The aircar pulled out of its dive twenty feet above the treetops, then started to climb again. “Barnes, slow down!” Daniel said. “We’re there, just bring us down by the tree with the orange foliage over there to the right!”
He wasn’t actually sure that was the right place, but he knew he’d better give Barnes a specific target or the good lord knew where they’d end up. The car banked and came around in a tight starboard turn, losing altitude more rapidly than it slowed. At what seemed to Daniel to be the last possible instant, they slid between the tops of two emergent trees and dropped to the height of the undergrowth where they hovered, barely crawling forward. Ahead of them was a battered metal cylinder covered with vines, tree roots, and generations of composted leaf litter.
Barnes landed softly. He’s a better driver than I realized, Daniel thought.
Barnes turned and beamed at him. “How about that, sir?” he said cheerfully. “I thought we were going to auger right in, but what d’ye know, she leveled out after all!”
And then again, maybe Hogg should drive the car back. . . .
They got out of the aircar gratefully, stepping onto black leaf-mold from which fungus sprouted in a score of different shapes and colors. Daniel found a prism of rock just beneath the surface and slid his boot to the side before putting weight on it. Valentina, not a woodsman, wasn’t so careful. She shouted as her ankle twisted. She’d have tumbled forward if her husband hadn’t caught her.
“Careful, dear one,” the Count said as he set her upright. He was smiling for the first time since he plunged into the slough. “The footing here is tricky.”
The wrecked starship was belly-up or nearly so. Thinking aloud for his companions’ sake, Daniel said, “It wasn’t moving very fast when it went over, so they probably didn’t crash while landing. Now, I wonder if . . .”
He strode purposefully toward the vessel, oblivious of the others and confident he was safe in ignoring everything but his personal question. Hogg was watching the forward arc about them while Tovera took the rear, a division of concern they’d made without discussion so far as Daniel could tell. The two worked well together.
He extended the wire butt of his sub-machine gun and used it to scrape litter away from the ship’s steel hull. “Yes!” he cried, pleased to have support for his surmise.
“You’ve found Tsetzes’ yacht?” Valentina called eagerly.
Her husband in almost the same breath said, “How do we get in? Good God, if the regalia’s still aboard her, think of it!”
“Excuse me, your excellencies!” Daniel said hastily as he straightened. “I was unclear, I’m afraid. This isn’t the Nicator. It’s a typical country craft, the sort of trader-cum-raider we saw in San Juan and all over the Commonwealth. But judging from the height of the trees that’ve grown around it—”
Which could only be an estimate, based on what Daniel knew of similar trees on similar planets.
“—I’d say that the wreck is of roughly the same period as when John Tsetzes might have arrived on Morzanga. And the wreck was destroyed—”
He tapped the hull’s smeared bands of rainbow discoloration.
“—by plasma bolts at short range. It’s possible that two pirates fell out with one another, of course; but it’s also possible that John Tsetzes forestalled what he suspected was an attempt at piracy by destroying a strange vessel as soon as it arrived. He was, I gather from his history, a man who might have made that sort of decision?”
“He was a butcher,” said the Count. His tone was more approving than not. “A bloody-handed butcher.”
The native stepped forward purposefully and stabbed his long spear into the leaf litter. He brought it up with something the length of his finger wriggling on the point. Before Daniel got a good look—it was multi-legged but seemed to have a soft body—the fellow lifted his head and dropped the creature down his throat without chewing. If you were going to eat the thing, swallowing it whole in that fashion was probably the better course. . . .