“He's right,” Melpomene said. “The survey team went down at least forty thousand miles from here, and Sean was still able to use his transceiver to reach the ship.” She looked at Andromeda. “They're designed for ground-to-space transmissions. So long as the antenna is pointed in our general direction, you should be able to keep in touch with the ship, and Anne can relay signals from the camp or Sean's team.”
“I'm still not . . .” Jason began.
A soft chirp from the radio hooked to Andromeda's belt. “Speak of the devil,” she said, then lifted a finger for silence while she pulled the headset up from around her neck and nestled it against her ear and chin. “Base camp here,” she said, then smiled. “New call sign,” she added. “Nueva Italia.”
D'Anguilo preened as Rolf rolled his eyes. A moment's pause, then Andromeda heard Anne's voice.
“Acknowledged, Nueva Italia. Skipper, I've just received a hyperlink transmission from Coyote. Captain Harker is on the line. Would you like for me to put him through?”
Andromeda hissed beneath her breath. It had been more than twenty-seven hours since the last time she had reported in; no doubt Ted Harker would be irate with her. “Affirmative,” she said, then looked at the others. “It's Harker. I better take this in private.”
The others nodded as she stood up and walked away. A few seconds later, Harker's voice came through the headset.
“Andromeda, where the hell have you been?”
“Sorry, Ted. Things have been busy here.” Andromeda gave him a brief rundown of all that had happened since the
Montero
entered orbit around Hex, concluding with the establishment of the base camp at Nueva Italia and the message she'd received from the
danui
. Harker listened without interrupting her; when she was done, Andromeda heard his voice again through her earpiece.
“This doesn't sound good. The Corps team has lost two people, and the rest have gone missing, and the
danui
have captured your vessel and transported it to another location.”
A pause.
“I'm tempted to call this mission a failure and order you to return, if only for your own safety.”
“You're not serious, are you?” Andromeda stared into the darkness. “I've got three people out there.”
One of whom is my son,
she was tempted to add, but decided not to; Harker knew that already, and she didn't want him to think that she was letting personal motives cloud her judgment. “I can't just leave them behind because I'm worried about my ship.”
“Captain, the safety of your vessel and its crew are your top priority,”
Harker replied, and Andromeda couldn't help but notice that he'd taken to addressing her by her rank.
“If necessary, you must be willing to get them out of harm's way.”
“Captain, my crew is not in danger. Chief Petty Officer Brandt was returned unharmed, and the message he relayed to me from the
danui
indicates that they're interested in speaking to us. When you called, I was making plans for Tom, Zeus, and me to go to the coordinates we'd been given.”
“What about the survey team? What's their present condition?”
Andromeda hesitated. “I haven't heard from them in several hours,” she admitted, “but my son is now in charge of the team. He told me that they've reached an accord with the
arsashi
, and they're willing to help him reach our location.” She paused. “I'm not going to abandon him, Ted. Don't ask me to do so.”
A few more seconds passed, longer than could be accounted for by the time lag of hyperlink transmissions.
“I'm not going to,”
Ted said at last,
“but neither am I willing to let the
danui
, or any other race, hold them hostage.”
You poor fool,
Andromeda thought.
You really have no idea how power ful they are, do you?
Yet the implications of what he'd said puzzled her. The Federation Navy could dispatch another vessel to Hex, this time as a rescue mission. So long as Sean had an active transceiver, another Corps teamâor even a squad of Federation Militiaâcould zero in on his signal. But how would they get here in the first place? So far as she knew, the
Montero
had the only starbridge key that would allow a starship to make the jump from 47 Ursae Majoris to HD 76700 . . .
Unless there's another key that we haven't been told about,
she thought.
“I understand,” she replied, choosing her words carefully. “But I think it would be wise to exhaust our alternatives before we . . . ah, exercise that option. If only for the sake of diplomacy.”
Another pause.
“I agree. I'm willing to give you more time to work things out for yourself, Captain, but I expect regular reports from now on. If there are any more delays or unfortunate incidents, you may expect an order to withdraw at once. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative. I'll report back sometime tomorrow and let you know how things stand.”
“Very well. I'll be waiting to hear from you. Harker over and out.”
Andromeda sighed as she pulled out the earpiece and switched off the transceiver. On top of her other problems, she'd just been handed a ticking stopwatch. All of a sudden, she had a feeling that this wasn't going to end well . . .
“Trouble, Captain?”
Startled, she turned around to find D'Anguilo standing behind her. She didn't know how long he'd been there, but it was a good bet that he'd been listening in.
“No,” she said, deciding that a lie was all he deserved for eavesdropping on her. “Just a little disagreement with my boss.” She started to walk past him, then a new thought occurred to her, and she stopped. “By the way, Tom . . . when the
danui
gave you that starbridge key, was it the only copy?”
“So far as I know. But if you're asking whether our people could have used it to make others . . .” D'Anguilo hesitated. “I suppose it's possible that an effort may have been made to reverse engineer it,” he went on, his reticence plain in the guarded way he spoke. “It wasn't in my possession the entire time I was at Starbridge Coyote. It's conceivable that someone may have sought to crack its code and duplicate it.” He hastily shook his head. “I can't be sure, of course.”
Andromeda nodded. Yes, he could, even if he wasn't about to confess everything he knew. Between the time that the
danui
emissary had given D'Anguilo the starbridge key and the time he'd boarded the
Montero
, someone from the Federation Navy had closely examined the key, perhaps even hooking it up to an AI that replicated a starship's hyperspace system. In that way, they might have been able to crack the code for the hyperspace coordinates and thus fashion a second key that would enable another human ship to make the jump to HD 76700. Just in case the
Montero
ran into trouble.
“Well . . . if someone did, then I hope they're careful in how they use it.” Andromeda continued toward the circle of light cast by the lamps. “We've made enough mistakes already. I don't think we can afford another one.” She glanced back at D'Anguilo. “And Mel's right. Messing with the
danui
may be a bad idea.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
T
HE LIGHT WAS BEGINNING TO DIM AS SEAN BROUGHT THE gyro in for a landing. Lusah Sahsan had warned him that this might happen; the
arsashi
homeworld had a day of only twenty-three hours, and their Hex habitat imitated its sunrises and sunsets. So Sean wasn't surprised when night began closing in; hoping to reach the eastern end of the biopod before it became too dark to see, he'd wasted no time leaving the place where the
Reese
had come down.
He clutched the stick tight within his right hand, feeling every shudder and jounce the gyro made. So far, the survey team had been lucky. The second
arsashi
vehicle to arrive at the crash site was equipped with a crane, and it had managed to raise the lander high enough for Sean, Sandy, and Lusah Sahsan's two husbands to pry open the cargo hatch and lower the gyro from its trapeze. Although the aircraft was still flightworthy, nonetheless it had sustained some damage. The aft pusher-prop's blades were out of alignment, but he and Sandy were able to fix that; however, they couldn't do anything about the cracked reserve hydrogen fuel cell or the hairline fracture in the canopy.
So the gyro was good for one short-range flight, and its cabin couldn't be pressurized. Sean knew that they would have to abandon it once they reached their destination. So long as it held together long enough for his team to reach the nearest tram station, though, that was fine by him. He didn't admit it to Kyra and Sandy, but the truth of the matter was that he barely knew how to fly the damn thing.
Once the team thanked Lusah Sahsan and her tribesmen for their help, they climbed into the gyro's narrow cockpit, where they squeezed themselves into its small, tandem-mounted seats. The miniature aircraft wasn't built for comfort, but Sean expected their trip to take only two or three hours. In any case, he was relieved that he was able to start the engine. The aft prop made a noisy clatter as it wound up to speed, but at least it worked, and as soon as the main prop was an invisible blur above their heads, he pulled back on the stick, and the gyro made its clumsy ascent.
Sean had received only minimal flight training from the Corps, and thus had only logged fifteen hours in gyros. Minimal experience as a pilot hadn't been an issue when he was picked for the expedition because Mark Dupree was supposed to fly the gyro, but it mattered now. So Sean didn't spend much time admiring the landscape; his attention was entirely focused upon his instruments, and within his airmask, he chewed his lower lip. The few times he allowed himself to gaze out the canopy, though, he was impressed by what he saw. Like a planet in a bottle, the wintry terrain spread out below them was a microcosm of the
arsashi
homeworld. Despite his strong desire to get the hell out of there, he found himself wishing that he could remain longer, if only to explore.
Sure . . . and he'd be like a kid in a candy store who wanted only licorice jelly beans and nothing else. If Tom D'Anguilo was right, Hex contained hundreds of billions of miniature worldsâperhaps even trillions. The possibilities were staggering.
We could spend generations exploring this place,
he thought,
and never see them all.
And then the gyro lurched again, and he returned his mind to the instruments.
So, nearly three hours after leaving the crash site, they'd reached their goal. Through the canopy, Sean spotted what appeared to be a narrow, tan strip leading straight up the steep side of the southern mountain range. Lusah Sahsan had told him to look out for something like that; it would be the escalator that would carry his team to the tram station.
“Wow . . . Now that's weird.” Sandy's voice, coming from two seats behind him, was muffled slightly by the prop noise.
“The escalator?” Sean gently pushed the stick forward as he pulled back on the throttle. The pusher-prop growled like an angry dog as the gyro began to descend. “I suppose, but they'd have to get down here somehow, wouldn't . . . ?”
“No, that's not what I'm talking about,” Sandy said. “I've just spotted the source of the river, and it looks like it's coming from a hole in the wall.”
“You're right.” Kyra was sitting directly behind Sean, so he could hear her more clearly. “I see it, too . . . There's a hole in the wall, and that's where the water is coming from.”
Sean didn't dare look at what the two women had seen, but from the corner of his eye he could make out the titanic concave wall that marked the biopod's endcap. It had loomed before them for the past three hours, steadily growing larger with every passing mile, but he hadn't been able to make out any significant details other than some large round holes evenly arranged in a circle near its edge. He and Kyra had thought that they might be ventilatorsâafter all, the atmosphere had to come from somewhereâbut it appeared that Sandy might have found another explanation.
However interesting her discovery might be, studying it was the furthest thing from his mind. “I can't look at it just now,” he said, a little more peevishly than he intended. “Get some pictures. I'm busy.”
“Okay . . . sure,” Kyra said quietly, as if chastised. “Didn't mean to bother you.”
Great,
Sean thought.
Keep it up, and you'll turn into Cayce.
“Sorry,” he added. “It's just that I'd like to get us on the ground in one piece, that's all.”
He'd been careful to keep the gyro at an altitude of no more than eight hundred feet; if the aft prop failed, he could turn off the engine, switch the main prop to unpowered autodescent mode, and make an emergency touchdown. Sean glanced at the altimeter; they were at 450 feet. The aft prop sounded as if tin cans were tied to its blades, though, and he carefully throttled it back a little more.
Please don't go out on me now,
he thought, gritting his teeth as he gripped the stick with both hands.
I don't need two crashes in one day . . .
But he didn't need to worry. The gyro held together, for the seven minutes it remained airborne, and settled upon its wheels as though it were a feather drifting to the ground. The pusher-prop rattled loudly as it spun to a halt, then it was still.
Sean sighed and closed his eyes in relief as he let his head sink back against the seat. His pulse hammered in his temples, and he felt Kyra's hand reach forward to give him a reassuring pat. “Good work,” she said. “I knew you could do it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He gave her hand a brief squeeze, then he switched off the rest of the gyro's systems. Behind him, Kyra and Sandy were already turning the canopy latches. He waited until the main prop stopped turning, then said, “Okay, we can get out now.”