Cho stood nearer to her than he usually did, not touching but just an elbow bend from it. Prader gripped and flipped a wrench in her hands, holding on to it like the handle of a roller coaster. Jefferson rubbed his thumbs over his forefingers, loosening the grit from the creases there, grit that had long since become
permanent. Wagner looked to each of them before opening his screen and raising a volume control that the rest of the crew had kept on mute. They all knew he’d kept the volume of this channel just at the edge of hearing range, his captain’s ear incapable of not listening for it.
They stood silently, waiting, the hot orange of the sun fading. Meg was thankful for that. After this period, the air would cool just a little, the light become a little less flame-like. She thought it was the time they called Fa-something because the light came mostly from the paler sun that always hung over the archiving station. Wagner would know. He’d made a point of knowing the suns and their schedules. She and the rest of the crew had just moved through the shifting light trying not to get sunburned or light-blinded. Wagner paid attention to the suns. He was a navigator. The solar patterns directly affected this mission. He had to pay attention to them, just like he had to keep a certain audio channel open.
They waited, hearing the unmistakable white noise of an inactive audio channel. Around them, the Dideto crews thrummed and muttered, curious about the withdrawal of their Earther teammates. From the corner of her eye, Meg saw crews heading toward Loul to ask him. Loul was the unofficial authority on all the strange behavior the Earthers exhibited. She wondered what he was telling them.
“Contact,
Damocles Sub Two
, this is the
Damocles
, contact come in.”
As one, the five Earthers blew out a sigh of relief loud enough to be heard over the sea wind. Prader slumped forward, hands on her knees still clinging to the wrench. Jefferson bent backward, eyes closed, mouth open. Cho bumped against Meg, who had to cover her face with her hands. Wagner stayed still as he spoke.
“
Damocles
, this is
Sub Two
. We have contact.” His voice broke on the last word and he dropped to one knee. “It sure is good to hear your voice, Aaronson.”
The tremor in the usually unshakeable voice brought the rest of the crew to the ground as well. They settled cross-legged, listening. “It sure is good to be heard, Captain. It was, um…” Static crackled and Cho grabbed Meg’s hand. “It was a little more exciting than I cared for. Especially since I had to worry about your candy asses getting Roswelled down there. Can I assume Prader hasn’t shot anyone yet?”
They laughed and Meg felt tension she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying running out her spine. Prader spun her wrench on the ground before her. “Don’t assume anything, Aaronson. And don’t think you can help yourself to my stuff. My underwear had better all be in place when we get back.”
“Trust me when I tell you this, Prader”—Aaronson’s voice regained its stony tone—“there is nothing in this universe safer than your underwear. Jefferson’s underwear, on the other hand…”
“Okay, okay, let’s knock off the chatter.” Wagner tried to sound stern but his grin gave him away. “We still have a mission and we’ve got a lot of confused Dideto around us wondering what the hell we’re doing right now.”
“Oh shit.” Meg spun from the circle and found Loul’s wide-eyed, flushed face staring back at her. She’d forgotten to turn off his com. The other Dideto had earpieces but Meg had restricted the channels they could access. Only Loul’s had full access to anything she could hear. She’d wanted him to hear the interplay among the crew. He was fascinated by the tones and tempos even when he couldn’t understand the words. Now he heard a new voice, a voice he believed she’d lied about.
“What’s it like down there?” Aaronson asked as Meg opened her screen. She didn’t want to do this. She knew the message it
would send to Loul but what they were discussing here would be too difficult to explain. She didn’t know what the verdict was going to be and she couldn’t let Loul stumble upon information he might misunderstand. There were limits to anyone’s loyalty. She shut off his com.
His hand flew to his ear, tapping the piece as if he thought it had malfunctioned. When he realized the truth, he pulled the piece from his head, dropping it on the table. Meg held out her hands in that gesture that begged patience but he turned away from her. For the first time since their landing, Loul turned his back on her.
“Shit.” She turned back to the circle, shutting off her screen. Wagner raised an eyebrow at her but she waved him off. One thing at a time.
Prader, Jefferson, and Cho continued talking over each other, answering Aaronson’s questions about the planet, the people, the discoveries they’d made. They bragged about Meg’s language breakthroughs and Wagner’s computer interface miracle and teased Cho about his new girlfriends. Aaronson laughed, an unusual sound from the serious woman, and kept peppering them with questions. At first, they lost themselves in the happy conversation, but as the questions kept coming, Meg saw Prader raise a worried glance to Wagner. Cho took Meg’s hand again, and while they kept up the chatter, the tension in the circle rose.
Wagner, as captain, took the lead. “So now that you’re light side again, we’re going to relay this information back to the ship’s database. We’ve got a megaton of information that’s going to take three lifetimes to process, so we’ll have plenty of work on our hands. But the pictures don’t really do it justice. Officer Aaronson”—he cleared his throat, the muscles in his jaw working to spit out the question—“will you be joining us on the surface?”
Static ripped through the coms and the five of them leaned forward, unconsciously urging the answer from their crewmate. She took a moment before answering. “That’s a negative, Captain. The Chelyan crystal is not recovering. I repeat, the crystal is not recovering. I cannot put the system in automatic.” Even through the static, Meg could hear Aaronson swallow hard around the words. The five on the ground grew very still.
“Prognosis?”
“I believe the crystal is still viable. It hasn’t shown signs of terminal damage but as yet I cannot reactivate the growth cycle.” Aaronson kept her tone level, her words technical, her speech familiar to all of them as that of a pilot in crisis. Aaronson had been a combat pilot before becoming one of the most decorated deep-space navigators alive. She knew more about Chelyan crystals than anyone in the crew, and Meg knew her greatest asset was her ability to remain calm and realistic. If Aaronson said the crystal was still viable, it was. That she wouldn’t leave the system to automatically tend to the situation spoke volumes on the seriousness of their situation.
Wagner’s lips were pale around the edges where he held his mouth so tight. “Recommendations?”
“A direct injection. The space debris I’ve picked up in orbit hasn’t had sufficient amounts of the silicates needed to reactivate the recombination. To be honest, I think all this damned solar radiation is burning off the elements we need.” They all heard the sound of something banging. Meg could picture Aaronson in her navigation cubby hurling her coffee cup across the panel. That action was the equivalent of any of the other crew members having a complete histrionic meltdown.
“What are you looking for?” Jefferson dug his nails into the dry soil. “We’ve got an abundance of Class I and II silicates within easy reach.”
Aaronson sighed, a whispering sound through the static. “I don’t think we can do it without Class IV. Maybe, maybe we can hump ’n’ jump with Class III, but, I’m not going lie, I haven’t been feeling especially lucky lately.” They could hear her breath through the com. “It’s really good to hear your voices. These suns, that star pair we rode in behind, they do weird things with the light up here.”
Meg shivered despite herself.
“How are we with hard fuel?” The captain’s voice was all business.
“Uh, we’ve been better but we’re okay.” The sound of keys clicking came through beneath her voice. “Someone had the decency to smash up a pretty large moon a couple hundred years ago and there’s enough hard metal to keep the magnets busy. I’ve shut down all systems on the ship except mine so the cells can recharge. I hope nobody minds but I broke into the whiskey to toast the innovator who decided to equip the
Damocles
with solar rechargers. We’re going to have enough to break orbit and give her a good running start if…you know.”
“Yeah.” Wagner gnawed on the edge of his lip. “Jefferson?”
The geologist pried a small stone loose from the ground. “We’ve got traces of Class IV but so far I haven’t found a solid source. Hopefully now that the captain’s started the interface I can research the Didetos’ files for the silicates. So far I can’t really figure out how they classify their minerals. Seems they don’t break them down quite the same way we do. Plus the surface is pretty uniform, at least where the drones have touched down.”
Aaronson cut him off. “It’s not an accident that Class IVs tend to cluster in the black. Solar radiation and higher-class silicates—not exactly a love story. We didn’t have them on Earth for that very reason. A planet with seven suns? Well…”
Meg only understood a fraction of the discussion. She knew the crystal needed certain elements combined at varying temperatures to reactivate. The crystal had been designed to operate in the cold void of space.
“This hump ’n’ jump you’re talking about.” Prader tapped the wrench against her open palm. “How much humping and jumping are we talking about? Can I retrofit the fuel cells for a little more jumping and save the humping for the deep-space burn?”
The sound of keys clicking came through the coms once more as Cho squeezed Meg’s hand. She looked up at him and he gave her a shrug. So much of this propulsion talk was beyond him as well. He and Meg were the least qualified to make an engineering decision.
“If we can get a large enough dose of some clean Class IVs and you can boost our burn out of orbit, I think we can probably limp up enough speed to hump the crystal. I won’t know until injection but it’s worth a look-see. Can you run a diagnostic down there?”
“Hell, yes.” Prader threw down the wrench and pulled out her screen.
Wagner looked to Jefferson, who worried smooth pebbles from the ground. “How about it, Jefferson? Can you find some clean Class IVs? A sufficient amount?”
His words rolled out with a heavy Galen drawl. “Well, it’s a slightly larger needle in a slightly smaller haystack, so yeah, I think I can trace the traces, so to speak. Send me down some specs, Aaronson, and I’ll start digging.”
“Let me do some figuring,” the pilot said, typing as she spoke. “I’m going to try a few more things up, you know, since I have all this time on my hands. Also, since the deep freeze isn’t the answer, we’d save a lot of juice if I can drop down into closer orbit. I don’t suppose you could clear that with your new friends?
Keep them from shooting me out of the sky? I’ve been playing hide-and-seek with a couple of bad-looking satellites up here.”
Wagner nodded. “They’re decades away from having anything to reach you, Aaronson, but we’ll wait to see if they spot you. We don’t want to start a panic.”
Cho squeezed Meg’s hand and she realized she had drifted from the conversation after Wagner’s remark about creating a panic. It seemed that everyone else’s teams had enough hard data to distract themselves from the question of another Earth ship. The Dideto were nothing if not focused on their jobs. Only Loul had pressed the issue and it had hardly been a press at all. Maybe it was a natural lack of curiosity, although she doubted that. Maybe it was politeness. Maybe the Dideto simply didn’t evade questions, choosing to be honest at all times. That seemed impossible to imagine as a human being. Whatever the case, Meg had to face Loul now and try to explain what she had hidden and why. Before she could even begin to formulate how she would approach this, Aaronson’s voice caught her attention.
“Here’s the thing, Captain. If this works, if you find adequate silicates and if Prader can pull off a hump ’n’ jump on the thrusters, it’s going to change our parameters. Significantly.”
“How so?”
“Sir, I know these crystals. I know this crystal, this kind of crystal. I’ve seen this kind of affliction before.” They could hear static crackle as she cleared her throat. “After the injection, we’ve got to let her digest it. If it takes, if she lets it in, she’s going to be a shark. She’s a shark.”
“A shark?” Meg asked.
“Yeah. If the injection feeds her then she’s got to move. She’s got to move fast and she’s got to keep on moving for at least a year. If we can fix her, we have to leave.”
The generals had their backs to him, talking into the heavy radio set as they always did just before Fa-pale, when the signal was clearest. They were filling in the presidents on the day’s activities and discoveries. Loul knew they didn’t know the biggest discovery of all.
He had to tell them. He had to let them know that he’d been wrong, that there were more Urfers and that they were close, close enough to contact their ground crew. There was another ship and there were more Urfers and he had lied about knowing otherwise. He hadn’t known, of course. None of them had, but by not admitting such in front of the world media, he’d let it be implied that he knew differently.
He kept seeing Meg’s face when she’d turned off his earpiece. She knew he had heard the voice. The expression on her face was yet another one he hadn’t seen before. If he had to guess—and really wasn’t that all he’d been doing this whole time?—he’d have said it was a look of fear. Like she was afraid the secret was out. Like she was afraid he would tell the generals and foil their plan.
Was she afraid? Did she have a plan? Was it all a lie? The specter of being the man who had vouched for these Urfers, these aliens, these invaders to his planet, swooped down and pushed all the air out of his lungs. It was very similar to the feeling he’d known when he’d stood in front of the panel of officials and heard them laughing at his alien-contact preparation report. The long-term repercussions weren’t what hurt. He hadn’t thought about the death wound he had just inflicted on his career. He’d felt only the humiliation. And now, crouching down watching the generals file their daily report, he felt the same immediacy of shame. Death, destruction, enslavement of his planet—stupidly they paled in light of going down in history
as the man who didn’t have sense enough to keep his guard up, the dork who’d treated the entire encounter like a ridiculous child’s role-playing game.