"PГўtecatl and Russovsky must have been busy." Parker fumbled in his pocket, but found nothing, not even a gum wrapper. "Crap. Stupid Marines… Okay, see if you can get a lock with a peapod laser! If you can, we'll be set."
"Perhaps." Magdalena began sending a new set of codes to the satellites. She hummed as she worked, a deep rumbling sound in her chest. Parker became nervous after listening for a bit and sidled off the bridge.
By the time he returned, looking even more morose than before, the Hesht was watching as a targeting overlay wandered jerkily across the video feed from the surface. Hummingbird was nowhere to be seen and the wind had died down to intermittent gusts. Parker stared at the screen, then turned to Maggie with a perplexed expression. "What's going on?"
"Comp on a peapod is about as smart as a leaf-eater," she said, flashing both incisors. "It's having a hard time finding the comm aperture."
"Guide it to lock-on yourself," Parker said irritably. His right hand moved toward the control panel.
Magdalena raised a silver-frosted eyebrow at him. Long whiskers curving back around her face twitched in amusement. "How far away are we from the planet?"
"Oh. Yeah." Parker slumped against the console again. The Palenque was steadily accelerating away from the third planet. "How much lag is there?"
"Three light-minutes," she replied, turning her attention back to the screen. The targeting indicator was jumping from spot to spot, wildly painting the top of the Midge, the rocks, blowing sand, the left wheel as it groped to find the aperture receiver. "We'll just have to wait. Shouldn't take long."
Five minutes passed with Parker squirming like a kit who had to find some fresh dirt. Then the scatter-search pattern implemented by the peapod comp hopped into lock with the aperture. There was a cheerful chiming sound and a new v-pane opened on Maggie's panel as the peapod negotiated a channel with the Midge.
A sharp beep followed and Maggie frowned at the v-pane.
"I think we've got a lock," she announced in a dissapointed tone, "but the responder laser is not working properly." The Hesht scrolled through a log, whiskers flat against her head. "This model has a two-part system," she explained after a moment, indicating a sub-schematic. "The receptor itself can modulate a reflected signal along the path of the incoming beam, but only for basic comm etiquette. Real data return is handled by a second, separate laser. But we're not getting any response at all. I think this other laser is blocked out by Hummingbird's comm lockdown."
"So," Parker said, his brief excitement dampened. "We can only talk one way? How do we get any data back?"
"I don't know." Magdalena frowned at her displays. Luckily, Hummingbird had not emerged from the cave while the laser-whisker was gyrating across the landscape. The only motion visible below was the slow rocking of both ultralights in the wind. "I could send sets of command codes blindly, but…" She hissed, picking at her left upper incisor with the tip of a claw. "All we see are the ultralights and their immediate area. We need something to change visually in response to our signal. Ah!"
Her claw stabbed at the v-panel, running along the grainy, pixilated front edge of an ultralight wing. A curving strip of bright material gleamed in the Ephesian sun. "Here we are, blessed furry little kit." Her yellow eyes flickered back to the schematics on the other panel. "These lights are made of a phosphor material which can be controlled by onboard comp."
Parker laughed aloud. His thin fingers fluttered across the control console, bringing up the specifics of the LuxTerra illumination fabric. He ran a forefinger down a list of wavelengths. "We can pulse each phosphor in ultraviolet – that would cut through the clouds and atmospheric distortion – and the satellite cameras could pick up a datagram as large as the panel array will allow."
"Good." Maggie ran her claw down the middle of the command panel. Immediately, the workspace split in two. "Get to work on a receiver program to interp a multibyte array."
"Me?" Parker gave her a horrified look. "I'm not a comp-head! I fly shuttles, aircraft, pogo-sticks…"
Magdalena smiled at him, showing a great number of teeth. "I'm busy, coding blind commands to reconfigure the Midge. So make yourself useful." She paused, nose twitching. "I want to know what the packleader is doing. Right now."
Parker swallowed nervously and dragged over an equipment box for a seat. "Sure. Sure. I'm working on it." He forced his fingers to the panel and cleared away everything but some editors. "Code – I wrote some code once. In school."
Maggie's lip curled. The smell of the human's fear-sweat made her nose twitch.
Slot Canyon Twelve
With the old Mйxica helping her stand, Gretchen stepped gingerly out of the overhang. The sun had set and the wind had died down, leaving everything quiet and still. Anderssen was vastly relieved to have the world wrapped in darkness. Her head still felt altered, somehow, and she was sure the full light of day would be too much to take. Even the light of the stars – very clear, very bright, with a pellucid crystalline quality – hurt her eyes.
"Careful…there's a cable," Hummingbird pointed. Gretchen stopped, staring at the line of shadow stretching from the ground to the Midge. Something like a white flame winked at the edge of her vision, then brightened. After a moment's attention, she saw the cable itself outlined in pale fire. Gretchen swallowed and looked up.
The ultralight was glowing very softly. Every edge was lit by the same kind of faded, heatless brilliance. Each strut, window, airfoil – all were limned with light. Gretchen's heart skipped a beat, but a sense of delight filled her. There was no fear, only amazement at the glorious sight. She leaned on Hummingbird's shoulder and looked around. Both aircraft were spectral, incandescent ghosts standing out sharp against a limitless black background. The cables made sharp, tight lines to the ground – but the sand, the rock, the cliffs seemed to have disappeared. Only very faint lights winked in deep crevices in the stone.
"The…the Gagarin is glowing," she said softly.
Hummingbird's eyes crinkled up in response. "Yes. I imagine it is."
"What am I seeing?" Gretchen turned to look at the old Mйxica and found him equally illuminated, his kaffiyeh wicking with jewel-colored flames, face blazing with a pearlescent, gold-tinged light. She raised her own hand and saw her palm and fingers glowing in the same way.
"When first you begin to see," Hummingbird said, voice soft against the respirator's background hiss, "you will see too much. In this darkness, you are sensitive to even the least perturbation. By day, you would be almost blinded by the immense detail of the world. Right now, you are aware of the electromagnetic field around living things. The Midge is illuminated because our aircraft carry vibrations from their engines, from the motion of flight, from the powered systems onboard."
"I'm seeing an electromagnetic field?" Gretchen started to laugh. "That's impossible!"
"You see the light from a glowbean or a wand, don't you? This is the same, only much much fainter." Hummingbird took hold of her shoulders and turned her toward the open plain. "The 'helper' I gave you has broken down a barrier in your mind, a perceptual filter to which you've become accustomed since you were born. Look out there, into the emptiness. What do you see?"
"Nothing…wait, there's a faint radiance along the dune faces."
"Heat is radiating from the earth. Soon it will be gone and the sand and air will be the same temperature. Then there will be no difference for you to perceive."
Gretchen gave the old Mйxica a sick look. "Is this what you see? All the time?"