The Rebel Worlds

They could have made their goal, or come near, had their initial velocity been in the right direction. But the instrumental survey had been expedited by throwing Asieneuve into a retrograde orbit. Now the planet’s rotation worked against them, forcing extra energy expenditure in the early stages of deceleration. By the time the boat was approaching a safe speed, its accumulators were drained. Overloaded, it had no possibility of a long ballistic glide. There was nothing to do but use the last stored joules for setting down.

Nor could the tail jacks be employed. Unharnessed, men would be crushed beneath their fellows if the gee-field gave way. Flandry picked out an open area surrounded by forest. Water gleamed between hummocks and sedgy clumps. Better marsh then treetops. The keel skids hissed beneath a last rumble of engine; the boat rocked, bucked, slewed around, and came to rest at a steep angle; flying creatures fled upward in clamorous thousands; and stillness was.

A moment’s dark descended on Flandry. He pulled out of it to the sound of feeble cheers. “E-e-everybody all right?” he stuttered. His fingers trembled likewise, fumbling with his harness.

“No further injuries, sir,” said one voice. “Maybe not,” another responded. “But O’Brien died on the way down.”

Flandry closed his eyes. My man, pierced him. My men. My ship. How many are left? I counted … Twenty-three with only small hurts, plus Kathryn and me. Seventeen — sixteen — seriously wounded. The rest — Those lives were in my hands!

Havelock said diffidently, “Our radio’s out, sir. We can’t call for help. What does the captain wish?”

Rovian, I should have collected that chunk, not you. The lives that are left are still in my murderous-clumsy hands.

Flandry forced his lids back up. His ears were ringing almost too loudly for him to hear his own words, but he thought they sounded mechanical. “We can’t maintain our interior field long. The final ergs are about to go. Let’s get our casualties outside before we have to contend with local pull on a slanted deck.” He rose and faced his men. Never had he done anything harder. “Lady McCormac,” he said. “You know this planet. Have you any recommendations?”

She was hidden from him by those packed around her. The husky tones were unshaken. “Equalize pressures slowly. If we’re anywhere near sea level, that air is half again as thick as Terran. Do you know where we are?”

“We were aiming for the Aenean base.”

“If I remember rightly, this hemisphere’s in its early summer. S’posin’ we’re not far below the arctic circle, we’ll have more day than night, but not very much more. Bear in mind the short spin period. Don’t count on a lot of light.”

“Thanks.” Flandry issued the obvious commands.

Saavedra, the communications officer, found some tools, took the panel off the radio transceiver, and studied it. “I might be able to cobble something together for signalling the base,” he said.

“How long’ll that take you?” Flandry asked. A little potency was returning to his muscles, a little clarity to his brain.

“Several hours, sir. I’ll have to haywire, and jigger around till I’m on a standard band.”

“And maybe nobody’ll happen to be listening. And when they do hear us, they’ll have no triangulate and — Uh-uh.” Flandry shook his head. “We can’t wait. Another ship’s on her way here. When she finds the derelict we shot up, she’ll hunt for us. An excellent chance of finding us, too: a sweep with metal detectors over a planet as primitive as this. I don’t want us anywhere near. She’s likely to throw a missile.”

“What shall we do, then, sir?” Havelock asked.

“Does my lady think we’ve a chance of marching overland to the base?” Flandry called.

“Depends on just where we are,” Kathryn replied. “Topography, native cultures, everything’s as variable on Dido as ’tis on most worlds. Can we pack plenty of food?”

“Yes, I imagine so. Boats like this are stocked with ample freeze-dried rations. I assume there’s plenty of safe water.”

“Is. Might be stinkin’ and scummy, but no Didonian bug has yet made a human sick. Biochemistry’s that different.”

When the lock was opened full, the air turned into a steam bath. Odors blew strange, a hundred pungencies, fragrant, sharp, rotten, spicy, nameless. Men gasped and tried to sweat. One rating started to pull off his shirt. Kathryn laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t,” she warned. “No matter clouds, enough UV gets past to burn you.”

Flandry went first down the accommodation ladder. Weight was hardly changed. He identified a tinge of ozone in the swamp reeks and thought that an increased partial pressure of oxygen might prove valuable. His boots squelched into ankle-deep muck. The sounds of life were coming back: chatter, caw, whistle, wingbeats. They were loud in the dense air, now that his hearing had recovered. Small animals flitted among leaves in the jungle.

It was not like a rain forest on a really terrestroid world. The variety of trees was incredible, from gnarly and thorny dwarfs to soaring slim giants. Vines and fungoids covered many dark trunks. Foliage was equally diverse in its shapes. Nowhere was it green; browns and deep reds predominated, though purples and golds blent in; the same held for the spongy, springy mat on the land. The overall effect was one of somber richness. There were no real shadows, but Flandry’s gaze soon lost itself in the gloom under the trees. He saw more brush than he liked to think about pushing his way through.

Overhead the sky was pearl gray. Lower cloud strata drifted across its featurelessness. A vaguely luminous area marked Virgil. Recalling where the terminator was, he knew this district was still at morning. They’d leave before sundown if they worked.

He gave himself to helping. The labor was hard. For that he was grateful. It rescued him from dead men and a wrecked ship.

First the wounded must be borne to higher, drier ground. Their injuries were chiefly broken bones and concussions. If your armor was ripped open in space, that was generally the end of you. Two men did have nasty abdominal gashes from bits of metal whose entry holes had been sufficiently small for them or friends to slap on patches before their air could flee them. One man was unconscious, skin chill, breath shallow, pulse thready. And O’Brien had died.

Luckily, the medical officer was on his feet. He got busy. Arriving with an armful of equipment, Flandry saw Kathryn giving him skilled assistance. He remembered in dull surprise that she’d disappeared for a while. It didn’t seem like her not to plunge straight into a task.

By the time the last item had been unloaded, she had finished her nurse’s job and supervised a burial party. He glimpsed her doing some of the digging herself. When he slogged to her, O’Brien was laid out in the grave. Water oozed upward around him. He had no coffin. She had covered him with the Imperial flag.

“Will the captain read the service?” she asked.

He looked at her. She was as muddy and exhausted as he, but stood straight. Her hair clung wet to head and cheeks, but was the sole brightness upon this world. Sheathed on a belt around her coverall, he recognized the great blade and knuckleduster haft of his Merseian war knife.

Stupid from weariness, he blurted, “Do you want me to?”

“He wasn’t the enemy,” she said. “He was of Hugh’s people. Give him his honor.”

She handed him the prayerbook. Me? he thought. But I never believed — She was watching. They all were. His fingers stained the pages as he read aloud the majestic words. A fine drizzle began.

While trenching tools clinked, Kathryn plucked Flandry’s sleeve. “A minute, of your courtesy,” she said. They walked aside. “I spent a while scoutin’ ’round,” she told him. “Studied the vegetation, climbed a tree and saw mountains to west — and you wouldn’t spy many pteropods at this season if we were east of the Stonewall, so the range ahead of us must be the Maurusian — well, I know roughly where we are.”