The dot descending from the gray overhead resolved itself into a bright orange-and-white disk topped by a pair of black tail fins. The boys gazed up apprehensively as it approached, at the same time keeping attention on Keene with nervous glances. He waved up at the airmobile and nodded back at them, trying to look reassuring. “Okay, I’ve got you on visual,” Heeland’s voice said from the handset. “Didn’t know you had company. What gives?”
“They’re okay. Just bring it down right in front of the probe.”
“You’re not planning on taking those guys too, I hope.”
“No, just me.”
The mobile landed amid a scattering of dust. Keene picked up the foil-backed survival blanket that he’d taken from the downed probe and moved forward to check the accommodation. Two of the underside racks were empty as Heeland had promised, the third still holding its probe. Keene unsnapped recessed catches locking its emergency compartment cover, then leaned in to activate the comm panel and take out the handset. “Reading?” he checked.
“Loud and clear,” Heeland responded on the new channel. Keene shut off the handset he’d been using from the grounded probe. Now he had a channel that would travel with him. He unfolded the blanket and began packing it around inside one of the empty racks. The boys were watching him uncertainly, the leader reaching for his spear now. Keene pointed at the pile of things he had set aside to take back, before the change of plan.
“Back, Joburg,” he said, pointing to the direction down from the ridge. “Charlie. For Charlie. You take, yes?” He eased himself down, sliding a leg into the space he had prepared.
“No!” the leader barked, brandishing his spear threateningly. It seemed that allowing Keene to go would be a betrayal of responsibility. The other two picked up their spears and came forward to support him. Keene had hoped this wouldn’t happen. He produced the automatic that he had retained and leveled it at them. They stopped, confused and afraid. In the last couple of days they had seen enough to know what such a weapon was capable of.
“Sorry, guys. It’s not the way I wanted to end things, but I have to insist. Just stay back there, and no one gets hurt.” They didn’t understand the words, but they got the message. Keene eased himself into the rack, still keeping the boys covered. “Okay, take her away,” he told Heeland. The three youths stared helplessly the mobile lifted. As it cleared the ridge, Keene saw figures outside the huts below, some pointing, others running about. Its arrival had obviously caused a commotion. He hoped Charlie would be able to figure out at least something of what it meant. The mobile continued in a turning climb toward the east.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Wernstecki stood in the Aztec’s cargo hold, absorbed in thought as he stared again at the groups of squat, cylindrical AG exciters, each more than six feet across, mounted in their massive steel supporting frames. For transit they were secured solidly to the ship’s main structural members, stacked crossways to the vessel’s length for symmetrical mass distribution. Capable of generating shaped force-fields to shear blocks weighing hundreds of tons from bedrock, this battery of them could be made to project a region of intense, narrow-focused gravitational potential, like a beam, back from the tail of the ship and across the surrounding space. And sitting out there just a few miles away was the Trojan, its construction flimsy and extended compared to the Aztec’s ruggedness and compactness. It would be like a ferris wheel caught by a grappling hook thrown from a tank. Exactly what kind of damage, disablement, or other effect might be inflicted in this way, Wernstecki didn’t know; that would be for those who knew something about ship design to say. But here was a hostile vessel dictating terms because the Aztec was unarmed. But maybe, if properly used, some of the cargo it was carrying could be improvised into an armament that no military mind aboard the Trojan had dreamed of.
But how?
He sighed and shook his head. Getting the parameter settings right would need a lot of computing. Then there was the physical problem of running heavy power connections from the ship’s fusion converters. How could anything like that be organized or even talked about with the ship occupied? Two guards from the boarding party were watching him from the open doorway at the end of the hold right now. It was impossible.