Mark stopped just out of arm's reach of Jesilind. He put his hands on his hips, unconsciously mimicking the stance Yerby used to face down opposition. He continued, "If you shoot, well, I don't give long odds that I'll survive. But I've got a lot better chance than you do."
Jesilind swallowed. His face was blotchy white except for the scratches. He sidled against the far railing and put the pistol in his pocket. Mark stepped onto the deck, walked to Jesilind, and took the weapon from the pocket. Jesilind didn't resist.
Amy opened the cabin door. "Stay clear, Amy!" Mark warned.
Instead of speaking, Amy went to the junction box on the outer bulkhead. She began to reconnect the power and control conduits, which Jesilind had unscrewed.
"This is all a mistake," Jesilind said. His voice quavered. He was sweating furiously.
"Yes, I rather think it was," Mark said. His whole body trembled with reaction. More hormones were racing in his bloodstream than even after the fight in the caravansary.
He cleared his throat. "Doctor," he said, "you'll take my flyer to Wanker's Doodle and board whichever ship there is going to take off soonest."
Mark looked up at the sky. "I doubt you'll be able to make it tonight," he continued, "but I strongly advise you to get as far as you can. I'll have your goods shipped after you if you're willing to leave a destination. I doubt Yerby will come searching for you when you've left Greenwood, but that's a decision you're going to have to make for yourself."
Amy walked to Mark's side. She stepped very carefully around the edge of the deck so that she wouldn't come between the two men.
"That gun doesn't really work," Jesilind said. He tried to wipe his face with a handkerchief. He dropped the square of cloth but didn't notice it. He mopped his forehead with his bare hand.
"Doesn't it?" Mark said. He looked at the weapon, wondering if Jesilind had threatened Amy with it also. "Well, that doesn't matter."
He turned and hurled the pistol as hard as he could into the waterfall's spray. It clinked on the rocks somewhere beyond.
"I fear that you've both misunderstood me," Jesilind said, desperately trying to smile.
"Well, that's a pity, Doctor," Mark said as he stepped forward. "But I really wouldn't want you to misunderstand me."
He punched Jesilind in the pit of the stomach. Jesilind doubled up. He must not have had anything to eat that day, because all that sprayed from his mouth was a little bile.
"Amy," whispered Mark. He sagged against the railing. "Would you mind dragging this fellow onto the ground so that we can get out of here? I don't feel strong enough just now."
Mark sat in a corner of the cabin shivering while Amy flew the dirigible through the darkening sky. They must be getting near the Bannock compound. Mark didn't look out the cabin windows to be sure.
"What happened an hour ago," he said wonderingly. "It's as if somebody else did it."
"You did it, Mark," Amy said. "I don't think… I never thought I'd meet anybody who could do what I watched you do."
"Yerby would," Mark said. "He wouldn't have stopped where I did, either."
"Being willing to stop is as important as being brave enough to start," Amy said. She kept her eyes resolutely on the terrain ahead.
"Wonder what my dad would think to see me brawling that way?" Mark said with a sneer for his own behavior. "I guess the only thing I've learned since I left Quelhagen is what your brother taught me: Never hit a man in the jaw with your bare hand."
He shook his head and added bitterly, "Of course, Yerby'd be ashamed of me for hitting him with my bare hand at all."
"Yerby wouldn't be ashamed of you, Mark," Amy said softly. Pumps whined, compressing hydrogen in the ballonets so that the dirigible would sink. They must be just about to land. "And I've met your father. I don't think that he'd be ashamed of you either."
Mark managed to stand. He felt better than he thought he would; just weak, really. The dirigible was descending into the Bannock compound. The lights in all the buildings were on. People were coming outside to wave and cheer.
Amy looked over from the controls. "Mark," she said, "not everything my brother has to teach you is wrong. It's just that sometimes he doesn't use the best judgment about where to display what he knows."
They landed lightly. A dozen of the folk in the courtyard grabbed dangling lines and held the dirigible down against any chance gust that might hit before the pumps had squeezed most of the lift back into the high-pressure tanks between the ballonets.
Mark reached for the door latch. Before he touched it, Yerby burst into the cabin bellowing, "In the name of all that's holy, girl, where have you been?"
The frontiersman paused, looked around him, and added, "And where in thunder is Doc Jesilind?"
"The doctor was called off-planet abruptly. He said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Yerby," Amy said in a clear voice. "We'd gotten confused on direction, but Mark very kindly guided me home."
"Direction?" Yerby said, his brows knitting as he tried to understand.
Amy put one arm through Mark's and led him out of the cabin, clearing a path with an imperious wave of her free hand. "Because we got lost," she said, "I didn't get to see the Bottomless Pool after all. Since human guides are so unreliable, I think the best choice is for Mark to navigate me there using the map in his holoviewer."
Amy looked at Mark. "If he's willing," she added.
Mark blushed and cleared his throat. "I'm willing," he said in a squeak.
21. Company Coming
Nothing unusual had happened in the month since Mark enabled the full range of the landing system at the Spiker, so he'd pretty well forgotten about it. Now when the alarm he'd rigged in the Bannock compound rang loudly, it took him a moment to recall what it meant. He dropped the extrusion nozzle he'd been cleaning in a shed and ran for the main house.
The commo room was on one end of the ground floor, across the central hall from the parlor. The kitchen, the large dining room, and an office/workroom completed the floor plan. The second story was broken into spartan bedrooms for guests-Mark had one of them, while the top was for the Bannocks themselves. During the time Mark had been on Greenwood, Yerby had slept in the guest room beside Mark's rather than on the third floor with Desiree.
Yerby had been asleep when the alarm rang. He crashed into the commo room just behind Mark, still wearing the clothes Mark had seen him in the night before.
"There's an anomaly in the data the ship's captain radioed down," Mark explained. "He says they're the three-hundred-ton Judy from Hestia, but the ship's own core memory says they're the Aten, a twenty-eight-hundred-ton liner in the Zenith-Earth trade."
Amy and three of the men who worked for the Bannocks arrived in the hallway outside the commo room. Tomse, the cook, wiped his floury hands on his apron.
Desiree managed the plastics plant, but she must have been up at the compound when the alarm sounded, because she appeared only a heartbeat later. She gestured the employees out of the way so that she could stand stone-faced beside Amy in the doorway.
"If they bothered to fake their landing announcement," Mark continued, "then this is the invasion we've been expecting. You've got to call out the militia at once. A ship that big could hold five hundred troops!"
"Now, don't have kittens, lad," Yerby said. He sat at the console, brushing Mark aside without noticing the contact. His big hands rested on the keyboard. "You've took over the whole system here, that's right? They can't land by themselves so long as this-" He rapped the terminal feeding through the compound's radio. "-is hooked to the box at the Spiker?"
"That's right," said Mark. He hadn't thought Yerby was following the description of the changes Mark had made in the automatic landing system. Yerby's "simple frontiersman" act covered a mind just as surprising as his physical strength. "They'll wait awhile for a control signal, because there might be another ship on the magnetic mass. But before long, they'll just decide to land at Wanker's Doodle."