CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Sariena found Charlie Hu in one of the cubicles in the Lab block, contemplating a screen showing analyses of atmospheric samples that the probes had collected from various places. He seemed to have detached himself from recent events by turning inward and immersing himself in his work. “This is interesting,” he said, inclining his head. “Athena has changed the isotope mixes of carbon, argon, nitrogen… all of the elements we’ve studied. If the same thing happened with the earlier Venus and Mars encounters, it would invalidate the assumptions that most conventional dating was based on… .” He turned his head finally and registered the look on Sariena’s face, saying that other matters were preoccupying her just at the moment. “What?”

She kept her voice low. “Lan and Shayle came to talk to me. Lan’s had one of his ideas again.”

Charlie pushed himself back from the worktop where he had been writing. “What about?”

“Did you know that a probe was disabled at Joburg on the day the Scout made the first contact there?” Sariena asked.

“Was it? No, I didn’t. I was still up in the ship then.”

“It’s still there, grounded somewhere up above the Joburg settlement. With everything that’s been going on, nobody has done anything to retrieve it. Apparently, the probes are equipped to function as mobile emergency relief posts. More to the point, they have a communications system that bypasses the regular net and uses a special band to link via the circling airmobiles to the probe control section up in the Varuna.”

“How do you know all this?” Charlie asked.

“From Lan. Owen and one of the controllers showed him the system when he was up there.”

“Owen Erskine? The guy who got shot?”

Sariena nodded. “Yes. But the thing right now is that Lan’s talking about using it for another try at getting a warning out to Aztec.”

Charlie looked perplexed. “But how can he, if it’s at Joburg?”

“That’s the whole point. He thinks he can get there. But it isn’t like getting from California to Texas and Mexico this time. Everything has changed since then. And he had others with him then. He’ll get his chance, but he needs better odds than these. Shayle agrees. But we’re not Terrans, Charlie. How can we try to tell him what he’d be taking on? It needs someone from Earth, and who was with him then. We want you to try and talk him out of it.”

“How do you think you’re going to get there?” Charlie demanded. They were standing with Keene on the edge of the pad area, outside the Agni‘s shielding wall. Farther away, in front of the silo and pad constructions, a shuttle was being elevated in readiness for launch. Keene turned to gesture back toward the excavations on the far side of Agni, where various vehicles and machines were working.

“One of the general-purpose runabouts. They’ve got the right torque and speed for the terrain, wide wheels to get through the sticky patches, and you could turn one on a dime. Given the kind of going I’d estimate from what I saw with the Scout, I’d say a day, maybe a day and a half.”

“But they’re electric. They don’t have the range.”

“Rig one up like the Scouts. You put a diesel-generator set in the truckbed and drive the motors off that. I figure that thirty-eight gallons of diesel fuel should do it. A regular drum holds over fifty. I plan on taking two.”

“Wouldn’t the generator set need to be secured somehow?”

Keene shrugged. “Drive out for an hour on the fuel cells—which will also mean a quiet start. Then drill a few holes and bolt the set on before switching over to the generator. Okay, so add another couple of hours.”

“You think you’re just going to load up a runabout and drive away? Like no one’s going to notice or say anything? And even if you managed to just disappear, they’d have probes out searching within hours.”

“There are always some runabouts left out at the pad workings. Naarmegen’s group are leaving from there tonight. If I arrange to disappear at the same time, it will seem that I decided to join them at the last minute. Any probes will be looking for the Scout. A runabout’s a lot smaller. And visibility from anywhere above a few hundred feet tends to be pretty hazy and patchy in any case.” Keene nodded decisively. “I think there’s a good enough chance of making it.” He waited, watching the contortions following each other across Charlie’s face, as if somehow able to read from them the thoughts forming within. Finally he emitted a knowing sigh. “Okay, Charlie, I’ll spare you the agony,” he said. “Shayle and Sariena think it hasn’t got a chance, and they asked you to try and stop me because you’re someone that I’ll listen to. Is that close enough?”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, that’s about it, Lan,” he admitted.

“Okay, then, let’s hear it. There are just too many hazards and unknowns out there. Zeigler’s too far gone now to stop at anything. If the Aztec hasn’t been taken over already, it will have been by the time I get there.” Keene listed the alternatives in a weary voice. “What’s the line, Charlie?”

“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t thinking anything like that at all,” Charlie said. “What I was thinking was that Kronians found this world intimidating even before any of this happened. Four hands are better than two for things like bolting generator sets to trucks. And that anyone getting hurt on their own out there is going to be in real trouble.” He tugged at his tuft of a beard and met Keene’s eyes squarely. “The only thing I’d try and talk you out of is this crazy idea of doing it alone. I’m coming too.”

Keene’s position of running the primary power system for the base made him responsible for overseeing backup arrangements too, so there was no difficulty in acquiring a generator set. He had Shayle collect one from the stores in a GP runabout, along with an assortment of tools, and then ferry it out to the construction area, ostensibly for a standby installation to be located there. She then came back with a returning work crew in a site bus. Keene and Charlie took the rest of their gear and supplies out at intervals through the remainder of the day. It really was as straightforward as that.

Shortly before midnight, a transformer located in the rear part of the base experienced a mysterious short circuit to the accompaniment of spectacular arcs, clouds of white smoke, and considerable noise. The diversion had been requested by Naarmegen, but there was no reason for Keene and Charlie not to take advantage of it too. While guards ran around hurrying the on-duty technicians from the power house, and searchlights that normally wove desultory patterns around the pad area were turned rearward to illuminate the scene, the two escapees slipped away from the main complex and followed a roundabout route along the side of the pad area. Keene had arranged for Shayle to leave the runabout at a remote spot on the outskirts of the construction workings, which was also well away from the storage sheds for unloaded shuttle freight, where Naarmegen’s Scout was concealed. There was no point in taking a larger than necessary risk of getting involved if the other group encountered trouble. Another reason why Keene had chosen to stay apart and not reveal his own intentions was the possibility that Naarmegen’s approaches in recruiting for the larger group, despite his best attempts to exercise discretion, might have been picked up by informers.

They lay low, watching for a while, but the surroundings remained quiet and undisturbed. Keene concluded that his fears had been groundless. By this time, a pump was running over in the base complex to clean up the foam from the transformer fire—and also to cover any sound from across the pad area of the Scout starting up and leaving. It was also as good a time as any for Keene and Charlie to be on their way too, they decided. They emerged from cover to climb into the cab, Keene taking the driver’s seat.

He had equipped himself with night-vision goggles to help navigate through the darkness, since they wouldn’t be able to use the runabout’s headlamps until they were well clear of the base. However, there had been no time to put them to any practical test, and as things turned out their value proved limited. They operated by intensifying the images produced by low-level sources like starlight, but in the near total blackness below the post-Athena clouds there was precious little of anything to intensify.

As soon as they left the cleared area of the base, Keene found himself running into rocks and sliding down slopes of soft-formed sediments. He knew straightaway that this was going to be a very different affair from traveling overland in a Scout, which with its balloon-tire wheels and swiveling axles could traverse just about anything. After a particularly violent lurch off a clump of boulders that felt for a moment as if the runabout was turning over, they resorted to the expedient of Charlie shining a flashlight ahead through the windshield, waved in response to Keene’s hasty directions. But at best it could reveal only incoherent glimpses of what lay in a few tens of feet immediately in front, keeping their progress down to a crawl. Already, Keene was finding himself forced to revise his estimates of how they could expect to fare tomorrow.