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“How long a length do you have?” Tarbush held Scruffy firmly, making sure that the ferret could not get near the danger zone between the two silver rings.
“I don’t know. But the thread is ratcheted inside the rings. I can make it longer or shorter, as I want. Hold something out to me — something we don’t need.”
“I’ll have to put Scruffy down. Do we want to keep her here?”
“I told you, we should let her go.”
“Then hold on a minute.” Tarbush stood and walked over to the air duct. “Go on, Scruff. Find Deb Bisson and Da
He held the animal forward again toward the duct. She nuzzled his hand, then vanished in a sudden blur of brown fur.
“Hope she’ll be all right,” Tarbush said as he splashed back toward Chrissie. “Listen to that wind! It’s not nice out there.”
“Tarb, it’s not nice in here.” While he had been gone, Chrissie had removed the compass from the sleeve of her suit. The instrument had provided nothing but nonsense readings since their arrival on Limbo, and now she balanced it on the top of her boot and brought the silver rings carefully down, one held in each hand, so that the thread lay across the compass.
“Careful!” Tarbush said. “Don’t ruin your suit, you may need it again.”
“I know that.” Chrissie bent forward. All her attention was concentrated on the filament, thi
“Now I’ve got the feel of it. The question is, will the monofilament do the same thing to the wall?”
“Even if it can, how does that do us any good?” Tarbush picked up the halves of the compass. “To cut something apart, you have to place the rings on both sides of it. We’re inside the wall.”
“So we have to be tricky.” Chrissie stood up and went across to the closer of the ventilators. “Before I waste any time, let’s see if there’s any point in even trying.” She reached far inside the duct, her hand still holding its silver ring. She brought the other hand around in a semicircle, so that the monofilament met and cut into the perimeter of the duct. A crescent slice, carved from around the wall, silently slid free and splashed into the dark water at her feet.
“Principle established,” Chrissie said softly. “This will cut anything. Now for the tricky bit. I have to widen the hole more and more, and hope I can get one hand all the way to the outside.”
“Chrissie, let me do it.” Tarbush held out his hand. “My arm’s longer than yours, and stronger. I can reach outside easily.”
“You could — if you could get that great ham fist into the duct at all. Which you can’t. Stand clear, sweetheart. Keep your light focused on where I’m cutting. I don’t want to start slicing pieces off my own arm.”
She was moving one hand in a wider arc, excising from the wall a circular cone half a meter across. As it came free, Tarbush lifted it clear. “Hm. This is warm ,” he said. “That thing you have isn’t just a monofilament. I wondered how it could cut so easily. There must be nanos inside the thread, freeing molecular bonds.”
“Deb specializes in tricky weapons. But now for the hardest part.” Chrissie had her arm in the enlarged hole up to the shoulder. “I can reach all the way through, but I have to enlarge the duct at the outside edge because unless I do that we have nothing useful. I’m going to work one hand outside, hold the ring against the outer wall, then slide both hands in unison to slice a cylindrical section. Don’t breathe.”
“I’m not sure it’s necessary to go to all that trouble.” Tarbush had been examining the conical wedge removed from the wall, and now he moved forward.
“We want to get out, don’t we?” Chrissie, her hands encumbered with the rings, could not easily push at him. She said sharply, “Get your hand out of the way. If you stand like that you’ll lose some fingers.”
“No. Back off, Chrissie. I need to try something.”
“Tarb!” But he was dangerously close to the monofilament, and she was forced to pull her hands clear. “What are you playing at?”
“Just watch. We haven’t used my strongman act for years, but let’s see how it plays on Limbo.” He stood in front of the ventilator pipe, took a deep breath, and punched his fist deep into the expanded hole that she had made. Chrissie heard nothing, but she saw a cloud of powder fly out around his arm.
“What did you do?”
Tarbush was pushing his shoulder and then his head into the hole. “Take a look at the piece you cut out.” He was grunting at some great effort, interspersing his words with gasps. “Push your finger in it — you can, it’s soft as cream cheese. This whole building must have an — integrated structure. Very strong when it’s complete, forms a single unit, but if any part is — destroyed — the rest is ready to crumble. We’re lucky that Deb’s — monofilament cutter didn’t bring — the whole place down on top of us. But we have to move fast — it’s self-repairing, and it’s starting to adjust. Going to be touch and go. One more push — hah! — I’m through! My arm’s outside. Now for the big push. Look out back there.”
He emerged from the hole, coated in gray powder and coughing and choking. “Should have closed my suit — up my nose — going to sneeze.”
He did, in a vast explosion of air loud enough to hear above the sounds of the storm. Then: “Follow me! Close your suit. It’s a mess outside.”
A mess inside, too. Chrissie imagined that she could see the room starting to sag and melt around her. She heard sounds — not the storm — from beyond the wall to the i
“No time for acrobatics.” Tarbush was lifting her easily, setting her on her feet, shouting in her ear. “Can you stand up?”
Chrissie was about to shout back “Of course I can!” when the wind caught her. Inside the building she had never dreamed that it would be so strong. She felt herself sliding away sideways, down a wet and slippery incline. Only Tarbush’s invisible grip on her arm saved her from being blown away.
While she stood braced against him, the darkness was suddenly dispelled by strong light. She turned, and saw a green globe of luminescence drifting across the sky. Tarbush shouted, “They’ve got us,” and pulled her close. The globe lengthened to become a tall cylinder, a vortex column that stretched toward earth and sky. When it touched the ground it vanished. Chrissie felt her skin prickle.
“Not the aliens,” she screamed at Tarbush. “Some local sort of electrical activity caused by the storm. But the wind!” She could feel her feet slipping. “I can’t hold — it’s too strong.”
“Let yourself go. We can’t travel upwind, but if we can reach the forest—”
He released his hold. Chrissie went slithering and skating away into the darkness. She could see nothing. She felt nothing, too, until with a teeth-loosing jolt she hit the boundary fence. A moment later, Tarbush crashed into the mesh wall a few feet to her left.
“Damnation!” His howl of rage carried over the wind. “We have to try to drag ourselves around to the gate — but which way? I have no idea.”
“It may be guarded anyway.” Chrissie lay spreadeagled on the fence. “Can you shine your helmet light over here? I ought to have turned mine on before I started.”