"You carr.... weapons?" Hali asked.
"The cargo manifest lists food concentrates, building equipment and tools, medical supplies, groundsuits and weapons."
Hali shook her head. "I knew you needed weapons to survive groundside, but I didn't know they were being made shipside."
"Do you know what a weapon is?" Ferry asked, looking directly at Hali.
She thought of her history holos, and the soldiers at the Hill of Skulls. "Oh, yes. I know about weapons."
"This laser scalpel." Ferry touched the stylus shape at his breast. "Acid concentrates, plasteel cutters for construction teams, knives, axe...."
Hali swallowed past a lump in her throat. Every bit of her med-tech training cried out against this. "If we prepare t.... kill," the word was barely a sigh past her lips, "then we will kill."
"Down here, it's kill or be killed," Ferry said. "That's the way The Boss wants it."
In that instant, the freighter skipped into the first thin surface of Pandora's atmosphere. Vibration hummed all through the cabin, then smoothed.
"Can't we run away?" Hali asked. Her voice was a low whisper.
"Nowhere to run," Ferry said. "You must know that. All Shipmen learn enough about groundside to know that."
Fight or flee, Hali thought, and nowhere to flee. And it occurred to her that Pandora was a place where people were made into primitives.
"Trust me," Ferry said, and the quavering in his old voice made the statement pathetic.
"Yes, of course," Hali said.
She felt the freighter's braking thrust then as it pressed her against the restraining harness, and she glanced back to reassure herself that Waela remained secure.
"We will land in the cradle of the sea," Hali said. "That's what Waela said. Remember?"
"What does she know?" Ferry demanded, and it was his fearful, querulous tone, the one which had made her despise him.
This the true human knows:
the strings of all the ways
make up a cable of great strength
and great purpose....
FOR A long time Panille sat in the shadows of the seaside cliff while he felt the approaching presence from space. The sea lay below him down a rugged path, the cliffs soared high behind. Avata had been the first to tell him about this problem and, for a few blinks, he had fallen back into Thomas' ways of thinking.
The Redoubt will know about this freighter, will send its weapons against it.
But Avata soothed him, told him that Avata would transmit false images to the Redoubt's systems, concealing the freighter's passage. Avata would continue to mask the nest's location with similar projections.
The rock was cold against Panille's back. From time to time, he opened and closed his eyes. When his eyes were open he was vaguely aware of the amber glow from Double Dusk - the sky alight from two suns dodging just below Pandora's horizon.
Ship would know he was here and what he was doing. Nothing escaped Ship. Did that omnipotent awareness work through phenomena similar to those of Avata? Was it awareness of even the most minute changes in electrical impulses? Or was it some other form of energy which Ship and Avata monitored?
That presence from space was coming close.... closer. He felt it, then he saw it.
The freighter skipped up the horizon, a great stone crossing the surface of a glassy sea. The fall into atmosphere was deceptive. The freighter had entered Pandora's pull at the lowest point on the horizon. It streaked a long upward arc as Panille felt it fill his awareness. It grew larger with its approach around the planet's curvature, and he saw it now falling white-hot toward him.
The crunch of gravel told him of Thomas' approach, but Panille had only a single purpose now. The approaching freighter was himself and he was diving through the sky alight with amber.
"Can you do it?" Thomas asked.
"I am doing it," Panille whispered. He begrudged the distraction of answering.
Until he had seen the pinpoint of that first glow against the Pandoran dusk, Panille had not been sure he could master this thing.
"I'm thinking them in," he whispered. There was awe and wonder in his voice.
"Who is coming?" Thomas asked.
"Avata did not say."
Thomas emitted a wry, jibing chuckle. "It's a surprise package from Ship. Maybe more recruits for me."
He moved around Panille and climbed down out of sight along the narrow path, his figure a mysterious movement in the half light.
Going to the shore where the surf crashes. The surf will make this landing perilous.
As the last sound of Thomas faded from Panille's awareness, darkness fell - the Double Dark in which Pandora's greatest mysteries blossomed.
Panille thought of himself now as a beacon. He was a signal transmitter in a known position. The freighter and its unknown passengers depended on his constancy. Avata wanted this freighter to land here. He trusted Avata.
Come to the sea, he thought. The se.... the se....
Hylighters began whistling along a rock ledge ahead of him and he knew it was time to join Thomas on the shore. He got up stiffly. It had been a long wait on the observation ledge. Knowing this, he had scavenged a singlesuit of white shipcloth which Avata had stored in the nest.
A hylighter positioned itself above and behind him as he began the slow climb down to the shore. Panille sensed tentacles dangling near, ready to grasp him should he fall.
Avata, Brother, he thought.
It fluted a brief reply.
The sharp rocks and the difficulty of the dark cliff path were second nature to Panille's body. He did not have to think about the climb. And he found that he could maintain the beacon while his thoughts wandered. His mind strayed back to Thomas' unbelieving interrogation.
Thomas demanded explanations and refused to believe almost everything he heard.
He believes Avata projects strange images into his mind. He believes I have learned from Avata, that I am a master of hallucination. He believes only what he can touch, and then he doubts that.
Panille recalled his own words: "Avata is not hallucinogenic. They are not even they. That's why I use the term Avata. That's why I call a hylighter Avata."