She could even see the faint, shining presence of minute Ephesian stoneflowers growing in cracks between the slabs. She could see them moving as the light of the sun began to gild the roof of the overhang. Though Gretchen was unaware of making a noise, there was suddenly a sharp gasp of pain echoing in her ears.
A shadow moved on the ceiling, almost lost among the crevices. She heard boots crunching on sand. Gretchen rolled her head to the side, feeling strangely empty, as though everything inside her body had been drawn out through a very small straw.
Hummingbird approached, silhouetted against the rising sun. Behind him, the wings of both Midge s were shining with fabulous rainbow brilliance.
For an instant, as the shadow moved toward her, Gretchen saw something strange. A shifting cloud of Hummingbirds filled the mouth of the cave. Some wore their djellaba over one shoulder, some had none, the z-suits of some were dark, some light. Some of the figures had long hair, some short. One indistinct shape had pale skin. The sound of boots on gravel grew deafening, then subsided.
The old Mйxica leaned over her, smoky green eyes concerned. His mouth opened, one hand reaching down to touch her shoulder. Smoke billowed from between his teeth, curling around his goggles and lean, weathered face.
Gretchen closed her eyes, head thudding back on the blanket. She welcomed onrushing darkness with vast relief.
The Palenque
Magdalena leaned forward on one paw, yellow eyes intent on the main v-pane.
"What is he doing? Where's Doctor Anderssen?" Parker slouched against the control panel, his thin body enveloped in a big, bulky field jacket. He looked cold and a little ill, though the bridge was really very warm from the ring of heaters around the command station.
"She must be inside the cave," Maggie replied, adjusting the light levels of the feed. The dawn line had just passed over the eastern side of the Escarpment and everything was terribly washed-out. The figure of Hummingbird could be seen moving around the tied-down ultralights. The Mйxica knelt momentarily beside both of the Midge s. "He's checking the sand anchors."
Even in the jerky, disrupted image on the panel, Magdalena could tell there was a fierce wind lashing against the cliffs. Less than two kilometers away, a boiling cloud of yellow-red dust raged against the Escarpment. Sheets of sand roared across the valley floor and funneled down into a terrifying-looking standing cone at the mouth of the canyon.
Hummingbird turned and scuttled back beneath the overhang, the tail of his cloak snapping in the violent air.
"Looks rough," Parker said, chewing on his fingernails. "Those anchors had better hold…"
"He's checked them twice already since the sun rose." Magdalena adjusted the camera view again, trying to get a low enough angle to look beneath the overhang. The image changed, but not enough. "Ssssh! Curse warband leader Hadeishi for trying to crash our satellites!"
Parker tapped on one of the secondary panels and grimaced at the resulting screen. "Almost no propellant left."
"No." Maggie let out a steam-kettle hiss of disgust. "I managed to stop them from degrading too much, but all I can do now is reorient their point of view. Some of the others are already deep in the atmosphere – they'll burn up soon. We'll go blind, eyes gouged out one at a time."
"Still no comm?" Parker started to chew on his other hand. Magdalena stared at him in disgust – his weak claws were already worn down to repulsive pink nubs.
"No – I was talking to Gretchen several days ago and we were cut off. I think the old crow is trying to impose comm silence… Will you stop doing that?"
"What?" The pilot stared at her in surprise. Maggie's paw blurred in the air and seized his hand, turning over the ruined fingernails. "Oh…I just need a tabac, you know. Makes me nervous to…not have any." He grimaced.
Magdalena let go of his hand, then wiped her paw on one of the blankets surrounding her. "Bitter smoke means so much to you?"
"Yeah." Parker looked a little queasy and rubbed his wrist. "I'll stop." He put both hands in the pockets of his jacket. "So – hey – don't Midge-class ultralights act as a local comm relay? We could tap in and listen to what they're saying."
"Yes," Maggie growled, curling up in her nest again. "Which is all shut down. I suppose they have suit-to-suit comm working, but I've tried opening a long-range link through the peapods and there's no response. Feather-brain has everything locked up tight."
"What about accessing a backup system?" Parker looked painfully earnest. Both of his hands, flat-looking fingers and all, were out of the jacket pockets and being rubbed together as if he were cold. "You used the standard long-range highband, right? Isn't there a secondary system on these aircraft?"
"Sometimes." Maggie gave the pilot an inscrutable look. "But the peapods do not mount microwave emitters. There's no way to punch an area transmission through the atmosphere."
"Really?" Parker started to smirk. He pointed at the main display. "How are you getting a transmission back from your satellites?"
Maggie showed him a full set of teeth, which did not properly impress the pilot. After a moment she relented, saying "To reduce emissions I am using a point-to-point laser link."
"You mean," Parker said, grinning, "to get around the main array lockout. And keep engineer stoneface from noticing your violation of the judge's orders."
"Maybe." Maggie stirred in her blankets and bone-white claws make a sharp, skittering tik-tik-tik on the panel as she queried the peapods. "A highband query failed to draw a response from the Midge onboard comm. So if we try a laser we'll have to drop a whisker right on the comm port, which seems very unlikely if we're firing from orbit and trying to hit a port which is probably underneath the wing."
"Not at all!" Parker seemed to have forgotten his tabac sticks and slid over the panel to stand beside Magdalena. "Look, let's bring up the mechanical schematic from the repair bay – not the standard manual, mind – but PГўtecatl's record of modifications she'd made herself."
The Hesht and the human both began looking through the dead engineer's records, searching for maintenance records concerning the expedition ultralights.
An hour later Magdalena coughed in delight and brought up a hand-annotated schematic on the command panel. Parker squinted at the diagram and smiled himself.
"That's it." The pilot ran a thin, tabac-stained finger over a layout of the Midge tail assembly, squinting to read a block of annotated text. "This is a military-surplus comm aperture bolted to the rear engine housing. Which is great." He frowned. "But why?"
"To communicate with the ship," Magdalena said, eyes bare sodium-yellow slits. "With the Palenque. Look at the other Midge." A claw stabbed at the image on the main display. Both ultralights were leaning hard against the cables holding them to the sand. Hummingbird's aircraft, despite the patched wing, was obviously newer and lacked the worn, battered appearance of Russovsky's aircraft. Seen from above, there were other differences – the extra comm aperture, larger air intakes, reinforced tail pylons…