Long View - Zelde M'Tana Part 9

He cut the circuit.

Parnell said, "Good, Dopps! Taking the pressure off him; you did right."

"What else could I do? But now-what if it doesn't work soon enough?"

Parnell shrugged. "Either we have fuel to loop back if we overshoot, or else we don't."

Adopolous stared at him. "You mean that, what you just said." "Why not? It's true, isn't it?"

For Zelde, time dragged. n.o.body said anything and Parnell wouldn't look at her.

Dopples scratched fingernails on the comm-panel but touched no switches. She felt like yelling, but of course she knew better.

She wanted coffee, or a drink-but d.a.m.ned if she'd move when n.o.body else had to.

Wishing somebody would talk, she sat there.

It couldn't have been as long as it seemed before the intercom squawked again.

Harger's voice. "I think we have some gees coming up in a minute. Get braced."

n.o.body answered-but then the seat hit her b.u.t.t and she knew, from Dopples'

relieved gasp, that things were all right.

For the moment. Then came a bounce feeling and Parnell said, "He doesn't have it steady yet." n.o.body else spoke. Finally the push came solid again. After a minute of it, Parnell unstrapped and stood. "Harger's got it now, I think. All right, Dopps- with all that jittering, our time's off. Run the readings through Tinhead and integrate for corrections; right? Set decel to hit zerch a week before we need it-we can ease off at intervals to use up the difference, and we may have to. Agreed?"

"Right, skipper. Will do." On his computer keyboard Dopples set up patterns, punched activation, frowned and began again. Parnell beckoned to Zelde; she stood and joined him, and they walked back to quarters.

80.Inside, he pulled her to him. One slow kiss, then he said, "We're in trouble. You know that?"

Looking at him, she grinned. "I sort of guessed. How bad?"

"Harger's already said he can get us to Terranova but not off again-not without at least the bare guts of a new drive. I believe him." He stroked her shoulders. "Zelde- we could all die on that world."

"Could of died in Escape, too-but we didn't." With narrowed eyes she squinted at him. "Parnell-what you up to?"

To gesture, he had to let go of her. "Terranova-it's UET, with maybe Escaped ship contacts. I-and Chanticleer--we may get in and out safely or we may not-the odds aren't good. But you, Zelde-you're not tied, not labeled, one way or the other. You could jump ship, if necessary, and melt into Terranova with whatever story we fix up for you. You're not stuck-"

Her palm covered his mouth. "And leave you, Parnell? Don't you ever say like that again!" She made herself smile. "You said once, I own your life. Sneak off, leave you to take care of it by yourself-what kind of way is that, to own something?"

She reached down at him; the same moment, his hand found her. She hadn't thought she was in a hurry, but getting to bed they left clothes wherever they happened to fall. Then her body urged at him-no taking it easy, no slow delight, no rests-and Parnell stayed with her all the way. Afterward, when she got a hand free to wipe sweat-his and hers, both-off her face, she said, "Parnell, we just screwed my brains out-you know? Same time, though- part of my head, where I didn't notice, thought other ways." Mouth trembling, she looked up at him.

"What ways?" He didn't have much breath yet for talk.

"Suchlike, we're in hard on Terranova-could be maybe I act like you said-run off and hide, all that. Look like I'm on my own, but be finding stuff out for you, is what." How he looked, it didn't change. "Oh-I can't help what my head does!"

His face twitched; then he grinned. "Zelde-my G.o.d, girl! Do you think I'm hurt?"

His hands cupped her face.

81."When your mind works to help me, how could I possibly feel slighted?"

She had to laugh. "Parnell, sometimes I don't understand all I know about you!"

Then he tickled her, and she fought back-and if it hadn't been so late, and so soon again, both, they might have started all over again.

Harger kept his promise; the drive-except for a wiggle once in a while-stayed solid. Every time Zelde came on watch she checked the computer tapes; the time and distance figures stayed close to what Parnell had said he wanted. For now, she quit worrying.

The day the power suit was ready for testing, Parnell told her about it. They were having breakfast. "It's not the one you smashed-and praise peace that you did! This is a newer model. Its power unit failed, and no replacements. So your friend Henty Monteil has been jury-rigging to use the power supply from the wrecked suit.

Harger did the circuit designs, but it's taking a lot of handwork, too. Nothing much fits, without modifications."

Zelde swallowed the last of her scrambled eggs and poured more coffee. "A lot of work, you say. Is it worth it?"

Parnell grinned. "Because of the way you knocked one out? Well, not to belittle the very brave thing you did-but I don't think you know how many kinds of luck you needed, to do it."

She listened while he ticked off points. The man in the suit wasn't trained-barely checked out in its operation. Standing with his back to a long drop-that had been foolish. And the suit's gyros couldn't have been revved up to standard and balanced right, or no lunge of Zelde's could have toppled it; she might have slid the whole thing back slightly, but that's all. But most important-although it was unheard-of for anyone to tackle a power suit barehanded, no trained operator would have been taken by surprise.

She frowned. "What you're saying-you mean I ought to take this gadget more serious? What for? Me, I mean."

"Because I want you trained to use it. All right?"

"Sure, Parnell-whatever you say. Ready to go?"

"If you are." They stood, and he led the way downship.

82.In the equipment staging area just above the drive room, they found Dopples arguing with Henty Monteil. The man stood encased in the lower half of the power suit. Spread behind him like a partly shed carapace, the upper half lay sprawled over a workbench. Nodding to Parnell, the First Hat looked over his shoulder and continued his raised-voice complaint. "All right then, Monteil-what else can't this thing do, that it's supposed to?"

Before the woman could answer, Parnell said, "More problems with the interface circuits?"

Straightening up from the suit-glove she'd been adjusting, Henty stood only shoulder-high to Dopples. She pushed gray hair back from her forehead. "That's it, Captain. The circuit redesigns, between this suit and the one that got smashed- several of the interfaces between suit and power pack are at different levels, one from the other-even different frequencies, sometimes. I've done what I can, but even Chief Harger admits that we have to sc.r.a.p a few functions. There's no way out of it."

Adopolous made a snort. "You managed the gyros- took the exciter feed ahead of the shifter and then used the shifter to handle the dark-sensor input. So why can't you-"

For a second or two, Henty looked like shouting, but the small woman's voice came calm. "Sure. Harger and I rigged this and shifted that and shuffled the other thing. And a good job, too-if I do say so myself. But what I'm trying to get through your stubborn head-sir-is that I've used up all the angles the equipment has to offer.

I -won't hang interface units outside the suit where anyone could smash them with a kick or a beer bottle, or where they'd go sour in vacuum work near zero-Kelvin. I-"

Moving with precise restraint, Parnell's hand cut air. "Let's talk about what we have and what we don't have. Maybe we can make some tradeoffs."

Henty Monteil nodded. Dopples began climbing out of the suit, and said, "You take it then, skipper-maybe you can get some sense out of her. I'm due on watch."

Parnell waved a hand, and the man left. Then the captain looked to Monteil, and she began to explain.

Listening, Zelde understood most of it. The basic power extensors-the part that made someone in the suit stronger 83.than anybody and maybe faster-all of that worked. Seeing with light or without it, hearing in ranges humans don't hear naturally, the use of reflected sound and radiation-a few problems, Henty said, but mostly okay. And the gyros-the balancing units that had to disconnect and then hook up again fast when you bent or turned or did much of anything except straight-line movement-those controls were in good shape.

Going outside in s.p.a.ce-that's where it got itchy. You had to hang on, Henty said, because the magnetics weren't reliable-and stay tied to a line, too, for safeties. All right. . . .

"And there's no way," she said, "to derive a power feed for the energy projector that's built to mount on this suit, as part of it. That's mainly what p.i.s.sed Dopples."

Parnell had explained about projectors, the big guns that armed ships carried.

"Two convergent lasers," he'd said, "operating above the visual octave and heterodyning in the peak range for heat energy." The energy guns she already knew of-they worked the same way, he said. But peashooters by comparison. This one, that they couldn't use, it had to be somewhere in between.

"Well," Parnell said now, "if we can't, we can't. What else?"

Henty shrugged. "That's most of it. Some of the fancy stuff-ratio circuits for null- gee operation, all that-Harger doesn't know it very well, and Dopples couldn't make it clear to either of us, so why try?"

Parnell waved her scowl away. "Then good enough, I think. Are you finished with the modifications you can manage?" She nodded. "All right. I'll take it from here- and you get a bonus." She tried to protest; he said, "Don't argue with the skipper; you can't win." Henty Monteil grinned, and left the area.

Now Zelde followed Parnell to a side room. He opened a cabinet and brought out a skeletal contraption that slid along an overhead track. "This is a suit trainer." Not sure what she was agreeing with, Zelde nodded. "It has all the basic servo-circuits of a power suit, and simulates the inertia without the actual weight-lots cheaper to operate, and safer for the student. You strap into it, and I'll feed you enough juice so you can begin learning how to use it."

84.He showed her how to adjust the harness; not saying anything, she did as he told her. But just before he could push the power switch, she said, "Parnell-why? Why is it you want me doing this?"

Lopsided, not moving the shoulder that still bothered him, he shrugged. "All officers and top ratings should have this training." Now, and still only on one side, he grinned. "If Czerner had stuck to that rule, we wouldn't be here now. But he didn't."

"I see what you mean. All right, what do I do next?"

Long after the simulator's balky response had her untrained muscles aching, she kept practicing. At the end of it, before their late lunch, Parnell said she was doing pretty well.

/'// do better.

On the screen, Terranova's sun grew. "About five days out, Dopples," Parnell said. "If they had Earth's facilities, we'd have been detected by now. Here, though-"

Adopolous straightened up from the computer keyboard; he stretched. "Maybe they have here, too. Do you want to check the log again, skipper?" Zelde, in Control a little early to relieve the First Hat, knew what he meant. The Great Khnn's entire trip log had been replaced, so far as normal access codes were concerned, by a faked version.

"Sure." From his auxiliary position Parnell punched for access. "If anything's suspicious-any real investigation- we're in the soup. Lucky for us, UET isn't given to checking up on underlings. But we have to have it all down pat."

As the readout came, Parnell mumbled under his breath. Zelde listened; she'd heard it all before but she wanted to know it by heart. All right-Captain Czerner promoted to a groundside command on Earth, Parnell upped to skipper with several other promotions entered as retroactive to Earth, and thus official. About half of Turk's women were now on the books as crew from the start, and the rest scheduled for Farmer's Dell, not Iron Hat. Those last, they'd have to move back into Hold, Portside Upper, before the landing.

No hiding the period of drive failure, so use it: Terihew and the dead Engineering officer listed as accident victims. And the Khan's UET-a.s.signed schedule now read Earth to Terranova to Farmer's Dell, where further orders might be 85.waiting-or if not, at the captain's option, return to Earth either directly or via the Twin Worlds.

There was more-a lot of details that Zelde wouldn't be expected to know. Those she let go by, listening with only half her attention. At the end of it, Parnell said, "Good work, Dopps. You covered everything that any of us have been able to think of. The only trouble is-"

"Yes," said Adopolous. "I wouldn't believe it, either."

Now, getting ready to land in UET country, Parnell was busy all the time. He called meetings and lectured groups on the version of ship's history they had to know and keep straight. He set quotas of who could go groundside and who couldn't. "Folks who talk when they drink, they drink aboard, where they won't speak to the wrong ears." In Officers' Council, n.o.body argued with his choices.

He was thinner, Zelde noticed-and he looked tired again. She knew he was worrying-how the h.e.l.l not? On the job, that was his business. But off duty she tried to get his mind relaxed.

It wasn't easy. He was off the pain pills now but used stimulants a lot. Nothing she said, helped-but booze did. So-not liking it at all-as the least of the evils, she didn't fuss when he drank more than he should.

The second time, after he'd okayed the fake log, that they had off-watch time together, she got him out of Con-^ trol and back to quarters right away. Once his shirt and shoes were off and he had a drink at hand, she said, "You just stay put now. I'm going to fix me up some." His brows raised, and she grinned. "Lately, Parnell, you've been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g like it was a training exercise or something- when we get to it at all. And me, I let you get away with it. Not today, though. You just wait there, see? And build your strength-'cause 1 aim to see that you need it!"

Preparing, she took her time. Turned out, it was worth it.

Three days short of Terranova, groundside hailed the Khan. Hearing the scratchy signal as it rose and fell between noise bursts, Zelde wasn't surprised when Parnell didn't answer yet. "lonization," he said. "Flares, and the radiation belts from the two big gas-giant planets-it's be- 86.lievable that we couldn't read them from here. Zelde-put on the loop tape."

He turned to the comm-board tech. "Off-tune your signal. Overload the mixer stage for plenty of peak distortion, but run your final output at half power. Once we're past the two biggies-and we're lucky they're both on this side of the primary-we'll have to talk. But not until then. Meanwhile we listen."

On a side-screen he had charts of Terranova; on another the planet showed in direct view, at top blowup. Standing, using a pointer to indicate surface features, he said, "None of us has been here before, so this is all we have to go on." Zelde saw Dopples shrug as Parnell's voice went into his lecturing tone. Personally, she liked to hear him explain things. . . .

". . . with that much axial tilt, the northern continent's climate is all extremes.

Except for mineral-search teams and the like, it's uninhabited."

"Was, you mean, the last we heard," said the Chief Engineer.

Parnell smiled. "Right, Harger-but the odds say it still is." He moved the pointer.

"The other continent, here- same name as the planet, is it?-I'm not sure. Its north coast hugs the equator, nearly halfway around Terranova, but none of the landma.s.s extends south of it more than about a radian. And most of the main colony push, that we know of, has been near the west end of it."

Now he pointed-on the chart only, since in direct view, the feature he wanted wasn't showing-to the large island that was Terranova's only other major piece of land. West and north of the southern continent it sat-in the planet's temperate zone, Parnell said.

He wiggled the pointer. "We don't know the name of this, either. Only the settlement on it-Parleyvoo-and that we got from the Underground. Doesn't sound like UET's style of naming, so maybe the colonists are getting a little independent-or were, for a time." And again Zelde realized, this time-rolling thing the ships did, it was something she didn't understand very well.

Parnell set the pointer down. "You've heard before, we have the two choices-main port, at Summit Bay on the southern ma.s.s, or the new one, if it's really there, at Parleyvoo. Now here's something important."

87.He frowned. "When we start talking with groundside I want to be here at all times. I mean, no one else gives the planet any answers. Understood?"

Dopples said, "No problem. Calling for you won't add enough time-lag for them to notice-not early on, when you're getting things settled."

"Right." Parnell nodded. "It's not that I don't trust and depend on all of you. But this decision-putting the facts together-it has to be in one set of hands. And right now, it's mine."

Leaving Control with Zelde beside him, he seemed less anxious. Tired, yes-but more relaxed than he'd been in a while. She said, "It's set now, how you do it?"

"I think so. The decision still has to be made, but-"

"But either way, Parnell, it goes on course. Your course."

At fifty hours out, Parnell decided he had all the info he was going to get, and quit playing coy with Terranova. The planet's beacon-its hailing tape-came clear now, so gradually Parnell had his comm tech tune and strengthen the ship's own signal.

When it brought a response, Zelde followed him to Control.

On the screen a world loomed; on the speaker, volume shifting with the solar current, its signal blared. " . . . from the Great Khan, acknowledged. Greetings and welcome. Please advise estimated time of landing and specify your designated landing site. We are now ready to record any priority messages you wish to send in advance." The voice continued. When it began to repeat itself, Zelde knew she was hearing another loop tape.

Parnell, at the central control position that duplicated the major functions of every console there, didn't answer directly. He spoke onto tape, played it back and edited it. Then he signaled for transmission. Zelde listened.

"To Terranova from the Great Khan. Ragir Parnell, Captain, brings greetings from Earth. Our ETL, slightly under fifty hours, Earth standard," He'd been sounding like some kind of ceremony; now his voice changed. "If I may be a little less official for a minute, who's there?" He paused a moment. "I mean, what ships, which of my old friends? The years, they're so long out here." And Zelde 88.saw that he wasn't acting; he meant it. Then he went back to official talk, finished it and waited for an answer.

Eventually it came. After some more ceremony, a voice came that sounded halfway like a real person. It named ships and captains, three groundside at Summit Bay just now, then said, "There's a message here for you, Captain, left by Aloysius Malloy of the Charon-First Officer, I believe-yes, that's right. It doesn't bear privacy seal, and- why, it's quite short. The text reads, 'Congenial place, this.

Though likely there'll soon be a pig in the parlor'."

A pause, then an embarra.s.sed laugh. "I was waiting for your answer; I forgot the time lag. Well, Captain, I'm sorry, but you've missed your friend. The Charon lifted from Parleyvoo, leaving that port empty now, about nine days ago. For Short Haul and then Franklin's Jump, if that's any help."

"Not much," said Parnell, but his voice switch was dead. The groundhog may have forgotten time lag; Parnell hadn't. When the port's message ended, he answered. "Thanks for all the information; it's logged. Awfully bad luck that I missed Malloy, especially since Parleyvoo's our designated landing site. But that's the way of it sometimes, when you have two ages." He said more, but nothing that caught Zelde's attention. Then he cut the circuit and said, "Malloy's saying he found local Underground contacts and his ship's making ready to Escape. Pig in the Parlor's what he plans to name it. Well, I wish him success. But to us, another vital factor is that Parleyvoo is free, just now, of UET ships."