“I’m okay,” Heim said. His entire being seemed one bruise, and blood welled from abrasions.
“Her?”
“Broken leg at the minimum.” Vadász’s fingers touched the unnatural angle between left hip and thigh of the motionless figure. “I don’t know what else. She is unconscious.”
“Her suit is intact,” Uthg-a-K’thaq said. First silly remark I’ve heard from him, trickled through Heim. If the fabric had torn, we wouldn’t worry about bones.
He shoved Vadász aside and bent over her. When the faceplate had been wiped clean, he could make out her features in the dimming light. Eyes were closed, lips half-parted, skin colorless and sweat-beaded. He was dismayed at how sunken her cheeks were. Laying an audio pickup against her speaker, he was barely able to detect breath, rapid and shallow.
He poised on his knees. To stave off the future, he asked, “Did anyone see what happened?”
“A stone moved when she put her weight on,” Vadász said. “She started to roll and half the/hillside went with her. Some recent quake must have unstabilized it. I will never know how you got down here so fast, not falling.”
“Who cares?” Heim gritted. “She’s in shock. I don’t know if that’s due to anything more than the leg fracture, she being so weakened to begin with. Could be worse injuries, like spinal. We don’t dare move her.”
“What then can we do?” the engineer asked.
Heim realized that command had passed back to him. “You two go on,” he said. “I’ll stay with her.”
“No!” Vadász exclaimed involuntarily.
Uthg-a-K’thaq spoke in some remnant of his pedantic way. “You can giwe her no aid, woth sealed in airsuits. We others may well need an ex-tra wair ow hands. A diwwicult wassage is wewore us,”
“As battered as I am, I’d hinder you more than help,” Heim said. “Besides, she can’t be left alone. Suppose there’s another rockslip, or this mudpot boils higher?”
“Cawtain, she is done already. Unconscious, she cannot take her grawanol. Without that, in shock, heart wailure comes quickly. Kindest to owen her helmet now.”
Rage and loss flew out of Heim: “Be quiet, you coldblooded bastardl You goaded Bragdon to die, on purpose. One’s enough!”
“Gwurru,” the Naqsan sobbed, and retreated from him.
The venom dissipated, leaving emptiness. “I’m sorry, C.E.,” Heim said dully. “Can’t expect you to think like a Terrestrial. You mean well. I suppose men’s instincts are less practical than yours.” Laughter shook chains in his throat. “Speaking about practicality, though, you’ve got something like an hour of light. Don’t waste it. March.”
Vadász considered him long before asking, “If she dies, what will you do?”
“Bury her and wait. I can stretch out the water in these canteens if I sit quiet, but you’ll need the laser for your own drink.”
“And you will then have nothing to, to fall back on. No, this is foolishness.”
“I’ll keep the automatic, if that makes you happier. Now get going. I’ll hoist a beer with you yet.”
Vadász surrendered. “If not on ship,” he said, “then in Valhalla. Farewell.”
Their hands clasped, pair by pair. Minstrel and engineer began to climb. A geyser spat not far off, steam blew down the wind, the two shapes were lost to sight Heim settled himself.
A chance for sleep, he thought. But that desire was gone. He checked Jocelyn’s breathing—no change—and stretched out beside her, glove upon her glove.
Resting thus, he grew clearer-headed. With neither excitement nor despair he weighed the likelihood of survival. It wasn’t great. Zero for Joss, of course, barring miracles. For the other three, about fifty-fifty. The walkers should emerge from Thundersmoke tomorrow evening, more or less. Then they had perhaps two days (allowing those, tough bodies one day without chemical crutches) in which to cross the high meadows toward Wenilwain’s castle. It was still distant, but the folk of the Hurst ranged widely. Doubtless they even crossed above Slaughter Land now and then, on their way to the plains and the sea. (Hm, yes, that’s why they leave the robots alone. A free defense. Carnivore souls for sure.) Given a break, the travelers might have been spied days ago.
Well, the break was not given. So Joss must die in this wet hell, under a sun whose light would not reach Earth for a century: Earth of the green woods where she had walked, the halls where she danced, the garden where she played her flute for him until he frightened her with babbled impossibilities. As that sun smoldered to extinction behind the fogs, Gunnar Heim pondered the riddle of his guilt toward her.
He had forced her here. But he did so because if she stayed behind she would betray his hopes for his planet. (Are you certain of that, buck? In fact, are you certain your way is the right one?) The choice would never have arisen except for the plot she had joined in. Yet that was evoked by his own earlier conspirings.
He gave up. There was no answer, and he was not one to agonize in unclarity. This much he knew: if the tune aboard the Quest had not matched those dreams he buried long ago for Connie’s sake, it had still been more dear than he deserved, and when Joss died a light would forever go out in him.
Blup-blup, said the mudpot beneath. A hot spring seethed louder. A geyser roared in thickening dusk, echoes resounded from unseen walls and water rilled among the shadow shapes of boulders. Heavy as his own flesh pressed against unyielding painful jumble, night flowed across the world.
Gloom lightened when the nearer moon rose, close to full, a shield bigger than Luna seen from Earth, iron bright and mottled with a strange heraldry. Heim dozed a while, woke, and saw it well above him. A thin glow surrounded the disc, diffusion in the upper mists. But most of the sky was open and he could make out stars. The lower fog rolled ashen through Thundersmoke gulch.
His drowsy eyes tried to identify individual suns. Could that bright one near Lochan’s ghostlike peak be Achernar? If so, curious to look from here upon his emblem of victory. I wonder if Cynbe could be watching it too. Wherever he is. Better check on Joss. He commenced pulling his stiffened frame off the rocks. What’s that? WHAT’S THAT?
The sight was a lightning bolt. For a second he could not believe. A long V trailed across the moon—Staurni, in flight home to the Hurst!
Heim soared erect. “Hey! Hallo-o-o! You up there, come down, help, help, help!”
The bawling filled his helmet, shivered his eardrums, tore his larynx; and was lost within meters of noise-troubled air. He flapped his arms, knew starkly that the blurring vapors made him invisible from so high above, saw the winged ones pass the disc and vanish into darkness. A beast yell broke from him, he cursed every god in the cosmos, drew his automatic and fired again and again at heaven.
That little bark was also nothing. And not even a glint from the muzzle. Heim lifted the useless .thing, which could only kill Joss, to hurl it into the mud.
His hand sank. The metal moonlight seemed to pierce his skull, he was instantly cold, utterly aware, tracing the road he must follow as if on a battle map.
No time to lose. Those wings beat fast. He squatted, unbuckled his air system, hauled its packboard around in front of him. The valve on the hose into his suit closed readily, but the coupling beyond resisted. And he had no pliers. He threw all his bear strength into his hands. The screw threads turned. The apparatus came free.
Now he was alone with whatever air his suit contained; the recycler depended on pressure from the reserve bottles. He cracked their valves. Terrestrial atmosphere, compressed more than Staurn’s own, streamed forth.