Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [111]
“Propulsion systems.” With that Mallory turned and began to retrace their original line from the repair ship, not walking deliberately this time but moving in long, bounding strides through the low gravity. Each time he touched down his feet kicked up a cloud of slow-settling dust—dust and small rocks.
Nadurovina was visibly concerned, and Tse’s expression bordered on the frantic; but Rothenburg saw and understood. By running Mallory was not just returning as rapidly as possible to the crater: He was delivering a lesson in physics. Ignoring the rising plaints of the technicians, the major raced after the retreating patient.
Arriving at the crater’s edge he found Mallory once more searching the terrain. Not along the crater’s rim this time, but beyond. Well beyond. Without a word he moved off to one side and commenced hunting on his own. He heard Nadurovina long before she reached him.
“What’s going on? You heard the tech. We have to return to the ship!”
“Five minutes,” the excited officer told her. “Another five minutes. Then we’ll all go back together. Right, Mallory?”
“Right,” the spirited reply came. Some private epiphany had restored the patient’s spirits even as they had revived Rothenburg’s enthusiasm for the mission. “Five minutes. And if we don’t find it then, we’ll come back and spend some real time looking for it. Everybody, five minutes! Look for the rock.”
Tse fell to searching alongside him. “I thought you told us that you placed it on the rim of the little crater, Alwyn. In a line between your lifeboat and the broken hill.”
“I did.” Not looking up, he continued moving methodically over the airless landscape, head down, searching, searching. “But when repair craft came from the Ronin to recover my lifeboat, one of them might have positioned itself with its grapplers facing that way.” He rose just long enough to point directly behind them, back toward the waiting boat. “When it fired its thrusters to commence the return to the cruiser, the exhaust blast would have come this way.” One arm swept around in a wide, swooping arc that terminated with his hand pointed toward the ragged promontory. “It would have blown dust and debris in the direction of the hill.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “And rocks.”
He nodded vigorously. “Maybe even a few big rocks. Maybe even one shaped like a triangle.”
They found it with six percent air remaining in their suits. There was nothing under it. Another man might have been crushed by the sphere’s absence, but not Mallory. He recognized every rill in the stone, every pore, every crack. It was his rock, the one he had positioned as a marker over the container holding the recording. Half mad at the time he might have been, but the sane half had known what it was doing. Of that infinitely priceless little sealtight there was no sign.
“It’s here.” Carefully he put the rock down. “For God’s sake, everyone watch where you step.” His head was in constant motion, minutely scrutinizing the surface around the feet of his companions as well as his own.
Nadurovina studied the gently rolling, dust-and grit-covered terrain. “We’ll need dozens of searchers. Even with numbers it could take months to find anything in this.”
“If the exhaust blast from the repair vehicle blew a rock this size so far from the crater’s rim, the container holding the recording would have been blown ten times as far.” Rothenburg was looking not at his feet, but off in the distance.
“Not necessarily,” Mallory argued. “It could have been blasted down into the dust, or become caught up against another rock, or the rim of one of these smaller craters. It could be an arm’s length from here, or a hundred.”
The major was nodding. He was doing what he did best, what he most enjoyed: organizing. “Everyone will be properly instructed. We’ll bring shape sensors in, and have some simple mesh boxes made up for sifting dust. We’ll find it.” His tone was decisive.
“Unless it was blown off into space,” one of the techs contended. “The gravity here is so weak.”
“That is a possibility.” The ever-rational