Skye Object 3270a (20 page)

“D
evi!”

“I see h—”

Devi's transmission was cut off as a new voice interrupted, speaking in a harsh, masculine timbre. This was definitely not Tannasen. “I don't know how you kids made it up here, but it's dangerous. More dangerous than you know. Come in to the habitat. We'll talk things over . . . and arrange your transport home.”

Skye couldn't tell if it was the figure in the shadows speaking, but now that person stirred, moving into the light, revealing himself to be a man, tall and slender, in an orange skin suit. He straddled a sled. Its cylindrical surface was covered with tiny nozzles. Working in concert, the little jets could send him in any direction. Now he was moving to intercept Devi.

Devi was less than two meters away from a blue ingot the size of large room. If he could reach it, he could kick off, and dodge his pursuer. But he wasn't going to reach it. His trajectory would take him past it. Devi had no sled and the cord was broken, so there was no way he could stop, change direction, or run away . . . unless someone gave him a nudge.

Quickly, Skye wriggled out of her backpack, working the straps past Ord's frozen tentacles. With a pang, she wondered if Ord was still alive. And if it was, how long could it survive in vacuum? There was nothing she could do to help it now.

She got the backpack off just as she passed through the last great ring. Then she unplugged the nutrient line. Now she would have only a few hours before the suit used up its energy reserves. Given the circumstances though, that would be more than enough time to succeed . . . or to fail.

Holding the pack by a strap, she took careful aim. Then she slung it at Devi. “Heads up!” she shouted.

It almost missed.

But Devi had been alerted by her warning. He saw the pack and grasped at it, catching it on his fingertips. It was only a nudge, but it pulled him around, changing his trajectory so that now he angled across the face of the ingot, drawing gradually closer. He waited three seconds, four, then five. The man on the sled sped toward him, gesturing frantically, shouting something that Skye could not understand because she was shouting too. “Hurry Devi! Jump now! Go, go, go!”

He kicked out hard. Both feet hit the wall of the blue ingot, and he shot away, past the man on the sled. Skye smiled. His new trajectory was aimed to intercept her own path. “Catch my hands,” he shouted. “Push off me, toward the red ingot. You have to get to the lifeboat, Skye. You're the only one who matters.”

“No!” the man cried. “Don't you understand? You're destabilizing—”

“Now!” Devi shouted. They caught each other's hands. For a moment she could look into his eyes. She could see the pride there. The determination. Then he pushed her away as hard as he could. Skye shot off, turning slowly as she went. The red ingot swung into sight. From the corner of her eye she could see the man on the sled racing toward her, but he was too far away to catch her. The red ingot loomed close. She kicked at it with one foot, launching herself deeper into the cache.

Ingots were all around her now, like huge boulders, glistening in a rainbow of colors. She dove from one to the next, kicking off hard every time. Buyu had seen the lifeboat near the center of the cache. As she careened from ingot to ingot she looked for it.
There
. A pure black egg-shape decorated with a few golden tatters left from its shattered solar sail.

“Devi, I see it!”

“Skye wait!”

She didn't listen. She kicked off one last ingot, launching herself at the lifeboat.

She was going fast, and she hit it hard. The impact set the lifeboat wobbling. She felt a fierce heat blaze in her gloves—but they weren't bonding! Somehow the hull had rejected the bond with her gloves. Now she slid helplessly across the rounded prow. “Bond!” she screamed at the DI. “Meld with the hull.
Now!
”

The DI answered in its calm female voice, “This surface will not accept a molecular link.”

Zeme dust!

As she slid across the glossy black hull she tried to slow herself by friction alone. It was like trying to get a grip on polished ice. At the same time Devi was screaming at her to “
Kick off!
Get out of the ingot cache!
”

No way.

She slid the length of the lifeboat. She was about to slip over the side when her fingers found a seam. She thrust her hands into it. It was like plunging them into a hard gel. She held on tight. Her legs swung around and she almost lost her grip. Almost, but not quite.

For a moment she didn't move. She could feel the lifeboat rocking under her belly. She could hear Devi shouting in her ear, his words mixed up with the frantic voice of the stranger so she couldn't understand either of them. Motion drew her eye. She turned, to see an ingot wobbling slowly past.

Her eyes widened in shock. When she had entered the cache, all the ingots had been motionless relative to one another. Had the man on the sled launched one after her? Did he want to kill her?

She twisted around, suddenly sure he would be right behind her. But what she saw was worse. Dozens of ingots were wobbling, drifting, colliding with each other and then bouncing away again . . . like slow motion billiard balls in a zero gravity box.

And if each ingot was a billiard ball, then Skye was the size of a soft and very crushable fly. What had the man on the sled tried to tell them?

Don't you understand? You're destabilizing—

Skye thought she could finish the sentence now:
You
'
re destabilizing the ingots
.

The ingots were massive, but every time she had launched off one, she had given it a little bit of momentum—for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It was a classic rule of physics. Every ingot she and Devi kicked must have wobbled off its course, and now the slow, chaotic motion was spreading across the cache. The man on the sled hadn't been trying to stop them from reaching the lifeboat. He'd been trying to protect them by protecting the quiet order of the cache.

“Skye?”

“Devi, I didn't think—”

“Neither did I. Can you see a path out of the cache?”

She hesitated. “Devi, I can't leave now. I'm at the lifeboat.”

“I don't care.”

Tannasen's voice backed him up. “Devi's right, Skye Object. Curb your curiosity. It's not worth getting crushed.”

A new worry touched her. “Devi, where are you? Are you safe?”

“I'm with Tannasen. In
Spindrift
.” He sounded embarrassed. “He grabbed me with the ship's robot arms. Zia and Buyu are here too.”

At least they were safe. But just how far could those robot arms reach? Could they pluck her out of the middle of the cache? She looked overhead, then underfoot, but she did not see the little research ship. The man on the sled had disappeared too, but then he would be crazy to follow her into this gyrating field. Just to be sure, she looked over her shoulder—and gasped.

A huge black ingot was wobbling only a few meters away. Was it moving toward her? She watched it closely for several seconds before she was sure.
Sooth
. It was drifting slowly toward the lifeboat. Inevitably, it must collide.

And then what? Would the boat be damaged? Would its stubborn DI assume it was again under attack? Skye had to make contact with the DI before that happened—but to do that she had to get the lifeboat open.

Frantically she ran her fingers along the hidden seam. She felt for buttons, touchpads, levers. “Open,” she whispered softly. “Open, open, open . . .” Not listening to Devi and Tannasen's frightened pleas.

Something gave way beneath her probing fingers. The seam widened. A neat section of the egg-shaped lifeboat lifted away on a hinge, revealing the white gleam of a gel membrane. Skye took one last glance at the mammoth ingot wobbling toward her on a slow collision course. Then she dove inside.

T
here was no light at all inside the lifeboat. Skye skidded through the dark, bumping up against a smooth, curved something. A wall? She could feel it rocking slowly, echoing the wobble of the lifeboat.

“Hey,” she whispered to her suit DI. “Make my suit glow, the way it did in the lava tube.”

Even before she finished speaking, her suit began to give off a soft light. It revealed a narrow tentacle, sliding slowly down her right arm.
A lydra?
She yelped and brushed at it frantically. Then froze, as she realized what it must be.

“Ord?” she whispered. She turned her head, to find Ord perched on her shoulder, wide awake and mouthing words that she could not hear. “Ord!” Then to her suit DI she said, “Is there air here? Is it breathable?” From her research she knew the life support system was supposed to be working.

The DI assured her that indeed, it was quite safe to unfurl her hood. She did. Ord's little head turned to peer at her. Its tiny face wrinkled in a look of distaste. “Skye,” it said primly. “You smell dirty.”

She laughed. If that was the worst thing that could be said about her, she could live with it. “Let's just hope the lifeboat's DI can smell me too!”

She looked around. The interior of the lifeboat was much smaller than she had expected. It was shaped like an oblong capsule, its walls smooth and rounded and featureless except for four air vents. There was barely enough room for her to stretch full length. Of course, this chamber had been designed to hold only an unconscious baby. Truly, it was lucky she could fit inside at all.

She thought back to Tannasen's reports, and remembered that this space had been filled with a nutrient gel when he had found her.

Now it held only a pleasant atmosphere.

She eyed the air vents. They were covered with mesh screens, and each gap in the mesh pumped open and closed like mechanical lips—an army of lips breathing cool air into the chamber on one side and sucking it out on the other. Skye wondered why the vents were working. Why had the DI kept this chamber habitable for so many years? Was Devi right? Was it waiting for her to return?

Ord tapped her cheek. “Smart Skye. This is a nice, safe place to be.”

Skye wasn't so sure. She thought of the mammoth ingot, drifting slowly toward the lifeboat. How long before it hit? Minutes, at most. What to do? What to do? The empty chamber offered no inspiration. All the lifeboat's control systems must lie hidden behind the walls.

Was Devi right? Was there anything left of the DI that had once existed here?

Her throat felt dry with worry, so she took a sip of nutrient juice from the straw inside her skin suit. When she looked up again, the chamber walls were aglow with a warm white light. A voice spoke. It sounded neither male nor female, but something in between. It said a word in a language she did not understand. At the same time, a section of the wall softened, stretching into a tall human shape. A moment later a man in a skin suit popped through the gel membrane. Skye recoiled.

This wasn't Devi and it wasn't the man on the sled. She knew it, because his skin suit was sparkling white. The stranger's head turned comically back and forth as he looked around the chamber. Then his hood unfurled to reveal a narrow, chiseled face, its harsh features capped by a stubble of closely-shaved hair. “You've got it working!” he exclaimed. “Skye Object, how did you do that?”

Skye shrank against the wall. “Tannasen?” she guessed.

“Sooth. We've met before.” He winked. “Though I don't think you would remember.” Then he added, as if it were an afterthought. “You've grown.”

“Where's Devi?”

Tannasen hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “On
Spindrift
. Outside the ingot cache. We've got to get you out of here too.” Then he shook his head. “I can't believe you've got this boat working. I know people who have spent years trying to get some response from this DI.”

“It spoke to me.”

His face got very still.

“It said something,” Skye insisted. “I didn't understand the language.”

“Can you repeat it?”

“I . . .” She shook her head. She could not.

Then an idea came to her. She turned to Ord, plucking it off a wall. “Ord, did you hear what the DI said? Do you remember it?”

“Yes, good Skye.” Then Ord mimicked exactly the word they had heard. In a tone that sounded almost smug it added, “City library translates this as ‘cargo child'.”

“You understood it? Why didn't you say so?”

At the same time, Tannasen was musing, “Cargo child. Then it does recognize you . . .”

“So Devi was right!”

“Sooth. So far.”

“I can't talk to it,” Skye said. I don't know its language.”

“Not surprising, considering how many languages we humans use. Well, if your little pet can translate, perhaps this DI can translate too? Ask it. Why not?”

Why not indeed? Skye swallowed hard. Then, gazing at the blank walls, she said, “Sooth. I am the cargo child. I've come back. Can you understand this language I'm using? Can you speak it?”

The man/woman voice responded immediately. “Yes, cargo child. We have waited for your return. Is the danger past?”

“The . . . danger?”

“We sought refuge in this system, but we were attacked—”

“That . . . was an accident,” Skye whispered. “There is a nebula surrounding this system, full of stony pebbles, and tiny gnomes that feed on the solid matter . . .”

“Is the danger past?” it repeated.

She smiled weakly. This was the message she had come to deliver. “Yes.” Then she said it louder. “Yes. The danger is past. We are safe, and it's time for the other cargo children to come home.”

The DI did not reply. For a moment Skye wondered if it had stopped working again. Then Tannasen's hands flew up to cover his ears as a shriek roared out of his suit radio. He must have set his system to pick up any signals in the area. “By the Unknown God!” he shouted. “What is that?”

Skye laughed. “It's an all-clear, Tannasen! It's the signal the other lifeboats have been waiting for all these years. I always knew I wasn't alone.”

The lights went out. The air vents whispered into silence.

In the darkness, Skye's skin suit glowed blue. She looked around in confusion. “Hello? Is something . . . wrong?”

The DI didn't answer.

“It's gone,” Tannasen said softly.

“What?”

“It's been sitting here for twelve years without replenishing its energy supply. It must have used all the power it had left to send that signal.”

She wrestled with a sudden sense of loss. “I . . . thought it could tell me who . . . who I am. Where I came from. Who my parents were . . .”

Tannasen drifted close. He put an arm around her. “You're Skye Object,” he said gently. A warm smile unfolded on his face. “And as for the rest of your questions, young lady—they'll be answered when we pick up the next lifeboat.”

“Then you really think—”

Suddenly the lifeboat shook. The chamber wall slammed up against them.

“The ingot!” Skye cried, as they bounced back and forth across the little chamber. “It must have hit us.”

“Sooth. Let's get out of here while we still can.”

Skye grabbed Ord. “Hold on tight, now,” she warned it. “We're going outside again.” Then she pulled on her hood. Tannasen had already wriggled out through the gel membrane. Skye followed him. It was a tight squeeze. The hatch that covered the membrane had been partly crushed in the collision. She fervently hoped no other ingot was heading their way.

At last she wriggled free, only to find herself sliding away across the lifeboat's slick hull.

“Whoa!” Tannasen called. “Wait for me.”

As if Skye could stop.

He dove after her, and they linked hands. Skye took a quick look around. On one side the ingot cache looked like a field of nervous boulders, jostling in slow motion. “We don't want to go in there,” Tannasen said.

“Sooth.” On the other side, the ingots were nearly still. “That way then?” She pointed with her free hand.

“Naw.” He jerked his thumb up past his face. “That way will be faster.”

She looked overhead, to see
Spindrift
waiting, a short jump away.