“What about the Bose drive?”
“Unaffected. But you can’t use the Bose drive unless you’re at a Bose node. It’d be a miracle if there was one on the surface of Marglot. Even if there is, we got no idea where it might be.”
“So what’s your suggestion.”
“I don’t have one. I’m goin’ outside. If conditions are too bad, the Have-It-All may not be able to land at all.”
And how bad was too bad? Nenda again glanced at his suit monitor. Down to twenty-five below. Where the devil was the Have-It-All? Louis wasn’t sure which worried him more: the idea that it was too windy to permit a landing, or the idea that J’merlia would attempt it no matter what and smash the ship to pieces.
He knew what would happen, of course. J’merlia, with Kallik’s enthusiastic support, would try for the landing no matter how impossible.
He felt a sudden weight on his legs, and thought for a moment that part of the cone-house must have collapsed. He turned. It was Sinara Bellstock, wiping the snow from her faceplate and peering in through Louis’s.
“I was worried about you.” She snuggled down beside him, half demolishing the shelter that had cost him a great deal of trouble to make. “Captain Rebka said that you had gone outside. You’ve been carrying a tremendous load ever since we left the Pride of Orion. And Torran Veck told a story from pre-space times, about a man who went out into the snow to die so that others of his party might be saved. I thought you might have—I was afraid you might have—but I should have known, you are too brave for that.”
It took Louis a moment to catch on. Who in his right mind would wander off outside, to die in the cold? Louis had heard about cases like that, and decided that in the old days there were even more lunatics around than there were today. Sinara, of course, was looking for a hero. Didn’t she know that you were a real hero if you helped people to survive—especially yourself?
“I didn’t come out here to die.” Even with his helmet in contact with hers, he had to shout to be heard above the wind. “I have no intention of dying. I’m looking for the Have-It-All and wondering where the hell it’s got to. They ought to have been here hours ago.”
“What does it look like? I mean, its lights. I know we won’t be able to make out its shape in these conditions.”
She was right about that. Louis could see maybe forty meters. Everything beyond was obscured by falling snow, changed from its earlier gentle flakes to a torrent of hard-driven ice needles.
“Maybe a searchlight, though that isn’t necessary. J’merlia will be landing using instruments only. The ship will be flying in atmospheric mode with wings deployed. There should be navigation lights, one steady red, two flashing red.”
“You mean like that?” Sinara immediately pointed off to the left, in the direction of the pelting snow crystals.
Beginner’s luck. Louis had stared that way a hundred times, scraping ice from his visor, and seen nothing.
“Exactly like that. Sinara, don’t move!” She was starting to stand up. “Wait ’til they land.”
He didn’t like the look of the way those lights were veering and tilting. The Have-It-All had stabilizers, but when you came right down to it the ship was designed for space, not atmosphere. If the wind happened to be too strong, there would be problems.
The navigation lights rolled, pitched upward, straightened, and fell. Louis could not estimate the distance of that final drop.
“Come on. Now we go.”
You couldn’t run through waist-deep snow. Kallik or Atvar H’sial would have covered the distance in a dozen gigantic leaps. Louis floundered. Even Sinara was better at this than he was, reaching the ship twenty meters in front of him. The hatch was three meters above her head, far too high to reach. She would have to wait until someone lowered a ladder—no easy job in this wind and snow.
The hatch opened barely wide enough to admit a suited human. Louis heard a startled scream. He saw Sinara grasped by a giant tentacle and whisked inside.
Good old Archimedes. Brains weren’t everything. He panted his way the final few meters and stood expectantly. He was grasped and whipped up and away like a paper doll.
Kallik and J’merlia were leaping with excitement as Archimedes set him down. But first things first.
“Damage assessment?”
“The structural damage is superficial. But—” J’merlia looked uncertainly at Sinara Bellstock.
“It’s okay. You can talk in front of her. She can’t learn anything the rest won’t know soon enough.”
“The engines to permit atmospheric flight present no problems. They are high above ground level. If there is snow and ice to be cleared from them, it will be no more than an hour’s work after they have cooled down. There will also, of course, be the need to clear a runway for takeoff. The drive to return us to orbit is another matter. It sits on the underside of the ship. It must be cleared of packed snow and ice, which will be a lengthy task. That, however, is not my main concern. The efficiency of the thrustors is low until they have had a chance to warm up. In space this is no problem. Here, however, heat is constantly carried away by wind, and in such intense cold the Have-It-All may be unable to achieve orbit with its projected loading.”
“You’re talkin’ big stuff, right? We may need to lighten a lot, not just dump the odd person out of the hatch and overboard.”
“I fear so. Major fittings must be removed from the ship, and even then the attainment of orbit is questionable.”
“Lovely.” Nenda turned to Sinara. “Did you know, it took me twenty years to put all this together an’ get the Have-It-All the way I like it?” He did not expect an answer. “Come on. You an’ me have to leave.”
“But we only just arrived!”
“I know. But it’s gettin’ colder out there, an’ it’s still snowin’. Before things freeze solid an’ nobody can walk through it, we have to bring everybody over from the cone-house. After that, I give ’em the good news-bad news routine.”
“Isn’t it all bad news? You may have to strip your ship down to the bare bones, and even then you don’t think it will fly out of here. What’s the good news?”
“That everyone except Lara Quistner is still alive. If we work real hard an’ have a bit of luck, maybe we can keep it that way.”
Inside the cone-house Ben had merely been useless. On the way to the Have-It-All he became an out-and-out liability.
He had tried. When Nenda, backed by Julian Graves and Hans Rebka, stated that they must move to the comparative safety of the ship, Ben had closed his suit and stood up with the others. He followed Torran Veck. The outer leaves of the cone-house had frozen brittle and snapped off when they were pushed out of the way.
Torran headed straight for the ship, using the path made through the snow by Louis and Sinara. Ben intended to do the same. He had taken only half a dozen steps when the full force of the wind hit him. Without the strength to resist and unable to react quickly, he was blown sideways to lie full-length and helpless. He could not bite back a cry of pain as his rib cage twisted.
Torran turned at once. “Ben? Can you hear me?”
He spoke over the suit radio channel. Ben replied—he hoped it was calmly, “Yes. But I don’t think I can move.”
“Don’t even try. I want you to stiffen your suit all over and make it rigid. Can you do that?”