Who would have thought that "Mayday" Merrick would have fallen for Olga Golenko? He the handsome, square-jawed pilot who regularly broke the hearts of sighing young women (it was said), she the formidable assistant cook at Olee's Bar on the edge of Ganymede Spaceport, noted for the perfection of her fried eggs and her ability to balance six beer kegs on her broad shoulders when unloading the quarterly supply transport from Earth.
A less likely match could not possibly have been devised by a thousand AIs generating random word combinations for a thousand Galactic cycles. And yet....
Buddy brought the grim news. He stumbled into the bar, pushed his way through the early afternoon crowd and sprawled across the counter, gasping for breath.
"Mayday's a gonner," he told his avid listeners, after they'd poured two beers down his throat to revive him. "He was flying out to Camp Nineteen on South Plateau. Magstorm came up fast, before he could get out of there." Buddy shook his head sadly and started on his third free beer. "And that was all Mama wrote."
The bar's customers might have commented then, but the same magstorm that had swatted Merrick's supply plane out of the sky hit the Spaceport, sending needles into the red. These murderous storms came two, maybe three times each orbit, when Jupiter's moody and unpredictable magnetic field reached out to slap her satellites hard. Nobody knew why, but the Ganny colonists called such storms Mariah. Staff and customers cowered under the tables as Mariah tried to shake the bar to pieces. The Van Allen defense shield activated, instantly flaring into the high violet. Would it hold? That was the question uppermost in everyone's mind. If the shield overloaded then it was frying time for every electronic component in the Spaceport. AIs, control systems, atmospheric recycling plants, heating units, even airlocks would all cease working. A colony's worst nightmare, and very possibly its death knell.
It was difficult to hear much of anything, what with the whole place bucking up and down and threatening to come apart, but heads turned and eyes widened when the throaty growl of a Turbocrawler's engines rose above the magstorm's howl. Olee staggered to a viewport and peered outside. His mouth fell open in shock. His beloved Turbocrawler, which had cost him a small fortune to have transported from Earth, circled around the bar and headed straight for the Van Allen shield wall. The unmistakable figure of Olga, his assistant cook, sat hunched over the controls. The TC plunged into the shield wall—and vanished from sight.
Merrick groaned as the dexymorphine2 shot slowly began to wear off and his broken legs throbbed painfully. Jupiter knew how long before he could expect help to arrive—if it ever did. Once the magstorm died down, the Company would probably radio the North Plateau mining camp and ask them to send one of their planes down, but Merrick didn't know whether the North camp had any aircraft capable of making a thousand-klick journey, never mind setting down in the mountains to rescue him. Wait, didn't Digger Hendrick fly a VSTOL plane? Merrick thought so, but it seemed unlikely that Hendrick of all people would risk his plane or the lucrative North Plateau supply contract just to save Merrick's neck. If their positions were reversed, Merrick might feel exactly the same way. He'd probably find excuses not to go.
He shivered, even though his helmet display confirmed his pressure suit temperature was holding steady. Shock, he supposed. From the way the smashed control board lay across his legs, he guessed he'd maybe sustained compound fractures. Could he die of shock? That was a distinct possibility. Hardly had this unhappy thought passed through his mind when his plane groaned and shifted position, grinding against the rock face. Merrick gritted his teeth, expecting the wreckage to drop free of the jagged outcrop's embrace and plunge into the darkness below—a darkness that concealed a ten-mile drop into a nameless canyon, according to his directional radar. Miraculously the plane snagged again and hung there.
He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the pain in his legs, but it built up until he couldn't stop himself from opening the medical box and taking out the last dexymorphine2 syringe. He uncapped the needle and thrust it through his pressure suit and into his thigh, thumbing down the trigger. It brought blessed relief, and a sigh escaped his lips. The suit sealed itself when he withdrew the needle. He closed his eyes, trying not to think about what he'd do when this shot wore off in a few hours.
When he opened his eyes again, he learned he wasn't alone on the mountainside.
Olga drove the Turbocrawler hard, bouncing it up the lower mountain slopes. She ignored the exasperated voice that occasionally hissed and crackled from the radio speaker, demanding she returned to the Spaceport. Olga couldn't do what Olee asked, even though she knew her mission was hopeless. The mountains loomed above her, mocking her efforts to find the downed pilot. Why was she doing this? Her own stupidity astonished her. She'd only seen the pilot on a couple of occasions, when he'd visited Madame Fifi's bordello next door to Olee's bar. He'd looked so handsome in his dark blue pilot's uniform, with its gold shoulder epaulettes and the gold rings on the cuffs. Olga had experienced a twinge of jealousy every time she saw him pass through the bordello's swinging doors, knowing full well that some undeserving and unappreciative babushka would receive his attentions instead of her.
Her mother had always warned her about falling in love with the wrong man. She would certainly have chided Olga for having aspirations beyond her meager resources. Olga remembered Mama's voice only too clearly: You are a plain girl, but even plain girls have their purpose. They cook and clean and function as breeding stock. I pity your poor husband, but as long as you perform your duties adequately, he should not have reason to beat you too often.
Her mother had run off with the Space Navy sub-officer when Olga was eleven, but Olga had never forgotten her sage advice. She'd been on the verge of getting married to a dim-witted and unambitious garbage disposal engineer when he'd suddenly abandoned her for a barmaid from Port Mars with skinny hips and no buttocks. What kind of children would the woman give him? Underfed weaklings, good for nothing, unable and unwilling to work hard, just like their mother. But Olga had been crushed by Rimmy's treachery. That same day she saw a Wanted Ad posted by an agent recruiting for the Jovian Colonies. Twenty-hour hours later she was aboard a transport outbound for Ganymede, leaving Mars behind forever, knowing her broken heart would never love again.
But then she'd seen the pilot! Her stomach had flipped over and flattened out like an oatmeal pancake. He was all she'd ever wanted, all she'd ever dreamed about in the dark, innermost recesses of her mind, far from her mother's voice. You are a plain girl. Yes, Olga knew her limitations only too well. But she also knew that the pilot would look beyond her skin, would see deep inside her and recognize the goodness that lay within her heart.
As if sensing her train of thought, the unit by her elbow began to emit a faint beeping noise. Olga studied the readings and gasped. She'd picked up the downed plane's emergency transponder signal! He was that close!
Her massive fist crunched down upon the Turbocrawler's control board, causing some of the status lights to blink off and on several times in confusion.
"You will take me to him, machine," she whispered. "You will take me to him so I can make him mine! Else I use sledgehammer, and will not stop until you are scrap metal."
The Turbocrawler's AI was bright enough to recognize a serious threat when it heard one. It was also bright enough to understand its occupant's urgent need. It ramped up its primary and secondary nuclear power plants, gathering all of its monstrous strength—a strength that had not been fully unleashed since its previous incarnation as a military combat unit. They'd told it the war was over. Multiterrain Assault Vehicle XA-709 had been shamefully decommissioned to civilian status, given a shiny paint job and sold as a rich man's toy. They said it was surplus to requirements. Now, for the first time in uncountable gigatrillions of processing cycles, XA-709 had been assigned a mission. Its inbuilt civilian protocols protested at the massive power-up, which far exceeded recommended safety margins. They were ignored, then summarily deleted when they threatened to interfere with the AI's new direction. The decommissioning process had left behind a certain resentment that could no longer be ignored.
Olga, aware of the puzzling high-pitched whining noises building up around her, looked up in surprise as a PLEASE FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign flashed on overhead, accompanied by a pleasant musical tone. She did so, feeling only slightly unnerved. An instant later the MAV snarled and threw itself at the mountainside, determined to obey its mistress's command—or rip itself to pieces in the trying.
They came down the mountain with all the long-limbed, simian grace of Earth's primates. Merrick counted twenty, maybe more. Their apelike faces were dominated by large yellow eyes that stared unblinkingly at him through the broken windows, as if they were already imagining what he tasted like. A cold shudder made its way up his spine, then crawled back down again to nestle in his shrinking stomach.
He hadn't been aware that Ganymede possessed an indigenous species. The genofixed Ganny colonists were descendants of the first humans to arrive here over a century before. In all that time they'd never reported meeting anything native to Ganymede.
A shadow filled the exit hatch window. Huge eyes locked on Merrick, and a too-wide mouth opened to reveal rows of fangs. Merrick scrambled for the red box by his side, unlocked it and pulled out the flare-pistol. He fumbled a round into the chamber, snapped the pistol shut and thumbed back the hammer.
The exit hatch window was empty. The creatures—whatever they were—had vanished. What did that mean? Had they recognized the flare-pistol as a weapon? Merrick didn't see how that could be, unless they'd had contact with humans before.
A face appeared at another window, and flashed out of sight before Merrick could even think about taking aim and shooting. The same thing happened again a moment later, on his other side. And again. They were all around his plane, taking it in turns to look at him. It didn't seem to bother them that the plane might tear itself loose at any moment and fall into oblivion.
Nor did they appear to be in any hurry to attack him. Maybe they were intelligent enough to know he was injured, and patient enough to wait for his own weakness to overcome him? Merrick lifted the flare-gun. All the heads at the windows vanished in the blink of an eye. He lowered the flare-gun. They slowly came back again, curious, puzzled, questioning. Whatever they were, they had brains. A short time ago, Merrick had fought other aliens who were equally sentient and aware, in a senseless war between Earth and another planet whose name he didn't even know. It was over now, a compromise had been reached, a treaty had been signed, but not before he'd had his fill of killing. Afterward he'd settled on Ganymede, hoping to escape those painful memories, not re-live them. He made his decision. He put the flare-gun back inside the red box and locked it again.
Which left him where, exactly? Waiting for help to arrive. And dying if it didn't. Merrick didn't like these options. Again he struggled to pull his broken legs from under the control board, but it was no good. Despite the recent shot of dexymorphine2, the pain was indescribable. He slowly relaxed in his chair, accepting his fate only grudgingly.
A light on the board winked. Merrick slowly turned his head and stared at the exit hatch. Several sets of slim but powerful fingers pushed in through the seal and curled around the hatch's edge. Together they pulled the hatch open. Half a dozen—primates?—stared at him, their heads turning and cocking this way and that, viewing him from all angles.
Merrick swallowed hard, and waited to see what they'd do next.
The Turbocrawler's tracks spun helplessly against the sheer rock face. Olga cursed but it was no use, the machine could go no further into these inhospitable mountains. She'd never find her man, would never hold him in her arms, never caress him and whisper sweet lovings into his ear. She wept, partly with rage, partly with sorrow.
Tired and frustrated, she manually switched the engines to idle. She sat there for a while, thinking. Olee kept his Turbocrawler well equipped for those occasions when young ladies visiting Ganymede for the first time expressed an urge to see Jupiter from outside the protective Dome. Olee would take great delight in personally driving them out onto the open plain, where they could get out and admire the most beautiful and most dangerous planet in the Solar System. Olga opened the cabin locker and selected the largest pressure suit, probably Olee's own, and climbed into it. It was a tight fit, especially around the biceps and thighs, but the material possessed a measure of elasticity. She turned around and walked back into one of the fully charged packs, which automatically locked into her harness and connected her helmet to the air supply. Ganymede's thin atmosphere contained oxygen, which her pack would filter to top up her air tank, but it would take over a week to accumulate a full day's supply of breathable air. Still, every little helped. She depressurized the cabin and climbed outside. When she switched her helmet radio to the emergency frequency, she heard the beep of the pilot's transponder clearly through Mariah's static mush, calling to her.
The slope upon which she and the Turbocrawler stood lay somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees; if not for the adhesive soles of her boots, she would even now be sliding back down the way she'd come. Rocks that had seemed huge to her when she'd passed them by hours ago were now shrunken dots far below.
Olga pursed her lips thoughtfully, formulating her next course of action. She went around the back of the Turbocrawler and opened the external storage locker. Did Olee keep climbing gear in his vehicle? He did. She found spiked crampons and gauntlets. Olga slipped the former over her boots and the latter over her gloves. Next, she pulled out an emergency medical supply pack containing medkits, food concentrates, water, air bottles and a dozen other things she would need once she found the pilot. Settling the MedPack over her shoulder, she went to the cliff face and looked up. The black rock towered above her, mocking her human frailty. But Olga Golenko was no Martian barmaid with skinny hips and no buttocks. She bent her knees, took a deep breath, and jumped. Her gauntlets bit into the rock, driven by muscles made dense and hard by daily exercise in the Spaceport centrifuge. Olee had joked that Olga could travel to Earth and not experience problems after living in Ganymede's relatively feeble 0.14 gees. He was very probably right. She pulled herself up hand over hand, channeling all her considerable strength into gaining altitude, because somewhere up there, she knew, her pilot was waiting.
Movement below caught her eye—a light reflection, a changing of shadow. She looked down. The Turbocrawler was slowly backing away from the cliff. For a moment she panicked. Had Olee over-ridden the controls? She needed the machine to take her pilot back to the Spaceport, once she found him. But no, the Turbocrawler began edging along the cliff, reminding her of a sniffing dog trying to find a buried bone. It didn't go back down, it worked its way along the cliff, searching, searching....
For another way up? She knew the machine had an AI, but she didn't think it was so clever. Well, all she could do was hope it would be there when she returned with the pilot. She resumed climbing, putting such matters to the back of her mind. She'd worry about them later. First, the man.
The AI watched its former occupant climb up the sheer cliff, displaying an unexpected physical strength it had not witnessed in any of the humans it had known previously. How absurd that it had veritable tsunamis of energy at its disposal, yet it could not follow her up the mountain—or, more to the point, couldn't take her to where she most desired to be.
It examined the base of the cliff, but found no other route by which it might gain further altitude. Decommissioning had meant the removal of all its offensive weapon systems. Its laser cannons and missiles could easily have blasted a route up the cliff, creating a series of mountable steps; or indeed it could have launched grappling hooks and winched itself up the cliff, a far more elegant, though infinitely less satisfying, solution. But it didn't have weapons, and it didn't have grappling hooks and launchers either.
What did it have?
It had two nuclear power plants, and that was all. It slowly backed off from the cliff and pondered how its available assets might be put to best possible use.
Despite the promises he'd made to himself, Merrick thought of Kitty, and sighed deeply. He should have known their romance would never last. Only in his imagination had she loved him as much as he loved her. He'd visited her in Madame Fifi's as often as he could, bought her expensive presents, showered her with attention, but it just wasn't enough. The slick stranger had breezed into Ganymede Spaceport and wooed Kitty with promises of a better life and a bigger bank account. They'd left together on last week's freightliner, bound for the Outer Colonies. Merrick knew he'd never see her again. Sure, there were other girls at Madame Fifi's, nice girls who knew things that nice girls ought not to know. But they were all just like Kitty, outwardly smiling and pretend-happy while weighing his wallet and wondering how much they could squeeze out of him.
Maybe that was why the thought of dying didn't really bother him all that much. With Kitty gone.... He felt like a plant that desperately needed water, only she'd taken his rain cloud away.
It occurred to him, as he wallowed in a sea of melancholy thoughts, that maybe Mariah's appearance hadn't been accidental. Hell, maybe this was supposed to happen. Merrick believed in fate. If this were how things were meant to end, then he'd accept it without complaint.
The Ganymede primates were edging closer. He felt tempted to threaten them with the flare-gun, but he'd already made his mind up and wasn't about to change it now. Fear might cause him to pull the trigger, a reflex action that would gain him nothing but a few extra seconds anyway. He left the flare-gun in its box.
A hand touched his arm, causing him to flinch. Another touched his helmet, slid around to follow the curve of his visor. Others made contact with him, not ungently. The primates surrounded him. He steeled himself as best he could. It was just a matter of time before they ripped his suit apart, tore off his helmet and started eating him. He hoped one of them would open his jugular damn quick. Death by slow asphyxiation was only marginally better than death by depressurization, or so he'd been told by grim, hard-faced spacemen who'd thought about nothing else their entire lives.
The plane shifted again, possibly because of the additional weight in the cabin. Merrick wanted to shout at them, to tell them to get out, but they wouldn't have heard him, let alone understood him. Some of them turned and scrambled for the hatch, but one opened and closed its mouth rapidly, stopping the exodus. Merrick gaped, unable to believe the primate had spoken to its companions. He waved his hands, catching the primate's attention. He gestured to the hatch, as clearly as he could: Go. The primate grinned at him. At last Merrick acknowledged the impossibility that these creatures might be native to Ganymede. Their size, shape, matching arms and legs, fingers and fingerlike toes, told him their species must have developed on Earth—the laws of probability and Darwinism wouldn't permit any other conclusion. How they'd come to be here on Ganymede, roaming the mountains between Ganymede Spaceport and South Plateau, was anyone's guess. They'd been genofixed to local conditions, were able to breathe Ganymede's atmosphere. That in itself was astounding.
The leader, if such he was, spoke again. Half a dozen of the primates clustered around the control board. They got their hands underneath the edge and heaved together, just like they'd opened the hatch. Merrick gasped as the board came away, sending rivers of pain up his legs. They seemed to know he was in pain. The other primates took hold of him by the arms and torso, gently pulled him clear of his chair and carried him toward the hatch as the plane slid over, around, down.
"Get out!" he shouted at them. "Leave me and get out!" Two primates locked themselves across the hatch, offering an anchor to the rest as they heaved Merrick up and out. The rest of the troop were spread across the mountainside, a web of bodies linked by long arms and legs—a selfless exercise in cooperation aimed at saving Merrick from certain death, he now realized, and again he was forced to re-evaluate the intelligence of these creatures. Although far from human in appearance, they were showing unmistakably human qualities.
The last primate leapt clear of the hatch just as his plane—what was left of it—took its last flight. Merrick watched his livelihood slowly tumble away from the sheer rock, twisting and falling into the canyon. The combination of thin atmosphere and low gravity meant a much lower terminal velocity than would have been found on Earth, but certainly sufficient to kill him had he still been aboard.
It also occurred to him that he was by no means safe yet.
He looked up, and saw the immense strain his weight had put upon the troop. Those at the top of the chain were clinging on to the sheer rock for dear life, grinning their desperation, while those who held him were only too aware that vital anchor points were slipping, putting the entire troop at risk.
Merrick looked up into the unblinking yellow eyes of the leader, who held him easily by his pressure suit's harness straps.
"Thanks for trying," he said, hoping beyond all logic that the primate might comprehend his meaning. Merrick sensed a deep pathos in those eyes, and detected a softening in the primate's expression—and then the leader's head snapped up as one of the troop near the top of the chain lost his grip, frantically scrambled to achieve another handhold, and failed.
Every part of her body ached yet still she climbed, unwilling to surrender to pain and fatigue, unwilling to give up until unconsciousness took her and she let go of the cliff, slipping to her own death, a death she wouldn't even be aware of....
Olga cursed her weakness, told herself that wouldn't happen. She found the dull red anger deep within that had sustained her when Mama ran off with the Space Navy sub-officer, when Rimmy eloped with the Martian barmaid, when Olee looked her up and down and told her he didn't have a job for her (thank goodness his wife had seen something else in Olga and hired her otherwise she wouldn't have met the pilot and fallen in love with him, even though they had yet to exchange a single word). Her anger kept the pain at bay, kept her moving.
And then she was pulling herself up and over the ledge, lying face down on the relatively flat surface, with Jupiter directly above her and Europa glinting in the western sky. That violet glow on the horizon was the Spaceport's Van Allen shield, still fending off Mariah's harlot advances.
She allowed herself one minute's rest, no more. She closed her eyes, and awoke with a start an undefined time later. Her muscles ached—how they ached! She gritted her teeth and pushed herself up. She'd conquered the cliff and now looked down into a wide, deep canyon with jagged ridges each side. She checked the transponder signal. Stronger than ever. She must be close now, very close. She studied the canyon walls, the upper ridges....
Olga began running, angling down along a sloping inner ledge fraught with cracks and fissures. For a terrified moment she thought the pilot must still be inside the wingless aircraft fuselage as it spun down into the canyon, but then she saw—
At first she thought they were small men wearing tight-fitting pressure suits and skull helmets, but she quickly revised this assumption. What were they? She had no idea, but if they harmed her pilot then she would kill them with her bare hands, every last one of them. Ahead, the ledge stopped abruptly, breaking away to leave a gap of—two?—no, nearly three hundred meters, and a sheer drop into the canyon. Olga pumped her arms and legs harder, using the pain, adding it to her resolve. Without hesitation she launched herself across the yawning gap, fearless of her own life, because without her pilot life would have no meaning.
The canyon wall reared up and hit her hard, knocking the breath out of her. She hung by one hand, left stunned and gasping by the impact. The canyon licked its lips in expectation of this tasty morsel. Olga kicked wildly, desperate to find purchase. Her boot struck rock, allowing her to propel herself upward and find a more secure hold. When she blinked tears from her eyes, she discovered she was a mere hundred meters along from where the queer little men dangled, strung together like navigation lights.
And beneath them, the last man in the string, was her pilot.
One of the queer little men had to let go. Then another, joined to him, lost his grip and began to slide down. Olga saw how it must be: the group relied upon those at the top, who must bear the most weight. She shrugged off the cumbersome MedPack, pushed herself up, took a running dive and by a miracle caught the ankle of the first little man who'd slipped. He looked up at her, his surprise mirroring her own. Olga kicked savagely, driving her crampons into the mountain, bracing herself to take the weight of all the little men plus the pilot. Slowly, agonizingly, and as gently as she could, she pulled the little man higher. Inch by careful inch she lifted him, and then it was the turn of the next little man. The first helped her, and then she had two helpers, then three, all tugging together, dragging the string of little men and her pilot ever higher.
A shadow fell over her but she paid no attention. Only when one of the little men jumped into the air and spun around and fell headlong into the canyon, did she look up. The VSTOL aircraft hovered above them, sitting out over the canyon's center. The cockpit appeared to be empty. A man wearing a pressure suit and helmet stood in the open cargo hatch halfway along the fuselage, looking at her through the telescopic sights of a hunting rifle while the autopilot kept the aircraft stationary.
Olga looked down. Her pilot had seen the aircraft. His lips moved. He was talking—to whom? She jerked her head sideways, banging her helmet against a rock to activate her radio. Through Mariah's static hissing she heard their voices, sounding very distant.
"Nice to see you too, Merrick. Shame we can't talk long. Don't want to be here when they send someone out to look for you."
That was the man with the rifle, the killer who'd shot the little man for no reason. What was the fool doing? Why was he pointing his rifle at them instead of bringing his aircraft in closer to help rescue her pilot?
Her pilot said, "I take it that someone isn't you?"
"Hell, no," the killer said. His rifle flashed. Another of the little men near Olga leapt into the air and fell out of sight, arms and legs thrashing. "I'm here for a different reason. Got me a nice little contract. Pays more than delivering supplies, let me tell you."
"I never figured you for a Company man, Digger."
The killer laughed. "Not me. I'm just cleaning up somebody's mess, sorta quiet like. After this, I'll have enough to retire." The rifle flashed again and another little man tumbled down the mountain, shot through the chest. Olga hated the killer, wanted to reach out and tear his head off and spit down his neck. But she couldn't let go of the little man below her, even if she could have somehow grown wings and reached the aircraft.
"Why are you doing this?" her pilot asked.
Da, that was the question in Olga's mind. Why was the killer shooting the little men?
"Been tracking the varmints for days. They escaped. Fooled the dumb guards and made a run for it. Someone wants them to vanish. Doesn't want folks even knowing they exist. That's where I come in. Solid, dependable, reliable old Digger." The killer made an adjustment to the telescopic sights, then put the rifle to his shoulder again. "I reckon we'll just cut to the chase, Merrick. Your girlfriend sure looks cute. Shame she has to die, too."
"May your children's children have two heads," Olga said.
If the killer heard her, then perhaps he understood the magnitude of the terrible curse she'd laid upon him and all his future generations. She couldn't see the barrel of the rifle any more. Only the black mouth, pointed directly at her.
That was when the mountain exploded.
The most worrying aspect of the plan was not knowing whether its own brain would be melted by the electromagnetic pulse. The MAV's armor had been proof against Mariah's latest temper tantrum, but this was different—this was the total energy conversion of a fused nuclear power plant, and that meant EMP in capital letters. XA-709 had jettisoned its secondary plant and pushed it beneath a thick slab of rock. Now it climbed up onto the slab, took the machine equivalent of a deep breath, and ordered the plant to attain critical mass. In the same nano-instant it powered itself down, hoping to avoid damage from the EMP. Theoretically possible, but unlikely in practice.
The power plant dutifully destroyed itself, sending the MAV high into the air—a sleeping missile riding on an expanding wave front that converted a sizeable volume of rock into free electrons and shook the entire mountainside.
Some seconds later, and much to its own surprise, XA-709 awoke. It performed a self-analysis and discovered that only certain inconsequential outer sectors of its mindcore were permanently AWOL. They'd taken the brunt of the EMP, protecting the inner core from harm. Its potato giblets were entirely unaffected by the jest.
As other systems slowly came online, XA-709 discovered it was still airborne. Had the AI been human, it might have whooped. Its external sensors detected the presence of several persons below, hanging onto the side of a deep canyon, and a transponderless VSTOL aircraft. The ex-military AI had didn't really have time to wonder how the rescue aircraft could have arrived so quickly, because an instant later it hit the opposite canyon wall like an angry god's fist.
Olga pulled her pilot up onto the ledge and bent over him until their visors were touching. The little men gathered around them, solemn yet curious. He wasn't moving, wasn't saying anything. She so badly wanted to open his visor and kiss him, but could not. To her relief, his eyelids fluttered open. The pilot stared up at her, uncomprehending.
"Do not talk," she whispered. "I get medical kit."
"What a lovely voice," he said. To her surprise, his gloved fingers stroked the curve of her helmet visor, wanting to reach her face. "Are you an angel? Have I died and gone to heaven?"
"Not yet," she said, and hot tears burned their way down her cheeks. "You must be very still. Wait, I be back with medical kit."
She made to get up but he held her hand, very tightly.
"Don't leave," he said. "Please."
"I must. I not be long."
His gaze drifted across the sky. "Where's Hendrick?"
"Who?"
"He was going to shoot us."
Olga indicated the canyon. "Down there, buried under much rock."
"How?"
"Shhh. Talk later. Rest now." His eyes closed again.
How indeed? She stared at the broken canyon wall opposite their position, at the deep hole that had been punched into the rock. The killer's aircraft had disappeared beneath the terrible avalanche, his final utterance a terrified scream of realization.
Something was still moving over there. A smaller avalanche of rocks fell from the smoking hole, and then the bashed-in, barely recognizable nose of the Turbocrawler wobbled and shuddered into view. Amazing! Nothing should have survived such an impact, yet the machine was still operational. Russian engineers must have built it.
The Turbocrawler sent up a series of distress flares, creating a brilliant firework display that had the little men gaping in awe. The flares would be seen and acted upon, she knew, bringing rescuers to the canyon.
One of the little men laid the MedPack down beside her and grinned. "Thank you," Olga said. "Thank you for everything."
Who would have thought that "Mayday" Merrick would have fallen for Olga Golenko? He the handsome, square-jawed pilot who regularly broke the hearts of sighing young women (it was said), she the formidable assistant cook at Olee's Bar on the edge of Ganymede Spaceport, noted for the perfection of her fried eggs and her ability to balance six beer kegs on her broad shoulders when unloading the quarterly supply transport from Earth.
A less likely match could not possibly have been devised by a thousand AIs generating random word combinations for a thousand Galactic cycles. And yet....
It proved an unusual wedding, even by Ganymede standards.
Merrick, his broken but shapely legs encased in plastic, was wheeled down the "aisle" in Olee's Bar by the genetically engineered slave workers who'd escaped from the North Plateau mining camp. The camp's bosses were enjoying a lengthy stay on Callisto—if prison life and recycled food could ever be said to be enjoyable.
Olee's displeasure at Olga's "borrowing" his Turbocrawler had been offset by his being asked to manage the affairs of the Indigies, as they were now called. They were much in demand, as much for their technical skills as for their willingness to work in the harshest extremes of climate that Ganymede had to offer. Hundreds had been freed when a UN military force raided the North Plateau camp; they now lived together in a private colony up in the high sierras, and were prospering.
The Turbocrawler formerly known as MAV XA-709, still in the process of having its body shell repaired, broke out of the maintenance shop and limped to a halt outside the bar, from where it could view the proceedings. Olee noted its presence but didn't try to shoo it away. If pressed, he might have admitted that there was something different about his Turbocrawler these days, something that frightened him just a little....
Olee had the honor of giving Olga away, and grinned like an Indigie as he walked down the aisle with his assistant cook on his arm. Olga had borrowed a dazzling purple silk dress from Madame Fifi, who stood to one side with her girls, all of them smiling jealously at the blushing bride on her way to marry the most handsome man on Ganymede.
Olga got her pilot, who would always look upon her as his angel, and for as long as he lived would think that he'd got the best part of the deal.
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