The Grad said, "Lawri?"
"It's over," she said. "Damn, I'm tired. Take the controls, Jeffer."
"I have it. Relax."
Lawri rubbed her eyes fiercely. The Grad touched blue dashes to slow the cairn further. A fingertip touch set the cabin warmth control to normal. The cabin was already warm. If it hadn't been lethally cold when they entered atmosphere, they might well have roasted.
He looked back at his passengers. Six of Quinn Tribe remained.
Twelve total, to start a new tribe…'We're back," he said. "I don't know just where. Are we all alive? Does anyone need medical help?"
"Lawri You did it!" Merril chortled. "We lived long enough to get thirsty!"
The Grad said, "We're low on fuel and there's no water at all. Let's find a pond. Then pick a home."
"Open the doors," Jayan said. She released her straps and moved aft, with Jinny following.
"Why?"
"Horse."
Right." He opened the airlock to a mild breeze that smelled fresh, clean, wonderful. The carm's air stank! It was stale, a treefodder stink, fear and rotting meat and too many people breathing in each other's faces. Why hadn't he noticed?
The twins released the corpse from its mooring, wincing at the touch. They towed it through the doors. The Grad waited while they sent the bones of the salmon bird after it.
Then he fired the aft motors. If I met his ghost, he wouldn't even recognize me. How can I say I'm sorry? Never use the main motor unless—
Horse dwindled into the sky.
The pond was huge, spinning fast enough to form a lens-shape, fast enough to have spun off smaller ponds. The Grad chose one of the smaller satellites, no bigger than the carm itself. He let the carm drift forward until the bow window just touched the silver sphere.
What happened then left him breathless. He was looking into the interior of the pond. There were water-breathing things shaped like long teardrops with tiny wings, moving through a maze of green threads. He turned on the bow lights, and the water glowed. There was a jungle in there, and swimming waterbirds darting in flocks among the plants.
Lawri roused him. "Come on, Jeffer. Nobody else knows how to do this. Pick two mutineers with good lungs."
He followed her aft and didn't ask her about lungs until he'd figured it out himself. "Clave, Anthon, we need some muscle. Bring the squeezegourds. Better than lungs, Scientist."
"Squeezegourds, fine. If you'd planned your mutiny better, you'd have dismounted the pump and stored it aboard."
He laughed and thought, Should I have asked your advice too? and didn't say it. After all Lawri had been through, it was good to hear her joking, even in treemouth humor.
While she mounted the hose to the aft wall, the Grad carried the other end outside. He saw no sign of the nets that had covered the hull. Even the char had been burned off. He tethered himself before he jumped toward the water a few meters away. Clave came after him, also properly moored, carrying squeezegourds, followed by Jinny and Jayan.
Everyone was coming out. Mark was out of his pressure suit and tethered to Anthon. Merril, Usa, Debby…In a tangle of lines they plunged into the water and drank. The Grad hadn't let himself think of his thirst. Now he surrendered to it, submerging head and shoulders and doing his best to swallow the pond. The carm's headlamps lit the water around him.
It was playtime. Why not? He tugged on his line, pulled himself out before he drowned. The rest of the citizens were drinking, splashing, washing themselves and each other.
Was Lawri alone in the carm?
Alone with the controls of a vehicle that could hover near the pond, spraying fire on men and women who would have to choose between burning and drowning-He saw Lawri emerge with Minya and Gayving behind her. He'd been careless; they hadn't. The Grad kept an eye on her thenceforth to be sure she didn't return alone.
She splashed in the water. She and the dwarf washed each other and talked a little, in earshot of Anthon. Her motions were jerky, twitchy.
She looked wire-tense in the aftermath of reentry. His suspicions seemed silly; she was in no shape to contemplate a countermutiny. He wondered if she would have nightmares.
They took turns pumping. The technique was to shove the neck of a squeezegourd into the hose, warily, because there were three gourds in motion; squeeze; duck it under water, squeeze, wait while it filled; into the hose, squeeze.
"My arms just quit," Minya said and handed her gourd to Merril.
With her archer's muscles she had lasted longer than most. Gavving was some distance from the others, motionless in the water. He'd already speared four peculiar, supple, scaly waterbirds. She watched him and wondered how he really felt about the guest growing in her.
How did she feel? Her impregnation was part of her past. The past was dead for anyone, but stone dead for these citizens, with hundreds of thousands of klomters and the storms of Gold itself between them and their homes. She would have a child. Time was when she had given up hope of that…but how did Gavving feel?
Merril said, "Nobody's talking about Sharls Davis Kendy."
"What for?" Debby wondered. "He never bothered us before and he never will again."
"Still, it's something to have seen the Checker, isn't it? Something to tell our children. Someone that old must have learned a lot—"
"If he wasn't lying, or crazy."
"He had the facts right," the Grad said. "We did take him at his word, didn't we? Maybe he only had cassettes, like me. A dwarf Scientist, stuck out there in a carm, like we almost were. He's not all that bright, either. He swallowed Mark's story—"
"Come on, I was brilliant!" the silver man bellowed.
"You tell a fine story. Mark, why did you back me up?"
It was a breath or two before the dwarf answered. "You understand that I can't support a bloody copsik revolution."
"Okay. Why?"
"It was none of this Kendy's business. Whoever he is. Whatever he is.”
"Yeah…He did have some interesting machinery. Maybe he got stuck aboard Discipline itself, somehow. I'd have liked to see Discipline."
Lawri hadn't even tried pumping. She flexed her fingers, wondering if they would heal. She had smelled the stink of fear on herself. That at least was gone.
She said, "I wouldn't deal with Sharls Davis Kendy if he gave me Discipline. Ugly, arrogant treefeeder. He wanted Mark dead like you'd kill a turkey, because it's time. Convenient. And he ordered us around like copsiks!"
They laughed at that. Even Mark.
At the end of three hours their forearms were distilled pain. The blue indicator inside read H20: 260. The Grad asked Lawri, "Enough?"
"For what we've got in mind—"
"We wondered about going home," Debby said.
Clave snorted, but they waited for Lawri's reply. She said reluctantly,
"I'd never find London Tree again. Carther States is even smaller, and they're both on the wrong side of Gold. We'd have to accelerate west, drop in from the Smoke Ring, and let Gold pull us around. Do you want to go for Gold again?"
She smiled at their reactions. "Me neither. I'm tired. We can get to another tree and moor the carm. We'll build a pump before we need more water than that."
"We'd prefer a jungle, of course," Ilsa said.
One of the women bristled. "Nine of us and three of you! If—"
Clave said, "Hold it, Merril. Ilsa, are you sure? You can move a jungle, and that's good, right?"
Ilsa nodded cautiously. Anthon said, "That's one of the things we like about jungle life."
"But you can only do it every twenty years or so. We can moor the carrier…carm to the middle of an integral tree and move it when and where we like."