by David Coy
“I’ll leave it parked right here with the keys in it,” he said. “Take the thing.”
With that done, Habershaw went back and looked for the ancient head-sets he and Lavachek used to use. He found them stuffed in the old canvas bag he carried from job to job.
Donna, John and Habershaw met later back in the locker and took inventory. There wasn’t much. They would use the rescue harness from the shuttle attached to the winch to lower one of them down. They had lights and they had the rifle. That was it.
“Who goes down to get her?” Donna asked.
“I do,” John said. “No arguments.”
“How much wire’s on the winch?” Habershaw asked.
“It’s got a thousand meters on it.”
“That’s plenty.”
“Yeah.”
“So we go tonight,” Donna said.
“Tonight,” Habershaw echoed.
“Tonight,” John agreed, only wishing it could be much sooner.
“Then we’d better get some sleep,” Donna said. “By sunup tomorrow, I want to be as far from this place as we can get.”
15
By the time John got into his net suit and took up a perch on the rig’s high railing, the night had begun its noisy song. There were lights still on in the monolith that cast long shadows of the equipment parked in front of the opening. Like strange rays, they struck harsh patterns of light and dark across the clearing. John looked down and checked every corner, every dark spot, looking for movement. From where he was, it would be impossible for anyone to move without him seeing a shadow. He watched for ten minutes or more, making sure. All he saw were the tiny, back-lit wings of insects flying in front of the opening, drawn by the lights. They flew like snowflakes in the wind, but never blew inside, constantly repelled by the structure’s remarkable chemical defense.
Donna came up quietly and looked with him. She didn’t have to touch his arm to know it was taut as a spring.
“That’s the strangest damn thing, isn’t it?” he said.
“What’s strange?” she said. “The whole planet is strange.”
“Look how the insects cluster around the opening and never go in. Look how they seem to bump into an invisible wall just where the opening starts. What’s keeping them out?”
“Some repellent, like Rachel thought.”
“But none of them go in. None. It’s fantastic really.” She reminded herself about John’s amateur interest in biology. But he was creating a diversion for himself, going somewhere far away in his mind even if for a moment. She wished she could do the same.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” she said, acting like a good sister. “It’s amazing. I’m no expert, but I’d say that thing has evolved a great way to keep out pests.”
John checked the moons’ positions. They were just coming up, no more than a few degrees over the horizon. It was dark enough to get started.
“Did you sleep any?” he asked.
“No.”
“Neither did I,” he said and huffed a long exhale. “We’d better get going.”
“Hey,” she said.
“What?”
“This could work. It could work real easy.”
John nodded his head. If one of those holes led to Rachel, he’d find her. That’s all he cared about. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
They met Habershaw on the dark side of the rig behind the massive track. He was antsy, nervous about being off the rig and out in the open at night. His experience on the road had left a figurative, as well as a literal, impression on him. He constantly brushed the bugs off his net suit—a futile task. One eye was always on the jungle’s edge, waiting for one of those giant grubs to shoot out its grabber at him. John and Donna seemed not to mind, largely ignoring the insects clattering around them.
Donna saw Habershaw's obvious discomfort. “You get used to it,” she said casually. “They’re only bugs.”
They moved at a tangent away from the light then circled wide and entered the shuttle pool in near total darkness. There were a dozen or so shuttles parked in an irregular row. Habershaw kept moving until he came to Mayflower’s. When he pulled on the latch, the door opened wide.
“Perfect,” he said. “Mayflower always was a man of his word. ”
John moved to the pilot’s seat and turned the shuttle on. The instrument panel lit up brightly. He dialed the intensity down just to be on the safe side. When he turned the suspensors on, the shuttle hummed quietly then gently lifted off the ground. He banked right as soon as he cleared the treetops and swung around to the back side of the monolith. He waited until the moons were out of sight and they were in the structure’s shadow before he started his ascent. They moved vertically along the structure’s sheer wall and were at the top in less than a minute.
“Where are the shafts?” he said. “I can’t see them. Shit!”
Christ, he’s really strung tight, Donna thought.
“Turn the lights on,” Habershaw offered.
“That’s risky.”
“How else you gonna find ‘em.”
John turned the lights on, and the top of the monolith was suddenly awash in bright light.
“There they are,” Donna said, pointing. “Right there.”
Fifty meters ahead was a ring of circular black holes, each about two meters in diameter. John picked the closest one. “I guess we’ll try that one first."
He brought the shuttle to rest directly over the hole. It came down with a slight bump. Donna opened the access hatch, a square opening in the cargo area’s floor. A rush of warmish air coming from the shaft lifted her hair. When she looked, she swallowed involuntarily. It was as if the hatch opened into a bottomless black void.
When they’d first seen the ring of vents, in the bright daylight, they had leaned cautiously over the edge of one and speculated about what function they might serve. Rachel had held to John’s arm and leaned farther out and felt the updraft on her face. “It’s a ventilation shaft,” she’d said, “part of a static cooling system, like a termite mound. It vents heat. That’s why the interior is so comfortable.” It had been difficult enough to look down those dizzying, vertical shafts when there was light around them.
* * *
A box—with buttons that attached to an umbilical—controlled the winch, mounted in the ceiling directly over the hatch. Donna plucked the controller from its wall mount, pressed the Down button and reeled some slack off the spool. The winch let out a steady hum as it worked.
John came back, put his hands on his hips, leaned out a ways and peered down. Donna studied his face and could see the apprehension there.
“It’ll be all right,” she said. “It’s just a black pit.”
“Sure,” he said.
He pulled his light from its holster, aimed it squarely down the hole and turned it on. The light had no effect. The shaft swallowed it as if it never existed. He could see the smooth walls for some distance down when he bounced the beam off them, but the bottom of the shaft just didn’t exist.
“Deep,” he said.
He let himself imagine for a moment what it would be like to fall down that shaft. He saw himself tumbling, glancing off the walls as he sped toward some unknown impact below. In an even more gruesome flash, he imagined that the shaft narrowed suddenly, and feet first, he was jammed into a space smaller than his own diameter to be held there in a lingering, claustrophobic embrace.
He shuddered and stepped back, angry with himself for allowing such a mind-numbing vision to form in his head.
“Yeah, it’s a deep bastard all right,” Habershaw said. “You sure you don’t want me to go. Hell, it don’t bother me.”
It was a nice gesture, but a lie. The shaft bothered everybody.
“No, thanks. I’ll be all right once I start down. It’s my job, not yours.
John put the rescue harness on, secured it with the straps, attached the cable’s clasp to the ring, then slung the rifle over his shoulder. Donna handed him a headse
t, and he put it on, adjusting the springy wire until the earphones and mouthpiece were just right. Donna thought he was taking just a little too long, but that was okay.
Once Donna and Habershaw had put on their headsets, Donna passed the controller to Habershaw. He tested it by running a length of wire up and down a couple of times.
“It’s not real fast, is it,” he said.
“Not made for speed,” John said woodenly. “But it’ll lift two thousand kilos easy.”
“Aw, you don’t weigh that much,” Habershaw said, trying
to inject some levity. Donna tried a grin that didn’t work.
“Ready?” Habershaw asked.
“Sure,” John replied, checking the connection a final time.
Habershaw took up the slack. John bent his legs, put his weight on the wire then dropped slowly out into the space over the hole. Turning gently, he rested his hand on the wire and felt its incredible thinness, its tight, rod-like insufficiency. He had to think hard and remember that the braided wire was Coretense steel fiber, half the size of his boot laces, but thousands of times stronger. He’d had the same feeling about it when he was in pilot school, and the students had “rescued” each other in practice. Adrift hundreds of feet over the hard ground of the Mojave, he’d hoped that he’d never have to hang by the thin shit ever again. Oh, well.
He turned his light on and pointed it downward. “Let’s go,” he said.
Habershaw pressed Down and the winch hummed. They watched as he dropped slowly down the shaft, turning helplessly at the end of the thin, shiny wire.
“Can you hear me?” Habershaw said into the mouthpiece.
“Loud and clear,” the answer came back.
“What’s it look like?”
“Nothing. It looks like nothing,” John said. He looked up and saw their heads on two sides of a small, lighted square in the center of the black void above. “This is not fun,” he said.
“Think of it as some kind of ride or something,” Habershaw said, “like at a ride park.”
“It’s too slow and not fun enough to be a goddamned ride.”
“Sorry. What’s it look like now?”
“Still nothing. How far have I gone?”
Habershaw read the numbers on the winch’s counter. “A hundred and ten meters. You should be about halfway there.”
John watched the light brown walls drift by and tried not to think about where he was. He made his mind focus on Rachel. He thought about the first time he saw her and about her thick hair. He thought about her smooth skin and her strong limbs. He thought about the first time they slept together. He thought about her being held captive by a highly organized group of religious fanatics. He thought about where they’d taken her. “I wish this goddamned thing would go faster,” he said. “We’ve got nine more of these things to go down.”
“Not necessarily,” Donna said. “The chances are fifty-fifty that we’ll find the right one in the first five.”
John smiled. “Did you do that math on your own?” he asked. “Part of my pharmaceutical training—you know, counting and dividing and all that. It helps to know these things. Look what it’s done for me,” she said with a smile in her voice. “I’ve got a great career with a great future—travel, adventure, the chance to meet new and interesting people—great paydowns—just like they promised in school. All I had to do was learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Fun with numbers—that’s the key. You gotta love ‘em—make ‘em your friends.”
“You’re full of shit,” the speck of light said.
“Yeah, but I can count,” she said.
John noticed something down below. Floor. He was coming to the bottom of the shaft. It now bent at a sharp right angle.
“I’m coming to the bottom,” he said softly. “Get ready to stop.”
“The bottom?” Donna asked.
“Yeah, well, it goes off horizontally.”
“Which way?”
“I don’t know—I’m too turned around.”
“Maybe it’s connected to the others. Maybe it’s one big system.”
“Stop the winch,” John said.
“Winch off,” came the reply.
“I can see down it quite a ways. It’s tall enough to walk in. I’m going down it. Feed out the line.”
“Well, you can’t get lost,” Donna said.
“Right . . . ”
“Winch on.”
John walked down the tube, trailing the wire behind him. His light cast a dancing pattern on the brown walls as he went. He went another hundred meters in before he came to an area where several tunnels came together. In the center of the juncture was a large hole, perhaps five meters in diameter. He approached cautiously and looked down.
Ten meters down was the lab floor, now covered with a mix of alien and human machinery.
“Stop winch,” he whispered. “Okay, this is it.”
“What is?” Donna said.
“I’m standing at the big hole over the lab.”
“Told ya,” Donna said.
“Save it.”
He unhooked the wire from the harness and walked slowly around the opening, keeping far back so not to be seen from the lab floor if anyone was looking. The lab seemed completely devoid of activity; and as his confidence grew, he moved up until he was standing on the lip looking down.
“It looks like nobody’s home,” he said.
“You sure?” Donna said.
“As far as I can see. No activity at all.”
“That’s odd,” Donna said.
“Yeah. Odd,” he said. “I’m going down.”
He attached the wire to the harness, sat on the edge of the hole and slowly slid off until he was adrift in the air again. Keeping his eyes on the wire, he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Start winch.”
The wire slid over the surface as he started down—and immediately started to cut, burying itself in the material.
“Stop winch! Stop winch!”
“What is it?” Donna said.
“The wire’s cutting into the wall. It’s gonna bind.”
“Shit,” Habershaw said.
He was dangling from the wire just a meter down from the ceiling, but still hidden by the umbilicals and other biotic structures hanging there. He waved his legs and torqued around a revolution to take a look-see. Still nobody home.
He had two choices. He could winch up right now and probably climb over the lip, aborting the mission. The other option was to make what would likely be a one-way trip down.
Rachel’s oval face and buttery voice filled his head. She was
smiling and laughing at something he’d said.
“Winch down,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Habershaw asked.
“Winch down, dammit,” he said.
He started down and watched the wire saw through the surface of the material. A few centimeters in, it seemed to hit a soft, wet substrate that dripped dark fluid down the wire. In a matter of seconds, the wire had sawed a full meter into the ceiling. He cursed quietly. That was that. They’d have no way to climb over the lip with the wire buried like that. And with Rachel’s added weight, going up, the wire could wind up two or three meters farther in.
Just two meters from the floor, his descent slowed to a crawl, and he felt a chattering, a stuttering, along the wire as if it was trying to cut into something very tough and strong.
Less than a meter from the floor, he stopped completely.
“Winch down,” he said.
“It’s winching down.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Winch off,” Habershaw said. “You’re right. The wire’s slack up here.”
“It’s bound up.”
John bounced against the wire, trying to get it to move. No luck. He reached down with his feet and tried to touch the floor. He was still too far. He felt the incredible tightness of the wire, and his fingers worked at the clip. It felt as if the clip and the ring it was attached to were welded toge
ther. He reached up, took hold of the wire with both hands and tried to pull himself up. Not a chance—the wire was too goddamned thin. Unless he could get the pressure off it, he’d never get the clip loose. He found the clasp on the harness and tried to release it. His weight had locked it as tight as the wire clip. He pinched it together until his fingers ached. No use. He’d be stranded right there until they found him, hanging helplessly just a half-meter from the floor.
“Damn it!”
“What?” Habershaw said.
“I’m stuck in the air is what.”
“How high off the ground?” Donna asked.
“Let’s just say if I was a little taller, I’d be there.”
“Unhook the harness,” Donna said.
“I tried that. Got a knife?” he said, closing his eyes in regret. With a knife he could have cut the straps. He’d carried a knife of some kind his entire life—until now. His mind raced. There had to be something he could do. This was nuts.
The rifle. It was one of the series of military-issued GN90's. One of the GN90 variants, if he remembered correctly, had a multi-tool for field maintenance in the stock. He unslung the rifle, found the tool’s compartment in the stock and opened it. There was the tool suspended neatly on two clips. He pried it out and unfolded it. It formed into pliers, and at the base of the pliers’ jaws—the blades of wire cutters.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered.
“Say again?” Habershaw said.
“Nothing. Stand by.”
He slung the rifle, positioned his feet so he wouldn’t fall when he hit, put the wire cutters on the wire at the clip and squeezed. The wire separated with a ping and sang sharply as it flew toward the ceiling. He landed just slightly off balance and stumbled backwards against a cart, knocking the contents noisily to the floor.
He looked around, sure that someone, somewhere, must have heard the noise. Nothing. The lab was as quiet as a tomb. He squatted behind a table-like thing and got his bearings.
