Hervil Apsile, Master Technician of the Third Fury Shared Facility, ran the ultrasonic hand-held over the gascraft’s starboard nacelle one more time, smiling with some satisfaction at the smooth line on the screen. Above his head, one of the Shared Facility’s drop ships stood on extended legs, a squat lifting-body shape, hold doors open. To one side, the main hangar’s transparent dome showed a vast darkness, fitfully illuminated by long lighting flashes like sheets of tipped diamond catching the light of a dim blue sun.
“Checking for scrits, Hervil?” Fassin asked, approaching by bounce along the fused-rock floor.
Apsile grinned at the sound of Fassin’s voice but watched the hand-held’s screen until he’d got to the end of the seam he was inspecting. He switched the machine off and turned to Fassin. “Just the standard varieties detected so far, Seer Taak.”
Scrits were the almost certainly mythical creatures which Dwellers blamed when anything went badly wrong anywhere in their vicinity. The humans who had lately taken up the baton of Dweller Studies had adopted early on the idea of scrits to account for the high degree of malfunctions any interaction with — or indeed near — the Dwellers seemed to involve. It was either that or accept that the Dwellers’ endemic technological carelessness and congenital lack of enthusiasm for keeping machinery in reliably working order was somehow contagious.
Fassin patted the dark flank of the fat, arrowhead-shaped gascraft. This was his own machine, designed specifically for and partly by Fassin himself. It was about five metres long, four across the beam if you included the outboard manoeuvring nacelles and a little under two metres in height. Its smooth form was broken only by the shut lines of its various manipulators and manoeuvring impellers, a few sensor bulges, and the rear power assembly, vanes currently stowed. Fassin rubbed his hand over its port tail fin. “All prepped and ready, Herv?”
“Entirely,” Apsile said. He was Nubianly black, slim but muscled, sleekly bald. Only a few lines round his eyes made him look remotely as old as he was, which was very. Every year or so, before his annual depilatory treatment — he thought gene treatment too invasive — a white micro-stubble would start to appear on his scalp, giving his head the appearance of a bristling star field. “And you?” he asked.
“Oh, prepped and ready too,” Fassin told him. He’d just come from the day’s final briefing, with the Dweller Current State people. It was their challenging brief to try and keep abreast of what was going on in the sheer and utter chaos that was Dweller society and, as a sideline, keep track of where the major Dweller structures, institutions and — especially — Individuals Of Interest were at any given moment.
The news was not good: a formal war was brewing between Zone two and Belt C, at least one long-term storm structure between Zone one and Belt D was collapsing while two were building elsewhere, and the movements of IOIs recently had been particularly fluid. One might even say capricious. As for the whereabouts of choal Valseir, well. Nobody had seen anything of the fellow for centuries.
Dwellers had always been hard to follow. In the past people had tried setting drone remotes on individuals to keep tabs on them. However, Dwellers regarded this as a gross intrusion on their privacy and had an uncanny ability to spot and destroy any such platforms, micro-gascraft or bugs, no matter how small or clever they were. Dwellers also sulked. When people had the temerity to try anything so underhand, cooperation was withdrawn. Sometimes over an entire population. Sometimes for years.
The Slow Seers of Nasqueron had a pretty good relationship with the local Dwellers. By Dweller Studies standards it was almost close, but only because the Seers tried to interfere as little as possible with Dweller life. In return the Dwellers were relatively cooperative, and broadcast a daily update on the location of their most important cities, structures and institutions. This eight-and-a-bit-hourly bulletin was a byword for trustworthiness — almost a legend — in Dweller Studies, on occasion approaching accuracy rates of very nearly ninety per cent. “Things fine with Sept Bantrabal?” Apsile asked. “All well. Slovius sends his regards.” Fassin had talked to his uncle a few hours earlier, still trying to persuade him to leave the Autumn House. The time delay between Third Fury and ’glantine made a normal conversation just about possible. He’d caught up with Jaal too, on the other side of ’glantine, at her Sept’s Spring House. Life appeared relatively normal back on ’glantine, the new Emergency affecting people there less than it seemed to on Sepekte.
Apsile flicked a roll-screen from his sleeve and tapped a few patches. He looked casually up at the lifter ship poised above the little gascraft, ready to accept the smaller vessel inside its open hold and take it down to the gas-giant’s atmosphere. Fassin followed the Master Technician’s gaze. He looked at a dark shape already hanging inside the cargo space, protruding downwards from it like a thick wheel. He frowned. “That looks a lot like Colonel Hatherence,” he said.
“Not many places she’ll fit,” muttered Apsile. “Eh?” A voice bellowed. Then, quieter: “My name? Oh. Yes, that’s me. Seer Taak. Major Taak, I should say. Hello. Sorry; asleep. Well, you know, one does. Thought I’d try out this space here for size. Fits very well, must say. I shall be able to be transported to the atmosphere of Nasqueron most ably by this vessel, if needs be. Well, so I think. Think you so too, Master Technician?”
Apsile smiled broadly, revealing teeth as jet as his skin. “I think so too, ma’am.”
“There we are agreed, then.” The giant hanging discus dropped fractionally from its mountings inside the delta-shaped transporter, so that it could turn and twist towards them. “And so. Major Taak. How goes your attempt to persuade Chief Seer Braam Ganscerel that you ought to be allowed to delve directly?”
Fassin smiled. “It goes like a long-term delve, colonel; exceeding slow.”
“A pity!”
Apsile thumbed a patch on his roll-screen, clicked the screen back into his sleeve and nodded at the little gascraft. “Well, she’s ready. Want to put her up?” he asked.
“Why not?” It had become something of a tradition that Apsile and Fassin lifted the craft into the carrier. They stooped, took an end each and — very slowly at first — hoisted the arrowhead into the space above, letting their feet lift off the floor at the end to slow it down. The gascraft weighed next to nothing in Third Fury’s minuscule gravity, but it massed over two tonnes and the laws regarding inertia and momentum still applied. They were carried three metres up inside the drop ship’s hold, towards the opened arms of the waiting gascraft cradle. The Colonel’s esuit took up the space of two of the little gascraft, but that still left room for another five in the drop ship’s hold. The arrowhead snicked into place alongside the tall discus that held Colonel Hatherence. Satisfied that the arrowhead was correctly fastened in, the two men let themselves fall back to the floor. The colonel drifted down alongside them.
Fassin looked up at the sleek lines of the gascraft. How small it looks, he thought. Tiny space to spend years in… decades in… even centuries… They landed. Apsile, more experienced, got his knee-flex just right; Fassin bounced.
The giant esuit had to tilt to clear the carrier ship’s opened hold doors, toppling then coming upright again with a burr of vanes and a whoosh of air. “Imust say I myself would prefer to enter the atmosphere directly, that is to say, in fact. Indeed, in reality,” the colonel shouted.