Chindi

He listened for a response. “Hutch?”

“Hutch,” said Tor. “Can you hear us?”

Silence.

“I CAN SEE the problem, Hutch,” said Bill. “They’ve restored the exit hatch again. And that cut off the signal to the relay.”

Hutch was sitting in the lander, ready to launch. “Well, I’m glad that’s all it is.”

Nick, back on the bridge, was making worried noises.

The projected rescue, which had seemed routine as long as they got sufficient warning, was begi

After it took the fu

“Bill,” she said, “what’s the range of winds in the Slurpy, for an object moving at the same velocity as the fu

“Hutch, there are some areas in which it would be only a few kilometers per hour. But there is a wide variance, although no worse than hurricane force.”

Well, that was consoling.

“You can’t go over there in that,” said Nick.

Bill agreed. “Wait until they come out. Then pick them up.”

Hutch stared out at the cargo hold. What had she told George? We want to get you out before it goes into the Slurpy. But that was before the braking process started. If they tried to come out onto the hull now, somebody would get killed.

Lamps came on signaling that decompression was complete. The doors were opening. “They’re ready to leave,” she told Nick. “I’d rather take my chances with the Slurpy than have the damned thing take off while we’re all out on the hull.” She took a deep breath. “Bill, plot me a course for the chindi.”

THE CHINDI GLIDED through the night, framed by the vast arc of Autumn’s rings. The lander dropped down and took up station above and to the rear of the giant ship.

“The chindi continues to brake, Hutch. At present rate, it will be over the fu

The major risk was that George, Tor, and Alyx would make it to the exit hatch, cut through, and try to leave. Anyone sticking his head out onto the hull while the chindi was braking would get banged around pretty severely.

She wasn’t sure what she could do in the event, but at least she’d keep close. So she could pick up the body.

Damn. Hutch promised herself again that this absolutely would be her last flight. When this was over, she was going to find a quiet office somewhere, or maybe just head for a front porch.

Even though the fu

Bill kept a picture of the fu

“Winds near the top of the fu

She stayed with the chindi, keeping where she could watch the exit hatch.

Stay put, she told George mentally. Don’t try to leave. Not yet.

Ahead, the Slurpy grew, expanding steadily, a mass of howling white winds, snow, sleet, and ice. It grew until the arc of Autumn’s ring disappeared behind it, until it sprawled across the sky, a vast gray front, a North Dakota blizzard coming in from Hudson Bay.

The chindi fired its thrusters again and she swept out over it, passing close above its granite plains, before her own braking rockets took hold.

Bill, on-screen, seemed to be watching a display. He looked worried. “One hour four minutes to the Slurpy,” he said.

THE PASSAGEWAYS PROVIDED no handrails, nothing to grab on to, and George was hurting from getting knocked down every few minutes. He wondered why the chindi didn’t manage a nice gradual braking maneuver instead of firing its thrusters every few minutes.

Hutch thought they were protected from the worst of the braking maneuvers by a damping effect. He didn’t like thinking how severe it would have been without it.

“I wonder,” said Tor, “whether we shouldn’t stop and pick up the dome.”

“No. Leave it.” It wouldn’t have been that far out of the way. But they didn’t want to be hauling equipment now. “I’ll get you a new one when we get home,” he said.

George had been frightened since the moment he’d set foot on the chindi. The prospect of being hauled off somewhere on this cavernous ship, taken perhaps beyond the reach of rescue, had unsettled him far more than he’d allowed anyone to see. Or for that matter allowed himself to think about.

Hutch was right. Safety should have been his prime consideration. Stay alive. Unless one stays alive, everything else is irrelevant.

But the truth was, before this, George had never been forced to accept his own mortality. He’d never been ill, had never been in an accident, had never voluntarily risked his life. He wasn’t one of those idiots who thought attaching themselves to slings and jumping off skyways was fun. Consequently, the possibility of dying had always seemed remote. Death was something that happened to other people.

But the corridors of the chindi ran on forever. They trooped along. George and Tor consulted the map periodically. Yes, this was the chamber with the treetop home, and that was the museum. Absolutely. I’m sure this is Denmark Street. (Denmark-16 held, they believed, a site in which an excavation had collapsed and killed a group of archeologists. It was a kind of display within a display, archeologists themselves being dug up and placed under glass.) They hurried past an armory and a group of machines that manufactured leather goods.

Occasionally one of them walked into a wall, or stumbled, or needed a moment to reorient. Alyx’s wristlamp failed, and they worried briefly that the power in her e-suit would also shut down. That had been known to happen. So they’d stopped and waited and held their breath, wondering what they could do if her warning lamps began blinking. But it didn’t happen, and they moved on.

Once, twice, they got lost. Left, right, or straight on? They disagreed, debated, consulted George’s map, which hadn’t been seen to properly. But they managed and pressed ahead.

George kept track of the time, watched it dwindle to an hour, then to forty minutes.

They got knocked off their feet again with just over a half hour left, and he went down hard and banged his jaw on the floor. Bit his tongue in the process and had to be helped to his feet.

“You okay?” asked Alyx, looking at him solicitously.

He loved Alyx. The whole world loved Alyx, of course, but that was make-believe. He was one of the relatively few who really knew her.

He patted her on the head, a gesture which brought a frown.

There were no robots abroad. Another indication that the chindi was getting ready to leave orbit.

They passed the Ditch.

“I wonder,” she said, “if my handkerchief is still bobbing around in there?”

And they were thrown down once more. This was different, though. It wasn’t simply a burst, but rather a sustained firing. It was much harder to get up this time, even with help, and he found he had to lean forward to keep his balance. It was like walking up a steep hill.