"Outside," was all of his response, and I followed him to the aft lock.
The Setari on watch is posted with a greensuit just inside the lock; there’s seats, and they don’t have to stand, but usually seem to be. Anya and the greensuit were both standing, and the greensuit looked like she had a headache, heh.
"Any movement?" Ruuel asked, and they both said no, tensing because we wouldn’t have been there if nothing was happening.
Ruuel opened the outer hatch and lifted us both on to the roof of the ship. He used straight Levitataion, which I much prefer to being hauled about clinging on to people, but the Setari can only lift me directly if they’re not enhanced.
"Try to gauge a direction while I arrange clearance," he said, and then I guess sent an override in turn to the Diodel's captain.
It’s really hard to work out the direction of a distant noise. Shadowed by Ruuel, I walked around the roof of the ship, trying to ignore the chilly wind, and eventually decided that I could hear it best on the aft end. By that time, a couple of greensuits were preparing the ship’s transports for a night-time excursion, and Fourth and Ninth were all up and ready.
There’s a lot of different types of smaller transports, and the name of the two the Diodel carried would roughly translate to skimmers. They hold eight people and are more complex than the flat, hovering sleds we used crossing the lake at Pandora, with low seats wrapped around the edge and a flat area in the middle: flying rafts. No visible controls or console or anything like that. They can only go about forty feet up, but scudded along at a brisk pace.
Each skimmer had two greensuits, and five Setari, with two of Ninth Squad left at the Diodel, including one unimpressed drama queen. I sat up front opposite the greensuit, feeling very silly, and we flew in the direction I’d indicated. I was picturing the reaction if I’d chosen the wrong direction, but as we got closer I could tell it was more to one side, and re-directed the greensuit, and kept making corrections the louder the Ddura became.
Nurioth sprawls over two rivers which drain into another fresh-water lake – the westernmost of a chain of huge lakes including Pandora’s lake. After a while, as the Ddura grew louder, I stopped feeling so self-conscious about playing native guide, and enjoyed looking at the stars and the reflections in the lake and the spooky gloom of the city. After we left it behind us, I was expecting to arrive at another of the small settlements marked by the circle symbols on roofs, but there was just forest beside the lake, and small mountains which reminded me of those pictures you see on old Chinese pictures – conical pointed arrangements.
"Very near here," I said, looking back confusedly. "Think we passed." There was no sign of any settlement, just the gleam of an old road.
"Take us lower," Ruuel said to the greensuit, then touched my arm and added to Auron and Mori: "Try to locate another of the communication devices."
The moon was three-quarters full above us as we dropped to nearly ground-level among the steep mountainettes. All three of the path-finders turned slowly in the same direction, glanced at each other and nodded. We moved back the way we came, until we were in the middle of a triangle formed by three of the conical mountains, with the lake to our left and patches of whitestone paving poking through the dirt and plants beneath. There was something distinctly unnatural about the shadowy near-vertical slopes of the mountains around us, the moonlight picking out too-regular shapes among bright-edged shadows.
"We need more light," said Ormeral, the sole greysuit who’d been sent along.
Ruuel said: "Halla," and she obediently sent a huge Pillar of flame into the air above us, startling a flock of birds (or bats) into flight and revealing large stone doors surrounded by decorative carving, firmly sealed and very impressive. Before the flame died away I saw that all three mountainettes had the same sort of entrance.
"Set down by the lake," Ruuel said. We were well out of what he’d said was normal interface range, but I guess the skimmers would include communication links, since he got that talking-to-someone-else expression and, when we set down, said: "The Diodel will relocate, and we’ll wait for daylight. What’s the status of the Ddura?"
"Still hunting." It was loud, but not as loud as it was on the surface at Pandora, let alone at the communication platform.
Ruuel nodded. "We’ll scout for gate locations external to the site while we wait."
He split us into two groups, putting me in the "sit in the skimmers and don’t move" half, and then divided the rest into pairs who vanished off into the night. Pairs meant he didn’t sense a major threat nearby, which I guess isn’t that surprising since the Ddura had been hunting through the area for the last half hour. Ormeral began taking readings using a bulky machine he’d lugged along, looking tremendously excited. I watched the lake.
This is such a beautiful world. I pretended, just for a few minutes, that I was here on a family holiday. Mum and the aunts and the cousins, maybe even Dad. We’d fish, and only Nick would catch anything. Mum would go off on a long rambling walk, and bring back a huge bouquet of interesting leaves and flowers. Jules would be everywhere, complaining half the time of X-Box deprivation, and then would fall out of a tree, scrape every limb raw, and be all pleased with himself. Maybe I’d go canoeing – I’ve never tried that, but it looks like it might be fun. We’d have a campfire and cook the fish, with potatoes in the coals, and tell ghost stories. Everyone would argue just a little, and laugh a lot, and be comfortable and relaxed and no matter what planet it was I would belong because that’s what being with your family does.
Thinking about all this of course made me feel intensely miserable. I was surprised when Auron patted my shoulder and when I looked at him he gave me this shy, sympathetic smile. I smiled back, appreciating the gesture, which was uncharacteristic for him: he’s even more taciturn than Ruuel, though in a very different way. Ruuel had swapped him for Glade as my primary babysitter pretty early on, maybe just because he’s so tall it makes it easier for him to tuck me under his arm. I’m more comfortable clinging to Auron, anyway. Glade, though he was always correct, was I think endlessly tempted to tease me about it.
Halla and Sonn are still pretty formal, but I think even they accept me as a temporary part of Fourth Squad; they’re certainly not hostile. Mori and Glade are becoming friends, and Auron (Par) sort of comes as an added extra with Glade. And their acceptance and growing willingness to talk to me makes it a lot easier to be around Ruuel so much. I really don’t enjoy the way I feel about him a lot of the time. Too vulnerable.
The arrival of the Diodel interrupted all my introspection, and now I’m back on the ship and everyone’s sitting around waiting for it to be dawn. One of the main things all this exploration is for is to find information about the Pillars, and I guess Ruuel has decided there might be some here. This means the place is going to be searched really carefully, with especial emphasis on not accidentally standing on vital bits of evidence. Most of it will be inside the mountains, though, so I find it funny that they’re waiting for dawn just so they can sift through the debris outside the doors.
I think I’ll try and get a little more sleep now that I’m no longer so keyed up.
Seeing too much