"I guess we could stay here and tough it out," Darya Lang was saying, staring around them. "This is as quiet as it's been for a long time. If it doesn't get much worse than it was . . ."
"No. It will get a lot worse."
"How bad?"
"I'm not sure."
That was an understatement. He had no idea how bad, and it did not matter. We have to get off Quake, a tiny voice was saying in his ear, or we are dead. He was glad that Darya could not hear that voice, but he had learned never to ignore it.
"We have to leave," he added. "This minute, if you're ready."
"And go where?"
"To the Umbilical, and then to Midway Station. We'll be safe there. But we can't wait too long. The Umbilical is programmed to lift away from the surface before Summertide."
She climbed into the car and consulted the chronometer. "It lifts twelve hours before Summertide Maximum. That's twenty-seven hours from now. And we can be over there in one Dobelle day. We have plenty of time."
Rebka closed the car door. "I
like
to have plenty of time. Let's go."
"All right." She smiled at him. "But you've seen more of Quake than I have. What do you think will happen here at Summertide?"
Rebka took a deep breath. She was trying to be nice to him, but worse than that, she assumed that he was tense and needed to be calmed down. And the trouble was, she was right. He was
too
tense. He could not explain it—except that he had been badly fooled once on Quake, by assuming that something was safe when it was not. He did not want to do it again. And every nerve in his body urged him to get away from Quake
soon
.
"Darya, I'd love to compare notes about Summertide." He was not annoyed that she had trapped him, he told himself; he was impressed. "But I'd rather do it when we're on the Umbilical, and well on our way to Midway Station. You may think I'm a coward, but this place scares me. So if you'll just move over, and let me get at those controls . . ."
The
Summe
r
Dreamboat
was well hidden.
The Pentacline Depression formed the most highly visible feature on the surface of Quake. One hundred and fifty kilometers across, packed with a riot of vivid and strongly growing vegetation, it could be seen from half a million kilometers away in space as a starfish splash of lurid green on Quake's dusty gray surface. The Pentacline was also the lowest point on the planet. Its five valleys, radiating up and out like stretching arms from the central low, had to rise over eight hundred meters to reach the level of the surrounding plain.
The little starship had landed close to the middle of the Pentacline's north-pointing arm, at a point where dense vegetation was broken by a small flat island of black basalt. But the ship had flown in to the bare outcrop on an angled descent and skated to its very edge. It was shielded from overhead inspection by vigorous new growth. Scarcely bigger than an aircar, the
Summer Dreamboat
was tucked neatly away under a canopy of five-meter leaf cover. It was empty, with all its life-support systems turned off. Only residual radiation from the Bose Drive betrayed its presence.
Max Perry stood inside the abandoned ship and stared around him with amazement. His head nearly touched the roof, and the whole living space was no more than three meters across. One step took him from the main hatch to the tiny galley; another, and he was at the control console.
He inspected the panel's simple displays, with their couple of dozen brightly colored switches and indicators, and shook his head. "This is a damned
toy
. I didn't know you could even get into the Bose Network with something this small."
"You are not supposed to." Graves had himself under firm control. He did not look quite sane, but the twitching of his fingers was less, and his bony face no longer boiled in a turmoil of emotion. "This was built as a small tourist vessel, for in-system hops. The designers didn't expect a Bose Drive to be added, and certainly no one ever thought it might be used for so many Bose Transitions. But that's Shasta for you—the children rule the planet. The Carmel twins talked their parents into it." He turned to J'merlia. "Would you kindly tell Kallik to stop that, before she does something dangerous?"
The little Hymenopt was over by the ship's drive. She had removed the cover and was peering inside. She turned at Graves's words.
"It is not dangerous," J'merlia interpreted, listening to the series of clicks and whistles. "With great respect, Kallik says that it is the opposite of dangerous. She is aware that someone as ignorant as she can know little about anything so difficult as the Bose Drive, but she is quite sure that this one's power unit is exhausted. It cannot be used again. It is debatable that this ship could even make it from here to low orbit. She already suspected this, from the weak signal that her master's ship received in its survey of the surface."
"Which explains why the twins never left Quake." Perry had turned on the display and was examining the computer log. "It makes sense of their peculiar itinerary, too. This shows a continued Bose Network sequence that brings them to Dobelle and then takes them right into Zardalu territory in two more transitions; but they couldn't do that without a new Bose power source. They could have picked one up at Midway Station, but naturally they didn't know it. So the only other place they could have gone in this system would have been Opal, and we'd have tracked their arrival there at once."
"Which is unfortunately not the case
here
. So how will we find them?" Graves walked across to the door and peered out, snapping his finger joints. "I deserve censure, you know. I assumed that once we found the ship they came in, the hard task was over. It never occurred to me that they might be foolhardy enough to
leave
the ship and roam the planet's surface."
"I can help with that. But even if you find them, how will you handle the twins themselves?"
"Leave that to me. It is the area of my experience. We are creatures of conditioning, Commander. We assume that what we know is easy, and we find mysterious whatever we do not." Graves waved a skinny, black-clad arm out toward the Pentacline. "All that to me is mysterious. They are hidden somewhere out there. But why would they leave this ship, and relative safety, to go to
that
?"
What could be seen from the ship was a green mass of vines, lush and intertwined. They trembled continuously to ground tremors, giving an illusion of self-awareness and nervous movement.
"They went there because they thought it was safe, and so they wouldn't be found. But I can find them." Perry glanced at his watch. "We have to be quick. It's already hours since we left the beacon. J'merlia." He turned to the apprehensive Lo'tfian. "We promised we'd have you back where we came from in four hours. And we will. Come on, Councilor. I know where they'll be—alive or dead."
Outside the ship the atmosphere of the depression felt thicker and more oppressive, ten degrees hotter than the plain. Black basalt quivered underfoot, hot and pulsing like the scaly hide of a vast beast. Perry walked along the edge of the rock, carefully examining it.
Graves followed, mopping at his perspiring brow. "If you are hoping to see footprints I hate to be discouraging, but—"
"No.
Water
prints." Perry knelt down. "Runoff patterns. Quake has a lot of small lakes and ponds. The native animals manage fine, but they make do with water that you or I couldn't drink. And once the Carmel twins left their ship, they'd need a supply of fresh water."
"They might have had a purifier."
"They would have, and they'd need it—fresh water on Quake is a relative term. You and I couldn't drink it, nor could Geni and Elena Carmel." Perry ran his hand over a smooth indented wedge in the rock. "If they're alive, they'll be within reach of water. And it doesn't matter where they headed first, if they started out from this rock—and they must have, because the
Summer Dreamboat
is here—they'll finish up along one of the runoff lines. Here's one of them, a good strong one. There's another over there, just about as well defined. But this rock slab is tilted and we're on the lower side. We'll try this one first."
He lowered himself carefully over the edge. Graves followed, wincing as his hand met the basalt. The bare rock was beyond blood heat, almost hot enough to blister. Perry was moving away fast, scrambling along on his backside down a thirty-degree slope that plunged through a trailing curtain of purple-veined creepers.
"Wait for me!" Graves raised one arm to protect his eyes. Saw-edged leaves cut into the back of his hand and left their scratch marks along the top of his unprotected skull. Then he was through, under the tree-floor of vegetation that marked the first level of the Pentacline.
The light of Mandel and Amaranth was muted here to a blue-green shadow. Small creatures flew at them. Julius Graves thought at first that they were insects or birds, but a query to Steven brought the information that they were pseudocoelenterates, more like flying jellyfish than any other Earth or Miranda form. The creatures chittered in panic and flew away from Graves into the gloom. He hurried on after Max Perry. Within a few meters the air temperature beneath the canopy had jumped another few degrees.
Perry was following the rocky watercourse, squeezing his way past sticky yellow trunks and upthrusting mushroom structures two meters high. Clouds of minute winged creatures burst from the overhead leaves and flew for his unprotected face and hands.
"They don't bite," Perry said over his shoulder. "Just keep going."
Graves swatted at them anyway, trying to keep them out of his eyes. He wondered why Perry had not brought masks and respirators with them. In his concentration he was not looking where he was going, and he walked into the other man's back.
"Found something?"
Perry shook his head and pointed down. Two steps ahead the streambed dropped into a vertical hole. Graves leaned recklessly forward and could see no sign of the bottom.
"Let's hope they're not down there." Perry was already turning back. "Come on."
"What if the other one dead-ends, too?" Graves was snapping his finger joints again.
"Bad news. We'll need a new idea, but we won't have time for one even if we think of it. We'll have to worry about ourselves."
Rather than climbing back up the rock face, he led the way to one side, working his way slowly around the foot of the outcropping to where a second runoff flowed. Away from the watercourse the lower-level vegetation grew more strongly. Tough bamboo spears jutted up to knee level, scoring their boots and cutting through the cloth of their trousers. Irritant sap from broken leaves created lines of stinging cuts along their calves. Perry swore, but did not lessen his pace.
In another twenty meters he stopped and pointed. "There's the other runoff. And something has been this way quite a few times." The gray-green sedges at the side of the streambed had been flattened and broken. Their crushed stems were coated with a brown layer of dried sap.
"Animals?" Graves leaned down to rub at his scraped shins and calves, which had begun to itch maddeningly.
"Maybe." Perry lifted his foot and pressed down on an unbroken stem, gauging its strength. "But I doubt it. Whatever flattened these wasn't far from human body weight. I've never heard of anything in the Pentacline that massed more than a quarter as much. At least this makes it easy to track."
He began to walk down the stream side, following the line of broken vegetation. The verdurous gloom had deepened, but the path was easy to follow. It ran parallel to the dry watercourse and then inched over into it. Thirty meters farther on, the bottom of the path became veiled by a thicket of tough ferns.
Graves put his hand on Perry's shoulder and moved on past him.
"If you're right," he said quietly, "then from this point on it's my show. Let me go in front, and alone. I'll call you when I want you."
Perry stared for a moment, then allowed Graves to step ahead of him. In the past five minutes the other had changed. Every sign of instability had vanished from his face, leaving in its place strength, warmth, and compassion. It was the countenance of a different man—of a councilor.
Graves stepped cautiously along the streambed until he was no more than a couple of paces from the veil of ferns. He paused, listening, then after a few seconds nodded and turned to Perry. He winked grotesquely, parted the ferns, and stepped through into the dark interior of the thicket.
It was the Carmel twins, it had to be; they had been located, although Perry would have given high odds against it when he, Graves, and Rebka had left Opal. But what was Graves saying to them, hidden away in the darkness?
A few minutes in the Pentacline so close to Summertide felt like hours. The heat and humidity was horrible. Perry looked again and again at his watch, hardly able to believe that time was passing so slowly. Though it was full day, and Mandel must still be rising, his surroundings grew less and less visible. Was there a dust storm brewing far overhead in the atmosphere? Perry stared straight up, but he could see nothing through the thick multiple layers of vegetation. Underfoot, however, there was plenty of evidence of Quake's activity. The root-tangled forest floor was in continuous, steady vibration.
Thirty-five hours to Summertide Maximum.
The clock kept running in Perry's head, along with a question. They had promised to return J'merlia and Kallik to where they had found them. That promise had been made in good faith and without reservations. But could they allow such a thing to be done, knowing that Quake would soon be a death trap to everything except its own uniquely selected organisms?
Perry was startled by a sudden bright light in front of him. The curtain of ferns had been pulled aside, and Graves stood behind it gesturing him forward.
"Come on in. I want you to hear this and serve as an additional witness."
Max Perry eased his way in through the bristly fronds of the ferns. Lit from the interior, the dark thicket was revealed to be less than it seemed. The ferns formed only an outer framing web, a convenient natural fence within which stood a flexible tent supported by pneumatic ribbing. Graves was holding a door panel open, and when Perry stepped through he was astonished by the size of the interior. The floor area was at least ten meters square. Even with the inward-sloping walls the living area was substantial. And the furnishings were amazingly complete, everything that was needed for normal pleasant living. Some form of cooling and humidity-control unit was operating, to hold the internal conditions at a comfortable level. And it was well hidden from any normal searcher. No wonder the twins preferred to stay here, rather than in the cramped quarters of the
Summer Dreamboat
.