Rebka turned to the Hymenopt, who, even with one injured leg, was four times as fast as any human. “Kallik, when you reach the hatch, you go right in, leave it open, and ready the ship for takeoff. Don’t get into a discussion or an argument with anyone on board — we’ll have time for that later. By the time I’m there, I want us ready to lift. All right?” The Hymenopt nodded. “Then go.”
Kallik was a dark moving streak against the flat mossy surface, her legs an invisible blur. Atvar H’sial, surprisingly fast for her bulk, was not far behind. The Cecropian covered the ground in a series of long, gliding leaps that took her smoothly up to and inside the hatch. Louis Nenda was third, his stocky body capable of real speed over short distances. Rebka was catching up with him on the final forty meters, but Nenda was through the hatch a couple of yards ahead.
Rebka jumped after him, turned as his foot skidded across the threshold, and slammed the hatch closed. “All in,” he shouted. “Kallik, take us up.”
He swung around to see what was happening. It had occurred to him, in the final seconds of the dash across the moss, that there was one real possibility that he had refused to consider because it had final and fatal implications. What if the Indulgence had somehow been captured by the Zardalu, and they were waiting inside?
Breathe again. There were no signs of Zardalu — the cabin was empty except for the four new arrivals. “Kallik, bring us to a hover at three hundred meters. I want to look for Zardalu.”
But the little Hymenopt was pointing at the control display where multiple lights were flashing. “Emergency signal, Captain Rebka. Not for this ship.”
Rebka was across to the console in a couple of steps, scanning the panel. “It’s the Erebus! In synchronous orbit. Take us right up there, Kallik. Graves should have stayed outside the singularities. What sort of trouble is he in now?”
The hover command was aborted and the rapid ascent began. All eyes were on the display of the dark bulk of the Erebus, orbiting high above them. No one took any notice of the downward scope. No one saw the dwarfed image of Darya Lang, capering and screaming on the sunlit surface far below.
Chapter Twenty
Darya was learning the hard way. There was no way of knowing just how much discomfort and fatigue a person could stand, until she had no choice.
The irritating little black bugs that crawled into her eyes, nose, and ears were nothing. Limbs that cried out with fatigue were nothing. Hunger and thirst were nothing. All that mattered was the disappearance of the Indulgence, the only escape from the surface of Genizee.
As the sun rose higher she sat down on a flat stone, filled with despair that changed little by little to annoyance and then at last to rage. Someone — someone of her own party, not a Zardalu — had stolen the ship, just a couple of minutes before she and Tally were ready to board it. Now they were hopelessly stranded.
Who could have done it? And finally, with that thought, Darya’s head cleared. The answer was obvious: the survivors, whoever they were, of the first group that had flown down to the surface of Genizee. They had arrived on the seedship, but it had not been there when they wanted to leave. With that gone, they must have seen the Indulgence as their only way off the surface. But if that was so, once they realized that they had left people behind on Genizee, surely they would return. Hans Rebka would come for her. So would Louis Nenda. She was absolutely sure of it.
The problem — and it was a big one — was to be alive and free when that return took place. And one way that would certainly not work was to remain on the surface. When she peeked over the sheltering line of vegetation between her and the shore she could see the water bubbling with activity. Now and then a great blue head would break the surface. The Zardalu might not like the rocky, broken terrain where she and Tally were hiding as much as they liked the sea and shoreline, but by now they would have realized that the escaped prisoners had taken to the air ducts. It would surely not be more than another hour or two before a systematic examination of the surface vents began.
She rubbed flies from the corners of her eyes and crawled across to where E.C. Tally was sitting in front of a little bush bearing fat yellow leaves.
“E.C., we have to go back. Back into the ducts.”
“Indeed? We went to considerable trouble to remove ourselves from them.”
“The ship will come back for us” — she told herself she believed that, she had to believe it — “but we can’t survive on the surface while we wait.”
“I am inclined to disagree. May I speak?” Tally raised a bunch of the yellow leaves, each bloated at its extremity to a half-inch wrinkled sphere. “These are not good in taste to a human palate, but they will sustain life. They are high in water content, and they have some food value.”
“They might be poisonous.”
“But they are not — I already consumed a number.” A considerable number, now that Darya’s attention had been drawn to it. While she had been sitting and thinking, two or three bushes in the little depression had been denuded of foliage and berries.
“And although I am an embodied computer,” Tally went on, “and not a true human, the immune system and toxin reactions of this body are no different from yours. I have suffered no adverse effects, and I am sure you will also feel none.”
Logic told Darya that Tally could be quite wrong. He had direct control over elements of his immune system, where she did not, and the body used for his incorporation had been carefully chosen to have as few allergic reactions as possible. But while her mind was telling her that, her hands were grabbing for a branch of the bush and plucking off berries.
Tally was right. Too tart and astringent to be pleasant, but full of water. The juice trickled down her dry throat like nectar when she crunched a berry between her teeth. She did the same to a dozen more before she could force herself to stop and speak again. “I wasn’t thinking of food when I said we couldn’t stay here. I was thinking of Zardalu.”
The embodied computer did not reply, but he raised himself slowly from a sitting position, until he was able to look out toward the shore. “I see nothing. If any are close-by, they are still in the water.”
“Do you want to bet on their staying there? The air vent we came up is more than a mile from here and we don’t know of a nearer one. If the Zardalu came out of the sea farther along the shore, between us and the vent, it would be all over. We have to get back there.”
Tally was already pulling whole branches off the bushes. Darya began to do the same, eating more leaves and berries as she did so. Tally had the right idea. On the surface or under it, the two of them would still need nourishment. There might be bushes closer to the vent, but they could not take the risk. Collection had to be done now, even though it meant an added burden. She broke off branches until she had an armload. She would need the other arm free to help her over rough spots. She nodded to Tally. “Let’s go.”
The trip to the air-duct exit was surprisingly easy and quick — good light made all the difference over broken ground. And the light was more than good — it was blinding. Darya paused a few times to wipe sweat from her face and neck. Here was another reason why the surface might be intolerable. Genizee close to noon promised to be incredibly hot. She turned and went uphill, far enough to peer uneasily at the shore over the ragged line of plants. The water was calm. No towering forms of midnight blue rose to fill her with terror. Did the Zardalu keep fixed hours, for water and land living? She knew so little about them, or about this planet.
As they came close to the vent Darya noticed what she had not seen in the half-light of dawn: the whole region was covered with low bushes, similar to the ones whose branches they were carrying but with fruit of a slightly lighter shade of yellow. She broke off half-a-dozen more branches and added them to her load, popping berries into her mouth as she did so to quench her increasing thirst. These seemed a little sweeter, a little less inclined to fur her teeth and palate. Maybe the fruit was an acquired taste; or maybe these new berries were a fraction riper.