Wasteland of flint

seemed she was rushing forward across a flat, rocky plain, with queer looking mountains rising in the distance. Then her eye registered thin veils of cloud standing vertically from the plain and she remembered the Midge was plunging down the side of an enormous peak. Anderssen's eyes snapped to the control panel.

Both engines had shut down and – without power – both wing comps had locked out surface adjustment control. The wheels skittered across basalt and suddenly Gagarin was drifting away from the cliff face. Even without comp control, the Midge's curving wing could bite some air and get some lift. Gretchen closed her hand on the stick with infinite gentleness, feeling her stomach squirm with the unremitting sensation of falling. But we're miles up, she realized, and that means I have whole seconds, even as much as a minute, to react.

She pushed the stick forward, finding it terribly stiff without the comp providing powered support. The wings seemed to creak and the entire aircraft shuddered in reaction. Wind howled around the cockpit and Gretchen tried to bring the nose up slowly. 'Inspired, we fly unto thee, Oh Mary, ever Virgin Mother of the True God!'

The wings shimmied into the right cross section and there was a heavy jolt. The Midge wallowed into a glide, slowing, and the altimeter stopped spinning so wildly. Gretchen dragged the stick to the right a point, then two. Her course angled away from the spires of a lesser peak and into clearer air. 'Though grieving under the weight of our sins,' she heard herself shout, as from a great distance.

Anderssen punched a shutdown glyph at the upper right of the main comp. The panel flickered, then died abruptly. All machine noise ceased. There was only a shriek of air roaring under the wing and whining through the landing gear. A heavy hand pressed on her shoulders. '…we come to prostrate ourselves in thy august presence; certain thou wilt deign to fulfill thy merciful promises…'

Gretchen started to count the beats of her heart, mouth filling with blood. The yawning chasm of the canyons below her grew larger. She could see rivers of crumbled rock and stone twisting between towers of stone. The wind had carved huge, shallow caves from the cliffs and pierced some ridges with winding tunnels. There was no sign of life – no green, no blue – only black and gray and ever-present rust-red.

'And…sixty!' Gretchen managed to gasp out, past bloody lips. Her thumb mashed down on the panel restart and she groped to switch her air supply to an oxygen pack. Chill air hissed across her face, drawing a cry of pain.

The comp flickered and woke up. The Midge's flight control systems ran through a startup checklist, registered a dozen warning signs and flashed an amber alert on the panel. Gretchen overrode the query, hoping the engine failure hadn't fouled the fuel lines with ice. The mountains below had swollen into vast fields of brightly-lit boulders and gravel. She felt the stick quiver to life and the main panel rippled with light.

'Show me your mercy, blessed Sister!' She leaned right, swinging the stick over and the Gagarin's engines kicked in with a thready hiss. Comp control reasserted on the wing surfaces and the entire aircraft suddenly came alive. Giddy with relief, Gretchen swung the little plane away from the onrushing mountainside and roared south along a steep-sided, V-shaped valley. Momentum bled away and she turned the ultralight into a wide, climbing turn.

Once more, the shape of Prion filled the sky, blotting out the horizon.

Hummingbird had winched his Midge to the far end of the ledge by the time Gretchen came around for her third landing attempt. This time she managed to drop her airspeed almost to a stall as the Gagarin drifted over the tilted slab. All three wheels set down with a gentle clatter and the ultralight rolled to a halt. Anderssen felt the aircraft leaning to one side and she adjusted herself in the pilot's seat to compensate. Moving carefully, she locked the wheel brakes and shut down the engines. Gagarin gave out a weary sigh of settling metal, plastic and composite. The comp panels dimmed down to standby.

Getting out of the cockpit proved a slow process. Gretchen was sore from head to toe – again – and had trouble standing. She wound up crawling away from the Midge with the winch line over one shoulder. Reaching the wall, she leaned back against dark, gray-streaked stone with relief. Grudgingly, the medband consented to dispense an antitoxin to break down the fatigue poisons in her weary limbs. Feeling the familiar, welcome chill flushing through her body, Anderssen was content to lie at the base of the cliff, the winch pad adhered to the nearest rock surface, and close her eyes.

The view from the mountaintop was stunning. The Escarpment slashed left and right to the rim of the world. She could make out the slowly advancing terminator of night to the east. Another vast desert lay there, though the feet of the mountain chain were deeply buried in blown sand. Tiny shining lights sparkled across the distant plains.

When Gretchen felt she could stand up without having both legs buckle under her, she stumbled back to the ultralight and released the wheel brakes by hand. Another trip back to the base of the cliff left her a little dizzy. Too much altitude, too little oxygen for the rebreather, she realized, checking the medband. The clever little device indicated a variety of oxygenating compounds were already flowing into her bloodstream. Be fine in awhile. Gretchen propped herself against the cliff again.

The nose winch on the Gagarin whined and complained, but managed to pull the ultralight up close to the cliff. Both wings had collapsed into their storage configuration. Squatting under the pitted canopy, Gretchen secured the wheel brakes again and managed to wedge the sand anchors into crevices in the crumbling stone.

'Hummingbird?' Where is he? There was no answer on the comm, though the indicator lights showed two responding units within range. Hmm, Gretchen worried, he's left the Midge comm open. Shouldn't be wasting power like that.

Gretchen surveyed the ledge – a hundred meters of tilted, corroded rock jutting from an equally decrepit- looking mountainside – with a frown. The nauallis's Midge was parked fifty meters away to her right, the whip antenna she'd seen while landing at the far end of the ledge to the left. For no particularly good reason, she set off to the right, clambering over rough-edged stone and slabs of tilted rock. She was halfway to the other ultralight when a cave mouth appeared in the cliff face. The opening was tall, slanted and narrow. Anderssen peered at the floor, making a face when she saw the outline of boot prints in the gravel and dust.

'Old crow?' She whispered into the throat mike. Again, there was no answer, though some odd warbling static began to filter in around the edges of the comm band. Wary of the shadows – who knew what kind of life they sheltered? – Gretchen crept into the cave, her goggles dialed to light-intensification mode.

To her surprise, the cave seemed totally empty – there were no effusions of the spindle-and-cone flora which had overtaken the shuttle or even the tiny spikelike clusters she'd seen in the discarded pulque can. Instead the floor was a jumble of fallen stone, pebbles and dust. A blotchy series of tracks led off down the passage. Gretchen paused, digging a light out of her tool belt and adjusting the wand's radiance to the lowest possible setting. Her goggles would take care of the rest.

With the wand held out of her line of sight, Anderssen padded down the slot for another twenty meters or so. The ancient crevice ended, opening out into a larger chamber with a tilted roof of jammed-together boulders. Gretchen halted quietly and pressed herself against the wall, her thumb switching off the wand.

A queer blue radiance filled the chamber, reflecting from a ceiling covered with pendant crystalline fronds. The branches and whisker-thin needles seemed dead and lightless themselves, but the faceted surfaces gleamed with puddles of cobalt and ultramarine. Below them, the floor of the cavity was a bowl of crushed rock, surrounded by a thin circlet of something like blue moss. Gretchen resisted the urge to dial her goggles into magnification, though she supposed the 'moss' was truly a forest of tremendously thin filaments, swarming with Ephesian life.

The unexpected presence of Doctor Russovsky captured her attention instead.

Anderssen froze, suddenly, simultaneously aware of the geologist lying on the floor of the cave, wrapped up in an old red-and-black checked blanket, and a muscular, gloved hand pressing against her stomach. Hummingbird was crouched at her feet, one arm out stiff to hold her back. A few centimeters from her boots, the circle of bluish filaments was crushed and broken, leaving a black gap in the carpet.

Gretchen backed up very slowly, unable to keep her eyes from Russovsky's recumbent form. Behind the