Ammonite Stars (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #4-5 (19 page)

Arcan pulsated for a second and then the shape engulfed the three of them. Ledin only had time to make a signal to his men to carry on without him, before the scene in front of him vanished, and then they were on the bridge of the Independence, back in orbit above Pictoria. A surprised Diva was standing beside them, looking very out of place in a magnificent gown. Her face was a picture.

“WHERE ON SACRAS do you think you are going with that dress?” demanded Six.

“Excuse
me
, I was right in the middle of some important negotiations.” Diva’s eyes glittered.

“With Tartalus, I suppose?” Six could have cut off his tongue as soon as he had said it.

“What is it to you who I negotiate with?” She put her hands on her hips.

“Nothing at all. I don’t care who you might be gadding about with.” Six’s teeth grated audibly together, so he closed his mouth tightly.

“Yes. But –
Tartalus
? You have to be joking!” Diva began to unwrap some of the heavy gold thread from around her body as they all made their way over to one of the changing areas. “Grace, can you bring me a bodywrap too, please? And can you tell me what is going on? Is Arcan in some kind of trouble? Is the visitor all right?”

The girls separated briefly from the men as they all changed into bodywraps. Grace and Diva helped each other on with theirs, and Grace told her what little they knew.

“I’m not sure what we will be able to do even when we get down to the planet,” said Diva. “It sounds as if the real battle will be quantum in some way.”

“I know. But we might be able to help, so—” she shrugged, “—here we are!”

“Do you think we will somehow be able to contact them mentally, to help them that way?”

Grace shook her head. “All I know is that Arcan needs us,” she said, finally managing to fasten up the padded material, “and we have to go.” She looked around the bridge. “Arcan? Where are you?”

“I … can’t manifest myself at the moment. The morphics need you all, down on the planet. They are not strong enough to hold the Dessites back. Please go down to the surface.”

“Can you tell them we are here?”

“I daren’t risk any direct contact. I am barely managing to hold my own against the Dessites. You will have to find them yourselves. Please … go …”

“We are on our way, Arcan,” Grace told him softly. “Don’t worry. Just concentrate on what you have to do.”

Diva scowled. “We had better hurry up. Things sound really bad …”

“Then let’s go. We can get down well before it gets dark and the winds start up again.”

“Only … do you think we should take some weapons down this time?”

Grace stopped. “Oh! Yes, perhaps we should. But if it is a mental attack that is not going to be any use at all.”

“Agreed. On the other hand, the visitor told us that there was a chance that the Dessites had kept some of the ortholiquid. If that is the case, they may be planning to somehow travel physically over here. Do we know if that is impossible?”

Grace didn’t. “You are right. We should be prepared – for any eventuality.”

“Let’s see what Ledin and Six think, then.”

After consideration they all agreed that some form of weaponry would be a sensible precaution, so they decided to take both shuttles down to the planet’s surface, together with as much of the heavy fire power that they could manage, which on examination of the space trader turned out to be not much. Six and Diva took the first, and Grace and Ledin the second.

Six was still mulling something over in his head as he manipulated the controls for take-off. “Why did you say ‘not
Tartalus
’ like that? Is there somebody
else
I ought to be jealous of?”

“For heaven’s sake, Six. No! Of course not!”

“If you don’t mind my asking?”

“I
do
mind! You are the one who came up with the idea of my staying on Coriolis. You are not being the least bit fair. And you’re a fine one to talk, aren’t you? What about these girls on Kwaide – the ones Grace has been telling me about?”

“Grace should know better than to gossip.” He said sternly.

“She says your classes are full of girls. There’s the one who wanted quantum mechanics classes from you. You know – the one who simpers.”

“Kaileen? She does
not
simper.”

“So you have seen her?”

“Well of course I have seen her. I’ve seen everybody.”

“There you are then.”

Six wasn’t going to let her get away with neatly turning the tables on him. “I think I asked you a question first, and you know perfectly well there is nothing between Kaileen and me.” Unfortunately he flushed.

“Then why have you gone red?”

“I haven’t!”

“You’re the same colour as a Xianthan poppy!”

Six had the feeling all this had got out of control, and he wasn’t about to let Diva get away with that. “I suppose you’re all dressed up to impress some eager candidate to the throne?”

Diva straightened to her full height, and her eyes went slitty. “What is it to you if I am?” Her words were clipped. “After all, I have repudiated you. You are no longer my consort.”

Six gave a snort. “Consort my—”

“—your what?”

“—mi-ight be the wrong word, I was going to say.” Six made his voice dignified. “If I hadn’t been so rudely interrupted, that is.”

“What do you mean, the wrong word?”

“Well, as I recall it, I was only your consort for a couple of hours, so it probably doesn’t count.”

“But you admit that I am completely free to chose another consort – if I should so wish?”

“Of course. Just as I might prefer to have a relationship with somebody soft and kind instead of an impossibly spiky character like you.”

“Oh, yeah. Like your Kaileen, I suppose? – or the other girls that Grace tells me you’ve been seen hanging about with.”

Six shrugged. “Why should you care? —If you are busy looking for a consort substitute, that is.”

“You know perfectly well that I am not.”

“Then neither am I.”

“But I could if I wanted to …”

“And so could I.”

“Grace says you have been giving extra classes to some of your pupils?”

“Yes. That’s right, they—”

“And I suppose that they were all girls?”

“Yes! But I was surprised that they should all be girls, and I’m surprised that you are not surprised that they are. Why? Have you decided that girls are not as intelligent as boys?”

“Of course I haven’t!”

“Then I fail to see how you should have assumed that they were all girls.”

“Bah!”

“As usual, Diva, you express yourself with complete clarity.”

“Grrhhh!”

Six smiled, feeling that he had come out well from that little interchange, which wasn’t exactly easy with Diva. He decided that any further conversation might lose his hard-won advantage, and turned away, busying himself with the controls again as the shuttle began to come in for its landing.

Diva looked sideways at Six. She frowned. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation she had got lost, and she wasn’t very pleased with the outcome. But she felt exhilarated too. It was all very well to battle about new laws on Coriolis, but nothing could compare to a few minutes of verbal sniping with Six. She had missed it. She wondered why she felt such a burning sensation of anger somewhere in her middle, though. She hadn’t eaten anything for hours, so it couldn’t be indigestion.

AS HE AND Diva shut down the controls of the shuttle, after landing, Six was grumbling about having to go out to find the morphics. “We can’t go on like this. Why can’t we figure out some way of contacting the visitor, and the twins? How do we know they are going to be down in the cavern?”

Diva paused in what she was doing. “We can’t use Arcan,” she mused, “but perhaps we could contact them through our canths?”

Six lifted one eloquent eyebrow. “At this distance? Do you think we can do that? From 30,000 light years away?”

Diva grinned. “We could try,” she said. “Who knows? Grace said that she had a misty glimpse of Pictoria when the blue roan died. And we don’t have to get a message across to them. All we have to do is convey a sense that we are here, and they will come and find us – if they can.”

Six gave a shrug. “Worth a try,” he agreed. “It will certainly speed things up if we don’t have to let ourselves down into that cavern again.”

They all concentrated on their canths, but it was useless. There was no twinge of contact, and after fifteen minutes they were all prepared to admit defeat.

“We will have to go down the cavern,” said Six. “Again!”

Diva bit her lip. “Grace isn’t going to make it down there. In any case I think we should split into two groups. There is absolutely no point in all of us going down. It should only take one of us to alert the morphics that we are here, but perhaps two should go, just in case there is trouble. The other two can stay by the shuttles, and make sure the weapons we have can be used if necessary.”

Six nodded. “The winds will be getting up soon, and we are all going to need some cover. I think Ledin and I should take the cavern. And I think we should both go down. There is no point leaving somebody at the top of the pothole, when the winds are due to start shortly. If we both go down then one of us can always use the ortholiquid if we can’t find the morphics, and there is a back-up if anything goes wrong.”

Diva thought about it. It did seem the best plan. She and Grace could spend their time preparing and setting up the armament in case it needed to be deployed. “All right. But you had better be quick. You will be lucky if you even get to the pothole before the winds start.”

Six nodded. “We’ll get there. Ledin and I are used to moving swiftly. And we need only carry a rope each. That should be enough.” He made his way to the hatch, stopping long enough only to pass a thick coil of rope over his head and one shoulder.

“Six …?”

The hatch was already ajar as he turned back. “What?”

“Be … err … be careful, won’t you?”

“Me?” he said jauntily. “It’ll be a doddle. In any case, Ledin will have my back.” He let himself out through the hatch, and then turned to her again. “I’ll tell Grace to come over to you. You can start here first. See you.”

“Try not to get into trouble.”

“Me? As if!” And he was gone.

SIX AND LEDIN made their way across the tiered ridges running from north to south. They were both back in good physical condition – Ledin had recovered quickly from his injuries on Dessia, so it was a simple matter for them to jump from one ridge to the next, helped in this by the smaller gravity on Pictoria.

Even so, by the time they reached the pothole entrance, the wind had arrived. It didn’t grow slowly from a breeze to a gale. It simply arrived, a solid wall of air that slammed into them both as they were trying to get one of the ropes solidly laced around a boulder. It was so strong that they could hardly take a breath, and visibility was cut to almost zero by the tiny particulates of red rock that had been dislodged from their normal place underfoot.

Six slipped a mask pack on, but by the time he had finished the particulates had got inside it, and he found himself choking as he inhaled at last what he thought would be clean air. Through streaming eyes, he saw that Ledin was in much the same state. It was lucky they had thought to put on bodywraps, and provide themselves with mask packs. For a second, Six thought back to all the times they had used mask packs. The person who had invented them should be given a medal, he thought. Whoever it was had saved their lives countless times.

It was lucky that they had almost finished attaching the rope when the wind first hit, because Six doubted that they could have done very much if they hadn’t. As it was, they had to grab the rope to stop being blown away. Slowly, deliberately, and clinging on desperately as best they could, they moved towards the edge of the pothole. It had been their intention to use a rope each, but now there was no time to attach another one, so they simply stumbled towards the edge. Once there, Six signed to Ledin to go first, and there was a ridiculous moment of doubt as they each tried to insist, until Ledin realized that the doubt was putting both of them in further danger, and slid over the edge. Six was not far behind him.