"Over here! There's someone over here!" The light was in my eyes. A flashlight. I opened my eyes, blinked, and blinked again. It was nighttime. There were lights everywhere. Above it all, the pink shroud of the airship still fluttered and glowed. The great ceiling flickered with golden light.
"It's McCarthy-Jesus Christ!"
"No. Just call me Jim."
"Is he alive?"
"I think so. Yeah. Dead men don't look this bad. Captain McCarthy? Can you hear me? It's Siegel-He's alive! Get a stretcher down here!"
Somehow, I croaked out some words. "Where's… Lizard?"
"Who?"
"General… Tirelli-"
"Sorry, I don't know. They haven't found her yet."
"She's on the phone-" I waved my communicator at Siegel. He took it and frowned. "Sorry. It's dead, Jim."
"It can't be! I was just talking to her. She put me on hold."
"Jim, what time is it?"
"What are you talking about. It's what? Afternoon. We just came down on the treetops and-"
"Jim, it's almost midnight. You've been unconscious. You're all right. Help is coming. Just stay calm."
"But Lizard sent you, didn't she?"
"Nobody's seen her, Jim. Or heard from her."
"But she's still on the ship. In a corridor off the briefing lounge. All twisted sideways. Climbing toward the top. She called me on the phone." It was hard to say it all, but it was important to get it all out.
Siegel hesitated. "Did you get that?" he called to someone. "Check the briefing lounge."
"The lounge was crushed-" I didn't recognize the voice. Someone from the crew?
"Check the corridors," Siegel ordered. "Now!"
"Siegel?"
"Yes, Captain?"
"I'm not… a captain anymore. I'm an… Indian scout. What are you doing here? I saw you get crushed."
"Not quite, sir. Hold on, I've got a stretcher coming. The loading bay is a mess, but the team survived. You trained us better than you thought. We're dropping a rope now. Dr. Meier's got a medical bay rigged. We're going back up into the trees."
"She doesn't have enough duct tape for this-we'll never get the ship airborne again."
"Don't worry. We're okay. Lopez has a comlink working. We've got full network communications. They know where we are. Choppers are on the way. We'll all be out of here by tomorrow night. Can you feel anything when I do this?"
"No.
"How about this?"
"No."
"How about-?"
"Yowp! Yes, goddammit! Don't do that." After the worst of the pain subsided, I asked, "I can't move to see clearly. What was that?"
"Your leg. Your knee, actually. Just lie still, I've got a med-team coming." He held my hand. He shifted his grip upward so he could lay one finger across my wrist. To check my pulse.
"Status report?"
"We crashed."
"Got any more details than that?"
"We're about twenty, maybe twenty-five klicks northeast of the mandala. We've got fifty people accounted for. We're searching for the rest. People are still checking in. Most of the ship is in pretty bad shape, she broke her keel in three places, but a large part of the main deck is actually okay. A little precariously balanced, but the engineers are looking to secure things and see if they can level it off a bit. We've rigged a med-bay, we're working on a kitchen. We've got P-rations and bottled water, so we're okay for tonight. Actually, we're okay for a month, if we have to dig in, but I wouldn't worry about that. There's a rescue mission launching from Panama. In the meantime, we're going to try to keep everybody in the treetops. We don't know how long it'll take the worms to get to us, but we know they've got to be following the trail of debris we dropped. We're putting out probes and prowlers. And we're laying down mines. Two of the spybirds are busted up; as soon as we find the others, we'll launch them. We may have to wait until morning. Hold on, the medic's here-"
I heard a rustling. I managed to turn my head. Somebody in a blood-spattered jumpsuit. He looked familiar. I couldn't see clearly.
He pushed something gently away from my eyes. He studied me impersonally, then began spraying my face with something wet and misty. It smelled of antiseptic and peppermint. A moment later, he was daubing gently at my eyes and my forehead and then my mouth and nose. "Boy, do you look like hell." A quick last wipe with the cotton. "Hiya, sir." He grinned quickly at me. "Is that better?"
"Hi, Shaun. Love your bedside manner." My voice cracked. "Can I have some water?"
"Only a sip." He held a straw to my mouth. He pinched it off quickly. He wasn't kidding about a sip. I barely got enough water to wet my throat, not enough to swallow.
He ignored my protest and began unfolding a stretcher; his movements were quick and professional; he knew what he was doing. From somewhere, he produced a shears and began cutting open my jacket and shirt and began pasting monitors to my skin; one on the wrist, three on the chest, two on the forehead, two on my temples. As soon as they had all beeped green, he began wrapping me in a silvery blanket. I started feeling immediately warmer.
I felt him reaching around under my head; he was locking a neck brace into position.
"Is that necessary?" I asked.
"Just a precaution, in case we drop you."
"Do you drop many?"
"Hardly any. You'd be the second. Today, anyway." He finished with the neck brace and began gently feeling my collarbone, my arms, and finally my legs.
"Watch the knee," said Siegel.
"I see it," Shaun replied.
"No fair copping a feel," I said.
"Hey! You do your job, I'll do mine."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"All right," said Shaun to Siegel. "You ready to try getting him on the stretcher? I'm going to turn him on his side toward you, you hold him up, I'll slide the board under, then we put the whole thing together around him, got it?"
Siegel nodded. "I know the drill. Let's do it."
"Can we stop for pizza on the way up?"
"Shut up," said Shaun; he used a tone of voice that allowed no reply. "Okay? One, two-lift!"
"Oww! Goddammit! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Son of a bitch! Shit! Piss! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
"Hold him steady. Okay, got it. Let him down easy now. All right, let's fasten some straps." He patted me gently on the chest. "See, that didn't hurt me a bit." He was already locking the rest of the stretcher into place. A moment more and he and Siegel were lifting me up off the jungle floor.
"That way," said Siegel. "There's kind of a path-"
"No," I interrupted. "It's a worm-track. Stay off it."
"-that we need to avoid," he finished, ignoring me completely. "Shut up, sir," he added.
"Right," said Shaun. He listened to his earpiece for a moment. "They're lowering a sling."
"Hang on, Jimbo. You're almost home."
"We're a long way from home-what did you call me?"
"I didn't call you anything, except maybe a pain in the ass."
"You wish. Forget it. I'm a married man."
Shaun allowed himself a broad sigh. "Why is it all the good ones are either married or straight?" For a while, neither one of them said anything as they struggled through the uneven terrain of the jungle muck.
Finally, they came to a place where the sky above was clearly pink and bright. I could see the yellow light of an open bay far above, and it made me think of another time and another airship. Only that time, it hadn't been my ass in the sling.