So she jumped into the dark and plummeted deep into the chindi.
She had tried to get into the center of the shaft, away from the walls, which were already hurtling past in the uncertain beam from her lamp.
In her link, she heard Nick’s desperate cries. And the frantic voices of Tor and George. Screaming at her.
Screaming after her.
She fell. The walls, rough and cracked and stained, dissolved into a blur. Do not touch. Other passageways flickered past. Her lamplight slashed into them, and once or twice she thought she saw lights that were not hers.
She fought down a wave of panic.
Hold on.
“Nick.”
He was trying to breathe.
“Nick, keep your light on.”
There was only one explanation for Nick’s reappearance. This was a gravity tube, like the one she’d descended in the Wendy. Gravity tubes, when they were powered up, negated artificial gravity. They were used to move cargo and people from deck to deck in zero gee.
But the chindi wasn’t the Wendy Jay. It was enormously larger, and that was why Nick had come back. The tube passed completely through the ship, top to bottom. Except there was no bottom.
In Academy ships, gravity generators were located on the lowest deck. But the chindi was too big. If she was right, there was a deck running through the center of the ship. And gravity was generated in both directions from that deck. Stand on either side of it and you could look up. The chindi had no below decks. Everything was up.
Nick had passed through the central deck, gradually lost momentum, reached the end of his trajectory and fallen back. He’d become a kind of yo-yo, up and down.
“I’m behind you,” she said.
“—Happening to me?” She didn’t recognize his voice.
She felt a sudden rise and drop, as she might when a shuttle maneuver was completed with perfect technique. Gee forces squeezed her sides, then let go. She was beginning to slow. Moving up.
“I’m with you, Nick. I’m coming.”
She’d passed the central deck and was rising in the shaft, shedding momentum. She was upside down, feet up, head down, and her instincts tried to take over. Her body wanted to reverse its position.
No.
In a few moments, Nick would reach his apogee and begin to fall back. She had to get past him without a collision. “Nick, I want you to close your eyes.”
“What? Where—you, Hutch?”
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Do it!” If he saw her coming, he would try to get out of the way. That was what she didn’t need.
“Closed,” he said.
“Good.” She saw his light above her. In the dark. Getting brighter.
It looked to be right on top of her.
She watched it come. Knew it was an illusion. They were both, she thought, still ascending. But she was moving more quickly than he.
Gaining ground for the moment.
Then the distant light grew sharply brighter. He had begun falling.
“Keep cool, Nick.”
Coming fast. It was impossible to see well. But she took a quick look at the walls around her, which had slowed down so that she could see the cracks and stains again. Then she blipped the go-pack, pushing herself toward a corner, and he was past!
The wall came desperately close. She used another blip to get clear.
“Nick,” she said, “you can look now.”
She reached her own apogee and began to fall. Still head down. Ideally, she should have fired a short burst to speed things up, but she was already approaching a terrifying velocity and couldn’t summon the nerve.
The walls blurred again.
She did a quick calculation, eight hundred meters top to bottom, all apparently honeycombed with individual decks and compartments. Decks say five meters apart, 160 stories.
The world turned over again and another spurt of well-being flushed through her. She felt squeezed again, and released, a sensation so brief that she understood it happened as she passed the zero-gee level.
But she was right-side up now, her ascent already beginning to slow.
“Nick.” She hit the go-pack. Fired her thrusters. And picked up some lift.
“Help me, Hutch.”
“Coming.” Poor son of a bitch didn’t even know what was happening to him. “Nick, I’m behind you. Coming fast. Going to pull in front of you.”
“Okay.” The voice shrill.
“Grab hold of me when I pass. And hang on.” She watched his light, sometimes seeing the lamp, sometimes the beam sweeping around the shaft. “George.”
“Hutch, what the hell’s going on?”
“Give me some light. Need to see where you are.”
More lamps blinked on. High. Way up there.
“Don’t point them in the shaft.”
“Hutch—” Tor, sounding frantic.
“Not now.” She cut the thrusters, moved up close to Nick, long dark passageways blinking past as her lamp swept through them, but slowing down, rather like a sim losing power.
Above Nick, George’s light was coming too fast. The boost she’d given herself would crash her into the overhead. Couldn’t have that. As she approached Nick she twisted around, got her feet up, and the thrusters up. She moved past his legs, and presented him with her front to keep the go-pack away from him. She was, of course, upside down again.
He made a grab for her, got hold of her harness. His face was gray, his eyes round and the irises like marbles. Then the lamp angle changed, and she couldn’t see it anymore, but he had hold of her. Death grip.
She got one hand into Nick’s harness, whispered to him to hold on, and hit the power again. Just for a moment, just a blip from the thrusters, and then another one, enough to take off a little more momentum.
There was a cacophony of voices on her link. But she was too busy to listen. The passageways were almost distinct now as they flickered past.
She needed a place to land.
Couldn’t see above her. Didn’t know how far the roof was. But she’d be falling again momentarily.
Pick your spot, babe.
She twisted to get the thrusters horizontal to the passages. Tightened her grip on Nick.
Don’t hit the wall.
The passageways were opening up to her as she slowed. Her lamp swept each in turn and she tried to time them, now, now, now, getting into the rhythm.
Hit the button.
The thrusters ripped them sideways and took them into a tunnel. They crashed into something, an overhead, tore along it. Fell to the floor. Bounced. The lights flickered and went out. And then it was over and they lay sprawled in a tangle of arms, legs, thrusters, and air tanks.
She got to her hands and knees. One of Nick’s legs was bent the wrong way.
“How you doing?” she asked.
He managed a smile. “I’m hurting a little,” he said.
Hutch would not have believed it, but it had been just over one minute since she’d jumped.
“HUTCH, WHAT HAPPENED?” George leaned over and looked into the shaft. His stomach reeled as he peered into its depths. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She sounded relieved, jubilant, scared, ecstatic, all at the same time. “We’re a little beaten up, but we’re alive.”
“Where are you?”
“Below you. Wait…” A lamp beam appeared down in the dark and played up the side of the shaft.
“I see you.” They looked to be three levels down. Say fifteen, maybe twenty, meters.
Nick’s voice: “What the hell was that all about?”
“It’s a bottomless pit,” Hutch said. And she explained. Something about artificial gravity radiating both directions from the center of the ship. “You could fall forever,” she continued, “back and forth. Up and down.”