“I don’t mind underwhelming if you want a change. Born where?”
“On Earth. In Sweden.”
“What happened to your parents?”
“Mother’s still around, teaching at UNU. Father made the second descent to Blue Lantern.”
“Um, quicksand, right?” It was a classic deep-space horror story. Twenty-odd years ago, so she could have no memory of him.
She nodded. “The first team landed on what looked like a beach beside a small lake and the shuttle sank in up its wings. With the jets plugged, it would have blown up if they had tried to take off. Then it started to move toward the pond. Nobody thought badly about that—quicksand is caused by underground artesian springs, so a slow flow down to the water seemed reasonable.
“Prospector Tsukuba brought the second shuttle down. He landed on the lake itself, as instructed. The plan was that he would throw ropes to the first crew, haul them off the beach, then fish them out of the water. He was standing on the wing of his shuttle, preparing to throw the first rope, when the shuttle was dragged under, and him with it. The whole thing, pond and beach, turned out to be a feeding orifice.”
“I’ve seen the plog, what there was of it. All four people died.”
“Blue Lantern was one of the bad ones, but we may match it. Ask me tomorrow.”
“My immediate worry is getting seasick,” Seth said.
They lay in silence for a while. He was physically exhausted, and had been running on his nerves for hours. Even so, he could not sleep in this blender.
Yet he must have dozed for a few minutes, because he was suddenly aware of Meredith tugging at her sheet.
“Right, Quasimodo.” Her voice was slurred. “Pull out your rope and bells and start humping.”
“Never met anyone as romantic as you, Juliet.”
“I mean it, Stud.” This was the stim shot speaking. “May be the last chance we’ll ever have and I am hot to trot, ripe to rape, frantic to—”
“Not now! Wait until we’re safely on Golden Hind, fed and clean and comfortable. Then I’ll be at your service. All you can eat. These little piggies can go ‘Oo! Oo! Oo!’ all the way home.”
She muttered something inaudible. Her eyes stayed closed.
More light was coming in the window. Their submarine was rocking, pitching, and spinning even more violently in waves near the surface. Weeds were streaming past the glass. They looked like that ferny ground cover, so it was the shuttle that was moving at such an alarming rate, and the water wasn’t very deep.
Then thump! The stern had grounded. Crunching noises. More violent thumps, felt in every bone he possessed. The light brightened.
“That’s good,” he said. “We’re surfacing.”
No answer.
Four smaller bumps and a big one and all motion stopped.
The water level sank steadily down the glass.
Seth swallowed his heart back where it belonged. “Please remain seated with your safety web fastened until the shuttle has come to a complete stop at the terminal building.”
The cabin was resting on its belly, almost level. The door that had been in the ceiling was now at the far side of the room, easily accessible.
He waited to make sure that there were no more surprises coming but his eyelids started drooping, so he sat up. Having made sure Meredith was comfortable and not likely to choke, he rose to peer out the window. All he could see was rain and an extremely rough wall, reminiscent of a coral reef, decorated with “moss” and “barnacles”. He could guess what that was.
He might be going to survive this crazy adventure after all.
He dug through the litter to find his headband, then walked up the slant of the deck to the corridor door. And hesitated. The corridor might be full of water. There had been two dead bodies in the shuttle before it broke apart. He did not know their present whereabouts, and they would be in loathsome condition after three weeks of unrelenting heat. The door opened easily to his touch. He detected no foul stench of death.
The window on that side showed another chimney about two meters away, half hidden in driving rain. He could hear nothing except the noise of the storm, although that seemed to be slackening. If the centaurs had any sense, they were staying indoors. The corridor, like Niagara’s, was divided by airtight doors. The first one aft was warped and immovable, but there was probably nothing left beyond it anyway. If he couldn’t get out, centaurs could not get in.
Forward the corridor brought him to the starboard exit door. He decided not to try it, because if he couldn’t open it, he probably couldn’t get out at all. He would cross that bridge when he got to it.
Now the passage ended at a door that he guessed would lead to the prospectors’ quarters. Normally only Control could open bulkhead doors, but with the power off all he need do was tug on the emergency lever. Inside, he found no bodies, just a dormitory for two, a toilet, and the door to the cab. The heat was terrible, the air stale and nasty. Rummaging in cupboards, he found the most welcome sight of his life, a crate of water bottles. He gulped a quarter of a bottle without drawing breath.
His search found no bodies and ended in the cab itself. In the absence of power, the view screens had all reverted to windows, and he was able to look out at the chimney colony. There were still no centaurs in sight, but visibility was restricted by rain. Aft, past where the shuttle’s wing had been, he could glimpse a spread of flat sand, broad enough for Niagara to land on, and that was a very welcome sight.
Armed with a second water bottle, he settled into the master’s chair. The glass should not block transmission as the metal hull had.
“Prospector to Golden Hind.”
At least three voices yelled, “Seth!” simultaneously. The ship must be passing almost directly overhead, for he detected no delay.
“Meredith and I are both alive, in the forward end of the shuttle, jammed in the chimney forest.”
Jordan: “Yes, we can see it. The other half didn’t go far, but if you’d been a hundred meters farther north, you’d have gone straight past and out to sea.”
“Must be the gods’ reward for virtuous living. How’s the weather look?” He was resigned to hearing that another week ought to do it.
“It looks good for about four hours from now, but our orbit isn’t properly lined up. We can jump if it’s urgent, but there’s a big tropical high due in about eight hours. That should give you some relatively calm weather. And you must need some sleep.”
He’d believe in calm on this violent planet when he saw it. “Is my plog uploading?”
“Control says it’s all done.”
“Good. There is a problem. Meredith is unconscious. I haven’t tried to waken her, but I think she’s in coma. It’s probably a reaction to the stim shot, on top of narcosis, dehydration, and a diet of raw fish. Emotional trauma too, I expect. Dare I give her another stim shot before the shuttle lands? I can’t carry her in this gravity.”
Pause for murmured consultation…
“Seth? Jordan again. Control and Reese both say no, don’t risk it. We’ll try to concoct something safer for her and send it down with the shuttle. How close can it land?”
“The closer the better as far as I’m concerned. It seems flat enough behind the cab, but it’s raining too hard to be sure. Don’t argue with the chimneys, they’re natural formations, solid rock.”
“We won’t.”
“Come down on sand if you can. Both of us will need depressurizing, especially Meredith, and we should both be quarantined, because I had to break asepsis.”