“Rather that than starve to death, which I will if you don’t make it. I
won’t handicap you, Nicky. Not any more. If we aren’t loaded down the
way we were, I can keep up with you. And I’ll be extra hands and eyes.”
He pondered. “Well, if you insist.” She’s more likely to be an asset
than not–a survivor type like her.
Sardonically: Yes, just like her, I suspect she’s got more than one
motive for this. Exemplia gratia, to make damn sure I don’t gain
anything she doesn’t get in on.
Not that a profit seems plausible.
VIII
—-
As they neared the plain, Mimir went into eclipse.
The last arc of brilliance edging Regin vanished with the sun. Instead,
the planet showed as a flattened black disc overlaid with faint,
flickering auroral glow and ringed with sullen red where light was
refracted through atmosphere.
Flandry had anticipated it. The stars, suddenly treading forth many and
resplendent, and the small crescents of two companion moons, ought to
give sufficient illumination for cautious travel. At need, he and Djana
could use their flashbeams, though he would rather not risk drawing
attention.
He had forgotten how temperature would tumble. Fog started forming
within minutes, until the world was swirling shapeless murk. It gave way
after a while to snow borne on a lashing, squealing wind. Carbon dioxide
mostly, he guessed; maybe some ammonia. He leaned into the thrust,
squinted at his gyrocompass, and slogged on.
Djana caught his arm. “Shouldn’t we wait?” he barely heard through the
noise.
He shook his head before he remembered that to her he had become a
shadow. “No. A chance to make progress without being spotted.”
“First luck we’ve had. Thanks, Jesus!”
Flandry refrained from observing that when the storm ended they might be
irrevocably far into a hostile unknown. What had they to lose?
For a time, as they groped, he thought the audio pickups in his helmet
registered a machine rumble. Did he actually feel the ground quiver
beneath some great moving mass? He changed direction a trifle, without
saying anything to the girl.
In this region, eclipse lasted close to two hours. The station would
have been located on farside, escaping the darknesses altogether, except
for the offsetting advantage of having Regin high in the night sky. When
full, the planet must flood this hemisphere with soft radiance, an
impossibly beautiful sight.
Though I doubt the robots ever gave a damn about scenery, Flandry
thought, peering down to guide his boots past boulders and drifts.
Unless maybe the central computer … yes, I suppose. Imperial
technology doesn’t use many fully conscious machines–little need for
them when we’re no longer adventuring into new parts of the galaxy–so
I, at any rate, know less about them than my ancestors did. Still, I can
guess that a “brain” that powerful would necessarily develop interests
outside its regular work. Its junction–its desire, to get
anthropomorphic–was to serve the human masters. But in between
pros-pectings, constructions, visiting ships, when routine could only
have occupied a minor part of its capacity, did it turn sensors onto the
night sky and admire?
Daylight began to filter through the snowfall. The wind died to a
soughing. The ground flattened rapidly. Before precipitation had quite
ended, fog was back, the newly frozen gases subliming under Mimir’s rays
and recondensing in air.
Flandry said, low and by sonic transmission: “Radio silence. Move quiet
as you can.” It was hardly a needful order. Earplugs were loud with
digital code and there came a metallic rattle from ahead.
Once more Wayland took Flandry by surprise. He had expected the mists to
lift slowly, as they’d done near dawn, giving him and Djana time to make
out something of what was around them before they were likely to be
noticed. His observations in orbit had indicated as much. For minutes
the whiteness did veil them. Two meters away, wet ice and rock, tumbling
rivulets, steaming puddles, faded into smoky nothing.
It broke apart. Through the rifts he saw the plain and the machines. The
holes widened with tearing rapidity. The fog turned into cloudlets which
puffed aloft and vanished.
Djana screamed.
Knowledge struck through Flandry: Damn me for a witling! Why didn’t I