Overhead the sky stood huge, cloudless, as deeply blue as the shadows cast by sun A across the snows. Paler were those from B, an elfin tracery mingled with the frost-glitter. A kilometer ahead, the trail ended at a hot springs area. The greens and russets of pools were twice vivid in the whiteness elsewhere; the steam that rose from them was utter purity. Beyond, the Lucknerberg gleamed in its might. The sounds of seething carried this far through the silence, but muffled, as if it were the underground working of the planet that one heard.
“You are so land,” Laurinda said. “We'll miss you so much.”
Yoshii shivered, left his reverie, and caught his girl's gloved hand. They were walking in front of their companions. He glanced back. “Yes, and we'll worry about you,” he added. “Headed into the… the unknown—”
“You'll have better things to do,” Ryan laughed.
“And we'll be fine,” Carita put in.
“Shorthanded,” Yoshii said. They had not found a satisfactory replacement for him. “I can't help feeling guilty, like a deserter.”
“Juan, boy,” Carita replied, “if you left this lass behind now, even for a month's jaunt, I'd turn you over my knee and spank you till you took first prize at the next baboon show.” Quite possibly she meant it. Her short, massive frame certainly had the capability.
“I might have gone too—” Laurinda's words trailed off. No, she would not have done that to her parents. “If we could only stay in touch!” Ryan shrugged. “Someday they'll miniaturize hyper-wave equipment to the point where it'll fit in a spaceship.”
“Why haven't they already?” she protested. “Or why didn't it come with the hyperdrive?”
“We can't expect to understand or assimilate a non-human technology overnight,” Yoshii told her in his soft fashion. “As was, it took skull sweat to adapt what the Outsiders sold your world to our uses. I'm surprised that you, of all people, should ask such a question.”
“A woman needs to spring an occasional surprise,” Carita said. Laurinda gulped. “But not a stupid remark. I'm sorry. My thinking had gone askew. I am afraid for you two and the Saxtorphs.”
“Nonsense,” Ryan said. “It'll be a heahe, a breeze, a well-paid junket.” Into reaches that had swallowed a kzinti warcraft. “You don't get ol' Bob haring right off on impulse. If we should meet difficulties we can't skip straight away from, we're equipped like an octopus to handle 'em.”
“No weapons.” She had not been concerned with the refitting, but she knew this.
“Oh, he and I saw quietly to our stash of small arms, explosives, and all.”
Yoshii's mouth tightened. “What use against the universe?”
“As for that,” Carita stated, “you know full well what we've got.” Mainly to Laurinda: “A beefed-up grapnel field system. We can lock onto a fair-sized asteroid and shift its orbit, if we want to spend the fuel. Our new main laser can bore a hole from end to end of it. Our robot prospector-lander can boost at as high as a hundred Earth gees, for a total delta v of a thousand KPS. Plus the stuff we carried before, except for the second boat—radars, instruments, teleprobes, you name it. Oh, we'd be no match for a naval vessel, but aside from that, we're loaded like a verguuz drinker.”
“Now will you joyful honeymooners kindly reel in your faces and start singing and dancing as the drill calls for?” Ryan snorted.
The couple traded a look, which rapidly grew warm. Smiles radiated between them. “Makes me feel downright lecherous,” Carita murmured to Ryan. “How 'bout you?”
With a rumbling roar, a geyser erupted among the springs. Higher and higher it climbed against the gentle gravity, until the tower of it reached a hundred meters aloft. Light sharded to bows and diamonds in its plume. Thence it flung a fine rain which fell stinging hot, smelling of sulfur and tasting of iron, violence broken loose from rocks far below. Abruptly the humans felt very small.
Chapter VII
Waves move more slowly on Wunderland than on Earth and strike less hard, but the seas that beat against the cliffs of Korsness were heavy enough. The noise of them reached the old house on the headland as a muted throb, drums beneath the wind-skirl. Gray, green, and white-maned, they heaved out to a horizon vague with scud. The clouds flew low, like smoke. The room overlooking the view seemed full of their twilight, despite its fluoros. That glow lost itself in swartwood furniture, murky carpet, leatherbound codices and ancestral portraits. Above the stone mantel hung a crossed pair of oars, dried and cracked. The first Nordbo who settled here had used them after the motor in his boat failed, to fetch a son wrecked on Horn Reef.
Saxtorph liked this place. It spoke to something in his blood. “You've got roots,” he remarked. “Not many folks do these days.”
Seated on his left, Tyra nodded. Her hair was the sole real brightness. “The honor of the house,” she said, then grimaced. “No, forgive me, I do not mean to be pretentious.”
“But you shouldn't be afraid of speaking about what truly matters,” said Dorcas on her far side.
“I am not. Your husband knows. But—” The com that they confronted chimed and blinked. Tyra stiffened. “Accept,” she snapped.
The full-size image of a man appeared, and part of the desk behind which he sat, and through the window at his back a glimpse of the Drachenturm in München. “Good day,” he greeted. Half rising to make a stiff little bow: “Frau Saxtorph, at last I get the pleasure of your acquaintance.” He must have worked to flatten out of his English the accent his sister retained.
Dorcas inclined her head. The mahogany-hued crest and tail of her Belter hairstyle rippled. “How do you do, Herr,” she answered as formally. The smile on the Athene visage was less warm than usual. “Someday I may have the pleasure of shaking your hand.”
Ib Nordbo took the implied reproof impassively. He was in his mid-forties, tall and low-gee slim, smooth-chinned, bearing much of Tyra's blond handsomeness but none of her verve and frequent merriment. At least, during his previous two short encounters with Saxtorph he had been curt and somber. Insignia on the blue uniform proclaimed him a lieutenant commander of naval intelligence.
“Why would you not come in person today?” burst from Tyra. “I tell you, this is the one spot on Wunderland where we can be sure we are private.”
“Come, now,” her brother replied. “My office was and is perfectly secure, there is no reason to imagine your town apartment or the Saxtorphs' hotel room were ever under surveillance, and I assure you, this circuit is well sealed.”
Anxious to avoid a breach, for the earlier scenes had gotten a bit tense, Saxtorph said, “You'd know, in your job. Actually, my wife and I were glad of Tyra's invitation because we were curious to see the homestead.”
“We hoped to get some feel for your father, some insight or intuition,” Dorcas added.
“What value can that have, on a search through space?”
Nordbo's question would have been a challenge or a gibe if it had been uttered less flatly.
“Perhaps none. You never can tell. If nothing else, this was an interesting visit; and to hold his actual notebook in our hands was… an experience.”
“I fear nobody else would agree, Frau.” Nordbo's attention went to his sister. “Tyra, I hesitate to say you have become paranoiac on this subject, but you have exaggerated it in your mind out of all proportion. What cause does anyone have to spy on you? How often must I repeat, the Navy—no part of officialdom—will concern itself?”
Saxtorph stirred. “And I repeat, if you please, that I have trouble believing that,” he said. “Okay, one kzinti ship was lost thirty years ago, among hundreds. There was an avalanche of matters to handle in the years right after liberation. This business was forgotten. Sure. But if we did show them your father's notes and reminded them that the kzinti reckoned it worthwhile dispatching a ship—”