Crashlander   ::   Нивен Ларри

«You're ahead of me on this,» I admitted. «What has this lander got for belly rockets?»

«Your basic hydrogen and oxygen,» Feather said. «High heat and a water-vapor exhaust. We'll burn the nest out.»

«Good.»

* * *



Yo! Boy, when Carlos's 'doc is finished with you, you know it!

Open.

The sky was a brilliant sprawl of stars, some of them moving-spacecraft, weather eyes, the wheel — and a single lopsided moon. The island was shadow-teeth cutting into the starscape. I slid out carefully, into a blackness like the inside of my empty belly, and yelled as I dropped into seawater.

The water was hip deep, with no current to speak of. I wasn't going to drown, or be washed away, or lost. Fafnir's moon was a little one, close in. Tides would be shallow.

Still I'd been lucky: I could have wakened under water.

How did people feel about nudity here? But my bundle of clothes hadn't washed away. Now the boots clasped my feet like old friends. The sleeves of the dead man's survival jacket tailed way past my hands until I rolled them up, and of course the front and back were in shreds. The pants were better: too big, but with elastic ankle bands that I just pulled up to my knees. I swallowed a tannin secretion dose. I couldn't have done that earlier. The 'doc would have read the albino gene in my DNA and «cured» me of an imposed tendency to tan.

There was nothing on all of Fafnir like Carlos's 'doc. I'd have to hide it before I could ever think about rescue.

* * *



«Our medical equipment,» Carlos had called it; and Feather had answered, «Hardly ours.»

Carlos was patient. «It's all we've got, Feather. Let me show you how to use it. First, the diagnostics —»

The thing was as massive as the inflatable boat that would carry us to Shasht. Carlos had a gravity lift to shove under it. The intensive care cavity was tailored just for Carlos Wu, naturally, but any of us could be served by the tethers and sleeves and hypo-tipped tubes and readouts along one whole face of the thing: the service wall.

«These hookups do your diagnostics and set the chemical feeds going. Feather, it'll rebalance body chemistry, in case I ever go schiz or someone poisons me or something. I've reprogrammed it to take care of you too.» I don't think Carlos noticed the way Feather looked at it, and him.

«Now the cavity. It's for the most serious injuries, but I've reprogrammed it for you, Sharrol my dear —»

«But it's exactly Carlos's size,» Feather told us pointedly. «The UN thinks a lot of Carlos.