The logical thing to do was to leave him behind to take his chances. Ensign thought. Part of him was shocked at how cold-bloodedly he considered the idea. He remembered what Shorty had said about being a pod leader.
The same part of him cold-bloodedly rejected the idea. They had lost too many pod members and too many remoras already. They couldn’t afford any more losses. So Simon had to be brought along. But that meant risking the whole pod being caught in the next skyfall.
Pod leader’s choice again. Skies Above, he came to hate those!
Ensign called Yearling back to him and met him halfway.
“We’re going to string out,” he told him. “Simon’s having trouble.”
“And you want the strongest flyer among us to shepherd him,” Yearling said calmly.
The youngster had already sized up the situation and accepted it, Ensign saw. He’s growing up, he thought. But he only nodded.
His first instinct was to take the lead, the pod leader’s traditional position. But he remembered Teacher’s admonition and remembered that the pod leader always took the most important post.
“Geek,” he called ahead, “you and Melody trade off in the lead and sing out the soundings. I’ll stay between the groups and relay them back.”
It was a compromise and like all compromises, fundamentally a lousy choice. But like most successful compromises it was the best lousy choice in a lousy situation. He settled in to the exhausting work of flying north.
Gradually a dark line emerged on the distant horizon. It thickened and widened until they could see it was the band edge disturbances. Abstractly he was even glad for the increasing downdrafts and turbulence.
Concretely, the bad air only added to his problems. As the going got rougher Simon and Yearling fell farther and farther behind. Ensign had to drop back to act as a relay until finally both the group ahead and the group behind were just specks that could only be reached by low-frequency sound.
After several day-tenths, Melody reported that they had reached the zone edge and they were searching for a calm place to cross.
“Just cross,” Ensign snapped back, “We’ll meet on the other side.” He looked back at the two distant specks that were Simon and Yearling. Once again he looked upward in vain for the comet. Simon had told him he wouldn’t be able to see it in daylight, but he felt it hanging over him anyway.
As the air became more turbulent the clouds swirled up about them. He lost sight of the following party, first occasionally and then almost all the time. His only contact with them remained low-frequency sound and that became intermittent.
Ensign wanted desperately to turn back to them, to hurry them along and for the simple comfort of being close to others of his kind. But reason, and the pod-leaders songs, told him it would be useless. He could do nothing for them and if all three of them were lost the Bach Choir was utterly destroyed.
Ensign had lost contact with Simon and Yearling and he had just dipped a wingtip to circle around and call for them when the southern horizon blazed up brighter than the Sun.
Skyfall! Half by instinct and half by reason Ensign angled upward and jetted hydrogen, climbing desperately. He broke out of the mists and something seared his back and rear. He kept his rear eyes tight shut but he was nearly blinded by brilliance behind him.
Don’t look back. Whatever you do, don’t look back. And climb. Climb for everything you are worth. Climb for where the air is thinner and the shock wave less intense. Climb, climb and don’t look back.
He was still climbing when the shock wave took him, shaking him in its jaws like the biggest shark ever. Ensign rolled and tumbled mercilessly. He felt his wings strain forward almost past their limits from the pressure and his whole body compressed and resonated from skyfall’s blow.
And then it was over. Most of his hearing was gone, his muscles were torn and sore, but he was alive. A few remoras that had been shaken loose hurried to reattach themselves. Down below the world had been reduced to the now familiar flat white plain. Gingerly, favoring his left side, he turned toward the north and began the pod leader’s call.
It seemed like forever before he heard The Geek’s answering call ahead of him. Ensign didn’t know how long he had been calling. The Geek’s voice sounded tinny and strange in his damaged hearing and he knew he had lost some important frequencies.
He could feel pain in his burned outer membranes as he heaved his wings to rejoin his pod. He could hear The Geek calling to Simon and Yearling. Their voices came closer and closer until he finally broke out into clear air. Off to his right the two flew a wide formation. Melody trilled greeting and The Geek continued his call.
“You’re hurt!” Melody exclaimed as Ensign approached.
Ensign took up formation as leader and replied, “I’ll live.” The Geek kept calling.
Ensign pondered for long wing-beats while they flew an elongated figure-8 over the blank whiteness, listening in vain for Yearling or Simon. Or more correctly, the others called and listened. With his damaged hearing and skin Ensign really wasn’t up to either.
“Do you hear anything?” he finally asked. The Geek rippled negation.
“Give it up then.” Off to the side he saw Melody start, as if in denial. She may have moaned. He couldn’t hear.
“One last call,” The Geek said simply, “—if only to the empty winds.”
Ensign nodded.
The Geek sounded Last Call, focusing down in the lower frequencies and using every bit of energy he could put into his vibrating membranes, so much that a few of his remoras shook loose and flapped around him in a cloud. Even with damaged timpani, Ensign thought, if he kept singing that clearly, he’d become a Master.
Ensign began the wide sweeping turn which would continue their journey north. His lower eyes spotted a dark shape in the mists far below. “Possible shark, low and to the left—pretty far away.”
Melody and The Geek fluted acknowledgement. Ensign probed the swirling clouds and saw it again. It was the largest shark he’d ever seen. Perhaps this band had huge predators. It certainly had the distinctly dark coloration of a shark. It rose out of the clouds Ensign stared, perplexed. Whatever it was had the shape of one of the High Folk and the skin of a shark.
Melody exclaimed, “It’s Yearling! He’s been burned darker than you, Ensign!”
“Bach Choir—to me! Anybody!” Yearling’s call was reedy and thin.
Ensign pulled a wing-over and dove for his pod-mate below. “I’m coming. Turn toward me!”
Yearling’s voice, rasping, floated up, “I’m blind in my upper eyes. Can’t see a thing. Overloaded with remoras.”
“Simon?” The Geek called out. His voice sounded blurred by the wind as he, too, dove to meet Yearling.
Yearling sighed in the lower registers, “He didn’t make it. I got his memories.”
Ensign and the others leveled out even with Yearling, who immediately began shaking off a cloud of remoras. They attached themselves to The Geek, Ensign, and Melody. The three High Folk, burdened with the memories of seven, had to stroke their wings to maintain altitude. Ensign looked at Yearling, battered and scarred, burned to a dark outer shade and said, “You’ve lost all your remoras! Take back the basic ones—you’ll never be able to keep up without them!”
Yearling quirked his trailing edge. “Don’t need ’em where I’m going.”
Melody screamed, “Yearling!..” But Yearling only sighed in the lower frequencies and rolled away, exposing his underside. Instead of a smooth aerodynamic surface it was lumpy with ruptured and burned gas cells. Charred skin hung in tatters where one or two cells had burst to the outside, but most had broken inward causing massive internal damage.