Grabbing hold of a projecting ladder-rung from the metal tower he stood next to, swaying in the howling insanity of the wind, Dan rested for a moment, then pushed on. He rounded the corner and saw what the groaning noise was.
The tent was collapsed and flapping on the ground like some monstrous dying pterodactyl. Dan couldn’t see the airlock, couldn’t tell if Ross had made it to the underground shelter before the collapse. If he hadn’t, he was dead inside there.
Only one thing was certain. There was no way for Dan to get inside to safety.
The storm howled triumphantly.
In the ship’s observation center, at the zero-gravity hub, the only sound was the faintest whispering of the air-circulating fans.
Larry hovered weightlessly at the transparent wall of the big plastiglass blister, staring out at the massive curving bulk of the golden planet below. A huge yellow-brown smear was staining one section of the planet’s surface: the storm.
He touched the plastiglass wall with his fingertips, anchoring himself lightly in place. There was a wall phone within arm’s reach, but he didn’t want to use it, didn’t want to hear what was happening.
“Dan’s still down there.”
Before he turned, he knew it was Valery’s voice. In the golden light coming up from the planet, she looked like an ancient goddess, shining against the darkness of the observation center’s dim lighting. Her face, though, was very human: worried, almost frightened.
Larry said, “The shuttle came back about fifteen minutes ago. Estelella brought the two girls and Vic O’Malley with him. Dan and Cranston stayed. Dan made certain that he sent every gram of deuterium they had processed.”
“And now he’s in the middle of the storm.” Her voice was calm, but just barely. Larry could hear the beginnings of a tremble in it.
“They’ve got the underground shelter. He’ll be all right.”
“Has he sent word? Do you know for sure…?”
Larry jerked a thumb toward the storm cloud. “Can’t get radio transmission through that stuff. We’ve tried every frequency. Too much electrical interference.”
“He could be dead.”
“No. He’s tough and smart. He’ll get through it all right.”
She stared out at the swirling muddy-colored storm cloud.
“It looks alive… like some monster eating—” Val reached out for Larry. “Can’t you do anything! Send the shuttle down for him? Something!”
He took her in his arms and rocked her gently. “There’s not a thing we can do but wait. The shuttle would be wrecked trying to fly through that. All we can do is wait.” And his mind was asking him, If it were you down there and Dan safely up here, would she be this upset?
“It makes you feel so helpless,” Val whimpered.
“I know. I know.”
“How long will the storm last?”
Larry shrugged. “Nobody knows. Not enough data on the weather patterns of this planet. The last one took two days to blow past the camp. But we don’t know if it was an unusually big one, or…” He let his voice trail off.
“Or an unusually small one,” Valery finished for him. “This one looks bigger, doesn’t it?”
Larry didn’t answer.
She kept staring out at the planet, at the storm. “Oh, Larry, if he dies there…”
“It’ll be my fault.”
Val turned sharply enough to bounce slightly away from the plastiglass. “Your fault? Why should it be your fault?”
“I sent him down there, didn’t I?”
“It’s part of his job. He wanted to go.”
Larry said, “I could have stopped him. I could have ordered somebody else to go down instead. I knew it was dangerous down there.”
Val was drifting freely in a small semicircle around Larry. He had to turn his back to the plastiglass to keep his eyes on her. She floated in midair, a golden goddess shining against the night.
“Did you want him to be exposed to danger?” she asked.
“You mean, did I want him to risk getting killed?” Larry closed his eyes and found the answer in his mind. “No, I didn’t.”
“Not consciously,” Val murmured.
“What?”
“You knew he’d be running into danger.”
Nodding, Larry admitted, “Sure. I even thought about going down there with him… but I’m not qualified for any of the jobs that need doing down there. I couldn’t justify taking up space on the shuttle and in the camp, just to show everybody I’m as brave as Dan is.”
“But in the back of your mind you knew he might be killed.”
“Of course. But that doesn’t mean…” He began to see what she was driving at. “Val, you don’t think that I…you can’t believe that!”
“I don’t,” she said. But it sounded weak, unconvincing.
Larry thought, it would certainly settle all the problems if he got killed down there. Then another part of his mind screamed, And that would make you a murderer, whether you planned it beforehand or not!
Valery seemed to sense the turmoil in his mind. She took him by the hand and pushed against the plastiglass wall, driving the two of them into a slow drift across the big, darkened, empty-looking chamber.
“I guess you’re right,” she said over her shoulder to him. “There’s not much we can to except watch and wait.”
“Val… I didn’t want it this way, honestly. I didn’t…”
“I know,” she said soothingly. “I know.”
They touched down on the floor easily, their velcroed slippers catching and holding gently against the carpeting there.
“As long as we’re here,” Valery said, letting his hand go and walking carefully, in a slow zero-g glide, toward the desk and instruments in the middle of the room, “I might as well show you what I’ve found out about the other stars.”
She’s changing the subject, Larry realized, trying to get both our minds off Dan.
Val sat at the desk while Larry stood beside her. She touched buttons on the desktop keyboard and pictures appeared on the viewscreen.
To Larry, they all looked like tiny white dots. The stars were bigger and brighter; in some pictures they were glaringly bright. But the planets around the stars were all featureless blobs of light.
Valery shook her head after showing about twenty of the pictures. “Those are the best we have so far. And it’s all pretty depressing. Nothing even close to being Earthlike.”
Larry blinked at her. “None of those planets…”
“They’re mostly gas giants, like Jupiter. Or little balls of rock, like Earth’s Moon.”
“Can you be sure?”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, I’m still working on it, trying to get better data, more precision in the spectrograms and visuals… but it looks very bad.”
Larry sagged into a half-sitting, half-leaning position against the desk’s edge. “And this goes for both Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani.”
“Yes, both stars. I’m afraid the planet here is the only choice we’re going to have, Larry.”
He sat there a moment longer, his mind turning slowly, wearily. “When … when will you report this to the Council?”
“I want to make the data much more precise,” she answered. “I haven’t shown this to anyone yet… you’re the only one. In a week or two, I’ll report it to the Council.”
He nodded dumbly.
Valery went to turn off the last picture from the viewscreen. “Oops!” She pulled her hand away from the keyboard as if it were burning hot. “I almost hit the ERASE button. That would’ve been stupid.”
“Huh?”
“All this data—weeks and weeks of work—would be erased from the computer’s memory bank if I had touched that button just now.” She pressed the proper button and the viewscreen went blank. Looking up at Larry, she added, “The only two places where the data’s stored are in the computer’s memory bank … and my own head.”