While Boro, with advice from his pilot and navigator, commanded the return trip to the cold fourth planet, Ilika and Kibi sat with the mission team as those who could see took turns describing the images on the screen.
“That’s an aircraft or spacecraft hanger,” M’palta’s mate assured. “Not nearly big enough for the huge colony ships, but they were probably assembled in orbit.”
Kibi touched a knowledge pad to change the image.
“Some kind of fuel conversion plant,” Timoradalia the chemist offered.
“Those lumps to the south look like mine tailings, so it was probably something they dug up in solid form, then purified, or converted to liquid.”
Silence lingered, so Kibi changed the picture.
The female beetle’s mandibles started twitching. “I’ve seen something like that before. Those snow-covered piles of twisted metal could have been transmission towers. Yes, I think it was some kind of power generating plant.”
Tizoromulia the mathematician nodded agreement.
“I’m starting to get a picture of what happened here,” K’storpo said, “but I want to know more.”
Kibi moved on to the next image.
The male Ti’ia leapt into the air and hovered. “Another generating plant.
And right beside it, if I’m not mistaken, was a reverse-combustion plant where they changed electricity into solid or liquid fuel.”
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 51
“For their colony ships,” Kibi mumbled.
Timoradalia nodded while gazing at the screen.
After a moment of silence, the picture changed.
“Another spacecraft hanger,” M’palta’s mate shared, “with a vertical launch pad and a landing strip . . .”
After they had discussed more than a hundred pictures from the icy surface of the fourth planet, and a moment of silence had passed, Kibi timidly raised her hand.
“Kibi wishes to speak,” Ilika said.
K’storpo
nodded.
“If they made those big space ships because their planet was growing cold
. . . and those ships aren’t going to make it to . . . anywhere . . . doesn’t that mean we should rescue them . . . or at least . . . some of them?”
“Exactly what the rest of us are thinking,” M’palta said. “It looks like they got off their planet just in time, as it was, and still is, rapidly plunging into an ice age.”
K’storpo drew himself up to full height. “You are completely correct, Kibi.
Under these circumstances, Nebador will find them a new home, just as some of your crewmates helped to do recently for that little group of jungle lizards.”
Kibi
smiled.
Boro wiped the sweat from his brow when Sata verified that the Manessa Kwi was in a stable low orbit over the icy fourth planet.
“Thank you, Boro,” Ilika said, stepping beside the command chair.
“Can I . . .” the engineer began, pointing toward his station.
The captain smiled and nodded.
“Because of the nippy weather down there . . .” Ilika began, taking his seat,
“we’re going to do as much exploring as possible with the ship, but a few excursions will probably be necessary. Sata, you have Rini’s list?”
She tapped at her display selector. “Yep.”
“We’re starting at location thirty-four, but beyond that, it will depend on what we find. Prepare to de-orbit.”
Rini produced a weather chart, Sata defined an elliptical curve, Boro
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 52
warmed up anti-mass and ion drives, and Mati arranged it all on her screen.
As soon as Kibi declared her passengers ready, the pilot turned and looked at her captain.
He
nodded.
“Shall we let Manessa do this one?” Mati asked Timorazonia, currently perched on the pilot’s shoulder.
“That’ll be fast, right?”
“So fast your head will spin.”
“Okay!”
Timorazonia’s little eyes nearly bugged out of her head as the Manessa Kwi swooped toward the cold planet at ion three, coming to a sudden stop four thousand meters above the snowy ground.
Kibi had to close her eyes.
Mati and Sata exchanged grins.
K’storpo, M’palta, and Timorafilia wished they could have seen it. Fuzzy light and dark patches were starting to come to them, but no focused images.
Under Mati’s watchful eye, Timorazonia took Manessa’s smallest flight control and guided the ship over the ice and snow. Ilika or Kibi described the scenes to those without vision, and K’storpo made choices about what they should explore.
After finding a large metal door that had collapsed inward from decades of snow, the little ship lurked about in a huge aircraft assembly building. The bodies of faithful security guards, still seated in front of monitors that had gone dark long ago, proved that this was once the home of the same insect species that was attempting to cross the vast interstellar void.
After Rini declared the air a bit thin but breathable, he, Sata, and Tizoromulia put on harsh-environment suits and explored a building near a shuttle launch pad. The mathematician could not fly in the insulated suit, so he rode on Sata’s shoulder, or jumped down to explore tables and shelves. He found plenty of star charts and astronomical calculations.
“They certainly had enough brains to figure out how far away things are in space,” the male Ti’ia began back in the Manessa Kwi. “But I see no sign that
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 53
they had the wisdom to realize they couldn’t do it, they couldn’t build a ship that would survive for hundreds or thousands of years. Pride always trumps intelligence, especially in any large group.”
“Maybe they were getting desperate,” Timorasimia the empath suggested.
“Their home planet was dying. Desperate creatures usually don’t think clearly.”
Rini nodded with a thoughtful, far-away look in his eyes.
A few hundred kilometers to the west, the ship hovered beside an ice-covered surface-to-orbit shuttle plane that had skidded off the landing strip and crashed into a small building. Boro stepped through the airlock onto a small platform that Manessa provided. With his favorite prying tool, the one T’shlix had used when he made his fatal mistake, Boro wedged off chunks of ice until he could look inside the shuttle’s command cabin.
“Pilot’s all smashed into his console, probably when they landed. Same winged bugs . . . I mean insects. Door to the inner cabin is open, and I can see others who died just sitting in their seats — but they weren’t smashed or anything — just sitting there like they couldn’t think of anything else to do.
All the panels are dark and covered with years of frost.”
With everyone at the table sharing a hearty meal, K’storpo began to speak after taking a few bites. “The evidence seems to be telling us that the three colony ships got away in the nick of time. From the ice samples Dalia took, it looks like the temperature was dropping very quickly when they left.”
“Another year, I think,” the little chemist added, “and they wouldn’t have made it.”
“It’s sad,” Boro began. “The shuttles and their crews, after building and supplying the big ships, returned to their home bases, but had no further purpose . . . other than to . . . you know . . . die from the cold.”
Kibi nodded in sympathy.
“That’s the nature of a hive society,” M’palta began. “With the leaders at the top commanding some effort, it’s almost unstoppable. With the leaders gone on the colony ships, nothing, almost literally nothing, gets done in any collective, organized way.”
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 54
The Manessa Kwi perched on a wind-swept field of ice as everyone got comfortable for sleep. The crew members all took short walks in the bitter-cold air, in pairs. Kibi asked her passengers if any of them wanted to stretch their wings or legs, but K’storpo explained that insect bodies didn’t work at that temperature. Kibi apologized.
“No need to be sorry,” Timorasimia the empath, hovering, assured the steward. “We can work and play at temperatures so high you’d be on the floor drenched in sweat.”
Kibi grinned and gave the little Ti’ia a friendly poke, who chittered and fluttered into the seat where her family awaited.
A few minutes later M’palta, still able to see little, asked for Kibi’s help with her mate’s bandages. The two arachnids agreed that one bandage could come off, leaving only the one on the broken leg. Kibi worked very slowly, carefully unhooking the stretchy material from the sharp spikes on the spider’s leg.
That done, Kibi stood and looked around the passenger area, her passenger area. Suddenly a warm feeling welled up inside her. As a slave, she had never been able to take pride in her work, never able to trust anyone or be trusted by anyone. Now, at least with Nebador citizens, it was all about trust.
At K’storpo’s seat, he and Ilika finished talking about what they hoped to accomplish the following day. Kibi watched as the captain of the ship, her sweet lover, strolled around the bridge to check each station, then waved with a shy smile and stepped into the lift.
After leaving a bowl of plump fruits on the galley counter, and checking the supplies in the toilet rooms, Kibi dimmed the lights and slipped into an unused seat at the back, where she soon drifted into a light sleep.