"Do you want me to do it?" Waela asked.
He shook his head abruptly, realizing that she too must have noted his funk. "No. I can handle it."
The procedure was direct: release the slip-tackle which linked them to the anchor cable, fire the blast bolts which freed the command gondola from the carrier, blow the tanks and ride the gondola to the surface. Once on the surface, the gondola would stabilize automatically. They could fire their radiosonde then and set their locator beacon. From there, it was a matter of waiting out the arrival of a relief LTA.
The sense of failure was large in Thomas as he began the escape procedure. They had barely started the communications routin.... and the plan had been a good one.
The kelp could've answered.
They all felt the jolt of the blast bolts. The gondola began to lift from the split carrier. Rising out of it like a pearl from an oyster, Thomas thought.
As they lifted, the kelp lights once more came into view through the open areas of the plaz walls.
Waela stared out at the winking lights. They pulsed and glowed in spasmodic bursts which sparked a memory just at the edge of awareness.
Where have I seen that before?
It was so familiar! Lights almost all green and purple winking at he....
Where? I was only down in th....
The memory returned in a rush and she spoke without thinking.
"This is just like the other time when I escaped. The kelp lights were very much like that."
"Are you sure?" Thomas asked.
"I'm sure. I can still see them there - the kelp separating and opening a way to the surface for me."
"Hylighters are born in the sea," Panille said. "Maybe they think we're a hylighter."
"It may be," Thomas said. And he thought: Is that what we were supposed to see, Ship?
There was a certain elegant sense in the idea. Colony had copied the hylighters to give the LTAs free access to Pandora's skies. Hylighters did not attack an LTA. Perhaps the kelp could be fooled in the same way. It would bear investigation. There were more important considerations of survival right now, however. Suspecting sabotage, he had to share that suspicion with his team.
"Nothing ordinary could have brought down that LTA," he said.
Panille turned from looking out at the firefly lights of the kelp.
"Sabotage," Thomas said. He produced the arguments.
"You don't really believe that!" Waela protested.
Thomas shrugged. He stared out at the descending cables of kelp. The gondola was almost into the biologically active zone near the surface.
"You don't," she insisted.
"I do."
He thought back through his conversation with Oakes. Had the man come out to inspect a sabotage device? He certainly had done nothing discernible. But there had been discrepancies in his responses - lapses.
Panille stared out through the gondola's plaz walls at the enclosing cage of kelp. Illumination was increasing rapidly now. The surface dome of light expanded and expanded as they entered sun-washed waters. Swimming creatures darted out of their path and circled close. Dazzling rays of light shot through the enclosing kelp barrier. The flickering nodules dimmed and were gone. Within a few heartbeats, the gondola broke free on the surface.
Thomas activated the surface program as the gondola began to bob and turn in the currents of the lagoon, rising and settling on a low swell. The sky overhead was cloudless but a mass of hylighters could be seen downwind.
A sea anchor popped from its external package below them, spread its funnel shape and snubbed the capsule around. The plaz-filtered light of both suns filled the gondola with brilliant reflections.
Panille exhaled a long sigh, realized he had been holding his breath to see if they really had stabilized on the surface.
Sabotage?
Waela, too, thought about Thomas' suspicions. He had to be wrong! A few remnants of the LTA bag drifted in the kelp leaves around the downwind edge of the lagoon. It was all consistent with a lightning strike.
In a cloudless sky?
Honesty would have to focus on the big discrepancy!
The hylighters, then?
Hylighters do not attack LTAs. You know that.
Thomas armed the radiosonde, punched the firing key. There was a popping sound overhead and a red glow arced over them, swerved left and dove into the sea. Boiling orange smoke lifted from the water where it had gone and was whipped toward the mass of hylighters tacking across the downwind horizon.
They all saw the kelp leaves twist and lift in agitation where the radiosonde had gone.
Thomas nodded to himself. A faulty radiosonde.
Waela freed herself from her seat restraints and reached for the release handle to the top hatch, but Panille grabbed her arm. "No! Wait."
"What?" She twisted free of him.
It embarrassed her to touch him after that scene the previous nightside. She found her skin glowing a hot and velvety purple which she was unable to control.
"He's right," Thomas said. "Touch nothing yet."
Thomas unlocked his own seat restraints, found the gondola's toolkit and removed a unipry. With the unipry, he began removing the cover to the hatch mechanism. The cover came off with a snapping sound and fell to the deck below. They all saw the odd green package nested in the controls where it would be crushed by a lever when the hatch was undogged and opened. Thomas took nippers from the toolkit and released the green package. He handled it gently.
Very amateur work, he thought, recalling the training which his Voidship crew had undergone in detecting and defusing dangerous devices. Ship did much better than this even before it was Ship. That had been good training and necessary. There had been no telling how a rogue Voidship might attack its umbilicus crew.
Did we create a rogue Voidship of more subtle powers?
The evidence of sabotage which he had seen thus far did not feel like Ship. It reeked of Oake.... or Lewis.
"What's that package?" Waela asked.
"My guess is it's a poison vapor set to start fuming when we tried to undog the hatch," Thomas said.
Handling it with caution in the bobbing gondola, Thomas set the package aside and returned his attention to the hatch controls. The system appeared to be free of other tampering. Slowly, gingerly, he undogged the hatch, folded down the screw handle and began turning it. The hatch lifted to expose the rim of gaskets and a sky unfiltered by the enclosing plaz.
When he had the hatch fully open, Thomas took the green package in one hand, climbed part way up the ladder and threw the package downwind. When it touched the water, lime-yellow smoke erupted from it, was caught by the wind and blown across the kelp-covered waves. The surface leaves writhed away from the smoke, curling and withering as he watched.
Waela clutched a stanchion for support and put one hand across her mouth.
"Who?"
"Oakes," Thomas said.
"Why?" Panille asked. He found himself more fascinated than fearful at these developments. Ship could save them if it came to that.
"He may want no more than one Ceepee alive in Colony."
"You're a Ceepee?" Panille was surprised.
"Didn't Waela tell you?" Thomas came back down the ladder.
"...." She blushed a deep purple. "It slipped my mind."
"Perhaps The Boss has his own plans for the kelp," Panille said.
Thomas pounced on this. "What do you mean?"
Panille repeated what Hali Ekel had told him about the threat to exterminate the kelp.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Waela demanded.
"I thought Hali might be mistaken an.... the opportunity to tell you did not arise."
"Everybody stay put," Thomas said, "while I see if there are any more little surprises in here."
He bent to his examination.
"You seem to know what you're looking for," Waela said.