Strata

this was Earth.’ He looked up. ‘Okay, Kin, you’ve been dying to tell us. What did hit us back there?’
    ‘Was the hole on the ecliptic?’
    Marco leaned over and played with the computer terminal for a few seconds. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Is it important? The sun was well below us.’
    ‘We were pretty unlucky. I think we were hit by a planet.’
    ‘That was my thought too,’ said Silver gravely, ‘but I did not like to say anything in case I was thought a fool.’
    ‘Planet?’ asked Marco. ‘A planet landed on the ship?’
    ‘I know it’s usually the other way around, but I think I’m beginning to grasp the workings of this system,’ replied Kin. ‘There’s a fake sky, so there’s got to be fake planets. Their orbits must be something to see. If it’s really supposed to look like an Earth sky they’d have to be retrograde sometimes.’
    ‘I was wrong,’ said Marco. ‘We should have started for home. We could have rigged up the sargo and taken turns to wake up. Two thousand years isn’t all that long. I don’t know what agency told Jalo I was the man for the job, but he’s owed his money back.’
    ‘Still, the view’s good,’ said Kin.
    The ship was passing under the disc again. And again there was the flash of green fire as, for a few seconds, the sun shone through the waterfall around the disc.
    Something hit them – again.
    It wasn’t a planet. It was a ship, and most of it was still hanging in the rearward aerial array when Marco had fought the spin it gave them.
    Kin went out this time, and she steadied herself on an aerial stump as she looked at the frosted wreckage.
    ‘Marco?’
    ‘I hear you.’
    ‘It’s made one hell of a mess of the antennae.’
    ‘I have already deduced that. We are also losing air. Can you see the leak?’
    ‘There’s fog damn near everywhere. I’m going to take a look.’
    They heard her boots clump around the hull, and then there was a silence so long that Marco shouted into the radio. When Kin spoke, she spoke slowly.
    ‘It is a ship, Marco. No, wrong word. A boat. A sailing boat. You know, like on seas.’
    She looked across at the fire-rimmed disc.
    A waterfall pouring over the edge of the world.
    The mast was broken and most of the planking had been whirled away by the force of the impact, but enough rope had held together to make it obvious the boat had a passenger.
    ‘Marco?’
    ‘Kin?’
    ‘It had a passenger.’
    ‘Humanoid?’
    Kin growled. ‘Look, it went over the waterfall and then into vacuum and then hit the ship! What sort of description do you want? It looks like an explosion in a morgue!’
    Kin was used to violent death. Oldsters died that way – freefall diving without a backpack on, deliberately wandering near when they released the cloned elephants on a new world, banjaxing the safeties and stepping into the hopper of a strata machine – but then ambulance crews took over. There had never been anything to see, except in the strata machine case. And that was only a strange pattern in a freshly-laid coal measure.
    She knelt like a robot. Wet cloth had frozen in vacuum, but it had been good cloth, well woven. Inside …
    Silver later analysed tissue samples, and announced that the passenger had been human enough to call Kin cousin. She would have been surprised at any other result, without being able to say quite why.
    He had sailed over the edge of the world. The thought made her go cold. Everyone knew the world was flat, everyone had always known the world was flat: it was obvious. But there was always someone who would laugh at the oldmen and voyage into the terrifying seas to prove a different theory. And he had been horribly wrong.
    Kin was glad about the argument over the suits. There were five, two of which were shand size. One of the others seemed to be faulty, and the trio were all sufficiently space-cautious not to trust a suspect suit.
    ‘We must take the dumbwaiter,’ said Silver. ‘Maybe you and Kin will be able to eat what is down there, but I will be poisoned.’
    ‘Get the machine to dish out a sack of dried food concentrates then,’ ordered Marco. ‘We need that fourth suit.’
    Silver grunted. ‘Not as much as we need the machine. It can analyse food. It can supply clothing. If necessary we can live off it.’
    ‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Kin.
    ‘It’ll take the lifting power of the entire suit!’
    ‘Would you rather take a laser rifle that won’t fire?’ said Silver. They glared at