by Jake Elwood
She had risked her life to get Liz out of a tight spot.
Liz scowled. "I would've been fine."
Joss didn't answer, just stared at her.
"Fine!" Liz glared at the irritating young woman. "I guess you're not entirely bad."
That brought a hint of a smile to Joss's lips. "Why, thank you, Liz. I believe that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
It was, too.
A distant thump told Liz that the airlock had just cycled. A moment later her phone buzzed. "Mr. Chan is not here," said Rhett, all the static gone from his voice. "There is no one in sight."
"All right, come back in." Liz broke the connection and grinned at Joss. "Let's go get some answers."
Liz took the laser pistol out of her pocket and held it close beside her leg. Then she walked back into the food court, Joss and Rhett behind her. The small man in the oversize shirt glanced at her, too casual, then froze, his eyes on the gun. The big man noticed and turned, and his eyebrows climbed his broad forehead. The smaller man shoved a hand into his pocket, but before he could take out whatever weapon he was reaching for, Liz dropped into the seat across from him. Her gun hand was under the table, invisible. "Go for it," she said. "Let's see how fast you are."
He stared at her, his face pale. The big man held himself quite still, looking from Liz to the small man, then glancing back over his shoulder. Joss had circled behind the two men, and she stood gazing down at them, her hands behind her back. Liz knew Joss's hands were empty, but everything in her posture said she was ready to do … something.
"Why don't you put your hands flat on the table," Liz said. "I can't possibly miss your dick from here."
The small man stared at her, his tongue touching his lips. He wanted to go for the gun in his pocket. She could read it in every strained line of his body, and she smiled, letting him know she was ready. Eager.
He exhaled, and slowly lifted his hands into view. Both hands were empty, and he put them flat on the table. His right wrist was encased in a crude cast. It looked home-made, a layer of dark fabric with strips of plastic wrapped around it. The fabric would be to protect him from the heat as they melted the plastic onto his forearm.
The large man stared at him, then shook his head and put his own hands on the table as well.
"Wise choice," Liz said. "Now tell me about Riverson. And Chan. The guy who went out that airlock over there about three quarters of an hour ago."
"I don't know nothin'." The small man's voice was hoarse and strained. "I swear. Nothin'."
"Then I'll shoot you, so your friend here knows I'm serious. And I'll ask him."
"You wouldn't!" He looked around the food court. No one was paying much attention, but there were plenty of potential witnesses. "You can't kill someone here."
"You attacked me," Liz said calmly. "With this laser pistol that you got from Clark. I took it away from you and defended myself."
"That's what happened, all right," Joss said. "I saw everything."
He stared at Liz, the whites of his eyes showing all the way around the iris. "You're crazy!"
"She is," Joss agreed.
"Will you let us go?" the big man asked. "If we tell you everything?"
"Absolutely," Liz lied.
"Riverson's dead," the big man said. "So's the other guy. The nosy one. You're too late."
A cold knife seemed to twist in Liz's guts, and she barely kept her finger from squeezing the trigger. "Back up," she said. "Start at the beginning. Tell me everything."
Chapter 9
Chan screamed as he fell.
He tumbled through orange fog, completely disoriented, shrieking until his throat was raw. He fell and fell, and at last the screaming stopped. A bit of rational thought returned, and he spread his arms and legs, thinking that it might slow his descent. He couldn't tell if it was working – with nothing around him but fog, he had no way to judge his speed – but before long he stopped tumbling. That was a good enough reason to keep his limbs splayed.
He was on his back, staring up, the city long since gone from view. It occurred to him that he might not be falling very fast at all. Titan, after all, had a thick atmosphere and negligible gravity. Terminal velocity would have to be much, much less than it would be on Earth.
Still, it would be more than enough to kill him. The voice of reason told him that he should curl into a ball and try to fall faster. He was only prolonging his suffering.
He kept his arms and legs out, however hopeless it might be. How long would it take to fall two hundred kilometres? He pushed the thought out of his mind. I'll be damned if I'll spend my last few minutes doing math.
His thoughts turned to the radio built into the suit. He couldn't summon help, not in time to save him, but he could report what had happened. He turned the radio on with his chin. "Hello? Can anyone hear me? This is an emergency. Particularly urgent, in fact."
Silence. In fact, there wasn't even static. He thought of the burst of white noise that had come at the beginning of the attack. The radio was mounted on the outside of the suit for easy field replacement. His killers, he realized, had smashed the radio first.
"Well, crap," he said. "All this time on my hands and no one to talk to."
Something hit his feet, slapping them upward, and he found himself tumbling again. A dazed corner of his mind wondered what could have hit him. He was still wondering about it when something yanked at his arm. He was spinning now as he fell, and his stomach rose in protest. The third impact was against his head, the suit absorbing some of the force, the muscles of his neck protesting as his skull was yanked to the side. Some sort of black lattice flashed in front of his eyes, and he reached his hands toward it instinctively. Something brushed his fingertips, he thrust his hand forward, and there was an impact against his palm. He clutched with his fingers, his body swung forward, and something tore away in his grip. He was clutching a strip of flexible plastic a metre long. An instant later his arm hit another piece. The impact yanked him upward before that piece of plastic broke as well. He tumbled away from whatever it was, sure he was falling slower now.
A horizontal strip of plastic caught him across the ribs. He grunted, the plastic tore, and he spent another couple of seconds falling. He hit another strand of plastic and clutched at it, but the plastic tore again and the strand slipped through his gloved hands. He turned, falling backwards, and saw fluttering strips of plastic in the fog above him. His back hit another strand and he turned. In a moment he was falling again, face first.
A black line appeared in the fog before him and he grabbed at it. His forearm hit the strip of plastic and his body swung. He could feel the strip sliding across his forearm, and he curled his fingers in anticipation. His hand closed on the plastic strip, his body swung wildly, and he brought his other hand up. His left hand closed on the strip an instant before his right hand lost its grip.
He bounced upward. There were no visual cues, but his stomach told him that he had stopped falling. For an instant he was weightless, and he used that instant to get both hands firmly locked on the horizontal strip of plastic. He fell again, but there was no momentum this time. In Titan's light gravity he had no trouble keeping his grip. When he finally stopped bouncing up and down it was child's play to hook both ankles and both elbows over the strand of plastic.
After that he just hung for a while, marveling.
He stared at the plastic strip, completely mystified. At last, not knowing what else to do, he took the strip in his hands, slid his legs down until his ankles hooked over the strip, and started working his way along, moving hand over hand, letting his ankles slide. The movement was slow but not taxing. After a time the plastic, bowing under his weight, took a slight upward curve. That made his progress more difficult, but only somewhat. He kept going.
As he pulled his way along he mused about why the atmosphere under the city should be festooned with plastic. He thought of what he'd read about Crius, tried to picture steel stilts two hundred kilometres high. The sti
lts, he decided, would likely splay outward for stability. As he fell, he would eventually cross the line of the stilts. But strands of plastic?
Well, plastic was cheap and plentiful on Titan. He dredged up vague memories of engineering classes taken in his youth. Steel had tremendous linear strength. It resisted compression very well, but it tended to bend. The stilts, he reasoned, were stabilized by a plastic mesh connecting them to the ground and to each other.
The plastic strip ended at a thick plastic cable that was nearly vertical. Climbing it would have been impossible in Earth-normal gravity. In Titan's gravity it was difficult but manageable. The cable was as thick as Chan's thigh. He gripped it with his hands and with his knees and started shinnying upward.
Time crawled past. He climbed and climbed, focusing on the moment he was in. The city was many kilometres above him, and he knew he would never reach it. Exhaustion or a lack of air would finish him. There was nothing he could do about that. In the meantime, he climbed.
When fear started to grow in his mind, he turned his thoughts to the railing where he'd fallen. He was developing a theory about those wear marks. The drug dealers had come up with the perfect hiding place for their contraband. They were lowering it over the railing to a hiding place somewhere beneath the city. If he couldn't reach the city, Chan told himself, perhaps he could reach the stash. It might not even be too far away. The crooks might have put their hideout at the point where the spreading stilts were directly beneath the railing of Dome Eight.
From time to time Chan encountered a horizontal strip of plastic attached to his cable. When he reached the next strip he hooked an arm over it and hung there, resting his hands and legs while he peered into the fog.
There was still nothing above him but a swirling orange mist. That was hardly surprising, as he had fallen for quite a while. It was disappointing, though.
Off to his right he thought he could make out a faint vertical line in the fog. It had to be either a plastic cable or a steel stilt. His cable, not quite vertical, would bring him closer and closer to that vertical line as he climbed.
Chan renewed his grip on the cable and resumed climbing.
He wondered idly how much air he had left. It felt as if he'd fallen for hours, but it was probably only minutes. How long had he been climbing? His helmet had a clock display, but since he had not noted the time when he left the dome, it wasn't much use. There was a display on the sleeve of his vac suit that would show how much air remained. He decided he would look at it the next time he stopped.
He reached another horizontal plastic strip. Once again he hooked an elbow around the cable and peered into the mist.
The vertical bar to his right was definitely a stilt.
He squinted into the fog. Was there a blocky shape attached to the stilt, somewhere above him? It was impossible to be certain. He decided to climb higher and take a closer look. He resumed shinnying, feeling the strain in his legs now. How much longer can I keep this up? The rest of my life, I suppose, ha ha. I forgot to check my air. Well, I guess it hardly matters. I've got a lifetime supply.
When he thought he was across from the blocky shape on the stilt he tried to look over his shoulder. It proved impossible. The cable he clung to angled toward the stilt, which meant that he hung from the cable with his back toward the stilt. He tried to squirm around to a different angle, but fatigue defeated him. He shrugged to himself and kept climbing.
The next horizontal band of plastic was one he'd torn during his fall. There was nothing to cling to while he rested. He finally took the dangling end of the plastic strip and looped it around his forearm, then let himself hang by one arm. He turned slowly as he hung there, and at last the stilt came into view.
There was nothing to give him a sense of scale or perspective, but he guessed that the stilt was forty or fifty metres away, close enough that the orange mist did little to obscure it. It was a girder made of three vertical columns connected by smaller bars in a lattice. If he had the distance right, the stilt might have been a metre wide. He traced the length of it with his eyes, and found the blocky shape of a steel box attached to the stilt a hundred metres or more below him.
Did I really climb that far? No wonder I'm so tired. I wonder how much air I've used up. He stared at the girder and the mysterious box, trying to come up with a better idea than the one that was building in the back of his mind. He wanted to dither, to postpone the decision, but every inhalation put him one step closer to death by asphyxiation. There was simply no time to think things through.
He used his free hand to draw the plastic strand up in great loops, draping them over his shoulder. He needed the far end. Loop after loop went over his shoulder, and at last he held the ragged bottom end in his hand. He clutched the end in his hand, then took a grip on the vertical cable and shook his other arm free.
Then he clung there, mouth dry, not wanting to take the next step. He knew, intellectually, that he was going to die here beneath Crius. As long as his air lasted, though, life was still precious and death was an abstraction. He didn't want to resume that dismal, lonely plunge toward the surface of Titan. He wanted to cling here and hope against hope for some kind of rescue.
"Come on, Chan," he murmured. "It's a slim chance versus no chance. You can do this."
No I can't, insisted an urgent voice in the back of his mind. He ignored the voice, brought his legs up, and braced his feet against the cable. Then he kicked out with his feet and let go.
He screamed again. Why not? I'm the only person in a hundred kilometres. There was terror in the scream, but a bit of exhilaration, too. He soared out and down, and the dark line of the stilt came closer. For a moment he thought he might even reach the stilt in one jump.
Then the plastic strip pulled tight in his hand and he swung away from the girder, whooping. Maybe I've discovered the next extreme sport! I'll be rich, if I can just survive this. He swung, Tarzan style, bringing his legs up to maximize his velocity. The cable flashed past, brushing his shoulder, and he swore. If he hit the cable he was finished.
For an instant he hung suspended in the fog. Then he swung back down, still facing outward, rushing blindly toward the cable. Something brushed his shoulder and he spun. That had to be the cable. I'm past it. He whooped again, but he had to force it. He was spinning too quickly to see where he was going, and timing was critical. I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to-
He sensed that he was slowing down, and told himself to let go of the plastic strip. The panicked muscles of his right hand refused to obey, and precious momentum bled away as Chan fought a desperate internal battle. Then his hand opened and the plastic strip fell away as he flew into the fog.
He was sideways, and he twisted as he flew, trying to look ahead. He couldn’t see the girder, and a sick despair rose in him as he knew that he'd failed. Then a dark line appeared in the corner of his eye. His hand shot out, and he gave a hoarse cry of frustration as he realized that he was going to miss the stilt by centimetres.
Steel slapped against his fingertips, he clutched for dear life, his body turned, and his fingers lost their momentary grip. There wasn't even time to despair. His forward momentum was gone. He was falling straight down, with the stilt right in front of him. He threw his arms out and clutched the steel as it flashed past.
Both hands hit metal, a crossbrace knocked his left arm loose, and then the same crossbrace slammed into his helmet. The impact stunned him, and he spent some time just admiring the colorful bursts of light that he saw. He felt as if he was floating in a sea of stars.
You feel like you're floating because you're falling, you moron! You're dead! Consciousness returned in a rush. He opened his mouth to scream again.
A silver dome filled his vision. He stared at it, blinked, cocked his head, and finally realized it was a rivet holding a crossbrace to the stilt. He tilted his head back. His left hand held the crossbrace in a death grip. He was hanging by his left arm.
The stilt must have been c
loser than he'd realized, because it was about the width of his shoulders, not much more than half as wide as he'd guessed. The three vertical bars were about as thick as his wrist. The crossbraces were no thicker than his smallest finger. It all seemed much too frail to hold up an entire city, but there were hundreds of stilts in total, and so far it seemed to be working.
The crossbraces were more than a metre apart, too far for comfortable climbing. He peered up, hoping he hadn't ended up below his target. The stilt above him vanished into the fog, plain and unadorned.
He looked down. He was fifty or sixty metres above a dark square stuck on the side of the girder. He had a momentary urge to just let go and drop onto the roof of the box. The urge didn't last long.
For the distance of two crossbraces he climbed carefully, holding one brace in both hands and lowering himself until his feet were on the brace below. His weight was so low that it was hard to be so careful, especially with the knowledge that his air would eventually run out. He let himself drop from brace to brace, insteps against the vertical columns, one hand curled around a column to keep himself from tipping outward. The other hand caught each crossbrace as he fell past, holding just long enough to stop himself, then letting go.
After a dozen crossbraces he just slowed himself each time, never quite coming to a halt. The stilt drifted past like an infinite ladder, the swirling orange clouds beyond giving the whole experience a dreamlike quality. Down and down he went, one crossbrace after another, and then his feet thumped against a flat surface and he clutched the stilt, startled.
He was on top of the mysterious box. He looked around. The roof was a flat steel plate, maybe three metres square. Chan dropped to his knees and peered down the stilt. The box seemed to be a cube, about as tall as it was wide, welded rather crudely to two of the stilt's vertical columns.
He worked his way around the perimeter of the roof, staying on hands and knees, peering down at the walls. There was a window of some sort on the stilt side, covered by another steel plate. He imagined a man inside reaching out with a hook to draw in a payload of drugs dangling from a cable hanging from Dome Eight.