“Clever trick, though,” Jim said, chuckling as he rose. “Keeps you from having to breach stake autonomy, and keeps that fool where he can’t do more damage. I’ll just amble over to Ezra’s pod.” He left the room with a backhanded wave at Emily and Paul.
Immeasurably cheered by his visit, they went back to the onerous tasks of scheduling crews for the upcoming Threadfalls and mustering teams to collect edible greenery for silage from places as yet untouched by the ravening organism.
* * * * *
“Look, Jim, I just can’t find any other logical explanation for the destruction of the probes and these. “ Ezra Keroon waved a handful of probe pics, so blurred that no detail could be seen. “One, maybe two probes could malfunction. But I’ve sent off seven! And Sallah – ” Ezra paused a moment, his face expressing the sorrow he still felt at her loss. “Sallah told us that there had been no damage report for the probe garage. Then we have the Mariposa. It did not hit the surface. Something hit it just about the same time one of the probes went bang!”
“So you prefer to believe that something down on the surface prevents inspection?” Jim Tillek asked wryly. He leaned back in his seat, easing shoulder muscles taut from hours of bending and peering through magnifiers. “I can’t credit that explanation, Ez. C’mon man. How can anything on that planet be functioning? The surface has been frozen. It can’t have thawed appreciably in the time it’s been swinging in to Rukbat.”
“One does not have such regular formations on any unpopulated surface. I don’t say they can’t be natural. They just don’t look natural. And I certainly won’t make any guesses about what sort of creatures made them. Then look at the thermal level here, here, and here.” Ezra jabbed a finger at the pics he had been studying. “It’s higher than I’d anticipate on a near-frozen surface. That much we got from the one probe that sent data back.”
“Volcanic action under the crust could account for that.”
“But regular convex, not concave, formations along the equator?”
Jim was incredulous. “You want to believe that plutonic planet could be the source of this attack?”
“I like that better than substantiating the Hoyle-Wickraman-singh theory, I really do, Jim.”
“If Avril hadn’t taken the gig, we could find out what that nebulosity is. Then we’d know for sure! Hoyle-Wickraman-singh or little frozen blue critters.” Jim’s tone was facetious.
“We’ve the shuttles,” Ezra said tentatively, tapping his pencil.
“No fuel, and there isn’t a pilot among those left that I’d be willing to trust to do such a difficult retrieval. You’d have to match its orbit speed. I saw the dents on the Mariposa’s hull myself where the defense shields failed. Also, we didn’t bring down any heavy worksuits that would protect a man out in a meteor storm. And if your theory is correct, he’ll get shot down.”
“Only if he gets too close to the planet,” Ezra went on cautiously. “But he wouldn’t have to, to get a sample of the trail. If the trail is nothing but ice, dirt, and rock, the usual cometary junk, we’d know then that the real menace is the planet, not the trail. Right?”
Jim eyed him thoughtfully. “It’d be dangerous either way. And there’s no fuel to do it anyhow!” Jim opened his arms in a gesture of exasperation.
“There is fuel.”
“There is?” Jim sat bolt upright, eyes wide with surprise.
Ezra gave him a wry smile. “Known only to a chosen few.”
“Well!” Jim made his eyebrows twitch, but he grinned to show that he took no offense at having been excluded. “How much?”
“With a thrifty pilot, enough for our purpose. Or maybe, if we could find Kenjo’s main cache, more.”
“More?” Jim gawked. “Kenjo’s cache? He scrounged fuel?”
“Always was a clever driver. Saved it from his drops, Ongola said.”
Jim continued to stare at Ezra, amazed at Kenjo’s sheer impudence. “So that’s why Kimmer’s nosing about the Western Barrier Range. He’s out trying to find Kenjo’s cache. For his own purposes or ours?”
“Not enough to get anyone’s hopes up, mind you,” Ezra continued, holding up a warning hand. “Maybe it’s not too bad a thing that Tubberman sent off the homer. Because if it is the planet, we need help, and I’m not too proud to ask for it.” Ezra grimaced. “Not that Kimmer said anything to anyone when he made off with the big sled and enough concentrated food and power packs to stay lost for years.
Joel Lilienkamp was livid that anyone would steal from his Store. We don’t even know how Stev found out about Kenjo’s hoard. Except that he knew how much fuel the Mariposa had in her tanks eight years ago. So he must have figured out someone had saved fuel back when Kenjo made those reconnaissance flights.” Then, as Jim opened his mouth, he added, “Don’t worry about Kimmer taking off even if he finds fuel. Ongola and Kenjo disabled the shuttles some time back. Kimmer doesn’t know where we stash the fuel sacks here. Neither, do I.”
“I’m honored – by your confidence and the cares you have so carefully laid on my bowed shoulders.”
“You walked in here three days ago and volunteered your services,” Ezra reminded him.
“Three days? Feels like three years. I wonder if my skimmer’s been serviced.” He rose and stretched again until the bones in his spine and joints readjusted with audible clicks. “So, shall we take this mess – ” He gestured to the mass of photos and flimsies neatly arranged on the work surface. “ – to the guys who have to figure out what we do with it?”
Paul and Emily listened, saying nothing, until both men had finished expressing their conflicting viewpoints.
“But when the planet is past us in the next eight or nine years the Threadfall will stop,” Paul said, jumping to a conclusion.
“Depends on whose theory you favor,” Jim said, grinning with good-natured malice. “Or how advanced Ezra’s aliens are. Right now, if you buy his theory, they’re keeping us at arm’s length while the Thread softens us up.”
Paul Benden brushed away that notion. “I don’t credit that, Ezra. Thread was ineffective on the previous try. But the Pluto planet could be defending itself. I could live with that much of your theory based on the evidence.”
Emily looked squarely at Jim. “How long will this gunge fall if it’s from your cometary tail?”
“Twenty, thirty years. If I knew the length of that tail, I could give a closer estimate.
“I wonder if that’s what Avril meant,” Paul said slowly, “by ‘it’s not the . . .’ Did she mean that it wasn’t the planet we had to fear, but the tail it brought from the Oort cloud?”
“If she hadn’t taken the Mariposa, we’d have a chance of knowing.” Emily’s voice had a sharp edge.
“We still do,” Ezra said. “There’s enough fuel to send a shuttle up. Not as economical a vehicle as the Mariposa but adequate.”
“Are you sure?” Paul’s expression was taut as he reached for a calc pad on which he worked several equations. He leaned back, his face pensive, then passed the pad over to Emily and Jim. “It might just be possible.” He caught and held Emily’s gaze. “We have to know. We have to know the worst we can expect before we can plan ahead.
Ezra raised a warning hand, his expression wary. “Mind you, they can’t get close to the planet! We’ve lost seven probes. Could be mines, could be missiles – but they blow up.”
“Whoever goes will know exactly what and how big the risks are,” Paul said.
“There’s risk enough in just going up,” Ezra said gloomily.
“I hate to sound fatuous, but surely there’s one pilot who’d take the challenge to save this world,” Paul added.
Drake Bonneau was approached first. He thought the scheme was feasible, but he worried about the risk of a shuttle that had certainly deteriorated from eight years’ disuse. He then pointed out that he was married with responsibilities, and that there were other pilots equally as qualified. Paul and Emily did not argue with him.