Resurgence (43 page)

"With what useful result?"

"Once the
Have-It-All
is moving at the right speed and in the right direction, the three of us, in our suits, leave the ship. We fly on, to rendezvous with Ben Blesh. However, as soon as we leave the ship, the
Have-It-All
uses its engines to change direction. It stays well out of the plane of danger, and heads toward M-2, a million kilometers away. When this ship gets there, it loops around
behind
M-2. That planet is huge, it will serve as a shield to protect you from free-flying debris. This ship then returns on the
other side
of what was once Marglot's equatorial plane. You will again be far enough out of that plane to be at no risk. And there you wait for us. We will fly through the danger zone in our suits, collect Ben Blesh, and bring him with us to safety."

"That sounds completely impossible."

"Some of it may be. It's possible that we will die trying to reach Ben, or die trying to get back to the
Have-It-All
. But the trajectories are quite feasible if you believe E.C. Tally and Kallik and Atvar H'sial. All three performed the calculations separately at our request, and all assured us that everything we are suggesting is well within the
Have-It-All
's capabilities. The engines are now operating at full efficiency, and given the ship's reduced mass the maneuvers that we have described are easier than ever. Louis Nenda confirms this."

Julian Graves examined one by one the faces of the three people in front of him. He saw something that had not been there on the voyage out: absolute determination.

He leaned his head back on the cold metal wall. "You know, sometimes I think that all young people are mad. And sometimes I am persuaded that the only real progress in the world comes from those who are mad."

He was slowly nodding. Sinara said, "I'm sorry, Councilor, but is that a yes or a no?"

"It is neither." Graves stepped toward the waiting trio. "You know, in my distant youth I believe that I was quite mad myself. I would like to think so. But before we discuss your suggestions further, let me ask one question. You mentioned Darya Lang, Hans Rebka, Louis Nenda, E.C. Tally, Atvar H'sial, and Kallik. Is there
anyone
on this ship, other than myself, whom you have not already consulted regarding your proposed rescue mission?"

The final five minutes seemed to stretch for ever. Sinara stood in the
Have-It-All
's one remaining useable airlock, next to Teri Dahl and Torran Veck. They were suited, waiting, ready to go—and, inevitably, there was one more briefing.

"Ideally, you would dive in perpendicular to the plane of debris." Hans Rebka was the speaker. "That would minimize your time there, and also your risk of collision with lumps of rock and solidifying magma. Unfortunately, Ben Blesh is heading out on a radial path, directly away from where Marglot used to be. That would make your trajectory at right angles to his, and if you were lucky—or unlucky—enough to run into each other, the impact would kill all of you. So Louis Nenda will fly—"

"Not me," Nenda interrupted. "J'merlia will pilot this one. He can slice things finer."

He went on, ignoring Hans Rebka's irritated look. "J'merlia will take the
Have-It-All
in on a path that's close to radial, same as Blesh's. So you'll be enterin' the debris belt at almost a grazin' angle, an' not much faster than Blesh is goin'. You'll approach him at only a few hundred meters a second. Your suits can handle that speed change easy enough. So you'll slow down, take him in tow, an' get the hell out of there. While all that goes on, the
Have-It-All
zips out an' away an' off toward M-2. 'Course, there's a disadvantage to doin' it this way. If you—"

"Got to make this quick." Hans Rebka cut him off. It occurred to Sinara that the two men were
competing
in the briefing. "Thirty seconds more and the two of us have to be out of this airlock so you can cycle it. Remember, the shallow entry angle will expose you to much more debris on the way in. On the way out, just pick the best path—"

"—an' don't worry about bein' met. J'merlia will make sure that the
Have-It-All
is there waitin' to pick you up."

"That's it, you two." Lacking an intercom, Julian Graves had to stand at the inner door of the airlock and shout. "Out of there, so we can cycle the lock. And the three of you—good luck."

Rebka and Nenda left reluctantly, nowhere near as fast as Graves would have liked. He was waving them on as the inner door closed.

As the outer door began to open with a hiss of escaping air, Teri Dahl said to Sinara, "Did you notice the way that Captain Rebka was staring at us? I didn't like it at all."

"I know what you mean. I've seen men with that look before. He had an expression on his face as though he wanted to screw us."

"That's it
exactly
! But what a time and what a place for it! In an airlock, in our suits, twenty seconds before we're ready to leave the ship. I'd heard that men from the Phemus Circle are sex-mad, but this is crazy."

"Hey, you two should worry." Torran Veck was laughing. "He was looking at
me
in exactly the same way. There was a touch of it in Louis Nenda, too, if you watched him closely. You are reading it wrong. It was lust, all right—only they didn't want to jump your bones, they want to
be
us. They want to go after Ben Blesh, too, so bad you could see it hurting. I think it's the reason for Hans Rebka's existence. If there's trouble, he wants to be in the middle of it. But we're the lucky ones. We get to go." He reached out to take Sinara's arm in his left hand and Teri's in his right. "Come on. Ten seconds to their ignition. Let's make sure we're out of here before that."

They did not wish to change their precisely calculated velocity vector, so the push to take them outside the
Have-It-All
's airlock was a gentle one. Sinara, Torran, and Teri drifted slowly away from the hull, keeping pace with it. The tiniest thrust from their suit jets could take them back into the air lock.

And then that was no longer true. The
Have-It-All
was gliding ahead, increasing speed as though it intended to plunge into the broad disk of debris. Within half a minute, Sinara could see another change. The ship was turning, thrusting itself away from the dangerous whirlpool and beginning the long drive out to and around the far-off bulk of the gas-giant M-2. She watched the pale-blue exhaust of relativistic particles until the wake of the
Have-It-All
's drive faded to nothing against the background of stars.

She, Teri, and Torran hovered in space with only each other for company. Except that they were not hovering. They were heading for the danger zone of Marglot's remains, a kilometer closer every few seconds.

Inside a ship you could feel a sense of security, no matter how threatening the situation. You were surrounded by older people, experienced people who had seen a thousand dangers and found a way to live through them. That sense of security, false as it may have been, vanished when you had no protection but your suit and were exposed to the enormous openness that made up even the smallest planetary system.

As they approached the whirlpool of matter that had once been Marglot, Sinara's feeling of discomfort increased. She steered her suit close to Torran and Teri, and noticed they were edging toward her.

"Still a long way to go." Teri's voice came over the suit radio. "Two and a half thousand kilometers to the nearest piece with a long-range radar reflectance. Seventeen thousand to Ben, according to his beacon."

That was half a day's journey, given the slow speed at which they were closing in on him. Their suits could pick up his distress beacon, but not his vital indicators. The
Have-It-All
, despite its distance, could monitor those, and Sinara had access to that information if she wanted it. She did not ask. Nor, she noticed, did Teri or Torran.

Half a day's journey, but not a second of it in which they could afford to relax. Sinara had proof of that when her suit's collision avoidance radar gave a loud beep and a great boulder rushed silently past. It appeared and disappeared so fast that her eyes scarcely had time to register its presence.

"I guess I was an optimist." If Teri felt nervous, she hid it well. "The belt of debris is wider than I thought, and our long-distance radar registers only big fragments. Some of the really huge lumps in the belt must still be colliding and fragmenting and ejecting parts of themselves. Look out! Here's another!"

This one was smaller, but Sinara saw it coming. She had time for a sudden spurt to the right, placing herself well out of harm's way.

"Seems as though Julian Graves was right." Teri had made the same sideways jump. "If we were as big and massive as the
Have-It-All
, that lump of rock wouldn't have missed."

"It wouldn't have hit you," Torran said. "It would have cleared you by at least ten meters. We don't want to go hopping around if we can avoid it. We could lose our original velocity vector."

"It wouldn't matter. We can pick up the signal from Ben's suit, and home in on that."

"Not if it cuts off, we can't."

That had unpleasant implications which Torran did not need to spell out. Ben's suit had ample power for the distress beacon. The signal would be lost only if the suit itself was damaged by impact. Ben's chances of surviving in that case were slight.

Torran said suddenly, "Something's wrong. My inertial guidance system shows me shifting away to the right."

Sinara checked her own monitor. "Not just you. All of us. It's a change of direction, but we're not heading off course. E.C. Tally predicted this, and he allowed for it in his calculations of our original vector. The most massive chunks of Marglot still have a hefty gravitational pull, and we are responding to one. Unless there are chaotic effects which Tally couldn't anticipate—"

A rattle on her suit like hard hail cut her off in mid-sentence. It took a few moments to realize that she was being bombarded with small particles. They must be low-speed, because her suit remained intact.

"Lucky this time." Teri Dahl had been hit by the same volley of space-gravel. "If that lot had been travelling twenty or thirty times as fast, we would be riddled."

"That's bound to happen as we get farther in," Torran added. "I don't know about you, but I'm recording Doppler velocity readings that are all over the place. We have material approaching us at ten kilometers a second, other stuff receding at the same speed. If we keep on as we are, we won't stay lucky. Something fast will hit us. Help me out, the two of you. Look for an object ahead that holds its distance from us—the bigger the better, but the main thing is a good match to our velocity vector."

It was a frightening ten minutes, with two more storms of low-speed gravel and pebbles, until at last Teri said, "Got one, I think. Azimuth eighteen, declination minus twelve."

Torran added, "And just about zero relative velocity. Seems perfect. Let's go take a close-up."

The fragment was several hundred meters across, a rough ellipsoid rotating slowly about its shortest axis. They could tuck in close behind it and be shielded from everything in the forward direction. There was still the danger of a hit from behind, but those fragments should be arriving at a lower relative speed.

"Not too close," Teri warned. "I'm reading a temperature of five hundred degrees. This is one hot rock."

"A piece of Marglot's deep interior, by the look of it." Torran was using his suit's light to study the surface. "See the bubbles from out-gassing into vacuum? But I think that phase is over."

"This is only a temporary hiding place," Sinara said. "Once we are close to Ben we'll have to risk open space again."

"If you can call it open space, when it's this big a mess." Teri had turned to keep watch behind them, relying on the other two to warn her if she came too close to the rock. "What I'm seeing is more violent and more random than it was. Everything from sand grains to molten planetoids, all with higher speeds. But for the moment, we take what we can get."

Sinara said to herself,
And after the moment, when we are close to Ben?
But she saw no point in starting a discussion with so few facts.

The three of them huddled as close to the shielding rock and to each other as they could get. After a silence that seemed to last forever, Torran said, "It's no good. We've been holding off, all of us, but I have to know. I'm going to call the
Have-It-All
and make sure that Ben is still alive. If he's not, we'll have to make a tough call. Do we risk dying, trying to pick up Ben's body? Or do we leave him where he is, hang in behind this lump of rock, and hope to ride it all the way out through the debris belt to safety?"

Teri said, "You know what Ben would say. The same as we were taught in survival school. Unless you propose to eat it, a dead body is worth only the cost of its chemicals. But my bet is that Ben is alive. Call the
Have-It-All
and find out—if you can. They may be out of range, or they may be screened from us."

Sinara heard the query signal in her suit. It was loud to her, but would it be strong enough to be picked up by the
Have-It-All
? The ship should be a million kilometers away, perhaps already shielded by the great bulk of M-2.

For another three minutes it seemed her worries were justified. Sinara's suit, tuned to the ship's frequency, offered nothing but static. At last she heard, faint and scratchy and barely intelligible, Hans Rebka's voice: "Ben Blesh is alive, but unconscious. He's weaker, but not much. Blood pressure sixty-five over forty, pulse forty-two. Why didn't you report in before? We've been picking up your beacons and vital signs, and that was all."

"Nothing to say. We're fine, all three. We found a rock to hide behind. It shields us."

Sinara recognized in Torran's laconic reply an echo of Hans Rebka. It was probably happening to all of the survival specialists. They were picking their heroes and imitating them. So who did Sinara herself sound like now?