All the assurances he’d tossed off earlier didn’t seem so bright now. “When do you think that’s likely to happen?”
“No way to know.”
“Well, at least it’s downhill to the dome.”
“Tor,” said Hutch. “Are you okay?”
“I guess. Are you sure he’s dead? It’s hard to see out there.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“But you got Alyx?”
“She’s on board.”
He shut off his lamp and stood in the dark, clutching the ladder. The tilt seemed to have stabilized, and he thought the angle was shallow enough that he could navigate back to the dome. Which he was going to have to do shortly to replenish his air supply.
After a while, the snow stopped coming down through the hatch, and the stars reappeared. There were three bright ones, a triangle, dazzling white, fixed in the center of the hole he had cut. Despite the gee forces, their stationary position created the illusion that he was not moving, not going anywhere, and Hutch could easily come pick him up at her leisure.
“Tor, how’s your air?” Her voice was right next to him. It was whispery and somehow filled with passion, as he had imagined it should be, for him. Images of her soft skin, her lips, her crystal blue eyes, floated into his mind. Incredibly, in the vast dark interior of the chindi, going God-knew-where, he imagined her beside him, soft, pliable, reassuring.
In a way he had never known her.
His air was in fact getting low. He carried a six-hour supply in his tanks, and he’d been out a long time. But he didn’t want to leave the area of the exit hatch. Didn’t want to return to the depths of the chindi.
“No way to pick me up after we get out of the Slurpy, huh?”
“Not likely. Not as long as it’s accelerating.”
“You can’t match velocity?”
“You can’t get out of the hatch alive.”
Beyond the exit, the dark sky looked placid. Hard to believe he couldn’t go outside. He took the wrench from his vest, climbed the ladder to within a half meter of the open hatch and threw it up. It slammed against the back side of the hatch, and literally vanished outside.
“I think you have a point,” he said.
“So you’re going back to the dome?”
He looked into the darkness, down the corridor. “Yes.”
“You do have enough to make it, right? Air?”
“I have enough.” He switched his lamp back on. The dome was a long way. Toward the rear, all sort of downhill now. He eased off the ladder and took a couple of tentative steps, resisting an urge to charge forward, to take advantage of the down angle. In the light gravity it might have been possible. He was far more agile there than he would ever have been at home. But therein lay the danger.
Anyhow, he had time.
“I’ll be back for you, Tor. As soon as it goes to cruise.”
If it goes to cruise. He imagined he could hear echoes down the wide passageways, and wondered whether his best bet after he refilled his tanks was to go looking for the pilot, to get to whatever passed for a bridge on this monster, and present himself. “Hello. My name’s Vinderwahl, and I seem to have gotten stranded on your ship. Terribly sorry. Do you think you could take me back? Or maybe drop me off somewhere convenient?”
He listened to the fading conversation between Hutch and Nick, worried while Hutch fought the storm, listened to damage reports, sensors down, engine malfunction caused by overheating. He understood the futility of the search for George, of Hutch’s inability to see more than a few meters, of the swirling fury of the Slurpy. Innocent name for a blizzard of that magnitude. He heard and felt the clang when she collided with a piece of ice.
He started down Main Street, moving from one door to the next. He was grateful for the rings, which provided something he could hang on to.
Almost an hour and a quarter later he stumbled into the chamber that held the dome. It had slid to the left side of the room and lay braced against the wall.
He hurried inside, through the airlock, and was relieved to see that it still had power. Everything not bolted down had piled up against the wall, chairs, table, food supplies, recording equipment. He turned off the suit and took a deep breath. Then he switched on the lights, dimmed them, and sat down on the deck.
IT WAS HOPELESS. The winds had died and the storm collapsed, but the slurry and the snow continued to spread along the orbit the chindi had occupied. There was no sign of George. And there was really no easy way to stage a search. The sky was filled with slush. The Memphis used her sensors and scopes, but she was overwhelmed as the number of contacts went into the millions.
Nevertheless, she kept looking. Despite what she’d told Tor about her certainty that he could not have survived, she stayed with it until well past the time when his air supply would have been exhausted.
Throughout all this, Alyx sat quietly beside her, her usual ebullience subdued by events and painkillers.
“Breaking off the search,” she told Bill and Nick at last. “I’m coming home.”
Nick’s image disintegrated and re-formed and disintegrated again. Decent reception on the lander was going to have to await repairs. “I’m sorry, Hutch,” he said, after a long hesitation.
“I know. We’re all sorry.” Where had she said that before? There was, she thought, no end to stupidity. She knew that the experts back home would say the data extracted from the chindi was invaluable, that it was worth a few lives if that was what it took. She could almost hear Sylvia Virgil’s brave words, “Lost in the pursuit of science,” or some such platitude. Virgil was always brave and eloquent in the face of other people’s tragedies.
Was it worth it?
The toll kept getting higher.
No more, she promised herself. No more.
“Bill,” she said, “activate the beeper.” She was referring to the tracking signal on the chindi.
“We’ve already done that,” said Bill. “It’s loud and clear.”
Alyx touched her arm. “Are you all right, Hutch?” she asked.
She was fine.
“Are we going to get him off?”
“Yes. One way or another.”
Bill popped back on-screen. “Mogambo’s on the circuit. He wants to talk to Tor.”
“Tell him reception’s poor.”
“Hutch? Are you sure?”
“What’s the circuit time?” Round-trip time for transmission.
“About ten minutes.”
“Okay. Put him through to me.”
“Before I do—”
“Yes?”
“The chindi has lifted out of orbit. We should know shortly where it’s going.”
MOGAMBO’S ARISTOCRATIC FEATURES fought through the turbulence on her display, and it actually seemed to her that the picture improved considerably. Nothing gets in the way of this guy. “Hutchins. What is the status of the chindi group? What is happening?”
“The thing is moving out. We tried to evacuate the landing party, but we lost George. At the moment, I have one with me and one stranded.”
She settled back to wait for the return signal. Alyx gazed at the on-screen image. “He’s pretty intense,” she said.
During a break in the storm she saw stars. And, briefly, Cobalt. Then Mogambo was back: “I’m sorry to hear about George. But we have to keep our eye on the objective. It’s absolutely critical that we not lose contact with the Ship.” His pronunciation capitalized the word. “If it gets away from us, it will be a disaster of major proportions.” Not to mention, she thought, that Tor is stranded on the damned thing.
“My captain informs me that, if it jumps, it should be possible to follow it.” His picture broke up and re-formed, but the audio remained steady. “Are you in fact able to do that?”
The lander broke out of the Slurpy. She searched the skies for the chindi. It was by then only a rapidly dimming star.