The Sparrow

'Absolutely not. It would have been completely unethical.'

He seemed better, more focused, when talking, so she decided to keep the conversation going. 'But if I had been dying, would it not have been your duty to save my soul?'

'This is not the seventeenth century, mademoiselle. We do not go about snatching the souls of dying heathens from perdition,' he said huffily, but he continued more equably. 'If you had earlier indicated that you sincerely desired to be baptized but had not yet taken instruction in the Faith, I would have baptized you, yes, out of respect for your intention. Or if you had regained consciousness and requested it, I would have complied with your wish. But without your permission? Without a prior statement of intent? Never.'

He was still a little upset but felt steadier now and pulled himself to his feet slowly, making small noises. Standing at a console, he called up a photographic map of the region between the forest camp and the village of Kashan. 'It's going to be a long walk home.'

He turned at the sound of her husky laugh. Tinted by half-washed blood and its bruises growing more colorful hourly, the beautiful Sephardic face remained cool and composed, but the eyes smiled as Sofia Mendes looked around her. 'Why walk,' she asked, arched brows high, 'when we can fly?'

They slept then and awoke late, tight-muscled and sore, but heartened by the poststorm sunlight and by their survival. They made a simple breakfast from the stock in the lander and Sofia reacquainted herself with the plane, going through the exercise of takeoff and landing on the simulator. Marc occupied himself with a brief survey of the forest life-forms he'd studied during their first weeks on Rakhat, taking notes on what might be seasonal changes. And he went to the grave of Alan Pace, neatened it, and prayed for a while.

At midmorning, Sofia climbed stiffly out of the lander and walked over. 'We should be ready to go in about two hours.'

Marc suddenly straightened. It was a mistake and he groaned, but then he asked, 'Have you contacted the others yet?'

'Oh, my God! They've probably given us up for dead by now,' Sofia cried, appalled. 'I meant to raise them last night. It slipped my mind entirely. Oh, Marc, they must be frantic!'

Marc had never before seen her in the least flustered. It humanized her and, for the first time, he decided that he liked her very much. 'Sofia,' he said, mimicking her own wry tone of the previous night, 'next time we are in a plane crash together, I'm sure you will remember to radio in news of our survival. We are, after all, amateurs at this sort of thing. A few mistakes are to be expected.'

'I may have been more shaken than I realized.' She shook her head. 'Come on. Better late than never.'

They went to the lander and tried to contact Kashan but got only dead air. 'Blackout,' Sofia said disgustedly. It was one of those irritating hiatuses in satellite relay coverage. 'Four hours before we get a carrier signal back.'

'Ah, well, we shall be home soon, like ones arisen from the dead!' Marc said gaily. Then he added conspiratorially, 'Perhaps in his surprise, the Father Superior won't notice that we've smashed his little airplane to bits.'

Sending Marc back to his plants, Sofia began a rigorous preflight inspection. There were a hundred potential hazards: little green guy nests in the engines, Richard Nixons roosting in the undercarriage, bugger swarms in the electronics boxes. When at last she was as certain as she could be that the lander was safe to fly, she went aft to the cargo bay and called Robichaux over. 'I'll be doing a test startup and then I'll take off for a few practice maneuvers. Would you like to come for the ride or have you had enough excitement for the week?'

'I believe I should prefer to spend the time collecting samples.'

If it had been Sandoz, she'd have said, No guts. She smiled at Marc. 'I'll be back in half an hour.'

He helped her fasten down the bay door and then moved well back to the edge of the forest, out of range of the engine blast. When he turned, he could see her through the cockpit window, wincing as she tightened the straps over a body as sore as his own. She looked at him then, and he put his hands together and raised them over his head in a painful good luck gesture. She nodded, and started the ignition countdown.

To an ex-combat pilot like D. W. Yarbrough, the words 'missing in action' always brought a hollow-bellied horror. Planes went down and you didn't know where or why. You knew the odds, but you didn't know the truth. And your next move was always awful with finely calculated risk. Did you send others into danger in hope of an unlikely rescue or did you accept the reality of casualties? There was a price, either way.

D.W. was not one to flagellate himself with knotted cords of regret and hindsight. Nevertheless, he wished with all his heart that he had not yielded to the pressure to let Sofia and Marc go. He should have waited and made the flight himself when he felt better.

As the hours dragged by with no word from them, D.W. had only that coldest of comforts: it had seemed like a good idea at the time. His best guess was that they'd crashed at the lander site. They might have survived, might be too hurt to move. It would take more than a week's march through unknown terrain to reach them, dead or alive. There was no good solution to this problem. He knew he wasn't well enough to make the trek on foot himself. Anne would probably be needed, but he hesitated about sending her overland. Emilio was a good medic and tough enough but small. Better to send Jimmy, who was almost as well trained in first aid as Emilio. If Marc or Sofia survived the seven or eight days it would take to reach them, they'd probably live for one more without expert treatment. So, it would have to be Jimmy, who was big, and George, who was tough and had flown the lander successfully on their last trip to the asteroid. He'd have George pilot the survivors straight to the Stella Maris, leave Jimmy with them, and refuel. Then George could come back down at Kashan to ferry Anne up. It would eat into their freedom of movement. They'd be down to three flights by then, but there wasn't any other way.

Shit, he thought. If the survivors were badly hurt, they might be worse off in zero G, if either of them took ill with space sickness. D.W. sighed and was about to consult Anne on the vagaries of the business when he heard a surprising roll of thunder. Usually at this point in the storms, all they heard was the steady drumming of rain on the flagstones of the terraces and the muted roar of the river below them, rising and roiling with runoff.

'That's the lander,' Emilio said.

Wishful thinking, was D.W.'s first response. Then his heart lurched as he realized Emilio might be right. He stood and went outside, cold to the bone. 'My God,' he prayed, searching the sky, 'not the lander. Please: not the lander.' He listened closely and, in an agony of ambivalence, recognized the engine note.

The others surrounded D.W. now, yelling with excitement and joy. He followed them up the slick stone walkways, Jimmy taking the cliff at a lope, George running behind Jim. D.W. listened, dying a little, to a jubilant Emilio shouting, 'I told you so' and 'Oh, ye of little faith!' at a laughing, relieved Anne, who was saying, 'Okay, okay, Deus vult already!' as they climbed the stairs ahead of him. Squinting into the downpour, he lagged behind the saturated exuberant parade, not really over his illness and needing time to come to grips with the disaster before he broke the news to the others.

By the time D.W. could see the plane, Jimmy had thrown back the cargo bay door and was lifting Sofia down. Marc climbed out under his own power. Even at this distance, D.W. could see the black eyes and swollen faces and the painful stiffness with which Sofia and Marc moved. Why hadn't they waited? Why hadn't they radioed home for instructions? He could have warned them! Then, hating to blame others, D.W. asked himself why he hadn't anticipated this. He'd reckoned they'd either come straight back if the landing strip was too dangerous, or land safely. Still befuddled and sick, he hadn't considered that Sofia might simply fly back in the lander if the Ultra-Light got wrecked.

Sofia saw him and, leaving the others behind, walked toward him, face shining and wet and discolored with injury she had risen above, after what must have been an awful crash. She is so beautiful, D.W. thought. And it had taken a lot of nerve to do what she had done. Logical girl, Sofia, brave girl: all brains and guts. And George, too. He'd taken such fearless pleasure in the barrel rolls and loops, not realizing how fine they were cutting things. It's not our weaknesses but our strengths that have endangered us, D.W. thought, and he searched for some way to soften the impact for Sofia, for George, for all of them.

'So,' said Sofia, smiling widely as she approached, 'we have returned like Elijah, in a chariot of fire!'

He held out his arms and she came to him for an embrace but, grimacing at the pressure against her battered body, moved away and began to describe the crash, one pilot to another, talking with the rushing manic emotion of someone who has cheated death. The others gathered around them and listened to the tale as well.