silence—the premade coffee, for once, smelled almost drinkable—and retreated to her bunk. By the time she had eaten half of it, Nkosi had returned, carrying the first of the barrier lights. Alexieva fetched the rest, and then collected the ration trays and fed them into the compactor.
“What is the plan today, Heikki?” Nkosi asked, perching on the edge of the map console. Alexieva gave him a look, but did not order him away.
Heikki crossed to her own console and switched it on, calling up the metal reading she had gotten at the end of the previous day. “We got one sharp echo yesterday, just before we set down. First thing, I want to check that out; if it’s nothing, then we’ll proceed with the original search plan.”
“What kind of reading?” Sebasten-Januarias asked. Three cups of coffee, downed in quick succession, had restored his good humor remarkably.
“I can’t really tell,” Heikki answered, and beckoned him over to see for himself. The young man squinted at the reddish spikes, and shook his head.
“Doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Djuro said. “It doesn’t say much. Just that there’s something metal out there.” He looked at Heikki. “Want to give odds?”
It was an old game between them. Heikki paused, considering, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she began, and then, seeing disappointment on the little man’s face, made herself think. “Two to one against? It’d be too damn easy, Sten.”
“Two to one against,” Djuro echoed. “Bear witness, all of you.”
Nkosi laughed. “And what are the stakes, this time?”
Heikki shrugged. Djuro said, “Dinner?”
“No, how can that be two for one?” Nkosi objected.
“Heikki pays food and drink,” Djuro said.
“Done,” Heikki said. They shook hands, the Iadarans watching stonefaced. Heikki felt strangely foolish, especially under Alexieva’s faintly disapproving stare, and was glad when Nkosi drew the surveyor aside, saying, “Please, Alex, show me the approximate course.”
It took little time to stow the remaining sleeping bags and prepare the jumper for flight. Nkosi lifted ship, this time, easing the juniper into the air on the whining rotors. He circled the clearing once, cautiously, before switching to the main plant, then swung the jumper onto a course that would bring them into scanning range of the metallic contact in little over an hour. Heikki, for all that she had given pessimistic odds, found herself holding her breath as they came up on the contact site, hoping in spite of herself.
Red spikes lanced across her board, shooting off the scale, and she hastily adjusted the scanner to a lower sensitivity. In the same instant, Djuro said, “Contact— Jesus. I think you owe me dinner, Heikki.”
“Let’s wait and see,” Heikki said, more calmly than she felt. She switched screens, watching the numbers shift across her board: the contact resolved itself into a large, relatively solid mass, and several larger but far less massive objects. I think you may be right, she thought, but a caution as ingrained as superstition kept her from voicing the thought aloud.
“There!” Alexieva said, pointing into the tank, and at the same time both Sebasten-Januarias and Nkosi said, “Balloon fabric!”
The tank flashed like lightning as sunlight was reflected off the shreds of the latac’s envelope into the cameras. Djuro adjusted his equipment, muttering to himself.
“Hold this position,” Heikki said, sliding out from behind her console, and swung herself up to the pilot’s bubble.
“Go to rotors?” Sebasten-Januarias asked, as she arrived, and Nkosi hesitated.
“Heikki, what do you think?”
“You’re the pilot,” Heikki answered, and Nkosi looked again at his controls.
“Go ahead, make the changeover,” he said, after a moment. Heikki waited until they had completed the maneuver and the jumper was steady, hovering over the first tattered strip of thinmetal envelope, before asking the crucial question. Already, she could see— they could all see—the break in the forest up ahead that must mark the gondola’s resting place. She nodded to it, saying, “See if you can set us down there, Jock.”
“I will do my best,” Nkosi said. The jumper swung slowly toward the new clearing, turning to use the wind to help hold the craft steady in the air, and now they could all see the second and third scraps of envelope snagged in the treetops, the edges browned and ragged as though touched by fire.
“Christ,” Sebasten-Januarias said, his face very pale. “That looks….” He let his words trail off as though he could not bring himself to voice his suspicions.
Alexieva said it for him, hard-voiced. “That’s blaster fire did that.”
“Heikki,” Djuro said, cutting through the younger pilot’s confused protest, “I’m picking up lifesign, a lot of blips—I think it may be orcs.”
“Let me see,” Alexieva said, and there was a silence. Heikki imagined her peering over Djuro’s shoulder, judging the numbers and the vague shapes on the little screen. “I think it is orcs, Heikki. About two kilometers off, and milling around. Something’s upset them, that’s for sure.”
Heikki made a face, but did not answer at once, looking instead at Nkosi. “Can you land here?”
The pilot’s answer was reassuringly prompt. “And take off again, too.”
“Alexieva, will sonics keep off the orcs?” It was a long shot, Heikki knew: the old sonics had never been enough, but there was a chance that the newer models might do some good.
“It’s possible,” Alexieva said, after a moment, and Heikki could almost hear the shrug in her voice. “It’s worth a try.”
“Drop a pattern,” Heikki said, “and once they’re down—” She touched Nkosi’s shoulder lightly. “—bring us in.”
Nkosi circled the clearing twice before they dropped the sonics, giving them all time to study the wreck. The gondola lay at the far end of what had been a natural break in the forest, its rounded nose half buried in the ground at the foot of a well-grown blackwood. The tree was canted at a forty-five degree angle, half of its root system jutting into the air; two other trees, barely more than saplings, lay snapped in the gondola’s wake. The ground in the clearing itself was churned and muddy, disturbed, Heikki thought suddenly, by more than the crash.
“I guess they were trying to land and overshot,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was still very pale, but his voice was under control.
“It looks that way,” Heikki agreed. “What are the orcs doing, Sten?”
“Still holding off,” Djuro answered.
Heikki made a face, studying the ground below as they swung past again. “Inform Lowlands tower that we’ve found the wreck,” she said slowly, “broadcast the map coordinates and our official claim number. Make sure it goes out on a wide band, Sten.”
“You got it,” Djuro answered, his voice neutral.
Nkosi risked a glance over his shoulder. “You are taking chances.”
“Am I?” Heikki said, stonefaced, and then relented. “Look, if this was a hijack, I want to be very sure everybody and their half-brother knows we found it, just so nobody decides to try the same trick on us on the way home.”
“Lowlands control has acknowledged our claim,” Djuro said. “I did a quick aerial scan, there’s nothing up here within range except a scheduled commercial flight.”
It was nice to work with people who anticipated her orders, Heikki thought. “You took the words right out of my mouth,” she said aloud, and took a deep breath. “Let’s drop the sonics, Alexieva, and then we’ll go down.”
The surveyor answered indistinctly, and a few moments later a light flared red on the central status board.
“The chute’s open,” Alexieva announced, almost in the same instant, sounding rather breathless, and then added, “First sonic’s away. Dropping the second. And the third.”
Heikki studied the pattern blossoming on Nkosi’s small-scale display, her imagination transforming the throbbing points of light into bright orange parachutes supporting the half-meter cubes of the sonic deflectors. She watched them down—Alexieva’s aim had been good; the cubes landed in a ragged line across the end of the clearing, falling between the wreck and the orcs—and rested a hand on Nkosi’s shoulder.
