“Ready?”
“Ready to head back down to Genizee.”
“I am. But you’re not going.”
“You wanna bet on it? I’m goin’, or you got a big fight on your hands.”
Rebka opened his mouth to protest and then changed his mind. If Nenda wanted danger, why stop him? He was a liar and self-serving crook, but he was also an extra brain and an extra pair of hands — and he was a proven survivor. “Fine. Get in, and hurry up. We’re going now.”
But the Karelian human was glancing over his shoulder to the hulking figure of Atvar H’sial, poised behind Hans Rebka at the hatch. “Uh-oh. Get set for takeoff, Captain, but before we go I gotta have a quick word with At there an’ tell her what’s what.”
“Louis Nenda.” The Cecropian’s pheromonal message was strong as he approached her, the overtones full of suspicion and possible reproach. “I can read you clearly. We are safe in space, but you propose to return to the planet Genizee. Explain your actions… or lose a partner.”
“Explain. There’s nothin’ needs explainin’,” Nenda came close to the Cecropian and crouched under her dark-red body case. “Be reasonable, At. Rebka’s goin’, you see that, whether I do or not. We know there’s all sorts of goodies down there, an’ we know he’s too dumb to take ’em even if he gets the chance. Somebody has to go with him, see what can be had.”
“Then I will go, too.”
“You wanna leave Kallik an’ Graves in charge, without two ounces of sense between ’em? Somebody has to stay here an’ keep things rollin’ smooth.”
“Then you can stay. I will go, in your place.”
“Don’t be crazy. You and Rebka can’t say one word that the other understands. I hafta go.”
“It is the human female, Darya Lang. You seek to succor her.”
“Succor! No way. I don’t know the meaning of the word. At, you’re gettin’ a real obsession about that woman.”
“One of us surely is.”
“Well, it ain’t me.” Nenda bobbed out from beneath the carapace and started into the hatch. “At, you just gotta trust me.”
The Cecropian moved slowly out of the way. “I see little choice. However, I have conditions. We have waited too long, and deviated far from our original objectives. I want a promise from you, Louis Nenda, here and now: that if I remain we will, as soon as possible after your return from Genizee, take possession of this ship for our own use. A safe path out of the Torvil Anfract is easy, according to Dulcimer — it is only the entry that is difficult and perilous. So you and I will leave the Erebus in this ship and return to Glister, where we will find your own ship, the Have-It-All. We have procrastinated long enough.”
“Hey, I miss the Have-It-All as much as you do — more. You got a deal. Soon as I get back, we go.”
“Just the two of us.”
“Who else? Sure, just the two of us. Go pack your bags. I gotta be on my way, Rebka’s all ready an’ waitin’.” He cut off pheromonal transmission to show that the conversation was over, and hurried back inside the Indulgence.
Hans Rebka was indeed waiting — but not for Louis Nenda. He was sitting at the controls and reentering an initializing sequence. His face showed total frustration. Nenda dropped into the seat next to him.
“What’s the holdup? Let’s get outa here.”
“I’d love to. If that would let me.” Rebka nodded to one of the displays. “I’m trying to open the connecting door to the outer hold. But the command set is being ignored.”
“It shows the outer door won’t cycle. That means the lock’s in use.”
“I know what it means — but that lock was empty when we came in through it.” Rebka was switching to a camera that should provide a view of the lock area. “So how could it be in use now?”
Louis Nenda did not need to attempt an answer. While they watched, the air-pump sequence had ended. The outer lock now possessed a balancing atmosphere with the inner hold, and the door between the chambers could at last slide open. Both men stared at the scene shown on the displays.
“It’s the seedship,” Nenda said. “How come it’s arrivin’ here now? Where’s it been all this time?” Before Hans Rebka could do anything to stop him Nenda ran back to the hatch, flipped it open, and within a second was free-falling through the open interlock door toward the smaller vessel.
Rebka followed at a slower pace. He could fill in a line of logic, and it made almost complete sense. He and his party had gone to Genizee on the seedship, but on their return to their landing place it was not there. They had been forced to return on the Indulgence. Darya Lang’s party had gone to Genizee on the Indulgence, but it had gone when they needed it. So they must have managed to locate the missing seedship on Genizee’s surface, and were now returning in it.
Almost complete sense. The mystery component was again J’merlia. He had vanished into a column of incandescent blue plasma on Genizee, and reappeared on the Erebus. But how had he come here, if not on the seedship?
Louis Nenda was already over at the ship, cycling the lock. As soon as it was half-open he was squeezing through. Rebka followed, surprised at his own sense of foreboding.
“Darya?” he said, as he emerged from the lock. If she was not there… But Louis Nenda was turning to him, and one glance at his face said that he did not have the news that Hans Rebka wanted to hear.
“Not Darya,” Nenda said. “Only one person on board. I hope you got an explanation, Captain, because I know I don’t. Take a peek.”
He moved to one side, so that Hans Rebka could see the seedship pilot’s seat. Lolling there, breathing but unconscious, was the angular stick-thin figure of J’merlia.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hans Rebka could find no trace of a wound on J’merlia’s body. He had watched the Lo’tfian fling himself into that roaring pillar of plasma so hot that it had instantly seared off the pursuing Kallik’s leg. Now that wiry limb was just beginning to grow back, but on J’merlia’s whole body there was no slightest trace of burn marks.
Rebka and Louis Nenda carried J’merlia back to the bridge of the Erebus. There Atvar H’sial was able to perform an untrasonic scan on the unconscious Lo’tfian’s body and confirm that his internal condition was apparently as intact as his exterior appearance. “And the brain seems to be no more damaged than the body,” the Cecropian said to Nenda. “The source of his unconsciousness remains a mystery. One suspects that it arises more from psychological than physical causes. Let me pursue that approach.”
She crouched by J’merlia and began to send powerful arousal stimuli to him in the form of pheromonal emissions. Rebka, to whom Atvar H’sial’s message was nothing but a complicated sequence of odd and pungent odors, looked on for only a minute or two before he lost patience.
“She can do that all she wants to,” he said to Louis Nenda, “but I’m not going to sit and sample the stinks. I’ve got to get down to the surface of Genizee. You come or stay, it’s all one to me.”
Nenda glared at him, but he did not hesitate. When Rebka headed back to the Indulgence, Nenda was hurrying at his side. “I’ll tell you another thing,” he said, as they prepared to soar free of the Erebus for the first phase of descent from orbit. “J’merlia may not want to wake up, but At says he feels better to her than he did the last time she saw him. She says he’s all there now.”
“What does that mean?” Rebka was aiming the scoutship for exactly the same spot on Genizee’s surface from which they had taken off, and only half his attention was on Louis Nenda. It was not just a question of navigation. At any moment he was half-expecting a saffron beam of light to spear out of the sky and carry them willy-nilly to some random place on the surface of Genizee. It had not happened so far, but they had a way to go before touchdown. He was losing height as fast as he dared.