Scolari, "can I tell you something on my own?"
"Sure."
"Everybody was scared out there today. I never knew when part of me might just disappear. You know what I mean? And even without the rocks, I don't like not having something solid underfoot. But I'm glad I did it. And I hope to God those four people come back. If they do, it'll be nice to know I had a hand in it." He managed a smile. "Me and Cleo and the others."
Miles Chastain was cruising the shaft, moving deliberately from one ship to the next, inspecting the work of the Outsiders.
Maleiva III was framed against the gas giant. The continents and seas were no longer visible, and the entire globe appeared to be wrapped in a thick black pall.
He was impressed that so many had been wilh'ng to risk life and limb during the course of the operation. He'd heard about the other events, the complaints by passengers ob the Star and by the science people on Wendy. He'd been through crises before, and he knew they tended to unmask people, to reveal who they really were, to bring out the best or the worst, whichever way an individual personality leaned. It was almost as if trouble stripped away the pretenses of daily life, the way Jerry Morgan was stripping Maleiva.
He was somewhere between Zwick, his own ship, and the Evening Star, headed down the shaft toward the net. The actual pickup of Hutchins and her people would be made by John Drummond's shuttle. Marcel wanted them out of the lander and the net as quickly as the transfer could be made. Miles's responsibility was to stand by in case of need.
He was alone. He'd returned Phil, the shuttle pilot, the assistants, and the Outsiders to the Star and had taken over the controls himself. He was approaching Zwick, which was facing him.
When the signal came, and they began to draw the shaft out of the atmosphere, they would be moving it into orbit. Once that had been achieved, it would become possible to retrieve the MacAllister party.
His message board lit up. Transmission from Zwick. Emma. Her usually sallow features blinked on-screen, but this time she was glowing. She invariably gave the impression, when she spoke to him, that she was thinking about something else, that she needed only give out
instructions. That Miles himself was somehow inconsequential. Probably, he'd concluded on the way out, it resulted from dealing with too many VIPs. Everybody else became a peasant.
"Yes, Emma," he said, "what can I do for you?"
"Miles, where are you located now?"
"In front of you. Coming up."
"My schedule says you're headed for the pickup."
"More or less. I'm just going down there to be available."
"Good. I want you to stop and collect us."
"Why?"
"It'll only take a minute."
"Why?" he asked again.
"Are you serious? They're about to do the rescue, or not, and you ask why we want to be there?"
He sighed. She was right, of course. "Okay. I'll dock in about six minutes."
"Good. And Miles, would you do something else for me?"
He waited.
"I want you to contact the other pilot, the one who's going to make the pickup. Tell him we'd like to do a broadcast as they come on board. Ask if he'll cooperate."
"Why don't you do that yourself?"
"Well, pilot-to-pilot… You know how it is. He'll be more receptive if it comes from you. A lot of these people out here resent us. They think we're in the way. Except when they need publicity for one reason or another. I just don't want to miss this." She was at emotional high tide. "It's going to be the news story of the decade, Miles."
"Emma, did you know the shuttles can't dock with each other? You'll have to go outside to make the crossing."
"I didn't know. But that's not a problem."