Parker stared around in alarm, making a cutting motion at his throat. "Sister save us! Boss, don't talk like that! He's plugged into every surveillance camera on the ship."
The pilot had been working up fuel loads and the speed and range of a Midge on the navigator's panel for an hour. None of his scenarios allowed an ultralight to rise to a sufficient altitude in the Ephesian atmosphere to let a shuttle on ballistic path to make a skyhook snatch.
"Maggie?" Gretchen swiveled her head toward the black-furred alien.
The Hesht shook her head, the overhead lights swirling across her work goggles, attention far away. "Crow and the Marines are loading supplies into the fresh Midge and doing a systems check. He's away from his surveillance equipment."
"See?" Gretchen grinned at the pilot. Parker made a face.
"Don't cost anything to be careful," he muttered. "Look – maybe he's expecting a pickup from the Cornuelle. A navy shuttle could pick him up anywhere. No law saying he has to be snatched out of the upper atmosphere on a skyhook."
"I suppose." Anderssen's face fell and her grumpy mood returned. In her heart, she knew there was no reason at all for the Imperial nauallis to choose the same way down and back. "So you think he wants this crazy high-altitude insertion now because the Cornuelle isn't available?"
"Sure." Parker settled back in the navigator's chair, his nervous tension draining away as Anderssen's voice became more reasonable. "Our shuttles aren't equipped with any kind of stealth tech, no antiradar alloys and composites…just commercial birds. So if he wants a quiet delivery, then this ballistic skip is an entirely reasonable way to go. Coming back? The Cornuelle sends down some freaky, high-grade military shuttle to snatch him up all ghostlike."
"Hmm. Only if the Cornuelle comes back soon enough. These suits and other equipment aren't going to last too long down there, not if he's wandering around in the mountains. He'll need to be extracted in no more than a week or two."
"What do you mean?" Parker stubbed out his tabac. "People have been working down at base camp for months."
"Yes, in pressurized buildings and using de-dusting equipment when they come in from the field." Gretchen waved her hand for emphasis. "Plus, the observatory site is in the middle of a bright, well-lit plain – almost flat, a desert even by Ephesian standards – so the population density of the microfauna is very low. I checked the airlocks and storm doors – they're eroding, not quickly, but you can see signs of wear. If the camp was someplace sheltered, in a canyon and in shade part of the day? There'd be nothing but a mineralized sheath left, or even an animate copy, like Russovsky."
Parker's shoulder twitched in reaction. "That's a nice thought."
"Ah-huh." Gretchen looked at Maggie questioningly. The Hesht was still staring into the distance. Still a little time, Anderssen thought. And what am I going to do? My prize is snatched away, the expedition cashiered short of any kind of deliverable – there won't be a single bonus now, not without something the Company can sell. The thought of not being able to afford a holiday ticket made her stomach turn over. Her thoughts shied away from the prospect of the expedition crew being charged for the lost machinery, tools, equipment and data at the base camp. "Parker, can you tell where the Cornuelle has gone? When it might come back?"
The pilot made a coughing sound – a conscious imitation of Magdalena's diesel generator laugh – and shook his head. "Sorry, boss. We lost the navy as soon as they went passive, shut down their hull lights and snuck off into the dark. Those light cruisers are built for snooping around, and the poor lot of matchsticks on this tub won't light them up even if we try."
Parker sighed, tapping a fresh tabac from a dingy plastic box he carried in the front pocket of his work vest. "As to a return date? I don't know. One of Maggie's tapes has Isoroku saying karijozu on his last comm call as they were preparing to leave. 'Good luck hunting.' So I'd guess they're looking for the refinery ship." He squinted at one of the dead navigation panels, thinking. "A search of the asteroid belt could take weeks, even months."
"I see." Gretchen's expression had grown still. She started to speak, but Magdalena suddenly twitched, making a sharp motion with one hand.
"They've finished," the Hesht said, ears twitching. "Back to work."
Grumbling, Parker hitched up his work belt and swung himself gracefully up and over the ring of command panels. "Mags, I think we need to jimmy up some kind of specialized clamp to back these dead connectors out…"
Gretchen sat quietly, thinking, while the Hesht and the pilot worked in the tight space under the deck, cursing and sweating. After almost an hour, she leaned forward and keyed up the Midge fuel-loading model Parker had put together. Her eyes were oddly flat and expressionless as she tapped in a new scenario.
A sleepbag muffled the sound of snoring, but Gretchen's work goggles were dialed up into light-amp mode and she pushed away from the door frame of Parker's cabin without a pause. She caught the far wall and bumped softly to a halt. With her free hand, she ran the sharp edge of her thumbnail down the sealer strip and a flap fell away, revealing the pilot's sleeping face.
"Breakfast time," she whispered, pinching his earlobe. Parker's eyes flickered open and he blinked in the darkness. Straining against her own exhaustion, Gretchen laid a finger across his lips before he made too much noise. "Quietly, Parker-tzin, quietly. Get dressed and bring your tools."
The pilot swallowed a curse, fumbled for his work shades, then hissed in disbelief at the hour. "Where -"
"I'll show you," Gretchen said, closing her eyes for a moment. I am so tired.
Parker eeled out of his bag with admirable skill, then started to gather up his work vest, toolbelt and clothing. The fingertips of Gretchen's left hand crept to the medband on her right wrist, and then a blessedly cool sensation began to prick up her arm. Ahhh…nothing like a jolt of eightgoodhours.
Fifteen minutes later, Parker had a very sour look on his face as they followed a guideline into the rear cargo deck of the number one shuttle. The docking bay was dark, lit only by the faint glow of lights around the airlock. Gretchen drew herself to a halt at the loading master's station, one foot hooked into a step-up to hold her steady. The hold was filled from side to side by the inelegant shape of a cargo pallet squatting atop the shuttle's deployment rack.
"Stand clear," Gretchen said, keying the loading master's panel awake. Frowning, Parker stood aside, keeping feet, hands and head behind a wedge of crosshatched yellow lines on the deck. Anderssen ran her forefinger down a control ribbon, her thumb plastered against an override.
A deep hum filled the air and Parker jerked back from the cargo rails. The enormous pallet slid forward smoothly, tiny winking lights marking the outline of the pod. As the pilot watched in growing alarm, the pallet rumbled past him, then out of the back of the shuttle.
"Wha…" Parker turned to Gretchen, but she was watching the pod with a grim, fixed expression. "Please say Maggie has subverted the surveillance cam -"
"She has," Gretchen muttered, her fingers dancing on the panel. "And Bandao is watching outside, just in case."
Parker felt the air tremble and looked back. A cargo lading arm descended from the roof of the bay, entirely ominous in the darkness, only a suggestion of movement, of long reaching steel claws. Two massive lading braces appeared out of the gloom and slid into matching grooves on either side of the cargo pod. The pilot inched back – he'd seen more than one spaceport worker crushed between a pod and the side of a shuttle or the maneuvering arms. The pallet clanked away from the shuttle deck, then swung away into darkness.