Dumbfounded, Cardenas asked, “How on Earth did she swing that?”
When her question reached him, Greg actually laughed. “Simplest thing in the world. She just threatened to reveal to the media that he’s running a nanotherapy clinic for wealthy foreigners right on the university campus.”
“Blackmail!”
“Black and green,” Greg replied after the lag. “She’s also making a hefty donation to his department at the university.”
Cardenas said, “She hasn’t offered me anything.”
When Greg heard her words, he replied, “Come on up here, Kris. Bring your husband if you want. Even if it’s just to hold her hand, she needs you. She’s not as strong as she’d like everyone to believe, you know.”
Who the hell is? Cardenas asked herself. To Greg’s image in the phone screen she said, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Doug swam in and out of consciousness. He seemed to be floating, but that couldn’t be. He dreamed he was drifting in the ocean, bobbing up and down on the long gentle swells of the open sea. Yet somehow he was stretched out on the desert sand, broiling in the sun, every pore sweating and Brennart lay beside him saying, “Like the man says, working out on the frontier is nothing more than inventing new ways to get killed.”
When he opened his eyes Bianca Rhee was always hovering over him, gazing down at him with an expression that mixed tenderness with desperate fear.
Is this real or am I dreaming? Doug asked himself.
“We’re on our way back to Moonbase,” Rhee said to him at one point. “They’re bringing specialists up from Earth to take care of you.”
Embalmers, thought Doug. Undertakers. Bury me on the Moon, he wanted to say. And don’t forget Brennart’s statue.
“The Yamagata team?” he heard himself croak.
“Killifer went out to get them,” Rhee replied gently, soothingly. “Moonbase agreed with you, rescuing them blocks any claim they might have tried to make.”
“They’re okay?”
“We don’t know yet Killifer hasn’t reached them, yet”
“I get all the shit jobs,” Killifer grumbled.
Deems, wedged into the cramped cockpit beside him, shrugged resignedly. “Well, you’re not alone, are you.”
They were piloting one of the Jobbers over Mt Wasseir, searching for the crashed Yamagata ship. Killifer had been ordered to do so directly by Jinny Anson, Moonbase’s director.
Two big lobbers had arrived at their south polar camp from Moonbase, filled with oxygen and other supplies, but without a single human being aboard. Killifer had to guide their landings remotely and use the expedition’s remaining personnel to unload them. Instructions — orders, really — from Anson back at Moonbase crackled along the satellite ; relay system: Get Doug Stavenger back to Moonbase immedi ately. Then go find the wrecked Yamagata lander and save its crew.
Killifer had loaded the Stavenger kid onto one of the lobbers. The astronomer, Rhee, volunteered to go with him. Volunteered hell, Killifer thought Nobody could tear the little gook from the kid’s side.
The expedition was a mess, but from what Anson told him, the corporation would have a valid claim to the area as soon as Stavenger’s vidcam pictures were verified. As he monitored the Jobber’s automated takeoff for its return flight to Moonbase, Killifer almost hoped that the radiation had ruined the vidcam and the disk would be a blank.
What the hell, he told himself. It rankled him, though, that even if he died young Stavenger would be a fucking hero. Especially if he died.
“I’m getting a transponder signal,” Deems said.
The summit of Mt Wasser was below them. Glancing down through the cockpit’s transparent bubble, Killifer could glimpse the telescope and other gear that Brennart and Stavenger had left on the mountaintop.
“Show me,” he said to Deems.
With the tap of a gloved finger, Deems brought up the transponder signal on the cockpit’s starscope display of the deeply shadowed ground below them. The screen showed not much more than a blur, with a red dot winking at them.
“Let’s take it down to five hundred and hover,” Killifer said.
“That’ll burn up a lot of propellant.” Deems’ face was covered by his helmet visor, but his voice sounded scared.
“We gotta see the ground before we set down on it,” Killifer said. “Friggin’ starscope sure isn’t showing much. Switch to infrared.”
“It’s too cold down there in the dark,” said Deems. “Must be two hundred below, at least.”
“Switch to infrared,” Killifer repeated, louder.
Silently Deems touched the keypad and the cockpit’s main screen showed a false-color image of the ground below: mostly deep black.
“That must be ice,” Killifer said.
“Yeah, it’s absorbing the infrared.”
“And the transponder signal’s right in the middle of it”
“They must’ve landed on the ice,” said Deems.
Killifer nodded inside his helmet. “Landing jets melted the ice under them and they splashed in. Dumb bastards.”
“Good thing the ice isn’t too deep.”
“Nah, it must’ve refrozen as soon as they turned off then-rocket engines.”
“Then they must be stuck in it”
“Yeah,” Killifer said disgustedly. “And we better make sure we don’t get caught in the same stupid trap.”
Killifer was not primarily a pilot, although over the years at Moonbase he had trained in both lobbers and hoppers and flown them many times. But setting down in pitch darkness in totally unfamiliar territory — no wonder the Japs crashed, he said to himself.
Hovering above the ice field while Deems worriedly stared at their fuel gauge, Killifer jinked the lumbering spacecraft sideways, searching for solid ground to land on.
“Ice field’s a lot bigger on this side of the mountain,” he muttered.
“But they wont be able to claim it once we rescue them, huh?”
“That’s the theory.” The only ground the infrared display showed looked too rough for a landing, strewn with boulders; the size of houses.
The radio speaker crackled. “Anson to Killifer. Yamagata just launched a lobber from Nippon One on a trajectory for the polar region. Must be their rescue party. Where are you?”
“Looking for a place to land without breaking our asses,” Killifer replied.
“It’s important that you get to the Yamagata team before their rescue party does,” said Anson.
“Yeah, I know. But there doesn’t look like much room to put down safely. That’s why the Japs crashed in the first place.”
“There must be someplace!”
“When I find it I’ll let you know.” Killifer punched the radio off. Turning to Deems, he added, “If we can find a landing spot before we run out of fuel.”
Deems said, “How about right on the edge of the ice?”
“We’ll melt it, just like they did.”
“Okay, but it can’t be real deep there. Must be solid ground underneath.” Before Killifer could object he added, “And if there’s boulders big enough to give us trouble, they’d probably be poking up above the surface of the ice.”
“Probably,” Killifer muttered.
“I don’t see any other way,” said Deems. “Do you?”
Killifer stared at the polished visor of Deems’ helmet. He could only make out the vaguest outline of the face inside. For a scared rabbit, Killifer though, he’s getting pretty gutsy.
“Otherwise we’re just going to run out of propellant jerking around, looking for a flat spot that isn’t here.”
Unaccustomed to bold ideas from Deems, Killifer grunted and mumbled, “Maybe you’re right.”
MOONBASE
It was unusual for a Clippership to land at Moonbase. Usually (the big commercial spaceliners went only as far as the space stations that hugged Earth in low orbits.
Greg watched the main display screen at the spaceport flight control center as the big, cone-shaped Maxwell Hunter settled slowly, silently on its rocket exhaust. More than a dozen others had crowded into the flight control center, too. Like a cruise liner landing in some out-of-the-way port, Greg thought. The natives go down to the dock to watch.