Shadows in Flight, enhanced edition (6 page)

"They don't need much fuel," said Bean. "It's a generation ship, so they don't have to accelerate much. Very slow burn until they reach cruising speed, and then nothing until deceleration."

"No way to guess how much fuel they have left. This planet might be their last hope, or just a casual visit to see if it might do. The machinery I looked at was aging but it works fine."

"Aging like a thousand years?" asked Bean.

"No. More like a hundred years. I think everything's been replaced again and again during the voyage. Plenty of indications that there's been a lot of servicing over the years. But none recently."

"Good work, all of you," said Bean. "I know there's a lot more in your reports, and I've scanned your data as you collected it. I think we have all the useful information we're going to get from the outside, and from that lump of rab that Sergeant brought back."

"Rab," said Sergeant, giggling a little. "Rat-crab."

"Half a rabbit," said Carlotta.

"'Rab' it is," said Ender. "Until they tell us what they call themselves."

"Now, when you go inside," said Bean, "you have to remember that Formic-based life-forms probably all have some degree of mental communication. Even if it's just a sharing of impulses and desires and warnings, they can tell each other what they need to know. So if any of the rabs notices you, they all know you're there. They might be smart enough to set ambushes. You have to be alert. And if it gets dangerous, get out. You are not replaceable. Do you understand me?"

Sergeant nodded, Carlotta gulped, and Ender looked bored.

"Ender," said Bean, "it looks to me as if you think you're not going in with the others."

That woke him up. "Me?"

"Three," said Bean. "I'd go myself, but you know my limitations."

"But I'm the biology guy," said Ender.

"Precisely why you need to go," said Bean. "Three for defense is the minimum anyway, but if you're there, you can learn things on the spot instead of waiting for them to bring things back for you to study."

"But I'm -- I'm not trained for --"

Sergeant looked at him with contempt. "You think you're above getting your hands dirty."

"I was up to my elbows in rat-crab blood," said Ender.

"He didn't mean literally 'dirty,'" said Carlotta. "You think we're expendable and you're the irreplaceable one."

"Nobody's expendable," said Ender. "I just won't be much help."

"You beat
me
," said Sergeant dryly. "Don't pretend you're helpless."

"He's scared," said Bean. "That's all."

"I'm not a coward," said Ender coldly.

"We're all scared," said Carlotta.

"Terrified," said Sergeant. "When those rab bastards came at me I pooped my pressure suit. Nobody in his right mind
isn't
scared going into unknown territory facing fast-moving enemies and more potential foes that you don't even know about."

"So why are we doing it?" asked Ender. "The ship is dead, it's not going to follow our trail back to Earth. The human race isn't in danger. Let's just make our report and move on."

The others didn't even bother to answer such a ridiculous suggestion.

"I think we're ready, Father," said Cincinnatus.

The Giant's voice came over the cabin speakers. "Attach yourself to a wall and strap in. I don't want to have to worry about you bouncing around in there while I'm maneuvering."

"So you're planning to show off what a hotshot pilot you are?" asked Ender. Cincinnatus made sure that they were all leaning against the wall of the cabin as the walls extended grips to hold them firmly. The lander was designed to carry cargo -- there were no seats. The walls were designed to restrain whatever was placed up against them, whether people or cargo.

"Eh," said the Giant. "It's been a while since I had a chance to fly a sweet machine like the Hound."

After the experience of bumping around in the Puppy, Cincinnatus was duly impressed with the Giant's piloting skills. The Hound detached and puffed free of the
Herodotus
, and then suddenly it was moving forward. There were no lurches, no abrupt changes of direction. One smooth parabola, a marvel of efficiency, and they were positioned over the still-open airlock of the ark.

From the belly of the Hound, a self-shaping tube extended and created a seal against the surface of the ark, completely surrounding the airlock door. The children watched on a holodisplay at the front of the cabin. They felt the sudden gust as air from the Hound puffed into the tube and the open airlock.

"We're connected," said the Giant. "When you get the inner airlock door open, command passes to Cincinnatus."

Carlotta dropped down the tube first and made sure the outer airlock could close behind them, in case some accident detached the tube from the ark's surface. She closed it and reopened it twice. Then she called, and Cincinnatus and Ender dropped down the tube into the airlock, carrying their shotguns, with the spray packs on their backs and the nozzles attached to their wrists.

Cincinnatus switched on his helmet's display, and after a moment's recon, the helmet computer began to outline and label all the key features of the airlock. That was the easy part -- Carlotta had already programmed in all the information from Cincinnatus's first foray. As they went farther into the ark, Carlotta would orally label whatever she saw that needed labeling, so that the helmets could create maps on the fly, and they would all see the same names for everything.

Cincinnatus located himself in front of the inner airlock door. He half expected a couple of dozen rabs to be positioned all around the door, waiting to pounce the moment it opened. That's what he would have done, if he'd been in charge of defending the ark.

The door slid open.

Nothing moved.

Cincinnatus slipped into the corridor, orienting himself to stand upright in the narrow space. To Formics, he would seem to be sideways, standing on the wall. Not that it made any difference. He tested the feel of his magnetics and murmured, "Mags five."

The others gave the same command, tuning their boots to stick even less tightly to the "floor."

When Cincinnatus came here before, he had seen rabs almost immediately. Did it mean anything that they weren't showing up yet?

The Giant's voice murmured in his ear. "I assumed that the ecotat would have days the same length as the Formic home world. If your previous entry was at Formic noon, you're now coming in at midnight."

"If they're nocturnal then this is day, same benefit," said Ender softly.

"If they're dusk feeders then this is dawn," said Cincinnatus. "And we're iced."

"I don't see any yet," said Carlotta.

They passed under two upward passages but Carlotta didn't tell them to go up. It wasn't until they came to a large opening to the left that she said, "This is one of the standpipes."

"Aren't those rocket tubes inside?" asked Cincinnatus.

"But all the controls run up between the standpipe and the hull," said Carlotta. "Let's at least take a look."

The passage was sealed off from the perimeter corridor -- an airtight seal, so that a breach in the hull would not suck air from the passages that ran the length of the ship. It opened with a lever like the one at the airlock.

Inside, there was a crescent-shaped space. The desiccated corpses of four Formic workers were discarded like broken dolls, some of their limbs broken off and randomly strewn. Cincinnatus couldn't help a momentary recoil.

"I don't think they died here," said Ender almost at once. "They were probably thrust down here by the force of deceleration as the ark approached the planet. They were already completely dried up by then -- all this breakage came recently, and they've been dead for a century."

"So they died when the Hive Queen died," said Cincinnatus.

"Presumably," said Ender. "That's what Formics do."

"The rabs didn't eat them," said Carlotta.

"Guess they can't work the levers," said Cincinnatus.

"Not smart enough to understand them," said Ender. "They're strong and dextrous enough."

The whole length of this standpipe had apparently been sealed off from the rabs. They ran into no more corpses, and no hostiles, either. But when they came out of the standpipe passage into another perimeter corridor, it was a different story.

The air was filled with debris, floating like dustmotes in a beam of light. It took a moment to determine that they were body parts. The helmet's heat sensor showed Cincinnatus that there might be living creatures beyond the curve of the corridor in both directions, but none within line of sight.

Ender came through and began picking pieces out of the air to examine them.

"Bits of rab bodies, but also bits of other life-forms. Wings like insects. Really big ones. Lots of little skeletal bits, skin I don't recognize."

"En, stay close; Lot, can you tether him so you can tug him? Don't want any gaps opening."

He knew that Carlotta would obey, hooking a three-meter cable from herbelt to Ender's. He had no time to check, anyway, because rabs now came hurtling through the debris, rebounding from wall to floor to ceiling, scattering a hailstorm of bones and shells and wings and skin bits as they came. It was like intertwining tornadoes coming up the corridor.