I didn’t have to worry about her rifling cabins, I thought. “Send her up.”

  It would take Lady Hergestal a while to reach the bridge. I grimaced and called Mishtect. If somebody replied and I was still on the call when Edwige arrived, she could wait for me to finish. This was, after all, my job.

  I got a flunky—he may have been a watchman—at the tubing factory. He said it was the owner’s birthday and supposed the owner would call me back when he visited the plant again, but nobody else could help me.

  He obviously couldn’t. I broke the call and figured I’d wait to try the factory again for at least a day.

  Before I could decide who to call next, Edwige Hergestal entered the bridge. I was alone, but fortunately I was facing the hatch so I could scramble to my feet.

  Try to, rather. My legs were asleep and I thumped back down on the seat instead of staying upright.

  Edwige didn’t appear to notice. Her features had a glassy calm. She said, “Lieutenant Harper, my father is missing. He remained at his post in the Residency after the first signs of the coming cataclysm. That’s what members of his staff told me, those who ran. My father felt it was his duty to stay at his post instead of adding to the panic which was sweeping the town.”

  I nodded to show that I was listening. How many lives would Postholder Bothwell have saved if instead he’d organized the town’s evacuation while it was still possible to do so in an orderly fashion? But that was looking at it with hindsight. I hadn’t thought the volcano was dangerous when we’d been here before. I’d ridden up the mountain to collect specimens—which might now be the last of their kind.

  “My father is missing,” Lady Hergestal said again. “I think he must still be in the Residency, perhaps trapped and unable to make his way to safety.”

  She swallowed. “He may be dead.”

  I kept my face still. He almost certainly is dead.

  “Lieutenant, until help comes from Formby or Escalante, the Alliance of Free Stars for which my father worked—and I’m afraid died—has no presence in St. Martins,” Edwige said, her voice trembling with anger. “My own driver refuses to take me to the Residency to look for my father. I’m therefore coming to Cinnabar to ask for humanitarian help for a good man, a decent man.”

  “Lady Hergestal,” I said, “I wish you well in your search for your father, but I have no operational control over the ship’s personnel. Captain Bolton is coordinating relief efforts from the command post on the quay to which the forward boarding ramp is attached.”

  Edwige turned without speaking. I said, “Milady? We’re not using vehicles in the town either, even ground vehicles. The fine ash would destroy moving parts almost immediately. An aircar which landed at the site of the Residency probably wouldn’t be able to lift off again. When there’s a heavy rain to lay the fines, it’ll be possible again. If you know where the Residency really is, which I’m not sure I do.”

  Edwige turned. “Thank you for your opinion, Lieutenant,” she said. “In my family, the idea of leaving one’s father trapped or unburied till the next storm is repugnant.”

  She left the bridge. I sighed and started thinking about alternate materials for tent poles.

  * * *

  The blast of hot gas and molten rock had spared a slice of St. Martins. A knob of the cone, an ancient relic of an earlier eruption, had survived a fraction of a second after the start of the explosion, long enough to cast a wedge of impunity over an edge of the town. Fine ash had covered the buildings and the water lines had ruptured when the earth shook instants before the fiery cloud struck, but most of the buildings themselves had survived—and the people in them had survived.

  Rick had a section of riggers laying power lines on tripods made from tubing while a Power Room team created a substation by repurposing spares from the Far Traveller. Another section of spacers under a bosun’s mate was putting down water lines on the surface, feeding collection points where survivors could fill containers for use in their shelters. The camps east and west of the city had spacers providing basic services also.

  Rick walked over to the techs who were adjusting the components of their substation. “We’ve got the line complete from the ship,” he said to Tech 5 Grabble, in charge of the squad.

  “We’re a half hour to the point we connect it,” she replied. “But at least we’ve finally got all the components. Unless one of these bitches fries, when we hook ’em up.”

  Rick returned to his riggers. He looked up what had been a boulevard before the blast. He could just see the apartment building Rachel had lived in. It was partially collapsed but part of it still poked up above the level which the superheated rock had found.

  “Joyeuse,” he said to the bosun’s mate. “Are you guys willing to take a little jaunt up the street”—he nodded toward the apartment house—“with me? This is a volunteer operation, not duty. A friend of mine lived around here and nobody aboard the Althea has seen her since the lid blew off.”

  Joyeuse didn’t even bother checking with her riggers. “Sure, El-Tee,” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Right up there,” Rick said, “the building on the corner you can just see the roof of. Her room was on the top floor. We’ll need masks.”

  They hadn’t been wearing their respirators for stringing wire, but they’d been issued them before the shift. Rick put his on and started toward the ruined building. On his third step the crust on top of the ash gave way and he plunged ankle deep to the pavement.

  “Ouch!” Rick shouted, jumping back and shaking his right leg furiously, shaking as much of the ash off as he could. “We can’t do that without rigging boots! Forget it, it was a bad idea anyway.”

  “We bloody well can do it,” Joyeuse said. “Adams, Kopinsky—get the doors off all the houses. If we don’t have enough, we’ll walk the back ones forward as we go. Move it, spacers!”

  “But what if some of the houses are still occupied?” Rick said.

  Joyeuse seemed to carry a pry bar as a matter of course. She stuck it into the back joint of a door to the stairs leading up to upper-floor rooms. With a fierce twist she ripped out the bolts of the top hinge, then bent and repeated the process with the lower hinge.

  She looked at Rick. “This is a bloody disaster, right?” she said. “Lots of worse things happened.”

  “They sure did,” Rick agreed. They placed the door, then went back to help the two spacers with providing more pavement.

  * * *

  “Lord Harper,” Edwige said. I jumped because I didn’t realize that she’d entered the bridge. “I am here to beg you.”

  “Lady Hergestal…,” I said because I couldn’t think of anything else at the moment. My brain was numb, trying to decide where I was on the recovery work.

  Supposedly there were ships that would shortly be under way from three ports carrying food and shelter—of various kinds in both cases. I didn’t trust the locals who’d promised me that, but there wasn’t much I could do about it if they were lying to me.

  “Lord Harper,” she said. “I’ve spoken to your captain. He refuses to release any of his personnel to search for my father. He says—”

  She stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, then opened them and resumed, “Your captain says that his duty is to the living and that my father is certainly dead. When Alliance officials arrive they can set their own priorities, but while he’s in charge his will stand. The lieutenant with him said that the death of one more of Guarantor Porra’s thugs wasn’t a matter for regret. Perhaps you feel the same, Lord Harper?”

  “My family isn’t political, Lady Hergestal,” I said. “And while I don’t have the right to speak on Lieutenant Vermijo’s behalf, he lost close friends in the war and is very fatigued at the moment with his work on behalf of the citizens of St. Martins. Regardless, Captain Bolton’s decision is one that most officers would make—if they bothered to volunteer to help in the beginning.”

  “I see that,” Edwige said. Her words and her expression both seemed glazed. “Lord Harper, I appeal to you as the son of my father’s cousin, can you help me find him or at least recover his body? I’ve found a guide, a clerk at the Residency.”

  I opened my mouth to say that there was nothing I could do even if I wanted to, but even as I formed the words my brain went into planning mode. I closed my mouth.

  Edwige turned away and leaned against the wall. She burst into tears.

  I got up from the console where I was sitting. “Lady Hergestal,” I said, “I need to check in person with the other members of Biology Section, especially with Doctor Veil, my superior officer. If you sit here”—I gestured toward one of the unoccupied consoles—“I’ll be back as soon as I have something to report. I hope it may be good news.”

  * * *

  The crew had a path of doors to the wrecked house like a game of dominos. Half a dozen civilians protested but none very strenuously, which surprised Rick considerably. The residents were so stunned by the catastrophe that they didn’t have much energy to protest forceful spacers entering to rip off interior doors because there hadn’t been enough outside doors to complete the track.

  “Here we go,” said Joyeuse as she and Kopinsky brought the door which would finish the job. It was light and the central panel was slatted, but it would keep their legs from sinking through the crust. “Here!”

  She dropped the door at the end of the row and adjusted it with hands protected with air-suit gloves. Their work on the trackway had stirred up enough dust that the respirators were necessary, which Rick had earlier hoped they could do without.

  “You first, El-Tee,” Joyeuse said, gesturing him to the front.

  They’d reached what had been a second floor window facing the street. It was open. The original residents must have fled immediately after the explosion. Rick wondered if they’d survived the freshly deposited ash. The interior of the piles was still oven hot after a week. The day it fell it was almost hot enough to ignite wood.

  Rick scrambled in without difficulty. There was a door to the hallway at the right side of the room. It had burst open when the building collapsed. He went through.

  The light beyond was bad, coming from the offset window by which Rick had entered. At the back end of hall a woman’s legs projected from beneath the fallen ceiling.

  “Joyeuse!” Rick shouted. “Spacers! We gotta lift the roof off a, a person!” He’d started to say “body” which it probably was in all senses, but he wasn’t going to give up hope. They might need a jack if there were any that weren’t already in use by other teams.

  The spacers crawled in behind him. He put his hand on the woman’s bare ankle. It felt cold.

  “Here, let me try it,” Adams said. Rick squeezed to the edge of the hall, wondering how he could best help the tall rigger.

  Adams turned and braced his back and both hands on the sloping ceiling. His knees were braced. They straightened and the ceiling lifted from the woman’s torso. Rick grabbed both the woman’s ankles. He’d get his arms under her torso if he could, but—

  There was a crackling. “Bloody hell!” Adams said.

  Adams’ feet crashed through the floor. He sat down on a stringer and the ceiling sagged back. “Bloody hell!”

  More of the floor had given way as well. The ceiling no longer lay heavily on the woman’s body. Rick slid forward and hauled her out on his knees, cradling her head and torso against his chest.

  She was Rachel. Her neck was broken, and she was long dead.

  “You got her, El-Tee?” Joyeuse asked.

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “Take her legs and let’s get out of here before the whole thing flattens.”

  Then he said, “She’s dead. Been dead.”

  They reached the window. “Lemme take her,” Adams said. “I’ll hand her out to you.”

  Joyeuse backed out ahead of Rick and said, “Well, it was worth a shot, El-Tee. Sorry.”

  Rick took as deep a breath as he could through the respirator. There was nothing to be done now. There hadn’t really been anything to do a month ago either.

  * * *

  Doctor Veil had told me to go ahead with anything I thought might be helpful; I think the extent of the volcano’s devastation had stunned her. Mahaffy and Kent said they were under my orders and they’d do what I said. I’d never met the machinist, Tech 4 Malanovic, and I hadn’t known how he would respond, but in fact he was delighted to have something he could do despite a badly broken hand. Kent and Mahaffy joined him in the fabrication bay to do lift and carry under Malanovic’s direction.

  Now I walked out on the boarding ramp to explain the situation to Joss. Any interaction with her was a negotiation. It wasn’t that I thought she’d object, but she operated in a different world than anyone else I’ve ever met.

  “Sir?” she said as I approached where she stood watching the floating extension bridge quivering on the surface of the harbor. I hadn’t seen her look around so I hadn’t been sure she’d seen me.

  “Joss,” I said, “I’m going to try to recover the body of Postholder Bothwell from the Alliance Residency, using Biology Section personnel. This is outside your regular duties. Are you willing to come?”

  She gave me a smile that made her face even more hideous than usual. “Sure,” she said. “If you’ve got a way to do it. You’re pretty good at figuring out ways to do things.”

  “The shop is fabricating a skid from a sheet of structural plastic,” I said. “It’ll have a winch on the bow. We’ll run a cable ahead wearing rigging boots and set a grapnel, then wind the skid forward with the winch.”

  I ventured a smile and said, “We won’t even have to kill anybody.”

  “Even without that,” Joss said, “I’m in. But say—the woman who flew an aircar onto the ramp this morning—she’s the one were doing this for?”

  “More or less,” I said. “The aircar can’t operate in the ash, though.”

  “Hell no,” Joss agreed. “But it can get me to the lake up the coast where I was collecting the first time on Medlum. I want to cut reeds there, because hell if I’ve ever managed to use those heavy boots.”

  “Yes,” I said. I had no idea what she had in mind but I didn’t figure it mattered whether or not I understood. “Lady Hergestal is on the bridge. I’m locking the inner hatches and I’ll get one of the regular crew to retract this bridge.”

  “I’ll let it loose from the shore end and set it to retract,” Joss said. “You go up and tell Lady Hergestal to get to her aircar soonest, it’s parked by the captain’s HQ. You get on with it, El-Tee. I’ll catch you up as soon as we get back.”

  “See you soon,” I said.

  I was confident that Joss would join us soon. I wasn’t nearly as certain about the rest of my plan.

  * * *

  The machine shop had its own external hatch though that didn’t have a landing pad for aircars. Kent and Malanovic said there wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t disbelieve them but it was a relief to me to see Mahaffy aboard the skid connect the cable hanging from the hovering aircar and Malanovic at the controls in the bay release the crane hook.

  Next to the captain’s headquarters on shore, I donned a pair of rigging boots. They were intended to keep spacers safe when working among the sharp edges and broken cable strands of a ship’s rigging. The would certainly protect me from contact with the hot ash.

  They were also miserably uncomfortable to wear, let alone to work in. Well, I’d been uncomfortable before.

  The aircar curved to shore near me with Kent driving and Mahaffy still in the body of the skid, steadying himself on a support cable and the side of the skid. It was boat-shaped and had an upturned prow, but the back was completely open.

  Kent let the skid touch down to take the weight off the cables so that Mahaffy could release them. While Kent parked the vehicle where Lady Hergestal’s car had been, I ran forward to take the grapnel already strung onto the hand winch.

  I’d known the boots would be uncomfortable but I hadn’t appreciated just how bad they would be. The tops galled my shins, and my feet in ordinary ship’s boots—really high-heeled moccasins—slid around bruisingly.

  “Wish me luck,” I said to Mahaffy as I took the grapnel over my shoulder.

  “Luck, El-Tee,” Mahaffy said. “Say, isn’t Joss up for this lark?”

  “She’ll be joining us later,” I said and began trudging forward.

  “Good luck, Lieutenant,” Captain Bolton called as I passed his HQ. I waved with my free hand.

  I’d plotted the course in fifty-yard stages, though there was a hundred yards of cable on the winch and we could splice in as much as we wanted from rigging spares. As I walked on, the ash changed from grit under my boots to a layer that I shuffled through—like running through the surf on a beach. But worse, and hot, and I was wearing the respirator.

  The first waypoint which I’d chosen had been a substantial building at a corner on the boulevard I’d taken uphill on my first trip into St. Martins. I wondered how Rachel Pond was doing. She hadn’t been among the Mission staff who’d evacuated to the ship in the harbor before the eruption.

  The building had been steel framed and one of the corner posts stuck out in the air. It had been bared when the weight of ash made the building collapse and spread the stone cladding over the streets. I looped the cable around it, then hooked the grapnel to another steel beam.

  I waved to the skid, then sat back on an ornamental lion which stuck up above the level of ash. I stretched my legs out so that the heels rested on a high spot. I wasn’t sure that the crew had seen me until the cable went taut. My face shield was fogged though the air was warm and my sweat had rolled onto it also.

  I took the respirator off carefully. I didn’t think I’d stirred the ash up too badly where I was sitting now, and I had to get more air into my lungs even if it came with tissue-scraping irritants that would cause serious problems in the future. The future could take care of itself.

  With the respirator off I could see the skid crawling toward me. Kent and Mahaffy changed off on the winch crank. That would be tiring work also. Neither of them did a lot of physical labor in their normal duties.