“Does everyone hear me all right?” she said, on the general frequency, and heard the answers in her earphones as well as in the air around her. “Then we’re ready when you are, Jock.”
“I am getting clearance from the tower now,” Nkosi answered. There was a moment’s pause. “And we are cleared. All secure in the bay?”
Heikki glanced around one final time, making sure that all the seals were complete, that no telltale flash of red or emergency orange betrayed an incomplete connection, then looked at Djuro and Alexieva. Both nodded, and she said, “All secure in the bay, Jock. She’s all yours.”
“Then we are off,” Nkosi said lightly, and a second later the first of the engines coughed to life. The jumper was well-screened against the outside noises; even so, by the time the sixth engine wound up to speed, Heikki had to swallow hard, and was grateful even for the minimal protection of her light earpieces. In an hour or two, she knew, the noise would fade into the background of her consciousness, but until then, it was an annoyance to be endured. The jumper lurched forward, then turned slow and reluctant, trundling toward its assigned runway. Heikki adjusted her frequency control until she had the tower, and listened idly while Nkosi ran through the final checkout procedure.
“Goodbye and good luck,” the tower said at last, sounding almost indecently cheerful, and its last words were swallowed in the sudden roar as Nkosi opened the throttles. The jumper started forward, swaying on its heavy wheels, jouncing along the metalled runway for what always seemed a dangerously long time. Even though she knew from years of experience just how long it took one of these craft to become airborne, Heikki found her hands growing white-knuckled on the arms of her seat.
Then, reluctantly, the jumper lumbered into the air. Nkosi’s voice sounded in the headpiece, “Everything looks green from here. We are starting our flight plan now.”
“Good luck,” Control said again, and the headpiece hissed with empty static.
Heikki winced, and adjusted her controls. The jumper still had a distinct angle—Nkosi had not yet brought it to their cruising altitude—but she switched on her console anyway. “I’m going to start calibrating now, Sten, Alexieva—do people call you anything for short?”
Even across the dim compartment, Heikki could see the one-shoulder shrug. “Not really.”
“All right.” Heikki looked down at her board. “I’m lighting the tank.”
“Sensor input ready,” Djuro answered.
“Then let’s go.” Heikki touched keys and the floor of the jumper seemed to disappear in front of her, to be replaced by a fuzzy, tilted image of the land over which they were passing. She frowned in concentration, touching buttons, and slowly the picture became clearer, until she could make out individual trees and the occasional building. “How does this match your maps?” she said, to Alexieva.
The dark woman bent over her console, her expression unreadable. “It matches my map 5b,” she said, and an instant later bright red grid lines popped into being, hovering over the apparent countryside. “Which is as it should be. Of course, you won’t get such a precise fit once we get into the ‘wayback.”
I know that, Heikki thought, and barely kept herself from saying it aloud. “Enhancements, Sten?” she asked, instead.
“This is infrared,” Djuro answered promptly, and the image shifted, the buildings standing out in stark contrast to the land around them. “Metal concentrations, ionization, subsoil minerals—” He ran down a list of options, the image shifting with each new possibility. “Composite.”
Heikki blinked at the chaotic image, and said, “Everything looks good on my board.”
“Same here,” Djuro answered, and returned to the real light projection. After a moment, Alexieva echoed him.
“So now we wait,” Heikki said. This was the worst part of any job, the interminable travel—usually by slow-flying jumper—to get from the main base to the place where she could do the actual work. She curbed her impatience easily—both the impatience and her control of it were habits now—and leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out into the aisle. There was nothing to do but wait.
The ground crept by in the tank’s image, the clumps of thick-leafed small-jades that dominated the area around Lowlands gradually giving way to stands of giant jade and tree-tall reed grass. There were fewer farmsteads here, what few there were huddled along the lakes, bright as silver coins that dotted the landscape. Alexieva muttered to herself at the map console, identifying each one. The lakes were linked by a network of little rivers, barely visible from this height, but drawn on Alexieva’s maps like a filigree fan. Gradually, the lines of the fan drew together into three thicker lines, more clearly visible from the air: the Three Rivers that flowed from the Asilas, spilling around the enormous outcropping of Castle Knob. Centuries of wear, of the Asilas’s water rushing past, had done little more than chip the edges of the volcanic plug; rather than carving a hole through it, the river had split around it, forming three new channels. A light was flashing from the top of the knob, and Heikki could see a light on her own console flashing in perfect synchronicity. She was receiving the beacon at Weather Station Green perfectly. She touched keys, checking her own course plot, and was not surprised to see the numbers match precisely.
There was a stirring behind her, and Nkosi stepped off the ladder and into the instrument bay. “We are just passing Castle Knob Beacon,” he began, and then broke off, looking at the tank. “Ah, I see you have it. Good.”
“Who’s minding the store, Jock?” Djuro called.
“Jan, of course,” Nkosi answered, managing to sound regally surprised.
“I’m glad you trust him,” Djuro retorted.
“He has been flying us for the past hour,” Nkosi answered. “Do you have any complaints?”
“Not me,” Djuro answered, and bent his head over the controls. Nkosi nodded, and started for the toilet at the back of the compartment, walking straight through the image in the tank. It was a startling effect, as though he’d stepped through an empty space. Even Heikki, who’d seen the illusion more than once, caught her breath as he stepped into apparent nothingness, walking through and over the image of the beacon and the verdant hills as though they weren’t there. And of course they’re not, Heikki thought, not really, but she could not help holding her breath until he was safely on the other side. At the map console, Alexieva shook her head slowly, but said nothing.
Heikki cleared her throat as Nkosi emerged from the little compartment, made herself not watch as the pilot waded back through the image. “We’re coming up on our first marker,” she said, on the general frequency, and Alexieva nodded in hasty agreement.
“Yes, the falls, where the Asilas comes off the massif.”
Nkosi paused at Heikki’s console, staring over the woman’s shoulder at the shifting image. “We do not actually make a course change here, do we?”
Heikki shook her head. “No, this is just to calibrate my instruments and Alexieva’s maps. We follow the river another three hundred kilometers or so—” She touched keys again. “Three hundred seven point five, actually, and then turn onto the new heading. We’ll cross the latac’s verified course about an hour after that.”
Nkosi nodded, still watching the tank, and then turned away. “I will let Jan fly us for a while, then,” he said, over his shoulder, and disappeared into the bubble.
Heikki nodded back, and bent her attention to her console. So far, at least, Alexieva’s maps and the terrain below seemed to match with better than average precision. She checked the last set of numbers, then leaned back in her chair. “It looks good, Alexieva. Everything checks out perfectly.”