Part 16 (2/2)

Kettrick stowed it, cold against his skin. ”I thought maybe you'd want to go down with me.”

”Anywhere out of this hole. We've all had enough of sit-ting.”

”Let's go then. Chai?”

She too had been excluded from the bridge. And she too was tired of sitting.

”Go outside, John-nee?”

”Yes. And run hard, for a little while.” He walked with her down the corridor, his hand on her strong gray shoulder.

They pa.s.sed the door of Larith's cabin. Kettrick stopped. ”We'll wait for you,” Boker muttered. He and the others went on to the lifeboat lock hatch.

Kettrick tried the door. It was locked, and he called through it. ”Larith! You were a little bit wrong about Seri. Don't you want to hear?”

The latch was drawn back. The door opened. She had put on her dress and fixed her hair and put the little touches of color in her face that brought out the beauty of it more clearly. Only her eyes were huge and still and there was no light in them.

”I tried to save you,” she said. ”If you had gone to Trace, you would have lived.” She paused. ”How long, Johnny?”

”As long as we used to spend on the island,” he said, ”when we found it pleasant to make love.”

She nodded. ”I did love you, Johnny, the best I knew how. Not enough to follow you when you went away. I weighed what I would lose and what I would keep, and I stayed. I'm sorry if it wasn't good enough, but I never promised more. I always knew you might have to leave me.”

”We could still live, Larith.”

He thought there was a brief flicker deep in those dark still eyes. ”How?”

”If we find the launcher in time, we can stop the Doomstar before it grows too big.”

”I would tell you if I knew,” she said. ”I don't want to die. I would tell you this minute if I knew, but Idon't. They never said more to me than that this time the Doomstar would be the White Sun.”

This time he did not doubt her.

”I'm going down,” he said. ”Goodbye, Larith.”

She stared blankly, as though she were thinking of some-thing far off.

”Seri is safe,” he said, ”if that helps.”

”Seri? Oh.” She shook her head. ”Yes, I weighed, Johnny. I've always been good at that, very good. Only this time I lost. Everything. Because of you.”

And now at last there, was light in her eyes, deep and smoldering.

”I will hate you, Johnny, as long as I can think. And the only thing that helps is that I will know you're dying too.”

”Very true,” said Kettrick. ”Only I won't die alone.” He cupped her cheek in his hand and it was cold as alabaster. He felt an odd remote twinge of pity for all that wasted love-liness. ”But,” he said, ”you've always been alone, haven't you?”

She drew away from him, back into the cabin, and shut the door, and he went with Chai to the lifeboat bay and through the hatch, and heard it seal behind him.

23.

The pilot of the lifeboat, a grim-faced and joyless man in a vicious hurry, landed them at the place Kettrick had desig-nated and barely gave them time to scramble clear of his jets before he was away again. Kettrick did not blame him. The small personal counter he had taken from the lifeboat's supplies showed radiation still well within limits. Yet the sunlight seemed to sting and burn on his skin, and he re-membered his dreams, and was afraid.

They stood at the very knife edge of a vast desert, blind-ing white in the fierce glare. It was only about three hours after sunrise here, and already the air was parched and hot. Far off in the sand was the upside down reflection of a bitter lake, rimmed with white bands of alkali.

In the other direction, beyond the knife edge, was a deep and fertile sink many miles in breadth that wound with the windings of a river across half a continent. Beyond the sink was another knife edge and more desert, with a loft of mountains at the end of it. To the west, downstream, the sink curved out of sight around the base of a series of b.u.t.tes like ancient battles.h.i.+ps sailing in line ahead. To the east, up-stream, it curved the other way around the broken cone of a small volcano, long dead, and the land there was stained black with lava. Smoke and dust darkened much of the horizon, ”Well,” said Boker, ”and here we are, exactly where we planned to be. And how easy it was, after all.”

Hurth gave him an answer that made the air seem cool. And Glevan said, ”Our lifetimes are short enough. Let us not waste the minutes.”

They gathered up the things they had brought from the lifeboat, chiefly anything that would serve as gifts, along with sidearms, rations, capsules for purifying water...hope-ful precaution!...and the contents of Boker's bottles trans-ferred to canteens. They had also brought a minipak field radio, which Kettrick carried on his back; a slender link with the feverish activity going on far up in the sky.

They began the descent of the escarpment, along a steep path treacherous with loose rock and sliding sand, that led to the green floor of the sink something more than a thou-sand feet below. And ashe went, Kettrick thought to himself that they...all of them, below and aloft...were going to need more than mere good luck. They were going to need a miracle.

Given time, there would be no problem. Reconnaissance techniques were so good that practically nothing escaped them. Given time. But there was no time.

The cruiser and the lifeboat between them would sweep the globe from daybreak to the edge of night, covering every mile of every lat.i.tude where human life might survive, with special attention to the high probability areas. They would use every aid possible for visual sighting and instrument detection. Yet their chances of spotting the launcher were very slight.

The powerful sunlight would drown the flare of a rising missile, unless it were very close. Vast clouds of sand, vol-canic dust, and smoke made any kind of sightings difficult over large areas, and there were always the random distractions present everywhere to make things tough for the radarman. The small, ultra-high-velocity missiles would be difficult to detect unless they were ejected in a sufficiently steady stream to form a recognizable pattern, and the best guess was that they were not. Interval of delivery for the seeding warheads was estimated at slightly over an hour.

Given time, all these obstacles could be overcome. Careful scanning, endless streams of data running through the com-puters, endless comparisons, endless study of photographs...But there was no time for all this technical proficiency. They had, like savages or children, to do it the simple way.

There was one bright hope, and that was that Seri and his friends might have been sufficiently careless, sufficiently sure that they were safe, to neglect to camouflage the launcher. The glint of metal carries a long way, and on this metalless world would be an instant revelation.

Once or twice on the blistering descent Kettrick switched on the radio. The cruiser was out of his range now, away south over the bulge of the equator, but the lifeboat was still receiving her and Kettrick could hear the lifeboat. The talk was brief and negative. He switched it off quickly.

They pa.s.sed into the heavier, moister air of the sink and there began to be vines and creepers along the path. Kettrick was watching for the Krinn, but it was Chai who saw them first, or smelled them. She growled and pointed.

There were trees below, tall things with s.h.i.+ny trunks and limber branches weighed down by leaves as big as carpets, all glossy green. There was movement underneath them, in the dim aisles that ran through a sweating undergrowth of ferns and saw-toothed gra.s.ses. A second later a wooden spear stuck quivering in the middle of the path ahead of them.

Kettrick went ahead of his companions. He stood by the spear and called out, in the grunts and clicks of a speech al-most as primitive as Chai's, ”Djunn will make talk with Ghnak. He will give presents to Ghnak, and to the People of the River.”

He held up both hands, palms out, and waited. It was a long time since he had been here, and the Krinn had short memories. Ghnak might be dead and eaten long since. Or he might just be in a bad mood today and give the sign to spear them all.

He waited. And the sun appeared to race toward the zenith. The needle of his small counter had inched closer to the red. His skin p.r.i.c.kled. He yearned, childishly, for the illusory shelter of the trees.

Ghnak stepped out into the path and retrieved the spear.

”We make talk,” he said.

They followed him into the shade of the forest.

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