The Spheres of Heaven

“Do it. I’ll explain later.” If there is a later. Chan ignored Bony and called to Elke, “Do you have the protocols you developed for moving between levels of the multiverse?”

She was over by the little computer of the Mood Indigo , studying it. She gave Chan or the computer — it was hard to tell which — a disdainful glare. “Of course.”

“If Bony takes off, feed him the final one of those protocols, and tell him to use it.”

“But won’t you be at the controls? You were the one—”

Chan was out of the hatch and down the ladder before he could hear the rest of her sentence.

He glanced around him. He needed a location with some specific properties. It had to be high, so that it provided good line-of-sight radio transmission over a wide area. It needed to be in a position from which the Mood Indigo was not directly visible; and ideally it should be hidden from the Malacostracan encampment.

The best he could manage was a compromise. He walked southeast for ten minutes, away from the sea and over the brow of a jutting ridge. On the other side of the hill he stopped. He couldn’t see the encampment, and he couldn’t see the ship. But would anyone hear him?

He began transmission. “Chrissie and Tarb, are you receiving? Hello. Can you hear me?”

He repeated the message three times at one-minute intervals. He was looking at his watch and beginning to feel that he was wasting his time when the receiver beeped. A breathless voice said, “Are you there?”

“Chrissie?”

“Yes. And Tarb. We’ve been sending out signals every hour, but we move around all the time because we don’t want the Malacostracans to be able to home in on our signal. We’re both fine.”

“Good. Where are you?”

“We’re in the area that Elke Siry marked as `badlands.’ She wasn’t kidding. When we heard your call we were only forty meters from our suits, but it took us until now to scramble back to them. This place is more up and down than sideways. It has caves and crevasses and overhangs worse than Miranda. Where are you ? My suit shows you farther south and closer than I expected.”

“How far?”

“About ten kilometers line-of-sight.”

“Damn.” Chan chose his next words carefully. He had to assume that the Mallies might be listening, and that Friday Indigo would be there to interpret anything that was said. “We left the Hero’s Return. You have our heading and our distance. Can you get here in two hours?”

He heard Chrissie’s snort of amusement. “Are you kidding? Ten kilometers line-of-sight is like fifty on the ground. We picked this place so we’d be hard to get at, and it’s just as hard to get out. If we didn’t fall over a cliff or down a sink hole — the area is full of them — we might reach you before dark. More likely it would be sometime tomorrow.”

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say. How’s your supply situation?”

“We took care of that. Friday Indigo gets by eating native flora or fauna, but we didn’t like the look of the stuff. We raided the camp supply case and brought enough food and drink to last for weeks.”

“Good. Now listen closely, because we don’t have much more time. The Mallies could be homing in on both of us.”

He spoke fast for two minutes.

“Got it,” Chrissie said cheerfully when he was finished. “Go do your thing, right now. Tarb and I will cross our fingers.”

“So will we. For you. Oh, and keep your eyes open for Vow-of-Silence. I don’t have time to tell you what happened to her, but she’s running loose along with Eager Seeker.”

“We saw a few Tinker components here and there in the bushes, but no sign of a Composite. We’ll be on the lookout. Scruffy is still missing, too, and I’ll never persuade Tarbush to go without her. Don’t worry about us. We’ll manage. Ready to close?”

“Closing.”

Chan went at once to the top of the ridge and scanned the horizon in the direction of the Malacostracan encampment. The sky was clear. No angry swarm of trifoliate aircraft was heading his way, but that might change any second.

He hurried back to the Mood Indigo. The hatch was closed, but Tully opened it at the first knock.

“Saw you hurrying, had us worrying,” he said. “Come in.”

“How was the pressurization test?”

“The ship’s all right, good and tight. We can fly.”

The Mood Indigo had been designed for a crew of three, and the flight deck was crowded with seven humans and an Angel. Bony had gone a step beyond Chan’s order, and posted lookouts at each of the three ports. “You said to watch for anything coming from the Mallies’ field,” he said, as Chan joined him at the control console. Elke Siry was already in the copilot chair. “But I thought we ought to know about anything that flies, no matter what direction it comes from.”

He stood up. “Here. You and Elke can handle the ship better than me. There’s a few hundred things I’d like to check before we take off.”

“Tully said we are ready to fly.”

“I told him that so he wouldn’t fiddle with equipment he doesn’t understand. I feel sure we can go up if we have to. But I need another hour before I’m convinced that we can stay there.”

Bony headed for the lower levels, down to the engine room of the Mood Indigo. Chan sat down and reviewed the status panel. It was a mass of red flashing lights. Every external antenna had been swept away. Most of the imaging sensors were out of action, leaving the ship partially blind. One of the seven main engines was clogged, probably with silt, and another contained a hairline crack in its fuel feed. Neither could be used without danger of an explosion. The ship’s profile had been deformed by structural changes to one of the airlocks. Two stabilizer fins were bent, and a third had been ripped off. Atmospheric flight, if it happened at all, would be a combination of computer thrust balance and human seat-of-the-pants improvisation.

In summary, the Mood Indigo was a mess. Bony had primed the five undamaged engines, but the whole ship needed a major overhaul. Back in the solar system it would have been declared a total loss.

Chan was calling for a more detailed summary of engine balance problems when Liddy, over to his left, said quietly, “Something took off. A big something.”

Chan glanced instinctively to the displays. He cursed to himself as he realized that the ones he needed were all out of action. He stood up and moved quickly to Liddy’s side. A Malacostracan vessel — one of the two big ones, labeled by Dag Korin as mother ships — floated in the sky to the northwest.

He asked Liddy, “Is it coming this way?”

“I don’t think so.” She was tracking the ship closely, using her hand on the glass of the port to measure relative motion. “If it keeps going the way it started, it will pass well north of us. I think it’s heading west.”

“To sea,” Chan said. “Toward the Link.” He hurried back to the controls. One of the imaging sensors in the seaward direction was still working. It showed a flickering yellow glow on the horizon. “Bony?”

“Here.”

“We don’t have an hour. Stop whatever you’re doing. We’re lifting off. Now.”

“Three more minutes—”

“ NOW!Everybody, brace for takeoff.”

Chan applied power to the five working engines. He did it gingerly, aware that they were not balanced, and he flinched at the creak and groan of the flexing hull. The ship had not been designed to fly with lopsided thrust. It was vibrating all over — and they had not left the ground.

All or nothing. “Hold tight!” Chan stopped breathing and went to three-quarter power. The Mood Indigo lifted, tilted, and began to swoop sideways. The computer caught the imbalance with its inertial guidance system and applied the correction in milliseconds. The ship wobbled, straightened, and lifted again. Chan applied lateral thrust. He had to take them west, toward the sea. They must parallel the course of the Malacostracan ship, then angle in toward it once it was well away from land.

How close dare he come? Too far, and they might miss the opportunity. Too close, and they would be