The chindi fired its thrusters again and she swept out over it, passing close above its granite plains, before her own braking rockets took hold.
Bill, on-screen, seemed to be watching a display. He looked worried. “One hour four minutes to the Slurpy,” he said.
THE PASSAGEWAYS PROVIDED no handrails, nothing to grab on to, and George was hurting from getting knocked down every few minutes. He wondered why the chindi didn’t manage a nice gradual braking maneuver instead of firing its thrusters every few minutes.
Hutch thought they were protected from the worst of the braking maneuvers by a damping effect. He didn’t like thinking how severe it would have been without it.
“I wonder,” said Tor, “whether we shouldn’t stop and pick up the dome.”
“No. Leave it.” It wouldn’t have been that far out of the way. But they didn’t want to be hauling equipment now. “I’ll get you a new one when we get home,” he said.
George had been frightened since the moment he’d set foot on the chindi. The prospect of being hauled off somewhere on this cavernous ship, taken perhaps beyond the reach of rescue, had unsettled him far more than he’d allowed anyone to see. Or for that matter allowed himself to think about.
Hutch was right. Safety should have been his prime consideration. Stay alive. Unless one stays alive, everything else is irrelevant.
But the truth was, before this, George had never been forced to accept his own mortality. He’d never been ill, had never been in an accident, had never voluntarily risked his life. He wasn’t one of those idiots who thought attaching themselves to slings and jumping off skyways was fun. Consequently, the possibility of dying had always seemed remote. Death was something that happened to other people.
But the corridors of the chindi ran on forever. They trooped along. George and Tor consulted the map periodically. Yes, this was the chamber with the treetop home, and that was the museum. Absolutely. I’m sure this is Denmark Street. (Denmark-16 held, they believed, a site in which an excavation had collapsed and killed a group of archeologists. It was a kind of display within a display, archeologists themselves being dug up and placed under glass.) They hurried past an armory and a group of machines that manufactured leather goods.
Occasionally one of them walked into a wall, or stumbled, or needed a moment to reorient. Alyx’s wristlamp failed, and they worried briefly that the power in her e-suit would also shut down. That had been known to happen. So they’d stopped and waited and held their breath, wondering what they could do if her warning lamps began blinking. But it didn’t happen, and they moved on.
Once, twice, they got lost. Left, right, or straight on? They disagreed, debated, consulted George’s map, which hadn’t been seen to properly. But they managed and pressed ahead.
George kept track of the time, watched it dwindle to an hour, then to forty minutes.
They got knocked off their feet again with just over a half hour left, and he went down hard and banged his jaw on the floor. Bit his tongue in the process and had to be helped to his feet.
“You okay?” asked Alyx, looking at him solicitously.
He loved Alyx. The whole world loved Alyx, of course, but that was make-believe. He was one of the relatively few who really knew her.
He patted her on the head, a gesture which brought a frown.
There were no robots abroad. Another indication that the chindi was getting ready to leave orbit.
They passed the Ditch.
“I wonder,” she said, “if my handkerchief is still bobbing around in there?”
And they were thrown down once more. This was different, though. It wasn’t simply a burst, but rather a sustained firing. It was much harder to get up this time, even with help, and he found he had to lean forward to keep his balance. It was like walking up a steep hill.
Conditions hadn’t changed when they arrived finally at the exit hatch. George sank against the ladder, grateful for something to hold on to. Alyx also grabbed hold and breathed a sigh of relief.
Ten minutes from the Slurpy. He looked up at the hatch, squirreled away in its airlock. The metal gleamed in the torchlight, showing no sign that it had been cut through twice, and twice repaired. “There’s what happened to the link,” he said. “Tor, maybe we should get out now and not wait?”
Alyx was nodding yes. Let’s waste no time.
Tor hesitated, then reached inside his vest and produced the cutter.
LEFT TO HIS own devices, Tor would have known not to remove a hatch during a maneuver. But he’d stopped thinking and instead developed a conviction that they had to get outside before they went into the Slurpy. Simple enough. It couldn’t be too bad out there. And anyhow, he knew Hutch would be nearby with the lander, and he had to give her a chance to pick them up.
He climbed the ladder to the hatch, activated the cutter and touched it to the metal. (Would the maintenance crew on chindi at some point get annoyed with the people who kept slicing through their hatch?)
The metal blackened and began to flake away. And while he cut he thought about Hutch, coming to bail him out again. And he promised himself when they were off the Memphis, when this whole goofy business was done and they weren’t caught anymore in a space of a few hundred square meters, when she was free to walk away from him if she chose, he would tell her. Tell her everything. How he still felt like an adolescent in her presence. How his voice tended to fail. How he woke up sometimes at night from having dreamed about her, and how his spirits sagged to discover none of the dream had been true.
Stupid. To get so caught up over one woman.
He completed the cut, shut off the laser, reached up, and pushed. The piece gave way and was torn from his grip and his hand slammed hard against the side of the hatch. He cried out and fell off the ladder.
He crashed into George and Alyx, who were trying to catch him, to break his fall, and they all went down.
George swore. “What happened?”
Tor’s hand was bruised, but, he thought, not broken. “Must have got above the damping field,” he said, trying to flex it. “Whacked it pretty good.”
Then he noticed Alyx biting her lip and holding on to her ankle.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Twisted it.”
The hatch was, at least, wide-open. Stars blazed through the opening he had made. But within a few minutes they went dark. A wind blew through the passageway, and a few snowflakes drifted down on them.
THE CHINDI INSERTED itself smoothly into the snowstorm. No tossing around there, Hutch thought. The vessel was too massive.
But she had a carrier wave again from George. “Hutch, are you there? Can you hear me?”
“I’m here. What kind of shape are we in?”
“Hatch is open. It’s snowing like a son of a bitch.”
“I know. Stay inside. Wait one, I’ve got another call. Bill?”
“Hutch, the chindi has just shut down its thrusters. Present velocity will result in rendezvous with funnel head. That is, with the device that created the funnel.”
“No more tweaks?”
“One more firing will be necessary. But it will be slight.”
“Okay. George, you still on the circuit?”
“We’re here.”
“All three of you?”
“Yes.”
“Does it look possible to do the pickup?”
“It’s a blizzard. How good a pilot are you?”
“Bill, can you get a reading on the wind near the chindi?”
“Forty to sixty, gusting to a hundred. Winds in a circle. Tornado style.”
“Okay. Time to see what we can do. George, I’ll be there in a few minutes. You guys be ready to go. But stay inside until I tell you.” She was fortunate to have a lander, and not a shuttle. The shuttles were boxier, not designed for atmospheric flight. The lander would provide more control.