“Yes, ma’am.”
The planet was noticeably closer. “The next question is, where do I go and how do I know where that is?”
Peters glanced at Gell, who beamed and pointed: forward. “Gell already set the instruments to go for the beacon, ma’am,” he said with fingers crossed. “The dial on your left shows which way to go, ‘cept it shows a straight line, and the dli don’t go in no straight line.”
“You mean I have to judge a re-entry by eye?”
“Yes, ma’am, there ain’t no other way.”
She turned. “I don’t see you asking the pilot many questions. You’ve done this yourself?”
“No, ma’am, not this part, I only watched.” When she held his gaze he looked down. “I, uh, I spelled the pilot some on the freight hauler while we was salvagin’ the zifthkakik, so I know a little about it, ma’am, but I ain’t never landed one on a planet.”
“I see.” Collins drawled the word out with a speculative overtone, and looked over at Gell, who beamed. “What comes next?”
“Well, ma’am, next is we wait,” Peters told her. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen for a little while.”
“I suppose so.” Collins released the andli, relaxed into the cushions, then turned to face Peters. “Evelyn Briggs says to tell you ‘thanks’. She’ll be back on flying status by the time we get to the next place.”
“Well, ma’am, you tell her for us we’re real glad she ain’t taken no permanent hurt… at least I hope she ain’t, ma’am,” he went on when she just looked at him. “I know I ain’t in no position to know what she’s gone through, but ain’t nobody deserves that kind of shit.”
“I’ll tell her that. She’d have told you herself, but our keepers—” this with a look at Gell “—don’t want us wandering around, and it didn’t seem right to summon you on the carpet to issue a thank-you.” When Peters nodded she continued, “I still don’t know the details. First I’m asked to sit on a Summary Court, then the next thing I know the prospective accused gets a commendation and everybody clams up. Care to enlighten me?”
Peters met her eyes. “Ma’am, I got two separate sets of orders says I ain’t supposed to talk about it.” Plus a chunk of change, but I reckon I better keep that under my hat.
“Oh, ho. The ‘can’t talk about it’ routine.” Collins tossed her head, and Peters got a flash of coltish seventeen-year-old with hair down to here; too bad he hadn’t been around… “I’ve heard that formula before,” she observed tartly, “and it always means something’s being hushed up ‘for the good of the Service’. I take it this is another such occasion?”
“Well, ma’am, I reckon you could say that.”
“And then again I might not. Hmph.”
They waited, all three humans growing tense as the planet swelled to fill their field of view. Peters glanced at Gell, who nodded and gestured. “Ma’am, about now you oughta be bringin’ the nose up,” he advised. “It’s supposed to go in belly first.”
“That makes sense.” She began handling the control, bringing the nose up until the limb of the planet bisected the forward port.
Gell made a pair of gestures: up, forward. “I reckon you oughta be puttin’ some way on, ma’am, so’s we’re movin’ faster in the direction we’re pointin’, and bring the nose up a bit more,” Peters advised.
“How do I know we’re going the right way?” she asked, handling the control.
Peters looked at Gell. “Should we steer for the destination at this point?”
“No,” the Grallt said shortly. “She’s doing very well.”
“Gell says real good, ma’am, don’t worry about which way to go till we’re done with this part.”
“All right.” Re-entry ionization came up in streams of yellow fire, and they rode that for a few minutes, the lower setting of the inertial damper making it a more visceral experience than either Peters or Todd had had before. “Oh,” Collins said with a note of wonder, “it’s flying!” She manipulated the andli, causing the dli to swing left, then right, in a series of smooth curves. “It’s flying,” she said again, and looked around at Peters. “I know how to do this.”
“Yes, ma’am, I reckon you do,” Peters answered her smile. “I reckon now you just follow the cross, ma’am.”
“Yes, I see that.” She nodded decisively, and brought the dli around in a long smooth curve to the right, banking to compensate for the gee forces and ending with the vertical needle centered. Then she looked over at Gell, smiled, and nodded.
The Grallt responded with a smile and nod of his own, then gestured, palm out: go ahead. At her answering nod he settled back in his seat, arms still folded.
Peters leaned back for the first time in the flight. “Whew.”
“She picked it up pretty quick,” Todd observed softly.
“Yeah, I don’t think any of our guys’ll have trouble figurin’ it out,” Peters answered in the same tone.
“Yeah, they’re pretty sharp.” Todd gave him a wry grin. “Commander Bolton’ll do fine.”
“How’s that?”
Todd’s grin got broader. “Now, now, it’s not like you to be so slow on the uptake,” he chided. “Commander Collins has had her chance. Isn’t it going to be fun when Commander Bolton takes his turn?”
Peters glanced back at the door behind which the gentleman sat. “Shit,” he remarked. “I wish you’d waited a while before remindin’ me of that.”
“Reality check,” said Peters as they emerged onto the wing. “Sky?”
“Blue,” said Todd. That seemed to be the usual circumstance. “Pretty white puffy clouds, too.”
Peters glanced at the white uniforms of the officers, moving away in a tight group, with Dreelig shambling along in front. “Sky blue, check,” he noted. “Water?”
“Also blue, with some very nice-looking surf,” Todd described.
“Water blue, nice surf, check. Sand?”
“Oh, I dunno, kind of browny white.”
“That’s tan, you asshole. Sandy sand, check. Trees?”
“That’s hard.” The majority of the vegetation visible was various shades of red and yellow, but a few were blue with a green tinge. The net effect would have been a fall day in the Appalachians with occasional conifers if it weren’t for the shapes, which were mostly variants on the theme of “palm”.
“Trees multicolor, check. Grass?”
“Grass magenta, with yellow flowers.”
“Purple grass, check. It’s real,” Peters decided. “Of course it ain’t home.”
“No, but it’s pretty.” They stepped down off the wing and set off up a long curving walk made of yellow-tan blocks toward the large building on the bluff. Similar buildings were visible down the beach, not too close together. The air was soft and not too warm, the sun hot and yellow, the beach a long inviting curve. Three steps led up to an entry portico, and Todd stopped and looked around. “Paint the trees green, it’s just your basic tropical island paradise,” he defined it.
“Yeah. Y’know, this is gettin’ a little annoying,” Peters remarked as they pushed through a set of glass swinging doors.
Todd looked around the lobby at marble, wrought iron, and plants in pots. “I think I know what you mean. This damn place could be in Galveston.”
“Or Miami. Except for him.” The desk clerk was of one of the species represented by the statuettes in the “golf” game so long ago: the Monkeys. He was bulky and hairy, with a muzzle that protruded a little less than a chimp’s, but stood fully erect, with no hint of an apelike crouch. He spoke Grallt clearly, with a somewhat better vocabulary than Todd commanded, but with a distinct accent.