Still, Rasht was settled in his decision. The orbiting ship had been picked clean; the shuttle held nothing of obvious value; that left only the cave. If we were to salvage anything from this expedition, that was the last option open to us.
Even I could see the sense in that, whether I liked it or not.
DON’T MIND ME, for the moment. Got work to be getting on with. Busy, busy, busy.
What am I doing with these things?
Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m arranging them around you. Jamming them into the ice, like mirrored sculptures. I know you can’t move your head very easily. There’s no need, though. There’s not much to see, other than the cave mouth behind you and the wreck ahead of you.
What are you saying?
No, it’s not for your benefit! Silly Captain. But you are very much the focus of attention. You’ve always liked being at the centre of things, haven’t you?
What?
You’re having difficulty breathing?
Just a moment, then. I don’t want you to die before we’ve even begun! It was lucky, what happened with the winch. I mean, I’d have found one eventually, and the line. Of course it didn’t seem lucky at the time. I thought I was going to die in there. Did you think of abandoning me?
I think you did.
Here. I’m making a micro adjustment to the tension. Is that better? Can you breathe a little more easily?
Wonderful.
WE WENT OUTSIDE again. The monkey was having some difficulty with its paw, as if the contamination had worked its way into the servo-workings. It kept knocking the paw against the ground, trying to loosen it up.
“There aren’t any footprints,” Lenka said, tugging binoculars down from the crown of her helmet. She was speaking in general terms, addressing Rasht and I without favour. “But I can see the cave mouth. It’s just where Teterev said it was. Must be about five, six kilometers from here.”
“Can you plot us a path between these obstacles?” Rasht asked.
“Easily.”
It was still day, not even local noon. The sky was a pale blue, crisscrossed by high-altitude clouds. Beyond the blue, the face of the gas giant backdropped our view of the hill—one swollen, ugly thing rising above another. We set off in single file, Lenka leading, Rasht next, then the monkey, then I. We were all still on suit air, even though our helmet readouts were patiently informing us that the outside atmosphere was fully breathable, and (at the limit of our sensors) absent of any significant toxins. I watched the monkey’s tail pendulum out from side to side as it walked. Bubbling pools pressed in from either side, our path narrowing down. Every now and then a geyser went off or a pool burped a huge bubble of gas into the air. Toxins or otherwise, it probably smelled quite badly out there. But then again, we were from the Lachrimosa, which was hardly a perfumed garden.
I had no warning when the ice gave way under me. It must have been just firm enough to take the others, but their passage—the weight of their heavy, power-assisted suits—had weakened it to the point where it could no longer support the last of us.
I plunged down to my neck in bubbling hot water, instinctively flinging out my arms as if swimming were a possibility. Then my feet touched bottom. Instantly my suit detected the transition to a new environment and began informing me of this sudden change of affairs—indices of temperature, acidity, alkalinity and salinity scrolling down my faceplate, along with mass spectrograms and molecular diagrams of chemical products. A tide of rust-coloured water lapped against the lower part of my visor.
I was startled, but not frightened. I was not totally under water, and the suit could cope with a lot worse than immersion in liquid.
But getting out was another thing.
“Don’t try and pull me,” I said, as Lenka made to lean in. “The shelf’ll just give way under you, and then we’ll both be in the water.”
“Nidra’s right,” Rasht agreed, while the monkey looked on with a sort of agitated delight.
It was all very well warning Lenka away, but it only took a few minutes of frustration to establish that I could not get myself out unassisted. It was not a question of strength, but of having no firm point of leverage. The fringe of the pool was a crust of ice which gave away as soon as I tried to put any weight on it. All I was doing was expanding the margin of the pool.
Finally I stopped trying. “This won’t work,” I said. By then I was conscious that my arms were picking up the same sort of furry red contamination that had affected the monkey’s paw.
“We’ll need to haul her out,” Rasht said. “It’s the only way. With us on firm ground, it shouldn’t be a problem. Lenka: you’ll need to go back to the lander, get the power winch.”
“There’s a quicker way,” Lenka said. “I saw a winch in the stores locker, on the wreck. It looked serviceable. If it’s no good, it’ll only cost me a little longer to fetch ours.”
So Lenka went back to the crash site, detouring around the pool in which I was still trapped, then rejoining our original path. From my low vantage point, she was soon out of my line of sight. Rasht and the monkey kept an eye on me, the Captain silent for long minutes.
“You think this is a mistake,” he said eventually.
“I don’t like that hill, and I like the fact that Teterev didn’t come out of it even less.”
“We really don’t know what happened to Teterev. For all we know she came back to the wreck and was eventually rescued.”
“Then why didn’t she say so, or take her journal with her?”
“We’re going into the cave to find answers, Nidra. This is what we do—adapt and explore. Mazamel’s intelligence proved faulty, so we make the best of what we find.”
“You get the intelligence you pay for,” I said. “There’s a reason other ships never dealt with Mazamel.”
“A little late for recrimination, don’t you think? Of course, if you’re unhappy with your choice of employment, you can always find another crew.” I thought he might leave it at that, but Rasht added: “I know how you feel about Lachrimosa, Nidra. Contempt for me, contempt for Lenka, contempt for your ship. It’s different now though, isn’t it? Without that winch, you’ll be going nowhere.”
“And without a navigator, you won’t be going much further.”
“You’re wrong about that, though. I can use a navigator, just as I can use a sensor specialist like Lenka. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t operate Lachrimosa on my own, if it came to that. You’re useful, but you’re not indispensable. Neither of you.”
“Be sure to tell Lenka that, when she returns.”
“No need. I’ve never had the slightest doubt about Lenka’s loyalty. She’s emotionally weak—all this stupid concern over Teterev. But she’ll never turn on me.”
The monkey gibbered. Lenka was coming back.
The power winch was a tool about the size of a heavy vacuum rifle. Lenka carried it in two hands. We had similar equipment, so there was no question of working out how to use it.
The winch had a grapple attachment which could be fired with compressed gas. Lenka detached the grapple from the end of the line, and then looped the line back on itself to form a kind of handle or noose. The line was thin and flexible. Lenka spooled out a length from the power winch and then cast the the noose in my direction. I waded over to the noose and took hold of it. Lenka made sure she was standing on firm ground, turned up her suit amplification, and began to drag me out with the winch. The line tightened, then began to take my weight. It was still an awkward business, but at last I was able to beach myself on the surrounding ice without floundering through. I crawled from the edge, belly down, until I felt confident enough to risk standing.