Spinneret

I'm going in."

"Take it easy," Meredith's voice came back, soothing on top, combat-ready underneath. "Flyer Three is scrambling now—"

"No time, sir," Carmen interrupted. "Cross your fingers."

Without waiting for a reply, she kicked the underside repulsers to life and eased on the main engines. Hovering a meter or two off the ground, the flyer swung around and drifted cautiously up the mountain toward the trapped expedition.

It was a nerve-wracking trip, caught as she was between the need for haste and the need for caution. She had no idea where the near edge of the high-gee ring was, and if she hit it too fast she could easily lose control and ram the flyer all the way in. Licking dry lips, she kept going, peripherally aware of Sadowski sitting tensely in the seat beside her. The others were ten meters away now … seven … four …

the hole the hammer had made was visible—

With a snap of sheared co

For that instant the underside repulsers were aiming slightly forward, giving the flyer a small backward thrust. By the time they'd leveled out once more they were three or four meters from the high-gee field, leaving behind a very flat piece of metal to mark the place.

"Nice flying, Miss Olivero," Sadowski said tightly. "I hope whatever we lost there wasn't vital."

"Me, too," Carmen agreed, the first glimmering of real hope stirring in her. The high-gee ring was no more than a meter wide—an impassable barrier for a human being, but perhaps not for what she had in mind. Taking a deep breath, she swung the flyer around and backed into the field.

They were moving faster this time, and hit the ground with a correspondingly louder crash. Ignoring the groans and snaps of tortured metal and plastic, Carmen ran the thruster limit all the way up and waited tensely for the automatic leveler to raise the tail off the ground. The usual background rumble rose to a scream, and she felt her hands curling into fists. The repulser units themselves could handle enormous temperatures, but it was doubtful the designers had expected the flyer to be flat on the ground at the time. She envisioned the underside plates buckling with the heat, perhaps melting or even boiling away—

And with a barely perceptible lurch the tail came off the ground.

Carmen was ready. The flyer's nose jets spat at full thrust, pushing the craft backward. Two meters were all they could manage before the underside temp monitors hit critical and shut down the repulsers, bringing the craft back down with a bone-jarring crunch. But two meters was enough. Flipping to "spacecraft" mode, Carmen shut down all fuel to the main engines, killed the preheating ignition system—and the monitors that might otherwise prevent her from doing this—and slammed the throttle to full power.

And with nothing to hinder or react with it, the flyer's compressed oxygen supply began pouring through the main repulser units, spraying directly toward the motionless figures beyond the barrier.

"They're moving!" Sadowski, pressed against the side window, turned back to face her, a wide grin plastered across his face. "They're okay."

Carmen closed her eyes briefly and let out a shuddering breath. Reaching down, she put the throttle back to half and popped the door beside her. "I'm going out for a look. Let me know when the 02 level hits point three—that screen over there."

Hopping down carefully, she limped around the curve of the flyer, making certain to stay well back of the high-gee field. Beyond it, the five men were sitting up now, looking dazed but otherwise all right. She started to wave; but even as she raised her arm Hafner suddenly clutched Nichols's shoulder and pointed toward Olympus. Carmen raised her own eyes—and gasped.

Glittering like spun silver in the sunlight, a filament was shooting skyward from the volcano's crater. She was just in time to see the leading end vanish into the blueness above, and for an instant the strand seemed motionless, conjuring the image of Astra hanging from an impossibly thin skyhook. Then the other end of the thread left the volcano, and she realized with a fresh jolt just how fast the thread was moving. Escape velocity for sure; perhaps much more.

She was still standing there, staring upward, when the steady wind blowing in her face abruptly died, nearly toppling her onto her face. Recovering, she looked down at the others. As if on cue they turned back to her as well; and after a moment of uncertainty, Perez picked up a stone and lobbed it in her direction. It landed at her feet without any detectable deviation, and a minute later they were all standing together by the flyer.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes flicking to each in turn.

"We're fine," Hafner nodded. He had a bemused look on his face, as if wondering whether any of it had really happened. Carmen could sympathize; with gravity back to normal and that mysterious thread long out of sight, she could almost imagine the whole thing had been a dream or mass hallucination.

Until, that is, she got a close look at the flyer's crumpled tail section.

Chapter 10

"The shuttle's matched orbits with the cable now," Captain Stewart reported. "It should be just a few more minutes."

Listening in from a few million kilometers away, Meredith swallowed hard against his frustration. He'd desperately wanted to be on the scene when rendezvous was made, and the fuel-efficiency arguments which had prevented the Aurora from stopping first for passengers weren't the least bit comforting.

Whatever that cable was, it was an Astran discovery, and he didn't like the feeling that Stewart was cutting them out of things.

Brown, sitting beside Meredith in Martello's communications center, seemed to feel the same way. "We're still not getting the picture you promised," he told Stewart. "You want to get someone on that, Captain?"

"So far, there's nothing to see," Stewart replied. "Even the shuttle's cameras still only show occasional glints. We'll tie you in when they go EVA for the material tests."

"Do that," Meredith said. "In the meantime, have you refined your dimension estimates any?"

"Not really. We still make it about six centimeters in diameter and something over two kilometers long. When we can get a piece of it to work on we'll get density and composition, but I'll bet you the Aurora we've got your missing metal right here."

"Yeah. Well, there's just one problem with that." Tapping computer keys, Meredith called up a list of numbers. "Our best estimate right now is that we lost about forty-seven hundred kilograms' worth, including all the stuff in the fertilizer.

If the cable's the density of iron, say, it shouldn't be more than a tenth that length.

So where'd the rest of the mass come from?"

"No idea," Stewart admitted. "Maybe the chemical analysis will give us a clue."

He paused. "Okay, they're exiting the lock now. Here we go."

In front of Meredith the screen came to life. To one side of the camera was the bulk of the shuttle, from which a spacesuited man equipped with a maneuvering pack was emerging. On the other side of the picture, the cable was just barely visible. A second figure joined the first, and for several minutes they jockeyed around the cable taking pictures. As Meredith had half expected, there was no more detail to the cable's surface at close range than had been visible farther out.

"That should be enough," Stewart said at last. "Try the cutters now—stay near the end."

"Roger." The first astro had unclipped a set of what looked to Meredith like a mechanized lobster claw. Moving forward, he set the blades against the cable—and suddenly swore. "Damn! It's stuck!"