“Trying to live in a place hotter than Jobi would kill most of us-except you and Ayrlyn,” responded Gerlich’s voice.
Saryn swallowed in the background, but Nylan said nothing.
“It wouldn’t be a revel for us.” Ayrlyn’s brown eyes seemed to flash blue.
Ryba nodded curtly, but not quite so coldly. “Anything else?”
“I think there’s some form of life down there, and there shouldn’t be, not without some form of moon, or unless we’re looking at a planoformed world. But there aren’t any electronic emissions.”
“Maybe it’s a lapsed colony world.”
“Could be. Whose? How long has it been isolated?”
“Stop it, please …” said Ayrlyn. “If the fusactors are down, can we fix them? If not, what do we do?”
“We die or colonize.” Ryba looked coldly back to Nylan. “Atmosphere?”
“Rough analysis indicates low CO, oxygen about twenty-two percent, mostly nitrogen. There’s nothing obviously wrong, but I can’t rule out toxic or chronic trace elements in the soil or atmosphere.”
“Inhabited?”
“The traces I’ve picked up say so.” The engineer shrugged again. “Could be anything, but it’s carbon-based, and, if I had to guess, probably some form of humanoid. There are some regular patches that could be fields and some lines that could be roads …”
“Better than savages, but not much.”
“You could be jumping to conclusions,” pointed out Ayrlyn.
“I have to go with the odds.” The captain glanced back at the readouts. “And we’re continuing to lose power.”
“This whole world is against the odds.”
Ryba turned and called up the visual display of the smaller continent on her console. “Nylan, Saryn, Ayrlyn … come here.”
“Captain? Gerlich here. What’s the drill? The marine force leader wants to know. So does Mertin.”
“We’re in stable orbit, but we’ll have to abandon the ship.We’re surveying landing sites. You can commence figuring loads for the landers. Something along the line of configuration C.”
“Self-sustaining?” came the weapons officer’s voice.
“That’s affirmative. Local culture looks primitive, but organized. Roads and fields, and that probably means things like blades, archers, and cavalry or the local equivalent if they have horses or what passes for them. Mass density is standard, and that means metal-working.”
“Understood. All four landers appear operational …”
“Fusactors aren’t going to work here, Gerlich,” added Nylan. “You’ll have to modify the configuration for that.”
“Fusactors work everywhere.”
“Not here, wherever here is.”
The captain looked at Nylan. “You sound absolutely certain.”
“You can have Gerlich test the survival fusactor, but it won’t work.”
“Weapons … the engineer is probably right, but test the fusactor and let me know.”
“Will do, Captain. How much time do we have?”
“Take enough time to do it right, Gerlich. We’re operating on stored power. We can’t take the tier two firin cells, but try to make room for the fully charged cells left in tier three.”
“What tools?”
“All the hand tools, and”-Ryba looked at Nylan-“two sets of laser cutters.”
Nylan nodded.
“No energy weapons?” asked Gerlich.
“The heavy-weapons head for one laser. Hand weapons might be useful for a time, but we probably won’t have any way to recharge them. All the slug-throwers the marines have. And take all your clothing-especially sweaters or warm things-even if you have to wear it or stuff it into cracks in the landers. And blankets. can guarantee we won’t be coming back for anything.”
“We’ll get working on it, Captain.”
Ryba turned to the bridge crew and gestured to the screen. “Where do we go down? Here’s the planet.”
The four clustered around the single wide screen.
“Four major continents. The one that looks like a fish-roughly-has an island off it.” Ryba glanced at Nylan. “Would we be better off on the island?”
The engineer shook his head. “It’s hot; it’s so dry that the sensors don’t show any moisture, and there are no signs of habitation. It’s also pretty rocky.”
“What about the big southern continent?”
“Isn’t it hot?” asked Saryn. “It’s not that far south of the equator.”
“Very hot,” admitted Nylan.
“You don’t seem very positive, Ser Nylan,” commented Ryba. “Each unit we sit and talk costs us power, and all you do is say no.”
Nylan shrugged. “I’d vote for the second-largest continent. It’s got some high mountain plateaus in that western range. It’s spring or early summer now, and we can land. There’s greenery there, but no signs of habitation-probably too cold for the locals, and it might be helpful not to tramp on anyone’s boots.”
“It’s hundreds and hundreds of kays from any access to oceans or major rivers,” pointed out Ayrlyn.
“We’re not exactly into seafaring,” Nylan said dryly.
“Fine,” said the captain. “We land on this mountain plateau. We get a defensible position-maybe. We get snow and ice over our head in the winter, a short growing season, and probably not much access to building materials.”
“We also have more time to establish ourselves before the local authorities, or what passes for such, show up,” answered Nylan.
“It’s insane to try and put a lander into a mountain pasture. It could be just a high-altitude swamp,” protested Saryn.
“The odds are against that, and there are two areas where we could land. Each is twice as long as a lander’s set-down distance.”
“Twice as long in the middle of mountains that could rip a lander into little shreds.”
Nylan shrugged. “How long will anyone last if we set down on those hot and flat plains?”
“We don’t even know if they have local authorities, or if the locals are intelligent, or if they even look remotely like us,” protested Saryn. “This is insane.”
“I think you just validated the engineer’s suggestion,” said Ryba. “There’s too much we don’t know, and we don’t have the energy to shuttle things off the ship. Besides …” She left the sentence unfinished, but Nylan knew the unspoken words. Except for removable power supplies, weapons, and tools, the Winterlance would shortly be unusable in any case.
“Trying to hit mountain landing areas? That’s crazy.”
“You’re right,” Nylan agreed. “Except that trying to land anywhere else would be even riskier. The landing is high risk, but it makes survival lower risk. Take your choice.”
“We’re opting for long-term survival,” announced the captain. “I’m not interested in merely prolonging existence enough to die of heat exhaustion on a nice flat plain where landing is easy. I’ll begin computing the entry paths,” the captain announced. “Nylan, would you do a survey of your equipment to see if there’s anything else that could be useful planetside?”
The engineer nodded as the captain assigned the responsibilities for cannibalizing the Winterlance.
IV
“HAVE YOU DETERMINED the cause of the great perturbation between order and chaos-the one that shook the world last evening?” asks the white-haired man dressed in the more traditional flowing white robes.
The younger, but balding, man straightens and looks up from the circular glass in the middle of the white oak table. “Ser?”
“I asked, Hissl, about the great perturbation. Jissek still lies in a stupor, and my glass shows that waves flooded the Great North Bay.”
“Waves always flood the Great North Bay, honored Terek.” Hissl inclines his head to the older magician, and the summer light that reflects off the roof of the keep of Lornth and through the window glistens on his bald pate. “I do believe that order fought chaos in the skies, and that times will be changing.”
“A safe prediction,” snorts Terek. “The times always change. Tell me something useful.”