The Shadow of the Ship, page 4
“Least slow, you mean?” she answered with a tinny chuckle. “Yeah. And pack a standard mortar as well as rifles.”
“Gotcha.”
“And I’ll be along too,” he told her. “No saddles this time.”
“Dibs on first through.”
Rheinallt hesitated. Neither personally nor as a caravaneer did he relish any risk to Whitnadys. Still, it wasn’t an excursion, and certainly if anyone was best qualified to sit in a squeaker’s howdah and ensure the survival of creature and riders, that person was Whitnadys.
“All right,” he said.
“You sound reluctant. Worried about irreplaceable me?”
“Irrepressible you? No, actually more worried about my being on any squeaker other than the one you’re riding.” Instantly she dropped the tease. “I’ll give you Seebanone as drover. My best apprentice: she’s quite good.”
“Thanks,” he said. She had not questioned that they would not ride together.
She was silent for a few moments, leaving only the faint pressure-sigh of the speaking tube. He imagined fingers pressed lightly to her chin as she thought.
“Do you want me to give the stop order at a likely place? We’re close enough for you to suit up,” she added.
“Fine. Not too far outside, though.” A howdah trip was like wearing a suit of armor in an earthquake, inside a fortieth-floor closet.
“Right. I’ll have trail flares set out when we stop, although I’m sure no other caravan’s going to be hauling along way out here.”
“Be with you shortly. Take care, darling.”
She murmured wordlessly in return, then closed the tube. Unfortunate, Rheinallt thought, that he couldn’t simply return to where Whitnadys’ caravan had rescued Arahant and himself, marooned on the wet planet he had named Rainstone on the Green Trail. But that was not a stop Earth’s starships were likely to be making again, or obstreperous undesirables would not have been dropped there. North of Rainstone, galactically speaking, if one went far enough the Green Trail was stopped cold by the so-called Whitecloud phenomenon, a huge and effective barrier to trail travel.
Rheinallt idly tapped his pen on the edge of the desk. Outside, the huge bowl of blackness seemed even huger: the optical penalty for trying to return, no matter how briefly, to ground-side back in starspace.
The caravan moved cautiously downward, feeling its way down the gravitically inclined pseudosurface like a snake in a funnel. At the head were the chryselephantine waybeasts, plodding coarse gold with ivory flashing in the spotlights. Whitnadys would be devoting extra care to them on this downward slope, for psychological reasons. Friction on the meadow was a source of disputation among infraphysicists; at any rate there was enough for traction. The slope here was not so steep that the caravan needed to be reversed, with the squeakers pulling rearward to brake it; but the squeakers’ knowledge of the weight of caravan at their backs understandably tended to make them nervous.
Grasping the speaking tube again, with the other hand Rheinallt turned the selector dial to All Hands, then one more notch past that to All Compartments. He turned up the pneumatic booster.
“Let me have your attention, please; this is Eiverdein. Let me have your attention, please.” He hunched forward over the desk as he felt the projective urge to move closer to the unseen audience.
“We are about to halt near the bottom of the gravitational well of a planet or planetoid called Starved Rock. Most of you have noticed it on our big wall map in the corridor by the chartroom; it’s the last landmark before reaching the Ship. When we’re past Starved Rock we ought to be on the last stretch of our outward journey.
“Now, Trigotha was here before us but he didn’t pass on any souvenirs. So we’re going to stick our nose in first to check it out. I suspect his name for the place describes it well enough, so don’t expect dancers and gourmet chefs to cheer us on our way.
“The length of trail on surface is supposed to be only twenty or thirty yards. This is far too short to park the caravan without disassembling it and pulling off the trail. I’m reluctant to do that so far from home, and on a world apparently without air.
“So while a few of us crew go through breakpoint, the caravan will be halted on the meadow. I intend this to be our last stop until the near vicinity of the Ship, and this would be a good time to make a final check of your equipment. If you haven’t reproved your airsuit recently, do so.
“Remember, though, this stop will be just long enough to scout the trail through Starved Rock. Do not set up any equipment that blocks the corridors, or outside. The auxiliary tent will not be set up. If you go outside, don’t go out of sight.
“Those passengers who would like mobility training to upgrade their meadow-walking skills, report in your airsuits to Car Two, right behind the head of the caravan. And, folks—if you want to be sure of living until your vacuum training starts—even though we’re parked, walk up there inside the caravan, all right?
“Thank you.”
After replacing the speaker tube, he got his airsuit from a locker, unclipped his personal haywire from its wall stand, and pulled a powerful portable light from a bottom desk drawer. He lit the lantern—a process vastly easier while he was still in atmosphere—and suited up. Grabbing the equipment, he went forward to join the other scouts.
Once he actually was in the howdah on a squeaker moving down toward Starved Rock, he felt pleased at how much progress had been made. At least progress of journey: progress of application was yet to be seen. The secrets of the Ship might turn out to be undecipherable, or unusable; the whole expedition a wild goose chase.
He suddenly had a real longing to see again a vee of wild geese slipping past a cloud with a cold wind blowing. Grasses waving on a marsh far below, and the only sound the faintest of honks as an echo from the highest cloud. If a homeward glance could undo the exile, could lift him out of this maze of trails on abstract wing back to fleecy skies where the goose honks high—well, he would be home already.
The well here was tremendously steep as the trail wound down to the surface of the planet. Like a funnel, the upper part was broad, the equivalent of perhaps a hundred planetary diameters. Looking around he could, just barely, distinguish the shape of the well, caravan lights a sparkling string high and to the rear. Toward the bottom the glowing trail defined the funnel tip of the gravitational depths, where the other detached way-beast was a moving spot on the blue thread.
On the far side the trail came up and out again, its light thinner but not diminished by intervening distance. In between the well went down and down. The steady rhythm of the squeaker’s motion, dampened and softened while on the caravan, was ragged and jouncy in the howdah as though he were trying to breathe but only could cough.
Fortunately the waybeasts weren’t built for cavorting, for an all-feet-off-the-meadow leap upward into nothingness would be a one-way jump. We all tend to act as though we’re immortal in safety, Rheinallt thought, and avoid believing that immortality comes only through disciplining our own ongoing death.
Yet the meadow’s pure pseudosurface, with nothing above and nothing below, will make the nondisciplined into nonexisters quicker than a wink.
The long and powerfully flexible trunk of their waybeast curled around through the open struts of the howdah to slobber briefly against Rheinallt’s helmet. A few high-pitched squeaks came down the temporarily air-filled fleshy tube to resound inside the helmet. He reached his gloved hand to squeeze the golden trunk where it was narrow near the tip; after a moment it withdrew from his hand with a slither like rough leather.
He leaned forward and touched his helmet to that of the woman sitting cross-legged in front. “Seebanone, what’s this squeaker’s name?”
The mahout leaned back to ensure a solid contact, while keeping her eyes on the trail in front. “Deasy.”
“Ah, yes. Reliable. Breakout soon?”
“Transition’s coming up.” Seebanone chuckled. “Deasy’s more reliable out of harness than in, according to Whitnadys. He’s been good on the slope, but we’ll have to see how he’ll do reentering starspace and groundside simultaneously without his mates.”
She leaned forward, tapping the waybeast’s broad shoulder twice lightly with her ankus. The pace slowed slightly, maintaining the interval with Whitnadys’ leading squeaker. She straightened but did not make contact again, pointing instead to a side-mounted mirror reflecting her hands, and switched to sign language.
“Breakout very soon,” she warned in trailsign.
“Ready.”
“Slow down more.”
Rheinallt wished that he could handle a subspace breakout himself: without either the waybeast-generated aura or an Earth starship’s mind-bending mentation enhancement. Moving in and out of subspace was too strait a gate for the unaided human mind. The Earth culture’s enhancement technology which allowed people to pilot starships over the meadow required tremendous portable power. And who could reproduce the unknown, cryptic neuropaths and unobservable techniques within a massive waybestial brain?
He rechecked his safety harness, fingers passing over buckles and quick-release snaps. There had been no indications that Starved Rock had a sun, so the planet ought to be reasonably stable, cold and solid all the way through. They might break out onto the surface of some gravel pile, although trails and complex multibodies rarely made connection. Emerging into a volcano or triggering a landslide were likelier risks, although still unlikely. Still, Trigotha had had big problems on his way back, some of which might have happened here. In some situation Rheinallt had not been able to pin down, Trigotha must have blundered.
Reckoning that Whitnadys had an adequate lead, Rheinallt was about to give an affirmative to the Ready question, when Seebanone jerked in front of him, rapidly twisting her shoulders to look up their back trail toward the parked caravan.
Seebanone made the quick finger-twirl signifying a twirly, meadow-mad state of affairs. “We’re being followed,” danced her fingers. “Deasy gave a sort of signal, a body tremor, in reaction to something behind us.”
Rheinallt turned for a long look himself, straining a little against the safety harness, scanning carefully up the long slope of the back trail. At a great distance he could see the caravan; nothing else.
“Can you see anything yourself?” he asked her.
“No, but I’m sure there’s someone.”
“Someone—who?”
“A squeaker,” Seebanone amplified. “Either one’s wandered off by itself, or more people decided to come ahead of the caravan.” With her knees she nudged the way beast into greater speed forward.
“Deasy reacted to some other squeaker on the trail this side of the caravan?” He glanced back once more.
“I suppose it would have to be. I don’t think he could know about something beyond all the confusion where we parked the caravan.” She spread her hands in a gesture of uncertainty, then chopped one hand forward suddenly in the most unmistakable motion of caravaneers’ technicalese that could be expressed in trailsign: “Breakpoint! Do it?”
“Go!” he told her.
Before he could take another whole breath the squeaker lumbered through the breakpoint from the pseudosurface of the meadow to a relatively normal patch of starspace on the surface of the planet. There was a rainbow coruscation in his mind, a subjective explosion of colors as deeper levels below consciousness reoriented themselves. Solid ground with freckled starspace overhead. Good to be back, sort of.
4. Starved Rock
Whitnadys stood on groundside a yard off the trail. She was already dismounted, leaning on her rifle. Her squeaker with its drover still mounted loomed golden above her, its eyes banked down to huge green slits.
Rheinallt grabbed his haywire from clips on the inner wall of the howdah and jumped down. A slight shifting of the rough gravel under his feet reminded him that he was in vacuum nearly as hard as that upon the meadow, and quite as dangerous. He signed to Seebanone to move her waybeast off the trail, and to Whitnadys for voice contact. Unlike the neutral meadow, the rocks were cold under his boots as he walked to Whitnadys.
“Squeakers hate to leave the trail until they’re sure we’ve touched down for a stay,” Whitnadys said as soon as they made helmet contact. “I think they consider us unpredictable.”
“So do I,” he said. “We’re being followed.”
“What? From the caravan?”
“Apparently. I couldn’t see it behind us, but Deasy sensed company. We’ve a little time yet.” He looked around as he gave Whitnadys a moment to digest this.
Starved Rock was dark: a stray without a sun of its own.
The sky was brightly spangled with pinpoint stars, and compared with the meadow the lonely place was bright enough. His night vision was recovering from the transitional dazzling of the inner eye at breakthrough. A few streaks still danced and writhed on his visual field, but the distant mountains were blackly outlined by starlight on the horizon. A rugged world.
Closer to hand were jagged boulders, a giant field of them beginning a couple of hundred yards to one side of the trail and extending until he could no longer discern them from their own shadows. The basic ground was gritty sand and gravel. Not much color, outside of Whitnadys’ face and the waiting waybeasts; and in this light any color would have given up the ghost ages ago.
The two giant squeakers glowed like elongated pale boulders among the native rocks, coarse hair and shiny tusks gleaming in gold and ivory, as they ambled aimlessly alongside the trail’s thin blue glow.
He leaned again into contact with Whitnadys, noting her puzzled frown. “Could that be a runaway squeaker on the trail behind us?”
“I doubt it,” she replied aloud. “No others should have been unharnessed at all. You announced a short stop for a quick scout, and I passed that on to everybody in the beast gang. Besides, squeakers rarely panic; they’re the slow-but-sure type.”
“Nobody would have released one, then.”
“No. I was already out and aground, apparently, before you folks noticed the follower, or our squeaker would have picked it up too. I haven’t any ideas. Let’s get out of sight of the trail until we see what’s going on.”
“Right. Good you’ve got a rifle.” Rheinallt looked around at the starlit rubble. “You and I will stay just inside the edge of the jumble over there. We’ll send the squeakers farther away so if they’re spotted, whoever’s coming can assume we’re all off exploring mounted.”
As they started a fast walk toward the squeakers, though, Rheinallt stumbled. He grabbed Whitnadys’ gloved hand and kept his balance.
“Thanks,” she signed. “Almost did a nosedive.” The starlight was faint on her luminescent-painted glove fingertips. “You’re thanking me? Did you stumble too?”
She stared briefly. “Sure. Didn’t you see me trip? Or did you just grab me for old times’ sake?”
He had to grin, but said, “Forget old times. We both tripped. That was an earthquake.”
“Huh. Groundside foolishness. Short and sweet, anyway.” Her expression was sour.
“Sure, but we just got here. If the planet’s gravitically unstable, I wonder if the trail could be shifting, or the planet drifting beyond the elasticity of the trail to stay in contact.”
“Trail elasticity? I bet you just made that up. Say, why don’t you get going! I’ll look for a hidey-hole.”
Rheinallt felt an urge to wipe his face where some sweat was running under his beard; he took a few seconds to reabsorb it. Then a multitude of itches suddenly woke, under the skintight suit, and clamored for attention. Suit paranoia: his body wanted out, to go home and be safe.
“Those rocks look kind of broken up,” he signed. “Don’t get caught under anything unstable.”
“Hey, thanks for the warning.”
He waved her away and, grinning, set off at a cautious lope to tell the two mahouts the plan of action. They had managed to stroll the waybeasts many yards from trailside without getting out of sight. Fine, except he wanted them to be wary, and not come tripping back merrily until called for.
As he went, Rheinallt stole long sweeping glances at the sky, trying without much hope to recognize constellations or any unusual stellar features. Starved Rock was even farther from Earth than the planet of his initial exile, Rainstone; there was nothing he could relate to any landmark from his own neck of the woods.
In newer editions of The Meadow Trails Pilot, Ortelius had begun including night-sky star charts as seen from trailside aground on the major commercial worlds. As yet he hadn’t covered all even of the standard trade routes within the Blue Free Nation, but the fledgling charts were helping Rheinallt refine his sense of place. Along some routes the locals were so rapacious, or physical conditions so violent, that no useful observations existed.
Ortelius was farsighted enough to see the potential value of knowing the locations of worlds in starspace as well as meadow-space, and slowly was laying foundation blocks for an astronomy which someday could prove immensely useful.
Some traditional old caravaneers had complained bitterly about Ortelius’ wasting space and making their handbook thicker. Star charts in a meadow navigation manual, they said, were worse than useless; because however ornamental to armchair browsers, for hardworking caravaneers star charts were a distraction and a nuisance.
This common attitude had amused Rheinallt since the star charts had first appeared in the Pilot last year and provoked the first growls. Rheinallt himself could take some of the credit for the innovation, but then he too was a practical man with his own goals.
Reaching the two squeakers, with a few quick signs Rheinallt informed their human riders of his intentions. He heightened his oxygen flow from his backpack, and his metabolic rate to match, and began loping back toward Whitnadys.
Scanning the hard and unwinking stars from this opposite direction, Rheinallt found himself wishing that the Ship somehow could be visible from here. But if it was in starspace, floating among the stars, he would not be able to get at it.
