She floated between the two, talking fast, hoping whatever she said would both make sense and make peace. "It's okay, Pham. He'll go." She brushed her hand across one of Blueshell's wildly vibrating fronds. After a second, Blueshell wilted. "I'll go. I'll go." She kept an encouraging touch on him — and kept herself between him and Pham, as the Skroderider made a dejected exit.
When the Rider was gone, she turned to Pham. "Couldn't it have been a nav bug, Pham?"
The other didn't seem to hear the question. The instant the hatch had closed, he had returned to the command console. OOB's latest estimate put the Blight's arrival less than fifty-three hours away. And now they must waste time redoing a velocity match supposedly accomplished three weeks earlier. "Somebody, something, screwed us over…" Pham was muttering, even as he finished with the control sequence, "Maybe it was a bug. This next damn burn is going to be as manual as it can be." Acceleration alarms echoed down the core of the OOB. Pham flipped through monitor windows, searching for loose items that might be big enough to be dangerous. "You tie down, too." He reached out to override the five minute timer.
Ravna dived back across the deck, unfolding the free-fall saddle into a seat and strapping in. She heard Pham speaking on the general announce channel, warning of the timer override. Then the impulse drive cut in, a lazy pressure back into the webbing. Four tenths of a gee — all the poor OOB could still manage.
When Pham said manual, he meant it. The main window appeared to be bore-centered now. The view didn't drift at the whim of the pilot, and there were no helpful legends and schematics. As much as possible, the were seeing true view along OOB's main axis. Peripheral windows were held in fixed geometry with main. Pham's eyes flickered from one to another, as his hands played over the command board. As near as could be, he was flying by his own senses, and trusting no one else.
But Pham still had use for the ultradrive. They were twenty million klicks off target, a submicroscopic jump. Pham Nuwen fiddled with the drive parameters, trying to make an accurate jump smaller than the standard interval. Every few seconds the sunlight would shift a fraction, coming first over Ravna's left shoulder and then her right. It made reestablishing comm with Jefri nearly impossible.
Suddenly the window below their feet was filled by a world, huge and gibbous, blue and swirling white. The Tines' world was as Jefri Olsndot advertised, a normal terrestrial planet. After the months aspace and the loss of Sjandra Kei, the sight caught Ravna short. Ocean, the world was mostly ocean, but near the terminator there were the darker shades of land. A single tiny moon was visible beyond the limb.
Pham sucked in his breath. "It's about ten thousand kilometers off. Perfect. Except we're closing at seventy klicks per second." Even as she watched, the world seemed to grow, falling toward them. Pham watched it for few seconds more. "Don't worry, we're going to miss, fly right past the, um, north limb."
The globe swelled below them, eclipsing the moon. She had always loved the appearance of Herte at Sjandra Kei. But that world had smaller oceans, and was criss-crossed with Dirokime accidents. This place was as beautiful as Relay, and seemed truly untouched. The small polar cap was in sunlight, and she could follow the coastline that came south from it toward the terminator. I'm seeing the northwest coast. Jefri's right down there! Ravna reached for her keyboard, asked the ship to attempt both ultrawave comm and a radio link.
"Ultrawave contact," she said after a second.
"What does it say?"
"It's garbled. Probably just a ping response," acknowledgment to OOB's signal. Jefri was housed very near the ship these days; sometimes she had gotten responses almost immediately, even during his night time. It would be good to talk to him again, even if…
Tines' world filled the entire aft and side windows now, its limb a barely curving horizon. Sky colors stood before them, fading to the black of space. Icecap and icebergs showed detail within detail against the sea. She could see cloud shadows. She followed the coast southwards, islands and peninsulas so closely fit that she could not be sure of one from the other. Blackish mountains and black-striped glaciers. Green and brown valleys. She tried to remember the geography they had learned from Jefri. Hidden Island? But there were so many islands.
"I have radio contact from planet's surface," came the ship's voice. Simultaneously a blinking arrow pointed at a spot just in from the coast. "Do you want the audio in real time?"
"Yes. Yes!" said Ravna, then punched at her keyboard when the ship did not respond immediately.
"Hei, Ravna. Oh, Ravna!" The little boy's voice bounced excitement around the deck. He sounded just as she had imagined.
