Outside the night was clear and cold and the range somnolent. Only the faintest whisper of their lullabies was audible. She glanced at the storm alarms and thought she detected a flicker on the DEW, but it might have been her imagination for nothing else blurped in a space of five minutes.
She gained some uneasy sleep for the remainder of the night, but by the first crack of light she was wide awake and doubly apprehensive. Two widely spaced flickers marred the dull face of the DEW. If there were a storm in the making, she would have plenty of other warning. She buried herself in work, but despite the involvement with crystal song, she was continually aware of something being not quite right. She was storing the first full crate of the day in the hold when she heard more alarms singing out.
Mach storm! She knew the drill and computed its arrival in approximately three hours, building from the northwest and due to sweep her relative area in the southeast. She had two hours leeway to escape the consequences.
She cleared away her equipment, grav-locked the precious cargo and strapped herself in. Not that she’d need the storm fastenings. She took off, activating the homing device as she’d not worked out where she actually was, thanks to Ardlor’s evasive tactics. Ardlor!
She veered left, over his working, and saw him busily chewing out a large tetrahedron. She wondered if he’d remembered octagons at all.
He was furious when he saw her, screaming vituperative curses and chanting Section 2, Paragraph 3. He’d report her to Lanzecki. Infringement! She’d not have any of his tetrahedrons. When she tried to leave her flitter, he attacked her with his cutter. She evaded him and moving swiftly got into his flitter and snapped up the Remind toggle.
“I’m supposed to be with you, you addle-pated baritone,” she roared at him as the replay intoned the original orders. “Listen! It’s Lanzecki’s voice.”
The crystal singer paused in his efforts to slice her up. And she took advantage of his momentary armistice to flick on the storm warnings. They blared forth, above Lanzecki’s recital, at top, urgent volume.
“There’s a mach storm coming. We’ve got to leave.”
“Leave?” Panic replaced anger in Ardlor’s wizened face. “I can’t leave. I’ve struck a pure vein. . . . I’ve. . . .” He clamped his mouth shut with remembered caution and was about to renew his attack on her when the storm klaxons hit a new dissonance. “I’ll just cut one more. Just one more,” he pleaded with her piteously. “I’ve got to get off-world this time. I’ve got to get crystal out of my blood.”
Killashandra snagged the cutter from his relaxed grip.
“You can’t cut crystal with a mach storm coming, you fool.”
“Crystal really sings when a storm’s coming. Can’t you hear it? Are you deaf?”
Now she fell for his ploy, stepping to the flitter entrance and hearing the distant thrumming as the ranges began to echo the stroking of approaching winds. Ardlor wrenched his cutter from her hand and leapt from the flitter. Cursing, Killashandra followed him, caught his tunic and, applying pressure, swung him toward her, lashing out with a sure fist to the side of his jaw. He collapsed.
She caught the cutter from his lax hand, let him easily to the ground. She put the cutter carefully in its cradle before she struggled to get him aboard and into his couch. The storm warnings added their wild obbligato to her exertions, reaching a well-nigh unendurable wail.
“Oh, shut up. Shut up!” she cried, exasperated in her efforts to save Ardlor, his crystals and his ship.
It was then she caught sight of her own craft and realized her dilemma. Two ships and one conscious pilot. She tried to rouse Ardlor but he was impervious to stimulus.
Killashandra searched her memory for a Section and Paragraph covering rescue and salvage, but she simply couldn’t think what it was. She did remember the two vouchers for escorting Carrik back and decided that there’d be something and she’d recall it later. After all, she owed Ardlor something for shepherding her when he didn’t want to and he did want to get off-world this trip, so it was up to her to preserve his everlasting unwanted tetrahedrons. A quick glance told her that his cargo space wasn’t full. She might be able to save something herself. She raced to her ship and scurried back with the dominant fifths. They’d be worth something. Would she have time for more?
The warning systems had climbed several deafening decibels toward the supersonic. She could now see the darkening of the horizon and the storm’s approach. She risked one more trip, almost stumbling in her haste to get the crate aboard. She took care to secure them, vowing that she was going to exorcise her conscience as soon as possible for the nuisancy thing it was.
All flitters had similar control panels, though Ardlor’s was somewhat the worse for wear and, despite a recent servicing, dirt engrained.
She lifted off, slamming on the homing device and veering upward as fast as she dared. His craft was sluggish. Didn’t Ardlor believe in maintenance? And he all ready to cut again with the storm speeding down on them? He took ridiculous risks.
She cast one last look at her own trim flitter, wondering if she’d ever see it again, wondering how much damage the storm would wreak on it. She’d have to pay for the repairs, Sections 9, 10, 11 ... all paragraphs. Funny she couldn’t think what the salvage rule was.
She was glad she’d secured Ardlor, because he came to before they’d quite cleared the Milekeys and he turned into a raving maniac. She could appreciate his agony because she felt the mach-tuned dissonances herself, jabbing her nerve ends, scoring her eardrums despite the buffering helmet.
He finally knocked himself out again, throwing his head against the duralloy wall so the last few hours into Ballybran City gave her the requisite quiet to restore her own nerves. Nonetheless she was feeling rather pleased with herself as she landed Ardlor’s flitter and reported to field control that she had Ardlor with her.
She stood and watched the medics take the man’s limp body off, even though she was told to report instantly to Lanzecki.
“He’ll probably be all right,” the medics told her diffidently.
She was miffed that they didn’t seem to care about him or comment on her self-sacrifice. She’d not expected bouquets but a remark somehow seemed in order. If anything, the ground crew was uncomplimentarily annoyed with her for rescuing the older flitter.
Despite that prelude, she was hardly prepared for Lanzecki’s castigations.
“Lost your flitter first time out? And a new one at that! How did you contrive to be so careless?” he demanded.
“I wasn’t careless. I had to rescue Ardlor and I couldn’t transfer everything to my flitter. Not with a storm ranging down on us.”
“You rescued Ardlor?” Lanzecki was astounded. “I gave you more credit than that.”
Killashandra gagged. “But... he wouldn’t listen. He even tried to slice me as a claim-jumper. . . .” She couldn’t believe Lanzecki’s reaction. “I had to knock him out to save his neck. What’d you expect me to do?”
“Leave him there, of course.”
She stared, aghast, at the Guildmaster.
“He’d’ve shown no compunction about leaving you in similar circumstances, I assure you. You did all that could be required of you by apprising him of the storm’s approach. Then you should have taken off and saved your own nerves . .. and cuttings. As it is,” and Lanzecki made a few passes at his computer, “you’re now in debt to the Guild to the tune of 8,000 credits.” He looked at her sternly. “You’re responsible for the repairs ... if any can be effected when your flitter is recovered. . . .”
“But the crystals I’d already cut. . . .”