Resurgence

Darya was standing up, although that was never the way you prepared for a lift-off. It was not a matter of choice. Every chair in the cabin had been removed except the one at the controls where Louis Nenda was sitting. Lacking the service of his usual automatic sensor systems, Nenda had assigned Darya and everyone else on board to monitor some aspect of navigation or signals. The only exception was Claudius, off his radiation high and once again a stone-cold corkscrew of green misery.

Nenda might have the only seat, but he was not a happy man. Darya saw him take a last look around at his ship. The Have-It-All had been stripped to the bones. With all interior bulkheads gone the entire interior length was visible. Darya could see them all—Julian Graves, Teri Dahl, Sinara Bellstock, Kallik, Atvar H’sial, everyone, in what had once been luxurious cabins and were now ragged metal frames. The aliens were as inscrutable as ever. The humans looked pale as ghosts. No one had slept for more than thirty-six hours.

The ship’s intercom had been stripped out. Nenda had to shout to be heard above the howl of wind on the hull. His voice echoed along the bare walls. “We’re all inside, and the hatches are closed. Hold on to somethin’. It’s gonna be bumpy as hell ’til we’re high enough to be above the worst of these winds.”

Tally had been assigned to the display that looked aft from the ship. He said, “Beetlebacks. I see silvery reflections from a group of them. They are heading for the ship, but the winds severely inhibit their movements. Some are being swept off their feet and carried backwards.”

“My heart bleeds. I wish we had a few in front, then I could run over ’em.”

“But if we could capture one—any one. They share data, and our information gain could be enormous. A delay of a few minutes, until the nearest one reaches the Have-It-All

—”

“—would be a lousy idea. Sorry, E.C. Say bye-bye to beetlebacks, and hello to a bump or two.”

Nenda initiated the sequence for atmospheric take-off. Bump wasn’t the word for it. Hans Rebka clung to a metal stanchion, while Darya hung on to him. First there was the bone-rattling run over hard ice. That ended at the moment of lift-off, but a few meters up the winds hit the ship with full force. The retractable wings fluttered and shook and seemed ready to break off. The ship tilted, and Darya thought one of the wingtips was going to hit the snowy surface. For a horrible moment there was no space at all between the wingtip and its own shadow on the ground.

The Have-It-All

shivered and righted itself. As it gained altitude, Darya had a view of a bigger area of the changing planet. Patterns of dark lines crisscrossed the snow. The ground was already fracturing, breaking open into fissures that widened as she watched. Subterranean stresses were growing faster than anyone had expected.

A little higher, and they reached a region where the winds were less affected by local ground contours. The Have-It-All steadied. Nenda said, “I’m takin’ us to three thousand meters, an’ I’m goin’ to hold it there for a while. We’re not shakin’ to bits anymore, but we want to gain all the speed we can as the planet spins faster. The air gets dragged around with everythin’ else, so it will boost us.” He was inspecting read-outs. “I hate to say this too soon, but you know what? We may make it. If I turned on the orbital thrustors right now, we have enough speed to take us to space. No hurry, though. Let’s build up a good margin before we move.”

Hans Rebka left Darya behind at the stanchion and dived forward to stand behind Louis Nenda. He said, “I’m not sure there’s no hurry. Suppose that the rotation speed of Marglot goes on increasing?”

“It will. That’s good. It helps us.”

“To a point it does. But suppose it goes too far?” Rebka turned toward E.C. Tally, who was still staring at the aft display—probably longing for his lost beetlebacks. “E.C., would you do me a calculation? Suppose that the spin rate of Marglot goes on increasing. How long before the centripetal acceleration at the equator is equal to the surface gravity?”

“The calculation is rendered more complicated than you might expect, because the change of spin rate of Marglot continues to accelerate. The reason for that, I presume, is the planet’s rapidly spinning inner core—which, as I noted at the time of my first arrival in orbit around Marglot, is the source of the planet’s anomalously high magnetic field. That core is coupling now to the planetary mantle, and that in turn to the outer crust. To estimate the coupling constants—”

“Could we have a number, E.C., rather than a dissertation?”

“Certainly. The purpose of my comments is to explain that there must be uncertainty in my answer, since the future spin rate is itself uncertain. However, my best estimate is that centripetal and gravitational forces at the equator will be equal fifteen hours from now.”