Part 20 (1/2)
Ali's brows lifted. ”Cogently spoken! Was that an interrogative? What happened then, is Craig gave you something to sleep after you woke up from your faint. What's happening now is that your trade is going on-and this is one for the record books. Where, along the coast, and just outside. When, now. How you get there is on your own two feet to the flitter, but it had better be fast, because the scope shows a storm line that looks like the end of the world, approaching fast.”
Dane started up, his heart hammering. ”Is this it?” Confused, apocalyptic images swirled in his head.
Ali shrugged theatrically. ”Floaters think so. Gas cloud was projected to hit the magnetosphere several hours back. Seismics show a lot of little sub-1 and -2 quakes, EM is up, and the aurora looks like a nuclear explosion. We're lifting off soon's we finish the Trade, but it's even money if we're out of the atmosphere at show time, the speed this storm is moving.”
”Lifting.”
”Off. Jets firing.,Zoom. Six hours.” Ali thrust a hand skyward. ”You have three minutes. I'll be out here, counting. If you're not ready, you go just as you are.” He lounged the short steps to the cabin door, then turned to smile. ”Coffee on your console there.”
Dane realized that that was the aroma he'd been smelling, and he stopped mentally cursing the heartless-sounding engineer. Instead, he gently set the cat down and got to his feet, the threat of onrus.h.i.+ng doom mixing oddly with the excitement of the trade-and of leaving Hesprid-to infuse him with energy.
When he stepped outside his cabin, tabbing the fasteners on his clean tunic with one hand and holding his mug with the other, Ali straightened up from wall-propping. ”Two and a half minutes-not bad.”
Dane laughed. The air felt cool on his wet head, and his stomach growled. But he ignored those things as he said, ”Stotz came up with something, then?”
”Stotz and Tazcin and yours truly.” Ali flourished a hand. ”Also Jasper and Vrothin and Shoshu and whoever else was at hand. The Tath didn't have time to grow the whole things, so Stotz cobbled up some of the varitubing from Craig's medtech and figured out a way to interface it with the saltvines from the camp. What we have created, my friend, are spritzers.”
”Spritzers?” Dane almost choked on a swallow of coffee.
”Yes.” Ali led the way through the cargo hold to the outer lock, but to Dane's surprise, he walked around the waiting flitter, its fans already humming in neutral, its wings folded against its body. ”Your coat is here.” He pointed, shrugging into his own haz gear. ”Sun came up an hour ago. And the Floaters are waiting.” He poised a thumb over the lock control. ”Suit up.”
When Dane was ready, Ali motioned him forward and opened the lock. Dane stopped in the hatchway and looked out, confused. Around the s.h.i.+p towered the vast trees, their branches swaying in low gusts of wind, but the air was empty of presence.
”Look on the ground.”
And there, like greenish red warts, on the rocks and on hastily laid plasweave tarps on the muddy ground, lay the Floaters, each almost empty of air, looking as helpless as a jellyfish on the beach. Crumpled in on themselves, they were far smaller than Dane would have expected.
”They don't even need sunlight to loft now,” said Ali. ”There's so much EM.”
”I guess n.o.body needs to worry about psi-contact, then.”
”Not now. But after you faded, Jasper and Rip and I did our best to try to show them what their touch did to us. We couldn't hold the bond long, but they seem to have picked it up. At any rate, at least they have eyes, and can see: they un-derstood that only the beings who thrust their arms in the air should be touched.”
Dane leaned against the hatchway, sighing with relief. ”I don't know if I can take any more of this psi-link work.”
”You won't have to,” Ali said with a strange smile. A triumphant smile. ”We're out of here.”
Dane eyed the engineer. ”And? You can't be gloating about that.”
Ali lifted one expressive brow as he turned away from the lock and sauntered back to the flitter. ”I learned yesterday in the process of opening the door how it could be closed,” he said as they strapped themselves in.
”Door.” Then Dane got it: Ali had somehow learned how to mentally shut the others out. Could Dane do it as well? He realized he didn't want to try. Though physically he was as well as he could expect to be, he felt mentally fatigued. He did not want to experiment any more with psi powers, at least not now.
And in a way it didn't really matter. If the others could shut him out, then he didn't have to worry about whether or not his own thoughts disturbed them. Privacy was extremely important to Ali; now that he had gained it, he might even be willing to work further on the bond.
Someday.
If they managed to get off Hesprid IV.
And past the pirates.
Moments later the flitter leapt from the s.h.i.+p and bolted up at a steep angle. Dane gasped as the trees fell away beneath them, revealing the sky in its entirety. Eastward, above a distant line of darkness the sun lofted, and even with his unprotected eyes Dane could see the sunspots marring the glaring disk. Overhead small clouds in serried ranks marched toward the west; above and between them the sky flickered, pearles-cent, like lightning reflected in an oyster sh.e.l.l.
”The aurora,” Dane said, unable to keep momentary disbelief out of his voice. ”In daylight.”
Right,” said Ali. ”You don't even want to know what the instruments are saying about the amount of energy building up in the ionosphere. The whole planetary electrical field is beginning to ring like a bell.”
”Don't tell me,” said Dane, danger signals singing along his nerves. ”We're at one of the nodes?”
Ali nodded grimly. ”Rip says if the amplitude keeps growing on its present curve, this spot is going to be the center of a short circuit the likes of which we can't even imagine.”
”The trees,” Dane said, remembering. ”They'll burn-”
”And reseed themselves,” Ali finished, ramming the controls. ”Frank Mura is calling them the Phoenix Trees, from some kind of dragon in his ancestors' mythology.”
As he spoke he caused the flitter to dive down over the cliffs, and they skimmed along the coast, buffeted by gusts of wind. Peering again at the far horizon, Dane thought he saw vague flickers of light sheeting across the darkness, warning of vast thunderstorms hidden by the planet's curve.
Ali nodded over to the right. ”Look at that.”
Dane looked away from the coming storm-and then forgot all about it.
The long, rocky coast was flat and wet-looking as the tide went out. What drew his attention was the churning of the waves as thousands of strange, spiky crablike creatures emerged from the water, each carrying in its pincers something which they then dropped onto the sand.
Four crew-Mura, Tooe, Parkku, and her mate Irrba- were sweeping back and forth along the sh.o.r.eline with bags, picking up the rocks, then hurrying up the beach and dumping their contents into makes.h.i.+ft ore-carts. Not just rocks; as Ali swooped even lower, just above the waves, Dane realized that most of those rocks were ore eggs. Something bothered him-something was not quite right about the scene. He frowned, trying to identify the source of his reaction.
”This has to be the stuff swept into the ocean by the tides and storms,” he said.
Ali nodded. ”Retrieved by these critters. Oh, but you haven't seen the big stuff yet. When the sun came up, Vrothin called us on the comlink. He was sent to scavenge what he could from the mining-launch site, and found. this.”
They lifted suddenly, veering round vast cliffs to which ancient trees clung. Ali jammed the speed forward, and the flitter vibrated in the heavy winds as it sped to the south. Then he abruptly pulled up, and Dane gazed in amazement at the sight below.
Huge loads of ore lay along the pebbly beach. As Dane watched, a mighty creature with black, rubbery hide and ma.s.sive webbed feet emerged from the water, waddling up onto the sh.o.r.e. Were these the singers-of-the-water the Floaters had hinted about?
Arms ending in tentacles dragged a load of muddy material on what looked like gigantic kelp leaves. The tentacles laced together in a kind of net around the leaf. As Ali circled around, Dane watched two creatures pull their tentacles away, shake off their leaves, depositing on the beach a huge mound of the ore eggs.
”That's got to be from quake-caused cracks in the ocean bottom,” Ali said.
As they circled again, Dane saw Gleef and Shoshu zoom their flitter down next to the piles, and begin loading the eggs into the back pods'.
”Where are they taking that?” Dane asked.
”The Queen. Soon's you see the spritzers, your job is to supervise getting all this stowed for liftoff, cargo master.”
Was that the nagging feeling that something was amiss? But that was just his job; already a part of his brain was totting up possible numbers and trying to calculate ma.s.s and storage. Then he realized the Traders would be bringing all their equipment-or as much as they could-and he whistled softly to.himself.
Ali's brows slanted. ”Thinking of storm versus weight? I thank the lords of s.p.a.ce daily that I never chose piloting for my career,” he commented breezily and pulled up with a sudden lurch. No one could call his piloting soft, Dane thought, smiling to himself as Ali added, ”Time to see our people in action.”