Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Searched

The storm didn't stop the looters from sending out crews to open up a new cache, however.

She could hardly believe her sensors when she saw, via Alex's camera, a half-dozen lights bobbing down the canyon floor coming towards his hiding place. She switched to IR scan and saw that there were three times that many men, three to a light. None of them were wearing pressure-suits, although they were bundled up in cold weather survival gear.

"I don't believe they're doing that," Alex muttered.

"Neither do I," she replied softly. "That storm is going to be a killing blizzard in a moment. They're out of their minds."

She scanned up and down the radio wavelengths, looking for the one the looters were using. She found it soon enough; unmistakable by the paint-peeling language being used. While Alex huddled in his shelter, the men below him broke open yet another cache and began shoveling what were probably priceless artifacts into sacks as if they were so many rocks. Tia winced, and thought it likely that Alex was doing the same.

The looters were obviously aware that they were working against time; their haste alone showed the fact that they knew the worst of the storm was yet to come. Whoever was manning the radio back at the ship kept them appraised of their situation, and before long, he began warning them that it was time to start back, before the blizzard got so bad they would never be able to make it the few hundred meters back to their ship.

They would not be able to take the full fury of the storm, but Alex, in his pressure-suit, would be able to handle just about anything. With his heads-up helmet displays, he didn't need to be able to see where he was going. Was it possible that he would be able to sneak back to her under the cover of the blizzard? It was certainly worth a try.

The leader of the looters finally growled an acknowledgement to the radio operator. "We're comin' in, keep yer boots on," he snarled, as the lights turned away from the cache and moved slowly back up the canyon. The operator shut up; a moment later a signal beacon shone wanly through the thickening snow at the other end of the tiny valley. Soon the lights of the looters had been swallowed up by darkness and heavy snowfall, then the beacon faded as the snow and wind picked up still more.

"Alex," she said urgently, "do you think you can make it back to me?"

"Did you record me corning in?" he asked.

"Yes," she assured him. "Every step. I ought to be able to guide you pretty well. You won't get a better chance. Without the storm to cover you, they'll spot you before you've gone a meter."

He peered out his window again, her camera 'seeing' what he saw, there was nothing out there. Wind and snow made a solid wall just outside the building. Even Tia's IR scan couldn't penetrate it.

I'll try it," he said. "You're right. There won't ever be a better chance."

Alex ignored the darkness outside his helmet and concentrated on the HUD projected on the inner surface. This was a lot like fly-by-wire training, or virtual reality. Ignore what your eyes and senses wanted you to do and concentrate on what the instruments are telling you. Right now, they said he was near the entrance to the valley hiding Tia.

It had been a long, frightening walk. The pressure-suit was protection against anything that the blizzard flung at him, but if he made a wrong step, well, it wouldn't save him from a long fell. And it wouldn't save him from being crushed by an avalanche if something triggered another one. Snow built up quickly under conditions like this.

It helped to think of Tia as he imagined her; made him feel warm inside. She kept a cheerful monologue going in his left ear, telling him what she had identified from the holos they'd made before the looters arrived. Sometimes he answered her, mostly he just listened. She was warmth and life in a world of darkness and cold, and as long as he could think of her sitting in the pilot's seat, with her sparkling eyes and puckish smile, he could muster the strength to keep his feet moving against the increasingly heavy weight of the snow.

Tired, he was getting so tired. It was tempting to lie down and let the snow cover him for a while as he took a little rest.

"Alex, you're here." she said suddenly, breaking off in the middle of the sentence.

"I'm where?" he said stupidly. He was so tired.

"You're here, the entrance to the tunnel is somewhere around there." The urgency in her voice woke him out of the kind of stupor he had been in. "Feel around for the rock face. The tunnel may be covered with snow, but you should be able to find it."

That was something he hadn't even thought of! What if the entrance to the tunnel had filled in? He'd be stuck out here in the blizzard, nowhere to go, out alone in the cold!

Stop that! He told himself sternly. Just stop that! You'll be all right. The suit heaters won't give out in this. They're made for space, a little cold blizzard isn't going to balk them!

Unless the cold snow clogged them somehow... or the wind was too much for them to compensate for... or they just plain gave up and died...

He stumbled to his right, hands out, feeling frantically in the darkness for the rock face. He stumbled into it, cracking his faceplate against the stone. Fortunately the plate was made of sterner stuff than simple polyglas; although his head rang, the plate was fine.

Well, there was the rock. Now where-

The ground gave away beneath his feet, and he yelled with fear as he fell, the back of his head smacked against something and he kept falling-

No. No, he wasn't falling, he was sliding. He'd fallen into the tunnel!

Quickly he spread hands and feet against the wall of the tunnel to slow himself and toggled his headlamp on; it had been useless in the blizzard. Now it was still pretty useless, but the light reflecting from the white ice above his face made him want to laugh with pleasure. Light! At last!

Light, and more of it down below his feet. The opposite end of the tunnel glowed with warm, white light as Tia opened the airlock and turned on the light inside it. He shot down the long dark tunnel and into the brightness, no longer caring if he hit hard when he landed. Caring only that he was coming home. Coming home...

CHAPTER NINE

The whisper of a sensor-sweep across the landscape, like the brush of silk across Tia's skin, when she'd had skin. Like something not-quite-heard in the distance.

Tia stayed quiet and concentrated on keeping all of her outputs as low as possible. We aren't here. You can't find us. Why don't you just fill your holds and go away?

What had been a good hiding place was now a trap. Tia had shut down every system she could; Alex moved as little as possible. She had no way of knowing how sophisticated the pirates' systems were, so they were both operating on the assumption that anything out of the ordinary would alert the enemy to their presence, if not their location.

Whether or not the looters' initial carelessness had been because of the storm or because of greed, or whether they had been alerted by something she or Alex had done, now they were displaying all the caution Tia had expected of them. Telltales and alarms were in place; irregular sensor sweeps made it impossible for Alex to make a second trip to the ruins without being caught.

And now there were two more ships in orbit that had arrived while the blizzard still raged. One of those two ships had checked the satellite. Had they found Alex's handiwork, or were they simply following a procedure they had always followed? She had no way of knowing.

Whatever the case, those two ships kept her from taking off, and she wasn't going to transmit anything to the satellite. It was still broadcasting, and they only hoped it was because the pirates hadn't checked that closely. But it could have been because the pirates wanted them lulled into thinking they were safe.