“Jock, we’re sliding off course, half a degree, now one degree to the south southeast,” Alexieva said.
“Correcting,” Nkosi answered, and the jumper tipped slightly. “Sorry about that, Heikki.”
“No problem.” Heikki’s eyes were still on her console, flicking from the main readout, with its spiked lines of blue and green, to the course display and the tank and then to the spot analysis as it flashed its next string of symbols.
“How’s it going?” Sebasten-Januarias’s voice in her headpiece sounded rather lost.
“Nothing so far,” Heikki answered, and was surprised to see how far they’d come along the latac’s projected course. Even as she thought that, Alexieva cleared her throat.
“We’re coming up on the projected crash site.”
That was an elipse perhaps four kilometers long and three wide, the computers’ best estimate of the latac’s position when the full force of the storm hit it. Without waiting for orders, Nkosi swung the jumper into a slow search pattern, spiralling out from one focus of the elipse. Heikki frowned, and adjusted her sensors again, sending the fine-scan ghosting ahead of the jumper to probe the forest.
“I don’t see anything,” Djuro said. “What about you, Jock? Jan?”
“Not a thing,” Nkosi said. “There is not a break in the canopy for kilometers.”
“Same here,” Sebasten-Januarias said.
Heikki glanced at her chronometer. The warning light had just begun to flash above the current time: two hours to sunset. “I’m not inclined to waste the time going back to Lowlands and then flying back out tomorrow,” she said aloud. “Alexieva, is there any place nearby that we could set down for the night?”
There was a momentary silence while Alexieva worked her console, and then the surveyor answered, “There’s a storm clearing about a hundred-twenty-five kilometers to the north. The last flyby was three months ago, and it was clear then. You’ll have to land on rotors, though.”
“Jock?” Heikki asked.
“I would prefer to land in daylight, if possible. Since we have to go to the rotors, that is.”
“Right.” Heikki adjusted her controls. “Flip me the coordinates, Alexieva.”
The surveyor complied without speaking, and Heikki stared for a moment at the numbers flashing on her screen. It would take them about an hour to reach the storm clearing, a patch of land deliberately deforested to provide a safe harbor for any craft caught by bad weather while crossing the massif. That left them perhaps half an hour’s further search, allowing for a safety cushion…. She sighed, and keyed a new course into her machines. It would take them to the clearing in a series of arcs, covering as much territory as possible before they were forced to set down for the night.
“Jock, I’ve got the new course for you.” Without waiting for an answer, she flipped the numbers to his navigation computer.
“Very good, Heikki,” Nkosi answered.
The land beneath the jumper changed slightly as they made their way slowly north, the giant-jades that dominated the massifs rim giving way to taller, needle-leaved blackwoods. Their trunks were more solid, the scalelike bark impregnated with minerals leached from the soil. Heikki scowled as her readings shifted, little peaks of red flashing up from the background, and adjusted the sensitivity of the analysands until the red no longer showed. It was necessary, she knew, but it cut her effective range back to three kilometers from the source. Frowning still, she began to swing her most sensitive instrument slowly through three hundred sixty degrees, trying to compensate for the loss of the general scan. Her display screen copied the movement faithfully, a wedge bright with detail sweeping steadily over the cooler general readings.
For what seemed an eternity, nothing changed. The chronometer ticked slowly forward, the warning light pulsing more strongly as sunset approached. In the tank, the visual display took on an odd, distorted quality as the ground shadows lengthened, and Djuro adjusted his instruments to compensate. The wedge of the fine-scan swept around the screen, bringing momentary detail to the picture. Then, at the far edge of the screen, metal flashed. For all that she had been anticipating just that, Heikki’s reflexes were slowed by the afternoon of waiting. The red peak, almost off the scale in that single pulse, vanished. She swore, and worked her controls until she got it back. The intensity had already faded, as though the object were already out of range. She swore again, but managed to fix the coordinates precisely before the signal failed.
“Got something?” Djuro asked, and did not bother to keep his tone casual.
“I think so,” Heikki answered, busy feeding coordinates to her navigation program. “Something, anyway. Jock, can we reach this spot before nightfall?”
It had been a forlorn hope at best, and she was not surprised when Nkosi answered, “No, Heikki, not a chance.”
“We’ll hit it in the morning, then,” Heikki said, and kept an iron control over her voice.
“Do you think it’s the latac?” Sebasten-Januarias asked.
“I didn’t get much of a reading on it,” Heikki answered. “I can’t tell.” But it was metal, and a lot of it, concentrated in one small area. Unless it’s another wreck, I don’t know what else it could be. She curbed her enthusiasm sternly, forcing herself to pay attention to the console in front of her. Already, she had missed the chance to fine-scan a dozen kilometers. She made a face, and applied herself to the work.
As predicted, the jumper came in sight of the storm clearing with the sun still a few degrees above the horizon. It was not an especially inviting place, just a break in the trees barely large enough to land a latac. As Nkosi circled slowly, assessing the difficulties, the tank in the main bay showed thin shoots of new trees already breaking through the dark ground.
“How’s it look?” Heikki asked, after what seemed an interminable silence.
“We can land,” Nkosi answered. “On rotors, of course, as you said, Alexieva, but we can land.”
“Go ahead,” Heikki said, and heard the engine note change as Nkosi began the switchover. The servos whined shrilly as the outboard nacelles tilted to their new positions, and the jumper shuddered under the new drag. There was a heartstopping moment when everything seemed to go silent, and the jumper seemed to hang suspended, held up only by momentum, and then the harsher sound of the rotors cut in. Slowly Nkosi increased their power, until forward motion stopped and the jumper was hovering a hundred meters above the floor of the clearing.
“Anything on the sensors, Sten?” Heikki asked.
Djuro shook his head. “Nothing of interest. Very small, mobile life—”
“Gerriks, probably,” Alexieva said.
“—but nothing any bigger.”