Titan

CHAPTER SEVEN

Before Cirocco quite had a chance to settle down, they were all sitting in a circle and Calvin was talking.

"I came out not far from the hole where the river disappears," he was saying. "That was seven days ago. I heard you on the second day."

"So why didn't you call us?" Cirocco asked. Calvin held up the remains of his helmet.

"The mike is missing," he said, extricating the broken end of wire. "I could listen, but not transmit. I waited. I ate fruit. I just couldn't seem to kill any of the animals." He spread his broad bands, and shrugged.

"How did you know this was the right place to wait?" Gaby asked.

"I didn't know, for sure."

"Well," Cirocco said. She slapped her palms on her legs, and then laughed. "Well. Fancy that. just when we'd about given up hope of finding anybody else, we stumble over you. It's too good to be true. Isn't it, Gaby? "

"Huh? Oh, yeah, it's great."

"It's good to see you folks, too. I've been listening to you for five days now. It's nice to hear a familiar voice."

"Has it really been that long?"

Calvin tapped a device on his wrist. It was a digital watch.

"It's still keeping perfect time," he said. "When we get back, I'm going to write a letter to the manufacturer."

"I'd thank the maker of the watchband," Gaby said. "Yours is steel and mine was leathery

Calvin shrugged. "I remember it. It cost more than I made in a month, as an intem."

"It still seems like too much time. We only slept three times." "I know. Bill and August are having the same trouble Judging

time.pi

Cirocco looked up.

"Bill and August are alive?"

"Yeah, I've been listening to them. They're down there, on the bottom. I can point to the place. Bill has his whole radio, like you two. August only had a receiver. Bill picked out some land- marks and started talking about how we could find him. He sat still for two days, and August found him pretty quick. Now they call out regular. But August only asks for April, and she cries a lot."

"Jesus," Cirocco breathed. "I guess she would. You don't have any idea where April is, or Gene?"

"I thought I heard Gene once. Crying, like Gaby said." Cirocco thought it over, and frowned.

'Why didn't Bill hear us, then? He'd be listening in, too."

"It must have been line-of-sight problems," Calvin said. "The cliff was cutting you off. I was the only one who could listen to both groups, but I couldn't do anything about it."

"Then he'd hear us now., if---"

"Don't get excited. They're asleep now, and they won't hear you. Those earphones are like a gnat buzzing. They ought to wake up in five or six hours." He looked from one of them to the other. "The smart thing for you folks is to get some sleep, too. You've been walking for twenty-five hours."

This time, Ciracco had no trouble believing him. She knew she was existing on the excitement of the moment; her eyelids were drooping. But she couldn't give in yet.

"What about yourself, Calvin? Have you had any trouble?" He raised one eyebrow. "Trouble?"

"You know what, I'm talking about."

He seemed to draw in on himself.

"I'm not talking about that. Not ever."

She was inclined not to push it. He seemed peaceful, as if he had come to terms with something.

Gaby stood up and stretched, yawning hugely.

"I'm for the sack," she said. "Where do you want to stretch out, Rocky?"

Calvin stood up, too. "I've got a place I've been working on," he said. "It's up here in this tree. You two can use it, and I'll stay up and listen for Bill."

It was a bird's nest woven from twigs and vines. Calvin had lined it with a feathery substance. There was plenty of room, but Gaby chose to get close, as they had been doing before. Cirocco wondered if she ought to call a halt to it, but decided it didn't matter.

"Rocky? "

"What is it?"

"I want you to be careful around him."

sirocco came back from the edge of sleep. "Mummph? Calvin?"

"Something's happened to him."

Cirocco looked at Gaby with one bloodshot eye. "Go to sleep, Gaby, okay?" She reached around and patted her leg.

"Just watch out," Gaby muttered.

If only there was some sign to mark the morning, Cirocco thought, yawning. It would make getting up a lot easier. Something like a rooster, or the sun's rays coming in at a different slant.

Gaby was still asleep beside her. She disentangled herself and stood on the broad tree limb.

Calvin was not around. Breakfast was within arm's reach: purple fruit the size of a pineapple. She picked one and ate it, rind and all. She began to climb.

It was easier than it looked. She went up almost as fast as she could have climbed a ladder. There were definitely things to be

said for one-quarter gee, and the tree was ideal for climbing, better than anything she had seen since she was eight years old. The knobby bark provided handbolds where limbs were scarce. She picked up a few scratches to add to her collection, but it was a price she was willing to pay.

She felt happy for the first time since her arrival in Themis. She didn't count the meeting with Gaby and Calvin, because those had been so emotional they had verged on hysteria. This was just feeling good.

"Hell, it's been longer than that," she muttered. She had never been a gloomy person. There had been some good times aboard Ringrnaster, but little out-and-out fun. Trying to recall the last time she had felt this good, she decided it was the party when she learned she had her command after seven years of trying. She gri

But she soon put all thought from her mind and let her soul flow into the endeavor itself. She was aware of every muscle, every inch of skin. There was an astonishing amount of freedom in climbing a tree with no clothes on. Her nudity, until now, had been a nuisance and a danger. Now she loved it. She felt the rough texture of the tree under her toes, and the supple flex in the tree limbs. She wanted to yodel like Tarzan.

As she approached the top, she heard a sound that had not been there before. It was a repeated crunching, coming from a point she couldn't see through the yellow-green leaves, in front of her and a few meters down.

Proceeding more cautiously, she eased herself onto a horizontal limb and sidled toward the open air.

There was a blue-gray wall in front of her. She had no idea what it might be. The enmching came again, louder, slightly above her. A tuft of broken branches moved in front of her and out of sight. Then, with no warning, the eye appeared.

"Wow!" she yelped, before she could get her mouth shut. Without quite recalling how she got to be' there she was three meters back, bouncing with the motion of the tree and staring transfixed at the monstrous eye. It was as wide as her out- stretched arms, glistening with moisture, and astonishingly human.

It blinked.

A thin membrane contracted from all sides, like a camera aperture, then snapped open again, literally quick as a wink.

She broke all records getting down, not feeling it when she scraped her knee, yelling all the way. Gaby was awake. She had a thighbone in her hand, and looked ready to use it.

"Down, down!" Cirocco yelled. "There's something up there. It could use this tree for a toothpick." She levitated the last eight meters, hit the ground on all fours, and was on her way down the hill when she collided with Calvin.

"Didn't you hear me? We've got to get out of here. There's this thing-.-"

"I know, I know," he soothed, putting out his hands, palms toward her. "I know all about it, and it's nothing to worry about. I didn't have time to tell you before you went to sleep."

Cirocco felt deflated, but far from soothed. it was terrible to have that much nervous energy and nothing to do with it. Her feet wanted to run. instead, she blew up at him.

"Well shit, Calvin! You didn't have time to tell me about a thing like that? What is it, and what do you know about it?"

"That's our way off this cliff," he said. "His name is--" he pursed his lips and whistled three clear notes with a warble at the end, "- but I see that's awkward to use mixed with English. I call him Whistlestop."

"You call him Whistlestop, " Cirocco repeated, numbly.

"That's right. He's a blimp."

"A blimp."

He looked at her oddly and she gritted her teeth.

"He looks more like a dirigible, but he's not, because he doesn't have a rigid skeleton. I'll call him and you can see for yourself." He put two fingers to his lips and whistled a long, complex tune with odd musical intervals.

"He's calling him," Cirocco said.

"So I heard," Gaby said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. But my hair's going to come back in gray."

There was an answering series of trills from above, then noth- ing happened for several minutes. They waited.

Whistlestop bulged into view from the left. He was 300 or 400 meters from the cliff face, traveling parallel to it, and even that

far away they could see only a little of him. He was a solid blue- gray curtain being drawn across their view. Then Cirocco spot- ted the eye. Calvin whistled again, and the eye swiveled aimlessly, eventually finding them. Calvin looked back over his shoulder.

"He don't see so good," he explained. "Then I'm for staying out of his way. Like in the next county." "That wouldn't he far enough," Gaby said, awed. "His ass

would be in the next county." The nose disappeared and Whistlestop continued to glide past. And glide past. And glide, and glide, and glide. There seemed to he no end to him.

"Where's he going?" Cirocco asked. "It takes him a while to stop," Calvin explained. "He'll get squared away pretty soon."

Cirocco and Gaby finally joined Calvin at the edge so they could see the whole operation.

Whistlestop the blimp was a full kilometer from stem to stem. All he needed to look like a bigger-than-life-size replica of the German airship Hindenberg was a swastika painted on his tall.