“All right.” Lorq started’ to suggest that Prince stud with Brian. But perhaps with his arm Prince might not be able to plug in properly. “Hey, Dan!” he shouted down the street. “You’re still working.”
The, Australian had just opened the door. Now he turned around, shook his head, and started back.
“What are we going for?” Lorq asked as they started back toward the field.
“Tell you on the way.”
As they passed the gate (and the Draco column ringed with the Serpent gleaming in the sunset), Brian hazarded conversation. “That’s quite an outfit,” he said to Prince.
“There’ll be a lot of people on the Ile. I want everybody to be able to see where I am.”
“Is that glove something new they’re wearing here on Earth?”
Lorq’s stomach caught itself. He glanced quickly between the two boys.
“Things like that,” Brian went on, “they never get out to Centauri till a month after everybody’s stopped wearing them on Earth. And I haven’t even been in Draco for ten months anyway.”
Prince looked at his arm, turned his hand over.
Twilight washed the sky.
Then lights along the top of the fence flicked on: light lined the folds on Prince’s glove.
“My personal style.” He looked up at Brian. “I have no right arm. This”—he made a fist of silver fingers—“is all metal and plastic and whirring doohickeys.” He laughed sharply. “But it serves me … about as well as a real one.”
“Oh.” Embarrassment wavered through Brian’s voice. “I didn’t know.”
Prince laughed. “Sometimes I almost forget too. Sometimes. Which way is your ship?”
“There.” As Lorq pointed, he was acutely aware of the dozen years between his and Prince’s first and present meetings.
Draco, Earth, Nepal, 3162
“All plugged?”
“You’re paying me, Captain,” Dan’s voice grated through. “Strung up and out.”
“Ready, Captain,” from Brian.
“Open your low vanes—“
Prince sat behind Lorq, one hand on Lorq’s shoulder (his real hand). “Everybody and his brother is coming to this thing. You just got here tonight, but people have been arriving all week. I invited a hundred people. There’re at least three hundred coming. It grows, it grows!” As the inertia field caught them up, De Blau dropped, and the sun, which had set, rose in the west and crescented the world with fire. The blue rim burned. “Anyway, Che-ong brought a perfectly wild bunch with her from somewhere on the edge of Draco—“
Brian’s voice came over the speaker. “Che-ong, you mean the psychorama star?”
“The studio gave her a week’s vacation, so she decided to come to my party. Day before yesterday, she took it into her head to go mountain climbing, and flew off to Nepal.”
The sun passed overhead. To travel between two points on one planet, you just had to go up and come down in the right place. In a vane-projector craft, you had to ascend, circle the Earth three or four times, and glide in. It took the same seven/eight minutes to get from one side of the city to the other as it did to get to the other side of the world.
“Che radioed me this afternoon they were stuck three-quarters of the way up Mt. Kenyuna. There’s a storm below them, so they can’t get through to the rescue station in Katmandu for a helicopter to come and pick them up. Of course, the storm doesn’t stop her from getting a third of the way around the world to tell me her troubles. Anyway, I promised her I’d think of something.”
“How the hell are we supposed to get them off the mountain?”
“You fly within twenty feet of the rock face and hover. Then I’ll climb down and bring them up.”
“Twenty feet!” The blurred world slowed beneath them. “You want to get to your party alive?”
“Did you get that ion-coupler Aaron sent?”
“I’m using it now.”
“It’s supposed to be sensitive enough for that sort of maneuvering. And you’re a crack racing captain. Yes or no?”
“I’ll try it,” Lorq said warily. “I’m a bigger fool than you are.” Then he laughed. “We’ll try it, Prince!”
Reticulations of snow and rock glided under them. Lorq set the loran co-ordinates of the mountain as Prince bad given them. Prince reached over Lorq’s arm and tuned the radio …
A girl’s voice tumbled into the cabin:
“ … Oh, there! Look, do you think that’s them? Prince! Prince, darling, have you come to rescue us? We’re hanging here by our little frozen nubs and just miserable. Prince …?” There was music behind her voice; there was a babble of other voices.
“Hold on, Che,” Prince said into the mike. “Told you we’d do something.” He turned to Lorq. “There! They should be right down there.”
Lorq cut the frequency filter till Caliban was sliding down the gravitational distortion of the mountain itself. The peaks rose, chiseled and flashing.
“Oh, look, everybody! Didn’t I tell you Prince wouldn’t let us languish away up here and miss the party?”
And in the background:
“Oh, Cecil, I can’t do that step—“
“Turn the music up louder—“
“But I don’t like anchovies—“
“Prince,” cried Che, “do hurry! It’s started to snow again. You know this would never have happened, Cecil, if you hadn’t decided to do parlor tricks with the hobenstocks.”
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s dance!”
“I told you, no! We’re too close to the edge!”
Below Lorq’s feet, on the floor screen, transmitting natural light, ice and gravel and boulders shone in the moonlight as the Caliban lowered.
“How many of them are there?” Lorq asked. “The ship isn’t that big.”
“They’ll squeeze.”
On the icy ledge that slipped across the screen, some were seated on a green poncho with wine bottles, cheeses, and baskets of food. Some were dancing. A few sat around on canvas chairs. One had scrambled to a higher ledge and was shading his eyes, staring up at the ship.
“Che,” Prince said, “we’re here. Get everything packed. We can’t wait around all day.”
“Good heavens! That is you up there. Come on, everybody, we’re on our way! Yes, that’s Prince!”
There was an explosion of activity on the ledge. The youngsters began to run about, picking things up, putting them in knapsacks; two people were folding the poncho.
“Edgar! Don’t throw that away! It’s ‘forty-eight, and you can’t just pick up a bottle any old where. Yes, Hillary, you may change the music. No! Don’t turn the heater off yet! Oh, Cecil, you are a fool. Brrrr! – well, I suppose we’ll be off in a moment or two. Of course I’ll dance with you, honey. Just not so close to the edge. Wait a second. Prince? Prince …!”
“Che!” Prince called as Lorq settled still closer. “Do you have any rope down there?” He put his hand over the mike. “Did you see her in Mayham’s Daughters where she acted the wacky, sixteen-year-old daughter of that botanist?”
Lorq nodded.
“That wasn’t acting.” He took his hand from the mike again. “Che! Rope! Do you have any rope?”