Roger MacBride Allen - Chronicles of Solace 03 by The Shores of Tomorrow

Author:The Shores of Tomorrow [Tomorrow, The Shores of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-08-08T10:22:59+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

A MATTER OF FACT

Somehow, Glister looked even colder from in the air. It didn’t help that the aircar’s heating system wasn’t all it could have been. They weren’t freezing, but they weren’t exactly breaking into a sweat, either.

And there could be no doubt that the world outside looked colder whenyou were cold. The view that scrolled past them down below—ice, snow, frozen rock-strewn wastes—was spectacular, but far from inviting.

Norla checked her displays. They were doing all right, so far. The biggest challenge had been getting the cargo transfer center’s vehicle airlock to cooperate. Norla had been worried that opening it manually would set off all sorts of security alarms. That hadn’t happened—at least so far as they knew—but it had never occurred to her that simply cranking hatches built to handle vehicles far larger than their aircar would take a lot of muscle power.

Now that they were airborne, and already several hundred kilometers from home, she had thought of a whole new worry: DeSilvo’s robots were still hard at work, hiding the exposed sections of DeSilvo City under rock and dirt and ice. Suppose they got around to burying the cargo center airlock before she and Yuri got back?That would be a lot of fun to deal with if they were delayed en route and were making final approach just after sunset.

Never mind. There was nothing they could do about it anyway. Not anymore. The best they could do was to continue forward.

She shifted in her seat and flexed her shoulders, trying to relax, trying to keep from getting stiff. They were flying in their pressure suits with their visors open, and the suits were really too big and bulky for the cramped interior of the aircar. Norla had insisted on the suits, mainly to keep them warm in case the aircar’s heating system went out. But there was also the chance that they would be forced to land and get out of the aircar to attempt repairs or signal for rescue, or whatever. If so, they’d need the pressure suits for more than heating—there was precious little free oxygen in what passed for air out there. Still, the aircar’s cabin was awfully crowded, and getting damned uncomfortable.

Suddenly the aircar was jolted violently from side to side as it banged into a patch of turbulence. Norla held on to the controls for dear life and fought the vehicle back to a stable heading. Turbulence stopped, as suddenly as it had begun. She hadn’t done much atmosphere flying in a long time. She had forgotten howdifferent it was from space flight, how the surprises came at you in a whole different way.

Yuri sat beside her on the right, staring endlessly down at the ruined landscape. She could barely imagine what was going through his mind as he looked down at the planet from which his people had come. Nor, to be honest, did she want to ask him about it. She knew Yuri could turn theatrical at times, and she had no desire to invite a display of histrionics.

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