All around, large flakes of white drifted down.
It was snowing.
“Want to go back an’ tell ’em the news?” Nenda jerked his head toward the cone-house.
“I think you should make your call to the Have-It-All first. Let’s see what else we can learn.”
“Yeah. Graves will start cluckin’ an’ gibberin’ if we go inside, but there’s not a damn thing he can do.”
They began to walk side by side across the snow-covered ground. Hans guessed that it must have started at least an hour ago. A faint glow of dawn was touching the eastern horizon, and by its light the outline of the pinnace was visible ahead. An outline only, because already it stood covered with a thin layer of snow. Cone-houses, scattered all the way to the horizon, formed steep-sided pyramids of white.
Their suits kept the men warm, but Hans confirmed from his monitor the large and sudden drop in temperature. Snow was sticking to everything, which meant that the air and ground could not be much below freezing.
Make that, much below freezing yet. It was not over. The suit record showed a continuing decrease of a few degrees an hour.
They had reached the pinnace, and Nenda slid one door open. He cursed as blown snow and snow from the roof fell on him and on the pilot’s seat. “Claudius was right. We should have stayed on Pleasureworld.” He waited until Hans Rebka had moved across to the passenger seat, then scrambled in after him. “If we had any sense, we’d take off now, and to hell with it. I know, I know, we can’t—but Atvar H’sial would understand if we did.”
He went to work at the communications console. “Hope this funny weather don’t mess up signals.”
“Are you sure they’ll be listening?”
“You kiddin’? I’ve seen better, but this will do.”
A grainy image of Kallik had appeared on the pinnace’s central display.
“Master Nenda! And Captain Rebka also!” The Hymenopt was hopping up and down in excitement. “We had been wondering and worrying.”
“Worryin’ why?”
“Marglot is changing. During our first orbits, one hemisphere was warm and one was ice-coated. Now we see clouds everywhere—snow clouds, from their appearance—and there is evidence of tremendous winds blowing between the cold and warm sides.”
“No need to worry about us. We’re near the Hot Pole—or what used to be the Hot Pole. It’s snowin’ here, too.”
“Just as predicted, from what Archimedes discovered.”
“Archimedes? He don’t have the brain to predict anythin’. Is there some way he could see what was happenin’ down here, even through the cloud layer.”
“Not at all. As observations of Marglot became less relevant because of clouds, J’merlia and I assigned to him a different task. We suggested that he use the aft chamber to study the planet M-2, and see what might be learned there.”
“Kallik, you two were just tryin’ to keep Archie out of your hair an’ out of the control room. You know there’s no life on M-2, never was and never will be.”
“That is true. But Archimedes came back to us almost at once. He asserted that rapid and inexplicable changes were taking place on M-2. He wondered if we could tell him what was happening.”
“Of course, we could not.” J’merlia had crowded in next to Kallik. “Where is Atvar H’sial?”
“She’s doin’ fine. Get on with it.”
“Of course. We had no hope of visual data better than those provided by the superior sight of Archimedes.” J’merlia rolled his lemon-colored compound eyes on their short eyestalks. “But even we could remark evidence of vast changes. However, it was not until we employed other sensors that the overall situation became clear to us. When we arrived in this system, the average temperature of the gas-giant M-2 was eight hundred degrees. Now, hard to believe, it emits negligible thermal radiation. Our bolometers register a surface as cold as liquid nitrogen.”
“Which sure as hell sounds like bad news for Marglot.” Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. “Liquid nitrogen?”
“Seventy-seven degrees absolute. It will take a while for the surface here to go that far, because the inside of the planet must have plenty of stored heat. But long before that, you and I and everyone else on Marglot will be—what are you doing?”
Nenda had reached out to the controls and flipped a switch.
“Turnin’ off all communications. You were going to say we would be dead, weren’t you? If Kallik and J’merlia think that At and me will get killed, they’ll go right off their heads. Leave this to me.” He switched the channel back on. “J’merlia, is the Have-It-All ready to fly re-entry?”
“Of course. It has been perfectly prepared for that, ever since the moment of your departure.”
“Good. D’you know where we are, from our suit beacons?”
“Precisely where you are.”
“Then I want the Have-It-All down here, quick as you can do it—but fly careful.”
“Certainly. It will be as you command. We will fly fast, and we will fly carefully, and we will fly with joy.”
Kallik added, “Master Nenda, it will be a pleasure and a privilege to come to Marglot and see you again. We have so missed—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Nenda switched off the channel. “You can’t afford to get Kallik an’ J’merlia get goin’ on the grovellin’, or there’s no stoppin’ ’em.”
“How long do you think it will be before the Have-It-All arrives here?”
“At least a few hours. I told ’em, they’ve gotta be careful. J’merlia’s a hell of a pilot, but he knows that Atvar H’sial will pull off his legs an’ use ’em as backscratchers if he damages my ship.” Nenda stared out of the window, where the wind was stronger and snow was driving almost horizontally. “Gettin’ a bit nasty out there. Anythin’ more that needs to be said to the Have-It-All?”
“Will there be medical supplies for Ben Blesh?”
“Sure. An’ the best robodoc that money can buy.”
“Then I think that’s it. I’m ready when you are.”
“I’m not ready at all. But we might as well go.” Nenda swung the door open, and had to shout above the sudden howl of the wind, “Back to the cone-house. Who wants to be the one gives the others the good news?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Stranded on Marglot
Cold, yes. Snow, yes. With no warmth from M-2 and the sun a brilliant but far-distant ball, anyone would expect those. But who could have predicted such a wind? Certainly not Louis Nenda.
On the leeward side of the cone-house the blast shrieked and howled around him. Despite conditions it could never before have experienced, the cone-house was standing up well. The great leaves ripped off one by one, but the central trunk held steady. That was just as well, because if the cone-house collapsed it would fall on Louis.
The snow was now almost waist-deep. He dug and tunneled and carved himself a kind of bunker in it, not much protection but better than nothing; and better by far to be here than sitting listening to the brainless talk within the cone-house. Everyone except Hans Rebka and the silent Atvar H’sial talked and acted as though the game was over and they were all safe from danger. The Have-It-All would land, they would board it, and they would fly home to the Orion Arm using the same set of Bose nodes as Nenda had used to arrive here. They were idiots, all of them.
Nenda looked at his suit monitor. Twenty below, and dropping. He had confided the truth to Hans Rebka.
“No point in tellin’ everybody yet, but the Have-It-All is a spaceship. Sure, it can fly atmospheric, an’ in any reasonable conditions it can take off to anywhere. But I’m not sure we’ll see reasonable conditions. With ice loading all over the hull and drive efficiency down to maybe thirty percent, the mass that can be hoisted to orbit will be way down.”