“I don’t believe this,” Ongola said. “He’s coming in from the wrong quadrant, at too steep an angle, and he’s going to crash smack in the center of the Island Ring Sea. Soon.”
“Repeat, Moth, your angle is wrong. Abort reentry. Nabol, take another orbit. Sort yourself out. Your instruments are malfunctioning.” Fardles, if Nabol could not feel the wrongness of that entry, he was nowhere near the driver he thought himself.
“I’m captain of this ship, Admiral,” Nabol snapped back. “It’s your screen that’s malfunctioning . . . Whadidya say, Bart? I don’t believe it. You’ve got to be wrong. Give it a bang! Kick it!”
“Yank your nose up and fire a three-second blast, Nabol!” Paul cried, his eyes on the screen and the speed of the incoming shuttle.
“I’m trying. Can’t fire. No fuel!” Sudden fear made Nabol’s voice shrill.
Paul heard Bart’s cries in the background. “I told you it felt wrong. I told you! We shouldn’t’ve . . . I’ll jettison. They’ll have that much!” Bart shouted. “If the farking relay’ll work.”
“Use the manual jettison lever, Bart,” Ongola yelled over Paul’s shouder.
“I’m trying, I’m trying . . . She’s heating up too fast, Nabhi. She’s heatin—”
Horrified, Paul, Ongola, and Jake watched the dissolution of the shuttle. One stubby wing sheared off and the shuttle began to spin. The tail section broke off and spun away on a different route, burning up in the atmosphere. The second wing followed suit.
“It’ll hit the sea?” Paul asked in a bare whisper, trying to calculate the impact of that projectile on land. Ongola nodded imperceptibly.
Like an obituary, the relay screen lit up with a glorious sunlit spread of many bits and one, larger object, disappearing into many faint pricks of glitter.
A team of dolphins were sent out to the Ring Sea to find the wreck. Maximilian and Teresa reported back a week later, tired and not too happy to tell humans that they had seen the twisted hulk wedged into a reef in waters too deep for them to examine closely. All the dolphins were still searching the Ring Sea for the jettisoned scoop.
“Tell them not to bother,” Jim Tillek muttered dourly. “There’s unlikely to be anything left to analyze. We know that the junk goes back in a years’ long tail. We’re stuck with it. Hail Hoyle and Wickramansingh!”
“Ezra?” Emily asked the solemn astronomer.
Keroon’s butterscotch-colored skin seemed tinged with gray, and he looked bowed by his responsibilities. He heaved a heavy, weary sigh and scratched at the back of his head. “I have to concede that Jim’s theory is correct. The contents of the pod would have been the final proof, but I, too, doubt the scoop survived. Even if it did, it could take years to find it in such a vast area. Years also apply to that tail, I fear. We won’t be able to judge until the end of that tail comes in sight.”
“And where does that leave us?” Paul asked rhetorically.
“Coping, Admiral, roping!” Jim Tillek replied proudly. With a twitch of his sturdy shoulders, he had thrown off his doomsday expression and instead challenged them all. “And we’ve Thread falling in two hours, so we’d better stop worrying about the future and attend to the present. Right?”
Emily looked at Paul and managed a tentative smile, which she also turned on Zi Ongola, who was watching them impassively.
“Right! We’ll cope.” She spoke in a firm, resolute voice. Surely we can hold out ten years, she thought to herself, if we’re very careful. She wondered why no one mentioned the homing capsule. Perhaps because no one had much faith in Ted Tubberman. “We’ve got to.”
“Until those dragons start earning their keep,” Paul said. “But this settlement must be restructured.” Emily and he had been discussing redispositions for days. They had been waiting for the right moment to broach the subject to the others of the informal Landing council.
“No,” Ongola said, surprising everyone. “We must resettle completely. Landing is no longer viable. It used to be sort of a link with our origins, with the ships that brought us here. We no longer require that sense of continuity.”
“And most especially,” Jim picked up the thoughts, “not with volcanoes popping up and spouting off in this vicinity.” Jim shifted in his chair, settling in to discuss basics. “I’ve been listening to what people are saying. So has Ezra. Telgar’s notion about moving to that cave system on basement rock in the north is gaining strength. The cave complex is big enough to house Landing’s population—plus dragons! We’re not out of raw materials to make plastic and metal for housing. But making it takes time away from the essential task of fighting Thread and keeping us alive. Why not use a natural structure? Use our technology to make the cave system comfortable, tenable, and totally safe from Thread?”
Emily did not even pause to take a breath. “Just what Paul and I have been discussing. There’s enough fuel, I believe, to transport some of the heavier equipment by shuttle. Then we can use the metal in situ. Jim, the Pern Navy is about to be commissioned.”
Paul grinned at Emily. It was much easier when people made up their own minds to do what their leaders had decided was best for them.
Chapter 17
“HOLIEST OF HOLIES,” Telgar murmured respectfully as he held his torch high and still could not illuminate the ceiling. His voice started echoes in the vast chamber, repeating and repeating down side corridors until finally the noise was absorbed by the sheer distance from its source.
“Oh, I say, mate, this is one big bonzo cave,” Ozzie Munson said, keeping his voice to a whisper. His eyes were white and wide in his tanned, wind-seared face.
Cobber Alhinwa, who was rarely impressed with anything, was equally awed. “A bleeding beaut!” His whisper matched Ozzie’s.
“There are hundreds of ready-made chambers in this complex alone,” Telgar said. He was unfolding the plassheet on which he and his beloved Sallah had recorded their investigations of eight years earlier. “There are at least four openings to the cliff top which could be used for air circulation. Channel down to water level and install pumps and pipe—I came across big reservoirs of artesian water. Core down to the thermal layer and, big as it is, the whole complex could be warmed in the winter months.” He turned back to the opening. “Block that up with native stone and this would be an impregnable fort. No safer place on this world during Threadfall. Further along the valley, there are surface-level caves near that pasture land. Of course, it would have to be seeded, but we still have the alfalfa grass propagators that were brought for the first year.
“At the time there was no need to investigate thoroughly, but the facilities exist. As I recall when we overflew the range above us, we discovered a medium-size caldera, well pocked with small cliffs, about a half-hour’s flight from here. We didn’t think to mark whether it was accessible at ground level. It might be ideal for dragon quarters, so accessibility isn’t a problem, provided they do fly as well as dragonets,”
“We seen a couple old craters like that,” Ozzie said, consulting the battered notebook that habitually lived in his top pocket. “One on the east coast, and one in the mountains above the three drop lakes, when we was prospecting for metal ores.”
“So,” Cobber began, having recovered from his awe, “the first thing is cut steps to this here level.” He walked to the edge of the cave and looked down critically at the stone face. “Maybe a ramp, like, to move stuff up here easy like. That incline over there’s nearly a staircase already.” He pointed to the left-hand side. “Steps neat as you please up to the next level.”