Strider's Galaxy (16 page)

"You will make friends with these creatures," he said finally. "Persuade them of the need for firm law in The Wondervale. And then, when you have got everything you can from them, you will annihilate them. That is my command."

"They have superior technol—" said Kaantalech before the Autarch cut off the transmission by slamming a forefoot to the floor.

#

Craft designed primarily for interstellar travel do not come to ground easily—those few that can do so at all. It is as if they were protesting that their true place is out there in the infinite vacuum, free and unfettered, rather than down here in a thick soup of gravity. Even despite the massive reconstruction of the
Santa Maria
that the Images had carried out, the starship's architecture remained one designed for deep space. It was better equipped to exist beneath the photosphere of a star than inside the atmosphere of a planet.

There was also a little indignity involved in that first landing. The tachyonic drive had taken them through large tracts of The Wondervale and into orbit around the larger of the two moons of the world whose name the Images could best translate as Spindrift. For the final approach to landing, however, adjustments had to be made—and they were not simple ones, even for the Images. A day and a half had passed while Heartfire and Nightmirror effected the changes; during part of this time Ten Per Cent Extra Free had communicated with fellow-Images on Spindrift, who in turn negotiated on the
Santa Maria
's behalf with the military of the planet's most advanced nation. The granting of permission to land seemed to be a ticklish business; Strider wasn't sure who was doing the most work, Ten Per Cent Extra Free or the other two.

Spindrift looked rather like Earth, but somewhat smaller, its huge polar icecaps dominating its map. As with Earth, only in a broadish swathe around its equator was there blue water visible. Using one of the Pockets, Strider could see that the land areas seemed strangely unpopulated—except for one large island, which was mainly taken up by what was obviously a spaceport. Of the dozen or so landing bays, only three were occupied. From the lack of evidence of any heavy industry elsewhere on the planet, Strider inferred that it was an occupied world rather than one which had developed space travel for itself. Or maybe some other civilization had planted a mere staging-post on Spindrift.

She didn't know why Ten Per Cent Extra Free's negotiations were proving so protracted. If the people on Spindrift weren't likely to be allies, why the hell had the
Santa Maria
come here?

She turned her attention to the moon close by. Its landscape reminded her of that of Earth's Moon: pockmarked with craters and rays, with great grey plains extending over the most part of the surface. According to the Pocket's graphic display there was, however, the faintest trace of an atmosphere. The smaller moon was much the same, but airless.

There didn't seem to be much she could do on the deck, so she passed over full command to O'Sondheim and went below to her cabin. Once there, reluctantly, she pasted a commlink to her rearmost upper right molar; this would act as a temporary commline, so that O'Sondheim could contact her instantly if need be. She loathed even this degree of invasion of her body by technology.

In fact, it was Ten Per Cent Extra Free who contacted her first.

THEY WILL NOT LET US LAND ON THEIR WORLD,
he said, jolting her from sleep. As she struggled out of an anxiety dream, it took a moment or two for the information to sink in.

"Then it was a bit of a waste of time coming here, wasn't it? Whose side are they on?"

THEY ARE ON NEITHER SIDE. MANY OF THE SPECIES IN THE WONDERVALE REFUSE TO BE DRAWN INTO THE CONFLICT ON EITHER SIDE. THE SPINDRIFTERS ARE AMONG THEM. THEY PAY THEIR TAXES, BUT THEY WILL NOT TAKE UP ARMS ON BEHALF OF EITHER THE AUTARCHY OR ANY REBELLIOUS FACTION. THEY BELIEVE IT IS SAFER THAT WAY.

"Or cowardly."

THE AUTARCH WILL ISSUE ORDERS FOR A PLANET TO BE TORCHED ON THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION. SPINDRIFT IS A VERY UNIMPORTANT WORLD, AND ALMOST NEVER COMES TO HIS ATTENTION. THE SPINDRIFTERS PREFER TO KEEP IT THAT WAY. THAT'S WHY WE BROUGHT THE
Santa Maria
HERE TO SEEK REFUGE. HAD WE GONE TO ANY KNOWN FOCUS OF REBELLION WE WOULD HAVE MADE IT SO MUCH THE EASIER FOR KAANTALECH TO FIND US—OR WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN BLOWN OUT OF SPACE BY REBEL FORCES BEFORE THEY DISCOVERED WHO WE WERE.

"But if the Spindrifters won't let us land . . ." Strider began.

THEY WON'T LET US LAND ON SPINDRIFT ITSELF, BUT THEY WILL LET US PUT THE
SANTA MARIA
DOWN ON THE MOON BENEATH US. FROM THERE WE CAN SEND A PARTY OR PARTIES ACROSS TO SPINDRIFT BY SHUTTLE.

She sat up on her bed and put her legs over the side. "Now you're talking. When can we get to it?"

#

Strauss-Giolitto watched Spindrift coming slowly closer to her. She had only fleeting memories of her childhood on Earth, but she had seen enough holos since then to know what the mother world looked like, and she could see the similarities here. Nevertheless, Spindrift seemed unnatural to her: there was so much free water everywhere, albeit most of it in the form of ice. And the planet seemed altogether bigger than it should be.

She felt a mixture of excited anticipation and fear. This was an unknown world. She knew full well that this was one reason why Strider had sent her as the human component of the first investigatory party: when it came to the crunch, Strauss-Giolitto was among the more expendable members of the
Santa Maria
's personnel. The Images had been full of assurances that the Spindrifters were non-aggressive, but Strider's opinion was that you could never be sure: Ten Per Cent Extra Free had been negotiating with a nation's military, after all. Sitting alongside her across a narrow aisle, piloting the shuttle, was one of the least expendable personnel—but the presence of Pinocchio increased the probability of the party surviving, and of course the bloody bot was more sturdily made than a human being, so that he himself was likely to pull through even if she didn't. She suspected that in fact he was doing only a part of the piloting, and that much only for cosmetic reasons; also aboard was Ten Per Cent Extra Free, who could easily have run all the shuttle's functions single-handedly . . .

Wondering if the Images actually
had
anything like hands damped down her nervousness briefly. But then the growing bulk of Spindrift brought it all back again.

Soon afterwards Strauss-Giolitto could see nothing ahead of her through the view-window but blue and white and brown. In her peripheral vision she could still see Pinocchio's knee. Seeing it annoyed her. It distracted her attention. The bot wasn't so bad, she had concluded a while ago, but his knee was very irritating, right now.

The shuttle lurched suddenly, and her restrainer belt tore at her waist and shoulder.

Strauss-Giolitto let out a little yip of fright. She'd been warned this would happen, but that didn't make the abrupt shock of the real experience much easier to take.

Pinocchio turned and smiled at her. "We're hitting the atmosphere," he said. "Don't worry: the shuttle can take almost anything short of a direct impact with the surface. Just get ready to watch the fun."

Then the smile vanished and he turned back to the controls, his fingers moving with unhuman nimbleness over the set of keyboards in front of him, his eyes intent on a bank of monitors rather than on the unfolding scene ahead.

The shuttle was being buffeted about more seriously and more frequently now. Despite her restrainer belt, Strauss-Giolitto gripped her armrests. The shuttle was skipping around the planet's upper atmosphere, losing speed all the while. Even so, the plastite of the view-window began to glow a dull orange. Plastite was virtually unbreakable and had a melting point of an almost unbelievable number of thousands of degrees Celsius, but that didn't mean much to Strauss-Giolitto right now.

Things got a lot worse before they got better.
Thank God I didn't suit up,
thought Strauss-Giolitto a few minutes later, eyes streaming, after she had emptied at least one previous meal into the plastic dispose-all provided for exactly such eventualities. Even Pinocchio seemed to be taking matters a lot less lightly than he had before; the grimness of his face was born not entirely of concentration. Strauss-Giolitto suddenly fathomed that he, too, had never previously come down through a dense atmosphere.

"You think we're going to make it, Skip?" she said hoarsely, hoping the weak joke would make her feel better.

It didn't. Pinocchio made no response, and she had a nasty few seconds before she realized that this was because his attention was focused entirely on what he was doing.

THIS IS PERFECTLY CUSTOMARY, MARIA STRAUSS-GIOLITTO,
came Ten Per Cent Extra Free's reassuring voice in her mind.
PLANETFALL IS NEVER AN EASY BUSINESS. ATMOSPHERES RESENT BEING INVADED.

Right now Strauss-Giolitto resented atmospheres.

Still the relentless pummelling of the shuttle went on. How long was it going to last? The plastite was a brighter orange now. Even if the plastite itself was impervious to what it was being put through, what about the points around the sides of the view-window? What were they made of?

She put her face in her hands so that she didn't need to keep on looking, but that only made it worse. Brute instinct, overriding logic, told her she should keep watching the view-window so that, if it
did
unexpectedly explode in towards her face, she would have a chance of running away and hiding. She wished she could run away and hide
now
, but there was nowhere in the confined cockpit to run
to
.

With an abruptness that was almost as shocking as anything that had gone before, it was over.

The shuttle was moving—still at a high velocity—through a clear blue sky. They had come in over one of the polar icecaps; the curve of the planet ahead of them was briefly orange and then, as the plastite rapidly cooled, a glaring white that stung her eyes.

Pinocchio visibly relaxed.

"You were worried there a while yourself, weren't you?" she said lamely after a while. The shuttle's drive was virtually silent; she could hear the whine of the air streaming past as well as all sorts of creaks and groans from here and there on the craft as its components cooled.

"It was something unique to my experience," the bot admitted. Only a short while ago, his head would certainly have buzzed. Since the Images had shaped him over it was senseless to continue with the pretence that he was just a halfwitted valet. Strauss-Giolitto's attitude towards him hadn't changed entirely—he was still just a bot, dammit, rather than a creation of the Lord—but she had at least come to regard him with some affection, as though he were a sort of incredibly intelligent housepet. They could get along together, so long as she remembered to bite back the more tactless of the remarks that came to mind.

One of the screens in front of Pinocchio lit up, and his attention promptly shifted away from her again. She wished she could see what the screen was showing him, but she was side-on to it. Out of its speaker came an incomprehensible noise, full of soft clicks and harsher whistlings.

After a few moments Ten Per Cent Extra Free intercepted, and the words began to sound to Pinocchio and Strauss-Giolitto as if they were in standard Argot.

." . . welcome you to our world, strangers, but you must understand that we have to take precautions." Even in Argot the voice sounded alien. It had a light touch of ethereality to it. She imagined this might be how a ghost would talk. "Our Images tell us that you are what you seem, but even an Image could be misled. You will therefore follow these navigational instructions precisely."

There followed a string of information that was as incomprehensible to Strauss-Giolitto as the earlier babble had been. Pinocchio seemed to understand it, though, for his fingers began moving swiftly over the keyboards again.

"I have assimilated all that," said the bot after a minute or two. "Would you like me to give a systems computer download to you so that you may check for error?"

"No." The voice from the screen sounded horrified. "You might infect our own systems. If you deviate slightly, we shall assume honest error. If you deviate greatly, I shall contact you again and re-dictate the navigational and landing instructions. Otherwise I shall not speak to you until you are over the Gate to the Sky."

The light from the screen, which had been reflected on Pinocchio's face, died.

THERE WERE NO ERRORS,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

#

The Gate to the Sky proved to be the spaceport Strider had observed from the
Santa Maria
. True to its word, the Spindrifter reopened communications with Pinocchio and guided him precisely through the landing. Strauss-Giolitto had a further urge to retch as a long runway ahead approached the craft at impossible speed. When they made first contact with the ground it was just as bad, because the shuttle jerked and bucked as if it were trying to throw itself off the hard surface and go tumbling into a blaze of destruction. Strauss-Giolitto's thoughts were drowned in the indescribable racket as the shuttle's retro-jets and brakes cut in and slowly, slowly prevailed.

At last, after what seemed like an infinitely extended screaming slither towards certain death, the shuttle came to a halt.

Strauss-Giolitto was so drained of all emotion that it was a long time before she could properly understand that she, a teacher from City 22, was the first human being to land on the surface of this alien world—the first of
all
human beings to be on a planet outside the Solar System. She felt there ought to be a bit of flag-waving and an out-of-tune brass band, but instead all she heard were the surreptitious little noises of the shuttle settling itself.

"May we disembark?" said Pinocchio to the screen.

And then the
wonder
of it all hit Strauss-Giolitto. She'd been thinking about brass bands, wasting valuable seconds when she could have been discovering what this new world was
like
. She'd been resenting the residual taste of vomit in her mouth. She'd been . . .