Clave smiled. “An interesting coincidence. The carm has outside cameras, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. And Booce would like to be rich so that he can give up logging. Do you think Kendy could persuade Booce to trade the carm to the Navy for metal?”
The smile slipped. “We’ll do it your way. Rather, this stops with us. All of it. Now shall we get us some waterbirds?”
“I said that to get us outside,” Jeffer said.
“Let’s do it anyway.”
Chapter Eleven
HAPPYFEET
from the Admiralty Library, year 131 SM, day 160:
Voice has set us the task of integrating the deserters—excuse me, wanderers—into the Admiralty. It will certainly take generations. Exec Willoughby admits that it may be impossible, and I’ve come to agree.
Half a dozen cotton-candy jungles now trade regularly in the Clump, meeting at the crossyear. They obey Admiralty law, where Admiralty Navy is present to enforce it. Outside the Clump there is piracy and slave-taking. We believe that the Seekers and the Lupoff family were involved in such incidents, though they were the first to trade in the Market.
We cannot bring law to thirty Earth-volumes of inhabitable territory. The Smoke Ring is too huge, and we are too few and too slow.
—Lieutenant Rand Carster
Brilliant as it was, the neutron star was too small to give much illumination. Yet the sky was never dark, even at crossyear, when the sun at nadir had to shine through the full thickness of the Smoke Ring’s farther arc. One must seek darkness in a cloud or a jungle or a tree tuft, or in the unoccupied depths of the Clump.
Now the sun was dead east, somewhere behind the slowly roiling blotch that was their destination. It was gloomy in the shadow of the Clump. Masses near the white-fringed black mass seemed to blaze in contrast.
“We’re better than halfway home,” Booce said. “Debby, I’ve been looking for more pod plants. The last thing I ever wanted was to come home with a pod for my cabin, but we don’t have time to build real cabins.”
“The rocket’s finished otherwise?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Debby had been working hard. Her tunic was off and her pale skin glistened with sweat. “Now, how do we make it work?”
“Trade secret.”
Debby regarded Booce angrily. “We built the treefeeding thing. You won’t tell us how to make it go?”
“Classified, Debby.”
“Will you tell us how to make it stop? In an emergency, if you and Carlot aren’t in reach, how do I stop it from just burning up?”
“We’ll get an extra pod and fill it with water to pour on the pipefire—”
“Very good! Now, suppose you and Carlot both fall off the tree and lose your wings and we’ve got to come after you. Suppose you left the rocket going. What do I want to do?”
Booce found her persistence disturbing. “Use the carm, I suppose—”
“The carm is gone.”
“They’re only refueling it.”
“It could be gone again!”
“Then use your wings. Don’t try to use the rocket. That’s dangerous.”
Debby glared and was silent. She was Booce’s height and almost Booce’s age, marked by a dangerous and exotic beauty. Pale-brown skin, pale straight hair, fiery blue eyes; a face all planes and angles, with a nose like an axe head. She was the type of woman who would remake a man, who would run his life for him. As Ryllin was. And Ryllin was far away…and if Booce carried that thought further, Ryllin would know somehow, and Booce would regret it greatly. Booce looked at the sky to escape Debby’s eyes.
He’d been watching the sky for days now. They were closing on the Clump. Matter would be thicker here, even this far in: more ponds, plant life, animals, predators, perhaps Navy craft or wandering happyfeet.
West of out, almost behind the log’s remaining tuft, he found paired bright and dark dots: the pond and the carm. No sign of pod plants. Would they have to cut wood from the out branch after all? Branchwood was better…but it was hard work, and the cabins would be crude.
Debby was still fuming. “You know, arguing isn’t the thing I do best. But Clave is going to have this out of you, because it’s stupid not to tell us how to use the basic logger’s tool. Won’t the Admiralty expect us to know—?”
“No. You’re hired labor.”
“Right. I forgot.”
The days went fast this close to Voy: nine days between waking and waking. North and west, the reddish fringe of the Clump’s shadow was sliding rapidly down a tremendous wall of cloud. Storm and lightning inside, and ponds forming…The line of sunlight picked out a green dot, a drifting jungle emerging from the fringes of the storm.
Carlot suddenly asked, “Debby, should we know how to use the carm?”
“Yes. Yes, we should know how to run the carm! Treefeeding fools they are, Lawri and Jeffer both.”
Booce was jolted. “Debby? You can’t fly the carm?”
“Nobody knows but the Scientists. Classified. Lawri I can understand. But Jeffer, he stole the thing himself, and now he acts just like her! Fifteen years, almost!”
“Dad? She’s right. We should all of us know all of that, and we have to start somewhere.”
Booce sighed. Crossyear child! Playing around with a dwarf tree dweller…but the women always won the arguments. “Debby, as far as any Admiralty citizen is concerned, you know nothing about how a rocket works. Understand?”
“Yes, Logger Booce. Now, what is it you loggers have been concealing from us laborers?”
“Go ahead, Carlot.”
Carlot considered before she spoke. “All right. Just the way you taught me. Debby, you’ll have to imagine the sikenwire in a tube around the pipe. I stuff firebark inside and light it.”
Debby nodded.
“The coals are just along the middle of the pipe, not too close to the ends. I wait. I want the metal to get hot. It should glow red. Hotter than that, the nozzle starts to char. That’s bad. So I run water through the pipe. The metal stays dark red, and steam comes out the nozzle. You can’t see it where it comes out, but it can flay the flesh from your bones, so stay clear.”
Her father smiled, nodding approval. He’d taught her well.
“Now, how do I move the water into the pipe?”
Debby mulled it. “No tide—”
“How do I keep outsiders from watching me do it?”
Debby brightened. She kicked herself to the fore end of the water tank. “I’m here, right? There’s a cabin, and I’m in it. And here’s the plug…”
“Just so!” Carlot joined her. “You pull the plug. You blow in it. When the water spurts back at you, you slam the plug in quick.”
“I could get a lungful of water that way.”
“Sure you could. We’ve all done our share of choking. Father taught us this so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.”
“Why does it blow back?”
“I…Dad?”
Booce said, “The steam pushes both ways. Out the nozzle, and backward too. That churns the water so more water comes down the pipe. After the rocket settles down, it’s thrust that pulls the water through. The back-pressure holds it from going in too fast. You can let the rocket run till the water’s almost gone.”
Carlot said, “You’ve got to let the pipefire die before the tank’s empty. Otherwise you’ll char the nozzle and the tank both. It’s a mess if you have to throw water on a pipefire.”
The storm was definitely reaching out to enfold the tree…and the jungle was closer too. Booce pointed. “Carlot—”
Carlot looked. “Happyfeet?”
“Maybe. Debby, what have we got for weapons?”
“Harpoons. The rocket, I guess.”
“Not enough. All right, ladies. Maybe it’s just a loose jungle, and even if it’s happyfeet they may not have noticed anything, but I think we should hide.”
“Hide?” Debby was outraged. “Booce, that’s not much of a jungle. Carther State
s was twenty times that size.”
The jungle was closer now, a fuzzy green ellipsoid with a shadowy slit in it, as if foliage had been shorn away to form a window into the interior. Booce said, “A jungle that size can hold a family of twenty or thirty. Debby, a tree is big. We can vanish into cracks in the bark and never be seen. I…think we’ve got time. Help me take the rocket apart.”
“Booce, it was tough enough putting it together!”
“You think I like this?” But Booce and Carlot were already tugging at pipe and nozzle, and Debby perforce joined them.
“The pipe is…priceless. We…can’t let happyfeet…get it.” Booce gasped in the thin air. The nozzle jerked loose and tumbled along the bark with Booce wrapped around it. His voice drifted back. “The rest they can have. We’ll hide the pipe in some crack and guard it. Now we really won’t have time to make cabins.”
They pulled loose the pipe and water tank. The green puffball was closer yet, and a line of vapor trailed behind it. The vapor trail became a curve…
Debby said, “It’s dropped five men. Winged. Now it’s going away.”
Nozzle and tank floated, slowly rotating. Now Booce was free to look. “They’re making for the Wart.”
“We can’t let them have it!” Debby cried.
“Well, the truth is, we can,” Booce said. He was pushing the pipe ahead of him, kicking hard. Carlot and Debby flew to help. “Maybe the carm can take it back for us. If not…we don’t need the Wart to reach the Clump. Those five that were dropped are after us.”
The log was far east, drifting in the fringe of a storm complex. Rather found it before Jeffer did: shadow backlit by the sun.
Jeffer chased it down. The carm arced over the top of the out tuft, moved in along the east side of the trunk. The dock came into view: a rectangle of bare wood, ragged around the edges. Rather felt the pull of the forward jets and heard pondwater slosh toward him. Water had spread along the carm’s walls and was creeping forward.
He wasn’t actually getting used to this, was he?
“Where’s the rocket?” Clave sounded merely puzzled.
Where they had built the rocket, there was nothing. Wait…there, drifting loose, a pale-brown bell-shape: the nozzle. There, some distance away, a brown ellipsoid trailing lines. Where was Carlot? Where was anyone?
“What happened here?” Clave demanded. “An explosion?”
Had there been a fire? Rather found only the small black scar of the cookfire. The arrangements around it were undisturbed.
Jeffer said, “We can’t search the whole tree. Where’s the sun?” Straight east. “We won’t get Kendy for another day.”
“Take us in,” Rather said.
Jeffer looked at him. “Why?”
“Just a guess.” Carlot had gone in, last sleep.
Jeffer swung the carm toward Voy and fired the jets. They skimmed above the bark. The fog was around them now.
Jeffer played with the controls. “There,” he said suddenly. “Five men.” But what showed in the window was an abstraction, orange blobs on red-and-black.
“We’re seeing by heat,” Jeffer said. For an instant the normal view returned: fog sliding along black bark. Then the red-and-black was back. “Didn’t Booce say something about happyfeet?”
“Find our people,” said Clave.
“Mmm…there.” Three orange blobs in a line. By normal light they became three human shapes lined along a crack. “And the rocket pipe, I think. Rather?”
Rather quickly disengaged his seat belt and moved aft. He pulled the silver suit out of the water and slid his legs inside. Clave said, “Good. Get the rest of it on and go join the others. Take some harpoons. They won’t have weapons. Jeffer, how did they get here?”
“Good question. I don’t see anything that could have brought them. Something could be around the other side of the bark.”
Rather waited while Clave bound six harpoons against the silver suit’s chest. Air on; voice on. “Can you hear me?”
His voice blurted from the control panel, and Jeffer jumped. “I hear you fine.”
“Let me out.”
The bark was half a klomter distant. Rather used his jets. He thrilled to the pull of thrust along his body: blood leaving his head, abdomen settling toward his feet. Not quite a comfortable sensation, but one few others could share.
Behind him, the carm accelerated south around the curve of the trunk and was gone.
Carlot and the others had seen the carm; they waved.
Two klomters toward the blue blur of Voy, a hundred meters out from the tree, green-clad men emerged from the fog. They flew along the bark, peering into cracks as they passed. At this distance Rather could see only that they were five jungle giants, and armed.
They saw him. Their legs stopped moving, though their motion continued. Closer now. One was a woman…
Then they were kicking again, turning back toward the storm that was reaching to engulf the tree.
He could catch them. They couldn’t know about the silver suit. His tanks were full. Rather fired his boot jets; his course became an arc.
He could catch them. Then what? Kill them? Rather’s parents had both killed. They didn’t like talking about it. When they did, old anger distorted their faces. Yet this was the Silver Man’s duty: from time to time, he killed.
One of the intruders looked back, and then all five were kicking madly, doubling their speed.
His arms were full of harpoons, hampered, while Debby and Carlot and Booce had no weapons at all. Rather swung back toward his crew.
He thumped into the bark not far from Booce. Carlot was looking at him oddly. He opened his helmet and said, “It’s me. Five of them almost found you. What happened?”
“Happyfeet,” Booce said. “A small jungle, steam-powered. Lupoff family, from the look of them. They want the Wart.”
Rather thumbed his personal Voice on. “Silver Man calling the Scientist. Jeffer, they want the Wart. Go for that.”
Nothing.
“They can’t hear me. Booce, I’ll guard you on the surface, but I don’t think they’ll be back. They looked like they were running.”
Booce grinned. “They thought you were Navy.”
“What?”
“Skip it.”
Rather settled himself on the bark above their heads. Helmet closed. The invulnerable warrior (and Carlot had looked at him as at some alien bird). But the happyfeet warriors were gone from sight.
The storm enclosed the tree. The fringe of it was a fine mist, just beginning to obscure vision. I wish I could use those other kinds of light Kendy sees by. And the ventral camera’s almost blind…hydrogen low, oxygen low, water volume low but increasing. We should have built a pump by now. Hey—“What’s that?”
Clave looked. “Jungle. Small. Just opposite the Wart.”
Now Jeffer spotted green dots around the puckered bark. Men, and one was pointing toward the carm.
The voice of Kendy startled him. “I’m scanning in infrared. I can’t see anything human outside of the Wart area. Take the CARM closer. Give me a view.”
Jeffer accelerated in. He asked, “Did you just come into range?”
“Yes. I’m running the record of your approach. You should have killed the invaders on the east side. They could attack your people.”
As the carm approached, the jungle jetted away on a trail of steam: north into the storm, then around the trunk, steam spraying in a wide curve. It was hidden before the carm arrived.
Jeffer brought the carm to rest a quarter klomter from the wooden crater. The happyfeet had been digging around one side of the Wart. Elongated men hovered around the block of black metal.
“Ten,” said Kendy. Rings of red light blinked scientifically on the bark, haloing men Jeffer had already spotted, pointing out others. Three interlocked rings circled bare wood. “Four in the open, three between the bark and the Wart, three more in a crack outside the crater.”
“We’d better follow the jungle,??
? Clave said. “They could find the rest of us while we’re busy here.”
Jeffer turned in his seat, but Kendy spoke first. “There’s time.”
“They’re too many to fight anyway,” Clave said.
“Nonsense. Spray them with rocket exhaust. Jeffer, have you been shown the throttle for the main drive?”
“Yes.” Jeffer didn’t know the word throttle, but Lawri had shown him how to control the push of the rockets. His fingers danced.
The CARM moved toward the Wart. The happyfeet waited, blurred by fog, spears ready. “Brace yourself, Clave.” The CARM swung around, still approaching the puckered bark, but stern foremost.
Men left the Wart, swimming hard. Others appeared from the bark beyond. Spears flew. The dorsal camera watched a bulbous-headed spear strike the hull and explode in a puff of smoky flame. Authoritative thumps could be heard through the hull.
Jeffer tapped the main drive on.
It felt like suicide. He’d nearly died the last time he did that. The carm surged forward. Jeffer felt his chest sag, his cheeks pull backward in a dead man’s grin. But his arm was rigid above his face, fingers almost touching the control panel.
It worked! Moving his fingertip down along the green bar reduced the main drive’s thrust to something he could handle. Throttle.
A nearly invisible blue washed across ten happyfeet warriors. The invaders burst into vivid yellow flame. They were comets, the flame streaming back from them. Explosions sent bits of men flying—
Clave cried, “Treefodder, Jeffer! Stop!”
Jeffer tapped the drive off. (Hydrogen, oxygen: both quite low. The Wart receded.) “Clave, they attacked us. They’ve got exploding harpoons.”
“They couldn’t have moved the Wart with us on their tails! We only had to take it away from them!”
“All right. Chairman.” Jeffer turned to look at Clave. “Now tell me what they’re doing to Booce and Debby and Carlot.”
“It’s time to learn that,” Kendy said. “Time to move, Jeffer. I’ve lost sight of the jungle from Discipline’s position. It circled half around the trunk and was approaching the point where you dropped Rather. We’ll have to get there fast, before I’m out of range. The invaders here are harmless enough now.”