“We will rest here for an hour, and then we have to get up to the next stage. The longer it takes, the less energy we will have. We have no food or water, and that is going to take its toll.”
“Don’t worry about me. I will make it.”
Six saw her pallour and doubted her words, but kept his opinion to himself. He thought privately that the sooner they got to the next stage, the better. Grace was running on pure nerve at the moment. When the adrenalin stopped, she would shut down and probably be unable to move at all.
The visitor arrived back with its characteristic whirring sound. “You have another hundred metres or so, and then the rock face narrows to the opening. It is worse than vertical for those last sixty metres.”
Six nodded. “I will scale that by myself,” he said. “Then I can get a rope and come back for the girls.”
Diva bristled up immediately. “I shall come with you!” she said, with an imperious tap of one foot.
“You won’t. There is no point in both of us risking our necks at the same time. I shall go first, and if I fall, then you will have your turn.”
“Oh.”
Six thought of something. “What time of day is it up there, Visitor?”
The visitor disappeared again, coming back a few minutes later. “It is dark, and there is a very strong wind blowing. I was unable to hold my position.”
“Good. That means that by the time we get up there it should be morning again, and that vile wind will have dropped. No point going from a bad situation to a worse one, is there?”
But nobody answered him. Both girls were staring into the distance with unfocused eyes, and he fell silent himself. He hadn’t much liked the sound of that comment of the visitor’s. Worse than vertical. That wasn’t good. Not good at all.
AND WHEN THEY finally completed the next hundred metres and reached the bottom of the chimney they saw that it was, indeed, anything but good. Only the loose shale and scree of the last stretch had presented any real problem, although struggling upwards over them had not been easy. Now the sheer rock face in front of them now was daunting. The rock soared upwards towards the small round hole at the top at an impossible angle. It was a cylinder about five metres wide, and at least sixty in height.
Grace gave a wail. “You can’t get up there!”
Diva examined it with interest. “There are still waves of stone,” she pointed out, “but they look awfully shallow. You won’t find much grip on there.” Her eyes traversed up to the tiny patch of brightening sky above, and gave a whistle. Six thought that she looked worried, for the first time.
“No problem,” he told them. “I can do it!”
Grace turned to him impulsively. “Six! Are you sure?”
“You know me. Spent my life in the uninhabitable zone. Climbed everything in it, feels like. Know it like the back of my hand.”
“Last time you said that,” Diva pointed out dryly, “you got us all lost.”
“Well hang it, Diva! I can’t get us lost here, can I? Straight up. Can’t miss it.”
She gave a snort. “I suppose.”
“Then shut up, will you? I tell you – I’ll have shimmied up there before you two have even got your breath back. Just make sure you are rested for when I come back with the rope. Even with a rope that isn’t going to be an easy climb.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just get going, will you?”
Grace’s eyes glittered. “Be careful, won’t you, Six?”
He gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ve climbed far worse. Don’t worry!”
He gave himself another hour, to make sure that his hands had recovered, and then got to his feet. Grace gave him a tight hug, not wanting to let him go and even Diva pulled him close to her for a second in a quick embrace.
“Watch out for the avifauna,” he warned. “They can’t be far behind!” Then he cricked his neck from side to side, and began to climb, the visitor hovering close by his shoulder and giving advice from time to time about the best hand or foot holes.
AFTER AN HOUR and a half Six was only about half way up the cylinder, and his hands were already dangerously slippery with sweat. His eyes pricked with the saline drops which trickled from his forehead, and he was breathing stertorously through his teeth. He was beginning to think that he wasn’t going to make it through the narrowing gullet. The small waves in the rock were almost imperceptible, and that gave him very little to grasp strongly enough to hold himself in place. His heart was thumping, and his fingers and toes were hurting him. He found himself talking to the visitor, to try to keep the inner despair he was feeling at bay.
“Is it looking any easier above?” he muttered.
The visitor considered. “Not really. I suppose there is one small area where you could rest – an indentation really, but the rest is more or less the same.”
“Doesn’t it get narrow enough for me to chimney?”
The globe buzzed. “A chimney is something which evacuates smoke,” it informed him helpfully.
Six closed his eyes. “Thanks for nothing,” he murmured.
“You are quite welcome.”
“No, you metallic witling! I meant, does it get narrow enough for me to reach the other side with my feet?”
“Why did you not say so? No, it does not.”
Six had progressed another half a metre during the exchange. “Then I will just have to continue, won’t I?”
“I can see no other alternative, certainly.”
“So let’s do it.” Six bit his bottom lip so hard that he drew blood, but he was so concentrated that he didn’t notice. He was edging his right foot to a tiny crevice way to the side when he heard the most hideous cacophony behind him, and nearly fell off the rock face altogether. “What in Sacras is that?”
“The avifauna have reached the girls and have seen that they are close to the surface. They are attempting to climb this very stretch of rock now. They seem somewhat eager to reach the surface of the planet.”
Six pressed his whole body into the rock face. “You mean that all the avians are rampaging up this very chimney?”
“That would seem to be the case.”
Below them, Six could hear the cries of the two girls, clearly warning him that now the avians had smelt the fresh air they were no longer content to stay meekly behind their adopted friends.
“How far to the indentation?”
“Another three metres.”
“Then help me get there, fast! If those birds run over me in their haste to get free then their claws will tear me to ribbons!”
The tiny globe examined the surface on the instellite with attention, and then began to give remarkably clear instructions. Six found himself obeying it blindly, only concentrating on reaching those small notches and grooves in the surface which the visitor was telling him about.
He could hear the strident cries of the avifauna as they neared his position. They were screeching their triumph to each other, and the sound reverberated around the stone, a gathering mixture of call and echo which seemed to blast over him like a physical push, making him teeter, and nearly loose his grasp. The thought of hurtling down all three hundred metres made his throat close up and his face burn. It took him a few moments before he could concentrate sufficiently again to hear the visitor.
“—You are nearly there. Just two more steps. Now, put …”
Six, running on autopilot now, found himself obeying the video camera, and tried to block out the wave of sound which was nearly upon him.
At last his fingers found the small ledge that the visitor had told him about, and with a terrific effort, he pulled himself onto it, laying his body lengthwise along it, and flattening himself against the narrowing rock, face to it.
They had been close enough for him to be able to make out the individual birds as they hauled their way up the stone face. They were gasping with the effort, too, and it was clear that even having four appendages provided with claws was not enough to make this ascent easy. Six hud
dled in his narrow refuge, making himself as small as he could.
Then the leading avians were on him. He felt bird after bird scramble past his position, each one grappling for a hold on the slippery surface. Their claws were long enough to catch him as they reached over the top of the ledge, and he felt his skin break under the bodywrap.
Each time an avian moved over his crevice, there was a tug in the material as the claw forced its way free again, catching on the threads, and pulling Six out of his scant refuge. He pressed into the indentation with every single bit of his body, trying to counteract the force pulling him off his shelf. More than once his whole body was hanging off the precipice by the time the avian in question had passed. He barely had time to shuffle back into the recess before the next one was upon him. His own breath was coming in tortured gasps, and he was sure that his last moment had come.
At that moment he felt the touch of some sort of insect against his face, and it took all of his self-control not to jerk back away from the rock. Whatever it was that had decided to move across his skin, it was taking its time. He felt leg after leg as it stepped across him, and cringed inside, waiting for the mortal sting. He didn’t even dare to breathe, in case the insect would regard that as a threat. Sweat stood out along his forehead and he felt slightly sick. Still he forced himself to hold still. It was one of the most difficult things that he had ever done. The insect crossed his face in a leisurely manner, and disappeared into the rock, thankfully unaware of his difficulties.
As suddenly as they had arrived, the avifauna too were gone. He could hear them above him now, their screeching becoming triumphant as the first birds reached the surface. Six carefully shifted to the edge and turned his face upwards. Sure enough, the circle of sky was showing the birds in silhouette as they reached safety. It must be late morning, he realized, because he could see the yellow-orange sun clearly overhead. He blew out a long, tense breath and struggled to get his body back in a vertical position on the rock. If he had survived that, there was no way that he was going to fail now. Not going to happen, he decided. What those booby birds could do, so could he!
AND HE DID, but the person who arrived at the top was not the same one who had set off. His fingers were cracked and bleeding, he was shaking all over, and he seemed to have reached a sort of catatonic state of perpetual fear. But he was there, and it was not exactly the right time to collapse in self-congratulation. He looked around to see if the avians were still around, but they seemed to have vanished altogether. He scrambled to his feet, and began to run towards the shuttle, after asking the visitor to go back down and keep the girls company. Once at the pod it was a moment to collect the two high-tensile ropes which came as standard issue, and head back to the gaping hole in the planet’s surface which he had just emerged from.
It took him a long time to get the girls up. The main problem was finding something suitable for a safe anchorage on the end of the rope. That took the best part of an hour, with Six finally settling on a crevice on the far side of one of the ridges which ran past on either side of the entrance to the cavern. He tied several strong knots in the end of the rope, and then snagged it through the crevice, tugging and pulling until it was firmly caught. Then he wrapped more of the rope around himself, and took the weight of the girl. It seemed to work well. Diva insisted on sending Grace first, and the Sellite girl managed the climb in about ninety minutes, although Six could see that she hadn’t enjoyed it much when she emerged from the gaping mouth of the cavern. She shook her head, and then unwound the rope from the body sling she and Diva had fashioned. Sitting on the edge, she lowered the rope down again for Diva, and then stationed herself behind Six, to help with the weight.
That made things even easier, and this time it was only an hour’s struggle for Diva. The Coriolan girl came out of the black depths with a whoop, carefully placed the bag with the amorphs in it safely on the ground, and then threw herself onto the short grass of the gully, rolling over and over in absolute glee.
“We thought you were a goner, Six, when the avifauna took off up the chimney after you!”
“It was a close run thing,”
“I helped,” said the visitor.
Six frowned, and then rolled his eyes. “I suppose you did,” he admitted.
“That is the second time I have saved your life!”
“Yeah, yeah, but who’s counting, right?”
The machine buzzed industriously. “I am,” it said.
Six shook his head, and gave a sigh. “There’ll be no bearing it at all from now on,” he predicted.
Diva grinned, and got to her feet. “Seriously, though – did you see the way the avifauna swarmed up the chimney wall? Unbelievable!”
Six had heard that tone to her voice before. Diva was contemplating an adoption.
“You can’t take one home,” he told her. “It would pine for those nice juicy spiders.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I couldn’t take one home.” But she looked disappointed. “It was fun though, wasn’t it?”
“Tremendous. Nothing like being shut in an underground cavern with some murderous fluid, I find. Really gets the blood flowing. Then of course, there is the exhilarating sharp climb up an impossible cliff face just to round the whole day off.”
Diva gave him a push, and he let himself fall dramatically into the greenery, where he lay groaning, pretending he had broken something.
Grace ran up, with a worried expression on her face, but Diva just grinned. “He’s only playing, Grace,” she said. “Leave him there. The wind will be up soon, and it is so strong that he’ll be pushed to his feet anyway.”
Six pulled a face and struggled up. “Perhaps we should get inside the shuttle, before those hurricane winds arrive?” he suggested.
“Perhaps we should.”
Once inside the shuttle, Six slid up to the console and checked all the instruments. “We should be all right,” he said. “The winds are due to start up in about ten minutes, though, so we will have to postpone the trials with the amorphs until tomorrow. Visitor, can you check back with your live counterpart on the Independence, and tell Arcan about everything that has happened?”
“You can tell him yourself, ninny,” said Diva, pointing to the interscreen on the control panel. “He knows perfectly well how to use one of those, remember?”
“I hope he’s all right,” he said, pressing the predis button in readiness, and acknowledging that she was right with a wry smile and nod to the visitor. “Because if he is not we are probably going to be stuck here on Boobyland.”
“Don’t call it that!” snapped Diva.
“So what do you want to call it, lady muck?”
“Something appropriate. Let’s see. How about Pictoria? Since we’re in the Pictoris system?”
Grace nodded. “Perfect!”
Six looked skywards. “Whatever!”
Once Arcan had confirmed that he was able to function still without the parts of him which had disappeared on the planet, and that their loss could be, although with some effort, compensated, Diva did a little dance on the spot.
“We made history today! Nobody else in the binary system has ever set foot on Pictoria!”
“Nobody else would want to,” grumbled Six, trying to look superior until Grace threw an empty nutripack at him.
Chapter 6
THEY SPENT THE rest of the evening huddled inside the space shuttle, and all the night trying to get some sleep. Diva had let the three amorph specimens out of the bag soon after their arrival; it seemed pointless to keep them shut up when they probably had the capability to tunnel out through the hull. They kept a keen eye on them; at the least sign of anxiety they would open the hatch, they decided, wind or no wind. But the amorphs seemed quite unfazed by the change in their circumstances. They scintillated a little, apparently pleased to be out of the confines of the bag, and then settled quite happily into a corner and held that position as if they were dormant.
The night was long and it
proved practically impossible to sleep. The winds were so strong that they buffeted the shuttle mercilessly, and although their calculations had shown that the strong hull would resist, it was hard to feel much confidence in mathematical calculations when the whole shuttle was shuddering and leaning at a perilous angle downwind. The morning calm, which arrived with a sudden disappearance of the howling which had tormented them all night, found them all jaded, and rather bad-tempered.
Shuttles were not meant to be comfortable at the best of times, and squeezing three of them in for a whole night – together with the visitor and three specimens – was not anybody’s idea of fun.
Six was not feeling sunny. “Typical! There’s Arcan, loafing around in a spacious space trader he’s got all to himself, and here we are, crammed like sardines in this suppository.”
“Six!” said Grace automatically.
“The orthogel entity is under great pressure,” rebuked the visitor. “He has lost part of his matter, and his physical integrity may be compromised. You should not speak of him like that.”
“Yeah. I should worship him from afar, I suppose?” Six was quite ready to be argumentative. He never liked to let anybody down in that respect.
“The orthogel entity is omnipresent,” it clacked. “A mere 3b like you should not criticize it.”
“He isn’t omnipresent on this planet, tin-pot, is he? He disappeared and let himself get eaten by a lake, didn’t he? How omnipresent is that? Unless he’s turned into one of these amorphs, that is?”
“He is a superior being, like myself.”
Six questioned the validity of that last statement by means of an incredulous laugh, which did not best please the tiny sphere.
“I will prepare the experiments,” it huffed, “you will find me outside.”
“Drop it, Six, will you?” Diva was crotchety too. “Why can’t you just humour the visitor like everybody else?”
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