Ascending - James Alan Gardner [131]
“Some men don’t like their wives to fuss,” Lajoolie murmured. “And some women learn to hide their concern.”
We all stared at her a moment; then we quickly turned away and gazed at our feet. “Let’s take a look around,” Festina said in a muttery voice. We were glad to follow her forward.
Footprints
The great mud flats stretched in all directions. There was plenty of space to hold all the Cashling ships that had been captured thus far; and even as we watched, another small crusade vessel descended from the sky on a red beam of light, to be deposited a short distance from Unfettered Destiny. The other Cashling craft sat close by—no doubt to make it easier for the admiral robots to move from one ship to the next, looking for…well, looking for me.
I had clearly been their quarry. Apart from wondering why that was—and I wondered about it a great deal—one had to ask what the robots were supposed to do after I was secured. If, for example, they were under orders to carry my unconscious body to a place of imprisonment, how long before the Shaddill realized the robots had been waylaid? Perhaps only a few minutes. We must needs act quickly, before an alarm was raised; we had to bring the Shaddill to their knees (if they were such creatures as possessed knees) before they even knew we were coming.
But where to go? We were in the middle of the flats, with no exit in sight. Almost certainly, there had to be a door in the distant wall of the chamber—perhaps many doors. But the wall was curtained off by those thick stands of trees, and in the grayish twilight, it was impossible to see where doors might be hidden. Considering how large this hangar area was (almost the size of the cavern that held Oarville), it would take hours to walk the circumference…perhaps longer if the jungle-ish forests at the edge hindered our progress.
The same thoughts must have passed through Festina’s mind. She had stopped on a clear patch of ground and was turning in a slow circle, peering at the horizon with narrowed eyes. “Wish I had a Bumbler,” she muttered. That was a device human Explorers carried for scanning their surroundings; it had many Scientific Abilities, such as amplifying dim light and magnifying faraway objects. However, we did not possess such a device, so we would be forced to rely on our own ingenuity.
I am excellent at ingenuity.
“Here is what we must do,” I said. “We must spread out to look for tracks. The robots were heavy creatures of metal, and the ground is only dirt. They must surely have left discernible footprints. We shall find those footprints and follow them back to the point where the robots entered this chamber.”
Uclod’s mouth dropped open. “Missy!” he said, in tones of admiration. “Good thinking!”
“Oar’s right,” Festina agreed. “Let’s be quick about this.”
The footprints close to the Cashling ships were too jumbled to read; but when we fanned out a short distance, Sergeant Aarhus found a clear pair of booted tracks leading back in a straight line toward the distant walls. They were like a great big sign saying THIS WAY OUT.
Since time was short, we followed the tracks at a run…and since Uclod was short, Lajoolie carried him. (Nimbus showed no apparent difficulty keeping up with our pace—he simply compacted his body into a horizontal raindrop shape and flew right along beside us.)
It took five minutes to reach the trees: five minutes during which we saw nothing but mud, mud, mud. The mud was not the deep mucky kind, and our feet were not completely swallowed with every footfall; nevertheless, the run was strenuous business, especially for one with low reserves of energy. If at the end I was wheezing, it is not evidence I was piteously out of shape—I was in excellent shape. How many of you could pass four years without food, then run for five minutes on muddy terrain? You would most likely die