Resurgence

Another flash of blue distracted him during his final words. This time it came from the left, brighter than the last one. He could follow its trace, beginning well behind the Savior and rippling along a straight line that led toward the grid point boundary. Or to Lara? It was impossible to say.

Hans turned off his radio and leaned across to Darya. “Did you see it?”

“Yes.” Darya was in the co-pilot’s seat. “What is it?”

“I hoped you could tell me.” Hans turned his radio back on and kept his voice calm and dispassionate. “This is Captain Rebka. Professor Lang and I are detecting some kind of unknown activity on the surface. Senior Specialists Blesh and Quistner, I strongly urge both of you to return at once to the Savior. I then propose that we lift off and hold a safe altitude until we know what we are dealing with.”

“Captain Rebka, what is the nature of the activity?”

Wrong response. When you think there might be danger, you run first and ask questions later.

Hans said, “It resembles a blue will-o’-the-wisp or dust devil, similar to what we noticed from orbit in the track of our laser.”

“I saw it!” Lara had finally halted, maybe fifty paces from the grid patch. “Ben, it ran right past me on an angle and merged into the green around the edge of the grid. Where the blue met the green I saw a kind of rainbow burst of light. Could you see it from where you are?”

“I saw nothing. Lara, back up and return to the Savior. At once. That’s an order!”

But Ben was not following his own instruction. He was still moving toward Lara. Under Hans’s control, the Savior crept after him.

Lara laughed. “Ben, you are overreacting. You must be receiving the readings from my suit. You can see for yourself, everything is nominal and there’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s not your decision to make. Lara, if you don’t go back to the ship at once you’ll be in big trouble.”

“All right, Ben, I’m on my way.” Lara’s suit faceplate reflected light from the Savior as she turned. “But you are making a big deal out of nothing. We are here to explore, not to ignore anything interesting that we see.”

She was moving toward the ship, but the range-rate reading told Hans that she was in no hurry. At her speed it would take minutes to reach the Savior. Hans’s fingers itched to hit the sequence that would boost them to orbit at maximum acceleration.

He resisted the temptation, leaned back, and concentrated on the banks of readings from both Lara’s suit and the ship’s all-around sensors. As she said, everything in her immediate vicinity registered no change. However, that wasn’t true of the edge of the grid point area a hundred meters beyond her. Instead of its previous absurdly low temperature of 1.2 kelvins, one spot now failed to report any temperature reading at all. That was impossible. When energy was delivered to a place—and even the blue dust devils must contain some energy—the temperature at that point had to rise. It could not possibly go down.

Hans felt his skin crawl. “Ben, Lara. I’m seeing surface changes near the edge of the grid patch. Get back to the ship—now.”

Even as he spoke he realized his mistake. If anything could keep Ben Blesh outside, it would be a direct order to return from Hans Rebka.

Predictably, Ben said at once, “The responsibility for bringing us in is mine, Rebka, not yours. Lara, if you don’t get a move on, I’ll come and drag you back.”

Hans saw another gleam of light. It was the reflection from Lara’s faceplate. Instead of answering, she had turned her head to look behind her. She said, “This is crazy. Captain Rebka, you’re seeing things. I’m a lot closer to the grid than anyone else, and I notice no change there at all.”

While she was still speaking, one of the displays of the Savior lit so brightly that it cast a flickering blue shadow onto the controls at Hans’s fingertips. He looked, in time to see another line of fire, bigger and brighter than the first two, racing like a blue fuse across the surface. It rippled well wide of the Savior, cleared Ben Blesh and Lara Quistner, and ran on to the edge of the gridded area. Hans saw a flare of light and a semicircular arc of rainbow colors standing up from the dark plain of Iceworld.

This time the flash was so bright that neither Lara nor Ben could miss it. Lara gasped and stood rooted, at the same time as Ben began to move.

“Not that way!” Hans could hardly believe his eyes. Ben was heading toward Lara—away from the Savior—into possible danger. Hans’s survival instincts told him to boost the ship away from the surface at once, but he continued to follow Ben.

Ben shouted, “Lara! MOVE!”

It had the right effect. She jerked into motion, starting to run across the smooth plane of the surface. As Hans had predicted, real running in such a low gravity field was impossible. Lara strained toward the ship with the agonized slow-motion action of a woman fleeing in a nightmare.