Resurgence (37 page)

Make that, much below freezing
yet
. It was not over. The suit record showed a continuing decrease of a few degrees an hour.

They had reached the pinnace, and Nenda slid one door open. He cursed as blown snow and snow from the roof fell on him and on the pilot's seat. "Claudius was right. We should have stayed on Pleasureworld." He waited until Hans Rebka had moved across to the passenger seat, then scrambled in after him. "If we had any sense, we'd take off now, and to hell with it. I know, I know, we can't—but Atvar H'sial would understand if we did."

He went to work at the communications console. "Hope this funny weather don't mess up signals."

"Are you sure they'll be listening?"

"You kiddin'? I've seen better, but this will do."

A grainy image of Kallik had appeared on the pinnace's central display.

"Master Nenda! And Captain Rebka also!" The Hymenopt was hopping up and down in excitement. "We had been wondering and worrying."

"Worryin' why?"

"Marglot is changing. During our first orbits, one hemisphere was warm and one was ice-coated. Now we see clouds everywhere—snow clouds, from their appearance—and there is evidence of tremendous winds blowing between the cold and warm sides."

"No need to worry about us. We're near the Hot Pole—or what used to be the Hot Pole. It's snowin' here, too."

"Just as predicted, from what Archimedes discovered."

"Archimedes? He don't have the brain to predict anythin'. Is there some way he could see what was happenin' down here, even through the cloud layer."

"Not at all. As observations of Marglot became less relevant because of clouds, J'merlia and I assigned to him a different task. We suggested that he use the aft chamber to study the planet M-2, and see what might be learned there."

"Kallik, you two were just tryin' to keep Archie out of your hair an' out of the control room. You know there's no life on M-2, never was and never will be."

"That is true. But Archimedes came back to us almost at once. He asserted that rapid and inexplicable changes were taking place on M-2. He wondered if we could tell him what was happening."

"Of course, we could not." J'merlia had crowded in next to Kallik. "Where is Atvar H'sial?"

"She's doin' fine. Get on with it."

"Of course. We had no hope of visual data better than those provided by the superior sight of Archimedes." J'merlia rolled his lemon-colored compound eyes on their short eyestalks. "But even we could remark evidence of vast changes. However, it was not until we employed other sensors that the overall situation became clear to us. When we arrived in this system, the average temperature of the gas-giant M-2 was eight hundred degrees. Now, hard to believe, it emits negligible thermal radiation. Our bolometers register a surface as cold as liquid nitrogen."

"Which sure as hell sounds like bad news for Marglot." Nenda turned to Hans Rebka. "Liquid nitrogen?"

"Seventy-seven degrees absolute. It will take a while for the surface here to go that far, because the inside of the planet must have plenty of stored heat. But long before that, you and I and everyone else on Marglot will be—what are you doing?"

Nenda had reached out to the controls and flipped a switch.

"Turnin' off all communications. You were going to say we would be dead, weren't you? If Kallik and J'merlia think that At and me will get killed, they'll go right off their heads. Leave this to me." He switched the channel back on. "J'merlia, is the
Have-It-All
ready to fly re-entry?"

"Of course. It has been perfectly prepared for that, ever since the moment of your departure."

"Good. D'you know where we are, from our suit beacons?"

"Precisely where you are."

"Then I want the
Have-It-All
down here, quick as you can do it—but fly careful."

"Certainly. It will be as you command. We will fly fast, and we will fly carefully, and we will fly with joy."

Kallik added, "Master Nenda, it will be a pleasure and a privilege to come to Marglot and see you again. We have so missed—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Nenda switched off the channel. "You can't afford to get Kallik an' J'merlia get goin' on the grovellin', or there's no stoppin' 'em."

"How long do you think it will be before the
Have-It-All
arrives here?"

"At least a few hours. I told 'em, they've gotta be careful. J'merlia's a hell of a pilot, but he knows that Atvar H'sial will pull off his legs an' use 'em as backscratchers if he damages my ship." Nenda stared out of the window, where the wind was stronger and snow was driving almost horizontally. "Gettin' a bit nasty out there. Anythin' more that needs to be said to the
Have-It-All
?"

"Will there be medical supplies for Ben Blesh?"

"Sure. An' the best robodoc that money can buy."

"Then I think that's it. I'm ready when you are."

"I'm not ready at all. But we might as well go." Nenda swung the door open, and had to shout above the sudden howl of the wind, "Back to the cone-house. Who wants to be the one gives the others the good news?"

Cold, yes. Snow, yes. With no warmth from M-2 and the sun a brilliant but far-distant ball, anyone would expect those. But who could have predicted such a wind? Certainly not Louis Nenda.

On the leeward side of the cone-house the blast shrieked and howled around him. Despite conditions it could never before have experienced, the cone-house was standing up well. The great leaves ripped off one by one, but the central trunk held steady. That was just as well, because if the cone-house collapsed it would fall on Louis.

The snow was now almost waist-deep. He dug and tunneled and carved himself a kind of bunker in it, not much protection but better than nothing; and better by far to be here than sitting listening to the brainless talk within the cone-house. Everyone except Hans Rebka and the silent Atvar H'sial talked and acted as though the game was over and they were all safe from danger. The
Have-It-All
would land, they would board it, and they would fly home to the Orion Arm using the same set of Bose nodes as Nenda had used to arrive here. They were idiots, all of them.

Nenda looked at his suit monitor. Twenty below, and dropping. He had confided the truth to Hans Rebka.

"No point in tellin' everybody yet, but the
Have-It-All
is a
space
ship. Sure, it can fly atmospheric, an' in any reasonable conditions it can take off to anywhere. But I'm not sure we'll see reasonable conditions. With ice loading all over the hull and drive efficiency down to maybe thirty percent, the mass that can be hoisted to orbit will be way down."

"What about the Bose drive?"

"Unaffected. But you can't use the Bose drive unless you're at a Bose node. It'd be a miracle if there was one on the surface of Marglot. Even if there is, we got no idea where it might be."

"So what's your suggestion."

"I don't have one. I'm goin' outside. If conditions are too bad, the
Have-It-All
may not be able to land at all."

And how bad was too bad? Nenda again glanced at his suit monitor. Down to twenty-five below. Where the devil was the
Have-It-All
? Louis wasn't sure which worried him more: the idea that it was too windy to permit a landing, or the idea that J'merlia would attempt it no matter what and smash the ship to pieces.

He knew what would happen, of course. J'merlia, with Kallik's enthusiastic support, would try for the landing no matter how impossible.

He felt a sudden weight on his legs, and thought for a moment that part of the cone-house must have collapsed. He turned. It was Sinara Bellstock, wiping the snow from her faceplate and peering in through Louis's.

"I was worried about you." She snuggled down beside him, half demolishing the shelter that had cost him a great deal of trouble to make. "Captain Rebka said that you had gone outside. You've been carrying a tremendous load ever since we left the
Pride of Orion
. And Torran Veck told a story from pre-space times, about a man who went out into the snow to die so that others of his party might be saved. I thought you might have—I was afraid you might have—but I should have known, you are too brave for that."

It took Louis a moment to catch on. Who in his right mind would wander off outside, to die in the cold? Louis had heard about cases like that, and decided that in the old days there were even more lunatics around than there were today. Sinara, of course, was looking for a hero. Didn't she know that you were a real hero if you helped people to survive—especially yourself?

"I didn't come out here to die." Even with his helmet in contact with hers, he had to shout to be heard above the wind. "I have no intention of dying. I'm looking for the
Have-It-All
and wondering where the hell it's got to. They ought to have been here hours ago."

"What does it look like? I mean, its lights. I know we won't be able to make out its shape in these conditions."

She was right about that. Louis could see maybe forty meters. Everything beyond was obscured by falling snow, changed from its earlier gentle flakes to a torrent of hard-driven ice needles.

"Maybe a searchlight, though that isn't necessary. J'merlia will be landing using instruments only. The ship will be flying in atmospheric mode with wings deployed. There should be navigation lights, one steady red, two flashing red."

"You mean like that?" Sinara immediately pointed off to the left, in the direction of the pelting snow crystals.

Beginner's luck. Louis had stared that way a hundred times, scraping ice from his visor, and seen nothing.

"Exactly like that. Sinara, don't move!" She was starting to stand up. "Wait 'til they land."

He didn't like the look of the way those lights were veering and tilting. The
Have-It-All
had stabilizers, but when you came right down to it the ship was designed for space, not atmosphere. If the wind happened to be too strong, there would be problems.

The navigation lights rolled, pitched upward, straightened, and fell. Louis could not estimate the distance of that final drop.

"Come on. Now we go."

You couldn't run through waist-deep snow. Kallik or Atvar H'sial would have covered the distance in a dozen gigantic leaps. Louis floundered. Even Sinara was better at this than he was, reaching the ship twenty meters in front of him. The hatch was three meters above her head, far too high to reach. She would have to wait until someone lowered a ladder—no easy job in this wind and snow.

The hatch opened barely wide enough to admit a suited human. Louis heard a startled scream. He saw Sinara grasped by a giant tentacle and whisked inside.

Good old Archimedes. Brains weren't everything. He panted his way the final few meters and stood expectantly. He was grasped and whipped up and away like a paper doll.

Kallik and J'merlia were leaping with excitement as Archimedes set him down. But first things first.

"Damage assessment?"

"The structural damage is superficial. But—" J'merlia looked uncertainly at Sinara Bellstock.

"It's okay. You can talk in front of her. She can't learn anything the rest won't know soon enough."

"The engines to permit atmospheric flight present no problems. They are high above ground level. If there is snow and ice to be cleared from them, it will be no more than an hour's work after they have cooled down. There will also, of course, be the need to clear a runway for takeoff. The drive to return us to orbit is another matter. It sits on the underside of the ship. It must be cleared of packed snow and ice, which will be a lengthy task. That, however, is not my main concern. The efficiency of the thrustors is low until they have had a chance to warm up. In space this is no problem. Here, however, heat is constantly carried away by wind, and in such intense cold the
Have-It-All
may be unable to achieve orbit with its projected loading."

"You're talkin' big stuff, right? We may need to lighten a lot, not just dump the odd person out of the hatch and overboard."

"I fear so. Major fittings must be removed from the ship, and even then the attainment of orbit is questionable."

"Lovely." Nenda turned to Sinara. "Did you know, it took me twenty years to put all this together an' get the
Have-It-All
the way I like it?" He did not expect an answer. "Come on. You an' me have to leave."

"But we only just arrived!"

"I know. But it's gettin' colder out there, an' it's still snowin'. Before things freeze solid an' nobody can walk through it, we have to bring everybody over from the cone-house. After that, I give 'em the good news–bad news routine."

"Isn't it all bad news? You may have to strip your ship down to the bare bones, and even then you don't think it will fly out of here. What's the good news?"

"That everyone except Lara Quistner is still alive. If we work real hard an' have a bit of luck, maybe we can keep it that way."

Inside the cone-house Ben had merely been useless. On the way to the
Have-It-All
he became an out-and-out liability.

He had tried. When Nenda, backed by Julian Graves and Hans Rebka, stated that they must move to the comparative safety of the ship, Ben had closed his suit and stood up with the others. He followed Torran Veck. The outer leaves of the cone-house had frozen brittle and snapped off when they were pushed out of the way.

Torran headed straight for the ship, using the path made through the snow by Louis and Sinara. Ben intended to do the same. He had taken only half a dozen steps when the full force of the wind hit him. Without the strength to resist and unable to react quickly, he was blown sideways to lie full-length and helpless. He could not bite back a cry of pain as his rib cage twisted.

Torran turned at once. "Ben? Can you hear me?"

He spoke over the suit radio channel. Ben replied—he hoped it was calmly, "Yes. But I don't think I can move."

"Don't even try. I want you to stiffen your suit all over and make it rigid. Can you do that?"