The hot sun and the crescendo of insects stirred up by it began to make things uncomfortable, though, and very soon Spotty stirred and then opened her eyes. She looked around, then sat up, frowning.
“Good morning,” he said softly. “Or, rather, more like midday.”
She stared at him in seeming confusion, then managed, “I—I… Do you know me?”
“Of course I do,” he responded, a little confused himself. “Don’t you remember? I’m Littlefeet.”
“Little—No, I, um, I don’t know what I mean. I mean, I can’t seem to remember anything.”
He realized that she wasn’t playing with him. “You really don’t remember who you are?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s like I just, well, woke up. I know your words, I understand you and can speak, but I don’t know anything else. It is a little scary.”
He’d never seen anything like this, but the old tall tales and legends had had stories about this sort of thing. He’d never believed them, but apparently it was possible to lose your memory. Not a little, but mostly. In the stories, people always lost their memories after having something awful done to them, so maybe that was true, too. Even if he’d thought it could really happen to somebody, though, he would never have bet on Spotty. Not tough, caring Spotty.
Froggy sighed, turned over a bit, then opened her eyes. She was short and chubby with big breasts, in dramatic contrast with the taller, thinner Spotty. “Oh, my!” she sighed. “I had such awful dreams!”
“They weren’t dreams,” he told her softly. “Um—do you remember who you are?”
“Urn, yeah, sure. You’re Feet and I’m Froggy and this is Spotty. What are you doing here, anyway? And where’s everybody else?”
“Then you don’t remember,” he replied. Just more than Spotty does.
It turned out that she didn’t, not really. She remembered a lot, but the previous night’s horrors had been totally blotted out, not erased but relegated to confused if frightening nightmares. She found it hard to believe that anything was missing, but was even more astonished to find Spotty completely blank.
“You two went through a lot last night,” he told them. “I think it’ll come back to you, at least some of it, after a while. Some of it, I think, you’d both be better off not getting back.”
“So what do we do now?” Froggy asked him. He’d never taken a lot of notice of her before, but for all the shock and horror of the previous night she seemed in better shape than Spotty.
“Let’s all find something to eat,” he suggested. “It’s not hard over here. Then we’ll work our way up north and see what’s left of the camp. Spotty, you’ll just have to stick with us and trust us until your memory comes back. Okay?”
“I guess,” she replied. “I don’t have anything else I can do, and from what you say, it’s real scary out there.”
He found some melons that made a good breakfast, and then they worked their way back to the river. Mercifully, he saw no bodies around, either floating or against the banks. The current had been swift enough to carry them at least out of sight downriver.
An hour or two’s walk north brought them directly across from the Family camp. It was all trampled and clear to be seen from their vantage point, which meant it was no more good as a camp anyway. There were some bodies visible over there, but it was impossible at this distance to tell who they were, or even if they were friend or foe. Probably a mixture of both. Hordes of insects were already going to work on the remains.
Far off he could hear the sound of one of the demon machines, but he couldn’t see it. No others were in evidence.
Littlefeet sighed. “Well, I don’t think everybody got killed, ’cause if they had there’d be a lot more bodies over there. Still and all, they’ve scattered all over to be safe and preserve the Family, and I don’t hear any wailing babies or anything like that, so they’re some distance off. The scouts’ll try and round ’em up, but where that’ll be it’s hard to say. Won’t be here, and I don’t think they’ll try this camp again, not this close.”
Spotty didn’t really follow some of this, but Froggy was upset. “You mean we’re cut off?”
He nodded. “Seems like. It’s the three of us on this side and all the other survivors on that side. Well, at least that tells me what we gotta do.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well, if we came up north to the demon flowers and couldn’t find a crossing, then they’ll come back to the river and head south, figuring maybe that somewhere down there might be enough built-up mud and crud to manage a swamp crossing. That’s my guess as to how they’ll think. So we move south. If we find ’em, maybe we can help get ’em across.”
“What if we can’t find ’em?” Froggy asked him. He sighed. “Then I guess we’re on our own.”
FOURTEEN
Priam's Lens
There were spacesuits for everyone aboard, although even Colonel N’Gana’s suit did not have the capabilities of Harker’s experimental model. N’Gana knew it, as did the silent but always attentive Mogutu, but the only thing the colonel could say was, “Look, Mister Harker—no matter what else, let us get one thing straight. I am in charge. I am the commanding officer of this expedition. Although you are a military officer, you are not in a formal military unit and you were not planned for on this one, so Sergeant Mogutu also outranks you. Understand?”
“It’s your party, Colonel,” Harker responded. “Right now I’m just along for the ride.”
The corvette could not risk actually landing on Hector; the thrusting maneuvers would have invited attention from the planet below. Instead, it braked and matched motion with the moon, then glided with minimal energy expenditure to where they wanted to go.
Hector was not large, but it was still almost six hundred kilometers in length, big enough to make an impression, albeit a small one, on the surface of the planet. In fact it usually looked like a small star-sized or planet-sized beacon, blinking in odd patterns because of its wobbly rotation and irregular shape.
Matched now with specific features on the surface, the interior of the corvette depressurized and everyone checked out in their suits. One by one they went out the hatch and, using primarily compressed air, floated to the surface below. The compressed air system was good enough for this purpose, and did not contribute to any energy signatures that could be picked up below. As soon as the last one was down, the corvette slowly moved off and out of sight, keeping its profile behind the tiny moon for the same reason.
The surface was about what Harker had expected. Dark igneous rock for the most part, pockmarked with tiny impact craters. The surface, for all that, seemed almost fluid, the rock bending and twisting, creating a rough and wholly irregular landscape.
Low-level automatic signals kept them pretty well tethered to the leader as if by a long strand of flexible rope. There was very little gravity to keep them on the surface, but the suits were able to compensate. They all learned pretty early, though, to keep their eyes on the ones in front of them and on the surface itself. While you couldn’t feel any movement, the sky when turned away from Helena was in a slow but noticeable motion that could be very disconcerting. N’Gana, Mogutu, and Harker, all old spacehands, had little trouble with it, but it was causing problems for some of the others.
“Put your suits on automatic,” N’Gana suggested. “They won’t let you fall. It won’t be much longer now.”
They walked to some low knobs that formed a very shallow valley and then into the valley. At the far end there was a darkened area that seemed different, although it took even Harker a few moments to figure out why.