“Great idea!” Ell said, patting her flat stomach and turning to trot that way.
Shan dug out the sandwiches and the two collapsible cups, then felt around in the empty backpack. “Hey, did you put in any drinks? All that’s in this backpack are the gyros and a couple of empty cups.”
She patted his stomach, “Maybe we need to drink some of this here six-pack?’
Shan snorted, “We could get pretty thirsty out here with nothin’ but saltwater for 20 miles.”
She held out her hand, “Well, let me see one of those cups.”
Shan handed her one of the collapsible cups and she popped it open and turned her back to him. He stared, wondering what she thought she was doing, but then he heard the distinctive sound of beer pouring. She’s naked! Where is beer coming from? Shan peered over her shoulder to see beer pouring into the cup from a spot in space about two inches in front of her belly button. It stopped for a moment, then resumed pouring from a spot just closer to her than it had been coming from, then paused again and began pouring from a little farther away. He snorted, “You’re using that single-ended port you put behind your belly button—for beer?”
Ell grinned at him, “Don’t you go acting all hoity-toity on me. I might just pour this beer of yours out in the sand.”
“Who’s pouring that beer in there for you? It must be what, six in the morning back in North Carolina?”
“Yep, you’re gonna need to thank Amy for gettin’ up so early, just to satisfy your thirst for alcoholic beverages.”
“Hah! You’re not going to have her pour you a drink?”
“Well, of course. As long as she’s already had to get up to pour one for you, pouring one for me too doesn’t seem like too much additional trouble does it?”
Shan laughed.
She held his beer out to him and plucked the other cup out of his hand. A moment later Coke started pouring into her cup.
They sat peacefully on a large smooth boulder at the water’s edge. Waves lapped at their feet while they ate their gyros. Shan sipped at his beer, looking out over the sea, glancing at the beautiful woman at his side. He thought about how, if someone had told him a few years earlier he might be doing this today, he would never have believed.
Ell turned to him and said, “You ready to try flying our little hoverbike yourself?”
“Yeah!”
Ell used her port to fill their cups with fresh water several times so they could splash the salt water off. Once the sun had dried them off, they put their clothes on and packed their trash back in the backpack. Shan straddled the hoverbike and Ell got on in front of him. Ell said, “I suggest you spool up the fans, staying short of where they’d lift us off. Then try moving the handlebars around to get the feel of what they do. In flight the AI should keep you from flipping the bike over or doing anything really dumb, but if you want to feel like you’re flying it, it’s good to have an idea what’s going to happen when you do things with the controller.”
Shan twisted the throttle grip a little and checked to make sure all the fans were turning. Tilting the handlebars side to side made the bike strain to tilt against its wheels. He pulled back and pushed forward and then leveled it. He lifted the handle bars to hear the fans all spin up, straining to lift off but unable to rise at the low throttle setting.
“All right, give it a little more throttle. “
Shan did and it lifted smoothly off the ground. “I didn’t think it would be so steady.”
“Trust me,” Ell laughed, “without the AI, it wouldn’t be. Give it more throttle, but lower the handlebars. It’ll be even steadier with lots of power available, but the AI reducing the power because the handlebars indicate you aren’t trying to lift very high.”
Shan gradually gave it more throttle while lowering the bars to keep the hoverbike about three to five feet off the ground.
“All right, take it down into the cove and let’s have you practice some circles and figure eights.”
“Why not right here?” Shan asked, though he did start skimming the hoverbike down across the beach to the water.
“If you wreck it here, you’ll land on something hard. I’d rather we bashed our delicate heads on the water.”
Out over the water, Ell had Shan practice banking to match the tightness of his turns so bike didn’t skid around the curve. For amusement, he did make a couple of turns without banking at all which—as long as he didn’t push forward on the handlebars and activate the pusher fans on the sides—had the effect of simply spinning the hoverbike while it continued coasting mostly in the same direction.
“That was fun!” Shan laughed after a while. “Shall we head back to Santorini?”
“Sure.”
Shan curved out and around the south end of the island, turning toward Santorini. “What the hell is that?”
A cloud of dirty yellow brown smoke hung over the island.
“Allan,” Ell said, “What’s happened at Santorini?”
“There has been a small eruption of the Thera volcano at Santorini with new lava flows emanating from the Nea Kameni island in the middle of the caldera. At present it does not appear to threaten the surrounding caldera islands. The only danger at present appears to be to a group of tourists who were hiking the small crater on Nea Kameni. They have been trapped between a pair of lava flows. Tour helicopters are attempting to pick them up at present, but there is not sufficient space for the helicopters to land.”
“Oh my God!” Ell exclaimed, taking the controls. “Let’s see if we can help!” She cranked the throttle grip wide open and smoothly pushed the handlebars forward and slightly up. As they leaned forward to decrease wind resistance, the hoverbike rose to about twenty feet and rocketed forward, quickly reaching two hundred miles per hour. At that speed they reached Santorini in about six minutes, Ell lifting the handlebars so that they rose over the northeastern rim of the caldera. Once they crossed the rim she dropped down toward the little island out in the middle of the huge caldera. Clouds of sulfurous smoke were billowing out of the crater in its center. Saying to Shan, “Use your snorkel!” Ell fumbled hers out of her pocket and up into the helmet.
They slid in over the island. East of the little crater at the center of Nea Kameni they could see about twenty people isolated between a couple of lava flows. A helicopter hovered over them, but because of the slope it couldn’t get close enough for any of the people to actually board it. Finally, while Ell and Shan watched, a man leapt up and grabbed one of the landing skids. The small helicopter sank for a moment under his added weight but then lifted back up and carried him to safety about a hundred yards away. They’d saved one, but it was very obvious that only individuals with a high level of physical fitness could be rescued in that manner.
Once the helicopter set the man down, it pulled away and flew toward the main island, presumably to get a rescue sling.
Ell swung off to one side and brought the hoverbike down on a fairly flat area. She hopped off and turned away from the trapped people down. Suddenly an eight foot length of 1” nylon rope shot out from just in front of her abdomen. She grabbed the front end, but let the trailing end fall. Then another and another shot out, until she had five ropes. Then a small bundle of black thread popped out. She tied loops into the five pieces of rope, then wrapped one end of the thread around the knots so that all five loops formed a bundle at the knots. The other end of the black thread she tied around the saddle of the hoverbike. Shan had been watching the people trapped in the lava flow, trying to think of a solution for rescuing them. He looked down at what she was doing. Opening his mouth to speak clumsily around the snorkel he asked, “What’s that for?”
“It’s one of Gary’s graphene cables. The only way I could get a hundred yards of cable through the port during the three seconds a one way port will stay open. You’re going to fly the hoverbike straight up and lift me over to get some of those people. I’ll give you directions.”
Staring wide eyed at the heavy thread she’
d tied to the hoverbike, Shan said, “I know graphene’s strong, but that stuff isn’t even a millimeter in diameter!”
“Ten thousand pound test. It won’t be our failure point… I’m going to run out to the side to pull the graphene cable out straight. If a loop of it were to get sucked into the intake of the hoverbike’s fans, that would be a disaster.” She picked up the five loops of rope and trotted away.
Shan’s eyebrows rose while he imagined what would happen to the fans if ten thousand pound test thread got wound into them. He glanced back over at the trapped people. One of them was throwing up, whether from anxiety or from the sulfurous fumes Shan didn’t know. Shan looked back at Ell, “Shouldn’t you be flying this while I give you guidance in dangling the ropes to them? You’ve got the flying experience.”
“You’ll do fine. The AI’ll help. I’m going to ride over to them on the cable, then help them get into the ropes. My gymnastics might come in handy…OK,” Ell said, tugging on the cable, “take the bike up slow.”
Shan gently twisted the throttle and lifted the bars. The bike lifted slowly and Ell started walking back toward him as the cable started reeling her in.
“You can go up a little faster… OK, slow now.” Ell pulled one of the one inch rope loops over her head and put her arms out over it so it went behind her back and came out under her armpits in front. She bent her knees and a moment later the cable lifted her and the other loops off the ground. Shan wasn’t going perfectly straight up so she dragged her feet to keep from swinging like a pendulum. “OK, I’m off the ground. Lift a little more and move south toward the people… OK, slow, slower, reverse a little. Drop down five feet now.”
Shrinking away from the heat of the lava, Aki Nishikawa blinked his watering eyes and coughed as he watched the bizarre craft land. It looked a little like a big motorcycle with huge front and back wheels turned on their sides. Or like a saddle suspended between two Frisbees. One of the riders hopped off and began fooling around with some ropes. Aki looked back toward the caldera islands, hoping to see a real helicopter coming back. When he turned back to look at the Frisbee craft again, it had lifted into the air and the man who’d gotten off was quite a ways away from it, still holding his ropes. A moment later he began trotting back toward where the Frisbee craft had been sitting. Aki wondered why the man had gotten off, but then the guy just lifted off the ground.
Aki blinked vigorously but couldn’t see how the guy could be flying up into the air like that. Glancing up, he saw the Frisbee craft straight up above him, as if it were pulling the guy up, but there wasn’t anything connecting the craft to the man. The guy had on a motorcycle helmet and suit and one of the ropes looped under one arm behind his back and back up under the other armpit. The rope was tight and appeared to be lifting him, but whatever was lifting the rope wasn’t in evidence. It did seem to point up toward the hovering Frisbee craft though. The guy was swinging toward Aki’s group! Could this be a rescue attempt? It looked like the guy might swing right by and Aki reached out to catch him.
Then he started to drop.
Chikushō! He’s going to land in the lava!
Instead the guy reached up overhead, grasped the ropes as high as he could reach and kipped up in an amazing gymnastic display, turning upside down to lift his feet up and over the lava. He righted himself and dropped nimbly back to the ground right next to Aki.
Aki grabbed at the guy to steady him, but he didn’t seem to need it.
A girl’s muffled voice issued from the helmet! “OK, drop a couple of feet to loosen the cable then hold steady there. Allan’s going to have the hoverbike’s AI help you maintain that position using GPS.” The young woman in the motorcycle garb flipped up her visor, reached in the opening to take a mouthpiece out of her mouth, and then shouted out at the tour group, “OK! We can fly you to safety four at a time. Step up and loop your arms in the ropes like I have mine. We’ll come back for more.”
No one answered because few understood. Aki translated the woman’s English into Japanese for the group and several stepped forward. A mother held out her crying child to the woman. The kid only looked to be about three to four years old. The young woman appeared to be startled, but did take the little girl from her mother. She asked Aki to have the four people who’d taken ropes stand back to back with her.
Coughing some more, Aki desperately wanted to take a rope for himself but decided that the women should go first. Besides, I should stay to translate. He swallowed as the ropes came tight on the group. He could hear the whine of fans above where the Frisbee craft hung above them and even though it was fifty meters up he could see the sulfurous fumes blowing away from its downdraft. The girl and the four people lifted slowly into the air, still without Aki being able to see what was attaching them to the hoverbike or otherwise could be lifting them. They swung across the lava flow and over to what looked like a safe area about a hundred and fifty meters away. The people dropped out of their ropes and one of them took the child from the young woman.
Moments later the young woman rose back off the ground and swung back over to Aki’s group. Landing again she flipped up her visor and shouted, “Ready for four more!”
As Aki looked on, the woman made three more trips back and forth, ferrying four people each trip. Finally Aki and two others were all that was left. As the young woman landed to pick them up, the fumes overcame the old man standing next to Aki. As the fellow began to collapse he staggered toward the lava flow. Aki reached out, knowing he would be too late. The old man is going to be horribly burned!
Instead, the girl in the motorcycle helmet leapt after the old man. Moving with what seemed to be impossible quickness she caught him and dragged him back. She looped a rope twice around the old man’s chest and turned back to Aki.
“Get your rope on! We’ve got to go! Now!”
Aki saw that the third man had his rope on so Aki quickly stepped into a loop and put his arms over the rope.
The girl put her arms around the old man and said, “Up!”
The rope snugged up and cut into Aki’s armpits, but with the tremendous relief of his narrow escape washing over him, he hardly noticed the discomfort. The ropes carried them several hundred meters before setting them down, apparently to get them completely clear of the fumes. As they landed, the woman laid the old man out on his back, pulled off her helmet and leaned down over his face. Pinching the old man’s nose, she closed her lips over his and gave him a couple of breaths. She looked up, glanced at the other people she’d rescued and then over toward the main Santorini island. Her eyes narrowed. She said, “Allan, try to contact the helicopter that’s coming this way from the big island and vector it to us. Tell them we have an older man who isn’t breathing, though I can feel a pulse.” She gave the old man a couple more breaths then looked up at Aki. “Do you know anything about medicine or CPR?”
Aki shook his head numbly. He sat down, not feeling very well himself. The girl gave the old man another couple of breaths. Aki saw that the third man of their little, last to be rescued, group was already sitting down. Aki and the third man were both breathing as hard as if they’d been running. Aki thought to himself that the volcanic gas had to be fairly toxic. He hoped it was mostly carbon dioxide that was making them sick, but thought sulfur likely had something to do with it…
After a little time Aki felt better and took a turn giving the old man a few breaths. The other people from their Japanese tour group arrived where they were, apparently having walked over from where they’d been set down. An older woman sank to her knees beside the old man, tears streaming down her face.
Large gusts heralded the landing of the helicopter. The old man had begun breathing on his own but still looked very sick. To Aki’s amazement, the girl picked him up like a child and placed him in one of the seats of the small helicopter. She reclined the seat fully into the one behind it. One person from the tour group claimed to be a doctor and got in with the old man. The old man’s wife got in too. This filled th
e small helicopter so it lifted off, presumably for a clinic on the main island.
Aki absently noted the attractiveness of the young brunette woman when she turned back to him. “Ask the group if any of them are feeling sick?”
He asked around and turned back to her. “They all feel a little bit ill.”
“Do they feel they can walk down to the shore and the boat that brought you here, or would they rather we lifted them with the ropes? I know being lifted by the ropes is painful.”
Aki frowned, “Yes it is, why don’t you have proper harnesses?”
She shrugged, “We aren’t a rescue group. We’re just here on vacation like you.”
His eyes widened. Why would they even have ropes? “Oh. Let me talk to them.” He turned to the group and spoke to them. Most of them had found riding in the rope slings to be frightening and uncomfortable, so they wanted to walk. He turned back to the young woman, “We’ll walk, but will you stand by in case something else happens with the volcano?”
“Sure.”
“May I get your name?”
She gave a little grimace and shook her head. “Sorry, I wouldn’t want word getting out. I’m not supposed to be here on Santorini.”
Aki and his tour group picked their way back to the path, and from there down to the harbor. They felt better and better as they got farther from the concentrated volcanic fumes. The tour boat which had dropped them off had pulled out to sea when the eruption started, but it pulled back in to pick them up. Once Aki was on board he looked around for their rescuers. He saw the two people on the hoverbike lift off with a wave and skim away to the north going faster and faster until they disappeared over the horizon. He wondered, who were those people?
It was only later that he began to wonder what had connected the ropes to the hoverbike and why they had had all that rope…
Shan said, “Why are we going this direction? Don’t we need to get back to Santorini?”
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