Arabella of Mars(76)
The captain nodded in brusque acknowledgement, then cast an analytical eye upward at the balloons.
“Cutting it too close by half,” muttered Stross.
“Nonetheless,” the captain replied, raising the telescope to his eye, “we retain sufficient lift for a safe landing.” A moment later he handed the instrument to Arabella. “Is that the plain on which you would have us land? Between that reddish rock pillar and the three large stones?”
She peered through the telescope. “Yes…,” she began, but then she noticed something that made the breath catch in her throat.
“What is the matter, Miss Ashby?”
She swallowed, struggling to focus the trembling instrument upon the distant, shimmering horizon. “The drying-sheds appear to be intact, but I … I think I see smoke. And running figures.” She handed the telescope back, realizing that the trembling was in her own hands. “I’m not certain.”
The captain steadied his elbow upon the forward rail, staring carefully for a long minute. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “Is there any better landing site within”—he glanced up at the balloons again—“three miles?”
Arabella and Stross exchanged a glance. They had argued long and hard over the charts and Arabella’s memory of the plantation, so much so that his cold civility toward her had threatened to crack. “No, sir,” Stross replied. “Anywhere else is too far from the drying-sheds, or too stony, or too steep. Even if we manage to make a safe landing at any of the other sites, we’d likely never take off again.”
The captain snapped the telescope shut. “Then I fear we have no alternative but to land there as planned, and prepare to defend the ship if necessary.” He nodded to Richardson. “Distribute the small arms.”
Arabella stared forward, through the forest of masts and cables, hoping against all hope that she’d been mistaken.
*
How many times had she traveled this road? Hundreds, certainly; among her earliest memories was awaking on the rocking back of a scuttling huresh, her cheek pressed against her father’s warm leather-clad flank, with the field Martians hooting a greeting as she and her father passed through the outer gate.
No one greeted them now.
The gate that drifted past beneath Diana’s keel lay open in silence, the great doors half unhinged and peppered with crossbow bolts. The packed and hardened sand around the gate was scuffed and marked with the tracks of many men, Martians, and beasts, and great dark splashes steamed gently here and there in the slanting late-afternoon sun.
In a moment the manor house would appear, rising like a pale square sun above the prominence her brother had named Observatory Hill.…
But the first sight that met Arabella’s eyes above that hill was not nearly so reassuring.
A thin column of black smoke.
“No…,” she breathed, her hands clasped beneath her chin.
But the house, as it began to appear, was not entirely destroyed. The north wing, housing the kitchen and stores, lay in blackened ruins, but the main house with the bedrooms and her father’s—no, Michael’s—office still seemed intact.
She must not lose hope, she reminded herself.
“Bring her down,” the captain muttered to Richardson.
“Back pulsers!” Richardson called.
From below the deck came the grunting chant of the men at the pedals, followed shortly by a low grinding sound from abaft as the propulsive sails, long silent, began to turn. Soon the grinding had risen in tone, accompanied by the low repetitive rushing sound as the sails themselves sped past. With each rush, a strong breeze swept forward, the moving air bringing the ship’s forward motion to a halt.
The captain nodded, and Richardson cried, “Out anchors!”
With a great clatter of wooden pawls, the two sand-anchors, one forward and the other aft, descended rapidly on their thigh-thick ropes. The booming thuds of their contact with the Martian surface below were plainly audible.
“Belay pulsers! Set anchors and prepare to warp in!”
The chanting of the men at the pedals ceased, while two airmen hopped over the rails fore and aft and began to shinny down the anchor ropes.
Arabella looked over the rail, watching the man descending the aft rope dwindle into the distance, recalling her terror as she herself had been lowered over the rail less than two months ago. The distance to the ground had been very much greater then, and her experience very much less. She wondered if, had her sex not been revealed, she would be one of those descending now.
If she were the one clambering down that rope right now, she thought, she might not be so terrified as she actually was. The certainty of a dangerous task was better than the uncertainty of what she might find in the partly destroyed manor house.
The man on the rope had now reached the anchor far below. With hands and feet he wedged it firmly into the sand, waving his cap and hallooing.
“Warp in!”
A new chant now broke out, closer to hand, as men on deck heaved at the capstans. Bare feet skidding on the polished khoresh-wood of the deck as they hauled in a circle, they wound the great anchor-ropes back onto the hogshead-sized spool belowdecks, pulling Diana gradually down toward the sand.
Arabella clung to the rail as the deck jerked unsteadily downward, peering anxiously toward the manor house. But there was no motion visible there.