“We are getting close to the eye,” Theodore called back to them. He was strapped in at the front of the sled, the reins in whatever he called his hands. “Would’ve been there hours ago if we could have cut straight across. But we’re getting close.”
How Theodore knew this was impossible to fathom, but an hour later he lifted the keel. The frogs began to jump again, short jumps that made the sled lurch forward with a sucking pop as the surface tension was broken. Kelvin raised himself up slightly, grimacing as the wind cut at the skin on his face that wasn’t protected by mask and goggles. But the wind was definitely weakening. The rushing clouds were slower ahead too, some breaking up and being sucked back behind them, into the eternal circular motion of the storm. He hadn’t noticed before, but it was getting quieter too, the noise of the Roar subsiding as they continued deeper into the eye of the storm.
“The calm center,” said Theodore. He sat up straighter and breathed in deeply, the air no longer quite so full of spray, mud, and particulate fungus. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Kelvin and Vinnie did not remove their masks to take a breath. They looked at each other, then at Mazith. She was lying at right angles to them, behind Theodore, pressed as flat as she could make herself on her stomach, with her head turned toward the clone siblings. Her eyes behind her mud-smeared goggles were shut, her breathing mask tight around her mouth.
Kelvin reached across and tapped her on the shoulder, repeating the movement a second later. Mazith stirred and sat up, grimacing as the wind smacked her wetly in the face. At that same moment, Vinnie snatched Mazith’s heat-beam from her shoulder holster and pointed it at the young officer’s head, finger next to the firing stud.
“We’ve got a few questions, Lieutenant,” said Vinnie.
“Are you really a special communicator?” asked Kelvin.
“Yes,” said Mazith. “Of course I am!”
“Why do we need a special communicator?” asked Vinnie.
“Uh, I guess, Navy HQ thought I could be useful,” replied Mazith. “I mean, there are VIPs who want to know what’s happened to their children, without delay.”
“Maybe true,” said Vinnie harshly. “But I bet there’s more to it. What’s the Rotarua doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Mazith. “Just a patrol. I’m only a lieutenant, I don’t know anything.”
“We know that’s true in general,” said Kelvin kindly. “But we think you might be an exception and actually know something. So why are you really here?”
“To communicate,” said Mazith. “That’s all.”
“How many special communicators has the Terran Navy got?”
“That’s top secret,” said Mazith. “Of course.”
“There are not that many, are there?” asked Kelvin. “Because they can’t be gengineered, right?”
“No,” said Mazith.
“So why send one of these incredibly rare special communicators into the wilds of Venus, into the Swamp, into the Roar?” asked Vinnie. “Please tell us why you’re really here, because otherwise I am—with great regret—going to shoot you, then Kelvin and I will turn around and go back right now and report that the ship was a write-off and you got killed by something along the way.”
“No!” exclaimed Mazith. “We have to keep going!”
“Why?” asked Kelvin.
“Because she … they … there are survivors.”
“Who is she?” asked Vinnie quickly. “And how do you know?”
“I … I can’t tell you,” said Mazith.
“Lieutenant Mazith,” said Vinnie. “You know that Kelvin and I are veterans of the Third Martian Intervention. You know I was an ASAP. I really will kill you if I’m not satisfied with your answers, and we definitely will not bother going any farther.”
“I’m … I’m one of a triplet,” said Mazith. “It’s top secret. Everyone thinks there can only be telepathic pairs, but there are three of us.”
“Let me guess,” said Kelvin. “Your third is on that downed ship.”
“Yes,” sobbed Mazith. “Jezeth’s in one of the survival pods. When they landed, they opened the air lock, and something got in, she said the others were careless, and now they’re … they’re … she doesn’t know what they are, not exactly dead, but not alive, there’s a fungus, she saw a little before she locked herself away … she’s hurt, she can’t send very much …”
“But why put you in a rescue party?” continued Vinnie. “Sure, they lose one communicator but then they’ve still got a pair like everyone else. Why risk that to try and rescue this Jezeth?”
Mazith didn’t answer for a moment.
“Remember what I said about answering my questions,” said Vinnie. Her voice was calm and matter-of-fact.
“Jezeth’s a made communicator,” whispered Mazith. “She’s younger than Lyman and I, eight years younger, gengineered to link up with us, and it worked. Sort of worked … there are … problems. So we have to get her back.”
“Why was she on the ship?” asked Kelvin. He paused, a nasty thought creeping into his brain. “And were there really any VIP kids on board?”
Mazith shook her head.
“All triplets,” she whispered. “Made ones. But they’re kind of … unstable, I guess … they do dumb stuff. Like steal the Jehosophat.”
“They stole the yacht?”
“Yes,” said Mazith. “I don’t know, Jezeth didn’t send to me until they were going down and they realized that they didn’t have a pilot. They had a crazy idea that they could defect to Mercury Inc., their genetic material would get them executive positions—”
“It’d get them vivisected most likely,” interrupted Vinnie. “I’ve seen some stupid young folk in my time, but …”
“Jezeth’s only fifteen,” said Mazith. “The oldest is … was … sixteen.”
“So you think we’ve really been sent here to rescue survivors?” asked Kelvin.
“Of course!” said Mazith. “What else …”
Kelvin and Vinnie looked at each other. They were thinking exactly the same thing, and it wasn’t about World Government trying to rescue a bunch of created telepaths. Far more likely that they’d want to make sure that any genetic information that could enable anyone else to duplicate the feat was destroyed. But to do that, they needed to know exactly where the ship had gone down.
“Tell me,” said Kelvin. “You said that telepathic communicators are always ‘aware’ of each other. Does that mean that you know where the others are? I mean in specific terms, like you could supply coordinates?”
“We always know where our partners are,” said Mazith. “In terms of a direction and distance. But Jezeth is injured or just too scared; I can’t link up with her properly. Otherwise, I could just tell you exactly where to go.”
“It wasn’t Jezeth I was thinking about,” said Kelvin. “Do you know where Lyman is right now, on the Rotarua?”
Mazith shut her eyes and was still for a moment. Then she pointed up at the sky at an acute angle.
“There,” she said. “About 1.2 million kilometers out, coming toward us.”
“So Lyman knows where you are too?” asked Vinnie, catching on.
“Direction and distance,” said Mazith. “But he can extrapolate that on a chart, he can use the … well, there’s a visualization system, to help us plot, that’s one of the experiments with the triplets, because you can triangulate so much better …”
“I reckon they’re on the return path of an elongated planetary orbit perpendicular to the standard plane,” said Kelvin, looking up where Mazith had pointed. “Can you tell if they’re accelerating on that course?”