The Wreck swelled in the forward screen until it blocked sight of the stars. Spin brought an emblem into view, scarred and scoured, then took the blue-and-silver wing away, then swung it back. Nansen turned his space-boat and proceeded parallel to the hull at a distance of meters, seeking a place to make contact. Field drive gave marvelous responsiveness; this was almost like steering an aircraft.
Almost. Never quite. Robotics handled most of it, with more speed and precision than flesh could, but the basic judgments and decisions were his, and a mistake could kill.
He worked his way aft, turned again, matched velocities, and rested weightless in his harness. Before him yawned the hideous hole where the after wheel and plasma accelerator had been. He called a report to Envoy. Dayan, at his side, probed the interior with radar, detectors, and instruments more subtle, still experimental, that employed her new knowledge of quantum physics.
"As we thought," she said after a few minutes. "The midships emergency bulkheads must have closed immediately and sealed the front end off The fusion reactor there is in regular operation, supplying ample current to all systems that are functional." She frowned. "The readings at the wheel aren't so good, but from here I can't make out just what the trouble is."
"That's what we want to discover," he said. "Ready? Hang on."
As slowly as might be, he maneuvered around the hull and forward. A hundred meters from the bow end of the cylinder, he went into a circular path around it — not an orbit; the gravity of even this enormous vessel was negligible. To stay on course required a constant, exact interplay of vectors. He fought clown a brief dizziness and concentrated on matching the rotation "below" him.
And now: approach. He had picked a smooth area, free alike of installations and of damage. However, it spun at nearly two hundred kilometers per hour. A slight miscalculation could mean that a housing slammed into him. The boat stooped. Contact shivered and tolled in the metal. At once he made fast. It would not have been possible to do so speedily enough with magnetics, but an electron manipulator inspired by the Holont gave him talons. Silence washed over him.
Weight tugged, as if he were hanging upside down. Stars streamed in the viewscreens. Envoy hove in sight, merely a glint among them unless he magnified. "We're docked," he told them aboard.
"Elohim Adirim!" Dayan gasped. A lock of hair had come loose from her headband and wavered like a small flame. "That was piloting!"
Nansen realized he had been necessary. He also realized he had not by himself been sufficient. "Thank the boat," he said.
Her name was Herald It.
Donning spacesuits and securing equipment to take along was a slow business. Weight amounted to about one-tenth terrestrial, in the wrong direction. They helped one another. Nansen saw Dayan's distress when he strapped a pistol to his waist. "The last thing I want is to fire this," he said, "but we simply don't know."
"That's the horror," she answered, "that you might have to." Her neck straightened. "Well, I won't believe you will until I have to."
They kissed quickly before they attached helmets. After that their appearance was unhuman, heads horned with sensors and antennae, blank visages, insectlike eyes that were optical amplifiers. They cycled through the personnel lock, planted gripsoled boots on Fleetwing, and moved off cautiously, a boot always emplaced. Drive units rested on their backs, but a return to this whirling surface would be an acrobatic feat. "Yes," Nansen murmured, "we two definitely had to be the first. Already I'm finding things to warn everybody about."
Dayan's breath was harsh in his audio receivers.
Step by step, they advanced. A coaming lay in their way. "That's a lock," Dayan said.
"I know," Nansen answered. They had studied the plans of the ship, taken from the Kith database, with equal intensity.
"Are you sure we shouldn't try to go inside here and proceed through the hull?"
"Yes, I am sure. Too many unknowns."
They crept around the portal. "I... I'm sorry," Dayan said. "That was a stupid question. I'm feeling a bit spinny."
Medication staved off nausea but couldn't do everything. They clung to a sharply curving world that wanted to hurl them from it, blood coursed too heavily in their heads, and a night sky whirled beneath them. "Don't look at the stars," Nansen advised.
Dayan swallowed. "Ironic," she said. "The stars are what this is all about, aren't they?"
They reached the end of the cylinder and crawled over the edge. She lost her footing. He grabbed an ankle barely in time and hauled her back. "Nombre de Dios!" he groaned. "Don't do that!" Twenty meters from them, the spokes of the wheel scythed across heaven.
"I'm sorry —"
"No, no, I am. I should have been more careful of... of my partner."
He heard a chuckle. "Enough with this modesty contest. But thank you, b'ahavah."
Progress became easier, here where the centrifuge effect pulled sideways. It was somewhat like walking in a stiff wind, which lessened as they approached the center. Nevertheless they kept their caution. "I feel well again," Dayan said after a while.
"Good." Oh, more than good, beloved.
They came at length to an occupied shuttle bay. Although the little vehicle had been designed centuries after those that Envoy bore to Tahir, it seemed crude compared even to the early field-drive models she now carried. Nansen helped Dayan unlimber the tripod that was part of her burden and snug its feet to the hull. It gave her a framework to which she could fasten her instruments. When he had finished, the single sound he heard was breathing. Somehow the stillness made the wheel that rotated on his right all the more monstrous.
Dayan busied herself for several minutes.
"I was afraid of this," she sighed. "It confirms the readings I took aft. The launch control is dead. Probably the power supply to the computer was knocked out in the disaster."
"What about the others?" Besides the lost boats, Fleetwing had carried eight shuttles; her people had more occasion to go to and fro than his ever did, and numbered many more. He glimpsed those that were docked in the wheel, whirling past.
"I can tell from here, the entire lot is stranded, at least on this side."
"Well, frankly, I'm not very regretful. I didn't like the idea of trusting an unfamiliar system that might have been damaged in unobvious ways."
"How will we evacuate survivors?" If any.
"That depends on what the situation is. At the moment, I think the best procedure will be for our engineers to make what modifications are necessary for us to use a shuttle of Envoy's. We'll convey it over, steer it to a wheelside bay, and ferry the people across to the hull. First we'll doubtless have to do some repair work there, too. They can pass through it to an exit port, and our boats will bring them to our ship. That may involve a large number of trips, but it looks to me like the most conservative, fail-safe plan. Meanwhile, let's repack your gear and execute the maneuver I rather expected we would."
Did a sob answer his deliberately impersonal words? He decided not to ask. Dayan went about her tasks as competently as always.
The truth came out as he slipped a cable off his shoulder and began uncoiling it. Under low weight and Coriolis force, it writhed from him like a snake. He heard her voice gone high and thin. "Rico, I'm afraid."
Astounded, he could merely say, "We don't dare be afraid."
"Not for me." She caught his arm. "For you, darling." Her free hand jerked toward the wheel. "I'm remembering how Al Brent must have died."
"That was long ago and far away." Six thousand years and light-years. Not enough to grant forgetfulness.
Her tone firmed. "Let me go first. We can better spare me."
"No." He shook his head, unseen by her within the helmet. "I've had much more open-space practice. We stay by the plan we've rehearsed."
"But if you are — caught —"
"I won't be. If somehow I am, you return at once to the boat and take her back. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she said after a moment. "Forgive my foolishness. It's just that I love you."
"And I you. Which is another reason I cannot let you lead." Maybe she visualized his grin. "Besides, allow me my machismo."
She laughed shakily and embraced him. Their helmets clinked together.
The cable, a thin and flexible strand stronger than any steel, floated in an are. He used the molecular bond attachments to stick an end to the front of her suit. She fixed the other end to the back of his. When he leaped free, she waved, then stood waiting, a soldier's daughter.
He activated his drive unit and curbed his outward flight. The next few minutes would be touchier than rendezvous and docking had been. Though turning speeds this near the hub weren't great, they were opposed; the space between units was narrow; the angular momenta were gigantic. He lost himself in the crossing, as a man may lose himself in battle or a storm at sea or the height of love. Not reckless by nature, he still found in unavoidable danger the fullness of life. The blood sang in him.
His mind stood aside, wholly aware, coolly gauging and governing.
He drew near a spoke, fifteen meters from the axle, and adjusted vectors until the eight-hundred-meter length was steady in his eyes. He edged inward. He swung his body around. His boots made contact. The impact was slight. He must have matched velocities within a few centimeters per second. Excellent! He took half a minute to stand triumphant among the marching stars.
Peering back, he verified that the cable was not fouled. He reached around, undid it from his suit, and attached it to the spoke. "All clear, Hanny," he called. "Are you ready?"
"Yes, oh, yes."
"Jump."
The line began to straighten as her mass moved offside. He caught hold and pulled, hand over hand. Draw her in. He felt how she used nudges of drive to counteract drift. Good girl, grand girl. Probably she could have made it safely on her own, as he did. But why take a needless risk? Whoever met the wheel while flying would spatter through space in chunks. He was better trained.
That was why he had elected to walk from the boat, rather than flitting directly. The first engineers to come, led by Alanndoch, must duplicate his transit. But they were young and — well — Maybe they could rig a net for those who followed. And eventually they'd have a shuttle from Envoy, for easy passage between wheel and hull.
That's if we find any reason to do the work. His exultation congealed.
Dayan arrived. He hugged her, one-armed, and gathered in the cable. They'd want it again later. Lateral weight here was about one-twentieth g, though Coriolis force complicated movement.
Dayan went to the entry port. "Uh-oh," he heard.
"What?" He got the strand back on his spacesuit and joined her. She pointed. "This is not an airlock according to plan," she said.
"No." He examined the hinged metal box that had been added in front, the traces of welding and hand tools. Cautiously opening the door, which faced spinward, he saw through murk that the box was a chamber barely adequate to accommodate a man. The door was airtight. When dogged shut, it could be opened with a single turn. A tube fastened at the rear seemed to have been a battery-powered lamp. An inscription was painted on the inside of the door. He had acquired enough Kithish to read it:
BLESSINGS FAREWELL
He reclosed the box and stood for a dark moment before he spoke. "Why did they make this?"
"More important," Dayan replied, "how?"
"Hm?"
"We don't know what else they did. If we can get in at all, we may cause terrible things. Like if we can't shut the lock valves, the air inside will escape."
A wind bearing corpses, as winter winds blow withered leaves?
"You are right," Nansen said. "Perhaps the next port is accessible."
They started off, to the hub and across to the spoke they wanted. The wheel gyred in silence and cold.
They arrived. "This lock looks intact," Dayan said. "We can deal with it."
Can we deal with what's behind it? wondered Nansen.
He pressed the plate for entry. Nothing stirred. "Circuits dead," he declared. "Don't stop to probe, Hanny." He leaned his muscles against the emergency manual truck. Gears worked; the valve swung ponderously aside. "Hold," he said. He couldn't make Envoy out among the stars, but his suit had sufficient broadcast power. "We're about to go in," he announced. "We'll be cut off from contact for a while."
"How . . . how long shall we wait before dispatching . . . reinforcements?" Alanndoch asked.
"Wrong word," Nansen replied. "Whatever we find inside, it won't be hostile." Or so I pray. "The enemy is around us." The universe, our enemy and our glory. "Give us twenty-four hours. After that, proceed at discretion, but remember always, your first duty is to bring our ship home."
"Luck be with you, Captain, Scientist."
"Thank you." Nansen switched off and beckoned to Dayan. They entered the chamber.
As Nansen spun the valve shut and lost sight of the sky, blackness closed in. Dayan turned her flashbeam on. In vacuum it threw a puddle of light on the side opposite. Reflections diffused dimly into gloom. Nansen saw her as a bulk of shadow and a few vague glimmers.
He closed the valve. No air gushed in. The pump wasn't working, either. Groping, he found the command plate for the inner valve and pushed it. As he expected, the servo did nothing. If there was an atmosphere beyond, it pressed on this exit with tonnes of force.
Despair tasted like iron. "Living people would have made repairs," he rasped.
"Not necessarily," Dayan said. "Tinkering with embedded circuits, using inadequate tools, could well make matters worse. If ever they had reason to go outside, they could, more slowly, by the backups. Maybe the hydraulics here aren't jammed. People could maintain those."
Nansen tried. The truck resisted his hands. He marshaled his strength and heaved. It was as if he were trying to pull his bones apart. Then the truck turned. A faint thread of light appeared before him. Through his helmet he heard the first whistle of inrushing air. The truck turned more and more easily.
Vision hazed. "Frost!" Dayan cried. "Ice on our lenses!" Water vapor. The breath of life.
They trod into hollowness. Standing on the platform, as their suit exteriors warmed and the rime smoked off, they saw a great shaft stretching emptily upward and upward. Its fluorescence was more chilling than the tomb darkness of the lock chamber. On one side a railcar track converged away into the distance, on the other side a ladder with occasional rest stops. That was a long climb.
"Air." Dayan's voice shook. "I'll crack my helmet and smell it."
"No, don't," Nansen ordered, "Not till we know what it's like" — pressure, composition, corruption.
"Right. My testing kit —"
"We won't stop for that yet. We'll have a look first." What we find may make everything else, our whole journey, irrelevant. "Come."
The railcar rested inert. He sighed and sought the ladder. As they descended the hundreds of meters, their weight rose toward Earth normal and their burdens grew heavy.
Mute, side by side, they debarked at the top and went through a bare room into a passageway.
Greenness! Plants in handmade boxes stood as far as they could see, leafing, blooming, fruiting, blanketing trellises, vaulting the overhead, rose, lily, violet, bamboo, pumpkin, dwarf juniper, trumpet vine, grapevine, things that Earth never knew, a riot of life.
"Life —" Dayan reached, trembling, humbly, to touch a flower.
They had not gone much farther when three persons met them.
The strangers loped down the corridor with tools in hand that Nansen didn't recognize. He hadn't had time to learn everything about this era. The detached part of him supposed they were implements to cope with crisis. The noise he and Dayan made could have signified trouble. His mind sprang to the people themselves.
An older man, a younger man, a young woman, short, dark, lithe, strong-featured: Kithfolk. They were skimpily clad and skinny but looked healthy. Joy roared in him. He unsecured his helmet and clapped it back off his head, to breathe mild air and green scents.
The three had skidded to a halt. They stared, stunned, at the miracle. Time whirred past before the older man whispered, "You — you are from outside?" It was in an old-sounding but comprehensible version of the principal language on Harbor, whither they had been bound.
Dayan had bared her own face. "Yes," she answered, not steadily. "We're here to bring you home."
"After, after . . . these years," the woman stammered. "You came."
The young man whirled about and ran off. His shouts echoed. The woman fell to her knees, raised her eyes, and poured her thanks and her love out to her God.
She wasn't loud. The other man stood fast. He was gray-haired, his countenance furrowed, clearly a leader. Maybe later the knowledge of deliverance would overwhelm him, but at the moment he had recovered and his tone was almost level. "Welcome aboard. A million welcomes. I am Evar Shaun. My companion here is Tari Ernen. We are crew of Fleetwing."
Nansen did not, at once, respond in kind. That it was Envoy which lay nearby might have been too much, just now. "We detected the failure of your zero-zero at Harbor," he said. "We came as soon as we were able. Why didn't you reply to our calls?"
"We didn't know," Shaun said. "Most electronics failed when the thing happened." Of course, he'd have no idea what the thing was. "We have had no viewscreens since then." Luckily — no, not luck; good engineering — such systems as light, temperature, and ventilation were separate, simpler and more robust. "Only by going outside at the end of a cable have we seen."
Tari Ernen got back to her feet. "Every year," she said. "We marked every year with a sight of the stars. On our birthdays."
"How are you?" Dayan whispered.
"We live," Shaun replied. "We have made ways of life that kept us sane." After a little: "It will be ... not easy . . . becoming planet dwellers."
"No children anymore," Ernen said. "We children grew up. We would not have our own. Not when we knew it would be at least fifteen years before rescue."
"And likeliest forever," Shaun added stoically, stating a fact to which he had been resigned, which his emotions did not yet quite recognize was no longer a fact.
"You have lost this ship," Nansen said, "but we are building more. They will need crews."
The pair gaped at him. It must be too great a wonder to grasp at once. Then Ernen sobbed, "We shall be starfarers again?"
"Thank you, thank you," Shaun mumbled.
Before everything dissolved in bewildered passion, Nansen threw a question that had been dogging him. "How many are you?"
"A-about two hundred," Shaun said.
"What, no more? Did you, uh, did you lose many in the disaster?"
His heritage — culture, chromosomes, spirit — arose in Shaun and he could answer quite evenly: "The shock injured most of us, but few fatally. It did worse and irreparable damage to the life-support systems. What was left could not serve all of us for the length of time we must wait. We would die in poison and filth from our own bodies. You see how we have planted gardens everywhere, to keep the air fresh and provide food, but that was not enough, either.
"The aged and infirm, and others chosen by lot, went into space, one by one. We rebuilt a lock to make it gentle for them. They drift among the stars. Their names live in honor."
Nansen stiffened. "How did you make them go?" he demanded.
Shaun met his gaze. "There was no need of force. They went freely. They were Kith."
"They are Kith," Ernen said. "Forever."
Dayan bowed her head and wept.