Free Calamity's Child by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Page A

night's
outcome.
    To the left, a twisty stand of
vegetation formed out of the shadow -- what passed for trees. He
slipped between the spindly trunks and into the shocking darkness
of the glade, where he paused. When he had his night eyes, he went
on, angling toward the mountain face -- and shortly came to that
which was not natural.
    It might seem at first glance a
shattered boulder, overgrown with such vegetations as were able to
take root along its pitted surface.
    At next glance, assuming one hailed
from a civilized world, it was seen to be a ship, spine-broke and
half-buried in the ungiving gray soil.
    Slade moved forward. Upon reaching the
remains of his ship, he fitted the fingers of both hands into an
indentation of the tertiary hatch, braced himself and hauled it
back on its track, until there was a gap wide enough to admit
him.
    Inside was deep darkness, and he went
slowly, feeling his way along the broken corridor, his soft-soled
boots whispering against the dusty plates. His questing fingers
found an indention in the wall, he pressed and a door clicked
open.
    Carefully, for there was torn and
broken metal even inside the one-time supply cabinet, he groped
within.
    His search gained him several small
vials, a single cake-bar of the survival food he'd wrinkled his
nose at in pilot training class, and an ironic appreciation of his
situation. He had fought the ship to the plains, knowing it unable
to survive a planet-fall in any of the world's salty
seas.
    By the seas, he might have found a mix
of food and vitamins better suited to his off-worlder needs -- but
the scant beaches below the cliff-lined continents were all of
shale and broken rock, and he had thought an inland grounding might
preserve his ship.
    Choices made. Or as Verad
might put it, this was the trail he found
today.
    He unzipped the cake wrap, the burp of
preservative gas letting him know it was still edible, and --
though the sweetness of it was surprising -- ate it as if it were a
delicacy as he continued to rummage through the former
larder.
    One more tiny container came into his
hand -- the last of the wide-spectrum antibiotics. He tucked it
into his pouch with the others, pushed the door shut, and crept
onward in the dark.
    As he moved, his back brain did the
calculations: if he rationed himself to a single dose every three
days, he could stretch the vitamins he needed to survive through
one more migration cycle.
    At last, he gained the piloting
chamber, where a single go-light glowed, faint. He inched forward
and sat in the chair which, with its webbing and shock absorbers,
had doubtless saved his life, and reached out to touch a
switch.
    The stats computer came up sluggishly,
the screen watery and uncertain. Despite this, he felt his heart
rise. His ship was alive.
    Alive, yet mortally wounded. The
distress beacon, its power source undamaged, gave tongue every six
Standard hours, hurling ship ID and coords into the heedless chill
of space. For two full turns of the Sanilithe seasons -- almost
three Standard Years -- the distress beacon had called.
    With no result.
    A less stubborn man might
by now have given up hope of rescue. He supposed, sitting there at
the dim board in the shattered belly of a dead ship, on the eve of
being either mated or cast out, that he
ought
to give up. Surely, the
choices before him were daunting.
    Were he cast out of the Sanilithe and
left to his own methods, he might hunt well enough to feed himself.
Perhaps. Certainly, he could not expect any other nomadic,
hardscrabble tribe to adopt him. It bewildered him yet, that Gineah
had taken him in -- undergrown, wounded, and without language as he
had been.
    As to the probability of being Chosen
at the fire -- he considered that approached negative numbers.
Worse, if he were, by some passing madness of the local gods,
Chosen, he would forthwith have broken every non-fraternization reg
in a very substantial book.
    The consequences of which were merely
academic, unless he