by Larry Niven
“Where's Henry?” she asked.
“I don't know. Calvin, will you tell me yet?”
“Nope. Sleep.”
Kyle barely got the words “damn you” out before he was, in fact, asleep.
* * *
The next thing he noticed was the habitat shaking. Lark was able to help him get her suited. She only screamed twice, once for each raw leg. They depressurized, and Henry tumbled in the door, carrying the suit he'd modified for Lark.
“You went all the way down there?” Kyle asked.
Henry sounded weak. “Someone had to do each thing. I knew you had the brains to get her safely.”
Kyle grinned. They repressurized and stripped out of their suits. Lark poured herself into Henry's arms, finally looking energetic. Henry looked very proud of himself. His smile was bigger than usual. Kyle stole a peek at Henry's vitals. His blood pressure was way too high, his respiration was shallow and fast. “Sleep, Henry.”
Eight full hours later Kyle opened his eyes. Lark was crying, looking down at Henry.
“He's not moving,” she sobbed.
“Calvin, what have we got for Henry?”
“Sleeping. Maybe in a coma. He might have had a stroke. We can't tell from here. Doesn't matter—the verdict is he can't possibly make it. Down will be at least half as hard as up.”
Lark crawled over to Kyle and cried in his lap. Kyle patted her head and found he was crying too. Ideas and condolences and tributes started coming in. Kyle turned off his radio; Henry would prefer silence. Besides—he wasn't dead. But how were they going to get him down?
“Remember when you sat on the leaves?” Lark said.
“Sure.”
“Do we have rope?”
Kyle winced, thinking of the supply basket. “Calvin, do we have rope?”
Calvin's voice. “They refilled the basket.”
Lark's backpack had a better knife in it. She led Kyle out to cut off whole leaves. “These are bigger than I needed to get down the stem,” Kyle said.
“They're not for you. They're for Henry. They'll cushion him,” Lark explained. “We're going to use the spaces, not the stems.”
“Huh?”
“To climb up, you had to use the stems. To climb down, we can do better. We're almost weightless, right? We tie Henry between us. We wrap him in leaves to cushion him if we screw up.”
“Hell with leaves, let's use the probes. They didn't have the strength to carry us up, but they could carry Henry down. Then we can use your idea, but we won't have to worry about carrying Henry.”
He was rewarded with a rare touch from Lark. “I want to come back,” she said.
“Both marbles are busted.”
“Climb back.”
“You want to do this on purpose ?”
“There's things I need to know about what's happening here. Besides, the real tourists will need guides.”
“What real tourists?”
“There are ten climbers on the next ship. Hundreds wanted to come—they had to do a lottery.”
“We're leaving.”
“Justine Jackson is coming here.”
“I'm content to watch her.”
“They're paying a premium.” She named a figure.
She could pay for her own school! “Do I have to climb these things again?”
“You're being requested.”
Kyle grumbled. Calvin laughed at him. He and Lark rigged Henry carefully in place of the supply basket. They charged his suit with water, oxygen, broth. Kyle tied the med-kit to his back and tied the basket and its other contents to the vine. It would grow home.
Shooterwould grow home too, to be stripped for salvage. It wouldn't do to leave its diminished fleck of antimatter loose in the sky.
* * *
Henry beat them down by two days. He was at the table when Lark came in for her party wearing the yellow dress. Suriyah must have fussed over the table for hours; everything was perfect.
“Henry, couldn't they find you a wheelchair?”
“This place isn't outfitted for cripples, Lark. Suriyah, you know I can move around. You don't have to keep lifting me.”
“I know. Next you'll be climbing the Styx again.”
Henry sighed. “No, not that. But—you're going, Lark. And Kyle?”
“For what they're paying? Sure I'm going. This base'll be open a lot longer now. At least until the Styx dies, if it dies at all. Justine Jackson—nice woman, by the way, but a little freaky—she doesn't want someone beating her record in the Guinness Files. She's talking about climbing the full length.”
“Kyle? Twenty-seven thousand kilometers?”
Lark burst in. “Yeah, but we'll have a lot of support. Like swimming the Amazon, you take a boat alongside. She did that too, remember?”
Suriyah said, “You'd be years doing this!”
“Team of twelve. Big habitat, and a chef. We'll still have a social life. Lark can attend Yale Virtual. Henry, we're still talking, and I'm not even sure she's funded yet, but wow! We'd have a dedicated channel for three years or so, and then chop that back to thirteen hours of just the exciting parts and a voice-over, for reruns.”
“Do you remember,” Suriyah said, “that the atmosphere is changing? You'll be climbing through hurricanes.”
“No, don't sweat the wind. Pluto's atmosphere is thin as a dream and getting thinner.”
“You're all crazy. You started crazy.” She looked from one to the other, and suddenly smiled. “Can I have your autographs? Some day they might be worth a lot. Here, on this.” On Henry's medical readout.
Authors’ Note:“We learned of the Hoytether™ from Robert Forward. He taught Niven about mini black holes and integral trees. We miss him terribly.”
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