By the time Davlin’s ship limped to the edge of the Relleker system, only fumes remained in the stardrive chambers, but his transmitter still called out for help. Relleker’s sun looked bright, its planets brilliant dots—all of them impossibly far away. He spent hours in detailed calculations, considering and dismissing many desperate alternatives.
Finally, with careful timing, he fired a burst of his engines, flaming out the last of his fuel to give the ship a push, taking it out of its decreasing velocity curve so that he could coast just a bit farther. He would drift closer to one of the planets, but much too slowly.
After a day, when he’d begun to lose hope that he would be spotted in time, his ship was intercepted by an outlying picket scout keeping watch for hydrogue incursions. The Relleker defense scouts were not formally part of the EDF, and apparently poorly trained, but at least they were in the right place. As soon as they brought him aboard, knowing he had no time to lose, Davlin hauled out his old credentials from Chairman Wenceslas and flaunted his EDF rank. When the scouts still appeared uneasy, he used silver-beret techniques to commandeer the picket ship so that he could race to Relleker and make his demands.
The people on Crenna were freezing, dying . . . and counting on him.
The Relleker population, though, was as unprepared for austerity measures as most colonies. This had been a luxury world, a spa and vacation spot that catered to wealthy Hansa citizens. Far from being self-sufficient, the inhabitants had long since used most of their ekti to gather emergency materials and discretionary items they thought they needed to survive.
When Davlin presented himself to the Relleker governor, a well-fed-looking woman named Jane Pekar, she said she had no resources to assist the Crenna colonists. She shrugged. “Irrespective of your credentials, Mr. Lotze, and your clear urgency, we simply can’t help you.”
“Your people don’t appear to be trying very hard to come up with solutions.” Davlin remained standing in the governor’s office long after the woman had become uncomfortable. But he had no way to force Relleker to take action, not even to tempt them into offering assistance. He couldn’t believe that despite overwhelming odds he had made it here, only to find himself with a new set of obstacles and no time to work around them. He was frustrated at his own helplessness. Had he come this far only to fail the people of Crenna after all?
Finally, with a sigh, Governor Pekar said, “We’re due to have a scheduled supply run in another day or two. Someone named Kett . . . the Voracious something. Maybe they can help you.”
Davlin smiled at last.
When Rlinda Kett and Branson Roberts arrived in their two ships, Davlin immediately went to meet them. “You did tell me to contact you if I ever needed any help.” He found it fundamentally unsettling to depend on anyone. “Now I need it.”
Rlinda gave him a huge grin as he explained the situation. “Hah! I’m happy to help. You didn’t think I was one of those government types who goes back on a promise, did you?”
Both she and Roberts dumped everything from their cargo bays, emptying out all the crates and materials that should have been distributed to other colonies. “I’ll just add it to Relleker’s tab. A hundred and thirty people, you said? Are they at least thinner than I am?” She patted her wide hips.
“I can promise that.”
“Then let’s go.”
The Voracious Curiosity and the Blind Faith descended into the darkness of the smothered Crenna system. Davlin rode in the cockpit next to Rlinda Kett, much more animated and intense now than he had been when she’d dropped him off at Crenna not long ago. He could barely contain his relief.
A transmission came from the Blind Faith. “We’re here, but somebody switched off the sun, all right. Can’t even tell we’re in a planetary system.”
“Just watch out that you don’t run smack into the star, BeBob. Sometimes you don’t pay enough attention to your piloting.”
“I resent that, Rlinda.”
“But I don’t hear you arguing.”
She adjusted course, and Davlin leaned close to the cockpit windows. Viewing through infrared filters, they could still see fading colors as the planet’s thermal energy bled into space. With the sun’s nuclear fires extinguished, the whole Crenna system was nothing more than a cooling corpse, a dark ball in space. The planet’s atmosphere had already frozen out; ice sheets were piled on top of shattered ground upheavals. The air had condensed into carbon dioxide snow. All lakes and streams were obliterated, every living thing wiped out on the surface.
Davlin shook his head. “I hope the people are still alive down there.”
“How long did you say this ice age has lasted?” Roberts transmitted.
“Less than two weeks. There’s still heat emanating from the planet itself, and the star’s not entirely cold. Overall there’s about one percent of the former flux.”
“Good thing we brought our shovels,” Rlinda said. “Tell me where to go, Davlin.”
Before departing, he had placed a locator beacon with a long-lived battery near the hatch that covered the tunnels. He had never mentioned it to Mayor Ruis, not wanting the people huddled in their warrens to realize how bad the outer environment would get. He scanned through frequency bands and finally located the faint pinging of the locator beacon, much weaker than he’d expected. To his dismay, he realized that the beacon itself was buried under deep ice.
“I’ll project a bull’s-eye for you.”
They descended through swirling air that had frozen into a slurry of snow and carbon dioxide flakes. Davlin operated the comm systems. “Crenna colony, this is Davlin Lotze.” He waited, but heard only static. “Mayor Ruis, are you still receiving? I’ve brought help.” He tried several times, equally unsuccessful.
Rlinda looked at her equipment and shook her head. “Oh, don’t read too much into it, Davlin. The storms and the snow are building up a significant EM disturbance, and a normal signal might not be able to punch through all that ice.”
When the two ships reached position, Davlin peered down at the swirling layers of ice and frozen atmosphere. He couldn’t even see the protrusions of his hangar or any of the town’s buildings.
“Shall we sprinkle some salt?” Roberts joked.
“If it’s frozen atmosphere, there’ll be a very low volatilization point. We can melt it with the exhaust from our engines,” Rlinda said. “Don’t have to be pretty about it.” She dropped the Curiosity closer for a slow landing and let the hot vented gases blast geysers of steam from a wide area near the sealed vault door. Drifting up and down to hold her position, in half an hour she had cut a significant divot, then withdrew to let the Blind Faith take its turn in the small zone, evaporating more of the thick frozen shield.
Before long, they had excavated a large crater around the sealed metal cap.
“Now for the next problem,” Davlin said. “We were in such a hurry to get the Crenna colonists underground, to build a safe haven that would keep them warm, we just installed that single vault lid—not a sophisticated airlock.”
“Can they survive long enough to make it into our ships?” Rlinda asked.
Davlin shook his head. “There’s no air. It’s all frozen out.”
“Well, then, that is interesting,” she said.
“There’s no tube to connect the ship and the hatch,” BeBob said.
“How many extra environment suits do we have?” Davlin asked.
“I’ve got three aboard, and BeBob has three on the Blind Faith.”
“Four,” the other captain transmitted.
“Okay.” Davlin tapped his fingers on the panel. “You have an emergency shelter dome, right?”
Rlinda nodded. “It’s in the crash kit, but it only holds a couple of people.”
“So, we erect and pressurize the tent as an airtight bubble atop the hatch and keep all the suits inside, like a small airlock chamber. Then when we crack the hatch lid from below, a couple of the colonists can come out and suit up. They’ll go to the ships six or seven at a time.”
“A hundred and thirty people? That’ll take days for suiting up, pressurizing, and repressurizing,” Roberts said.
“Then it’ll have to take days.” Davlin flashed Rlinda an uncharacteristic grin. “But it’ll work.”
They all suited up and worked together outside, surrounded by the towering ice walls of the narrow borehole they had blasted down to the vault lid. They wrestled out the large flexible structure designed as a sealed dome for short-term survival in an inhospitable space environment. Then they covered the region of the lid and anchored all the surrounding points.
Davlin took one of his heavy tools and banged loudly on the metal cap, hoping to signal the colonists who had not been able to read his transmissions. Before long, he felt a frantic vibrating response, people hammering back from the other side. “At least somebody’s alive.”
Still suited, Branson Roberts came through the sphincter door, hauling the three extra suits from the Curiosity. He and Davlin would make a second trip to bring the four others from the Blind Faith. Rlinda set up heaters inside the survival dome.
“This’ll be a tedious and not very dramatic ending to our rescue operation,” Roberts said.
“Saving people one step at a time is exciting enough for me.” Rlinda playfully punched Davlin in the shoulder. “You’re pretty compassionate for a spy, Mr. Lotze.”
Without answering, he worked the frozen hatch controls. When he finally succeeded in opening the heavy metal lid, several familiar colonists burst out, grinning. Mayor Ruis was one of the first, throwing his arms around Davlin and giving him a hug.
The greeting unsettled him, but Davlin had no regrets.