Three days later, the three hab-rovers and the IceRunner left New Pennsylvania and headed out across the ice.
"The children will be all right, won't they?" said Susan anxiously as she watched the city's ruined blast door recede behind them in one of the cockpit's monitor screens.
"They'll be fine," Andrew reassured her. "They're hostages now. You don't hurt hostages so long as those who love them do as they're told, which we will be doing. They're probably safer than we are with a remainer still among us, wanting to sabotage the mission. I might have asked them to stay behind even if the President hadn't demanded it. No matter what happens to us, they'll be safe."
Susan nodded her reluctant agreement. "And in return, we've got them," she said, nodding her head to where one of the New Philadelphia soldiers was watching them from the doorway, his machine gun cradled in his arms.
"Don't mind us," the soldier said with a mocking smile. "So long as you don't try anything you can just forget we're here."
Andrew tried to remember his name. They'd been introduced to the six soldiers back in the city's hanger but the New Londoners had still been thinking of the goodbyes they'd just made to their children and hadn't really been paying attention. Arness, that was it. James Arness. And his partner aboard their rover was called Grey. That had been his last name anyway. He couldn't remember what his first name had been.
He tried to put them out of his mind and called the other two hab-rovers on the video link. Philip and Lungelo's faces appeared on the screen in front of him, both men looking preoccupied by the knowledge that their loved ones were still back in the city, potentially with death threats hanging over their heads. Philip at least still had Joe with him. He had insisted that he couldn't complete the work without the seventeen year old with him, and the New Philadelphians had been happy to oblige since they still had twelve year old Stacey as a hostage. Lungelo, on the other hand, had had to leave his fully adult daughter behind, with only the assurances of a couple of middle ranking officers that she wouldn't be turned into a brood mare in his absence. As a result, he was looking positively haggard and Andrew's heart went out to him.
"Everything looking okay?" he asked them. The New Philadelphians had been all over the three rovers, looking for weapons and prodding and poking at the unfamiliar technology. The New Londoners had been worried that they might have interfered with some vital system and so they'd checked everything thoroughly before leaving. There was always the possibility that they might have missed something, though, and Andrew couldn't help but keep staring at the rover's instrument panel for any red light that might suddenly appear or any needle swinging too far away from a nominal reading.
"All systems check out," said Philip. "Looking good so far. You okay, Lungelo?"
"I am very far from okay," the other man replied. "However, the rover seems to be in good condition."
"Izzy'll be okay," came another voice from the speaker, and Halona came into view, putting her arm around his shoulder. "Now that there's going to be official contact between our two cities they won't dare do anything to cause a diplomatic incident."
Andrew nodded to himself and looked out the cockpit window where the New Philadelphia IceRunner was pulling away from them, heading in a different direction. The smaller rover had been equipped with the satellite uplink from Lungelo's rover and was heading east to where it would be able to talk to New London by means of the geostationary communications satellite.
"Hopefully, that Icelandic volcano will have stopped erupting by now," he muttered to himself. "There's almost no chance of a solitary rover crossing the fracture zone. The Icelandic route is the only realistic chance they've got of making it."
"If they don't make it, for some reason," said Philip, "are they likely to blame New London? Those army guys seemed rather paranoid and we've got two soldier boys here with us who look like they're just waiting for an excuse to fill us full of holes."
Andrew couldn't keep his eyes from flicking around to the soldier watching him from the doorway. He grinned back at him. "I wouldn't worry about them," he said. "They know they can't get back to their city without us to drive the rovers. They kill us, they kill themselves." He was rewarded by the sight of the man's grin wavering a little.
"They've got their own rover," pointed out Valentina, who had also appeared beside Lungelo and had been helping to console him. She let go of him now, though, and gave her full attention to the screen in front of her. "The life support systems will keep then alive for months. Plenty of time for the IceRunner to get back and go rescue them. All they've got to do is follow our tracks."
"Their rover is ancient," said Philip, though. "I admire the courage of men willing to go on a ten thousand kilometre round trip in a vehicle cobbled together from spare parts."
"Once they're within a few hundred klicks of the city they can call on New London for help if they need it," said Andrew.
"Which would give New London hostages they can exchange for New Philadelphia's hostages," Philip replied. "They may have been ordered not to let themselves be taken alive at any cost."
"Would they obey an order like that?" asked Valentina. "Do they have that kind of loyalty?"
Andrew didn't think it was a good idea to question the loyalty of men who were pointing guns at her at that very moment. And as the only New Londoner who didn't have a loved one held hostage back in New Philadelphia, the soldiers would be keeping a particularly close watch over her.
"I'm pretty sure they would," he said, just to placate the soldiers. They were all going to be in close quarters for several weeks yet. They would have to get along with each other. "We know they've been told not to go any closer to New London than they have to. They're going to stop the moment they're in contact with the satellite and make their demands from a safe distance."
"Their demands," said Susan under her breath. "I wonder how the council will react to being given demands. Do this if you want to see your people again. If you want the dysprosium you need."
"Always negotiate from a position of strength," said Joe, appearing behind his father. "And if you don't have a position of strength, you pretend you do. That's been known for thousands of years."
"But the very fact that you had to take hostages means that you're not in a position of strength," said Philip, giving his son a cold look. "Taking hostages is a sign of weakness, not strength."
"We don't know exactly what they've been told to say," Valentina reminded him. "I suggest we put them out of our minds and concentrate on getting safely back to LaSalle. We've got several weeks of work ahead of us before we need to worry about anyone other than ourselves."
"You're right," said Andrew. "So let's go. I'll take the lead. Everyone turn on your tracking systems. All we've got to do is follow our own tracks back to the habitat so it'll be a nice easy drive."
At that moment Grey, the other soldier, appeared beside his companion in the doorway. "Everything okay up here?" he asked.
"Pretty much," Arness replied. "Some of them seem unsure of our loyalty to the city, but apart from that..."
"If you doubt our loyalty..." began Grey, but then his attention was caught by the view through the cockpit window and he came forward to stare in fascination. "My God!" he exclaimed, staring around at the rolling hills of gleaming ice. Then he looked up at the million shining stars and the arching belt of the milky way. "My God, it's beautiful!"
"Never seen the surface before?" asked Andrew as the man stared as if hypnotised. "I remember my first visit above ground. It does take a little getting used to."
"It just goes on and on for ever!" the soldier exclaimed. "I never imagined what it would be like."
He looked around at the other soldiers to share the moment with him, but Arness was just staring at him with a contemptuous grin of amusement. Grey gave a start of embarrassment and turned on Andrew angrily. "No tricks," he snapped. "Try anything and you'll regret it."
"No tricks," Andrew agreed. "Just a nice, quiet drive."
The soldier glared at him, then left the cockpit. Arness remained, though, watching suspiciously as Andrew and Susan gave the rover's systems another careful looking over. "Okay," said Andrew. "Powering up to full speed. Last man to LaSalle buys the drinks."
He expected the usual cheerful reaction from Philip and Lungelo, but their faces remained grim before they disappeared from the screen, turning their attention back to their own rovers. Andrew felt a shock of guilt at the reminder that their children were hostages. Separated from him and from each other. Alone among strangers who were forcing them to call them family. Be safe, he prayed in the privacy of his own head. Be brave and strong until you're back with us and on our way home.
☆☆☆
They saw the blinking red lights of the habitat, the beacon to guide travellers back in, while they were still five kilometres away from it.
Grey was sitting in the co-pilot's seat beside Andrew as they crested the last ridge and saw the twenty metre hemisphere of inflated fabric gradually coming into view. "Quite a home away from home," said the soldier as the rover made a wide turn that would bring its outer door in line with one of the airlocks. "Looks like you were planning on staying for some time."
"It's just a workplace," Andrew replied. "We've come to think of this rover as our home. We've been living in it for over five years now."
"I can see why you would," Grey replied. "This vehicle is more luxurious than my apartment. Everything shiny clean and new. No power fluctuations."
"When you move to our city, maybe you'll end up living in our old apartment," said Andrew, just for something to say. "We'll leave a bottle of wine in the fridge for you. Well, we call it wine. Fermented algae, coloured and flavoured. You guys who've drunk real wine might not think much of it."
"Who told you we'd drunk wine?" asked Grey suspiciously. "Wine's expensive. You think grunts like us can afford it?"
"I suppose I just assumed it," said Andrew, remembering the luxurious mansions of Washington level and the expensively furnished apartment of Colonel Murphy with whom he'd lived for three days. High ranking officers, he suddenly realised. He'd known that New Philadelphia was slowly dying and yet he'd still judged the place by the standards of the only homes he'd been allowed to visit. The homes of what had essentially been the city's aristocracy. The military ruled there, and he'd assumed that all the military enjoyed a high standard of living, to keep them loyal. It seemed he'd been wrong.
He wondered whether these men knew how their superiors lived, how they hoarded the city's resources for themselves. Maybe he'd been too quick to rule out Philip's suggestion of organising a revolution. But then, maids, servants and gardeners visited the upper levels. They must live lower down, with their families, and they would have told them how their rulers lived. Maybe the common soldiers were too conditioned to obedience, he thought, and since they had all the guns they could keep the civilians in line.
We're going to have to return to New Philadelphia when we've got the dysprosium, he reminded himself. To turn the precious element over to the New Philadelphians while they negotiated an arrangement with New London. While we're there, I'm going to have to take a real look at the city. Get away from the guards and the minders and see how the civilians live. If Grey thinks this rover is luxurious, there'll probably be a stark contrast between the dwellings of the common folk and the homes of the officers.
"See that over there?" he said, pointing to a blocky steel device raised above the ice on tall poles. "That's the furnace. We'll be putting processed dysprosium titanate in there, mainly in the form of completed control rods. It gets melted down and separated into its different elements. The dysprosium then gets centrifuged out. We were about to get it fired up when we all came down with strep."
"That's very interesting," said Grey in a flat voice.
"I'm sure it's not, but the reason I mention it is because that's the one piece of equipment that can't be repaired or replaced. If anything happens to the furnace, our mission is over. No dysprosium. No return. No empty city for your people to move into. Which means that that is almost certainly what the remainer will try to sabotage. It must be watched at all times. It can't be left unattended even for a moment, because one moment is all the remainer will need."
The soldier fixed his attention on the device. "We don't know how to operate that device," he pointed out. "Even if one of us was standing guard over it and one of you turned up to do something to it, we wouldn't know if you were using it correctly or trying to break it."
"You wouldn't," Andrew replied, "but we would. That's why we'll only ever be approaching it in pairs. Your job will simply be to keep any of us from trying to approach it alone. So long as there are two of us you won't have to worry. We can keep an eye on each other, but one man trying to get to it alone might be the remainer."
"Understood," the soldier replied. "I'll make sure the others understand."
The rover backed towards the habitat under the control of its autopilot and there was a clunk as its airlock connected with the habitat's airlock. Through the cockpit window he saw the other two rovers also reversing in to dock with the inflatable building. Over the intercom he heard Philip confirm that he was safely docked, and a moment later Lungelo did the same. All three of them then powered down their rovers and the instrument panel went dark
.
"Well, Mister Grey," he said, rising from his seat. "Here we are. Shall we go and get comfortable? Put the kettle on? Have a nice cup of tea?"
"Sure," said the soldier, standing and picking up his machine gun. "Lead on."