The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall (35 page)

“How did you cut it that fine?”

“Humanitarian reasons required us to rescue the ten remaining survivors of the expedition.”

“Ten?” There was a pause that had nothing to do with interference on the line. “I shall be very interested in your report, Benden. That is, if your humanitarianism allows you to make it. What is the total of the excess weight you’re carrying?”

Nev handed over his pad, and Benden read off the figures.

“Hmm. Offhand I don’t think we can match orbits. Can you make it five KPs?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Roger. Hold on while we refigure your course and rendezvous point.”

Benden tried not to look toward Nev, or at Saraidh, who had joined them at the command console. He tried not to look nervous, but he felt various parts of himself twitching, unusual enough in gravity and damned annoying in free-fall. He clutched the edge of the console as unobtrusively and as hard as possible to keep from twitching out of the chair.

“
Erica?
Captain Fargoe here. What can you jettison?”

“How much is required?” Benden thought of the wealth they had just consigned to space.

“You’ve got to jettison forty-nine-point-zero-five kilos. You will need to make a ten-g burn for one-point-three seconds around the first planet, commencing at ninety-one degrees right ascension. That will put you on course, speed, and direction, and we devoutly hope, in time to make a new rendezvous. Good luck, Lieutenant.” Her voice indicated that he’d need it.

He didn’t like a 10g burn, even for 1.3 seconds. They’d all black out. It would be rough on the kids. But it would be a lot rougher to turn into cinders.

“You heard the captain,” he said, turning first to Saraidh and then Nev. “Let’s snap to it.”

“What’ll we toss, Lieutenant?” Nev asked.

“Just about everything that isn’t bolted down,” Saraidh said, “and probably some of that. I’ll start in the galley.”

In the end they made up the required kilos out of material Saraidh knew could be most easily replaced by Stores on the
Amherst:
extra power packs; oxygen tanks, which accounted for a good deal of the necessary weight; the messroom table; and all but one of the beacon missiles the gig carried.

“If Captain Fargoe decides you weren’t negligent,” Saraidh told Ross, her face expressionless, as they both watched the articles sliding out of the airlock into space, “you won’t have to pay for ’em.”

“What?” Then he saw she was teasing and grinned back at her. “I’ve enough I’ve got to account for, thank you muchly, ma’am, on this expedition without paying for it, too.” He kept trying to explain Kimmer’s demise to himself and wondering how he could have prevented it, if he could have.

“Now, now, Ross.” Saraidh waggled a finger at him. They were alone in the corridor. “Don’t hang Kimmer about your neck. I subscribe completely to the suicide theory. Temporarily of unsound mind due to the failure of his plan. He might just have done it to be awkward, too.”

“I’m not sure Captain Fargoe would buy that one.”

“Ah, but she’d never met Kimmer, and I have.” Saraidh gave him an encouraging thumbs-up.

The moment of truth came two long, weary weeks later. The temperature inside the
Erica
began to rise with its proximity to Rukbat, reaching an uncomfortable level. Benden was sweating heavily as he watched the ominous approach of the tiny black cinder of the system’s first planet. That poor wight hadn’t had a chance to survive. Bender intended to.

“Burn minus sixty seconds,” he announced over the intercom. He hadn’t informed his passengers of the rigors of a slingshot maneuver. They’d all black out: if something went wrong, they’d never know it. Meanwhile, he hadn’t had to endure Chio’s suspicions or the sorrowful reproaches of the other three women. He’d done slingshot passages before, both actual and in simulation. It was mostly a matter of timing the burn properly just as the ninety-one-degree right ascension came up on the nay screen. But he hated blacking out for any reason, not being in control for those seconds or minutes.

“Nine, eight, seven,” Nev chanted, his eyes glittering with anticipation. This was his first slingshot. “Five, four, three, two . . . one!”

Benden pressed the Burn button, and the
Erica
lunged forward. As he was slammed deep into the pads of the contour seat, he knew the maneuver would be successful and surrendered to the mighty g-forces he had just initiated.

Benden returned to consciousness, the blessed silence of space, and the relief of weightlessness. His first glance was for the expended fuel. Point-ninety-eight KPs left. It should be enough—provided the course corrections were accurate. He had one last burn to make as they bisected the
Amherst’s
wake and then turned back to her at a sharp vector.

“My compliments, Lieutenant,” Ni Morgana said briskly, unsnapping her harness. “We seem to be well on our way now. I think the cook has something special for lunch today.”

Benden blinked at her.

She grinned. “The very same thing we had yesterday for lunch.”

Benden wasn’t the only one who groaned. They’d added supplies at Honshu, but the fresh foods were long gone and they were down to the emergency rations: nourishing but uninspired. And that’s all they had for the next two weeks. When he was back on board the
Amherst,
Ross Benden was going to order up the most lavish celebratory meal in the mess’s well-stocked larder.
When
—and he grinned to himself. That’s positive thinking.

When the
Erica’s
sensors picked up the cruiser’s unmistakable ion radiation trail, Benden was in the command cabin, teaching Alun and Pat the elements of spatial navigation. The boys were bright and so eager to prepare themselves for their new life that they were a pleasure to instruct.

“Back to your pods, boys. We’ve got another burn.”

“Like the last one?” Alun asked plaintively.

“No, matey. Not like the last one. Just a touch on the button.”

Reassured, they propelled themselves out of the cabin and down the companionway, dexterously passing Saraidh and Nev at the door.

“A touch being all the fuel we’ve got left,” Saraidh murmured, taking her seat. She leaned forward, peering out into the blackness of space around them.

“You won’t see anything yet,” Nev remarked.

“I know it,” she replied, shrugging. “Just looking.”

“It’s there, though.”

“And not long gone,” Benden added, “judging by the strength of the ion count.” He toggled on the intercom. “Now, listen up. A short burn, not like the last, just enough to change our course to match up our final approach to the
Amherst.”
In an aside to Saraidh he added, “I feel like a damned leisure-liner captain.”

“You’d make a grand one,” she replied blandly, “especially if you have to change your branch of service.”

“My what?” Benden never knew when Lieutenant Ni Morgana’s wayward humor would erupt.

“Lighten up, Ross. We’re nearly home and dry.”

“Fifteen minutes to course correction.” He nodded to Nev to watch the digital while he contacted the
Amherst
. “
Erica
to
Amherst.
Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear,” came Captain Fargoe’s voice. “About ready to join us, Lieutenant?”

“That’s my aim, Captain.”

“We’ll trust it’s as accurate as ever. Fire when ready, Gridley.”

“Captain?”

“Roger, over and out.”

Beside him, Saraidh was chuckling. “Where does she get them?”

“Get what?” Nev asked.

“Are you counting down, Ensign?”

“Yes, sir. Coming down to ten minutes forty seconds.”

Why was it time could be so elastic? Benden wondered as the ten minutes seemed to go on forever, clicking second by second. At the minute, he flexed

both hands and shook his shoulders to release the tension in his neck. At zero, he depressed the burn on the last ninety-eight KPs in the tank, yawing to starboard. He felt the surge of the good gig
Erica
as she responded. Then all of a sudden the engines cut out with the exhausted
whoosh
that meant no more fuel in the tank.

Had the
Erica
completed the course correction? Or had the engines stopped untimely? The margin was so damned slight! And the proof would be the appearance of the comforting bulk of the
Amherst
any time now.
If
the maneuver had been completed before the fuel was exhausted.

Like the two officers beside him, Benden instinctively leaned forward, peering out into the endless space in front of them.

“I’ve got a radar reading, Lieutenant,” Nev said, and there was no denying the relief in his voice. “It can’t be anything but the
Amherst.
I think we’re going to make it.”

“All we need is to get close enough for them to shoot us a magnetic line,” Benden muttered.

Nev uttered a whoop. “Thar she be!” He pointed. Benden had to blink to be sure he actually was seeing the running lights of the
Amherst.
He was close to adding his own
ki-yi
of relief and victory.

Just then the comunit opened to a sardonic voice. “That’s cutting it fine indeed, Lieutenant.” The blank screen cleared to a view of the captain, her head cocked and her right eyebrow quizzically aslant. “Trying to match your uncle’s finesse?”

“Not consciously, ma’am, I assure you, but I’d be pleased to hear the confirmation that our present course and speed are A-OK for docking?”

“Not a puff of fuel left, huh?”

“No, ma’am.”

She looked to her left, then faced the screen squarely again, a little smile playing on her lips. “You’ll make it. And I’ll expect to have reports from both you and Lieutenant Ni Morgana as soon as you’ve docked. You’ve had time enough on the trip in to write a hundred reports.”

“Captain, I’ve got the passengers to settle.”

“They’ll be settled by medics, Ross. You’ve done your part getting them here. I want to see those reports.”

And the screen darkened.

“Got yours all ready, Ross?” Ni Morgana asked with a sly grin as she swiveled her chair around.

“And yours?”

“Oh, it’s ready, too. I said that I believed Kimmer suicided.”

Benden nodded, glad of her support. “It would have had to have been self-destruction, Saraidh. He would have been far more familiar with airlock controls than Shensu or his brothers,” he said slowly, considering his words. “It’s really far more likely that he did suicide, given the fact that he had failed to bring along all that metal. Damn fool! He must have known that he was dangerously overloading the ship. He could have murdered us.” That angered Benden.

“Yes, and nearly succeeded. I think he was hoping that his death would have brought suspicion on the brothers, as the most likely to wish his demise,” Ni Morgana went on. “He would have liked jeopardizing their futures. And discrediting another Benden if he could.” When she heard Benden’s sharp inhalation, she touched his hand, causing him to look at her. “You can still be proud of your uncle, Ross. You heard what Shensu said, and how proud he was of the way the admiral marshaled all available defenses.”

Benden cocked his head, his expression rueful. “A fighter to the last . . . and it took a wretched planet to defeat him.”

“Poor planet Pern,” Saraidh said sadly. “Not its fault, but I’m recommending that this system be interdicted. I did some calculations—which I’ll verify on the
Amherst
computers—and rechecked the original EEC report. That wasn’t, the first time the Oort organism fell on the planet. Nor will it be the last. It’ll happen every two hundred and fifty years, give or take a decade. Furthermore, we don’t want any ship blundering into that Oort cloud and transporting that organism to other systems.”

She gave a shudder at the thought.

“There she is,” Benden said with a sense of relief as the viewport filled with the perceptibly nearing haven of the
Amherst.
“And, all things considered, a successful rescue run.”

Anne McCaffrey
was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures. Before her success as a writer, she was involved in theater. She directed the American premiere of Carl Orff’s
Ludus de Nato Infante Mirificus
, in which she also played a witch. Her first novel,
Restoree
, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in science fiction novels in the 50s and early 60s. Ms. McCaffrey is best known, however, for her handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly in her tales of the Talents and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern.

McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland. Visit the author online at
www.annemccaffrey.org.

Books by Anne McCaffrey

Decision at Doona

Dinosaur Planet

Dinosaur Planet Survivors

Get Off the Unicorn

The Lady

Pegasus in Flight

Restorree

The Ship Who Sang

To Ride Pegasus

Nimisha’s Ship

Pegasus in Space

THE CRYSTAL SINGER BOOKS

Crystal Singer

Killashandra

Crystal Line

THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN
^®
BOOKS

Dragonflight

Dragonquest

The White Dragon

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

Nerilka’s Story

Dragonsdawn

The Renegades of Pern

All the Weyrs of Pern

The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

The Dolphins of Pern

Dragonseye

The Masterharper of Pern

The Skies of Pern