Deepsix

There were occasional calls, from Embry, asking whether everyone was physically okay, and could she be of assistance in any way? Guilty conscience, probably.

And from Tom Scolari, also sounding guilty, telling her he was doing everything he could to help recover them. Scolari was with the Outsiders. "It's going to be okay," he said. Sure. How good was he at manufacturing landers?

Kellie got calls from friends on Wendy. "I wish," she said, "they'd just let me be. They keep telling me to hang in. What the hell else can we do?"

Mac received one from Nicholson, assuring him they were making "every effort to extract him from his plight." MacAllister thanked him politely and shook his head. "How's your plight, Hutch?.You know, I believe that's the first time I've ever actually heard a living person use that word."

The lander flew on through the deepening morning, on this twelfth local day since their arrival on Deepsix. It now seemed to Hutch as if their departure from Wildside had occurred in another lifetime.

Sometimes the clouds closed in, and they could see nothing. There was no other traffic in the sky, of course, and she was confident she was above any nearby peaks, but she disliked flying blind, with neither vision nor instruments. She was dependent exclusively on guidance from Wendy and the satellites. To complicate matters, they lost communications with the orbiting ships for almost six minutes.

"Local interference," their contact told them when the system came up again. "The storm systems are starting to play hell with communications."

Augie Canyon called, asked a few questions, and reminded them a lot of people were praying for them back home.

"Anybody here believe in life after death?" Kellie looked around at her companions.

"I do," MacAllister said carefully.

"You do?" Nightingale suppressed a smile. "You've made a career of attacking moralists and reformers, Mac. And whole sections of the country that you thought took their preachers too seriously. Which is to say that they took them at all. What are we getting here? A deathbed conversion?"

"Randy." MacAllister's expression denied all charges. "I'm shocked and dismayed that you would think that of me. I have only attacked people who pretend to have the answers to everything. For the very good reason that they're either imbeciles or charlatans. But that doesn't mean I've denied there's a spiritual dimension to life."

"Really? A spiritual dimension?" Nightingale arched his eyebrows. "Sir, what have you done with Gregory MacAllister?"

"Wait a minute," said Kellie. "That's a fairly sweeping statement anyhow. Are you making those charges about everyone who belongs to an established faith? What about Brother Dominic?"

Yes, thought Hutch. Brother Dominic was a modern St. Francis who'd worked forty years among the poor in east Asia. "A fine man," MacAllister allowed. "I'll give you that. But I'd say he's locked into a belief system that's closed his mind."

"You're talking about the Roman church?"

"I'm talking about any system that sets up a series of propositions that are supposed to be taken as the word from on high. Adherents

get so caught up in their certainties that they miss the important things. What does Brother Dominic know about quantum mechanics?"

"What do you know about quantum mechanics?" demanded Hutch.

"Not much, I'll grant you. But then, I don't pretend to be pious."

"I'm a bit slow," said Nightingale. "Make the co

"Randy, doesn't it strike you that anyone truly interested in the creator, if in fact there is a creator, would want to take time to look at his handiwork?" He smiled benevolently at Hutch. "Or her handiwork? Matter of fact, doesn't it seem likely that the creator might be a bit miffed at anybody who spends a lifetime walking around paying serious attention to church architecture and misses the stars?

"People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to put all this together"-he raised his hands in the general direction of infinity-"and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get a

"I'm glad you're not ru

MacAllister agreed. "There'd be a lot more direct action," he assured them.

"So," said Nightingale, unable to let it go, "the great atheist defends theology."

MacAllister shrugged. "Not theology," he said. "Belief."

The conversation reminded Hutch, if she needed reminding, how frightened she was. She worried about how she'd respond if the rescue plan didn't work.

Nightingale studied her, and that dark gaze seemed to penetrate her soul. He reached over and touched her wrist. "It's okay," he said. "Whatever happens, we're in it together."

NOTEBOOKS OF KANDALL NIGHTINGALE

It's good to be in the lander. Even though it can't get us out of here, at least we've regained a sense of minimal control over what's happening. I can't explain it, but being relegated to walking around in the woods for several days left me feeling absolutely powerless. Maybe things haven't changed a whole lot, but it's nice to be able to take off, and to look down on the real estate. It makes me feel human again.

On the other hand, maybe it's just a result of feeling safe from the local wildlife.

— December 5 or thereabout

Guided by Wendy, Hutch set down on an island to wait for the midday tide to recede. They were about fifteen klicks west of the tower.

"How long?" asked Mac.

"Make yourself comfortable," she said. "It'll be a few hours."

"That's a lot of wasted time, Hutch. Why don't we just go in and get started?"

"We'd get washed away. Be patient."

He stared out the window at the vast inland sea. "Patience requires time, Priscilla," he said.

"Gunther." Janet the welder was unhappy. "I've just been asked a question I don't know how to answer."

"Go ahead," said Beekman.

"All the shafts look the same. We've got teams spread out along 420 kilometers of the assembly, every eighty klicks."

"Where the braces are," said Beekman.

"Right. And we are going to free a single shaft and the asteroid from the rest of the construct."

"Okay. What's the problem?"

"To do that, we have to cut the shaft free from the braces. We have five braces to deal with, plus the configuration where the assembly joins the asteroid, which is a plate. My question to you is this: We do not want to extract the central shaft because it involves too much cutting and manipulation. By far, the easiest course is to cut and remove one of the outer shafts."

"And?"

"How can we be sure that each team works to free the same shaft? The thing's too long. The shafts are all identical. There's no way I can see to distinguish them."

"Oh." Beekman apparently hadn't thought about it either. "I suppose we could send a shuttle out. Mark the damned thing."

"You mean wait while a shuttle paints a stripe down one of them?

That'll take too long. We don't have that kind of time. Or, I suspect, that much marker."

Beekman frowned. She wondered whether other issues like this would come up, things no one had foreseen. "What about a hammer?" she suggested.

"What would we do with a hammer?"

"Rap on the shaft. Give each team a sonocap from Medical. Let them listen for it. I'd think the vibrations would carry, even over eighty klicks."

He made a face suggesting he didn't think much of the idea. "I'm not versed in sonics," he said. "But the shafts are co