Permanence

Above, the elevator car had stopped moving. Rue could see the shapes of hatches in its floor. If those could be opened from the inside, then she and her people were about to be lasered.

"Come on!" shouted Barendts, his voice way too loud in Rue's headphones. He swung out and around again, but this time he was holding onto a line that he'd tied to the ladder. He disappeared into the gale. The man behind him followed an instant later.

There was no time to think. Rue grabbed the line and swung out. The wind caught her instantly and pushed her straight at a ragged black hole in the side of the shaft. She fell sideways out into night.

Barendts had calculated perfectly. As the wind vanished into vacuum around her, Rue fell against the outside of the shaft. Looming over her was one of the petallike tungsten plates. It hid any view of the hub above— so the lasers there could not touch her. One by one the others shot out of the bright tear in the side of the shaft and Barendts's men caught them. When they were all hanging from the lip of the tear— not so hard, since gravity was much reduced here— Barendts clambered up and began gluing handholds to the underside of the plate.

Rue could hear several persons' ragged breathing coming through the com lines. She said, "Everybody up now. We're going to have to use our suits' reaction jets to fly this thing. When Barendts cuts us loose we're going to fall, but coriolis effect will take us away from the habitat. Our main task is to keep the plate from spi

She demonstrated. Soon they were all hanging feet-down off the plate, with the glowing habitat below and the stars streaming past under that. "Ready," she said to Barendts.

He had attached another charge to the gimbal joint that co

"Ten, nine, eight, seven…" Barendts was counting down. As the Banshee slowly spun, he was lining up so that centripetal force would throw them at the shack. "…three, two, one—"

He fired the laser and a silent explosion silhouetted him. The plate shook over Rue's feet— but nothing else happened.

"Oh, shit," said Barendts. It hadn't worked.

"Everybody shoot the joint!" shouted Rue. The others unslung their lasers; she saw one rifle fall away; it arced out over the stars for a few seconds before vanishing in a flash of light. Destroyed by the hub lasers.

"Wait," said Barendts, "We have to line up another throw at the shack. We'll miss it if we drop now!"

"Too late!" Rue saw shadows moving inside the ragged hole in the side of the shaft. Whoever had been in the elevator car, they were out now and coming.

Bright spots appeared on the gimbal joint and in a few seconds metal was flaring intolerably bright. I hope the joint's not tungsten, too, she thought.

Without warning they were falling. Everybody seemed to be shouting or screaming, up turned down, the habitat whipped by and the stars were tumbling past—

"Jets forward!" shouted Rue as she brought up her own reaction pistol. She fired and several others did too. The plate wobbled under her feet, the Banshee's cables and shaft came into view and then the hub was peeking over the edge of the plate.

Light flashed and someone screamed. Rue was momentarily shrouded in smoke but she kept her feet braced in the straps and fired her pistol. After several agonizing seconds, the hub crept down over the plate's horizon again. Just as it did, the edge of the plate began glowing dull red, then orange.

"Who did we lose?" asked Barendts.

Silence for a few seconds. Rue looked around, but visibility was limited in her suit and in this dark.

"N-nobody," said Mina finally. "The laser caught my reaction pistol— blew it out of my hands. I've got a little leak in my glove, but nothing I can't seal."

Rue was watching the stars turn. "Jets back," she said. "Two second burst." They all fired and stabilized the plate again.

She could see the construction shack. It was above and to her left, but it was hard to know if they were headed in that direction. The plate they were riding was massive; she doubted if they could change its trajectory easily.

The metal under her feet glowed again, then faded. At least it looked like the plate would hold.

There was a long silence, as it sank in that they had, for now anyway, escaped. Then Blair's dry voice filled Rue's head.

"Well, Captain, this may not be the best ship I've crewed for you, but right now I wouldn't trade it for anything."

26

MICHAEL GRABBED THE autotroph canister by its handles, peering momentarily through its little window at the spiral-shaped thing inside. "You asked to be here, here you are," he said to it. Then he hauled it to the airlock and cycled through. The others were already outside, preparing to jump off the interceptor as they approached the construction shack.

The only light source outside was the stars, but the shack glowed in infrared and his suit helmet translated that into an image. The shack was huge and its quilted surface undulated slightly in places, like the fabric of a hotter-than-air balloon Michael had once seen on Kimpurusha.

"It's that ferrofluid again," said Herat. "These Lasa are nothing if not consistent." Likely there was no solid hull under that liquid, only a moveable matrix of powerful magnets. The shack's size and shape were a matter of convenience. Right now, it was a cylinder over a kilometer long and almost half that in thickness.

They slid behind the shack relative to the Banshee; as its glowing habitats vanished behind the horizon of the shack, their pilot said, "Fire," and the rail-shaped cart they hung onto pulled away from the interceptor. Michael had little sense of movement unless he turned to watch the interceptor depart.

Harp, their squad leader, pointed back along the surface of the shack. "I can see Captain Cassels's group. They're headed for the Banshee."

The cart drifted to a stop a meter from the shack. Michael switched off the infrared view and turned on his helmet light. The ferrofluid was a dull black, and until he reached to touch it, he wasn't sure he was seeing it. The surface indented slightly under his touch, but he couldn't penetrate it with his glove.

"No surprise we can't get through here," said Harp. "They'd want to control the placement of doors. Where's that photomosaic, Professor?"

Michael waited while they located an airlock. He was scared, in a completely different way than he was used to. This alien artifact was potentially more dangerous than any he and Herat had investigated— but the chief danger here was Man, not the alien.

Still, he told himself, this is what I've been waiting for. Ever since Kimpurusha, he had been wandering, waiting to come full circle. Now, finally, he had his chance to strike at the conquerors of his home. This time he would get it right.

Harp drew them over the curve of the shack to where one of the Lasa's distinctive airlocks sat nested in the spiky black skin of the shack. The soldier unclipped a hunt bot from his belt and pushed it through the resilient liquid. Michael tried to open an inscape window to it by habit; of course that didn't work in this military situation. He brought up his HUD and peered at the tiny image it projected ahead of him.