"What about the storms?"

"Big ones are developing. What's happening is that the atmosphere responds to Morgan's gravitational pull just the way the oceans do. So you have big slugs of air and water moving around the planet. Everything heats up from the tidal activity. The normal scheme of things is becoming unhinged. Cold water shows up in warm latitudes, the high-pressure areas over the poles get disrupted…"

"Bottom line, Abel?"

"Hard to say. The weather machine is being turned to soup. Anything can happen. You'll want to warn your people to be on the lookout for hurricanes, tornadoes, God knows what. We don't have enough sensors on the ground to be able to monitor everything, so we can't even promise an advance warning."

"Okay."

"They're just going to have to stay loose." "Thanks, Abel."

"One more thing. These storms'll be big. Unlike anything anybody's ever seen at home. Category seventeen stuff."

Memorials are polite fictions erected in the general pretense that we are selfless and generous, compassionate to those in need, brave in a just cause, faithful unto death. To establish the absurdity of these conceits, one need only glance at the conditions which inevitably erupt whenever police protection, however briefly, fails.

— Gregory MacAllister, Gone to Glory

Hours to breakup (est): 107

They recorded eighteen kilometers before quitting for the day. When Canyon reappeared to conduct his interview, he told them to relax, that he'd do all the work, and that when they got home they'd discover they were all celebrities.

It was in fact simple enough. He tossed them softballs. Were they scared? What had they seen that most impressed them? Were there things on Deepsix worth saving? Who was this astronomer in the tower he'd heard about? What was the biggest surprise they'd seen on this world?

Hutch knew what hers had been, but she talked instead about the giant dragonflies.

He asked about their injuries. None major, said MacAllister. Just a few cuts and scratches. But he admitted to having learned a bitter lesson about keeping in decent physical condition. "You just never know," he said, "when you're going to be dumped into a forest on a strange world and made to walk two hundred kilometers. I recommend jogging for everyone."

Later, when Jerry Morgan rose, it was almost the size of Earth's moon. It was, of course, still at half phase, where it would remain. The upper and lower cloud belts, somber and autumn-colored, were flecked with gold. A broad dark band lay at the equator. Hutch could pick out the altitude in the northern hemisphere where Maleiva HI, Transitoria, and the tower would make their fatal plunge.

Under other circumstances, it would have been a strikingly lovely object.

NEWSLINE WITH AUGUST CANYON

"Earlier today, I spent some. time with the five brave people who are stranded on Maleiva III while the giant planet named for Jeremy Morgan bears down on them. Four are scientists. The fifth is the celebrated writer and editor, Gregory MacAllister. They're trekking overland in a desperate effort to find a spacecraft left here twenty years ago. It's their only hope for getting off the surface before this world ends, which it will do in six days.

"Will they succeed? Nobody knows, of course. But we'll be talking to them in a special broadcast this evening. And after you've met them, I think you'II feel as I do, that if it can be done at all, these five people will bring it off-"

Marcel and Beekman increasingly gave way on the radio to surrogates, who kept them on course. Left to themselves, traveling through unfamiliar country, without identifiable landmarks or indeed landmarks of any kind, they'd have become hopelessly lost. There were jokes about Hutch's ability to guide them by the position of the sun, which was nil. Even at night, with clear skies and rivers of stars, she'd have been helpless. If there was a marker star, either north or south, she couldn't find it. She doubted that such a star would even be visible from the equator.

But it didn't matter. Somebody was always on the circuit. Guide right.

Angle left.

No. Not around the hill. Go over it.

Then, without warning, Marcel had a mission for them: "There's something up ahead. It's not at all out of your way, and we'd like you to take a quick look."

"What is it?"

"We don't know. A structure."

Hutch begrudged every minute spent off-trail. She glanced at the others, soliciting opinions. They were willing to indulge a minute. But only a minute. Nightingale thought it was a good idea. So long as it was indeed nearby. "Okay," she said. "We'll take a peek, let you know what it is. But then we're moving on."

It was on the shore of a lake, tangled deep in old-growth trees and shrubbery. They could see only a few glints of metal, and were unsure it was a structure at all, so completely had the forest embraced it.

They cut down some bushes, and Hutch's first impression was that they'd found a storage dome. Until they uncovered a line of windows. Most were still intact. Kellie walked around to the rear. "It's got a tail," she reported..

"A tail?"

"Twin tails, in fact. It's an aircraft."

It had a flared bottom. Symbols were stenciled on one side, so faint as to be barely noticeable. There was a windscreen up front. The vehicle was about the size of a commuter airbus. But it had no wings. Ground transportation, decided Hutch, despite the tail. Unless they had antigravity.

Judging by the trees that had engulfed it, it had been there for centuries. Hutch paced it off, and they relayed visuals back to Wendy. Thirty-eight meters along its length, probably six in diameter. Crumpled severely to starboard, somewhat less on the port side.

Chiang climbed a tree, produced a lamp, and tried to look inside. "Nothing," he said. "Get me a wet cloth."

Kellie broke off a few flat-bladed leaves, soaked them cautiously at the edge of the lake, and handed them up. Chiang wiped the glass.

"You know," said Kellie, "wings or not, this thing does have an aerodynamic design. Look at it."

She was right. It had flowing lines and was tapered front and rear.

"What's happening?" asked Canyon. They knew he habitually listened in on the allcom, and on conversations between the ground party and the orbiting ships.

Hutch brought him up to date. "I'll give you the rest when we know what it is," she said. "If it's anything."

Chiang had his lamp pressed against the glass. "There are rows of seats inside. Little ones. They look a bit thrown about."

"Little seats?" asked MacAllister. "Same gauge as back at the tower?"

"Yes. Looks like."

"Now that's really odd."

"Why?" asked Hutch.

"Look at the door." It was hard to see behind the tangle of growth, but it was there. Hutch saw what was odd: the door was about the right size for her.

It was almost at ground level, and it even had a handle, but when MacAllister tried to open it the handle broke off. So they cut a hole through it.

The interior was dark. Hutch turned on her lamp and looked at roughly thirty rows of the small seats divided by a center aisle, five on either side. Some had been torn up and lay scattered around the cabin. She saw no sign of organic remains.

The floor creaked. It was covered by a black fabric that was still reasonably intact.

The bulkheads were slightly curved. They were water-stained and, toward the front, broken open. There were scorch marks.

The cockpit supported two seats. But unlike those in the body of the craft, they were full-size, large enough to accommodate her. One was broken, twisted off its mount. There was also some damage to the frame that supported the windscreen. She looked down at what had once been an instrument panel.