“If they’re not airborne by then, you don’t have a pilot any more.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Just what is going on down there?”
“I wish I knew, Captain. But I can tell you I’m bloody glad we’re leaving.”
The McBoeing undocked as the Ekwan moved into the penumbra. Its pilot fired the orbital manoeuvring rockets, and it dropped away into an elliptical orbit which would intercept Lalonde’s upper atmosphere. Ekwan started her preflight checks, testing the ion thrusters, priming the fusion tubes. The crew scurried through the life-support capsules, securing loose fittings and general rubbish.
“Got him,” the navigation officer called out.
Captain Montgomery datavised the flight computer, requesting the external sensor images.
A long contrail of blue-white plasma stretched out across Amarisk’s darkened eastern side, its star-head racing over the seaboard mountains. Already fifty kilometres high and rising. Bright enough to send a backwash of lame phosphorescent light skating over the snow-capped peaks.
Ekwan ’s flight computer acknowledged a communication channel opening.
Ralph Hiltch watched the hyped-up Kieron Syson start to relax once he could datavise the starship again. It should have been something for Ralph to be thankful about, too, communications had been impossible in the aftermath of the landing. Instead he treated it like a non-event, he expected nothing less than the communications block to work. They were owed functional circuitry.
Environment-contamination warning lights were still winking amber, though the pilot had shut off the cabin’s audio alarm. The air was dry and calciferous, scratching the back of Ralph’s throat. Gravity was falling off as they soared ever higher above the ocean, curving up to rendezvous with the big colonist-carrier. The prolonged bass roar of the reaction rockets was reducing.
The air they breathed was bad enough, but the human atmosphere in the spaceplane’s confined cabin was murderous. Gerald Skibbow sat at the rear of the cabin, shrunk down into his plastic seat, a zipcuff restraining each wrist against the armrests, his hands white knuckled as he gripped the cushioning. He had been subdued since the airlock hatch closed. But then Will and Dean were looking hard for an excuse to rip his head off. Jenny’s death had been fast (thank God) but very, very messy.
Ralph knew he should be reviewing the memory of the ape-analogue creatures, gaining strategically critical information on the threat they faced, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Let the ESA office on Ombey study the memory sequence, they wouldn’t be so emotionally involved. Jenny had been a damn good officer, and a friend.
The spaceplane’s reaction drive cut off. Free fall left Ralph’s stomach rising up through his chest. He accessed a nausea-suppression program and quickly activated it.
Huddled in his chair, Gerald Skibbow began to tremble as the forked strands of his filthy, blood-soaked beard waved about in front of his still-bleeding nose.
Ekwan ’s hangar was a cylindrical chamber ribbed by metal struts; the walls were composed of shadows and crinkled silver blankets. The spaceplane, wings fully retracted, eased its squashed-bullet nose through the open doors into the waiting clamp ring. Actuators slid catches into a circle of load sockets behind the radar dome, and the craft was drawn inside.
Three of Ekwan ’s security personnel, experts at handling troublesome Ivets in free fall, swam into the cabin, coughing at the ash dust which filled the air.
Will took the zipcuffs off Gerald Skibbow. “Run, why don’t you,” he said silkily.
Gerald Skibbow gave him a contemptuous glance, which turned to outright alarm as he rose into the air. Hands clawed frantically for a grip on the cabin ceiling. He wound up clutching a grab loop for dear life.
The grinning security personnel closed in.
“Just tow him the whole way,” Ralph told them. “And you, Skibbow, don’t cause any trouble. We’ll be right behind, and we’re armed.”
“You can’t use TIP carbines in the ship,” one of the security men protested.
“Oh, really? Try me.”
Gerald Skibbow reluctantly let go of the grab loop, and let the men tug him along by his arms. The eight-strong group drifted out into the tubular corridor connecting the hangar to one of the life-support capsules.
Sir Asquith Parish was waiting outside the zero-tau compartment, a stikpad holding his feet in place. He gave Gerald Skibbow a distasteful look. “You lost Jenny Harris for him?”
“Yes, sir,” Will said through clamped teeth.
Sir Asquith recoiled.
“Whatever sequestrated him has several ancillary energy-manipulation functions,” Ralph explained. “He is lethal; one on one, he’s better than any of us.”
The ambassador gave Gerald Skibbow a fast reappraisal. Light strips circling the corridor outside the zero-tau compartment hatch flickered and dimmed.
“Stop it,” Dean growled. He jabbed his TIP carbine into the small of Skibbow’s back.
The light strips came up to full strength again.
Gerald Skibbow laughed jauntily at the shaken ambassador as the security men shoved him through the hatch. Ralph Hiltch cocked an ironic eyebrow, then followed them in.
The zero-tau compartment was a big sphere, sliced into sections by mesh decking that was only three metres apart. It didn’t look finished; it was poorly lit, with bare metal girders and kilometres of power cable stuck to every surface. The sarcophagus pods formed long silent ranks, their upper surface a blank void. Most of them were activated, holding the colonists who had gambled their future on conquering Lalonde.
Gerald Skibbow was manoeuvred to an open pod just inside the hatchway. He glanced around the compartment, his head turning in fractured movements to take in the compartment. The security men holding him felt his muscles tensing.
“Don’t even think of it,” one said.
He was propelled firmly towards the waiting pod.
“No,” he said.
“Get in,” Ralph told him impatiently.
“No. Not that. Please. I’ll be good, I’ll behave.”
“Get in.”
“No.”
One of the security men anchored himself to the decking grid with a toe clip, and tugged him down.
“No!” He gripped both sides of the open pod, his features stone-carved with determination. “I won’t!” he shouted.
“In!”
“No.”
All three security men were pushing and shoving at him. Gerald Skibbow strove against them. Will tucked a leg round a nearby girder, and smacked the butt of his TIP carbine against Gerald Skibbow’s left hand. There was a crunch as the bones broke.
He howled, but managed to keep hold. His fingers turned purple, the skin undulating. “No!”
The carbine came down again. Ralph put his hands flat against the decking above, and stood on Gerald Skibbow’s back, knees straining, trying to thrust him down into the pod.
Gerald Skibbow’s broken hand slipped a couple of centimetres, leaving a red smear. “Stop this, stop this.” Rivulets of white light began to shiver across his torso.
Ralph felt as though his own spine was going to snap, the force his boosted muscles were exerting against his skeleton was tremendous. The soles of his feet were tingling sharply, the worms of white light coiling round his ankles. “Dean, switch the pod on the second he’s in.”