Darya Lang normally worked alone. She did not like to be in charge of others, even when her own safety was involved. Today she was particularly happy to let someone else make the decisions.
On the other hand, those decisions had so far practically made themselves. In order to take maximum advantage of Marglot's rotation, the Have-It-All had to be launched to the east, and from as close to the equator as possible. It also had to be launched soon. The speeded-up planetary rotation was producing ground tremors that shook the ship, and bigger earthquakes were clearly on the way.
Darya was standing up, although that was never the way you prepared for a lift-off. It was not a matter of choice. Every chair in the cabin had been removed except the one at the controls where Louis Nenda was sitting. Lacking the service of his usual automatic sensor systems, Nenda had assigned Darya and everyone else on board to monitor some aspect of navigation or signals. The only exception was Claudius, off his radiation high and once again a stone-cold corkscrew of green misery.
Nenda might have the only seat, but he was not a happy man. Darya saw him take a last look around at his ship. The Have-It-All had been stripped to the bones. With all interior bulkheads gone the entire interior length was visible. Darya could see them all—Julian Graves, Teri Dahl, Sinara Bellstock, Kallik, Atvar H'sial, everyone, in what had once been luxurious cabins and were now ragged metal frames. The aliens were as inscrutable as ever. The humans looked pale as ghosts. No one had slept for more than thirty-six hours.
The ship's intercom had been stripped out. Nenda had to shout to be heard above the howl of wind on the hull. His voice echoed along the bare walls. "We're all inside, and the hatches are closed. Hold on to somethin'. It's gonna be bumpy as hell 'til we're high enough to be above the worst of these winds."
Tally had been assigned to the display that looked aft from the ship. He said, "Beetlebacks. I see silvery reflections from a group of them. They are heading for the ship, but the winds severely inhibit their movements. Some are being swept off their feet and carried backwards."
"My heart bleeds. I wish we had a few in front, then I could run over 'em."
"But if we could capture one—any one. They share data, and our information gain could be enormous. A delay of a few minutes, until the nearest one reaches the Have-It-All—"
"—would be a lousy idea. Sorry, E.C. Say bye-bye to beetlebacks, and hello to a bump or two."
Nenda initiated the sequence for atmospheric take-off. Bump wasn't the word for it. Hans Rebka clung to a metal stanchion, while Darya hung on to him. First there was the bone-rattling run over hard ice. That ended at the moment of lift-off, but a few meters up the winds hit the ship with full force. The retractable wings fluttered and shook and seemed ready to break off. The ship tilted, and Darya thought one of the wingtips was going to hit the snowy surface. For a horrible moment there was no space at all between the wingtip and its own shadow on the ground.
The Have-It-All shivered and righted itself. As it gained altitude, Darya had a view of a bigger area of the changing planet. Patterns of dark lines crisscrossed the snow. The ground was already fracturing, breaking open into fissures that widened as she watched. Subterranean stresses were growing faster than anyone had expected.
A little higher, and they reached a region where the winds were less affected by local ground contours. The Have-It-All steadied. Nenda said, "I'm takin' us to three thousand meters, an' I'm goin' to hold it there for a while. We're not shakin' to bits anymore, but we want to gain all the speed we can as the planet spins faster. The air gets dragged around with everythin' else, so it will boost us." He was inspecting read-outs. "I hate to say this too soon, but you know what? We may make it. If I turned on the orbital thrustors right now, we have enough speed to take us to space. No hurry, though. Let's build up a good margin before we move."
Hans Rebka left Darya behind at the stanchion and dived forward to stand behind Louis Nenda. He said, "I'm not sure there's no hurry. Suppose that the rotation speed of Marglot goes on increasing?"
"It will. That's good. It helps us."
"To a point it does. But suppose it goes too far?" Rebka turned toward E.C. Tally, who was still staring at the aft display—probably longing for his lost beetlebacks. "E.C., would you do me a calculation? Suppose that the spin rate of Marglot goes on increasing. How long before the centripetal acceleration at the equator is equal to the surface gravity?"
"The calculation is rendered more complicated than you might expect, because the change of spin rate of Marglot continues to accelerate. The reason for that, I presume, is the planet's rapidly spinning inner core—which, as I noted at the time of my first arrival in orbit around Marglot, is the source of the planet's anomalously high magnetic field. That core is coupling now to the planetary mantle, and that in turn to the outer crust. To estimate the coupling constants—"
"Could we have a number, E.C., rather than a dissertation?"
"Certainly. The purpose of my comments is to explain that there must be uncertainty in my answer, since the future spin rate is itself uncertain. However, my best estimate is that centripetal and gravitational forces at the equator will be equal fifteen hours from now."
"So in fifteen hours, and probably a lot less because of the internal deformations, Marglot will come apart. Lumps of the planet will be thrown out into space. That will start in the plane of the equator. And Nenda, you are flying this ship—"
"—smack on the equator. Wrong place to be if there's fireworks."
Darya had been watching her own assigned display, one that looked out and down from the ship. She said, "There will be fireworks, and in a lot less than fifteen hours. It has started. Look ahead." They were approaching the night side of the planet. Beyond and beneath the ship the darkness was illuminated by a orange glare. "Volcanoes, and lava flows."
Nenda said calmly, "Maybe I should take us outta here right now." As he spoke, a long tongue of flame leaped skyward in front of the ship. A smoking juggernaut of rock ten times the size of the Have-It-All shot past, still glowing bright red.
"Maybe you should." Hans Rebka was equally casual. They spoke so softly that probably no one but Darya could hear either man. "There's already large-scale planetary deformation. It can only become worse, and the equatorial region is absolutely the wrong place to be."
"So we wanna be outta here. I hear you." Nenda turned and shouted, "Grab a hold of somethin' firm again. Orbital thrustors comin' on—now."
He did something that Darya could not see, but she felt the upward surge. The ship shook with its worst spasm yet. Vibrations seemed ready to tear it apart. Her knees buckled, and she clung for her life to the metal post.
"Snow and ice residue in the firing chambers." Hans Rebka had fallen to his knees behind Nenda's chair. "They don't like that at all."
"Nor do I. Let's hope it'll boil outa there in a minute or two."
Darya, struggling to remain on her feet and watch her assigned display, saw the image of Marglot visibly shrinking. The upward thrust continued and the ride gradually became smoother. The possibility of continued life no longer seemed unthinkable.
Nenda went on cheerfully, "Well, unless something else happens we have it made. We're on our way to orbit. That was a lot easier than I expected. Once I'm sure we have orbital velocity I'll take us out beyond one of the poles. Safer to watch the show from there, all the junk will be flyin' out round the equator."
A show it was certainly going to be. The ship was ascending faster and Darya could see a substantial fraction of the entire planet. The swath of violent volcanic activity was spreading, growing wider while she watched. Far away from the equator, rocks like ruddy sparks emerged in shotgun volleys from the riven surface. Each one had to be at least as big as a house. If any were to hit the Have-It-All, Nenda's optimism wouldn't mean a thing.
Julian Graves came wandering on unsteady legs from the aft part of the ship. "What is our status? During that last convulsion I felt sure that we were doomed."
"Nah. Rattled us up a bit, that was all. We're in fine shape. The hard part was gettin' enough speed to take us to orbit. We have that, so everythin' else is easy."
"If we have reached orbital velocity and we are free to maneuver, why are we not heading at once for the Bose node entry point?"
"Too dangerous. The Bose node is close to Marglot's equatorial plane. We got to wait 'til the planet's spin-up is over before we can head for the node."
"I see. Very well. I rely on your judgment as captain. I will pass the word to the others. Everyone has held the station you assigned, but all are wondering as to our fate."
"Tell 'em the worst is over. They can sit back and enjoy."
Graves glared but said nothing. He went staggering away along the corridor, supporting himself against the metal walls and grabbing at the stems of missing light fixtures.
"That was a lie." Hans Rebka was back on his feet and once more standing behind Louis Nenda.
"Not all of it. We are at orbital speed, and I am takin' us toward the pole."
"You know what I mean. It's not dangerous to head for the Bose node. That's half a million kilometers away and it's nowhere near the equatorial plane. Chances of our being hit are negligible."
"Could be. You proposin' to go to Graves back there an' tell on me?"
"No."
"Thought not. You're as nosy as I am. How often do you get to see a whole planet fly apart? But what's causing it, that's what I'd like to know."
"Maybe we can answer that." Hans Rebka turned to Darya. "Do you remember what we were told by Guardian of Travel about the middle of Marglot?—though of course, we didn't know at the time that it was Marglot."
It was a struggle for Darya to think back. Their hours on Iceworld seemed years ago. "Isn't there some sort of vortex in the middle of Marglot? A big one, once used to change the rotation rate."
"Used once, and used again. That's what's happening now. The question is, where will all this end? What will be left of Marglot if the spin rate keeps going up?"
"I don't give a toss what happens to Marglot, though I admit I want to watch it go blooey." Nenda swiveled his chair to face the other two. "I'll give you another question. I don't trust the universe when it starts arrangin' things for my convenience. But just when we need it, Marglot speeds up its spin rate—in time to give us the added outward push we need to ascend to orbit. How come?"
Darya didn't think that Nenda expected an answer, but Hans Rebka was nodding. "We're not looking at the case of a benevolent universe, and this isn't coincidence. We owe our good luck to Ben Blesh."
"He froze to death on Marglot."
"I don't think so. He found his way back to Iceworld. Remember, Darya, we had the option of returning there? He did it. And now, from Iceworld, he is controlling events within Marglot."
"So he saved our asses? Pity we'll never get a chance to thank him. You believe that something Blesh did is responsible for all that? Sooo-eee."
All that. Nenda's gesture included everything outside the Have-It-All, but one feature dominated everything else. The ship had spiraled out and out and up and up, until Darya found herself looking down at Marglot from above. She could span the whole sphere with one hand. Except that it was not a sphere.
Marglot had become a fat ellipsoid. While parts of the world still showed the pristine white of undisturbed snowfall, a broad central belt glowed red and was shot through with sulfurous yellow flames. Marglot was developing its own planetary ring, a disk of hot ejecta expelled by violent vulcanism.
The others on the ship were drifting back into the control cabin, where the only remaining large display screen was located. They were silent as the central girdle brightened and Marglot continued to change in shape. The polar flattening and central bulge were too obvious to miss.
Hans Rebka was talking to no one in particular when he said, "Less and less at the poles, and wider and wider at the equator. Does it go on until the whole planet flattens into a pancake?"
Of course, it was E.C. Tally who answered. "It does not. An ellipsoid of revolution is a possible shape for a solid gravitating body only up to a limiting spin rate. Beyond that rate, instabilities grow exponentially and dissociation is certain. A threshold for the disintegration of Marglot must be reached in the near future."
"Not true, E.C." Nenda turned up the gain on the display. "Take a peek. It's already here."
The planet was changing. The spheroid had widened to become a fat disk of matter. Now that disk was dividing into three distinct lobes. The inner regions glowed white-hot, proof of enormous energies generated and released.
Nenda went on, "See what you got down there? It's Builders, one, Masters of Cold, zero. The whole damned place is doing a meltdown."
It was far from over. Darya could see more rifts developing within the three lobes of the shattered disk. Waves of compression and rarefaction built new nodes of compacted matter and left dark striations between them. They formed and dissolved chaotically as she watched.
Julian Graves had moved to stand next to Darya. He had his hand on her shoulder for support, although he was probably unaware of it. He said quietly, "The death of a world. But we are not witnessing genocide. That occurred before our arrival."
Marglot no longer existed. It had become streams of molten matter, flowing down from what had once been the poles to the equator, then spun off into space. The central region was no longer red-hot or white-hot. It flared blue. The middle of Marglot had turned from a liquid core to a plasma, ionized gas at a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees.
And still it was not over. Within the center of the blue-white maelstrom another shape was coming into view. A spinning darkness obscured the stars beyond. As the whirlpool of matter outside it was expelled, the vortex grew in size.
Finally it stood alone as a column of absolute black. And then, while Darya's eyes were still trying to recognize its reality, it vanished.
The vortex was gone. Marglot was gone. In their place stood three great lobes of super-heated matter within a broad expanding ring.
Even Louis Nenda seemed overwhelmed—until he leaned back in his chair and said, "Well, there's a first so far as I'm concerned. I guess we'd all rather be here than there. Nothing could live in the middle of that lot."
"Maybe not." Sinara Bellstock had moved to watch the big display along with all the others, clustering into the remains of what had once been a control cabin as fine as any in the Orion Arm. But she had hauled along the small piece of communications gear that Nenda had assigned to her. She still wore the earpiece, and she seemed to be listening to something.
She went on, "Maybe no one can live there for very long. But I'm picking up a distress signal, and it's from one of our suits. It shows weak but definite vital signs. And unless the range and direction are wrong on my readout, it's coming from the middle of that." She pointed to the display of the glowing disk. "Ben Blesh is alive in there, in the place where nothing should be able to survive."