Cinnamon met Carmen and John on the engineering deck of Falcon where the exploration suits were stored. The three began the routine checkout procedure that preceded each foray outside the safety of the ship. Richard joined them, and together they double checked each other's tell-tale lights inside the panel doors on their chestpacks and backpacks.
"The regulator indicator on my neckring telltales was flickering there for a while," John told Carmen over his shoulder. "Make sure that it's working okay will you, Carmen? Carmen!"
"What? Oh. Yes, I'm sure it's fine," Carmen answered distractedly. She reached for his backpack, opened the access door to the panel, pushed a reset button, and closed the door again.
Cinnamon, busily punching Richard's backpack buttons, glanced over at Carmen. She didn't understand the way that Carmen had been acting lately. Cinnamon couldn't see anything wrong with Carmen, but when she looked at her old friend, Cinnamon felt as if she had suddenly lost one of her senses. Like she was suddenly colorblind. A jazzy song tickled the back of her mind, but she couldn't remember the words. Still, it was a happy tempo, so it could hardly be foreboding.
"You check out fine," Cinnamon assured Richard and she patted his huge back. "Do we have enough sample bottles?"
Richard laughed. "I can hardly carry any more!" he said, holding up the collection of sampling vials that Jupiter had provided for them. "Once we fill these we'll need the flouwen to haul all the samples back to the ship."
They cycled through the lock and climbed down the stairs to the beach. Striding boldly into the surf they sank beneath the waves as their suits compensated to the proper volume. Almost immediately they were met by Clear«»White«»Whistle, Roaring*Hot*Vermillion, Sour#Sapphire#Coo, and Warm§Amber§Resonance.
Roaring*Hot*Vermillion flowed his red body about them and examined the bags of bottles that the humans were carrying, looking for signs of the suits that would let the flouwen walk on the land.
*Where are our drysuits?*
«If you had bothered to monitor the Sky¤Talker at Agua Dulce you would know that today the humans plan to collect live samples of our food so they can feed us during our stays on the Flying¤Circle, the lightcraft Prometheus.»
White Whistler had embraced human technology and phraseology with a vengeance. Sometimes the white flouwen reminded Cinnamon of her old hydroponics professor. Although he had dropped way behind in his field as it moved out into space, he tried to cover his ignorance with glib jargon picked up from trade journals. Often it was possible to predict the subject of his next lecture by reading the latest edition of Leviponics Monthly.
§Most of the time the Sky¤Talker is being used by Clear=Yellow=Chirp. We have found the best way to teach the youngling is to promise it a new song every time it masters a theory. This is the oddest youngling I have ever taught! Normally the solving of the problem is the reward.§
"Maybe it would be better to let it only work on the things that interest it," Richard offered.
"I don't know," said John. "I was never very interested in any of my studies, but my parents bribed me into getting good grades anyway. I graduated high school with a four-point-oh and a Jaguar." He chuckled. Even when John entered med school, he didn't have any stronger incentive than pleasing his family. When he realized that he would never be able to be the great physician that a 'Dr.
Kennedy' would be expected to be, John had switched to mechanical engineering. After obtaining his Ph.D., he became a nurse just to prove that his medical studies had not been for nothing, but never had John studied just for the love of learning. He didn't believe that anyone actually did.
"Maybe you should concentrate on art studies," Cinnamon suggested. "You do body plays, and Green Fizzer used to have his flitters perform dances before he got so interested in their genes; maybe Sunshine would enjoy studying those things."
#Body plays? Pretty¤Smells? These are not the sort of thing one studies!# Sour#Sapphire#Coo was shocked.
"I wouldn't have thought that a flouwen would have a rigorous study program," said Richard.
§It is necessary that each youngling be able to think logically and to know certain basic things. Otherwise none of the adults will want to talk to it.§
"In a society that has no manners, socialization depends on each individuals intellectual input," John hazarded.
"They don't think math all the time," Richard objected.
"No, but that is the major thing they share. Loud Red, do you even bother to share tastes of surfing?" John asked.
*No! If they want to go surfing they can go for themselves!*
"But what about the body plays that Yellow Hummer makes. Do you ever taste the way they are conceived?" John pressed.
§No one ever asked to taste my plays.§
«Even if we did, we would only be able to taste the feelings and the thought pattern. We would not then be able to come up with an original play of our own. Or maybe we could, but it would not be as good. Why try to do badly what another pod member can do well?»
John felt slightly uncomfortable with this statement. It echoed his own philosophy too well, and somehow it seemed less noble when he heard it repeated back to him. "But surely not all of the flouwen are as good at math than the others?"
#Some are dumb, but they share the tastes of the others and even if they don't come up with anything new, they can still follow along. Besides, eventually they rock up to work on something just like the rest of us. It is not polite to wake someone up just because someone else has figured out the answer to the problem.#
«There goes a Sharp¤Soggy! We should have some of those to eat.» cried Clear«»White«»Whistle. His pale body flattened so that he could chase after the little scavenger. Within moments, the white flouwen had engulfed the prey, being careful not to actually start assimilating the flesh. The small brown blob was similar to the flouwen in body shape, but it sported six sharp interlocking teeth fitted into a round sphincter that could pinch off pieces of larger or tougher prey. Even now the vicious little beast was biting off interior portions of Clear«»White«»Whistle and was eating them despite its predicament.
Gently, Clear«»White«»Whistle took one of the bottles from Richard, ejected the dark blob into the container, and secured it tightly. The sated animal rested quietly on the bottom.
«If I catch them all like this, there will not be much left of me.»
"Are all of your food prey, predators themselves?" John asked.
*Most are, but not all are dumb enough or sharp enough to try to take off a piece of a flouwen. Most prey on even smaller animals, or the plants that feed on the chemicals emitted by the volcanic vents.*
"We'll need samples of those lower life orders too," insisted Cinnamon. "Nels will need to have samples of the water near the vents, plus collections of plants and simple animals all the way up the food chain."
"Why will he need all that, if all he has to do is clone meat cultures for the flouwen?" asked Richard.
"Do you think the Chicken Little and Ferdinand tissue cultures were made in a day?" she laughed. "This is not Star Trek. Nels doesn't just use a replicator! It takes time for him to generate a new tissue culture. First, he'll need to study all the life forms in order to understand their chemical needs so as to prevent malnourishing the flouwen. During that time, all the smaller animals the flouwen eat will have to be fed too. The only thing he can replicate in the beginning is the chemicals thrown into the water by the vents. As time goes by, he will be able to make a tissue culture for each of the important flouwen foods, and things will be somewhat simpler." Cinnamon who had complete faith in her mentor. "If we miss something important, well— I wouldn't want to be the one to tell Jinjur that we need to expend another lander to come back here."
A short while later they were all riding inside the flouwen, the creatures having made clear pockets of water inside themselves so that the humans could get an unobscured, if slightly colored, view of the ocean around them. John and Carmen were riding in Yellow Hummer and Cinnamon and Richard were inside Deep Purple. White Whistler and Loud Red ranged out on either side, hunting up and collecting all the life they could find with the help of Loud Red's pack of Orange¤Hunters. Cinnamon had insisted that it was important to get more than one of each species, so they enthusiastically rounded up anything that moved. The flouwen, eager to cooperate, altered the course of their travel so that they would intersect the line of volcanic vents that ran inward from the islands. They continued to catch any small animal, including many that they normally would never bother to eat. These tiny animals often had plantlike characteristics and were so clear that the humans would have missed them entirely. In fact, the humans gave up the idea of helping hunt at all and did little more than label the lids on the sample jars with grease pencil as the flouwen filled them up.
Looking back on that morning later, John realized, that in its own odd way, this was one of the most relaxing days he had ever spent. They had finally reached the major vent fields, filled the last of their sample bottles with the chemical soup that surrounded the vents, and were now on their way back to the island. Not far away, to one side of Carmen's helmet, John could see Deep Purple's dark body and the flouwen's cargo of two humans. John was enjoying the flying sensation of moving effortlessly along, when suddenly, he felt squeezed by an overwhelming pressure. Too surprised to panic, it was with a dispassionate objectivity that he realized that many of the telltale lights inside the neckring of his helmet were now flashing bright red.
"Emergency!" he heard himself say, as the pressure suddenly eased with a loud pop and a burbling roar. John flipped, spinning over and over. He watched huge bubbles float up all around him, growing larger as they rose up through the yellow flouwen's body. His leg tensed as it was hit with a sudden flood of intensely cold water.
"Emergency!" Carmen's scream filled all their helmets. "John's suit is compromised!"
"What's happened? Talk to me!" Cinnamon demanded through their imps.
"His regulator failed! His suit inflated to tank pressure, then burst like a balloon!" Carmen was fumbling at the rip that had blown out in John's knee joint. "I can't reseal it!"
John began to hiss with pain as the ammonia-rich fluid started to attack his skin. His anguish became more obvious as the water filled his suit, slowly working its way up toward more delicate flesh.
"It burns!" His cry was barely intelligible through his clenched and chattering teeth.
"Yellow Hummer!" Cinnamon demanded. "The ammonia-water is hurting him. Surround him only with water, then squeeze his suit to get rid of the ammonia."
For a moment John and Carmen were blinded by the flouwen's amber flesh. Then the color again retreated, leaving them in a clear bubble that, this time, contained only pure water. By now the two flouwen were close enough together that Cinnamon to make out the figures inside the amber creature. She was appalled by what she saw.
"For gods sake, Carmen, get his head up! He's going to drown!" the medic screamed, as she watched John's precious air trickle up through the rip in his suit. Cinnamon could see Carmen floating over John, still holding his leg, but doing little else.
"John! Pull on her! Get yourself upright! You'll lose the air in your helmet!"
"I . I can't ." John's voice bubbled back through the link.
"Gods! I've got to get over there," Cinnamon muttered to herself. If she could get there fast enough, she could hook her regulator into John's and they could buddy breathe back to the Falcon. She swam her way out through Deep Purple, across the short gap of intervening ocean, and into the water bubble inside Yellow Hummer.
Pushing Carmen roughly away, Cinnamon pulled John upright and looked into his startlingly blue eyes. The eyes looked back at her, but John did not. Milky fluid floated up from his nose and mouth, clouding the water that filled his helmet to his eyebrows.
"Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!" wailed Cinnamon.
"It's only been a moment! There has to be something we can do!" pleaded Richard. He had followed Cinnamon over and was floating behind her.
"What do you want me to do!?" Cinnamon snarled. "Mouth to mouth through his suit? We can fill his helmet with air, but that's not going to make him breath again!"
"Lots of people recover from near drowning! We could squeeze his chest! Force the water out that way!"
"You'll collapse his lungs but they won't reinflate!" Cinnamon insisted. "Not here. Not without help. But we can take him back to the Falcon and try there."
"But he'll be dead by the time we get him there!"
"It's cold here, bitterly cold. There have been many cases of drowning victims being revived even after hours in the water, if it was cold enough water! We need to keep him from freezing though ."
Now that she had a plan, Cinnamon would not allow herself to despair. She opened his chest pack and adjusted the suit heaters to keep John just above freezing. "Yellow Hummer, keep the water circulating to even the cooling of his body and to prevent his extremities from freezing. We'll have to hope that not much ammonia got into his lungs. That caustic a chemical would scar them for sure."
Richard, feeling helpless and angry, rounded on the only person he could blame. He pushed his helmet right up to Carmen's face plate so that she would hear him directly. "You bitch! You were the one that checked out his regulator! You should have kept his helmet clear of water! You should have hooked your air up to his immediately! You didn't do anything right! You killed him!"
Carmen looked back at Richard with no more awareness than John had. Her black eyes no longer snapped, but stared vaguely into the middle distance as if she were looking at visions far away. Floating gently away from Richard's grasp, she curled up into ball; a silver fetus in an amber womb.
"Mayday! Mayday! We have an emergency! Dragonfly! Come in!" Cinnamon's voice crackled over the speakers on Dragonfly.
"Cinnamon, this is Caroline on the Dragonfly. What is the nature of the emergency?"
"John has suffered water inhalation and Carmen has . well . physically, she's OK, but mentally she's checked out completely. We need to get both back to the sick bay on Falcon immediately."
"Water inhalation?" Caroline asked.
"He's drowned. Technically, he's dead . but I think we can bring him back. I need to get him back to the Falcon faster than the flouwen can get us there. Can you get a fix on us?"
"It's already been done," interjected Shirley, her fingers flying over the pilot console as she powered up the VTOL fans in the wings of the aeroplane and took off. "We'll be there in ten minutes."
Fighting the thermal lifts above the churning smoky water that surrounded the volcanic vents, it took all of Shirley's expertise to bring the aeroplane down toward the heaving ocean. She hovered as closely as she dared to the blue, amber, and white flouwen that colored the surface. Thomas suited up and passed through the airlock to lower a ladder down to the four humans floating in the clear pool in the middle of Yellow Hummer. Richard, now that he had the traction of the ladder, easily lifted John and his waterlogged suit up and into the air lock. They cycled through, where they were met by Caroline and the Christmas Branch. Meanwhile, Cinnamon and Thomas manhandled the unresponsive Carmen up the ladder as well. As soon they were all aboard the Dragonfly, Shirley activated the nuclear jets and the aerospace plane headed toward the outer islands and the sick bay of the Falcon.
"Report," Jinjur ordered Cinnamon. This meeting in the Falcon's lounge lacked the suppressed excitement of the last. Now two of the crew were in the sick bay and things were looking grim.
"John was resuscitated after three hours of being technically dead," Cinnamon replied. Silently she relived those hectic hours and the frantic efforts of herself and the Christmas Branch that had finally resulted in a pulse. It had seemed like years before John had at last opened his eyes. She still didn't understand his first words. He had said, "She's come undone ." but whether he had been referring to Carmen or to the jazzy song, Cinnamon had no idea.
"All things considered, he is doing remarkably well. Despite our best efforts, however, his left little toe was frostbitten. He might lose it." Richard reflexively clenched his feet in his custom-made boots as sympathetic ghost aches arose in his non-existent little toes, lost years ago during a close call with an avalanche in the Alps.
"He's weak, and sore from some of our more violent efforts at resuscitation. He is also developing pneumonia, but if any ammonia reached his lungs, then Yellow Hummer's circulation diluted it enough that most of the lung tissue is functioning. In short, John will live, but he should be immediately transferred to the sick bay on Prometheus where he can be cared for properly."
Her pronouncement sounded like a death knoll. The crew had feared that this accident would mean aborting the mission, but all of them had been hoping against all reason that they would be able to stay and finish the job.
Jinjur, of all the crew, was the best prepared to bow to the inevitable. It was her decision to make and she had to rely on reality. She could not have foreseen this accident, but she was in command. She was responsible.
"What about Carmen?" Jinjur asked.
"She's practically catatonic. Carmen has nothing physically wrong with her, but she has completely withdrawn," Cinnamon continued. "She reacted poorly to the emergency, but whatever put her in this state happened before Richard or I got there."
Richard felt the muscles on the back of his neck release slowly. He had privately feared that his shouting at Carmen—blaming her for John's death—had pushed her over the edge. A weight he had not noticed was lifted from his shoulders.
"Frankly," the medic continued, "I am not sure what her problem is. As her best friend, I knew that something was troubling her, but she didn't talk to me about it."
"Don't beat yourself up about it, Cinnamon," said Caroline. "I think we all noticed that Carmen wasn't being herself. None of us thought it was all that serious. All of us passed rigorous psych testing before we were sent up here. It just wasn't supposed to happen."
"Carmen was the last minute replacement for Armstrong," Jinjur reminded them. "She had only the initial screening that all the applicants took."
"So what's going to happen to her?" Cinnamon asked.
"Once we get back to the Prometheus we'll turn her over to James. He may be a computer but he has more knowledge of psychology than the rest of us." Aborting the mission might be painful but with John in the condition he was in, it was inevitable. Jinjur pragmatically shifted her thoughts toward the next steps they would have to take.
Cinnamon felt uneasy about leaving Carmen's psyche in the hands of the computer, but none of them had any training in psychotherapy. Dr.was supposed to be their psychiatrist as well as their doctor, but he had died on the way out. Cinnamon asked to be excused from the rest of the meeting. She wanted to go back to the sick bay and keep an eye on her patients.
"So the mission is definitely aborted?" asked Tony.
"No mission is worth the death of one of my people. We will have to come back another time," said Jinjur. "John and Carmen need to get back to the Prometheus, the ascent module is the only way to get there, so we will all have to go."
"But we have the whole Barnard system to explore," Caroline objected. "If we have to make another descent to Rocheworld then we'll have to give up exploring one of the moons around Gargantua!"
"Then we will leave the rest of Rocheworld for the next wave of humans to explore . in fifty years or so," Jinjur said. The finality in her voice chilled the rest of the crew. They all hated the idea of others being able to explore the wonders of the planet they had discovered.
"Look," Thomas suggested. "We have to wait for another three hours anyway in order to be in the best position for the ascent module to link up with Prometheus. If I and the others can come up with a better plan in the meantime, will you consider it?"
"I'm not any happier about leaving than you are," Jinjur insisted. "I'll listen to what ever you come up with, but don't expect me to approve any risky gamble you invent."
"I move that the first thing we do is comm link with the Prometheus and get Red and Arielle in on this discussion!" Caroline said as Jinjur left the room. Switching the viewwall in the lounge from entertainment to communications, she raised the main ship. George's face appeared instantly on the screen, as if he had been waiting for the link.
"About time you called us in. Ever since Jinjur reported the possibility of John's evacuation we have been working on ways to keep at least part of the crew down on the planet. Arielle has some ideas and wants to talk with you." The view switched to that of the beauty queen, imp-brace sparkling between her lips as she spoke.
"Well ." said Arielle thoughtfully from the screen. "If I were down there flying Dragonfly instead of stuck up here on Prometheus, I would fly Dragonfly at high speed on its nuclear jets through the zero gee point, pull a hard turn and head straight out for the L-4 point. As I get to the top of my trajectory, I dump all the spare breathing air in Dragonfly into the jets and use that to go a little further, then the rocket fuel should just get us there, where Prometheus could fly in and pick us up."
"It could be done ." Thomas said thoughtfully, scratching his chin.
"No way!" said George firmly. "If the lightcraft missed the pickup the first time around, the whole crew would asphyxiate before the L-4 point came around the next time." He looked aside at the twinkling imp that rode on his shoulder. "James? Calculate the safety margins on such a maneuver."
"Chances of success are eighty-twenty," the computer answered.
"See?" crowed Caroline. "I'm willing to take that risk."
"Eighty percent chance of failure," James clarified.
"See?" George chided gently.
"The real problem," said Thomas. "Is that Dragonfly is a flying submarine. It's too heavy for its rockets to push it very far. It's too bad it's not a light-weight little crate like my ascent module. That could make it out to L-4 easy."
"That's it!" exclaimed Red from up on Prometheus, who like all the others, had been trying to find a way to salvage the mission. "What we need is another ascent module—and we've got one—the one Thomas and I brought back from SLAM I. It's hanging right out there in the rigging."
"How's that going to help?" said George with a frown. "It's no good up there. We need it down there—and full of fuel to boot."
"He's got you there, Red," chided Thomas. "Even if we filled the tanks to the brim, that ascent module wouldn't have enough fuel to make it to the surface of Rocheworld and back again."
"You heavy-lifters think all alike!" yelled Red, annoyed at his denseness. "You don't fly it down to the surface, ground-worm. You fly it down to the zero-gee point, hover to make the transfer of John and Carmen from Dragonfly, and piss flame for L-4 and the Prometheus."
There was a long pause as everyone tried to find a flaw.
"James? What do you think of it?" asked George thoughtfully.
"Once the ascent module flew down to the zero-gee point it would need almost no fuel at all in order to maintain its position. The ascent module would be able to wait as long as is necessary until the Dragonfly flies out to meet it."
The computer went on, improving the scenario. "The zero gee point is a saddle point, so to save fuel on the inward journey, the trajectory should be down along the spin axis. Along this trajectory, the only forces are the inward gravity forces. After the transfer has taken place, then the outward trajectory should be in the plane of the orbit. Along this trajectory, the inward gravity forces are partially canceled by the outward centrifugal force which ."
"Would throw the ascent module right back out into space!" George finished for the computer.
Jinjur's voice came in over their imps. "I have been eavesdropping. Does this mean the Prometheus wouldn't have to make any dangerous maneuvers near this whirligig of a planet?"
"That's right, Jinjur." said George. "The ascent module will have enough fuel to make not only to the L-4 point, but way beyond."
"Great! I knew you could do it. Make it so!"
Aboard the Prometheus the crew scrambled to accommodate for the change in plans. Nels and David would be replacing the two casualties on the planet surface, so they had to quickly organize their various personal projects.
David had been working on an animated program loosely based on the birth of the twin flouwen, using the music of Bach and intertwining it with the short but complex tunes that the young flouwen had already composed despite its youth. Whenever Sunshine was allowed to use the screen at Agua Dulce, it spent much of its time in communion with David. The two individuals, although from separate species, had been soul mates from their first introduction. David was thrilled at the thought of being able to meet and help in the education of the newest member of the pod.
Nels was simply thrilled. Less intimidated by George than he was by Jinjur, Nels managed to put his case for going to the surface before the scientist. To his delight, George had agreed completely that Nels would be the best person to select the samples of alien lifeforms since he would be the one who would later have to keep them alive on Prometheus. Besides, George would need to keep the other available biologist, Katrina, on board Prometheus to nurse the two patients that were coming up from the surface. Nels had no qualms about leaving James babysitting all his equipment and cultures; the hydroponics facility was designed to be mostly self-operating anyway.
Nels went to the suit storage area on the top deck and hauled out his special exploration suit with its artificial electrically-powered legs. He was pleased that all his recent practice in the suit would not go to waste. George had Prometheus under maximum acceleration, moving from its normal orbit in the plane of rotation of Rocheworld up above the north spin pole. Not wanting to take any chances of damaging the heavy suit, Nels called for the doughnut shaped elevator platform that was used to haul cargo up and down the long central shaft of Prometheus. He and the suit rode the elevator down to the hydroponics deck. From there he hauled the suit through the corridors until he came to an open port in the ceiling. Looking up, he could see the inside of the ascent module bridge and the flashing green limbs and short red hair of a busy heavy-lift pilot strapped into a blue acceleration harness. It was Red Vengeance, checking out the controls of the second-hand rocket. Hanging beside Red from the red copilot harness was a slim figure with curly golden-brown locks. Arielle was monitoring the checkout with her arms crossed to keep them off the controls, although she would occasionally reach out and touch her screen to change the display.
Arielle notice him down below her and reached up to the buckle on her harness, preparatory to releasing it. "You need help with suit?" she asked cheerfully, the imp-brace flashing.
That was all the incentive that Nels needed. "Nope," he replied gruffly, and grabbing the backpack of the suit with his toes, he hauled himself and the heavy suit hand over hand up the rungs in the wall, through the airlock, past the two women on the bridge and on up the rungs of the passway in the ascent module to the suit storage locker on the third deck.
The final two passengers boarded. One was David with his suit and personal baggage, which in his case was a special sonovideo board that he could plug into the computer consoles on either the Falcon or Dragonfly to entertain either himself or the crew. The other was Katrina, who would be taking care of John and Carmen while they were being transferred back to Prometheus. She busied herself during the wait for launch by rearranging part of the sleeping quarters on the ascent module into a temporary sick bay with two beds. Finally, all was ready. There were no prolonged goodbyes this time, for they would be back in less than a day.
"We're now hovering over the north spin pole of Rocheworld," came George's voice over Red's imp. "Actually ." he added, "since the light pressure from Barnard is slightly weaker than the gravity pull, we're not hovering, but slowly falling. I'll have enough light in my sails to pull out of my dive as soon as you leave, but you don't have any sail, so the minute you leave, you're going to be pulled straight down."
"I'm counting on that," said Red calmly. "To save my fuel, I'll wait to fire my rocket until I see the white of their tides."
"No sweat anyway, jet jockey," added Arielle from the copilot harness. "Even if the rockets don't work, we don't crash. We just fall straight through zero-gee point and bounce up again at opposite pole."
"Take her away, Red," said George.
"The Eagle is leaving its nest again," replied Red, as she lifted the ascent module on its control jets and moved out between the support shrouds and under the gigantic silvery sail.
The sail above Prometheus was tilted at almost broadside to Barnard as George applied maximum sail acceleration. He and James had arranged for the acceleration profile to decrease their orbital speed relative to Rocheworld almost to zero, just as Prometheus passed over the north spin pole of the double planet. The Eagle, dropped off with no orbital motion, was now falling straight down along the polar axis. Red rotated the craft so they all had a good view, Red and Arielle out the forward windshield on the bridge, and Katrina, David, and Nels out the viewport in the lounge. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, the spinning orbs of the beautiful double planet grew larger.
When they first left Prometheus, Barnard had been behind Roche, so its illuminated outer hemisphere was the only portion of the double planet visible. The shadow from Roche was falling on Eau, leaving it totally dark. As the hour passed and they continued to drop, Rocheworld continued rotating around in its six hour day, and the leading pole of Eau experienced sunrise, which spread over the planetoid until both lobes were half illuminated.
"Good timing on George's part," said Red. "By the time we arrive, it will be daylight at the pickup point."
"We have reached one kilometer per second," Arielle reminded her.
"Might as well wait until just before we hit the upper atmosphere before we fire our rockets," Red replied calmly, letting the spacecraft build up speed. "These big booster engines don't like to do rapid starts and stops."
From down below in the lounge came the voice of Nels, echoed by his words coming through their imps. "I have the Dragonfly in the telescope. It is approaching the midpoint between the two planets."
Red looked carefully down at the bow-tie shaped band of clouds that were drifting through the narrow neck from Roche to Eau as the heated atmosphere of Roche poured out of the Roche highlands down onto the Eau oceans. It was Arielle who first spotted the silver cross.
"There is Dragonfly. She is next to cloud that look like puppy with long ears."
The voice of Jack, the voice persona for the Eagle, came from Red's imp. "Since Rocheworld is approaching periapsis with Barnard, the entire atmospheric envelope has expanded considerably, including the neck portion. I would recommend that we commence deceleration in five minutes."
"Sounds like a good idea to me," said Red, using the control thruster to tilt the spacecraft so the main rocket engine pointed downward. "Sightseeing is over!" she broadcast through her imp. "Everybody get to your landing stations and buckle in. Gees in five minutes." There was a scramble down below. Katrina and David climbed up the passway and took their places at the communications and computer consoles, while Nels secured the telescope and galley, and headed for one of the sleeping racks in the crew quarters.
"I'm going to take it easy on you and only pull one gee," said Red.
"That only makes it last longer," complained David as he tilted his chair back and pulled the touchscreen off the console and put it in his lap.
Red watched her screen and waited until the miniature spacecraft in the display reached the red portion of the trajectory, then pushed the throttle forward to twenty percent. The large engine roared into life, and riding a long tail of flame, the Eagle settled down onto its perch of nothing.
Red turned to Katrina. "What are the radar range and doppler readings from the two lobes?"
"The ranges to the two surfaces are equal to within twenty kilometers of each other, and the doppler shift is essentially zero. Nice piloting."
"Just followed Jack's plot on the screen. We should be at the zero gravity point between the two planets. Better get out my sixty billion dollar gravity detector and check to make sure."
Taking a heavy gold coin out of her shirt pocket she placed it in mid-air. It hung there. If they had been in a "free-fall" orbit, the coin, not being at the center of mass of the spacecraft, would have drifted from where she had placed it.
"Zero gee," she announced after a while.
Arielle, whose eyes were always busy looking first at her controls, then out the window, then out the portholes, then back to her controls, suddenly took hold of the controls and expertly used the attitude control jets to spin the ascent module on its axis until the large landing windows in the cockpit were facing Eau. So accurate was her control that the gold coin did not change position, just rotated a quarter turn. Framed in the window was a silver aeroplane, rising up from Eau to meet them.
"You hold her steady, Arielle, while the rest of us get ready for company," said Red. She turned to David. "You and Nels had better get your suits on. Katrina can check you out while I get the airlock ready."
By the time the three made it down the two flights of passway to the engineering deck, Nels was already in his suit and putting on his helmet. Of course, not having to put legs and feet down into uncooperative leggings with tightfitting joints made dressing considerably easier. Katrina checked him out, and turned to David as Nels activated his 'stiction boots and clumped across the deck to where Red was checking out the airlock. Soon the two of them were cycled through. With safety lanyards attached to handholds inside the lock, they opened the outer door and watched as the Dragonfly approached.
As Tony coasted the Dragonfly closer to the Eagle, Shirley unstrapped herself and made her way back hand over hand to the rear of the aeroplane in the almost non-existent gravity. After living at a tenth-gee for a few weeks, it took a little time for her coordination to get used to the mechanics of free-fall motion again. She also noticed that the cleaning imps were busy again, flying here and there to capture specks of dirt, loose utensils, and other objects that were no longer held down by gravity. She floated slowly through the privacy curtain to where Cinnamon, Richard, and Caroline were tending their injured and sick comrades.
"Where's Carmen?" Shirley asked, looking around.
"Hanging next to the airlock," said Richard, nodding to a silvery sack with a big zipper and large handles. "All curled up like that, she fit into a standard rescue bag with room to spare. John, however, is a more difficult problem. Help Caroline at that end."
John was lying in the basket stretcher that had been used to transport him from the sick bay on the Falcon to one of the large bunks on the Dragonfly. A portion of the Christmas Bush was riding on the stretcher, applying pressure to a bag of medicated solution that was being percolated into his veins. On the other side of the stretcher was a tank of oxygen with a hose leading to a mask over John's mouth. Shirley, having gone through this before in getting John from the Falcon to the Dragonfly, held the stretcher while Caroline opened a large rescue bag and slid it over the foot of the stretcher and up over John's body, where it was taken by Richard.
"Like bagging Little White—with toys," joked Richard.
John started to chuckle, then broke into a hacking cough. Blood and phlegm oozed from the side of his mouth as he got his spasms under control.
"I'd better go with him to make sure he doesn't suffocate," said Cinnamon, wiping out his mouth and cleaning out the oxygen mask before putting it back on his face. "Somebody get me a flashlight."
Shirley reached to her side and pulled her permalite from its magnetic holder on her belt. With a practiced thumb, she flicked it to flood beam and handed it to Cinnamon.
"Good for six hours," she said. "Make sure you return it. It's my favorite."
With Richard and Shirley holding the two ends of the basket stretcher, it was easy for Cinnamon to straddle the stretcher and sit above John's knees with her legs wrapped around the lower end of the basket and her hands holding the top edges of the basket near John's shoulders. Bending her head, she let them pull the bag over them both and zip them inside.
One by one, two silver bags, one small and one large, exited the airlock on Dragonfly and were hauled by solicitous spacesuited humans into the nearby airlock on Eagle.
Cinnamon hovered over John as he was strapped down onto one of the beds in the sick bay of the ascent module. A small section of the Christmas Bush was making sure that the hose to his mask was free from kinks and that the flow of oxygen would continue throughout his trip back up to Prometheus. She glanced over to the next bed where Carmen was already strapped down. Carmen had been tranquilized for the trip and, now that she was asleep, she lost her vacant stare and looked almost normal.
"She would hate to have you see her without her makeup," Cinnamon said when she noticed John following her gaze over to Carmen.
"Hey, wait," John said, coughing weakly. He pushed aside the imp holding the oxygen mask and whispered hoarsely, "I know you want . to get back ."
"Hush!" said Cinnamon, replacing the imp. "If you have to talk, just move your lips. Jack? Can you use his imp to lip read?"
The computer didn't answer but most of the imp moved beneath the mask to rest on John's lips. A few of the tiny twigs even entered his mouth to monitor his tongue movements. After a moment, John's words came from the imp in Jack's voice. "Please, stay for a moment. I want to talk to you. While I was . out, I saw . things."
Here in zero gee, Cinnamon could not sit on John's bed but she hovered near his head and took his hand. "You know," she said. "A lot of people have strange visions after near death experiences."
"Bright lights? Long tunnels filled with all my long dead relations? A voice telling me to take a number?" John smiled under the sparkling mask. "Nothing like that. The thing is, Cinnamon, I never really left. I saw you. I watched as Richard pulled me up into the Dragonfly, I saw you pounding on my chest, I heard you yelling at me. You know I did . you saw me."
"What?"
"You looked up from my body . you looked right at me. You told me to quit fucking around. You made me come back ." John insisted, gripping her fingers harder.
"What do you want me to say?" Cinnamon asked quietly. "I did say that ." her voice trailed away.
"I could see more than just your body . it was like I could see inside everyone. I could see Richard's anger and insecurity, and the way he is always fighting an urge to drink."
"Richard Redwing!? Are you sure you're not just projecting your prejudices onto him?"
"I don't know . I don't know if anything I saw is true. I saw Carmen as—tripled. At the same time, she was a little girl, a teenager, and the Carmen we know. They were all angry and hurt and guilty. Can I use that to help her? Is any of it true? Can you tell me?"
"Go on."
"When I was looking inside you, I saw something special about you, also. You can sense what is going on inside others, can't you? It's as if the songs you are always singing, are somehow connected to what the people around you are thinking. I know that sometimes when an old tune starts ringing around in my brain, I often find that the lyrics are connected to whatever else I am thinking about, but you take it a step further. It's as if the songs in your mind are telling what is going on in other people's minds. You use it, don't you? You know you have this insight and you use it to help people."
My Daddy always told me that if you're not helping, then you're just in the way," she admitted in a barely audible whisper.
"Help me, then," he asked. "Help me to help Carmen."
For a long time Cinnamon was silent. She let go of John's hand and drifted over to the unconscious Carmen. Cinnamon frowned for a while, then started humming softly, working her way through a long low-pitched tune until she got to what her heart told her was the relevant line.
"'Fellows, it's been good to know you.'," she murmured to herself in a puzzled tone. Then she turned back to face John. "That's from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I think .
." She paused for a while before continuing. "I think it means that Carmen was expecting you to drown. She wanted you dead," Cinnamon finished bluntly. She left, closing the door behind he. Just outside she met Katrina returning with a new tank of oxygen for John.
"Nels is waiting in the airlock and has the rescue bag ready to take you back to Dragonfly," she said. Cinnamon left down the corridor to the passway, while Katrina entered the door to the sick bay. All concern, she floated over to check Carmen's straps to make sure she was buckled in for their flight up to Prometheus. After changing John's oxygen tank and checking his straps, she left them both to buckle herself into one of the sleeping racks right outside the sick bay door where she would be close to them if they needed her.
"Jack?" John asked his imp after she had left. "As long as I have to lie here, I might as well broaden my medical knowledge. How about giving me a lecture from Psychology 101?"