“You might not be the only ones this time,” Keene told them. He could feel his own eyes and skin smarting from something he’d encountered outside. The atmosphere still carried sulphurous and hydrocarbon contaminants from Athena’s tail.
While they were talking, he noticed that Zeigler, having seen the shuttle safely down and into its berthing slot, had noticed Keene with the two women and was on his way over. For the most part Keene had found Zeigler to be a remote kind of personality, giving a feeling of detachment and never quite mixing in with the confined community aboard the Varuna. It could have been that he took his position as Executive Officer a little too conscientiously—although things like that didn’t seem to inhibit Gallian from being his old jovial and informal self. Maybe it was just that Keene wasn’t used to Europeans. He looked up inquiringly as Zeigler joined them.
“How are we doing with the power?” he asked Keene.
“Connecting to the distribution system now. Shayle’s handling that part of it. I talked to her about a half hour ago. We should be running before tonight if they get the shielding finished.” Keene made an open-handed gesture. “So, what do you know? I might actually have some spare time on my hands for a change.”
“I’m sure we’ll find some way to fill it. There’s plenty to do. In fact, I was meaning to ask—”
Just then, an operator at one of the other consoles in a different part of the room leaned forward abruptly to follow something on a screen, and then turned her head to call crisply across to Zeigler.
“Sir!” The tone was enough to bring immediate silence to the whole room. Zeigler strode across to see what was happening. His body stiffened, and all heard his sharp intake of breath, followed by a slow exhalation of astonishment. Keene was already over there along with several others before he realized he had reacted.
The screen was showing a transmission from one of the probe drones that had been sent out to reconnoiter the surrounding regions. It was looking down over a chaotic area of rocky slopes, piled boulders, and tangles of vegetation with a creek running down the just-visible edge of what looked like a larger body of water below. In several places, crude shelters had been made from roofs of thatch built over crevices among the boulders. And as the probe moved, changing the angle, several simple thatched huts appeared. Human figures were outside, looking up, including several children. Two more figures were just in sight at one edge of the view, mounted on animals that seemed to be about donkey-size. The probe was being directed from Survey Control up in the Varuna. A zoom-in commanded by the operator up there revealed them as both dark-skinned. One appeared to be fairly young, fierce in appearance, wearing a tied headdress, and brandishing some kind of weapon. The one riding next to him was older, white-haired and wrinkled.
“What is it, Lan?” Sariena called from where she was still sitting with Adreya by the window.
“It’s coming in from one of the probes,” Keene said. He found it was taking him a moment or two to absorb the message. After all the wondering . . . “It’s found some, Sariena! It’s found people out there! There were survivors!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was a small world—or worlds. Vicki had moved from Dione to Titan for a week of familiarization and briefings at Foundation before going up to join the orbiting Aztec, now back from its trials and taking on supplies and equipment in preparation for liftout. With her was a Kronian molecular biologist called Luthis, also from Kropotkin’s Polysophic Academy, who would be going as the senior member among the Aztec’s scientific complement. Aztec would be the first vessel to incorporate decks fitted with experimental Artificial Gravity “Yarbat arrays” on a long-range mission. In the course of their week with SOE’s Training Division at Foundation, Vicki and Luthis met a former Terran petrological technician named Tanya, who had worked for a while on excavations at one of the construction sites at Omsk, on Rhea. After the meteorite strike there, Tanya had transferred to Essen on Titan to learn about the new AG-based methods being developed for cutting and shaping rock masses of large dimensions—termed “lithofracture” and “lithoforming”—developed from the technology that Lan had helped pioneer at the Tesla Center.