“What are you going to call it?” she asked Claymoor.
“Call what?”
“The show. The report on the rescue.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “If it succeeds, it’ll be After the Chindi.”
One of the strands separated. Mist blew across the rocky surface below her. “What if it fails?” she asked.
“It’ll be different. Don’t know yet what I’d want to call it, but it would have to be different.”
“One minute. Hutch, finish up and get inside. Everybody else, prepare for jump.”
She was still cutting. “Not going to make it, Yuri.”
“Then let it go, Hutch. Get to the airlock.” It was too late to abort. Try that now and he’d damage the engines. Maybe blow them up altogether.
The second strand parted.
“Hutch. For God’s sake.”
And Claymoor: “Let it go, Hutch.”
Let it go and they’d drag the rock back out with them or even if they didn’t and it fell off it would wreck the numbers. Either way Tor was dead.
“Hutch.”
“Wait one, Yuri.”
“Come on, Hutch, let’s go.”
Sweat poured off her. God help her, there was a way, if she could anchor herself to the hull. She shut off the laser.
“Good,” said Brownstein, obviously watching through one of the hull imagers. “Now we’re making sense.”
She clipped the cutter to her harness.
“We’ll figure something out later.”
But of course he knew they wouldn’t.
She reached inside her harness, found the shutoff toggle for the e-suit. Then she pushed the sleeve control and simultaneously pulled the toggle. The suit shut off, the world went frigid, and her senses reeled.
She tugged her belt off and looped it around one of the sensor mount’s supporting bars. Then she let go of it and reactivated the suit. The field re-formed around her.
“What are you doing?”
She turned the cutter on and went back to work. Claymoor was still watching her. “Henry,” she said, “go.”
No fool Claymoor. He was already at the airlock.
“For God’s sake, Hutch—” The captain’s voice was a growl.
She held the laser to the remaining strand, watched it begin to eat through. Jennifer broke in with a stern warning and started a countdown. Trying to scare her. What kind of AI resorts to that sort of tactic? The hull beneath the cable was getting scorched. Not good.
“Fifteen seconds,” said the AI.
Claymoor was leaning out of the airlock, watching her. “Get inside, Henry,” she cried. “Close it up.”
“Not without you.” The idiot didn’t move. He was still pointing the imager at her.
“Get in. Or you and After the Chindi will both stay here.”
She heard him talking with Brownstein, instructing him to cease and desist. God help her, that was actually the terminology he used. Then, at last, apparently persuaded he had no option, he was gone, and the hatch closed.
The cable separated. Because the asteroid and the yacht were traveling at the same velocity, Dogbone didn’t fall away, and the strands remained where they were. She had to heave them clear.
She twisted the belt around her arm. “You’re free, Yuri,” she said. “Go.”
Brownstein had delayed pushing the button, had given her an extra few seconds. But it was the limit of what he could safely do. “Hold on,” he said.
The Hazeltines kicked in and the hull rose under her. Steering thrusters adjusted their angle and fired. The yacht lifted away from Dogbone. The rock began to grow misty.
Hutch watched it fade. Felt the first sensations of approaching transition.
“Stay with us, Hutch.”
INSIDE A SUPERLUMINAL, people usually take transition with little or no discomfort. Some get mildly ill, suffer disorientation, lose the contents of their stomachs. It’s why passengers are always cautioned to eat lightly, or skip the meal altogether, when a jump is imminent. Theory holds that the damping field, which protects against momentum effects, also helps limit the physical reaction. To Hutch’s knowledge, that was a notion that had never been tested, and consequently she had no idea what to expect riding the hull of the McCarver as it went sublight.
Had there been time, she’d have run her belt through the harness, in one sleeve and out the other, to make sure she didn’t fall off. But there hadn’t been time and now she was no longer sure where the belt was, or her harness, or her arm. Her mind retreated into a dark cave while everything around her swirled.
Somewhere she was holding onto something. And she should continue to do that. Hang on. Don’t let go.
Her gorge rose. Not good. There was no provision in the e-suit for emptying the contents of her stomach.
Once, at about the age of seven, she’d been playing with a swing that hung from a tree limb. In an experimental mood, she’d stood beside the swing and turned it round and round until the sustaining ropes were so twisted she couldn’t continue. Then she’d climbed into it and lifted her feet and it had begun to spin. It had continued spinning and suddenly the world was spinning and the sky was underfoot and she crashed into the ground.
It was like that now. The cave was turning, and she caught flashes of light but the images were all indistinct, faces, clouds, a stretch of metal hull, voices far off talking to her, or about her or maybe about the weather. Who knew?
Transition time is normally about six seconds. But vertigo went on and on until she became convinced that she and the belt had somehow slipped into one of the nether regions associated with TDI.
She threw up. Couldn’t help it. The warm wet sticky stuff went into her nose and back down her throat. She choked. Couldn’t breathe.
Darkness crowded the edges of consciousness.
There was a sudden blast of extreme cold. Suit was off. How the hell…?
It was her last thought as she slipped angrily into the night.
AS A RULE, Claymoor approved of heroic types. They made good copy, and they were generally self-effacing in interviews, unlike, say, politicians, who were always trying to take over the conversation. But there was a problem with heroes: They tended to get other, more reluctant, people involved in the heroics. Consequently, if a death-defying act was to be performed, it was always a good idea to arrive after it had been, successfully or not, completed.
He had tried to intervene when he saw what Hutchins was going to do, urging Brownstein to call off the jump. But he’d been too late, had hesitated too long. The ship might slip out of this ghostly place at any moment, and he was damned sure Henry Claymoor was going with it.
Given time, he’d have dragged the damned fool inside. But he’d had to settle for whispering good-bye and closing the hatch, grateful to be inside, thinking what a waste, somebody that attractive. He’d sat down on the bench, propping himself against a bulkhead, where he endured the brief giddiness that always assaulted him during jumps.
He’d learned they were easiest for him if he rode backward and closed his eyes. He’d done that. He knew when it was over, always knew because the vertigo went away as if someone had thrown a switch. And he was listening to Brownstein frantically calling Hutch’s name.
He reopened the hatch, and was delighted to see that she was still there. He had the imager ready and got pictures. But she’d apparently been knocked loose from her perch and was drifting away from the yacht. The running lights were trained on her. Her arms and legs were twitching, jerking, and he saw with horror precisely what had happened. She’d thrown up, clogged the narrow hard-shell air bubble that the e-suit provided over the face, and she was strangling on her own vomit.
Her struggles were growing more intense. She was already a long way from the ship. Maybe ten meters.
“Henry.” Brownstein’s voice. “Can you reach her?”