“Orem? How’s it going?” Asair, on the vid.
“I could use a cool brew.”
“Sorry we goofed on the weather report. We just don’t have all the reporting stations they have on Earth.”
“Now you tell me. But basically, we’re all cool.”
It took a hell of a lot to break a carbon fiber cable, and those huge trees weren’t going anywhere.
Whoom, whoom, whoom, giant footsteps drowned out the wind. Frantically Orem looked for a clear space in the muck covering the window.
The trees were falling! Long rows fell down before the wind.
No, not falling. Bending. Suddenly Orem realized how these trees survived.
“Hang on,” he shouted. “We’re going over. Those damned trees have knees!”
How could anyone guess that that big bulge at the base was a hinge?
With a rending crash, the cradle fell. Someone screamed, then smashed into Orem, jerking him viciously against his seat belt. A jolt of pain seared his stomach; he felt cut in two. Now the floor reared up, leaving him hanging like a fly on the wall. The chair popped loose, then Orem, chair and all, fell down the floor, his fingernails scratching at the fabric, trying to get a grip, then smashing head first into someone at the bottom wall.
“Sorry,” he said, mumbling with his face pressed into someone’s stomach and his butt, still in the chair, pointing straight up.
The lights went out.
Loosened, the wall fabric whipped Orem’s side, slapping his arms and ribs. He snapped his seat belt, released himself from the chair and stood, only to have the wall flip and throw him down.
Alarms wailed.
“Air-tight security ruptured!” said a booming electronic voice. “Air-tight security ruptured.”
A tear in the dome. Things couldn’t get worse.
“Needle bugs!” A scream, with the pain of all mankind in it.
Orem leaped up, struggling to stand on the heaving mass beneath his feet. Tom fabric slashed across one eye, cutting his forehead and nearly blinding him with blood. He covered his face with his hands, the wind-driven fabric whipping his fingers, and forced his way to the back of the room where the emergency lights, armored suits, and first-aid kits were stored.
For a few seconds he pawed at the door, totally confused, for it was sideways. Finally his fingers found the release.
Lights. He flipped on a battery spotlight.
The place looked as if it had been stirred like cake batter. The walls flapped so loudly Orem couldn’t hear the man—Jason, he thought, though his face was so contorted who could tell—screaming, though he could see his open mouth and his throat muscles straining as he struggled to pull a needle bug from his leg.
Shuddering, Orem wanted to help, but remembered the spacer’s first law—protect the rescuer first. With trembling hands, watching where every finger went, he pulled an armored environmental suit from the emergency locker, climbed into it, grabbed a hand torch, and forced his way between the flapping fabric walls to Jason.
He flamed the needle bug. It didn’t release until it turned to smoke.
A hand tapped his shoulder. He turned to see Mara. Like him, she wore full armor.
“My job,” she shouted, pointing to Jason. “Your job: restore power and send out a mayday.”
The next two hours came closer to describing hell than any sermon Orem had ever heard. Needle bugs everywhere. Orem got a mayday off using a battery-powered transmitter. The main power lines to the reactor were down. Orem used the robos to run an emergency lead. Carrying their cables, the robos scurried over the downed trees. Needle bugs jumped them again and again; proving IQ-wise, needle bugs weren’t at the top of the class, but blind instinct’s not to be despised. Orem shuddered.
The lights came back on.
Now, stabilize the cradle. With the motors working, Orem reeled in enough cable to pull the cradle right side up. As the fabric pulled taut, the wind had less of a target, and the terrible buffeting slowed. Others mended the breaks in the airtight fabrics, reinflating everything.
This done, Orem went to the sick bay to find Mara.
In the dimness of the emergency lights, Orem saw five bodies on canvas cots. Five out of twelve. He stooped nearer.
Suze! Her eyes stared at the ceiling, her face waxen in the dim light.
“Oh, please, don’t let it be true.” He touched her hand with his armored glove. She didn’t move. Only her chest heaved, sucking oxygen from a clear plastic tube. “Don’t die, Suze,” he murmured, bending to look closer at her face.
Whack! Something slammed into his armored back. Mara. She’d hit him.
“No, dammit, no!” she shouted. “No time for whimpering. Get topside. They’re sending the shuttles for us.”
“What? In this wind?”
“We have five people in critical condition. Just enough serum to last maybe two hours. We need more serum now, and we need the sick bay on the big ship. You guide them down. Save the people.”
“We can’t take anyone not in armor outside. They’ll be bug meat in seconds.”
“Don’t tell me what I’ve got to do. You do what you’ve got to do.”
Orem ran topside just in time for the two shuttles swooping overhead.
“So what’s happening down there?”
Orem recognized the pilots by voice, Ivan Diachev and Riena Eisner. Then he glanced out, glimpsed the shuttles, and felt like screaming. They had no pods attached. The shuttles were simply generic carriers, a tiny pilot’s compartment, engines, and monster fuel tanks. For short trips in the planet’s atmosphere, they carried freight in slings. To reach orbit with passengers, they needed a special pressurized passenger pod.
“Where in hell is the pressure pod?” Orem shouted.
“Sitting in the desert halfway around the world from you. Rough landing, cracked an attachment point.”
“Then what are you planning to do? We have five casualties. We need help now.”
“We have serum for you right now. Then we’re trying for a pickup of the entire cradle, minus the reactor. We’ll carry you to a mountain habitat out of the storm and the needle bugs. They’ve got a better medical setup than you.”
“Pick up the cradle? That’s a tall order in this wind.”
“No choice, unless you can wait.”
“OK, but it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Orem watched the shuttles head into the wind, one on each side of the cradle. From time to time, Orem corrected them—the automatic laser guidance system was DOA. Mostly they worked by themselves, chattering back and forth and edging in, as they say, like whales making love. Long cables lowered, each with a robo clinging to the end, and whipping out into the wind.
Nothing to do but come lower, lower, and still lower. Now they hovered thirty meters overhead, heaving and rolling in the wind. Rocket blasts threw dancing shadows over thousands of trees, roots still firmly in the ground, but flat on their sides in ranks like sleeping soldiers.
Connection! The first robo caught a strong point and locked one cable in place, then went to lock in a second. That done, it came creeping up to the dome, cheating the wind by crawling low on its belly like an embarrassed dog. The robo bore a precious gift of serum, enough to save lives at least for a time.
Second connection. Another robo, more cables, more serum.
“You guys ready to ride?” Ivan said. “Hang on to your false teeth.”
Orem called a “now hear this” over the intercom to warn sick bay, then ordered the pilots to pull them up.
Rocket blasts drowned even the wind. Slowly the shuttles climbed, pulling the two cables taut. Gradually Orem paid out the anchor cables below, keeping the cradle level.
“Before I drop my anchors, you shorten your leads, or this thing will buck us to death. It’s the biggest sail you ever saw,” Orem said.