“Close to it. We’re talking forty hours, give or take five. That would bring us to a point far enough out of the main plane of debris for Julian Graves to agree to pick us up. Can Ben stand that?”
Sinara said, “I don’t think that’s the issue. If we leave here, we’re sure to need some fancy jumping and dodging to avoid being hit by debris. I said Ben seems stable, but I think those kinds of acceleration would kill him.”
“That settles it. Teri, do you agree? We stay?”
“We stay. Sinara?”
“We stay.”
For forty more hours. That was going to feel like eternity. Arabella Lund had made the point during survival training: “If you want to learn what a person is really like, arrange to be with her in two special situations. The first is when you have to make rapid decisions based on pure instinct. The second is when you are forced to spend a day or two together, with nothing to do but wait.”
Sinara had seen Torran and Teri in the first setting. Now she would have a chance to observe them in the second. Within the first couple of hours both of them became restless. First they calculated and re-calculated their velocity vector, estimating the earliest time that they might hope to be picked up. After that they went wandering around, wasting—in Sinara’s opinion—suit fuel. They explored the jumble of rocks and fragments surrounding them, moving large pieces to provide better protection from incoming debris.
Sinara did not join them; nor, after the first hour or two, did she watch them closely. She had her own preoccupation. Her suit, like every decent suit designed for use by humans, contained information on the species’ physiology and medical treatments based on ten thousand years of theory and practice. Of course, only a tiny fraction of that volume of data applied to Ben, but Sinara studied that fraction as intensively as she could. Sometimes sheer fatigue made her close her eyes for a few minutes, but each time that she awoke she at once checked Ben’s condition and ran a new prognosis.
Her task was made more complicated by Ben’s suit. It was not sitting idle. It monitored his condition second by second, and provided appropriate medications. Sinara could override it at any time, but she did so only once. She drastically reduced the narcotic dose, in the hope that it would return him to consciousness. When after twenty minutes it did not, she fed that information into her own suit and received confirmation that Ben had suffered a severe concussion. There was also edema, a brain swelling that was being controlled by anti-inflammatories. The cause was probably that same concussion.
Sinara’s actions absorbed her completely. She was more irritated than interested when Teri came floating over to halt on the other side of Ben.
“We need your opinion.”
“I’m looking after Ben.”
“He doesn’t seem any different now than he was when we first found him. He’ll be fine for five minutes. That’s all we need.”
“What’s the problem?”
“A little disagreement. Come and look at something.”
As a result of Teri and Torran’s continued labors, the barrier of protective rock fragments had steadily become more complete. Teri led Sinara to six great overlapping basalt wedges that offered between them only an irregular narrow slit through which to see beyond.
Torran was waiting a few meters away from it. “Take a look,” he said, “but don’t get too close. Sometimes little bits and pieces fly in—though we’ve not had anything with much speed.”
Teri added, “Tell us what you think. Torran and I don’t agree.”
“No hints, Teri.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Sinara approached within arm’s length of the ragged barrier of rocks. There was no such thing as a safe distance. Any second, a high-speed fragment could fly in through the slit and hit her. She peered cautiously out past one of the slabs.
The same kaleidoscopic litter of debris, large and small, near and far, filled the sky. It was a little less densely packed than before, thinning out as their distance from the sometime planet increased.
Nothing out there seemed worthy of a second look. Had Sinara not in effect been told to expect something, she would have returned at once to her vigil at Ben Blesh’s side. Instead, she scanned the scene before her a second time, focusing on each area of the sky in turn before moving on. Her attention finally returned to one small region. Something was different there, some oddity that was difficult to pin down.
She used her suit’s image intensifiers and narrowed the field of view. She made out a small disk, an oval shape brighter than its surroundings. As she stared, it thinned and dwindled. It lost width until it was no more than a bright line, then vanished completely.
She stared and stared, but now she could find nothing unusual. “That’s strange,” she began. “I thought there was—”
She paused. Here it came again, a thin bright line that slowly expanded to a fat silvery oval. Just as steadily, it then thinned and disappeared.
This time Sinara had some idea what to expect. She waited patiently for another half minute. Right on cue, the silver line appeared and swelled.
“I see it,” she said. “Or at least, I see something, over in the upper right quadrant.”
“That’s the place,” Teri said eagerly. “What do you think it is?”
“Well, it could be just a flat rock, a lot brighter on one side than the other. It’s rotating, so sometimes we see it edgeways and sometimes we don’t see it at all.”
“Exactly what I told her. See, Teri, Sinara agrees with me.”
“Except that it’s nothing like any of the other rocks,” Sinara went on slowly. “One side is really bright, like silver. We could be looking at one of the beetlebacks. They would have been thrown out into space with everything else when Marglot disintegrated.”
“Told you!”
“So what if it is?” Torran was defensive. “I hate to quote Julian Graves to you, but getting back alive to the Orion Arm is our main concern. Saving Ben was one thing, we were right to insist on that. But worrying about some dumb beetleback is another matter entirely.”
“Returning to the Orion Arm alive, with information. Didn’t you hear E.C. Tally complaining during our take-off from Marglot? One beetleback, with all the data it contains, could make a huge difference to what we know.” Teri moved away from the other two. “Torran, I don’t care what you think. I’m going out there to try to snag it.”
“Suppose it snags you?”
“That will be my problem. I don’t expect you to come after me if I get in trouble—I don’t want you to come after me. Your priority is the same now as when we started: getting yourselves and Ben back to the Have-It-All.”
Teri didn’t hang around for more debate. Already she was moving toward a gap in their primitive protective barrier.
“No, Torran.” Sinara had seen his reaction. She grabbed hold of his arm. “Teri is right, and this isn’t like Ben. She’s taking a risk, but she wants it to be her risk.”
“She’s crazy.” Torran shook his arm free.
“If you believe Julian Graves, we’re all crazy. And if you believe E.C. Tally, one beetleback could be worth the price of this whole expedition.”
Torran hardly seemed to be listening. His attention, like Sinara’s, was focused on the diminishing figure of Teri. He muttered again, “She’s crazy.” But his comment was drowned out by Teri’s exultant cry. “It is a beetleback. Badly damaged, with most of its legs gone. But since Atvar H’sial says it’s inorganic, that should make no difference at all to its information content. I have it, and I’m towing it. Five minutes and we’ll be back there with the rest of you.”