Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [186]
“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.
Chapter 94 — ORLI COVITZ
Starting with the framework of the old Klikiss city, the new colonists swiftly converted their temporary camp into a secure settlement on Corribus. It was a whole new world to tame. So much basic work remained to be done that the settlers had little time just to explore.
Orli, though, considered it part of her job.
Years ago xeno-archaeologists had gone through the alien ruins, gathering as much material as possible before their funding ran out. Later, Hud Steinman and other Hansa scouts had done a preliminary investigation of the area. However, Orli knew there were hundreds of nooks and crannies where no previous investigator had ever set foot.
Though her father was the one who someday expected to find lost riches, some of his persistent imagination had rubbed off on her. What if the Klikiss had hidden records or buried treasure during their last battle in the granite-walled canyon?
When she slipped off to explore, Orli left her furry cricket in its cage. Her father had taken his shift in the listening station at the communications tower, where he was probably passing the time by dabbling with strange ideas for inventions…
She went to where the canyon narrowed and the half-melted granite walls rose sheer and steep. Irregular mineral concentrations within the cracks had, over millennia, seeped out and grown into blocky crystals of alum, like stacked cubes of murky glass. They spangled the cliffsides like strands of rough-cut diamonds. In her original notation, Margaret Colicos had poetically described the site as “the mountains weeping crystal blood.” Margaret had wondered if