The screen was filled with poetry.
'What is it?' Angela asked.
'Maggie's notebooks.' Her eyes met Angela's, but looked quickly away. 'I think there was a lot about the woman that I missed.'
Angela's gaze intensified, but she didn't speak.
Hutch brought up a file. 'This is from Urik at Sunset.'
It was a group of prayers and songs celebrating the deeds of the Quraquat hero. Epic in tone, they retained a highly personal flavor. 'Urik was to be experienced up close,' Maggie commented in the accompanying notes, 'and not from a distance in the manner of terrestrial heroes.'
She went on: 'Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.'
And, finally, a prayer that seemed particularly pertinent:
My spirit glides above the waters of the world, Because you are with me.
They looked east across the sky. It will come from that direction. Over there. It would come in over the coffee-colored sea. If the sun would set, which of course it won't for several more days, they'd be able to see it now. 'It'll probably become visible during the next twelve hours,' Angela said.
What was the old line from the Rubaiyatl
But who was now the potter?
And who the pot?
The snowfields were broad and serene.
Delta. Friday, May 20; 0900 hours.
Hutch was not happy. 'What are our options?' she asked.
'How about clearing out now?' suggested Carson. 'Get in the shuttle and go. Get away from Delta altogether.'
Angela considered it. 'I don't think the odds would be good. The shuttle was designed for ship-to-ship operations. It was never intended for use in gravity wells. It doesn't have much power. We can't really get clear, and I don't think we want to play tag with that monster. No. Listen, it's moving pretty slowly now. I suggest we stay where we are. Go around the other side of the world and hide.'
'I agree,' said Hutch. She depolarized the viewing panels, letting the red daylight in. 'We know there were survivors on Quraqua and Nok: these things don't kill everybody. Let's just dig in.'
'Listen,' said Carson, 'is it really going to score a direct hit on usT'
'Yes,' Angela said. 'I don't think there's any doubt about it. It'll come in about thirty degrees off the horizon, and it'll land right in our coffee. Incidentally, its timing is perfect. If it were a little earlier, or a little later, it wouldn't have a clear shot at us. At the mesas, I mean.'
Carson's stomach tightened. Its timing is perfect. 'Okay,' he said. 'Let's make for the other side. Let the moon absorb the impact. After that happens, we clear out. If we can.' His face was grim. 'So now we know about Oz. It was intended to draw the goddam thing. I can't believe it. The sons of bitches deliberately arranged to bomb the civilizations on Nok and Quraqua. They must have been psychos.'
'Let's talk about it later,' said Angela. 'We've got things to do.'
'Right,' said Carson. 'Let's start by rearranging the cameras to get the best record we can.'
'There is something else we could try,' said Hutch. 'Maybe our blocks worked better than we expected. We could blow them up. Pull the bait out of the water.'
Angela shook her head. 'I don't think it would matter now. It's late. That thing is coming for dinner no matter what we do.'
The outermost moon in the system orbited the gas giant at a range of eighteen million kilometers. It was little more than a barrel-shaped rock, with barely the surface area of Washington, D.C. It was a fairly typical boulder, battered and ill-used. An observer in that moon's northern hemisphere would, during these hours, have been looking at a fearsome sky, a blood-red sky, filled by a vast fiery river. The river knew no banks and no limits: it drove the stars before it, and even the sun was lost in the brilliance of its passage.
30
Delta. Saturday, May 21; 1010 hours
They watched the dragon rise, a massive cloudbank, swollen and infected. Streamers and tendrils rolled toward them, over the eastern horizon.
The cameras had optical, infrared, X-ray, and short-range sensor capabilities. They were state-of-the-art stuff, but Hutch didn't think they were going to last long when things began to happen.
They picked three sites, each a half-kilometer outside the general target area. Two were on high ground. They slipped the cameras into makeshift housings, and bolted the units into the ice. One was set to track the approach of the dragon, and the others to scan the target area.
When they'd finished they ran tests, adjusted the power cells, and executed a successful drill from the cockpit. Afterward, they retired to the dome for a turkey luncheon. Hearty meal, thought Hutch. Good for morale.
They cracked a couple of bottles of Chablis, and made jokes about the weather.
No one had much appetite. In a world that had lost its anchor to reality, it was hard to get seriously involved with a turkey sandwich. Anything now seemed possible.
Long ago, when she was nine years old, Hutch had gone with her father to see Michael Fairish, the magician. It had been an evening filled with floating cabinets, people getting sawed in half, and a black box that yielded an unending supply of doves, rabbits, and red and white kerchiefs. Priscilla Hutchins had tried to fathom the methods used by the magician, but she had been astonished time and again. And although she knew that trickery was involved, that magic wasn't real, she had nevertheless lost touch with the physical world, and reached a point at which the impossible failed to surprise her.
She was at that point now.
After dinner, she went outside and sat down in the snow. She let the alienness of the scene suck at her, as if it might extract some hidden part, and infuse a portion of itself, a particle of enchantment that would re-establish a cable to comprehension. It was almost as if this world had been placed here exclusively for her and her companions, that it had waited through billions of unchanging years for precisely this moment.
The others joined her after a while, en route to other tasks, but they too paused in the growing radiance of the thing in the east.
Ashley continued to relay updates on the dragon, which was still running hot and true. Drafts was sliding from professional acceptance to near-panic, and had begun urging them to use the shuttle to get off-world. Janet, who had perhaps been through too much with Hutch and Carson, merely told them she knew they'd be okay.
After a while, they got up and straggled over to the shuttle. They disconnected the 1600 and carried it inside the dome. Not that it would matter when the fire fell out of the sky.
They began packing.
'I don't think we should wait until tomorrow,' said Angela. 'I'd feel better if we cleared out tonight.'
'We live better here,' said Carson. 'There's no point in scrunching up in the shuttle for an extra day.' He went inside and came back with more Chablis. To prove the point.
So they waited under the hammer and debated whether they would be safer on the ground or in the air at the moment of impact. Whether it wasn't paranoid to think they were actually being chased by this thing. ('It's not us' each of them said, in one form or another. 'It's seen the mesas. It's the mesas it's coming after.') Whether, if they made a run for it, the object would adjust course again and come after them. Them, and damn the mesas. After a while, despite the tension, Hutch couldn't keep her eyes open. No one went to bed that night; they all slept in the common room, stretched out in chairs.
Hutch woke, it seemed, every few minutes. And she decided, if she ever went through anything like this again (which she would, but that's another story), she'd by God, clear out at the first hint of funny business.
Somewhere around five, she smelled coffee. Angela held out a cup.
'Hi,' said Hutch.
