The Avatar (37 page)

The fact leaped forth.

Lightning, synchrotron effects, a hundred separate sources were putting forth radio energy yonder. Each had its set of patterns, which the holothetes understood in the way that a ballet dancer understands how another is executing a
pas seul
. But one small element was like a flute, defiant and variable amidst the uproar of a gale at sea—

Perhaps in a decade of concentrated effort, unaided humans would have made this discovery. The holothetes realized instantly that here was nothing which unliving nature could produce: therefore, that they were overhearing the discourse of beings which were alive and intelligent.

Afloat in the common room before his crew, the planet splendid at his back, Brodersen said into a hush: “Yeah, I do believe we should go look.”

“The hazard is too great,” Joelle objected. “We’re safe in orbit. We can keep signalling.”

“Till we start starving?” Dozsa snorted. The effort to get a response had been his. “We could, you know.”

“Really?” Caitlín asked. “And why should that be? Have you not been sending on their wavelengths, and a mathematical signal they cannot mistake?”

Dozsa smiled through the weariness on his broad features. “You’ve been too busy to hear the news, no, my dear? Well, the basic problem is the sheer size of that world. And, yes, the natural background at those frequencies, the noise level. Without holothetics, we might never have strained the information-carrying fraction out. It’s a mere by-product of broadcasts. The natives, whoever they are, have no reason to listen for calls from outside, I am sure. We must use a tight beam, to get a power they cannot miss picking up and identifying. But then we touch just a very small area.” He gestured at the tawny globe. “The whole of it is
huge
. And the broadcasting sources aren’t fixed, they appear to be constantly moving around.”

“I’d like to know how that’s done,” Brodersen remarked, “or how electronics is possible there.”‘

“At any rate, I have been making the attempt on the—off chance, do you say?” Dozsa went on. “Although mainly to pass the time while others collected more planetological data. The probability of our striking a receiver which happens to be tuned to the precise right band is—” he released his handgrip for a moment to shrug the more eloquently—“about like the probability of our guessing the path around that T machine which will get us back to the Solar System.”

“Besides,” Rueda pointed out superfluously, “we’re under a time limit. Exercise will not maintain our health indefinitely in free fall. We must soon have weight. Our reaction mass is
limited, and if we go into spin mode, that’s irreversible; we’ll lie in orbit forever.”

“Therefore, either we quit here and jump through a random gate, or we make an effort to contact the natives,” Brodersen summarized. “I vote for sticking with what we’ve got till we know it’s useless.” He could give tactical orders to be obeyed on the spot, but in a loneliness like this, a captain who did not consult the strategic wishes of his followers would not long remain captain. “There is thinking, technologically sophisticated life here. And it’s a life that maybe rates high with the Others, since they didn’t put the T machine in a Lagrange position, but right in satellite orbit before God and everyman.” He paused. “The dwellers could be Others themselves.”

Silence fell, until Caitlín whispered, “Marvel on marvel, dear darling, if that be so!” Planetlight shone golden in her eyes.

“The conditions there,” Joelle protested.

“
Williwaw
should be able to meet them,” Brodersen replied. “She was tested out at Zeus—robotically, of course, because of the radiation, but still, she could take everything that hit her.” The biggest attendant of Phoebus was actually larger than Jupiter by the mass of a few Earths or Demeters. “I figure a crew can stand several hours at a crack. Sure, it’ll be hazardous, but I’ve seen worse hazards and I’m still around to lie about them.”

He got scant argument.

When it was done, Brodersen said, “Okay, next question. Who goes with me?”

Caitlín snapped her head “up,” but it was Rueda who exclaimed, “With you? What are you talking about?”

“Since it will be risky, we’ll send a minimum crew,” Brodersen told them. “Pilot, co-pilot doubling as communications officer, and—well, they’ll both be busier’n a one-armed octopus, so I figure a third as well, to be lookout and whatever else is required.”

“I!” Leino and Frieda practically shouted.

Weisenberg cleared his throat and said louder than he was wont: “Hold on, everybody. Hold on. Let’s talk sense. Which you are not doing, skipper, if you really mean it about going down yourself.”

“Huh?” Brodersen grunted. “I’m qualified for co-pilot, at least. Do you suppose I’d send men into danger I don’t go into?”

“Dan, that’s chemically pure horse shit.” In Weisenberg’s mouth the vulgarism had shock value. “The captain does not do such things. He has no right.”

“True, true,” Rueda put in. “You are too important to our survival.”

Brodersen flushed. “Oh, come on!”

“No, you come off—off that nonsense,” Weisenberg snapped. “Aye, aye, if something happened to you we’d elect a new chief and carry on. But we’d not carry on as well, would we, now? You’re no superman, Dan. You do have a talent for coordinating people’s efforts, though. Besides, you tote around a lot of knowledge about your responsibilities, the kind of knowledge that never gets written down.”

A murmur of assent answered him. He thrust his Rameses face in the direction of it. “We’ve got to be cold-bloodedly rational about this,” he said, rapid-fire. “Those who go must be competent to go, and at the same time be those whose loss wouldn’t cripple us. Besides Dan we have three who can pilot the boat, and we need two. Stef, Carlos, Frieda, right? Which two?” His hand chopped off their yeas. “Shut up. Think straight. Carlos could readily replace Stef as mate. But you could too, Frieda, with a bit of strain, and you’re the only gunner we’ve got. That’s a real specialty. I’m not saying we’ll run into a fight out here. Most likely we won’t, unless against nature; but that might require placing a ray or an explosive exactly where it’s needed. True? True.

“Very well, Stef and Carlos pilot. They can squabble between them who gets top billing.”

His glance darted back and forth. “Who’ll be the third? Certainly not either of our holothetes. Nor Martti or me—shut up, I told you, Martti! I’m the CE and he’s my assistant and backup. Without proper maintenance, and repair at need, this ship is dead. Who’s left? Su and Caitlín. Su has much better technical training. But gravity on that planet is about two and a half times Earth normal. You’re not strong, Su.” His lips creased momentarily upward. “Tough, I’d say, tougher than you have the reputation of being; but not very strong in the muscles and not too fast in the reflexes either. Caitlín—“

“Wait a flinkin’ minute!” Brodersen roared.

“No!” Leino yelled.

“Do you
mean
that?” Caitlín cried. She released her handhold, kicked off, arrowed to Weisenberg, and cast her arms about him. The impact knocked him loose and they drifted away together, gyrating, while she gave him kiss after kiss and outrage boiled around them.

G
UIDED BY HER HOLOTHETES
,
Chinook
dropped easily down to a synchronous orbit which kept her above the region her boat would seek out. That put her below the radiation belts. Indeed, the field warded off most of the particle flux that she encountered in free space.

Conveyor and cranes swung
Williwaw clear
and the daughter vessel blasted free. “O-o-oh,” Caitlín breathed, a sound like a prayer. She had watched approach on the viewscreens and been awed, but now she was out in flesh and bone before a terrible splendor.

Optical systems in the control cabin opened on one entire hemisphere and elsewhere on large sections of heaven. The planet filled almost half. When she looked its way, there was nothing else to see; amber and gold, the inward-flooding light bore every star out of vision. To the right, unutterably distant, red bands along the rim of the world deepened into purple and thence into the cosmic blackness. The sun stood yonder, a tiny coal. To left was the nearer edge of night, a dark which lived with faint sheens, remote flashes, and orange streaks that were high clouds catching dawn-glow. Between stretched the daylit face, bright zones, richer-hued bands, in a thousand shifting shades, they themselves ever changeable, streaming, undulating, forming whirlpools, tides, rivers, an endless dance, majestic and joyous.

The boat murmured and throbbed. Recondensing jet vapor made a ruddy fog-bank aft, small to see—it dissipated as fast as it formed—but soon veiling
Chinook’s
globe from sight. Weight held the farers steady in their seats. Though less than a gee, acceleration was considerable, in order to get them down shortly after local sunrise. Rueda’s exchange of information with the ship was a dry obbligato, unreal-sounding.

He ended it as if in relief. Thus far everything was satisfactory. For a while he sat quiet, like his companions. Radiance made a halo of his baldness. At last he said softly, “Mother of God, a man might die quite happy after this.”

Dozsa grinned, not too mirthfully. His accent thickened. “If you wish. Me, I have a wife and children at home. Here is the kind of experience I like to
have
had.”

Rueda looked surprised. “And still you came along?”

“What else? I agree we must go search, and I am best qualified.” Dozsa was piloting, since besides past practice, he was a martial arts enthusiast, trained into strength and speed. “Don’t get me wrong, Carlos. I am not afraid. In fact, I relish the challenge. But I will relish it more in retrospect.” He crossed himself. “Or in the afterlife, if God does not will we succeed. Our death ought to be clean and quick.”

“Aye.” Caitlín was barely audible. “A shooting star in a sky like that—sure, and there are many harder fates, there are.”

“One feels near to God on this mission, no?” Rueda said, almost as muted. “But He is not the kindly old Father the sisters told me of in school, nor the just Lord our priest called on.”

“He is those and more,” Dozsa replied. “Caitlín, you pagan, even you must be hearing Him out of your childhood.”

She shook her head. Braided, her hair was a chiaroscuro around it. “No. Perhaps they were too Catholic in Ireland for me, a part of their seeking to rebuild after the Troubles and keep the faith after the Others… and I a rebel born. I’ve no anger in me any more, though.”

Dozsa smiled. “Well, let’s not argue. We have not the energy to spare. If you don’t mind, I will include you in my prayers. Most likely I shall be thinking a few.”

Rueda looked behind him to where she sat. “What do you believe in, if I may ask?” he inquired.

“In life,” she said.

They fell silent, watching the planet draw closer, night recede across it and brightness grow. Presently a fresh set of demands for readings and confirmation of flight plan details rattled forth. Having complied, Rueda added, “That was unnecessary, my friends.”

Brodersen’s voice replaced Joelle’s. It was almost unrecognizable: “My fault. I insisted. You’re really okay?”

“Never better, my darling,” Caitlín made bold to answer, “save for not having you here. And this cabin is rather craned
for sports anyhow. Make up our bed before I come back. It needs it, you will be remembering.”

“Pegeen, please—”

“I’m sorry.” She reached toward the loudspeaker as if toward him. “You fear for me. But would I not be fearing for you, were you bound off like this? Ah, don’t be selfish, be glad for me on such a grand adventure.”

“I’m… trying….”

“No, more than an adventure. Magic they never dreamed of in Tír na nÓg. Do you know, I was thinking we’ll need a name for our planet, do we win to its people. We can scarcely pronounce theirs, whatever it be.”

Brodersen hesitated. “And?”

“I thought of Danu, the mother goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan, they who became the great Sidhe.”

“Done, by thunder!” he decreed.

Williwaw
entered perceptible atmosphere more abruptly than above Demeter, for this air was compressed hard by gravity. Her path and vectors had been computed with that in mind. She got continuous guidance from Joelle, holothetically linked to instruments whose operators Fidelio had told what to probe for. Else her mission would have been suicidal.

As was, in the first hour Dozsa used himself to limits beyond what he had been sure were his. Rueda was nearly as busy, handling communication back and forth, often helping steer. The cabin soon stank from their sweat. It filled with monstrous roars, shrieks, rumbles, whistlings. Their own weight hauled at the humans, two and a half times what their race was evolved to bear. Every finger grew heavy, an arm was a burden, necks strained to keep heads positioned, guts sagged, hearts toiled, ribs ached from breathing, mouths dried out and throats went raw.

That would not have happened on a test centrifuge or aboard a watchship under full thrust, where a person could sit or lie at ease. Danu raged. Stratospheric impact made the boat shudder, bounce about, buck like a mustang. Deeper down, at low relative speed, she encountered winds to send her tumbling. If not skillfully met, they might have torn her wings off. Designed for Earthlike worlds, she was aerodynamically poor on this one. Nor did skill alone compensate, when the whole sky was strange.
More than once, Joelle herself was taken by surprise, as some violence erupted which she had not had the data to predict. However swift her response, it must be spoken, which ate seconds. From a Betan mother ship she could have piloted directly, could virtually have been the vessel. Dozsa and Rueda, though, must cope however they were able, till they got a word to help them.

Twice they passed through storms. Blindness clamped down, until lightning turned flying cloud wracks incandescent. Thunder followed; it was like being inside a cannon. The gales racketed and snatched. Each drop through turbulence ended with spine-jarring force. Roll, pitch, and yaw flung bodies against harnesses. Once hailstones crashed against the hull, once a Noah’s rain engulfed it.