"Captain Clairveau."
Marcel explained the general plan and made an emotional plea for passengers and crew to come forward, even those who possessed no special skills. "We're going to have to train people, and we have only a couple of days to get it done. Most of the volunteers may be asked to go outside. That will depend on what happens on the ground.
"I'd like to underscore the fact that while going outside entails a degree of risk, it is not innately dangerous. The suits are safe. But I wanted you to know that up front. And I'd like to thank you in advance for listening."
Within ten minutes after he signed off, Nicholson found himself awash with volunteers.
"There's one more thing, Erik."
My God. What else could the man want?
"We both know this operation is going to require extremely close coordination among the four vessels. There is simply no margin for error."
"I understand that. What do you need?"
Marcel looked down from the overhead screen. It struck Nicholson that the man was aging before his eyes. "During the operation, I'll want you to turn control of the Star over to us. We'll run everything from here."
"I can't do that, Marcel. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. It's against the regs."
Marcel took a moment before responding. "If we don't do it this way, we can't possibly succeed."
Nicholson shook his head. "There's no way I can comply. That's too much. No matter how the operation turned out, they'd hang me."
Marcel stared at him a few moments. "Tell you what," he said. "How about if we come over there? And run the operation from the Star?"
An hour seldom passed that Embry didn't thank her good sense for passing on Hutch's offer to go on the mission. She had mourned Toni's death, and she wished she could do something for the others.
But if she'd learned anything from this experience, it was that you didn't undertake potentially lethal assignments on the fly. These things required adequate preparation and planning. The sober truth was that a few people at the Academy hadn't done their jobs, they'd tried to compensate by rushing Hutchins in, and now poor Hutch was stuck with paying the price.
During the first couple of days, before things went wrong, both she and Tom had simply been annoyed at the delay. She'd sent messages off to people at home, complaining about having to spend an extra month or so floating around in the middle of nowhere. She'd even told several of her friends that she was considering legal action against Hutchins and the Academy.
Tom had been more tolerant. He was apparently accustomed to Academy mismanagement and didn't seem to expect them to be organized. He was not at all surprised that the original survey had missed the presence of ruins on Deepsix. "A planet's a big place," he'd told her. If the civilization had been in an early stage of development when the ice age hit, as was apparently the case, there would have been few cities to find. It was no wonder, he argued, that they hadn't realized what they had. He'd have been impressed, he said, if they had detected it.
The turmoil on the ground was reflected in the apprehension onboard Wildside. Embry had experienced pangs of guilt when she realized the implication of the lost landers. She could not see how she was in any way responsible for any of this, and yet she was trying to take it on her own shoulders. Ridiculous.
She and Tom had from the beginning been sitting by the monitors listening to the conversations between the landing party and the command people on Wendy. When Clairveau had contacted them to let them know that a rescue vessel was on the way, she'd demanded to know how such a thing could be allowed to happen in the first place. He'd apologized, but explained that they simply could not provide for all contingencies. How could anyone have foreseen that both landers would be destroyed?
She might have replied that the second lander, the vehicle from the Evening Star, should not even have been there. It hadn't been part of what passed for Academy planning. There'd been only one lander really available, so the risk had been considerable right from the start.
Circumstances. It all came down to circumstances. After her conversation with the captain of the Wendy Jay, Tom had argued that it just wasn't always possible to eliminate the element of danger. It didn't matter, he said, what someone had done or not done twenty years earlier. The only thing that mattered was the present situation. Hutchins had been given a directive, she'd decided the payoff was worth whatever risk might be involved, and she'd consequently chosen to accept the assignment. You couldn't fault her for that.
But people had died, and more people might follow. It was hard for Embry to accept the position that nobody was responsible. When things went wrong, in her view, someone was always responsible.
But something positive was coming out of the wreckage. She and Scolari, left alone and forgotten on Wildside, save when somebody needed medical advice, had taken comfort in each other's arms.
They listened to Canyon's periodic reports on the news link, she with contempt, Tom with his usual tolerance. "He probably feels it just as much as we do," he told her. "It's just that for public consumption he has to let his feelings show. That's what's distasteful."
She didn't believe it. Canyon was exploiting the disaster, profiting by it, and was probably thanking his lucky stars he'd been sent out here.
She was sitting with Tom, talking about future plans, how they would handle things when they got home. They lived on opposite sides of the North American continent, and would be forced to conduct a virtual relationship for a while. Neither was quite ready yet to make a permanent commitment. But that was not necessarily a major detriment. In an age of sophisticated technology, there was little even of an intimate nature that could not be carried out at long range.
Tom was describing how they should get together during their vacations when the monitor buzzed. Incoming.
"Put it up, Bill," he told the AI.
Clairveau's image blinked on. He looked tired, she thought. Worn-out. "Tom," he said, "I understand you have some lasers on board? Portables?"
"Yes. They have some back there somewhere."
"Good. I need you to break them out. I'll send a shuttle for them."
"What are you going to do?" asked Embry. "Why do you need lasers?"
"To rescue your captain."
"Really?" asked Tom. "How?" "Later. I'm on the run at the moment." "Do you need help?"
"By all means," said Clairveau. "We need all the help we can get." When he'd signed off, she could feel the tension in the compartment. "Tom," she said finally, "you don't know anything about welding." "I know," he said. "But how hard can it be?"
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Nicholson. As you're aware, the original schedule called for us to leave our present position in two days, on Monday, and to withdraw approximately seventy million kilometers in order to be well out of the way when the collision occurs Saturday evening.
"We have, however, offered to assist in the rescue effort. That means we'll be staying in the immediate area somewhat longer. I want to stress that the Evening Star will at no time be at hazard. Let me repeat that, there will be absolutely no danger to this ship. We'll be away long before anyone need be concerned.
"You may wonder what part the Evening Star will play in rescuing the stranded scientists. We're making a detailed explanation available on the ship's net. Simply go to the Rescue site. A specially produced and embossed copy of the plan, which you may wish to keep as a souvenir of the occasion, will be distributed later today.
"We also intend to present everyone on board with a skyhook pin as a special memento.