"All recorded and stored in the ship-soul," Prope answered.
"And is the anchor in place on the ground?"
"Naturally," Lieutenant Harque said.
He and Prope were running the console themselves, rather than letting the usual crew do anything. I told myself the captain was showing how cooperative she could be, by giving us her personal attention. Still, I had to wonder if Harque was really the best technician on the ship. While the others had been suiting up, I’d watched him fumble with the control dials, trying to maneuver a Sperm anchor down to the surface. I don’t know if he made any real mistakes, but he cursed a lot under his breath.
This particular anchor was the usual box with gold horseshoes, but it also had a tiny flight engine attached and a whole bunch of stealth bafflers to prevent people from noticing anything on radar. Not that we expected any radar dishes had survived the Fasskister Swarm, but Explorers hate taking chances. We needed the anchor on the ground, right where we wanted to land, like a pin to tack down the bottom end of the Sperm-tail. Without the little machine, the tail would flap about as wild as a firehose and might throw us out anywhere within a thousand-klick radius.
It would be really bad to get dumped into an ocean. Or in front of a big hostile army. Or thirty thousand meters above the ground.
"So the anchor’s in place?" Festina asked. "Did anyone down there notice it landing?"
"Negative, Admiral," Harque answered, as smooth as if he’d never had a flick of trouble putting the box in place. "Perfect insertion, in an alley within twenty meters of the Explorers’ signal source. The anchor’s been there for ten whole minutes and no one has come to investigate."
"So," Tobit muttered, "either the folks on the ground didn’t see the anchor go in, or they know exactly what’s happening, and are waiting in ambush."
"Ever the optimist," Festina told him. Her voice had a metallic ring to it, because she was speaking through her tightsuit transmitter. Since I didn’t have a tightsuit myself, I had a teeny receiver fastened into my ear — glued good and tight so it wouldn’t fall out. I didn’t have a transmitter, but I wouldn’t need one: the others could hear my normal voice just fine, as long as I was within normal talking range… and we had absolutely no intention of ever splitting up.
"Are we ready?" Dade asked, far too brightly. This was his first trip planet-down, and he was getting off lucky. Troyen might be at war, but it was a lot friendlier than most places Explorers went. Mandasar warriors might actually listen if you pleaded for your life.
"Ready as we’ll ever be," Festina said, without sounding too happy about it. "Start the sequence, Harque."
"Aye-aye, Admiral. Pressurizing now."
A weight pushed on my ears as Harque increased the air pressure around us. Regulations said we had to have a higher pressure on our end than the atmosphere we were heading for — otherwise, the end of our Sperm-tail might suck up stuff off the planet. The extra pressure would also give us a real strong push into the Sperm-tail.
"Fully pressurized," Harque announced. "Anchor activated. Preparing to plant tail."
I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Festina. "Get ready, Edward," she whispered softly. "Harque is just the sort of asshole to eject us without warning."
She nudged me to face the Aft Entry Mouth — the big irising door that would snap open any second now. When stuff started happening, it’d go really fast: no countdown to ejection, just zoom, the instant our Sperm-tail was planted. The tail would be glaringly obvious to anyone on the ground… a glittery ribbon of colored sparkles, stretching into the sky. Ideally, it would only stay put a few seconds, just long enough for us to hit the ground and switch off the anchor. Then the tail would slither away wherever it liked, flicking in all directions and confusing observers about where it actually touched down. If we were lucky, we could slink away from the landing site before anyone came for us. "Almost locked in," Harque muttered.
I glanced over at Festina beside me. Through the visor of her helmet, I could see she’d closed her eyes. Maybe she was praying. I thought about the last time I’d ridden a Sperm-taiclass="underline" the way I’d been bludgeoned with ugly memories I hadn’t wanted to relive. Did that happen to Festina too? Did that happen to every Explorer who shot through a Sperm-tail universe?
And yet we stood shoulder to shoulder as if we were brave people.
"Contact," Harque said.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Prope spoke in a gloating voice. "Good-bye, Festina."
The Mouth snapped open and swallowed us up.
35
WORKING INTO POSITION
Scooped off my feet by a gust of wind-puffed out the Mouth and into the Sperm-tail. I felt myself turn boneless, like water poured into a long long funnel that would spill me onto the dark soil of Troyen.
The palace grounds and Diplomats Row. My home.
I’d never felt wanted on my father’s estate; as for the moonbase, it was just a barren nowhere. My only true home was the place I was going — where I lived with Verity and Sam till they both died.
Except that Sam wasn’t dead, was she? Did that mean Verity wasn’t dead either?
No, no, no! a voice screamed in my head. Another presence was trying to pierce through to me as I gushed down the Sperm-tail. Just like the last time: an unknown spirit reaching in, dredging up my own memories and forcing me to confront them. I tried to resist, but couldn’t shut out the images.
Verity’s empty bedroom. After I’d escaped from those guards and sent Innocence to safety, I’d gone back to the high queen’s chambers. Both bodies had disappeared — nothing but that pool of Sam’s blood. I remembered kneeling in the damp, touching the red stickiness, lifting my fingers to my nose…
…only now I could remember the smell. The smell of the blood. As if my nose had been Mandasar-sensitive way back then. I smelled the blood and knew it wasn’t real — just artificial stuff, the kind the doctors synthesized for me whenever I needed a transfusion. Heaven knows, I’d needed tons of transfusions during my year of being sick. My nose knew the difference between real blood and fake.
That blood, the blood that had spilled out of Sam, was just stuff whipped up with a chemistry set. I knew that. Twenty years ago, I knew: knew that Sam’s death had to have been as fake as the blood.
How had I forgotten that?
And my sense of smell — so sharp back then, so far beyond human. But somehow it had gone all dull again… until those doses of venom woke everything up.
Everything.
Memories were coming back faster now. I remembered kneeling there in Verity’s chambers and squeezing my eyes shut to keep back tears. Crying because I knew. The Mayday signal that had brought me to the room… my sister lying in a pool of fake blood… the mutinous guards rushing me away before I could look at Sam’s body too closely… waiting for me to lead them to Innocence…
It was all a setup. By Sam and the mutineers. To fool dumb old Edward, who was close to the little girl queen and might know where she’d hide.
Twenty years ago, I’d wept bitter tears and pushed away those bad thoughts about Sam — pushed them away hard. Because if I didn’t, I’d have to ask who really killed Verity, and who released the outlaw queens, and who had made sure none of the peace initiatives ever really worked—$
Without warning, I hurtled out of the Sperm-tail and rammed against a brick wall.
Four Explorers shot into a dark narrow alley. Me, I collided with the nearest wall and crumpled. The other three, in big bulgy tightsuits, hit and bounced like they were wearing their own trampolines. Dade and Festina managed to keep their feet; Tobit caromed off the wall and went down, smacking flat on his butt, flipping over to his stomach, and hop-skipping along the pavement. If the folks on Jacaranda were watching via satellite, they must have been laughing their heads off.