A Planned Improvisation (15 page)

“If this isn’t an emergency,” Park responded tightly, “someone rewrote the dictionary while I wasn’t looking. Get on it as soon as we land.”

Arn was not as anxious to send
Phoenix Child
off again as Park and Iris had hoped, however. “What happened to the mandatory two-day turn-around time?” he almost demanded of Park.

The meeting had started out calmly enough with Park and Iris meeting Arn in the apartment he shared with Patty Zinco. Had it not been for the fact that most of the colony had taken refuge in the large subterranean and stasis shielded base, it might have just been a normal evening over dinner. As it was, the place was more crowded and noisy than it had been just after the colonists had come out of stasis. Part of Park’s mind wondered about that, but then realized that not all the colonists had been awakened by the power failure that had set him free. Arn had only wakened the colonists he felt he needed to get started with. The others had been brought out a few at a time.

“Think of it as more of a guideline,” Park suggested. “In an emergency, such as this, we can lift as soon as the tanks are refueled and in this case we have enough of the rocket fuel, all we need to top off are the jet tanks.”

“I need you here, Park,” Arn told him stubbornly.

“You need me more in Questo,” Park maintained. “We took a big hit here, sure, but from what we could see, Questo is in ruins. What’s worse is that from what you tell me, no one has gone to their aid yet.”

“It’s a Mer city,” Patty cut in. “Let the other Mer cities help them.”

“It is also our shipyard,” Iris argued, “and our people are there.”

“The other Mer cities are having enough trouble taking care of the ones that are nearest to them,” Arn admitted. “I’ve spoken to Terius. He has several broken bones and burns down his right side. Minor burns, fortunately, but he makes it sound like he got off lucky. Questo is isolated and no one is able to get there right away.”

“But we have injured people right here,” Patty maintained.

“And fortunately we have a hospital for them,” Iris shot back, “but they weren’t that lucky in Questo. So far as we could see, even their radio antenna was destroyed in the attack. They are entirely out of contact with the rest of the world. We have to send a mission there.”

“All right, you’ve convinced me,” Arn admitted. “Park, you should take our jets there, I think. It’s safer than lifting off in
Phoenix Child
again so soon.”

“Arn, those jets don’t have the range to make it there in a straight flight,” Park pointed out, “It will have to be one of the space ships. Ronnie is already prepping the
Child.
I’ll take her on a quick sub-orbital hop.”

“All right,” Arn nodded. Park and Iris got to their feet, but Arn stopped them. “Do you think we need a second shipyard? Seems to me, we’ve been keeping all our eggs in one basket. Before this happened, we had twenty-four ships between us and the Mer. Now there are only eight left undamaged. Three are the ones you brought back and two are on Luna. I think we can repair another three or four, but we are going to need a place to do it.”

“A second shipyard might stretch our engineers,” Park considered, “but I think it’s a good idea. Did you want to set aside an area for that here?”

“That was my idea,” Arn admitted. “I think we should keep this one hush-hush, though. We show our visitors around Questo freely, and that may be why those ships chose the place as a primary target.”

“They came here too,” Park pointed out.

“This town is more defensible,” Arn maintained. “Questo has almost nothing in the way of armaments.”

“That’s something else we’re going to have to change,” Park told him, “but yes, I’m all for a secret shipyard here. I’m not sure how you plan to keep it a secret, unless…”

“What?” Arn asked.

“The old storage levels below the base,” Park told him.

“We’re housing people there now,” Patty informed him.

“They won’t be there forever,” Park replied, “and the ground will help mask heat signatures from whatever we put down there. Well, right now, I need a change of clothes and a shower. Do I still have a house or was that one of the casualties?”

“You’re house is fine,” Arn shrugged. “The city was attacked, but your place isn’t near anyone else. It ought to be fine. I’m not sure if you have power out there, but you ought to.”

“A minor miracle,” Park admitted a short time later and he and Iris approached their home. Arn was right, the house had been left untouched and the lights were on, Marisea having arrived before them. To their surprise Sartena and several of her embassy staff were taking refuge there as well.

“I invited them,” Marisea admitted.

“The embassy is hardly livable at the moment,” Sartena admitted. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Iris responded instantly. “We’re going to be leaving in a few hours.”

“We’re going to Questo, right?” Marisea asked, holding Cousin in her arms.

“Maybe you ought to stay here,” Park considered. “We need someone to hold down the fort here, so to speak.”

“Sartena can do that,” Marisea argued, “and you’re going to need all hands to help out in Questo.”

“It won’t be pretty,” Iris warned her, “and I don’t think we should take Cousin with us. She’s more your pet than anyone else’s.”

“Sartena can take care of her,” Marisea pointed out. She turned to the orange woman, “You will, won’t you?”

“I’m willing,” Sartena smiled, “but you know the poor dear pines for you whenever you’re gone more than an hour.”

“I know,” Marisea admitted. “I had to take her to classes more often than any of my teachers liked.”

“Back when I was in school, I’m fairly certain that wouldn’t have been allowed,” Park commented.

“I doubt I could have gotten away with it on the main University campus,” Marisea laughed, “but things are more relaxed here in Van Winkle and Cousin usually stayed asleep on my lap. Oh, all right, I’ll stay in Van Winkle Town and help out here.”

“Thank you,” Park told her. “Report to Colonel Theoday in the morning. It sounds like he could use a good communications officer, and you can work out of my office.”

“I prefer my own,” Marisea laughed. “And it’s right next door to yours anyway.”

“I suppose that is what I meant. Keep in contact with us via the
Phoenix Child
until we get a new antenna up in Questo,” Park ordered.

“Aye aye, sir,” Marisea chuckled.

“Sartena,” Park turned to her, “Before we leave, I think Ronnie Sheetz would like a word with you about the star drive.”

“I should have asked,” Sartena admitted apologetically. “How did the test go?”

“It’s works well enough,” Park admitted, “but everything went a bit crazy when it did.” He went on to explain about the sensation of time and the color shifts.”

“Only three or four seconds?” Sartena asked. “That’s impressive. It generally lasts several subjective hours in any ship I’ve served in. Never had the color shift thing- everything just goes a little gray, but that might be related. Frankly, I’d put up with the colors for the faster transit time.”

“I thought transit was supposed to be instantaneous,” Park remarked.

“It is,” Sartena replied, “to anyone in this universe, that is. For you there is always some subjective time in Other Space. I’m told the math demonstrates that fairly clearly, but it is way beyond my understanding. A few seconds? Really?”

“Maybe it’s just because we weren’t going all that far,” Park suggested.

“Distance supposedly doesn’t make a difference,” Sartena replied, “or so I was taught. It certainly did not seem to matter whether a ship was hopping one parsec or one hundred. Have Ms. Sheetz give me a call and I’ll tell her so. Too bad all my books on the subject were on
Watcher
. Now that you’ve built a drive of your own I think I could have given them to you legally.”

“She’ll probably be happy just to know she didn’t do anything wrong,” Park replied.

“More like, she should be warned for when Alliance engineers demand to know what she did differently and why,” Sartena chuckled.

Phoenix Child
arrived at Quetso at dawn a few hours later. “Maybe we should consider building VTOL space craft,” Park suggested to Ronnie along the way.

“That’s more expensive and less efficient,” Ronnie shook her head. “It burns massive amounts of fuel going up and coming down. You need that sort of thing when exploring, of course. You can’t expect to find a properly built landing strip on an uninhabited world so maybe I’ll look in to that one of these days, but just now it is not something we need.”

“That depends on the condition of the runway at Questo,” Park pointed out.

“It looked fine from space,” she told him.

The low light angle at dawn revealed some runway damage nearest to the Questo port buildings, but Park decided he had enough space to land on. “We’ll have to so some repairs to that strip to take off again, but this crate can stop short. Garnor,” he asked the Mer at the communications station, “Are you sure there’s no answer from there?”

“Not so much as a squeak, skipper,” Garnor Theens admitted. “We are going to have to land without clearance.”

“I hate that,” Park muttered to himself, “but I suppose it can’t be helped. Let’s pass overhead there one more time. Tina, keep an eye on the useable part of the runway on the next pass. We don’t have a lot of flexibility on the actual landing. Okay, folks, let’s do this.”

On their first pass, they spotted two Mer males near the wreckage of a spacecraft. However as
Phoenix Child
approached, they ducked out of sight into that craft as quickly as they could so there was no one moving around the field at all. Tina guided the
Child
in for a landing, stopping her about thirty yards from the vehicle the two Mer had taken refuge in. “They ought to recognize us,” Park commented as they prepared to leave the ship.

“Unless those two didn’t work here,” Iris pointed out.

“Scavengers?” Park asked. “I doubt that. This place is too far from the other Mer cities and if they were out for the easy pickings there are places closer to home that were attacked, but maybe we should be armed, just in case I’m wrong.”

“We only have a few hand weapons in the locker,” Iris pointed out, “mostly just in case we have to go out into the wild.”

“Which may well be what we are doing today,” Park countered. “Arm up your best shots and we’ll see if the natives are still friendly.”

The precautions turned out to be unnecessary, however. By the time Park and the others opened
Phoenix Child’s
hatch, three dozen men and women, Human and Mer, had emerged from the wrecked space craft and were approaching
Phoenix Child
. While obviously non-hostile, the people looked awful. There had been a certain dirty and shocked look to the people of Van Winkle Town following the attack, but here it was worse. These people looked haunted, until one of the women burst out in a big grin, Shouted “Ronnie!” and ran to hug the other woman.

“Hey, Vel,” Ronnie murmured. “Sorry I missed all the excitement.”

“I’m not!” Velvet Blair told her. “It was terrible.”

“What happened?” Park asked automatically. “No, stupid question. What I mean is how did it happened? How did they attack and…”

“Park,” Iris stopped him warningly. “It’s too soon.”

“No,” Velvet shook her head, letting go of Ronnie finally. “I’ll tell you about it. Most of us will. It’s all we’ve been able to talk about since it happened.” She turned to the others and said, “We’ve been meaning to put up a tent here on the field. Now is as good a time as any.” A dozen men and women rushed away as Velvet turned back to Park. “We’re a little cramped on
Rescue
.”

“
Rescue
?” Park echoed.

“One of the first things we did after the attack was to rename
Liberty
here,” Velvet pointed at the ship. “I know she looks bad, but we did that intentionally. It’s just dirt and dust and some cleverly molded plastic. The stasis plating was about to be tested just as the attack began and we had over one hundred shipyard workers take refuge inside her. Talk about cramped! Would have thought it was a college fraternity stunt or something, but everyone in the vicinity got inside and the plating worked. After the attack, we made those few cosmetic enhancements in case the attackers came back. Will they, do you think?”

“Not the three who tried this time,” Ronnie replied. “One was blown up over Van Winkle and another got knocked out by a couple of out ships. The one that attacked here was last seen running for its life.”

“Too bad we didn’t get that one too,” Velvet muttered darkly. The men and women who had gone looking for a tent returned with the canvas and poles and started erecting a large dirty white pavilion that looked like it had started out life by providing weddings with shade. Velvet stopped her story for a few minutes while everyone helped get the tent up on the grassy strip next to the runway. “There,” she said at last. “Now we can sit and talk a bit.”

“I’ll organize breakfast,” one of the Mer women volunteered.

“I’ll help,” Garnore told her. At least a dozen others joined in, leaving the rest to talk under the tent.

“Before I go on,” Velvet said at last, “How did the test flight of
Independent
go?”

“Perfectly,” Park and Iris replied together.

“Other Space travel has its quirks,” Ronnie laughed.

“But, apparently Ronnie’s drive is an improvement over the standard model,” Park told them.

“Darned if I know why,” Ronnie admitted. “I was just copying what we saw on
Turnabout
and
Fairplay
, but then I must have done something different or it wouldn’t have taken three years to get a working prototype.”

“According to Sartena ours works better than most,” Iris explained to Velvet.

“Of course it does,” Velvet replied with a glance at Ronnie.

“I could lose the psychedelic lighting effects though,” Ronnie admitted.

“They only last a few seconds,” Park pointed out. “Imagine if we had to put up with them for hours.”