The Long War

The Gold Dust was the first of the following fleet to come upon the wreck, and the largest. As Dan and Helen hung back, trying to keep out of the way, there was a hasty conference call with the Captain in his cabin, and the commanders of the other craft as they arrived in this world. A strategy was soon cooked up, and the crew swung into action with an efficiency and dedication that warmed Helen’s soul. They dropped anchor, and soon had a kind of improvised elevator working, taking crew to and from the ground on an open platform. Helen saw Dan’s buddy Bosun Higgs go down, joining working parties assembled from all the crews of the fleet.

Then, as the crew worked, the Captain used the ship’s intercom to ask for volunteers from among the passengers to go down to help. Volunteers from among the passengers. Helen’s heart sank when she heard that phrase.

Of course she couldn’t stop him.

It all went well enough, for three, four hours, as the sun slowly went down, and the sandstorm finally petered out. From Helen’s godlike point of view high in the sky, she watched what looked like very organized ants working on the carcass of the fallen ship. They cut channels through the wreckage, led out walking wounded, and carried out the worst afflicted, and the dead. A field medical post was set up under a tent, and soon the first of the most seriously injured were being brought up to the Gold Dust on the elevator. The Gold Dust

was the best placed of the fleet to take the injured on board, with a well-equipped medical bay that could be quickly expanded into a hospital. Other parties worked at salvaging what they could of the Pennsylvania’s cargo, mostly Corn Belt wheat. Still others performed the sad duty of digging out graves around the crash site.

Then there was an alarm in the wheelhouse. One of the Gold Dust contingent had got himself trapped, deep in the interior of the Pennsylvania’s envelope, when a bit more of the structure had collapsed around him as he was trying, heroically, to reach one last group of stranded passengers. He was stuck in the collapsed framework, too high off the ground to be able to step out safely. A rescue attempt was quickly improvised.

‘Wow,’ Dan said, listening to the crackly radio messages. ‘Who do you think it is, Mom?’

Not your father, Helen pleaded silently. Not Joshua. Just this once, not Joshua.

A new line was let down from the nose of the Gold Dust, with two individuals clinging to it: Bosun Higgs and Sally Linsay. Helen’s hopes sank faster than the platform. With great caution they were lowered through a rip in the twain’s collapsed envelope, and disappeared into darkness. Helen heard muttered reports on the radio link, saw the spark of cutting torches deep in the Pennsylvania’s carcass. Then a period of silence.

At last Sally called: ‘Take her up!’

Slowly, cautiously, the winch turned. The platform came up first, with Sally and the crewman, trailing a length of cable. Then the line shuddered, and Sally waved a halt. Helen heard: ‘He’s OK. Not very dignified, but OK. Keep lifting.’

Up came the cable, rising out of the wreck. And at last, lifted into the low sunlight, dangling upside down with the cable wrapped around one ankle, was Joshua.

Dan rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, Dad!’

Helen thought that summed it up.

Eventually, to Helen’s chagrin, the whole incident made it on to the outernet, and the news channels. Sometimes it was hard being Lois Lane.

And – as Joshua had to point out later, for Helen hadn’t been looking at her – as soon as Joshua was clear of the wreck, Sally had grinned up at the watching crew of the Gold Dust

, and disappeared.

21

AS IT HAPPENED the Benjamin Franklin passed through the Mine Belt only a few days after the wreck. Via an outernet communiqué, the Franklin had been ordered to backtrack from Reboot to a Mine Belt world around seventy thousand steps from home, where some idiot had shot a couple of trolls.