Stone triumphantly announced their success to Krane over the radio. The Earthman seemed less than overjoyed.
“You have twenty-seven minutes left,” he said. “Do you think you can do it, Stone?”
Yily grinned and began to whistle.
“What’s that?” Krane asked.
“It’s not doing anything,” she said. “ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ right?”
But, even when the tune had been relayed back to them by Krane, only four of the eleven locks protecting the n-bomb snapped open. They needed seven in sequence. “The Yellow Rose of Texas” snapped open two more. “Moonlight on the Wabash” made two snap back. She tried different keys and speeds, new sequences. Two more. One more. But after that it was no good. She was embarrassed. “My grandma came to Mars in the Revival Follies. We used to sing them all before the dope took her.”
“This is getting dangerous,” Krane told them. “Something has jammed. Stop!” Oblivious of his growing concern, they kept trying and kept failing as the minutes and the seconds died. “You’ve got to stop!” Krane told them. “Unless every lock is undone in order, the bomb can’t be neutralized. It took us years to work out those codes. We encrypted everything in easily remembered traditional tunes. We—we haven’t time to work out the codes again! If anything, we’ve complicated the situation. We have eight minutes left.”
Mac hovered over the bomb, trying different force-tools on the remaining locks. “This is hopeless. We could explode the thing at any moment.” He watched the most recently tried force-tool fade from his glove.
“I guess neither of us is musical enough. Time for plan B.” She reached with both hands into her pack and pulled out a large square metal container. Quickly, she dragged off the box’s covering, revealing a compacted canister covered with government warnings, which, as she stroked it with her gloved fingers, began to expand, flopping and twitching like a living thing until it lay in her lap like a long khaki-colored barracuda. “I’d better set this now.”
Stone recognized the unactivated B-9 wombot. He guessed her plan, but he said, “What are you going to do with that?” It was his idea too.
But she wouldn’t stop. “I’m a lot lighter than you. Give me your big scarf,” she said. “Hurry! And some of those tools might prove useful here. I’ll tell you what to do. We need that spiderwire. Can you disconnect it from your suit?”
“I can try.”
So he dragged out his long white scarf. She began to wind the thing around her waist. No clocks or numbers on the bomb told them how much time they had left. They had only their own chronometers. “Seven minutes.”
He was still planning to do the thing himself. “Now,” he said, “get those magnets situated. The scarf will be useful. It won’t bear any serious strain, but it’ll keep the bomb in position while we spiderwire it to the wombot. Leave those ends free. Screw drill might help.”
The thing grew firm in her hands as she helped give the cables a few more turns. “OK,” he said. “More magnetic clamps. As many as we have between us.” The bomb was settled on the ground, the wombot beside it. At his count, they seized the bomb, rolled it, and bound it with the wire while they fixed the eight magnetic manacles she normally used for heavy-gravity truants. They held the wombot squarely on the bomb. Six minutes. He took a deep breath.
Then, while he was still thinking about it, she had straddled the whole contraption, binding herself to it with the scarf and the remaining spiderwire, leaving her limbs free. There wasn’t time to argue. Stone grew more and more unhappy. He realized that he couldn’t take over. Too late to start arguing.
Soon she had the whole contraption firmly beneath her, the wombot now fighting like a fish to be free. He gripped it as hard as he could with his numbed hands. Then she began powering up her suit.
He couldn’t find any more words. He felt sick. He had an unusual set to his jaw as he watched her first switch her own equalizer to run, then eased the bomb but not the wombot outside her suit’s circle of power. She tapped in codes on her arm. Wouldn’t she need a helmet? There was a faint flash and she winced. Not a suicide mission! Don’t say it was that! The sound of the falls still drowned any noise they made without using the radio. The powerful bionic drone jumped in her hands and lifted over Stone’s head with Yily still clinging to it. It bucked and pirouetted and bucked again. He yelled for her to let go, that he would catch her.
“I have to test it first,” she said. “There isn’t much time.”
“Maybe we should say good-bye.” Suddenly calm, though scarcely reconciled, he stepped back.
“Maybe.” And then she released the wombot.
It leapt into the air, looped once, with her hanging on for dear life, her e-suit flickering and flashing. The wire secured the bomb. She was held only by a few magnetic clamps, spiderwire, and her own strength. But Stone could have sworn he saw her grinning.
The contraption began to move in a straight line. Out over the Nokedu Falls—out through the distant spray, gold and silver in the pink light—and, to Stone’s utter horror, down!
Down flew Yily Chen. Down she flew! Out of sight as she was dragged by the wombot into that vast rosy chasm and those wild, dancing, deadly waters. Stone had never known so much fear before. Never so much fear than when he saw her vanish. “Oh, God!” He tried to get his radio back on, but there was no reception. “Oh, Yily!” He felt ill. He scanned the gold-flecked air with his enhanced eyes. Nothing.
The Nokedu Falls shouted its beautiful, monstrous laughter.
Then, triumphantly, the wombot leapt like a salmon up the falls, into the air above the canal, and seemed to hover for a moment with Yily flying behind it, going through some weird contortions, maybe to gain altitude. Up she came, then back, hurtling almost directly toward him. He dove clear of the thing as it seemed to home in on him. Was he the nearest heat? Had he really been the target all along? Then here she came, just in time, jumping clear of the flying bomb, down onto the walkway as the wombot performed a perfect turn and flew like a radium ray straight and true back along the way they had first come—then vanished from normal space-time. Now it would push through the folds of unseen space, seeking maximum heat, blinking up to the surface through the rock until it hit thin air, still skewering through the folds of space-time, on its way to Sol.
He rolled over as she switched off her suit and fell, laughing, into his arms.
Then Stone did what unconsciously he had wanted to do since he’d first chased the tousled, brown-skinned Martian girl playing hide-and-go-seek in and out of the deep shadows of the tanks. He took her in his arms, tossed away his helmet, and kissed her full on her blood-red lips. She kissed him back with a passion, biting his tongue and grinning as he responded.
Up in RamRam City, a scummer lying on his back, high on jojo juice, saw a quick blossom of brightness appear in Sol’s NW quadrant, a crimson flower against dull orange, and had no notion how lucky he was to be alive or what that brief moment had earned.
Soon Stone and Yily followed the long walkway of polished black granite beside the wide canal and up the great staircase to the chamber where he had first met Krane. The Earthman was gone, but on a hook extending from the deactivated noman’s right arm was a soft grey ratskin bag, and when Stone poured the contents into her open palm Yily gasped.
Stone lit the last three inches of his jane, drew deep, smiled, contentedly watching her as she laid them out, side by side on the bag: seven perfect flame sapphires, pulsing with constantly shifting shades of indigo. Each was a different world. Each was utterly fascinating, ready to reflect and amplify your secret dreams. Should you wish, you could live in one forever.