Yoshii ignored it. His attention was on the planet which Fido circled in high orbit. Radar, spectroscope, optical amplifier, and a compact array of other instruments fed data to a computer which spun forth interpretations on screen and printout. Click and whirr passed low through the rustling ventilation, the sometimes uneven human breath within the control cabin. Body warmth and a hint of sweat tinged the air. Yoshii’s gaze kept drifting from the equipment, out a port of the globe itself. “Unbelievable,” he murmured.
Airless, it stood sharp-edged athwart the stars, but the illuminated side was nearly a blank, even at first and last quarter when shadows were long. Then a few traces of hill and dale might appear, like timeworn Chinese brush strokes. Otherwise there was yellowish-white smoothness, with ill-defined areas of faint gray, brown, or blue. The whole world could almost have been a latex ball, crudely made for a child of the giants.
“What now?” Carita asked. She floated, harnessed in her seat, her back to him. They had turned off the gravity polarizer and were weightless, to eliminate that source of detectability. Her attention was clamped to the long-range radar with which she swept the sky, to and fro as the boat swung around.
“Oh, everything,” said the Belter.
“Any ideas? You’ve had more chance to think, these past hours, than I have.”
“Well, a few things look obvious, but I wouldn’t make book on their being what they seem.”
“Why don’t you give me a rundown?” proposed the Jinxian. “Never mind if you repeat what I’ve already heard. We should try putting things in context.”
Yoshii plunged into talk. It was an escape of sorts from their troubles, from not knowing what the fate of Shep and those aboard her might be.
“The planet’s about the mass of Earth but only about half as dense. Must be largely silicate, some aluminum, not enough iron to form a core. Whatever atmosphere and hydrosphere it once outgassed, it lost—weak gravity, and temperatures around 400 K at the hottest part of the day. That day equals 131 of Earth’s; two-thirds rotational lock, like Mercury. No more gas comes out, because vulcanism, tectonics, all geology ended long ago. Unless you want to count meteoroid erosion wearing down the surface; and I’d guess hardly any objects are left that might fall on these planets.
“Then what is that stuff mantling the surface? The computer can’t figure it out. Shadows of what relief there is indicate it’s thin, a few centimeters deep, with local variations. Reflection spectra suggest carbon compounds but that’s not certain. It just lies there, you see, doesn’t do anything. Try analyzing a lump of some solid plastic across a distance. Is that what we have here, a natural polymer? I wish I knew more organic chemistry.”
“Can’t help you, Juan,” Carita said. “All I remember from my class in it, aside from the stinks in the lab, is that the human sex hormones are much the same, except that the female is ketonic and the male is alcoholic.”
“We’ll have time to look and think further, of course.” Yoshii sighed. “Time and time and time. I never stopped to imagine how what fugitives mostly do is sit. Hiding, huddling, while—” He broke off and struggled for self-command.
“And we don’t dare let down our guard long enough to take a little recreation,” Carita grumbled.
Yoshii reddened. “Uh, if we could, I—well—”
She chuckled and said ruefully, “I know. The fair Laurinda. Don’t worry, your virtue will be safe with me till you realize it can’t make any possible diff—Hold!” she roared.
He tensed where he floated. “What?”
“Quiet. No, secure things and get harnessed.”
For humming minutes she studied the screen and meters before her. Yoshii readied himself. Seated at her side he could see the grimness grow. Pale hair waved around sable skin when at last she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “somebody’s bound this way. From the direction of the sun. About ten million klicks off. He barely registered at first, but it’s getting stronger by the minute. He’s boosting fast, we’d tear our hull apart if we tried to match him, supposing we had that kind of power. Definitely making for Prima.”
“What… is it?”
“What but a kzin ship with a monster engine? I’m afraid they’ve caught on to our strategy.” Carita’s tone grew wintry. “I’d rather not hear just how they did.”
“G-guesswork?” Yoshii faltered.
“Maybe. I don’t know kzin psych. How close to us can they make themselves think?” She turned her head to clamp her vision on him. “Well, maybe the skipper’s plan failed and it’s actually drawn the bandits to us. Or maybe it’s the one thing that can save us.
(Saxtorph’s words drawled through memory:) “We don’t know how much search capability the kzin have, but a naval vessel means auxiliaries, plus whatever civilian craft they can press into service. A boat out in the middle of the far yonder, drifting free, would be near-as-damn impossible to find. But as soon as she accelerates back toward where her crew might do something real, she screams the announcement to any alert, properly organized watchers optical track, neutrino emission, the whole works till she’s in effective radar range. After that she’s sold to the licorice man, as they say in Denmark. On the other hand, if she can get down onto a planetary surface, she can probably make herself almost as invisible as out in the deep. A world full of topography, which the kzinti cannot have had time or personnel to map in anything but the sketchiest way. So how about one of ours goes to Prima, the other to Tertia, and lies low in orbit? Immediately when we get wind of trouble, we drop down into the best hidey- hole the planet has got, and wait things out.”
(It had been the most reasonable idea that was broached.) “You’ve been doing our latest studies,” Carita went on. “Found any prospective burrows? The kzinti may or may not have acquired us by now. Maybe not. That vessel may not be as well equipped to scan as this prospector, and she’s probably a good deal bigger. But they’re closing in fast, I tell you.”
Yoshii made a shushing gesture, swiveled his seat, and evoked pictures, profiles, data tabulations. Shortly he nodded. “I think we have a pretty respectable chance.” Pointing: “See here. Prima isn’t all an unbroken plain. This range, its small valleys—and on the night side, too.”
Carita whistled. “Hey, boy, we live right!”
“Set up for a detailed scan and drop into low orbit to make it. We should find some cleft we can back straight down into. The kzinti would have to arc immediately above and be on the lookout for that exact spot to see us.” Yoshii said nothing about what a feat of piloting he had in mind. He was a Belter. She had almost comparable experience, together with jinxian reflexes.
“Yah, I do think our best bet is to land and snuggle in.” Saxtorph’s look ranged through the port and across the planet, following an onward sweep of daylight as Shep orbited around to the side of the sun.
That disc was less than half the size of Sol’s at Earth, its coal-glow light little more than one one-hundredth. Nevertheless Tertia shone so brightly as to dazzle surrounding stars out of sight. Edges softened by atmosphere, it was bestrewn with glaciers, long streaks and broad plains and frozen seas bluishly a glimmer from pole to pole. Bared rock reached darkling on mountainsides or reared in tablelands. Five Terrestrial masses had been convulsed enough as they settled toward equilibrium that the last of the heights they thrust upward had not worn away entirely during the post-tectonic eons.
The glaciers were water, with some frozen carbon dioxide overlying them in the antarctic zone where winter now reigned. The air, about twice as dense as Earth’s, was almost entirely nitrogen, the oxygen in it insufficient to sustain fire or life. It was utterly clear save where slow winds raised swirls of glitter, dust storms whose dust was fine ice.
A small moon, in most of four, hove in view. It sheened reddish-yellow, like amber. The largest, Luna-size, was visible, too, patched with the same hue, ashen where highlands were uncovered. It had no craters,—spalling and cosmic sand had long since done away with them.
“But, but on the surface we’ll see only half the sky at best,” Laurinda ventured. “And atmospherics will hinder the seeing.”
Saxtorph nodded. “True. Ordinarily I’d opt for staying in space in hopes of early warning. That does have its own drawbacks, though. A kzin search vessel could likelier than not detect us the moment we commenced boost. Since we might not be able to skedaddle flat-out from them, we’d probably drop planetside. That’s the whole idea of being where we are, remember? If we did it right, the ratcats wouldn’t know where we’d squatted, but they’d know we were someplace yonder for sure, and that would be a bigger help to them than they deserve.”
“Treacherous terrain for landing,” Dorcas warned.
Saxtorph nodded again. “Indeed. Which means we’ll be smart to take our time while we’ve still got it, come
