She didn’t need to use the jet: she pushed off from the dome, rising slowly into the void, holding the white banner stretched out below her. She ignored the stars, the dome, the mountain, fixing her attention on the way the light was drifting across the cooling bag.
She aimed the nozzle of the jet carefully, then opened it for a fraction of a pause. The red disk jerked wildly toward the edge of the fabric, and for a moment she thought she’d lost it, but when she stretched her left arm out a bit further the light reappeared.
Once it was clear that she wouldn’t need another correction immediately, Tamara opened her rear eyes and searched for the fire-watcher’s silhouette. She trusted Ada to perform her task flawlessly, but if the watcher hadn’t noticed the beam alight on them—or in their state of confusion had failed to grasp its meaning—they might have done the worst thing possible and fired their air jet again, changing their trajectory.
Tentatively, she slid the banner out of the beam, allowing the light to continue unobstructed to its original target. For a long time she could see no sign of it above her, but then she picked out a faint red speck surrounded by blackness. The silhouette had been there all along, but the trails behind it were so dim that she could barely make them out; little wonder she’d missed the gaps in them. She waited as long as she dared, hoping the reassuring message of the beam would get through, then she spread the banner out again to check her own alignment.
Ada’s tracking was perfect, and the watcher was proving to be an obliging partner in the rendezvous. There were grimmer reasons than presence of mind why someone lost in the void might stop trying to change course, but Tamara didn’t want to dwell on them.
The next correction she made would need just the briefest puff of air; Tamara’s fingers almost cramped with anxiety at the thought that she might open the valve too wide or for too long. The disk of light jittered, mapping every fluctuation in the nozzle’s tiny thrust, but when it settled it was closer to the center of the banner than ever. She chirped to herself to release the tension, then gazed in sudden wonder at the steady red glow. The navigators who’d brought the Peerless onto its orthogonal course had worked the marvel of their age, but none of them could have imagined following a beam like this across the void. She was at least four saunters from the mountain now, but the red disk had barely increased its width and was barely diminished in brightness.
The third correction was no less daunting, but she didn’t foul it up. Tamara imagined a daughter beside her, learning this skill from her, sharing her delight in the intangible red guide rope.
She could see the figure above her clearly now, almost certainly a woman, spinning slowly in the starlight. Tamara let the beam fall on the woman’s cooling bag, but it elicited no response.
Agonizing over their relative velocity would only waste time; she was sure it would not be injuriously high. She stuffed the empty cooling bag back into her tool pouch to free two more hands, aimed herself straight at the woman, and prepared to grab her.
Their bodies collided with a beautiful dull thwack, and Tamara closed six arms around her in a tight embrace. For a moment she almost let go in shock: the skin pressed against her through the fabric was alarmingly hot. She felt around the woman’s back for any trace of air wafting out; there was none. There was no canister attached to the bag, and no air jet either. Quickly, Tamara tugged her spare canister out of its pouch and snapped it onto the inlet. Air flowed through the bag, sending a warm breeze spilling out into the void.
How long could someone survive without cooling? Tamara shuddered, trying to remain hopeful. She tied their cooling bags together, then took a moment to get her bearings. They were spinning now, and they’d lost the beam, but it wouldn’t be hard to navigate back to the mountain by sight alone.
She pressed her helmet against the woman’s. “You’re safe now,” she promised her. “Just rest if you like. There’s no hurry to wake.”
Had the woman used up her air jet’s tank, then resorted to the cooling air as a substitute? But then, why was the jet gone entirely? The situation only made sense if there’d been no jet in the first place. The woman had fallen into the void with nothing to help her. She’d improvised with the bag’s air canister and managed to cancel out some of her velocity, but when she’d lost consciousness the canister had escaped from her hands.
Tamara put the mystery aside and concentrated on reducing their spin. Once the stars were no longer reeling around her, she took sight of the mountain’s peak and fired the jet, starting them on their way home.
Ada met them by the airlock.
“How is she?” she asked Tamara.
“Still not conscious.” Tamara began untying the safety rope that had bound them together. “Any reports yet? Of people gone missing?”
“No.” Ada bent down and helped remove the woman’s helmet. “I think I know her,” she declared in surprise.
“Would she have been on fire watch?”
Ada said, “I doubt it.”
The woman began to stir. Her eyes were still closed, but she started flailing her arms weakly.
Tamara was overjoyed. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you remember what happened? Where did you fall from?”
The woman didn’t answer.
Ada said, “We should contact her co. We should contact Macario.”
41
Carla looked up at the starlit mountain stretched out above the fire-watch platform. The ladder she’d just descended and the platform’s bulky support ropes converged in the distance into a single slender wisp. From this vantage, an alert watcher could hardly miss a flash of orthogonal matter against the rock’s muted tones, and even a lamp carried out onto the slopes would be sure to catch the eye. But any fine detail in this sweeping panorama that brought no light of its own to the scene would probably be lost in the gloom. A small team working by starlight might well come and go unnoticed, right under the gaze of the most vigilant observer.
Tamara nudged her and handed her the spyglass, then showed her where to look. Carla swept her magnified gaze back and forth several times before finally seeing it: a tent—or hammock—suspended from the rock, a circle of fabric attached at a few points on its rim, sagging down in the middle. On close inspection the camouflage pattern dyed into the fabric looked surprisingly crude—but she’d run the spyglass over the same spot twice without noticing a thing. When she’d first heard Macaria’s account of the hideaway it had sounded preposterous, but now she had to admit that the kidnappers had merely been unlucky. If one of their captives hadn’t escaped, they might have remained undetected.
She couldn’t see any hint of movement in the tent, but if Carlo was under guard he’d be wise to lie meekly still. Macaria had never heard his voice in this airless prison, but when she’d managed to tear open her own confining sack she’d glimpsed another just like it before she’d slipped out past the edge of the tent and fallen into the void.
With impressive—albeit nearly fatal—self-discipline, Macaria hadn’t even tried to detach the air tank from her cooling bag until the spin of the Peerless had put her out of her captors’ line of sight—and if she’d continued in free fall, she would have been too distant to be seen with the naked eye when the mountain came full circle. It was possible that the kidnappers believed she was dead and that her corpse had drifted away undetected. Then again, the mere fact of her escape was sure to have put them on edge.