Yerby chuckled. He changed screens and began to type information into the keyboard. He used two fingers, but he didn't need to hunt for the keys he hammered.
"They'll get their control signal, never fear," Yerby said as he worked. "For most nearly a year me and our daddy-"
He flicked a smile toward Amy. "D'ye remember that, girl? Or was you too young?"
"I remember," Amy said. She was tense with concern.
"Anyhow, we brought ships down on Kilbourn when the module packed up and we couldn't get a replacement in. Guess I haven't forgotten how to do it."
"Yerby," Amy said. Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. "If you crash the ship, you'll kill hundreds of people. Many hundreds. Even though they're enemies-"
"Now, hold your tater!" Yerby snapped. "First thing, I don't guess a bunch of softies from Zenith are going to pack themselves near as tight as Mark says. Besides, they're going to have a lot of big equipment-aircars and such. That's right, ain't it, lad?"
He rotated his head to look at Mark. "I guess so," Mark said.
They are enemies. Maybe the only way to deal with them is to smash the Aten on hard rocks that can't hold enough of a magnetic field to slow the ship for a landing. But-
Mark's mind couldn't imagine a future in which he let something so horrible happen. And he couldn't imagine how he could prevent it from happening.
"Yerby, you can't kill all those people!" Amy cried.
Desiree looked from Amy to her husband. Her face had no more expression than a billet of wood, but Mark knew by now not to confuse stolidity with stupidity. Yerby's wife was anything but stupid.
"Now, who said a single flaming word about killing?" Yerby said loudly. He slapped the Execute key to transmit the landing codes he'd just entered.
He stood and faced the others. "I don't guess I'm risking anybody's life. Leastways, nobody's life more than I am my own, because I'll be going to fetch them myself. They'll have a soft landing, I guarantee."
Yerby smirked at his audience. He was enormously pleased with himself.
"Yerby, what have you done?" Amy asked.
"I brought them down on the big island in The Goo," Yerby said. "The wet ground'll build enough field that they won't smash to bits, but I don't guess they'll be invading any time soon."
Thomse chuckled; even Desiree's face seemed to soften somewhat. Mark and Amy looked blankly at one another.
"The Goo's a swamp just in from the coast," Yerby explained cheerfully. "It's a bowl twenty miles across and it drains out through cracks in the rock, not by a proper river. I reckon they'll have time enough to get out of the ship, the folks will. The cargo hatches are going to be under a couple yards of muck as soon as they hit, though."
He stretched and grinned. "By the time I show up, I don't guess there'll be much to see of the ship but another hummock in the swamp. Even the island's not as solid as all that, you know."
"I see," Mark said. Yerby's beaming face had just melted away the field of smashed bodies he'd been imagining.
Amy switched the radio to normal operation instead of data link to the landing system. "This is Woodsrunners command to all Woodsrunners," she said into the microphone. "Pass this message on."
"Tell 'em to gather at the north end of The Goo," Yerby ordered in a stage whisper. "That's where I'll take our visitors out."
Amy nodded. Mark and Yerby stepped into the hallway, where they could speak without interfering with Amy. She was switching bands after each set of radioed instructions.
"Are you planning to fly in alone?" Mark asked.
"I'm going to walk in," the frontiersman said. "I figure our visitors are going to keep their personal guns, most of them. I don't want them to capture a flyer. There's enough Zenith settlers on Greenwood that somebody'd likely mount a rescue try if he heard about it. Nobody's going to walk out of The Goo, though, without I lead him and he's real polite."
"I didn't know there was any way into The Goo, Yerby," said Tindouf, a hired logger whose cracked ribs had kept him hanging around the compound for the past few days. "Except you fly."
"There's a way," Yerby insisted. "But nothing some Zenith is likely to find by himself. I'll bring 'em all out and it won't cost them a centime they haven't paid already."
He frowned regretfully and said, "I'd sure like the aircars and other fancy stuff they brought, but I'm not going to try and dig down through a swamp neither. Guess we'll get some guns out of the business, though."
Mark started to speak, then closed his mouth in embarrassment at what he'd been about to ask. Yerby grinned at him and said, "Say kid? How'd you like to come along with me? It'll be muddy, mind."
Amy paused, half turned, then hunched closer to the microphone. She continued to reel off instructions to the militia.
"If you'll have me," Mark said, "I'd be honored."
He'd been afraid of putting himself forward into a situation where he clearly didn't belong; a form of boasting, and therefore unworthy of a gentleman.
"Yeah, I would," Yerby said. He scowled with embarrassment and continued, "Now, don't take this wrong, lad… but I want to make sure the path's safe for somebody who hasn't, you know, spent as many years outdoors as I have. OK?"
Mark grinned. "I'm your guinea pig," he said. "Let's get started!"
22. Greenwood Justice
The mud was gray, sulphurous and stuck like glue. Mostly it was covered by vegetation. Shrubs on firm ground grew as much as ten feet in the air and spread their leaves widely, and dazzling little splotches lifted themselves six inches from the nearly liquid surface.
Every once in a while, a tall stem that cantilevered itself out from a hummock decoyed Mark into placing a foot a little beyond where Yerby'd stepped. As a result, Mark had as good a view of the mud as anybody could wish: it coated his coveralls to the throat. That was a much closer acquaintance than Mark desired, certainly.
Yerby prodded the surface ahead of him with a long piece of tubing. Mark had tried to carry a similar staff, but he'd quickly decided that he was better off with his hands free to clutch shrubs or his companion in the frequent crises. "How you doing, lad?" the frontiersman asked over his shoulder.
"I'm all right," Mark lied. He didn't think he'd ever been as exhausted in his life. The mud was warm as well as being sticky. Trying not to gasp, he added, "I guess this basin must be volcanic."
"Yeah, I reckon," Yerby agreed as he hopped nonchalantly to what Mark would have guessed was a sinkhole. The footing easily held the big man's weight. "It's the prettiest thing you ever saw in winter if the mist blows away, all green and cheerful in the middle of the snow."
Mark jumped. His muddy legs weighed him down. Yerby grabbed Mark's hand and snatched him from disaster. The ground felt like rock beneath a slime of mud.
"Don't worry, lad," Yerby said. "We're just about there. If them Zeniths do half so good as you, we'll get them clear no problem."
Mark took another step by rote. He was too tired to do anything except previous actions. Yerby caught him and steered him to the right, through a copse of virid shrubs. To Mark the ground looked exactly the same.
"Right there," Yerby explained with a nod, "there's a pit that don't stop till you're on the other side of the planet."
He walked Mark through a screen of diaphanous tendrils. About a hundred frightened-looking men and women milled or squatted fifty feet away. The Aten's splashdown had disturbed the expanse of mud between them and Mark. Alternate bands of tumbled plants and glutinous mud marked the arcs of compression.
The starship was a low gray dome behind the Zeniths. Yerby'd been right when he guessed that the ship would have sunk almost out of sight by the time he reached it.