by Emily
Where was she from? He'd have to look that up. It didn't make any difference, of course, whether it was Ohio or Scotland. Or even whether it was a small town.
Priscilla was from the lower Bronx.
It played just as well.
She worked for the Academy of Science and Technology, a pilot collecting standard pay, making the wearying runs between Earth and the dig site at Pinnacle or the black hole at Mamara.
Twenty years ago she was part of the expedition that discovered the Omega clouds, those curious constructs that erupt in waves from galactic center to attack swimming pools and twenty-story buildings. While everyone else on that mission wrote a set of memoirs, Priscilla Hutching simply went back to piloting.
We forgot about her. And we might never have noticed who she really was. Except that eventually they sent her to Deepsix.
He made a noise in the back of his throat and scratched out galactic center. It sounded too much like a park.
Nightingale got up and made for the coffee dispenser. Kellie had been trying off and on to read, but he could see she was making no progress.
Mac had almost finished when she straightened up. "Okay," she said. "The wind's down a bit. Everybody belt in." It was, he thought, brighter outside, but not by much.
He heard the whine of the engines and drew his harness down over his head. Panel lights blinked on. "Hang on," she said, and MacAllister felt the vehicle lift into the storm. In the same instant Kellie flicked on the running lights. They rose past walls and driving rain and writhing trees.
The lander fought its way into the sky while Nightingale tried again to raise Hutch.
Mac gazed hopefully out at the precipice. Occasionally, when the angle was right, he could see the gridwork. "Do we know where to look?" he asked.
"She was on the far left," said Kellie. "At sixty-three hundred meters."
Mac took to watching the altimeter.
In front of him, Nightingale was barely breathing.
"Elevator's gone," Kellie said. That was no surprise.
Nightingale swept the gridwork with binoculars.
"Any sign of her?" asked Mac.
"I'll tell you if I see something," he snapped.
Kellie stabbed at her link. "Hutch, you out there?"
The static broke momentarily, and they heard her voice!
"—Here—"
They all tried to talk to her at once. Kellie got them quiet. "Where are you?" she asked.
"Where you left me." The transmission broke up. "—see your lights."
"Okay, hang on. We'll be right there."
"Good. I'd be grateful."
"Hutch, what's your situation?"
"Say again?"
"What's your situation?"
"I'm okay."
"I see her," said Nightingale.
"Where?" Kellie asked.
"There." He jabbed his finger.
She was dangling from one of the crosspieces. Mac took only a moment to look, then reached behind him for the cable. He looped one end around the seat anchor and pulled it tight. Nightingale opened the inner airlock.
"Don't forget yourself," said Kellie.
He hadn't. Not after last time. He retrieved his own tether and tied himself firmly to the same base.
Kellie reminded them also to activate their e-suits. She matched air pressure. "Ready to go," she said.
A gust of wind hammered the lander, and Mac crashed to the floor. Nightingale helped him up.
Kellie opened the outer hatch. Wind and rain spilled into the airlock. And Mac saw why Hutchins was still alive. She'd converted her rope into a sling, looped under thighs and armpits, and lowered herself off the girder. Away from the metal.
"Hang on, Priscilla," he told her, though he knew she could not hear him over the roar of the storm.
"Are we close enough?" asked Kellie. The lander rose and fell.
"No," he cried. "We're going to have to do better than this."
"I don't know if we can."
The cable was general-purpose lightweight stuff. Something to be used for securing cargo or possibly marking off a dig site. In this wind he wanted something more like Hutchins's heavy vine.
He missed a couple times, and then shut off his e-suit long enough to remove a shoe. He tied the cable to it and waited for the right circumstances: a drop in the wind and the lander in close. When it happened he threw the shoe and the cable. The shoe sailed over the crossbar. Hutch swung back, swung forward, grabbed the line. She hauled it down and looped it around her middle and secured it under her arms.
Mac took up the cable and got ready.
"Hurry," Kellie pleaded, while she fought the storm and the down-drafts.
The laser appeared in Hutch's right hand. She showed the laser to them, signifying what she was about to do.
Mac glanced at the seat anchor, and tightened his grip. Nightingale, standing in the hatch, was not tethered. Mac pushed him back, out of harm's way.
Priscilla cut the vine and dropped down out of sight. The cable jerked tight. Mac held on, felt Nightingale move in behind him, and they hauled her in.
When she was safely on board, a wave of laughter engulfed them. Priscilla hugged Mac and kissed Nightingale. Kellie accelerated and shut down the spike to preserve its power supply. Then Hutch embraced her, too. They were happy, exhausted, tearful. She thanked them, wriggled out of the rope and cable, expressed her unbounded joy at being back in the lander, and hugged everybody again. She untied Mac's shoe and returned it ceremonially.
"Welcome home," said Kellie.
Mac eased himself into his seat. "Nice to have you back, Priscilla," he said.
She collapsed beside him, rubbed her thighs where the vine had supported her, and closed her eyes. "You wouldn't believe how good it is," she said, "to be here."
Kellie had been climbing steadily. Suddenly they emerged above the clouds. The air was less turbulent, but Nightingale caught his breath. He was looking up.
Mac followed his gaze. They could see the vast arc of the onrushing planet. The entire southwestern sky quailed beneath that purple monster. They could see into it, into its depths. Mac felt chilled. "What now?" he asked. "Do we make our rendezvous?" "Not yet," said Hutch. "It's too early. We've got more than four hours left."
He grimaced and looked down at the boiling clouds. "Do we really have to go back down there?"
Bill and Lori surprised the staff by showing up in tandem onscreen on the Star bridge. "I'm pleased to announce that maneuvering is complete," said Lori. "No further power applications need be made. Alpha will arrive at the designated point over the Misty Sea in the proper alignment at the specified time."
"Well done," said Bill. He seemed quite pleased.
Kellie found high ground near the base of the mountain, and set down.
Hutch went back into the washroom. When she came out a half hour later she looked scrubbed down, and she was wrapped in a blanket, waiting for her clothes to dry. "I hope nobody minds the informality," she said.
"Not a bit of it," said MacAllister, with a leer.
They passed around one of the bottles she'd salvaged from the Star. The wind blew, the rain fell, but for the moment at least, all was right with the world.
XXXIII
As there are some professions that demand believers in the amity of Providence, like those who work among the downtrodden, or who teach adolescents, there are others for which atheism is desirable. I am thinking particularly of pilots. When you are adrift among the clouds or the stars, you want someone in the cockpit who has as much to lose as you do if the party goes down.
—Gregory MacAllister, My Life and Loves
Hours to breakup (est): 20
Miles Chastain returned with Phil Zossimov to the net. This time he had his gear, a couple of assistants, and a load of material on two shuttles. Drummond waited with an Outsider team.
Miles been piloting superluminals for almost four years, the last three for Universal News. It paid well, and equal
ly important at this stage of his life, the job took him to places where something was usually happening. He had, for example, hauled a news team out to Nok, the only world known to have a living native civilization, just in time to see the first shots fired in the latest round of an early-twentieth-century-style war. He'd accompanied the investigators to Kruger 60 when the Aquilar returned from the first probe across the Orion rift without its crew. He'd been the pilot when Universal did its award-winning special on the antique alien station orbiting Beta Pac III.
Now he was helping orchestrate the rescue off Deepsix. Not bad for a kid from a Baltimore row house.
He arrived within minutes after receiving the news that Alpha was on course, and no additional course changes would be needed. That meant Phil's team could begin its phase of the mission.
To release the asteroid, Drummond had cut the net almost three-quarters of the way around its circumference. The net now drifted glittering in the sunlight, two halves, partially entwined, a kind of bright tattered banner trailing from a very long post.
Their first objective was to finish what Drummond had begun: complete the cut. Get rid of one of the two halves.
Drummond's shuttle inserted itself within the drifting folds. One of his Outsiders exited the airlock and tied a cable to the half designated for disposal. He then returned inside the shuttle, which began to move away, straightening that portion of the net to prepare it for a laser cut.
Miles approached in the second vehicle and sliced through it until it was cleanly separated. Now Drummond's pilot dragged the severed portion away and released it to find its own orbit.
He returned and secured the remaining half to the shuttle. Then he gradually braked, drawing it out. When he was satisfied, he released it.
Miles moved in again.
The idea was to convert the remaining section into a sack. The part of the net attached to the plate would, when it was lowered into the atmosphere, constitute the top of the sack; the opposite end, the former south pole, would become the bottom. The task facing Miles's team was to join the severed sides near the bottom and bind them together, forming an area which would hang down toward the planetary surface, and into which, in just over six hours, the lander could de-' scend. Or crash-land, if need be.
The shuttles took up positions on either side of the net, approximately one hundred meters up from the "bottom." Miles and three of the Outsiders climbed onto it and used the shuttles to help draw the lower sections together.
The rest of the Outsider team, which totaled eight in all, joined the effort. They'd been drilled specifically for this operation, but Miles never stopped worrying. They'd practiced on the Star's tennis nets, but that hadn't been the most realistic simulation.
He watched his people move out across the narrow space between the net and the airlock onto the metal links floating nearby. They connected their tethers as they'd been instructed, removed from their packs the clips which Marcia Keel had manufactured from chairs and coffee machines and cargo shelving, and began the process of binding the lower section of the net back together.
One advantage, at least: no lasers were in use. He'd hated putting lasers in the hands of the people along the assembly, and would have flat out refused to do it on the net, had he been asked. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary.
He was the only person out there with a go-pack. It was his responsibility to navigate along the edges, and to draw them close enough together that the Outsiders could connect them permanently. Only one drifted off during this phase of the operation, and Miles was quick to retrieve him.
He was uncomfortable about this aspect of the strategy. "This sack is three-quarters of a kilometer in diameter, Marcel," he said over a private channel. "It wouldn't take much for it to get tangled up. Then you'd have nothing."
"What's your suggestion?"
"I'd prefer to cut the thing down to a manageable size. Say 150 meters. Certainly no more than that."
"How long would it take you to do it?"
He looked across the hundreds of square meters of drifting net. They'd have to go back inside, do some complicated maneuvering, do the cutting, come back out, splice it together. "Twelve hours," he said.
"So that shoots it, no?" He could hear Marcel's impatience. "Do it as planned."
The Outsiders finished, and the bottom one hundred meters were stitched together into a sack. When they'd finished, Miles's shuttle picked them up.
Now it became the Phil Zossimov Show. Phil had brought along some tubing, cut and shaped like a ring. Miles admired the young Russian. He'd made it clear an hour earlier that the thought of going outside onto the net terrified him. But he showed no sign of reluctance as he stood in front of the volunteers and activated his e-suit.
The tubing constituted most of the life-support system taken from Wildside. The various pieces were marked to enable the assemblers to put them together with a minimum of confusion. Under Phil's direction, they went back outside.
Above the sack they had just made, the netting was open all the way to the plate. They cut sideways across the net just above the sack, opening a large space, and secured its edges to the tubing. When the tubing was in place, Zossimov connected a pump and a sensor.
He pumped air in until it became a rigid ring-shaped collar, forming a mouth about twenty-five meters wide. This collar would hold the net open, providing entry for the lander. The sensor, made from a hatch closer on Wildside, would activate a valve as soon as Hutch's lander passed through. The valve would open and release the air, the collar would collapse, and the danger of the spacecraft falling back out would be all but eliminated.
The next task was to ensure that the rear of the net would not drift forward and close the sack or block the entrance.
To accomplish that they brought out a load of bars that had been manufactured from the metal taken from Wildside's cargo bay, and designed with links so they could be connected to each other, end to end. There was also a supply of braces and supports.
Each bar was five meters long. (That had been the maximum length possible to get them in and out of the shuttles.) Altogether there were forty-six.
The Outsiders used them to assemble two rails, braced with supports. They connected the rails in parallel above and on either side of the ring, front to rear in the sack. When that had been accomplished, they had a container into which the lander should be able to maneuver.
All but Phil and Miles withdrew into the shuttles. Phil set the sensor.
"You sure it'll work?" asked Miles.
"Absolutely."
"How long will it take to close after the lander's inside?"
"It activates as soon as they pass through. I'm no physicist, so I can't tell you how fast the collar will deflate. But it shouldn't be longer than a few seconds. Especially at that altitude."
Miles inspected the collar. "I think we have ourselves a decent scoop."
At about the time Miles's people were climbing onto the net, the welding teams were spreading out across the hulls of the four super-luminals. Tom Scolari, Cleo, Jack Kingsbury, and an elderly man whom Scolari knew only as Chop, had responsibility for Zwick. The task should now be easy, because Jack and Chop had performed much the same assignment working alone earlier when they'd attached the star-ship to the Alpha shaft.
Scolari had been invited by Universal News to participate in an interview. Emma had found jumpsuits for him and Cleo, and the plan called for them to go on a live hookup when the job on the hull was finished. He was unnerved by the prospect, more frightened than he could ever have been about going outside.
It should have been easier to interview Chop and Jack, who'd been on board longer, and Scolari had wondered at first why Emma hadn't done that. But it became clear very quickly that neither of the two was very articulate. Jack responded to everything with one-word answers. And Chop scratched a lot. Scolari was concerned that they'd be resentful, but neither brought the subject up. When he told them about the pending interview, Chop had commented
that he was glad they hadn't asked him.
Zwick was the leading vessel on the shaft, only thirty-eight kilometers from the net, which they could see shining in the sunlight. Sometimes it made Scolari think of a flag.
The shaft was currently welded to the belly of the Zwick. They went out through the cargo hatch on the port quarter and walked around to the underside, and it seemed as if the universe rotated as they did so, so that the hull was always down. It was an effect caused by the magnetic boots.
When they were ready, Cleo and Scolari retired to the rear, Jack and Chop went forward. They activated their lasers and began cutting the weld. Now that the shaft was safely on course, and no more corrections would be needed, they were to separate it from the ship and change its orientation. "Be careful," Janet reminded them from her station in Drummond's launch, which was up near the net. This was the most dangerous part of the operation for the Outsiders: cut too high, and they could slice or seriously weaken Alpha. Do that, they'd been told again and again, and repair would be impossible. The people below would die. Cut too low, and they could penetrate the ship. That indeed was not life and death. Everyone had been cleared out of areas vulnerable to puncture on all the vessels. But it would nevertheless, in Janet's dulcet admonition, have been unprofessional. A mess that someone else would have to clean up later.
The clear lesson: If they had to screw it up, cut low.
Getting it right wasn't all that hard, he discovered, so long as he kept his mind on what he was doing. The image of the gas giant, growing visibly larger by the hour, did tend to be a distraction.
They began cutting. Jack and Chop had done a good job the first time out. Their instructions had been to connect as much of the shaft as possible to the hull. They'd done that, and it required a long effort to free it. Zwick was by far the smallest of the superluminals, but she had accepted a twenty-six-meter length of the shaft before her hull curved away.
So they worked steadily, in the shadow of the giant. Scolari had heard that almost a full kilometer had been laid on the Star. Getting that off would be a monster job, but that was where they'd concentrated the volunteers.