Crashlander   ::   Нивен Ларри

I could make myself safer, and Sharrol too, if I mapped out a wont-case scenario.

Feather's Plan B: Kill Shaeffer. Take the rest prisoners, to impose her will on Carlos … but Carlos flees with the boat. So, Plan B-1: Feather holds Sharrol at gunpoint. (Alive.) Some days later she waves down a boat. Blam, and a stolen boat sails toward Shasht. Or stops to stow Sharrol somewhere, maybe on another coral island, maybe imprisoned inside a plastic tent with a live lamplighter horde prowling outside.

And Carlos? He's had four months, now, to find Sharrol and Feather. He's a genius, ask anyone. And Feather wants to get in touch … unless she's given up on Carlos, decided to kill him.

If I could trace Carlos's path, I would find Louis and Tanya and even Sharrol.

Carlos Plan B-1 follows Plan A as originally conceived by Feather. The kids would be stowed aboard the iceliner as if already registered. Carlos would register and be frozen. Feather could follow him to Home … maybe on the same ship, if she hustled. But –

No way could Feather get herself frozen with a gun in her hand. That would be the moment to take her, coming out of freeze on Home.

There, I had a target. On Shasht they could tell me who had boarded the Zombie Queen for Home. What did I have to do to get to Shasht?

«Feed myself, that's easy. Collect rainwater too. Get off the island …» That, at least, was not a puzzle. I couldn't build a raft. I couldn't swim to another island. But a sailor lost at sea will die if cast ashore; therefore, local tradition decrees that he must be rescued.

«Collect some money. Get to Shasht. Hide myself.» Whatever else was lost to me, to us — whoever had died, whoever still lived — there was still the mission, and that was to be free of the United Nations and Earth.

And Carlos Wu's 'doc would finger me instantly. It was advanced nanotechnology: it screamed its Earthly origin. It might be the most valuable item on Fafnir, and I had no wealth at all, and I was going to have to abandon it.

* * *



Come daylight, I moved the 'doc. I still wanted to hide it in the lamplighter nest. The gravity lift would lift it but not push it uphill. But I solved it.

One of the secrets of life: know when and what to give up.

I waited for low tide and then pushed it out to sea, and turned off the lift. The water came almost to the faceplate. Seven hours later it didn't show at all. And the next emergency might kill me unless it happened at low tide.

The nights were as warm as the days.