Caleb had never much liked people, but this maddening solitude was getting on his nerves. Lost on a barren planetoid, he felt like Robinson Crusoe. From what he remembered of that old tale, Crusoe had been ingenious at using scant materials to make a functional home for himself.

Caleb figured he could achieve a lot more than that. After all, he was a Roamer.

Having scavenged the few marginally useful items at the melted ruins of the hydrogen-extraction facility, he used them to reinforce his modest habitat. After that, he resigned himself to utilizing the slim pickings in his escape pod. The only other technological items on Jonah 12 were orbiting ekti reactors, automated cargo-transfer satellites, and communications boosters, but they circled high above the frozen planetoid.

Eventually, with all the time in the world to think, Caleb convinced himself that those items might not be out of reach after all.

Though the pod’s transmitter wouldn’t reach beyond the Jonah system, he could use it to send coded commands to the mothballed equipment in orbit. It might take a while to decipher the protocols and Roamer programming, but it wasn’t as if Caleb had anything else to do. Tinkering with the emergency transmitter, he scanned through hundreds of possible frequencies and tried different electronic handshake routines as he attempted to wake up at least one of the satellites. Though he was wasting battery power, he considered the gamble worthwhile, given the potential payoff.

Finally, his constant pleading ping was answered when a production satellite recognized the signal. Caleb lurched over to the slanted control panel and keyed in the secondary protocol, which locked the two signals together. “Gotcha!”

The production satellite dutifully transmitted its schematics so that Caleb could see what he had latched onto. It was little more than a box with attitude-control thrusters, a storage unit holding supplies for passing cargo ships so they would not need to drop into Jonah 12’s shallow gravity well.

Now, if he could remember his basic celestial mechanics.

Since Jonah 12 had no atmosphere to speak of, he couldn’t use drag to slow down the satellite; that meant he would have to bring it down under its own power. At least he had a good estimate of the planetoid’s gravity, and that was the main thing he needed.

Under his command, the satellite’s rockets fired, decreasing its orbital velocity and forcing it to spiral down. It was easy to make the satellite crash; the tricky part was making it crashnearby. Even bounding along in the low gravity, he wouldn’t be able to cover much distance in an environment suit.

Four more orbits, and the satellite had spiraled down until it raced only a thousand feet above the surface. Caleb suited up, carefully checking his seals, locking his helmet down, closing the faceplate, and pressurizing his suit. One more orbit, he guessed, and the satellite was going to come down.

He stood outside, watching for the tiny glimmer to pass overhead as he stared up at the stars. They all looked like lonely, cold eyes.

The satellite came over the foreshortened horizon and roared past him, so close and so fast that he jumped — accidentally propelling himself ten meters off the ground. At the apex of his leap, he watched the production satellite keep going on its final plunge until it scraped along a line of frozen hills no more than a kilometer away. A starburst pattern of fresh ice and steam marked the bull’s-eye where the satellite had come in for a hard landing.

Caleb bounded across the ice, each leap seemingly carrying him halfway to the small planetoid’s horizon. When he reached the crash point, he saw that the satellite’s metal walls had buckled, but at least the contents weren’t strewn across the cratered terrain. With clumsy gloved hands he pried apart the broken pieces of metal, eager to see what equipment and supplies were inside. Again, he felt like Robinson Crusoe finding a cargo crate washed up on his shores.

The Roamer engineers had thought of everything: spare energy packs, generalized components that could be assembled into any number of useful gadgets, a standard emergency kit with basic medicines, even concentrated rations (though Caleb couldn’t imagine why anyone would really need such a thing out in orbit).

As he looked at the remnants of the large satellite, Caleb thought he might be able to cannibalize some of the structure itself, put a nice addition on his cramped escape pod. If he was going to be stranded here for the rest of his life — however long that might be — he could at least be comfortable.

Knowing he would have to make several trips, Caleb gathered the most vital objects, made one of the flat solar-panel wings into a sled, then happily began his jaunt back to the pod. He climbed up over the low, frozen hills, raced down into the valleys, and skipped around wide, black fissures.

As he approached his small camp, Caleb was startled to see a glow permeating the ice, shimmering as if from an inner fire. The eerie luminescence spread out to the width of a broad lake near his landed escape pod.

He stopped in his tracks, feeling a chill go down his spine. Still moving under its own momentum, the loaded solar-panel sled bumped into his heels, startling him. Something very strange was going on here.

But he couldn’t stay outside to wait and watch; his suit’s battery pack and air tank were already down to twenty-five percent. Gathering his courage, Caleb headed toward the strange glow that surrounded his pod.

59

Anton Colicos

While the Mage-Imperator remained a “special guest” in the Whisper Palace until Chairman Wenceslas figured out what to do with him, Anton was under orders to take Rememberer Vao’sh to the university. He had no idea what sort of interrogation or debriefing the other professors would inflict upon him, but he supposed Vao’sh could hold his own.

Anton had spent most of his scholarly career here, and this should have been a happy return for him. but it didn’t feel that way. “I’ve wanted to show you this place for a long time, Vao’sh. I’m afraid the Hansa’s actions have dampened my enthusiasm for all the things I used to be proud of.”

The old rememberer, though, was surprisingly accepting of the circumstances. “Even in troubled times, a rememberer should always observe and absorb. I intend to learn as much about your human culture as your experts intend to learn from me.”

Anton looked closely at his friend, trying to read his moods from the colors of his expressive lobes. “How are you holding up so far away from the rest of your people?”

“I can bear it, for now. The Mage-Imperator is close, and I know where the rest of my people are. I do not feel entirely alone.” With forced good cheer, the rememberer took Anton’s arm as they walked together onto the campus grounds. “After my previous ordeal with the isolation madness, perhaps I have a greater tolerance than other Ildirans.”