Yerby's bulk darkened the doorway. "Morning, lad," the big man said. "Blaney said you were out here."
Mark laughed. "I wouldn't call three in the afternoon morning," he said. "Did you and Amy just get back?"
"Ah, the trip to Bottomless Pool," Yerby said with a slight frown. "No, to tell the truth, I spent the night here, lad. Met a few of my friends last night and, you know, partied some."
Mark felt his expression harden. "Amy's been looking forward all week to seeing the fish in Bottomless Pool," he said. "I'm sorry to hear that you missed the appointment again, Yerby."
Dr. Jesilind had visited the site with Yerby. According to him, the Bottomless Pool was the vent of an ancient volcano that siphoned salt water from the ocean at least a hundred miles away. The crater lake was rich in brilliantly colored plant life and fish with no resemblance to shallow-water forms.
Mark didn't wholly accept the doctor's claim of a unique ecology, but the pool certainly sounded interesting. He'd have asked to go with the Bannocks except for the overhanging threat of Zenith invasion. It was more important to finish his work with the landing system.
Besides, Mark had the vague thought that maybe after Yerby showed his sister where the pool was, Mark and Amy would go by themselves.
"Oh, well, that's all right," Yerby said. He sounded a trifle uncomfortable. "The doc knows where the place is, so he offered to take Amy there. I know, she don't get along with Doc the way you'd like, but she wanted to go so bad and me, well, I just wasn't up to coming home last night for another dustup with Desiree."
"I see," said Mark. Actually, Amy got along with Jesilind exactly the way Mark liked, which was just barely. But as Yerby said, she'd really wanted to see the pool.
"To tell the truth, though," Yerby said, "I'd sorta thought they'd be back before now. They're off in the blimp, but the guidance beacon isn't working real good and, you know, I can't seem to raise them on radio."
"They're not back at the compound?" Mark asked, feeling suddenly cold.
Yerby scratched his ribs with a look of great concentration. "Desiree says not," he admitted, glaring at his fingers. "Says they went off at first light and that's the last anybody's seen of them. Desiree said some other things too."
He raised his eyes to Mark. "Might be she was right about some of those things," Yerby said. "Not that I really think there's a problem, but if you ain't seen her like I hoped you had, maybe I'll take my flyer out to the Pool. Want to come along?"
A series of possibilities clicked through Mark's mind. His face remained frozen. Turning from Yerby, he called a movement chart up on the landing system's screen. The unit had to be able to track aircraft also in order to bring ships down safely in busy environments.
"The Pool's south of here, isn't it?" he asked sharply.
"South-southwest of the Spiker, south from the house," Yerby said. "What's wrong, lad?"
"Nothing," Mark lied. He could almost hear his father's voice saying, "Generally, almost always, there's a better way than charging straight in."
"Yerby," he said, facing the big frontiersman again, "I've got to pick up some tools at the compound right now. It's important to get this system working so that we at least know who's landing here before they arrive. I'm sure you can take care of any little problem the blimp has by yourself."
Yerby's head jerked back in surprise. "Sure, I see that, Mr. Maxwell," he said. "Well, I'll leave you to your business, then."
Yerby ducked out of the hut and jogged toward the compound where he must have left his flyer the day before. His arms pumped more vigorously than his pace seemed to justify.
Mark got into his own flyer beside the hut. His guts felt heavy and frozen by Yerby's shocked disapproval; but Mark knew that if he'd told Yerby the truth, the result would have been as violent and certain as pulling the trigger of a gun.
Yerby's compound lay at the northern edge of the circle the system's plotting lidar swept. The dirigible's track from the compound at 6:47 in the morning was clearly marked, and as the vehicle rose to a thousand feet it stayed on the screen for another twenty miles.
Dr. Jesilind was headed northwest, not south toward the Bottomless Pool. There were a number of reasons Jesilind might have gone off with Amy in a direction nobody would think to search for them.
But all of them added up to Mark wanting very much to join the pair as fast as he could.
20. An Afternoon in the Country
Mark's holoviewer rested on his lap, projecting a holographic terrain map in the air before him. He kept the flyer a thousand feet high, so he didn't need to worry about what was directly in front of him unless a bird got very unlucky.
Or, come to think, unless he managed to collide with the dirigible itself. Mark assumed his quarry would be below him, probably on the ground; but he could imagine his first gymnastics coach shouting, "Always check the fastenings of equipment before you trust your weight to it! Assume makes an ass of U and me, boy!"
Dutifully, Mark raised himself in the saddle to peer over the top of the opaque hologram. The sky was as empty as a politician's promise.
He didn't know where Jesilind had gone, but the dirigible had flown straight from the point it lifted from Yerby's compound until the track vanished at the limit of the lidar's range. A one-hundred-foot cigar of royal blue fabric ought to show up pretty well. By keeping high and swiveling his eyes constantly, Mark figured he'd find the dirigible sooner or later.
It had better be sooner, though, or he was going to run out of daylight.
The flyer overflew another wooded ridge. It might be the one where Yerby took me and Amy to picnic when we fast arrived on Greenwood.
As the thought struck him, Mark saw the waterfall. It was richly golden in the low sunlight, so lovely that Mark flew for some moments further before he noticed the dirigible nestled near the cliff face at the bottom of the falls. He banked and brought the flyer down like a brick, a risk he'd never have taken if he'd been thinking about it.
Dr. Jesilind stood on the gondola's open deck. There was no sign of Amy. The howl of air past the flyer's frame tubes drew the doctor's attention.
Jesilind grabbed the door of the closed cabin, but it wouldn't open for him. He fumbled an object from his pocket, dropped it on the deck, and finally used both hands to pick it up again.
"Mark!" Amy screamed from a side window of the dirigible's cabin. "Stay back! He's got a gun!"
Jesilind leaned over to grab the window. Amy slid it shut, barely in time.
Mark's landing strained the flyer's framework but halted him within ten feet of his touchdown. His holoviewer flew onto the pebbly ground.
He remembered how he'd worried about the viewer when the thugs surrounded him in the caravansary. Not now. He wasn't worried about anything. That utterly amazed the part of Mark's mind that viewed the situation from a cool distance.
Mark clambered out of his flyer. Dr. Jesilind remained on the dirigible's deck, clamping the gate of the railing closed with one hand. He'd thrust the other into the pocket of his jacket again.
"Hello, Doctor," Mark said. He walked toward the dirigible.
Jesilind took his hand from his pocket with a gun. It had a wide, slightly flared muzzle. Mark supposed it was lethal.
"Stop where you are or I'll shoot!" Jesilind said. His voice was as high as if he'd gotten his balls caught in a car door.
Mark took another step forward. Close up he could see where Amy's fingernails had raked three long gouges down Jesilind's cheek.
"Well, Doctor," Mark said, "you've got two choices. You can shoot or you can give me the gun. If you give me the gun, I'll see to it that you get off Greenwood before Yerby learns what's happened here."