Kanti spread her hands. “It’ll be killed here, and if it tries to go back to GCH it will be killed there as well. It might join some metaflock military, but at a much lower position than what the Fay D-flat Seege offered it. It’s taking a terrible risk.”
It needs a flock, Greg thought. Well, in theory, the human station belonged to one. “Maybe Fay Seeffay would take it, since we’re supposed to be part of that metaflock, now.”
“No, Bach needs more than to be the lone subordinate of an alien subordinate. It’s a proud Uther now, a flock of one—I had to offer it a bribe that would not be an insult.”
An expensive bribe in terms of resource allocation. Greg pondered what would be required for life support of the alien for the thirty-year voyage, even with most of it in suspended animation. Did we even know how to do suspended animation of an Uther? He didn’t know. His mind spun.
Then they were under the ship. Beneath the pagoda tree leaf umbrella disguise, it was the typical Uther blunt wedge design, but Greg had never seen one from this perspective before. Set up in its base were ten rocket engines mounted 2-3-3-2 on a triangular grate with slanted truss rods taking the thrust loads to a central pivot point, which, from the plumbing, appeared to pass fuel as well as loads.
Five huge propellant tanks loomed above this, four hydrogen peroxide and one of light oil. The life support area would be in the nose, of course, twenty meters or so up. Standard Uther designs had a hatch up there on the outside that swung down to form a landing balcony. But the sides of the ship were clean of anything to climb, and too flimsy anyway—made of thin, horny refractory material that was only slightly stronger than cloth. When fueled, they relied on internal pressure for rigidity.
“OK,” Greg asked. “How do we get in?”
Kanti sang triads, the Uther sang back.
She translated. “Spacecraft humans try to steal without knowing how?”
“Providence!” This was not going to be easy, Greg realized, not in a long shot. The Uther had all the options—and if they failed, it could always shoot them and claim to have just captured them.
He thought furiously, conscious of the lightening day and increasing danger around him. The Uther ships had airlocks somewhere—but that flight balcony did not have an airlock door. It led directly to the main cabin. He tried to remember. Had he seen Uthers emerge from the base of their spacecraft in orbit?
He studied the tangle of pipes, cylinders, and cables above. There was nothing resembling a ladder, but various pipes and struts were in reach.
“I think they have an airlock leading to the propulsion section.” He pointed up. “Ask him.”
Kanti sang a few notes and Bach looked up the central shaft for a moment, then replied, softly.
“It said ‘a door, up there, is but—up there, Uthers, cannot fly to. Up there, this human, climb?’ ”
Greg shook his head. “Up there, this human will try to climb. Kanti, I’ll need to stand on your back to get a handhold. Can you handle that?”
“I’ll try. Where?”
The bell-shaped engine expansion nozzles had a ridge around their lower rims. He might be able to grab that and pull himself up. “Let’s try here,” he said, indicating a spot below an engine nozzle.
Kanti knelt down on all fours and Greg put his hands on her shoulders, then, as gently as he could, stepped up on her back. He straightened up slowly, fighting for balance. The rim of the bell was just beyond the reach of his fingers.
“I’m going to have to jump for it.”
“OK,” she gasped.
He jumped, grabbed the bell, and held on for a moment. Then there was a loud crack, like a gunshot, and the engine nozzle tore off, dumping him on top of Kanti and tumbling them both into the broadleaf.
Bach warbled and pointed his gun at them.
Kanti picked herself up and sang some plaintive notes back at it.
“We’d better do something fast.”
“Yeah. Look for another rocket.”
“Are we going to try to sabotage all thousand of them this way? I don’t think my back will take it.”
“Maybe you can climb up and open the lock?”
The teenager shook her head. “I wouldn’t have any idea of what I was pushing, or climbing on. It’s almost light.”
Greg thought furiously. “Maybe Bach could find one with its balcony-hatch open.”
Kanti shook her head. “It wouldn’t be able to get us in if it did. And it won’t leave us alone.”
Greg shot a glance at the Uther and its gun. “We’ll just have to try another rocket. Maybe we can find some rope or vines and hook them on something more solid.” He looked around, and saw nothing but roundleaves.
“Greg, look!” Kanti pointed back the way they’d come.
Greg didn’t see anything. “What?”
“The snail, it’s gone under a rocket. You could climb on that!”
The shell was almost two meters high at the top of its dome, less than half a meter under the exhaust nozzles. In an instant of clarity, he understood why the nozzles were so far off the ground.
“Tell Bach and let’s go.”
Kanti sang a translation and started off at a run. Greg followed. The Uther passed over him, gliding toward the peripheral spacecraft. The horizon was light blue now, and only a couple of planets were visible. Various diurnal life forms were starting to stake out their territories with various noises.
Slow as it was, the snail had almost passed under the edge of the rocket by the time Greg reached it. Without hesitating he took three huge squishy strides right at the thing and tried to run up the shell, grabbing for the parasitical vegetation that covered it.
His hands slipped—then found one of the eye holes they’d punched through the shell earlier. Using that purchase, he reached one of the swing-anchor holes. Holding on there, he was able to swing his foot up to the eye hole. With that anchor point he was able to grab a thick layer of “moss” on the upper flatter part of the dome. From there, he belly-crawled to the top of the dome.
It had almost passed under the side of the rocket. Then it stopped. Greg looked down—Kanti held her bare arm flat on the path of flattened roundleaf—and the snail started to crawl back over it. She pulled it back and it flowed a little closer.
Greg turned his attention upward. In a minute, he was able to stand up between the hull of the rocket and the outboard engine. The engine gimbal arrangement became clear—the entire engine platform could pivot in one direction, and the pivot axis itself could tilt in the other. It looked as if the arrangement could allow maybe 15 degrees of gimballing in all directions.
There were no gimbal motors that he could see, but there were what looked like tension cables running just inside the hull. Those should be strong enough to support his weight. He grabbed hold of one of them and pulled. It was bowstring taut and held his weight easily. He grabbed higher up with his other hand and squeezed himself slowly upward, pulling hand over hand on the cable, shuddering as various projections on his suit rubbed the pressure-taut tanks and created an ominous bass groan. There was a smell of clean Eponan fiber to the air here, with just a hint of oil vapor. He worried about sparks far too late to do anything about it.
Finally Greg emerged, carefully, into a crawl space below the pressure cabin. It was meant for zero gravity use—no solid handholds. But he could see what looked like a hatch cover near the center of the cabin s rounded bottom. Maybe, he told himself, just maybe this was going to work.
He rested his sore arms as he studied the arrangement. The control cables ended on levers attached to rods that projected from the cabin floor surrounded by what looked like the concentric circles of a constant volume joint. No electronics, no optics, and no sliding bearings through the sealed cabin floor—the levers could be worked from inside by flexing the floor at the point where the control rods penetrated.