This Perfect Day

He shone his light at the rotor housings. Twigs were piled in one of them. He brushed them out, picked them all out, and shone the light on the rotor within; it was new, shiny. The other rotor was old, its blades nicked and one missing. He sat down at the controls and found the switch that lighted them. A miniature clock said 5:21 Fri 27 Aug 169. He switched on one propulsion rotor and then the other; they scraped but then hummed smoothly. He switched them off, looked at the gauges and indicators, and switched the control lights off.

The cliff was the same as before. No members had sprung from hiding. He turned to the sea behind him; it was empty and flat, silvered in a narrowing path that ended under the nearly full moon. No boats were flying toward him. He sat in the boat for a few minutes, and then he climbed out of it and walked back to the cave. Lilac was standing outside it. "Is it all right?" she asked. "No, it's not," he said. "It wasn't left by traders because there's no message or anything in it. The clock stopped last year but it has a new rotor. I didn't try the lift rotor because of the sand, but even if it works, the skirting is cracked in two places and it may just wallow and get nowhere. On the other hand it may take us directly into '082—to a little seaside medicenter—even though it's supposed to be off telecontrol." Lilac stood looking at him.

"We might as well try it though," he said. "If traders didn't leave it, they're not going to come ashore while it's sitting here. Maybe we're just two very lucky members." He gave the flashlight to her.

He got the carton and the blanket-bundle from the cave and held one under each arm. They started walking toward the boat. "What about the things to trade?" she said.

"We'll have if," he said. "A boat must be worth a hundred times more than cameras and first-aid kits." He looked toward the cliff. "All right, doctors!" he called. "You can come out now!"

"Shh, don't!" she said.

"We forgot the sandals," he said.

"They're in the carton."

He put the carton and the bundle into the boat and they scraped the birdwaste from the broken windscreen with pieces of shell. They lifted the front of the boat and hauled it around toward the sea, then lifted the back and hauled again.

They kept lifting and hauling at either end and finally they had the boat down in the surf, bobbing and veering clumsily.

Chip held it while Lilac climbed aboard, and then he pushed it farther out and climbed in with her.

He sat down at the controls and switched on their lights. She sat in the seat beside him, watching. He glanced at tier-she looked anxiously at him—and he switched on the propulsion rotors and then the lift rotor. The boat shook violently, flinging them from side to side. Loud clankings banged from beneath it. He caught the steering lever, held it, and turned the speed-control knob. The boat splashed forward and the shaking and clanging lessened. He turned the speed higher, to twenty, twenty-five. The clanking stopped and the shaking subsided to a steady vibration. The boat scuffed along on the water's surface.

"It's not lifting," he said.

"But it's moving," she said.

"For how long though? It's not built to hit the water this way and the skirting's cracked already." He turned the speed higher and the boat splashed through the crests of swells. He tried the steering lever; the boat responded. He steered north, got out his compass, and compared its reading with the direction indicator's. "It's not taking us into '082," he said.

"At least not yet."

She looked behind them, and up at the sky. "No one's coming," she said.

He turned the speed higher and got a little more lift, but the impact when they scraped the swells was greater. He turned the speed back down. The knob was at fifty-six. "I don't think we're doing more than forty," he said. "It'll be light when we get there, if we get there. It's just as well, I suppose; I won't get us onto the wrong island. I don't know how much this is throwing us off course."

Two other islands were near Majorca: EUR91766, forty kilometers to the northeast, the site of a copper-production complex; and EUR91603, eighty-five kilometers to the southwest, where there was an algae-processing complex and a climatonomy sub-center.

Lilac leaned close to Chip, avoiding the wind and spray from the broken part of the windscreen. Chip held the steering lever. He watched the direction indicator and the moonlit sea ahead and the stars that shone above the horizon.

The stars dissolved, the sky began to lighten, and there was no Majorca. There was only the sea, placid and endless all around them.

"If we're doing forty," Lilac said, "it should have taken seven hours. It's been more than that, hasn't it?"

"Maybe we haven't been doing forty," Chip said.