Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 (92 page)

Ledin grinned, suddenly looking much younger, “Perhaps we should walk beside them, so as not to burden them?”

Six was shocked. “We don’t owe them
that
much!” Then they both looked at each other and laughed. Grace was alive!

WHEN GRACE WOKE up she was in a magmite-walled room with a high ceiling, and she couldn’t think where she was or even who she was. Then she heard some stifled comments to her left, and turned her head. Six, Diva, Ledin and her mother were all seated alongside the bed she was lying on, although she could see them only hazily, and there seemed to be a heap of white bandages around her nose.

“Wha—?”

“By Lumina, Grace!” Six almost shouted. “Do you know what a shock you have given us? Did you HAVE to let yourself get captured as if you were a Cesan mule? Couldn’t you have taken a bit more care?”

The others stared at Six, who looked taken aback, clearly just as surprised as they were at his outburst. Diva gave him the look, and that seemed to take care of the matter, for he slumped back into his seat and looked embarrassed, muttering a vague apology.

“I-I fell,” Grace remembered, wrinkling her brows at the effort, and wishing that she didn’t hurt so much all over her body. “Why am I alive?”

Diva smiled. “Because the visitor took it upon himself to break your fall,” she told her. “And because your canth knew where you were, and our canths were able to transmit what we were feeling. It’s a long story, don’t worry about it now. The important thing is that you are here, and on the way to recovery.”

Six stepped meaningfully on Diva’s toe, and Grace caught the movement, and the quick intake of breath on Diva’s part. “What? What is wrong?”

“You just can’t be quiet, can you, no-name?” Diva gave a sigh, then fell silent.

“Well, tell me!”

Ledin smiled. “Nothing very important,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse, believe me. You are going to lose a few fingers.”

Grace opened her eyes wide. “Nothing very important!” she repeated dumbly. “How many fingers?”

“Three,” said Ledin, and then obviously struggled with himself. “—And a half.”

Grace looked quietly into Ledin’s gaze, and then looked to either side of her. Her hands were propped up on pillows, and covered by cloths impregnated with some sort of cream. She signaled to Six to lift one of the cloths slightly. Underneath two of the fingers were black down to the hand, one other to the first knuckle, and all the others, together with the rest of the hand swollen and covered in great blisters. She bit her lip, and nodded for him to replace the cloth.
 

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Ledin said. “They were just fingers. You can still do everything you used to. You might need a bit of time to adapt, that’s all. If you will insist on free-falling about twenty miles, you have to expect some damage, Grace.”

Grace looked again at him. “It hurts?” she questioned, trying to keep her voice steady, trying to be brave.

He nodded reassuringly. “I know, they will give you something for that.”

“My nose hurts, and my ears, and my feet, and most all of me.”

“Yes. You have severe frostbite. They tell us it will be very painful. It is worst on your hands, then your nose, your ears, and to a lesser extent, on your feet. The rest of your body will get some blisters, but they say that should clear up completely within a month.”

“And does this big white bandage on my nose mean they will have to amputate that too?”

Cimma leant forward. “They are trying to save that. Don’t worry. You will probably look just like you used to.”

“It doesn’t matter what you look like,” said Six.

“Easy to see you’re a man,” said Diva without thinking, and then put her hand over her mouth. “I … err … that is, I mean you will look just fine, don’t worry about it.”

The visitor, through his tiny sphere, had been following all this, and now gave a short burst of static. Grace immediately focused on him; she hadn’t seen him with all the people around her bed.

“Visitor! Thank you! I don’t know how you managed to do it, but you saved my life. I am so much in your debt, that I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Not enough time anyway,” said the machine, with less volume than usual.
 

“Why? Is anything the matter?”

A tiny hiccup of static came from the little globe. “I may not be able to maintain this video camera for long. It is getting very hot inside the ship, and I am finding it harder and harder to keep contact with you. I am very sorry.”

Grace raised her eyebrows worriedly at Six, who explained that the ship was now resting on the ground near the entrance to the Xianthe.

“We should have thought of putting a cover over it!” he said crossly to himself.

The machine whirred. “It would only postpone the inevitable,” it said. “I was not equipped with protection against planetary atmospheres. The maximum hull temperature for me to live fully is under minus fifty, and even the air temperature here near the north pole is around plus twenty. That is too big a change. I don’t think the systems built into the ship would withstand that. And with the sun full on the metallic hull, the temperature inside is rocketing into the forties and fifties. I regret that I have not much time left. It is however, of little importance. So far I have managed to hide what I have done from the Dessites, but when they find out that I have landed on a planet they will terminate my contract pretty quickly anyway.”

Grace gave a little sigh. “No! You can’t die because you saved my life! I won’t let you!” She looked around at the others. “Do something, all of you, please! Do something!”

The others looked around, but it was the small sphere that spoke next.
 

“I am sorry to inform you that I can no longer maintain this connexion. I would like to say that I have found you much more interesting than I antici— … anticip— … anticipat—” With a faint buzz the machine stopped functioning. The lens closed and the small metal video camera fell to the floor with a force which left a crack in the magmite, rolled over and over a few times, and then came to a stop at Ledin’s feet. He bent down, picked up the machine and placed it gently on Grace’s bed.

Grace caught his gaze. “Please!” she begged. Then she looked around again at the others. “Please leave me here – I will be all right. You have to save the visitor’s life. That is far more important than seeing how many f-fingers I lose. I promise I will be fine, but just go and do something about the visitor. I don’t know – get him out of the ship, perhaps?”

Six shook his head. “He needs that nutrient tank to survive. There would be no point getting him out if he would die immediately. No, the only way to save the visitor is to contact Arcan on Valhai – and that will only work if the rest of the orthogel entity is still safe. The orange compound has obviously affected the part of Arcan that he left back on Valhai. Otherwise he would have turned up here to find out what had happened to the part of him that was with us, wouldn’t he?”

Diva nodded. “In any case, how can we possibly get in touch with him? We can’t get to any of the shuttles, and the Xianthans have said that the orthogel in the box is showing no sign of recuperation. They think that the only person who can cure it is Arcan himself. So how do we contact him?”

There was a longish silence, and then Cimma shifted her weight, and caught Ledin’s eye. Some wordless exchange seemed to be going on between them, for they both put their heads very slightly to one side, and seemed to be communing with each other. At last Cimma gave a sort of encouraging half nod, and Ledin cleared his throat.

“I think … that is … we could try …” He looked towards Cimma for some moral support.

“We have to try to get to Arcan through the canths,” she clarified. “There is no other way to contact him. We have to use the canths.”

Six and Diva stared. Cimma held up a hand to stop them speaking. “I know what you are going to say. You think it is a crazy idea and that there is no way that the canths will be able to contact something on another world. But I think …” she looked at Ledin and he nodded encouragingly, “… that is,
we
think that there is a chance that the black canth will be able to contact Arcan. After all, they know when somebody dies on Valhai, because my husband’s canth died the same day he did. So it
is
possible, at least one-way. And we
did
manage to contact them when we were on the Xianthe, so even if it is a bit far-fetched, it is our only hope now.” Cimma finished this, for her, long speech and sat down in her chair next to the bed with a bump.

Diva nodded slowly, and even Six had a wry expression of acceptance.
 

“I think you are right,” Diva said. “We have to try that, although I don’t think the chances of success are very good. We don’t know if Arcan is all right on Valhai, we don’t know if the visitor will last long enough for us to try, and we don’t know if we can use the canths to contact him. It is a pretty slim chance of success!”

Grace made a movement in the bed. “You must go. Go now!”

Diva shook her head. “Cimma will stay with you.”

Grace opened her eyes wide. “NO! You will need all the help you can get if the canths are going to be any use. Please, go! All of you! I promise faithfully to do my best not to lose more fingers than I have to, but only if you all do everything you can to save the visitor, and Arcan.” She was getting so agitated that beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead.

Ledin got to his feet. “Grace is right. We should all go. We don’t know how many of us will be necessary to effect some kind of transfer, and so we should make sure that the same people who were in the cage on the Xianthe are there to try. Grace will be fine here. She has the best nurses on the planet, and we can’t do anything to help her.”

“Except keep her company,” said Diva.

“Yes, but she has expressly said that she doesn’t want us to do that. I think we should do as she asks, get the Xianthans to take us to the canth farm on a magsled, get in touch with the man who keeps canths, and do our very best to contact Arcan through the canths. It is the visitor’s last hope.” He looked down on the now inert machine which lay on the bed, gave Grace a small twisted smile and then walked slowly out of the room.

“He is right,” said Cimma, also getting to her feet. “Take care of those fingers, won’t you?” She bent to kiss her daughter on the cheek, and then followed Ledin out of the room.

“Go on, you two!” Grace told Six and Diva. “You have to make sure Arcan and the visitor are safe. Ledin is right.” She swallowed. “I can live perfectly well without a couple of fingers. Just get out of here, will you!”

THE XIANTHANS AGREED to take them immediately to the canth farm. It was clear to them by that time that something terrible was happening, and that their country and some of their citizens had become involved. There was much colour to be lost in such dealings, and they were anxious to make amends in any way they could to their visitors.

At the canth farm, the man who kept canths came up as soon as he spotted the magsleds. He was obviously surprised, but pleased to see them.

“Your canths are fine,” he told them. “Eating well, and none the worse for their experiences.”

“And the black canth?” asked Diva. “Is that still well?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Then Arcan must still be alive,” said Diva. “If the link with the orthogel entity is the same as for the rest of us, that is.” She explained just what was necessary to the man who kept canths, and he agreed to help them.

“The more of us who try, the better the chances of getting a reaction,” he told them. “But can we do anything to help the visitor meanwhile?”

“If we could shade it with something?” suggested Six.

The canth keeper nodded, and went into the small office-like room near the gate to the farm. He now had a tridiscreen at his disposal, and it took but a few moments to get through to the ticket office at the Xianthe.

“I want you to cover the alien ship,” he said.

The ticket collector was silent for long seconds. “What with?” he asked finally.

“With whatever there is. Shade it as best you can from the sun, and keep the metal sheeting as cool as possible. I want you to sit in front of the ship, and watch it.”

“Watch it?”

“Don’t take your eyes off it for any reason whatsoever, and if you see any changes you are to call me immediately on the tridi. Is that clear?”