hands on hips, watching the big machine’s approach. Djuro handled it well, for all he was not primarily a pilot— probably better than I could, she admitted. He had only two of the engines going, the baby nacelles at the end of each wing, but even so the power they developed was more than he needed just to pull the machine along the ground. Heikki could hear the notes of stress under the engines’ steady beat. She could just make out Djuro’s face behind the windscreen’s tinted glass.
The jumper was coming in a little crooked. She pointed to her right, then, as the machine corrected its course, nodded approval and gestured for him to keep coming. Djuro was already slowing before she signaled the stop; the machine slid neatly into place with its belly hatch directly opposite the loading ramp. Djuro shut down the engines—Heikki could almost hear relief in the dying sound—then popped the canopy and slid down the jumper’s side without touching the recessed handholds.
“What do you think, Heikki?” he asked, and there was a note of pride in his voice.
“The ship or the docking?” Heikki asked, and beckoned for Alexieva to come out of the ho-crawl. Then she relented. “They both look pretty good, actually. What’s the interior volume like?”
“See for yourself,” Djuro answered, still smiling, and started up the side of the ramp to unlock the belly hatch.
Heikki stood for a moment, staring up at the jumper. It was a standard six-engined biplane, of a design long renowned for its stability as a survey platform and—not incidentally—for its ability to survive a crash landing. It was not a fast machine, by any means, but it was both efficient and practical: it would more than do, for this trip.
Djuro had the hatch open now. Heikki swung herself up the ramp after him, leaving Alexieva standing silent on the metalled ground behind her, and ducked through the hatch into the belly of the ship. The work lights were on, casting a dull orange light through the empty space, and a solid wedge of light fell into the hold from the clear-roofed pilot’s bubble.
“What do you think?” Djuro said again, out of the shadows.
Heikki took her time answering, turning slowly on her heel to survey the compartment. It was a standard set-up, with anchor points for equipment and crew fittings jutting from the beige-padded walls.
“Looks good,” she said. “Let’s get our stuff aboard.”
She and Djuro had fitted out similar craft a hundred times before, and Alexieva proved more than willing to take orders. They had all the crates aboard by the time Nkosi and Sebasten-Januarias returned from the control tower, and were already fitting the first of the control consoles into place against the forward bulkhead. With two more pairs of hands, the rest of the procedure went quickly, the other consoles, the main and secondary sensor suites, the topographical scanner, Alexieva’s maps, even the seats and padded benches that would double as bunks slotting into place with expected ease. When they had finished, Heikki stood for a moment, surveying the changed cabin, and then nodded to herself.
“It looks good,” she said aloud. “I think we’re ready, boys and girls.”
Sebasten-Januarias let out a cheer, quickly suppressed. He looked at Nkosi instead, and said, “Do you want to lift on hover, or will you fly her out?”
“Fly,” Nkosi answered instantly. “Why waste the chance, when we have all this space just waiting for us to use it?”
He did not say, did not need to say, that the heavy jumpers were notoriously less stable under the restricted power of the two variable-function engines. Heikki nodded her approval, and seated herself at the master console. It was set almost against the bulkhead separating the pilot’s bubble from the main compartment, so that both pilots had to squeeze past her to reach their seats. However, the position gave her an unimpeded view of the other consoles, and of the projection tank laid out on the floor of the compartment. When that was lit, it would give her a realtime image of the terrain in range of the jumper’s scanners. She ran her hands across her equipment, watching the checklights flicker, and slipped on the filament mike that would be her link with the rest of her crew.
“Does everyone hear me all right?” she said, on the general frequency, and heard the answers in her earphones as well as in the air around her. “Then we’re ready when you are, Jock.”
“I am getting clearance from the tower now,” Nkosi answered. There was a moment’s pause. “And we are cleared. All secure in the bay?”
Heikki glanced around one final time, making sure that all the seals were complete, that no telltale flash of red or emergency orange betrayed an incomplete connection, then looked at Djuro and Alexieva. Both nodded, and she said, “All secure in the bay, Jock. She’s all yours.”
“Then we are off,” Nkosi said lightly, and a second later the first of the engines coughed to life. The jumper was well-screened against the outside noises; even so, by the time the sixth engine wound up to speed, Heikki had to swallow hard, and was grateful even for the minimal protection of her light earpieces. In an hour or two, she knew, the noise would fade into the background of her consciousness, but until then, it was an annoyance to be endured. The jumper lurched forward, then turned slow and reluctant, trundling toward its assigned runway. Heikki adjusted her frequency control until she had the tower, and listened idly while Nkosi ran through the final checkout procedure.
“Goodbye and good luck,” the tower said at last, sounding almost indecently cheerful, and its last words were swallowed in the sudden roar as Nkosi opened the throttles. The jumper started forward, swaying on its heavy wheels, jouncing along the metalled runway for what always seemed a dangerously long time. Even though she knew from years of experience just how long it took one of these craft to become airborne, Heikki found her hands growing white-knuckled on the arms of her seat.
Then, reluctantly, the jumper lumbered into the air. Nkosi’s voice sounded in the headpiece, “Everything looks green from here. We are starting our flight plan now.”
“Good luck,” Control said again, and the headpiece hissed with empty static.
Heikki winced, and adjusted her controls. The jumper still had a distinct angle—Nkosi had not yet brought it to their cruising altitude—but she switched on her console anyway. “I’m going to start calibrating now, Sten, Alexieva—do people call you anything for short?”
Even across the dim compartment, Heikki could see the one-shoulder shrug. “Not really.”
“All right.” Heikki looked down at her board. “I’m lighting the tank.”
“Sensor input ready,” Djuro answered.
“Then let’s go.” Heikki touched keys and the floor of the jumper seemed to disappear in front of her, to be replaced by a fuzzy, tilted image of the land over which they were passing. She frowned in concentration, touching buttons, and slowly the picture became clearer, until she could make out individual trees and the occasional building. “How does this match your maps?” she said, to Alexieva.
The dark woman bent over her console, her expression unreadable. “It matches my map 5b,” she said, and an instant later bright red grid lines popped into being, hovering over the apparent countryside. “Which is as it should be. Of course, you won’t get such a precise fit once we get into the ‘wayback.”
I know that, Heikki thought, and barely kept herself from saying it aloud. “Enhancements, Sten?” she asked, instead.
“This is infrared,” Djuro answered promptly, and the image shifted, the buildings standing out in stark contrast to the land around them. “Metal concentrations, ionization, subsoil minerals—” He ran down a list of options, the image shifting with each new possibility. “Composite.”
Heikki blinked at the chaotic image, and said, “Everything looks good on my board.”
“Same here,” Djuro answered, and returned to the real light projection. After a moment, Alexieva echoed him.
“So now we wait,” Heikki said. This was the worst part of any job, the interminable travel—usually by slow- flying jumper—to get from the main base to the place where she could do the actual work. She curbed her impatience easily—both the impatience and her control of it were habits now—and leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out into the aisle. There was nothing to do but wait.
The ground crept by in the tank’s image, the clumps of thick-leafed small-jades that dominated the area around Lowlands gradually giving way to stands of giant jade and tree-tall reed grass. There were fewer farmsteads here, what few there were huddled along the lakes, bright as silver coins that dotted the landscape. Alexieva muttered to herself at the map console, identifying each one. The lakes were linked by a network of little rivers, barely visible from this height, but drawn on Alexieva’s maps like a filigree fan. Gradually, the lines of the
