Resurgence

The low-altitude radar had picked out a place for a landing: a flat hilltop, part of it clear of everything but random patches of old ice. Louis examined the radar image of the ground ahead as the pinnace drifted in. He changed the glide angle a fraction of a degree.

After that he didn’t need to work the controls at all. Louis folded his arms and leaned back. The ship touched down gently, and slid to a halt as smoothly and unobtrusively as a Karelian hostess picking your pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Ben’s dream

Ben Blesh burned.

At the Hot Pole, bathed in the warm outflow from the gas-giant world to which Marglot was tethered by an invisible gravitational string, summer reigned perpetual. With the sun hidden by clouds, day and night temperatures differed by only a few degrees. A human could not ask for a more placid and comfortable setting.

But Ben was burning up. He was not feverish. His suit would not permit such a thing. With its controlled flow of drugs into his body, it could stabilize elements of his physical condition. But it could not determine his state of mind. The source of heat that he felt was a fiery self-hatred and disgust coming from within. He had become a burden to the expedition, rather than a cherished asset. Others might excuse his behavior on the surface of Iceworld; he never could.

They had treated him kindly and gently. Hans Rebka and Torran Veck had cleaned the mummified fragments from the inside of the legged vehicle, then rearranged the interior better to serve human needs. They had carried him to a makeshift bed there, despite his assertion that he was perfectly able to walk and manage the couple of steps up. They had told him to rest and conserve his strength, and to tell them if he needed anything. They had asked him how he was feeling.

He had lied to them.

And then they had left, and forgotten his existence. Except for occasional brief appearances to check on his condition, everyone ignored him. He had his suit open as far as he could without interfering with its medical functions, and he watched the other five through the transparent windows of the vehicle. They gathered in a ring, talking intensely to each other and gesturing in various directions. Clearly, they were making definite plans, and he was no part of them.

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, two of the party had vanished.

It was the suit, deciding that he would benefit from a nap. It knew what it was doing from a medical point of view, because unless he moved he felt no trace of pain from his arm or his ribs. Even so, it was infuriating to have so little control over his own body.

He closed his eyes again, and this time when he awoke the whole group had disappeared. Where were they? Exploring—without him? As he watched, the ground twenty meters ahead began to tremble. The air above it seemed to thicken and shiver. A ghostly outline of a sphere formed. It hovered for a few minutes, then gradually faded. The earth once again became silent. Nothing moved, anywhere in the landscape.

Hallucination? That was not recorded as a side effect of any of the suit’s medications. What he had just seen had to be real. Guardian of Travel, true to its word, had opened a transfer field leading back to the middle of Iceworld. It would open “at regular intervals.” What did that mean to something like Guardian of Travel? Once a day, once a year, once a millennium? Maybe he had seen its only appearance in a million years.

Ben stared and stared, but the shimmering sphere did not return. He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them the brighter glow in the clouds that marked the sun’s position had changed. It stood lower in the sky.

Soon afterwards, Darya Lang climbed into the car.

“How are you?” she said. It was what they all said when they came in to check his condition—that, and little more. But this time Darya went on, “We’ve been clocking the rate of movement of the sun, and in another two hours it will be dark. We can’t possibly all fit into this car, and Teri Dahl has found a much better place for us to spend the night.”

“I saw the transfer field again, the one that links this world with the interior of Iceworld.”

“Did you? That’s interesting.” But Darya was not listening, because she at once went on, “Ben, what I’m going to do may hurt you. I have to walk us to the place that Teri Dahl found. I’ll keep the car’s movements as smooth as possible, but let me know if you feel any discomfort.”