“I can only sense the direction and velocity,” said Mazith. “Is this important? I could send to Lyman and ask him.”
Kelvin did a mental calculation of attack paths, ordnance speed, and launch windows. It seemed extremely probable to him that the Rotarua was on a sneaky approach pathway to launch something targeted by courtesy of the unaware Lieutenant Mazith, and after doing that, it would then continue on into the obscurity of deep space.
“I think we’ll keep communication silence for a while,” said Kelvin. “Don’t send anything unless I say so, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mazith.
“You say the young triplet, Jezeth, she’s not sending properly,” said Vinnie. “What is she sending?”
“After she locked herself in the lifeboat, it’s just been flashes of emotion. It’s common in the made triplets; if they get unbalanced, they can’t focus properly, and I have to block out most of the terrified stuff that she does send. It’s like someone screaming all the time. Please, Major. I don’t know all the ins and outs of the program or anything, but I do know my little sister is on that ship. I’ll do whatever you say, but can we please go on and help her?”
Vinnie looked at Kelvin.
“How long have we got if they do launch something once they’ve got the target from the lieutenant here?”
“What!” exclaimed Mazith, her back suddenly rigid, her neck tensed.
“At 1.2 million klicks out, they’re probably coming in at two gees, a spread of the latest-generation tactical multis launched half a mill out …” Kelvin figured it out in his head as he talked. “I reckon we might have just short of an hour once they confirm the target.”
“But … but my orders … we’re meant to rescue the survivors and take the yacht back up!” protested Mazith. “Why would they launch missiles?”
“Figure it out,” said Vinnie. “World Gov doesn’t want anyone else to get the technology to make telepaths. They know most of them are dead already because you told them so. Better to waste a couple of communicators and some reactivated old grognards than to risk someone else’s finding the genetic trove.”
“But I wouldn’t give them my location to be a target!”
“They don’t need to ask you,” said Kelvin wearily. “Won’t your mate on the cruiser just point and say ‘There she is’ when the XO looms over him and asks? I bet you’ve been told to report in when you sight the yacht, right?”
“Yes,” said Mazith. She was quiet for about twenty seconds, then she said, “I … I suppose you’re right. What are … what are you going to do? Shoot me and go back?”
“Nope,” said Kelvin. “I think we’re going to do what they don’t expect.”
“Which is what?” asked Vinnie.
“Find that damn yacht and fly it back up,” said Kelvin. “As soon as we clear the Roar, we start squawking to Venusport, Venus Above, and everyone else about how we’ve successfully carried out the rescue. That’ll bring the picket ships over, the Rotarua won’t attack if anyone’s watching. They’ll sheer off—with all the publicity, Terran Navy has to call us heroes, we sign a few secret forms, and go back to normal life.”
“You hope!” said Vinnie, with a snort. “We have to find the ship in the first place and sort out whatever—”
“The ship’s over there,” said Theodore, who made no attempt to hide the fact he had been listening intently the whole time. “Leastways, I reckon it is, judging from the look of things.”
He did something complicated with the reins, tugging on the secondary nerve ganglions that lined the frogs’ ridged backs. They slowed, then stopped, paddling gently in the shallow water. Theodore slipped over the side and immersed his head completely underwater, the fungal filaments on his scalp waving. When he came back up, he nodded.
“There’s something over in that direction,” he affirmed. “A current of destruction flowing … a burn-off where the ship came down, I guess.”
“I don’t know …,” said Vinnie. “You reckon the Rotarua will be in a launch position an hour from when they know we’re at the location, Kelvin?”
“Yeah, give or take five minutes.”
“But I won’t report we’ve found it,” said Mazith urgently. “I promise.”
“What if Lyman checks in with you?” asked Kelvin. “Could you hold it back? You mentioned receiving emotions, images … he could tell probably, right?”
“Yes, he might,” said Mazith. “But I could ask him not to tell—”
“Don’t be stupid, Lieutenant,” said Vinnie. “He’s up there, on the bridge, surrounded by superior officers. He’d tell them. So would you if you were in his position. He won’t know why they want the location fix.”
“So we’ll have say fifty-five minutes to get into orbit and start shouting from when we see the ship and Mazith gets pinged from the Rotarua,” said Kelvin.
“Doable?” asked Vinnie.
“Yes,” said Kelvin. “If she’s not too damaged. If we can deal with whatever fungus offed the rest of the triplets. If we can—”
“Don’t break out into Kipling,” warned Vinnie. “Shakespeare’s bad enough.”
“It would be easier to shoot the lieutenant and just go back,” offered Theodore.
Kelvin and Vinnie looked at the Leper, who shrugged not so much with his shoulders but with a curious undulating movement of his fungal carapace.
“I’m just saying. It’s not a recommendation or anything.”
“You’d better come with us if we try to lift the yacht,” said Kelvin.
“Nope,” said Theodore. “I’m a Venusian now, got no business in space. I figure if there’s an hour going, I’ll hightail it on the sled. You mentioned multis, but I’m presuming low-yield microfusion, maybe a hand of eight. I reckon there’s a reasonable chance I can get clear of that.”
Vinnie gave him the look.
“Commissioned Engineer,” said Theodore. “Syrtis Spaceforce, before the amalgamation, MBF for a while afterward. Long time ago.”
“Hell of a long time!” exclaimed Kelvin. “Syrtis got subsumed, what, back in ’21 or ’22. That’s ninety years!”
“Lepers live longer,” said Theodore. “Didn’t you see the bumper sticker on the back of the sled?”
“What’s a bumper sticker?” asked Mazith, Kelvin, and Vinnie, all at the same time.
“Ancient history,” said Theodore, with a sigh. “So what are we doing?”
“Lay on, McTheodore and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’ ” said Kelvin.
“What does that mean?” asked Mazith.
“I know,” growled Theodore, and whipped up the frogs.
They found the Jumping Jehosophat three hours later, in the quiet heart of the eye of the Roar. The ship had landed well considering the circumstances, a better landing than Kelvin expected any autopilot to make. The ship was still in one piece, and was only slanted into the swamp at a gentle angle, the nose buried in mud and water some five meters or so, just past the cockpit escape hatch. Looking at it, Kelvin figured that the ship must have been flung out of the storm into the eye high enough to be able to make a series of corkscrewing turns within the calm center, and had then landed on its VTOL fans, only to discover that the apparently solid island beneath it was really loosely compacted mud.
As they sighted it, Mazith’s eyes glazed over. Vinnie had been watching for this, and immediately pushed the young woman over the side into the water, dragging her back onto the sled a moment later.
“Does he know you’ve found it?” asked Vinnie.
“Maybe,” coughed Mazith. “I … I just haven’t been trained to block, I couldn’t help answering—”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kelvin. He looked at his watch, a locally made automatic winding timepiece that had no electronics at all. “We have to presume they know we’ve found it, have the position, and will fire on it. Fifty-five minutes to get into the ship and get out of here. Theodore, you’d better leave now.”