Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Karr relaxed a little.

"How far southwest is your goal?" Jenette asked sweetly.

"I don't know," Karr admitted. "Perhaps days."

Again Jenette was overjoyed. The farther they got from the Enclave, the better! "And time is of the essence, I suppose?"

"Exactly," said Karr.

Jenette scrutinized the water-filled lifter. "It looks as though we'll be lucky to still be floating by night fall."

"It is not as bad as it looks," Karr said, becoming a bit more animated. "I could get it flying with a few critical parts." He pointed at the cockpit. "The controls are shot."

"What kind of controls do you need?" Jenette asked nonchalantly.

"Just about anything. All colony equipment is standardized." Karr went to the pile of junk in the center of the deck and rummaged through it. He pulled out a device with a strange array of servo arms on one end. They scissored crab-like when he twisted the main shaft. "The right tools wouldn't hurt, either. This is all that's left of the emergency repair kit," he said disgustedly.

Arrou trotted over and sniffed the tool. "Not good."

"You're telling me," said Karr, still nervous around the large alien. He waved an arm where the cockpit canopy used to be. "It's designed to adjust a nav system that fell off at ten thousand feet."

Jenette had an idea. Her mind traced pathways of cause and effect and then, with an internal decision made, she innocently said, "We have tools and parts back at our crawler."

Arrou shot her a wary look. "No nine-sixteenths grippy," he rambled suspiciously.

"We can make do with an adjustable grippy," Karr said. He did not pick up on the sudden tension between Jenette and the alien.

"Great," she said lightly. "Why don't we take a cruise around to the other side of this island?"

Before Arrou could object, Karr leaned into the cockpit. The two rear engines thrummed to life and the lifter arched around in search of spare parts.

"Rrrrr," Arrou growled from the deck of the lifter. "Not hurt crawler."

The six-wheeled vehicle was moored alongside the heavy lifter. Both vehicles floated within fifty yards of the Feral island. Karr lay in the crawler cab, where he had begun unfastening parts from its dash. At the menacing rumble from Arrou, he looked at Jenette, who was on the crawler with him.

"Don't worry about him," she reassured. "He'll get over it."

Karr was not convinced and kept one eye on the alien as he resumed disassembling the dash. He grabbed hold of a module, working his fingers under the edges. It was stuck.

"Pull."

Jenette grasped a braid of microfiber relays.

Arrou twitched, distressed. "Fibers break."

The fibers were stronger than Arrou thought. Jenette yanked and, with a screech of wedged plastic, the module came free, still connected to the relays. But it was too much for Arrou. He sprang onto the crawler, grabbed the module from Jenette, and held it protectively. He barred his teeth at Karr. "Not hurt crawler!"

Feeling angry alien breath for the third time that day, Karr squirmed back against the control levers.

"Arrou!" Jenette scolded.

"Pilot hurts crawler!" Arrou accused.

"He's not going to hurt it," Jenette reasoned, "just borrow a few parts. I'm sure he can put them back later."

Arrou looked at the tangle of microfibers, considered, then leaned over Karr, looking very menacing.

"Put back now."

Jenette was mortified. "Arrou! That's not very nice! You apologize."

"No."

"Arrou!"

"Not hurt crawler."

Jenette apologized to Karr. "I'm sorry. He's not usually like this. Arrou, get back on the heavy lifter this instant."

Arrou would not budge. He stood between the two humans, clutching the module to his breast and ready to stop Karr from further pillage. Karr felt intimidated, but to his surprise, he also sympathized with the alien; after all, protective feelings for a vessel were something he could understand. Karr sat up.

"Grrrrrr."

Karr moved his hands away from any crawler components. "Arrou," he said to the alien, "you like the crawler a lot; I can tell."

"Like a lot," Arrou confirmed.

"Why?"

"Crawler fast."

"I see. How fast?"

Arrou responded proudly. "Twenty-five knots."

"Twenty-five knots?" Karr reflected. "And what sort of propulsion system does it have?"

"AstroFlow electric. Six hundred horsepower. Twenty-six thousand pounds tow."

Karr looked at Jenette. "Is that correct?"

"If he says so." Jenette shrugged. "He knows more about that stuff than me."

Karr returned his attention to Arrou. "See those big thrusters?" he said, pointing to the corners of the heavy lifter. "They can boost sixty million pounds to high orbit. And you want to talk about fast? An undamaged heavy lifter can do five hundred knots in atmospheric flight, and this one can probably still do one hundred."

"Five hundred knots," Arrou repeated, taken off guard. "That fast."

"Exactly," said Karr. "And we can go that fast, but to do it we need to use parts from the crawler."

Arrou was not ready to give up yet, however. "Want to drive crawler," he emphasized.

"Arrou," Jenette interjected. "You know that's impossible."

"Forbidden," Arrou said stubbornly, "not impossible."

Jenette threw her hands in the air. "I don't make the rules. This crawler is Enclave property and Enclave rules say domestics don't drive crawlers."

It looked like another impasse, but Karr had a simple solution. "Arrou, I'm in command of the heavy lifter. I make the rules. What if I teach you how to drive it?"

"Fly it?" Arrou corrected.

"Yes, fly," Karr confirmed.

"Really?"

"Really. And we can take the crawler too. There's plenty of room on deck. Good plan?"

"Urrrkurrrkurrrk," the alien rumbled, looking between the two vehicles. "Promise?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

Jenette flinched? nobody said that on New Ascension? but she was impressed with how Karr handled Arrou, like an equal and not an underling. "Well Arrou, what do you say?"

Arrou's gaze settled on the lifter, his answer coming in the form of a dreamy, glazed expression and hushed words. "Five hundred knots...!"

XII

"Failure shapes us: no one ever learned by trial-and-success. Every tear shed and every drop of blood spilled hammers us on the anvil of our flaws. But do not be misled! Do not idolize failure.

Mere failure does not ensure wisdom, just as mere survival does not ensure strength. Many fail and are found wanting, pervaded by weakness. We must drive out the weakness in our minds and turn our failures into weapons. Only then will we attain the Body Pure."

? from the speeches of Olin Tesla

The remainder of that afternoon was deceptively uneventful. Slow-motion streams of bubble-seeds floated downwind over the water. Frequently the rainbow-on-glass balloons popped over the heavy lifter, raining moist spore strands down on everyone's heads. It was all very beautiful, and quite lost on Pilot Lindal Karr, consumed as he was with the sense of time slipping away and the desire to locate the remains of his ship.

Karr made steady progress getting the lifter back in flyable condition. To show Arrou his good faith, they first winched the crawler on deck, where Karr strapped it down, and then finished stripping components. For his part, Arrou watched Karr like a hawk, flinching or groaning as each piece came out, but not interfering, for which Karr was thankful, if uneasy. Even once the stripping was accomplished, the large alien insisted on following Karr around and breathing down his neck, but somehow Karr began the task of reconstructing the heavy lifter's controls. It was a challenge. The heavy lifter had been refitted at Sheldon's World, which meant that its technology was twenty-seven standard years old. The crawler was from New Ascension's original seed-colony equipment, which, based on its manufacture date, made it nearly one hundred years old. So, while the basic design of all colony equipment was standardized, it was still a challenge to make the two sets of components work together.