It went with her. She got both hands into it. Tried to loop it around her arm.
It took longer than she expected, but the line finally jerked tight. Tore at her shoulder. The rise in front of her went up, and she went down and crashed into the rock. On the other shoulder. The world went briefly dark. The air was knocked out of her, or maybe the oxygen tanks shattered. Didn’t know which. The hills were going down again. She’d bounced, and she saw Tor above her. They were both going up, and the hills rushed beneath.
A sharp pain exploded in her side, but she tried to ignore it. Call Tor. “You okay?”
She heard him, heard something, but it wasn’t clear. And her vision was fading.
Damn. She was passing out again.
THE SUDDEN LIFTOFF had broken a couple of his ribs. But he was off the surface, hauled up and thrown down and whipped back up. He lost track of Hutch when he got yanked away, but then he saw her again, below him.
They kept circling each other, the way the Twins did, he guessed. She didn’t look conscious, but she still had hold of the cable, and he knew he had to get to her before she let go.
Carefully, he reeled her in, while they soared out over the rim of broken rock that constituted the chindi’s prow. She was pale, and blood was dribbling out of her mouth, but she seemed to be breathing.
When he touched her, her eyes fluttered open. She smiled but through his own gathering haze he saw that she was hurting.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She didn’t sound okay. Meanwhile it was getting hard to breathe. “Air,” he said.
She looked startled, nonplussed, apologetic, and pointed to her airtanks. “You’ll have to help.”
He got behind her and released the connection from her harness, then turned so she could remove his own useless tank and plug her unit in. Cool, fresh air rushed in. “Ah,” he said, “the simple joys we take for granted.” And: “Thanks, Hutch.”
She squeezed his arm and smothered a cry of pain, and then assured him that she wasn’t hurt, not really, well, maybe my ribs, a little. I had trouble with them once before. “How about you?”
“Same problem, I think.” Cautiously, he used his cutter to get rid of the loose cable, which floated beside them like a giant tangle of embroidery.
He was suddenly aware that Brownstein was calling from the McCarver. “No casualties,” Tor said. “But we need a pickup.”
Chapter 38
THE MEDIBOT DIAGNOSED Hutch with a dislocated shoulder, cracked ribs, a chipped collarbone, some torn ligaments, and what she came to refer to as a body bruise. Tor suffered more cracked ribs, a broken knee, and lacerations. Both were, despite their injuries, in a jovial mood until the painkillers put them under.
Hutch slept sixteen hours. When she woke she remembered only pieces and bits of the previous few days. “Considering what you’ve been through,” Jennifer told her, “I’m not surprised.”
It was a curious experience: At first she recalled only sharing her air tanks with Tor, but she had no recollection of how she got into that position. Then she remembered juggling the go-packs. Then the rest of the flight over the rocky exterior of the chindi. (“Was it really the chindi?”) Her memory proceeded backward until the giant starship blew out of the snowstorm and made for the oort cloud.
She was ravenous and they fed her fruit and eggs, and assured her that Tor was doing fine but was unavailable at the moment. She did however have a visitor.
Mogambo was in a gray-and-blue McCarver jumpsuit. Ready to go to work. “That was quite a show you put on out there,” he said. “Congratulations.” There was a darkness in those gray eyes.
“What’s wrong, Doctor?” she asked.
“Nothing.” But there was, and he was letting her see that there was.
“The go-packs,” she said.
“It’s all right.” He was operating somewhere between magnanimity and a sulk.
“Use the shuttle.” They were chasing that down now. “I brought one go-pack back with me. It’s a little bent, but I’m sure we can repair it.”
“Brownstein says there’s a liability issue. He’s not sure he wants to put us on the chindi in any case.”
“Oh.” Her mind wasn’t clear. “I thought we already settled that.”
“He says he agreed to bring us along. Not to land us on the chindi.”
“I see.”
“He says he won’t do it without your approval.”
“Well.” Hutch kept a straight face. “I can understand his reluctance.”
“There’s no danger.”
“That sounds familiar.”
He backed off and lowered his voice. “How’s your arm?”
“My shoulder,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Good. We were worried about you.”
“Professor, you see what we just went through.”
“Of course.”
“You understand that I’d be reluctant to chance anything like that happening again.”
Tor showed up behind Mogambo, on crutches. “How’s the patient?” he asked.
“I’m fine, Tor. Thanks.”
“How are you, Professor?” he said. “I hear you’re going over to the chindi.”
“We’re still working on it,” he said, not taking his eyes from Hutch.
Tor smirked and looked momentarily as if he were going to say more, but he let it go.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said.
He nodded, suggesting she was doing the only rational thing. “Thank you, Priscilla,” he said. “I’m in your debt.”
SHE DID THE promised interview with Claymoor that evening. To her dismay, he had used the McCarver’s telescopes to get pictures of her sailing awkwardly above the chindi and of her graceless crash landing. Thump. Bang. Whack.
“You’re not going to use them, I hope,” she protested.
“Hutch, they’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
“I look like a wounded pelican.”
“You look incredible. You know what’s going to happen when people see those shots? They’re going to see that you’re an incredibly brave young woman. A woman absolutely without fear.”
“Absolutely without sense,” she grumbled.
“Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You’re going to become the world’s sweetheart.” He gestured toward the mike clipped to his lapel. “Can we start?”
She nodded.
They were in a VR studio which looked like First and Main on the chindi. They sat in upholstered chairs along the lip of the Ditch, placed so that the audience could look past them down the dark passageways that traveled off in all directions. “I’m seated here with Priscilla Hutchins,” Claymoor said, “where we have a pretty good view of the interior of an alien starship. It’s called the chindi, and I should point out that what you can see is only a very small part of the ship. But before we get to that…” He leaned forward and his brow wrinkled. “Priscilla, they call you Hutch, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do, Henry.”
He smiled at the imager. “Hutch performed an incredible feat earlier today to rescue one of her passengers.”
In fact, despite her reservations, the interview went well. Claymoor asked the usual questions. Had she been frightened? Terrified.