by Larry Niven
“We have to move again pretty soon, honey, or we won't get to you in time.”
Her voice was small and cheerless. “How's your back?”
“It hurts. But not as much as losing you would hurt.”
“I hope we all make it.” It was the first time Kyle had heard Lark openly doubt success.
Kyle stared at stars, picking out constellations. Even eight hundred klicks up, the stars were faintly blurred. In Pluto's thin gravity the atmosphere reached way up, thinning very slowly.
There were few other humans this far away from Sol. He knew it was harshly cold, but he was sweating and the suit's movement was a constant irritation. He found the Sun, no brighter than Venus from Earth, and imagined the billions of people that populated the inner planets and ringed the Earth and Mars. He'd always wanted to make his mark, to be remembered. He wanted to do it by finding something unique in the heavens.
Early returns based on ‘local’ watchers indicated their rescue would be heavily touristed. In fact, he thought wryly, ratings would do better if they died. Not how he wanted to be remembered. The thought pushed him into waking Henry.
The next three climbs Kyle led again, painkillers making him woozy. They moved too slowly. Lark had about sixteen hours of air left, and they were twenty kilometers away, making just over a kilometer an hour. Calvin mentioned that their ratings were going up. Kyle cussed at him. “Now, now,” Calvin said, “I'll have to edit that out. It must be the meds talking.”
“It's a nightmare talking. We're never going to make it.” Kyle kept pulling, looking behind him for Henry.
The psychologist, Dr. Gerry, broke in. “Sure you will. We're all pulling for you.”
“Too bad you're not really here.”
“Yes we are. One step at a time. We're there.”
“Talk to Lark. Maybe you can do some good there.” Kyle flicked off the sound and brushed aside a leaf that was blocking his view.
“Don't ... do ... that,” Henry said.
“Do what?”
“Don't turn them off. You need them to get you to Lark. Lark's not on this direct path. You're going to have to cross stems a few times. They can help you with that.”
“Us.”
“You. I'm slowing you down too much.” Henry's breath was labored. “Can't get this close and not make it.”
“No.”
“You'll be faster.”
“And if I fall off again? Scotch my back?”
“I can't go any further. You were right to want to leave me.”
“I wouldn't be this far without you.”
“You won't get there with me. Save Lark. I'll ... I'll just wait here.”
“Can you take stims?”
Henry was quiet for a long time, still climbing. Kyle wished he'd talk. “You're coming. You have to.”
“The last thing I have to do is get you to Lark. Slow down, I'll unhitch. I can call up the habitat.”
“I'm the one that keeps tripping. You saved me last time I fell.”
“Move faster. Maybe I'll keep up.”
“You'll keep up—you're on a rope.”
Henry collapsed when they stopped for a rest. His heart rate showed that he was still alive, but he didn't respond to Kyle's voice. Playing possum? Kyle didn't know.
He demanded the supply basket. He closed his eyes while he waited for it, counting time.
Calvin was screaming his name. He blinked. He floated five meters from anything. Damn.
“Where ... what happened?”
“You passed out. Hang in there. The supply basket is almost there.”
“Like I'm going anywhere.” He checked. The rope was still attached. He tugged. It was tight. The basket was rising up from below him, the probes rising and falling as someone on the ground adjusted course to meet him. When the basket reached him, he struggled to find the medical kit. He pulled it out. As one hand emerged with the med-kit, weight inside the basket shifted. The open door hung down. Whoever was running the remote probes corrected the wrong way, exaggerating the shift. A long knife fell away first, tumbling slowly past, a soft glint along the blade showing as his head turned towards it, touching it with light from his helmet lamp. He tucked the med-kit under his arm and reached for a strap on the habitat as it came towards him. He snagged it, the bulk causing him to turn over, facing away. He twisted, holding the med-kit and the habitat. He needed to close the door. He was floating down, with no ability to move fast. Kyle tried to snag the extra rope with his foot while it went by. The coil fell across his toe, and he pulled his knee in to bring the rope to where he could grab it with a spare finger. It slipped off his boot and floated away. Next, the extra suit passed him two meters away.
Lark's pressure suit.
He tucked the habitat between his knees and reached, tried swimming for it. His rope stopped him.
He stared after the suit for a long time. “Calvin?”
No answer.
Of course not, he'd turned off the audio. “Calvin—track the damned suit.”
“We are tracking it.”
Well, he had the two most immediate things, but now he'd have to carry them. He left the collapsed habitat between his legs, tied the handle of the med-kit to the rope with a butterfly knot, and pulled himself back. The rope was attached to a creeper. Henry was anchored above him with his small belt rope, still out cold.
Kyle tied the med-kit to Henry's rope. He expanded the bulky habitat and plugged it into a vine. For once, there was a good cross-section of vines nearby to hang it on. He pulled Henry inside and collapsed next to the older man, panting. He had ten minutes to do nothing but think while the habitat pressurized. An hour had passed—Lark had fifteen hours left before she'd start running out of air.
He was so tired he could barely get Henry's helmet off.
Henry's vitals looked ragged. He checked with the med-team, and they agreed. Exhaustion. The verdict: no stims. So he'd lost Lark's carefully modified Tourist suit to retrieve stims, and then decided not to use the stims, at least for Henry. He looked up, toward where the bubble had to be.
Henry's face was white, peaceful. Kyle touched him, rolling him gently back and forth. Henry's eyes fluttered open, and a slow smile touched his mouth. “I must have passed out again.”
“Something like that.” Kyle filled Henry in. “I don't think I have time to go after the suit. I'm going after Lark. You'll be safe here. I'll come back with Lark. The suit she has will get her here. The habitat will keep her alive while I go after her suit. If that doesn't work—if it's gone—we'll just have to go down the slow way while we figure something else out.”
“Huh?”
“Creepers are growing down, right? Almost a klick a day. We'll be the first humans to live off broth for two hundred days.”
Henry shook his head. “Never make it. The habitat won't survive that long.”
“We all have suits. Little Siberia can send us supplies. There's no more Adventure suits, but maybe they can modify something else to tap the vines.”
“Go get Lark. Lemme sleep.”
Kyle picked his own helmet back up, jammed the stinking thing back on. “Yeah, okay.” He didn't have any choices. “Sleep well.” He fed the stim-pack into his suit's auto-med reservoir, asked for and received a dose. He watched Henry put his helmet back on, made sure he was secure, and then breached the hab and stepped back into the cold river Styx.
“Calvin—where's Lark's suit?”
“Snagged. Down. Kyle—it went two klicks down.”
Time was against him. He cursed the basket, cursed the damn vines, cursed Henry, cursed his back. “Show me.”
“You can't get there from here by yourself. Not unless you trust the winds to send you after the suit if you dive for it. We don't recommend that.”
What Lark didn't have was the modified siphons. There wouldn't be any way to get broth or water or anything into her. All he had to do was get her to the habitat.
He started out fast. Henry's early words
about running a marathon came back to him, and he slowed down. But he needed to make over two klicks an hour to have any time to spare. “Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.” He thought about Henry. “All be safe ... All be safe.
“Play music for me.”
“Huh?” Calvin sounded sleepy.
“Calvin—don't you sleep?”
“Not until you get to Lark.”
“Thanks. Play me some music. I need some rhythm to keep going.”
“What do you want?”
“Hell, I don't care. Something with a beat.” He looked around. “Got some African drums?”
“I'll find some.”
Every two hours he stopped for fifteen minutes rest and more stims, doing the equivalent of vine-sprinting in between. The drumbeats helped. His back still hurt. It became a familiar pain, something that kept him awake and aware, gave him a tie to his aching body. Every step was hard.
Lark wasn't answering. The team said she was asleep, exhausted. So many days of living in one place, in a pressure suit, were taking their toll. Four hours passed.
Calvin started peppering him with questions about Henry. A thought crossed Kyle's mind.
“How is Henry? I haven't seen his med-reads for hours.”
“We cut you off from everything but you and Lark and us. Don't want to distract you.”
“Damn it.” Surely Henry was all right. All he had to do was stay in the habitat. Had he checked Henry's water supply? But he'd plugged the habitat into the vine.
The networks had no control over the suit-to-suit-radio. He called to him. No answer. “Calvin, show me Henry's med readings!”
“You don't need the distraction. Talk. You need to talk so we know you're still with us. Your med feeds could be showing better, buddy.”
Kyle babbled about the time the feeder jammed completely just after the Styx got to Pluto, when a river of vines threatened to overrun Little Siberia. Henry and others had clambered out onto the surface. They'd fed vines back to the Hoytether trellis and set them climbing back toward Charon. Suriyah had stayed out there with him the whole time. Everyone else took turns. The story didn't seem to be coming out quite in order. Thinking about Henry wasn't right; he should be thinking about Lark. Why was she still silent?
“She's not in great shape,” Calvin said. “She's alive. We've been waking her up but she isn't staying awake long. She's been taking pain meds too.”
“Like father, like daughter, huh?”
“You imagine the sores you'd get sitting in the same place in a p-suit for ten days.”
“Yeah, well, I know what mine smells like after ten days.”
Calvin laughed. “I bet you do.”
“You don't have smell sensors built into these yet?”
“On the newer models.”
“It's a bad idea. Calvin?”
“Still here.”
How had he forgotten? “Wake up Lark now . I don't care how. Get her to fire the main motor for a few seconds.”
“Oh, right, we discussed that—”
“Check my position first and see if I'm out of the way. Henry too.”
“You're okay. You're almost underneath Shooter , but Shooter 's tilted. I'll get her to fire the motor, then guide you around to the channel. Hey, Lark!”
He kept climbing. Lark and Calvin negotiated. She spoke too low for his hearing, but she sounded angry.
He didn't see the exhaust itself. He saw a line of pale plants glow brilliantly, dissolve into colors, then explode in flame as heat reached the air veins. It ran for twenty seconds, and when it went off, vines still burned.
“Thanks, Calvin, I can see it myself,” he said, and angled around.
He had to pull himself into the forest to reach the channel. The vines were growing back ... but the going was suddenly much easier.
Kyle pulled up and over a half-charred leaf and stem-knot at an intersection. From here he could see a much bigger knot—and a darkly corroded metal claw, like a skeletal hand straining to break free. Shooter . The little ship was even more overgrown and tangled than when he'd seen it from the observatory. Flowers had sprouted everywhere, decorating it, making it look like a party bauble. He stopped a second and just looked, his heart flooding with the knowledge that he was going to make it. Calvin babbled in his ear—talk for the audience about how emotional the moment was.
“I'm afraid to go and look,” he said. Lark still wasn't responding to him.
He didn't feel his back or his body at all the last kilometer, just the soft give of the creepers in his hands and feet, the balance of his torso as he struggled to keep his center of gravity over the center of the stem. “Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.”
He was within thirty meters of the marble when the vines tangled around it shuddered and jerked up and down. What? Was the knot unraveling?
“Hi, Daddy.” Her voice was weak. She was using one of Shooter' s arms to wave at him. He breathed out, and then screamed triumph.
Calvin and his crew had spent hours trying to figure out what he should do. He had a belt knife—thin and insubstantial. It easily cut the edges of leaves, and wouldn't even dent a stem. He had a few hours, maybe more, maybe less. He was too tired to make sense of time.
Trying to untangle the ship appeared useless. Nevertheless, incident command had commandeered nearby computers and run thousands of simulations. They led him through the vines, one by one. Pull this part out of under—there. Yes. And then go around to the other side. Tug. Sure you can. Good. Now—see the one with the longest bell of flowers? Break that off. Pull here. Tie that down.
In the background, Calvin was talking Lark through a series of checks. He heard her talking back to Calvin, telling him to quit being so pushy, and Kyle laughed.
Kyle had made a new knot of vines, feeding the vines he was liberating from around Shooter into it to keep them from simply re-engulfing the bubble. His back was to Shooter . He heard a ripping sound.
He turned just in time to see Shooter lurch a few meters lower in the thinned-out net of stems that surrounded it. The ends of an arm dangled from above. Kyle had a rope tied to the marble. He pulled himself along it, fast, letting the vine he had been working on swing back towards Lark. It flapped out above the marble, safely out of the way. The door was free. By the time he got there it was swinging open.
His hand took his daughter's hand.
She was almost dead weight. Her boots flopped against the side door as he pulled, but her hands were gripping. He held her under one arm and looked inside. A backpack sat by her chair.
“Bring the backpack?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
“Weak.”
“It's going to take her a little while to learn how to move normally,” Calvin said.
“How long?”
“We don't know. Some experts say not until she gets out of the suit. Calvin says she's feisty enough to recover faster.”
Kyle talked to Lark. “Can you put your legs around me?”
She used to do that when she was a kid. He tucked his arm under her butt so she was sitting against his waist at the side, and she put her arms around his neck.
Well, he had one hand free. Now what? He shifted Lark to the front of him, sat on the stem he had climbed up, and slid. It was slower than walking—the suit material dragged wrong against the stem. The risk was real—if he wore out the suit material there was no fixing it up here. He stopped them, trying to think of a better way. Henry would think his own way out of a problem.
“Sit on a leaf, Daddy.”
It worked. He cut off a long thin piece of leaf, and tied it between his legs and up around his waist. He felt like he was wearing a diaper. The surface was slicker on the creeper stem. It held up until just before they got down to the first big knot, when the leaf shredded under him and he carried Lark to the knot, walking carefully, afraid that he'd launch them into space. Lark switched around to his back and he climbed carefully over the tangle of stems and vines. Cr
amps were making her whimper.
On the other side, he cut another leaf. He said, “The leaves are a good idea, honey.”
“I know the Styx.”
It took five hours to get back to the habitat. Lark gained more ability to move, and her hold on him was less tenuous. She still couldn't stand or climb on her own.
When they reached the habitat, it was empty. Kyle had been afraid he'd find Henry dead in the habitat. Or that Henry had left his suit for Lark and jettisoned himself into vacuum and death. The empty habitat was unnerving. He stuffed Lark into the habitat without repressurizing it, leaving her in her suit. He went out and refilled his suit's reservoirs, and sloshing full of sweet broth and water, he ducked back into the tent. Now he pressurized it and peeled Lark's suit off of her. It actually stuck to her calves, ripping layers of skin off so they looked raw. He took his own suit off, and fed Lark on broth and water. She drank more than he expected.