Wasteland of flint

he did – and contented themselves with gambling with the scientists, lending the engineer a hand and obsessively checking their equipment.

'I was rude,' she said bluntly. 'They are working hard and I am impatient.'

Fitzsimmons nodded, drifting over to catch the railing circling the command station. 'What does our interception window look like?'

'It shrinks.' A claw tapped up a plot echoed from the navigational display. 'This Shhrast-damned storm is making a mess of plotting pack-leader's pickup. Parker had hoped to make one pass around the planet…' The v-pane showed the path of the Palenque shearing close to the Ephesian atmospheric envelope, then hooking away in a sharp return path for the outer system. '…and picking up speed like a slingstone out again. But now…' she sighed, ears limp with despair, 'now we will have to decelerate into a parking orbit, losing precious velocity.'

'Are you sure?' Fitzsimmons frowned, leaning over the console. He smelled strangely familiar – bitter, pungent, smoke and old wood – and Magdalena raised her head, plush nose sniffing the air. Then she grinned properly, ears canted forward.

'You've been avoiding Parker-tzin, haven't you?'

The Marine looked at her quizzically for a moment, then smiled in a very impolite way, showing stumpy yellowed teeth. 'Use of tabac,' he said in a conspiratorial way, 'dulls the human sense of smell.'

Magdalena shuddered, her fur twitching from head to tail. 'A wretched weed,' she hissed. 'And this is enjoyed by your entire stunted, corrupt race?'

'Parker is a very religious man,' the gunso said in a roundabout way. 'But Thai-i Isoroku requested our assistance in keeping his engines – well, the Company's engines – free of tabac ash and other contaminants that might otherwise foul power junctions, mar the efficiency of computational cores and soil the sacred decks of the engineering compartments.'

Magdalena hissed in delight. 'You ate of his kill, pleading an empty belly,' she said in mock horror, 'while hiding your own in the river-pool! I saw you smoking his disgusting little sticks when we first came aboard.'

'Sure.' Fitzsimmons shrugged. The whole situation was water off his furless back. 'Share and share alike, right? Though Marines are never caught short of supplies.' He held up four pink wormlike fingers. 'Air, ammo, booze and tabac. Don't need much else.'

'He was generous,' she started to say, but had to admit – as she had admitted Isoroku's efforts on their behalf – she did not miss the foul smell clinging to her fur and making her sneeze. 'But I see the efficiency of the pack-ship is improved by this…deception.'

'The Engineer First,' Fitzsimmons said, scratching a jaw black with stubble, 'is my superior officer. In the absence of other command authority, his operational requirements are my holy writ. But while it's fun to pick on Parker, we need to talk about getting Gretchen and the judge back.'

'Yess…' Magdalena stared at the plot again. 'If we still had the satellites we could see pack-leader and eldest- and-wisest take off from the ground, allowing us to adjust course properly. But with only one eye left – and that one losing more altitude each day – we are close to being blind.'

'Well,' Fitzsimmons said slowly, eyeing the display. 'In drop school one of my instructors was always saying 'It's all about angular momentum,' which sort of applies here. There's a Marine assault-ship technique which could solve your problem, something Fleet pilots call the 'Pataya knot'. Parker's not the greatest shuttle pilot in the world, but he might be able to handle it.'

Magdalena growled, giving him a suspicious look. She wasn't sure this hunter-from-another-den could be trusted. But, she reminded herself, he was sniffing after the pack-leader, so he might soon be in her den as well. 'Show me this knot.'

Unaccountably, Fitzsimmons turned a sort of russet color.

The 'Observatory' Base Camp

These blankets are real, Gretchen thought, awareness returning from unnaturally vivid dreams. Real scratchy.

For a moment she remained still, eyes closed, listening. The wind outside had died down to an intermittent moan. The camp stove was a soft hiss of burning gas. Hummingbird's spoon made a metallic sound stirring sugar into his cup. He was breathing as she was, momentarily free of the mechanical counter-rasp of the rebreather mask. Everything seemed very normal, even the sensations of chill air against her face and constant throbbing pain in her mutilated feet.

The darkness of her closed eyes was vastly comforting. There were no phantoms, no visions of impossible vistas, no cloudy indistinct body rippling with clouds of buzzing lights. She felt solid – terribly tired and wrung out like a dead towel – but having substance. Okay, here we go.

Gretchen opened her eyes, focused on a perfectly normal-looking roof formed of honeycombed prestressed concrete, crisscrossed by metallic tracks holding cheap lights, and was vastly relieved.

'There is tea,' Hummingbird said. She turned her head. The effort of putting aside the heavy blankets could wait. The nauallis was watching her from the other side of the little stove, his face filled with open worry. Reaching over, he put a cup of steaming tea beside her. From close range, pitted and scratched metal revealed the foggy, indistinct image of a pale-faced woman with sweat-streaked hair. 'How do you feel?'

Gretchen nodded, but was exhausted even by moving her head. After gathering her strength, she managed to say, 'Tired.'

Hummingbird nodded, the deep grooves and wrinkles in his face deeper and more distinct than she remembered. The faint reddish glow from the heaters lent him a sepulchral aspect. 'How is your vision?'

'Only…one of you,' she said, too tired to smile. 'What…happened?'

His jaw clenched, then he visibly forced himself to relax. 'The storm has mostly passed. I have tried to contact the Cornuelle, but there is no answer. Also, something has gotten into the hangar. Both aircraft have become one with the floor.'

'Huh!' Laughing hurt, but the baffled look on the old man's face was priceless. Gretchen managed to worm one hand out of the blankets to take hold of the cup. The metal was only lukewarm, but the liquid inside burned her lips. She tasted more sugar than tea. 'Told you so.'

'Yes.' Hummingbird tilted his head in acknowledgment. 'You were right to be concerned. The rate of decay in the camp buildings is faster than I expected. But we should be able to clear out this set of rooms, get the generator started again and rig a positive-pressure environment. That will help.'

Gretchen set the empty cup on her chest and stared at the ceiling again. 'What day is it?'

'Plus fourteen from landing,' the nauallis replied, taking the cup away to refill.

'Two days.' Gretchen mumbled, feeling exhaustion overtake her. 'The Palenque will be here. But we need both Midge s in working order.'

'How…' Hummingbird saw she was asleep again, a soft snore escaping her lips. 'Working order? I thought we were done here, but…' He got up and began gathering up what tools he could find. 'Must be a sledgehammer or rock chisel somewhere in these buildings.'

Still limping, using a survey marker pole as a cane, Gretchen stopped beside the Gagarin and peered suspiciously at the undercarriage. The floor was remarkably clean for a base-camp hangar, which proved Hummingbird had been very, very busy while she was sleeping. For her part, Anderssen felt remarkably refreshed for a woman with two bad feet, a medband whining about alkaloid toxins in her blood and no immediate prospects of rescue from an increasingly hostile world entirely unfit for man.

'Kind of banged up,' she said, biting her lip at the dents and chipping visible on the landing gear assembly. Curious, Gretchen put her weight against the wing and the wheel clunked over. The heavy rubberlike material was badly pitted. She looked over at Hummingbird, who was squatting beneath his own ultralight. 'Good work to get this place cleaned out.'

'Does it matter?' The nauallis spread his hands, looking at her expectantly.

'It does.' Gretchen opened Gagarin's cockpit door. 'We need both ultralights to get off this rock. I was sure we were done for when your fuel pump froze up.' She threw the comp restart switch and leaned back on the pole, watching the system spool up.

'We need only wait,' Hummingbird said, eyes narrowing suspiciously. 'The Cornuelle will return soon.'