Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (40 page)

It was so beautiful she laughed out loud—the blue-lavender-pearl streamers against the star-blazed night. For an instant she looked for
Calgary’
s shadow, and then checked herself and laughed again; this world had no sun, it had never known a shadow from the sky—all its light came from below, within.

Then she was in it, blinded, dependent only on her instruments.
Calgary
was barreling down, its orbital direction curving to a fall. It occurred to her that the delta wings would help now. Would they extend, and if so, would they tear off? She had an instant’s neutral memory of another life, in which a captain’s potential madness had driven him to a compulsive predeparture checkout of
Calgary
, even to the old, never-used wing, even to insisting that it be serviced to function. Strange.

She activated the extensors, pulled with all her strength on the manual backup. Gratings, groans—and the delta lurched from its slots and extended in the alien air, slowing
Calgary
into a yawing roll. She thanked fate that she had strapped in where she could reach the old flight controls. Now her hard Earth-side flight training served her well; she soon had
Calgary
on a rough downward glide. The wings vibrated violently, but stayed on, even at this wild speed.

Down, down through two hundred kilometers of brightening cloud. Until she burst abruptly out of the lowest, lightest layer, and saw—yes—a world-ocean far below. This ocean glowed. She looked up and saw the cloud ceiling lit grape-blue, krypton-green, by its reflection.

Next moment she was over land, too high to see anything but swaths of new luminous colors. Glowing orange, smoky turquoise, brilliant creams and crimsons, with rich dark-purple curves and flowings here and there; a sublime downscape, with tantalizing illusions of pattern. Above her the solid sky was lit up varicolored reflecting it, as if an immense stained-glass window were shining from below.

The ocean under her again, this time much lower. She could see the lucent pale-green V where it broke on a small island. The surface seemed very calm, save for long, smooth swells. More V’s of green-blue light came under her—an archipelago? Or—wait—was there
movement
down there? Impossible. She strained to see—and suddenly there could be no doubt. Twenty or thirty somethings were each trailing its brilliant V of wake, moving contrary to others.

Life.

Life! Whalelike mythical beasts? Or was this perhaps a warm, shallow puddle-ocean, in which great creatures, like the Earth’s Cretaceous saurians, sported? Or—she dared not think it—ships? Whatever, minutes from her death, she had found, or been found by, the first alien life known to humanity; on a dark solitary unseeable almost-sun.

She prayed aloud to no god to let her slow enough to have one sight of this marvel. To the unknown power that had helped her, she sent desperate fear-lit images of her onrushing crash, explosion, death—unless
Calgary
could be slowed enough for her to belly-land it in one piece. She had the momentary sense that the power was reluctant, perhaps tired—but desire to know more of this wonder drove her shamelessly. She pled with all her soul to slow more.

And sluggishly, but in time, response came. Once the slowing was so abrupt that her glide fell below
Calgary’
s high stall speed. She went tail down and began to drop like a stone, until she found one last unbelievable gulp of fuel to send the ship back into level flight. She tried to send in careful detail the image of her needs. They were almost unfillable—to glide
Calgary
to some sort of bare, level landing place, large enough to absorb what would be her ground momentum. If only she could, once,
see
these marvels! No matter how injured she was, she longed only to die with her eyes filled with them.

Nothing but death lay ahead, but CP was in ecstasy such as she’d never dreamed of.

Releasing the controls for an instant, she flung her arms wide. “I name thee Cold Pig’s Planet!” she said to Auln. (Auln? Whence did that come to her?) But no, she was not falling to the satellite of any sun. “I name thee Cold Pig’s Dark Star!”

Appropriate, she thought wryly, grabbing the controls, and strapping in tighter. All those weary hours of Earth-flight kept returning to her aid. Skillfully she nursed the awkward old ship over the pale fires of this shoreless sea; she was too low to see beyond the far, high horizon to where land might lie. She could only fly straight with the direction of revolution toward where she remembered the continent bulged seaward.

Unsteady breezes tossed her, sometimes bringing her so low that
Calgary
barely skimmed the crests—and once she all but nose-dived in, as she caught a flash of strange life, dark-bodied, playing in the waves. Too fast, too low,
Calgary
could not survive splashdown here. Resolutely she ignored all wonders, made herself concentrate on staying airborne, above what seemed a world on fire. The horizon was so weirdly high! This world was huge.

And then a line of brighter fire showed on the horizon ahead, seeming almost above her. Shore! But forested, she saw. Those lighted shapes were a solid wall of trees—she was hurtling toward a fatal crash. Frantically she pictured, pled for what she needed—and then saw that the forest wall was not solid, there was a great opening, an estuary slanting out. She swung
Calgary
to aim into it; she could see now that it wasn’t a wide river, but a relatively small stream edged with swamp, almost treeless. Perfect. But coming at her fast, too fast—if only there could be head wind! She was prepared for anything now, had no wonder left but only gratitude as the sudden shore wind struck and slowed her.

Into the opening they tore, over the margin that appeared barest. Then
Calgary’
s belly structures hit sticky marshland, crushed clangorously—the ship bounced and careened past flying trees—flat-spun twice, throwing CP about in her straps—and went wing up, the down wing breaking off as it plowed fountains. And finally, incredibly, all motion stopped.

CP slowly, dizzily, stared around her at the cabin. No broken walls or glass, air-pressure reading constant. The cabin seemed to be intact. Intact. She was down safe! And, apart from a bruises, herself uninjured.

Her hearing was deadened by pressure change. When her ears opened, she could hear only the clanks of cooling metal and the crackle of a small flame by the jets, which died as she watched. No hiss of escaping air. But the silence outside had the unmistakable sense of density and resonance that told her the
Calgary
was no longer in vacuum but in air.

Weak almost to fainting, CP wiped her breath from the vitrex to peer out. It was confusing—a world like a color negative, all light coming from below, with strange-hued shadows above. So beautiful. Only trees and shrubs were around her—a wilderness of trees; CP had never seen so many trees all in one place. And they stretched on and on, she knew, to the horizon. Beyond them she could just see the lighted sparkle of running river water,
free water
, presumably fresh.

A paradise—save only for the lethal radioactivity, which had her scanning dial stuck against its high edge. A paradise, but not for her.

Nevertheless, her prayers were granted. She was seeing a New World. She could touch it if she wished. A deep, extraordinary happiness she could scarcely recognize filled her. Her lips trembled with a constant smile she’d never felt before. But she could no longer keep her eyes open. She knew she had spent some hours fighting the
Calgary
down; she didn’t realize it had taken her three Earth-days.

As she lost consciousness, hanging sidewise in the straps, from somewhere outside a living creature gave a single unearthly echoing hoot, loud enough to penetrate the sealed cabin.

Her last thought was that she would probably awaken, if she did, in the bonds and cuffs of Base prison.

She woke up painfully stiff and thirsty, but with the same marvelous alien world outside the port. And the air-pressure reading had stayed constant! All essential seals were intact—a final miracle.

Calgary
had come to rest nose down on its broken wing stub; the “floor” was at a forty-degree angle. As CP unstrapped and slid down, she saw how good this was: the big port at her chair gave her the view outside right down to ground level, and so did one end of the bow window. The opposite port gave her the treetops. She paused curiously to study their strange adaptations of form to utilize light coming primarily from below. There seemed to be two general types, a pad-leaved sort, and a big tree fern, but there was extraordinary intervariation.

How much sealed air-space was left her? Gone, of course, was the whole underbody, the scouter dock, and the trailing space equipment-including the ice-rock. But she had the pilotage and observation chambers, and the door to the galley had sprung askew without causing leaks. So had the wash-and-wastes roomlet, and even the door of her own bad-memoried little cubicle—no leaks in there.

Gratefully she pulled off her heavy helmet and shook out her flaming hair. Her last days would be not only sublimely interesting but actually comfortable!

Her water supply was intact too, she had checked that when first slaking her huge thirst. She would have to conserve, but she would have quite enough for the twenty days or so of oxygen left to her. That lack would be her end, as had been foretold from the start.

Just as she settled by the window to open a food pouch, movement outside drew her eyes.
Calgary
had plowed a long open avenue through the swamp brush, and was turned so she could look right back down it to the far, high green glimmer of the sea.

Now something she had taken for vegetation moved, moved again, and became a long willowy pale animal. It was clambering down from a low fork in a tree by the “avenue,” where it had perhaps spent the night. Had it been watching
Calgary
, shocked by the crashing intrusion of the ship? Even at this distance she could see that its eyes were enormous. They were shining with reflected light, set very far apart on a thin whitish head. The head resembled that of a goat or sheep which CP had seen alive in the zoo. It was definitely watching her now. She held her breath.

As it swung down, she could see that its side-skin hung in folds, and a long-ago memory of her one picture book came back. Earth had once had “flying” squirrels and other gliding animals. Perhaps this creature was a giant form like that, and used its flaps for gliding between trees?

Down from the tree, it sat on its haunches for a moment, still watching her.
Please, don’t be frightened
, she begged it mentally, not daring even to close her mouth, which was open for a first bite of breakfast bar. The creature didn’t seem alarmed. It stretched, in a laughably human way, and dropped its short forelimbs to the ground. It had a short, stout upcurled tail.

Now CP remembered a picture that was closest of all—the kangaroo. Like the kangaroo, this animal’s rear end was higher than its shoulders on all fours, because of its long, strong hind limbs; and its neck was curved up to carry its long head level. Only its tail was much smaller and shorter than the picture she recalled.

To her delight, it began calmly to amble, or walk-hop, right toward
Calgary
. As it came closer she could see its draped pelt clearly.

It wasn’t fur.

It wasn’t bare hide or leather.

It was—yes, unmistakably—and CP’s mind seemed to explode with silent excitement—it was
fabric
.

As it came closer still, she could make out that around the neck and along the back-ridge ran a pattern of what could only be embroidery. It was set with knots and small shiny stones or shells.

She simply stared at the approaching form, unable to take in all the implications at once.

A world not only bearing life, but bearing intelligent life.

Too much, that she had stumbled on
this.

And yet—was she really so surprised? The feeling that something . . . or someone . . . was “hearing” and helping her down had been so strong. . . . Was she looking at the one who—?

Impossible. She could think no further, only stare.

The creature—no, the
person
—calmly returned her gaze, and then sat down again, upright. With delicate spatulate fingers, it unfastened the throat of its cloak—CP could clearly see its thumbs—and removed it, revealing its actual pelt, which was cream-white and short. It folded the cloak deftly into a long strip and tied it round its body, then dropped back on all fours and resumed its amble toward her.

But it did not head to her window, it detoured around
Calgary
on higher ground. As it passed, twitching one of its tall “ears” toward her, CP had a confused, faint mental impression of others—very diverse others—somewhere nearby, whom this one was going to meet. The notion vanished so quickly she decided she had made it up. Her visitor was passing out of sight from that port, into the undisturbed forest ahead of
Calgary
’s stopping place.

She clambered quickly to the side post, but the stranger was already beyond sight among the trees. Perhaps someone or something else would come from that direction? She made herself comfortable by the vitrex, and at last began to eat her bar, studying all she could see. She was over the broken wing stub now.
Calgary
had come to rest against a dry hillock, this side made a natural approach. Slowly, so as not to alarm anything, she extended the auditory pickup and tested it. It worked! A world of varied rustlings, soft tweets, a croak or grunt, filled the cabin.

After a moment’s thought, she tested the sound transmitter and extruded that too, so that her voice could be heard outside.

Presently she became aware of a periodic crackling or crashing sound coming from the woods beyond the hillock. She watched, and saw a far treetop sway violently and go down. Soon another followed, a little closer, and then yet another smaller tree jumped high and disappeared. A big herbivore, perhaps, feeding?