"Toward the top,"said Glory. "The problem's near the top."
It was difficult to work without a perch, to get any leverage on the bar when she had no place to plant her feet.
"How are you making out?" asked Chiang.
The bar was heavy. Her arms quickly got tired, and once she almost dropped it. The compartment door was jammed tight.
"Okay," she said.
She struggled on. Chiang said he thought it was taking too long and they should pull her up and let him try.
"He thinks," said Kellie, "we need more muscle down there."
"He's probably right." Hutch slid the bar into her vest and took a minute to rest her arms. Despite her boyish dimensions, she was, like all women, somewhat top-heavy, and she had to fight a tendency to turn turtle. "Let's stay with this a bit," she said. "If I can't get it, I'll be happy to give Chiang a shot."
Her vest was cutting off the blood in her armpits. She changed position, retrieved the tool, and tried again. She worked with increasing desperation and finally got the bar inside the compartment. She pulled down, pushed it in farther, and pulled again. Something gave, and the door popped open. The capacitor hung immediately overhead.
"I've got it," she said. She secured the bar to her belt, reached up into the compartment, felt around, and estimated she had a reasonable amount of clearance. She tied the line around the front and rear of the capacitor and secured it.
"Okay," she said. "Take up the slack. But not too tight."
They complied. She got out from under the compartment. "Glory," she said.
"Yes, Hutch?"
"Release the capacitor."
It dropped out of the compartment and swung back and forth in a long arc. But the line held, and her knots held. To her immense relief it did not fall to the bottom of the canyon.
After they'd recovered the second capacitor, she resisted the temptation to get out of the chasm and instead pushed up through the airlock into the spacecraft.
She salvaged as many reddimeals as she could, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners packed in self-heating containers. They weren't exactly food off the griddle, but for something to eat on the trail in an alien place, they were going to look pretty good. She picked up some coffee packs, found two bottles of wine, and some sandwiches and fruit from the refrigerator. The galley supplied unbreakable dishes, utensils, and mugs. She paused in front of the water tank. That was something they were going to need at the far end of the journey. She removed it, emptied it, folded it up, and put it in her vest.
There were other useful items: towels, washcloths, toothbrushes, soap, an extra e-suit, a lantern, a pair of Evening Star jumpsuits, more cable, two backpacks, and a medkit.
The lander slipped a few more centimeters.
She packed everything into plastic bags and they hauled them up. Kellie was urging her not to press her luck.
"Coming now," Hutch said.
And then Glory's voice: "Hutch?"
"Yes, Glory."
"Are you leaving now?"
"Yes."
"You won't be back?"
"No, Glory. I won't be back."
"Would you shut me off?"
The capacitors were marked with the manufacturer's name, Daigleton Industries, the date of manufacture, which was the previous year, and the Daigleton logo, a stylized atom.
They put them on the worktable and threw canvas over them, and MacAllister opened a private channel to Hutch. "Maybe we should leave a couple of people here to make sure they're still here when we get back."
"Who's going to take them?" she asked.
"What about the cat?"
"I can't imagine what it would do with them." She adjusted the canvas. "No, we're safer together. If this place is as dangerous as Randy thinks it is, we shouldn't leave anybody here."
"Congratulations, Hutch. Outstanding job." Marcel sounded delighted, relieved, wiped out. Had he really been following all that?
"Thanks, Marcel. We've got a bunch of survivors here."
"I see that. By the way, we have a message for you from the Academy."
"Read it," she said.
"The subject is 'Aliens on Deepsix. It says: Priscilla, you are directed to make every effort to rescue whatever inhabitants of Deep-
six you can find. Humanity requires no less of us. It's signed by the commissioner."
MacAllister snorted. "Gomez thinks she's writing for the ages. 'Humanity requires…. Poor boob. They'll be laughing at her for a thousand years."
PART 2
OVERLAND
XIII
One of the sure signs of a moron is that he, or she, babbles about the glories of the wilderness. Moonlight. Cool crisp air. The wind in the trees. Flights of birds overhead. Be assured these people always do it virtual. That way one dmgs no mud into the house.
— Gregory MacAllister, "Boy Scouts and Other Aberrations," Editor at Large
Hours to breakup (est): 240
They melted snow, boiled the water, and drank it down. There'd been water in the lander, but there had been no practical way to retrieve it MacAllister predicted they'd all break out in hives by dinner. He added, more seriously, that they'd better start learning how to hunt They estimated that they had a six-day food supply. That means," he added, "we'll be traveling on empty stomachs when we get to Tess."
Their destination lay south-southwest but they couldn't immediately proceed in that direction because they had no way to cross the crevice that now divided the landscape as for as they could see.
They made snowshoes and put all their gear and food into sample bags and the two backpacks Hutch had salvaged from the lander. Hutch provided MacAllister with a cutter and showed him how to use it Then they took a last look at the tower and the capacitors and struck off across the plain.
"You'll be out of the snow in a day or two," Marcel told them. That was good news. Once they had solid earth underfoot they'd be able to move more quickly. But it was a struggle for the two older men right from the beginning. Nightingale developed a blister after they'd gone about a kilometer. Hutch treated it with ointment from the medkit. Within another hour, MacAllister was limping and grumbling.
Their first challenge was to find a way across the chasm. They walked along the northern edge, moving slowly so the two could keep up. Hutch wondered whether MacAllister had been right, that he and Nightingale should have been left behind to take their chances.
At a patch of forest, they called a halt and fashioned walking staffs for everyone. "Don't need it," protested Kellie.
"Use it anyhow," Hutch insisted. "It's good for you."
Nightingale took his gratefully. MacAllister manfully swallowed his discomfort and smiled. "We all look good with staffs," he said. "Adds a certain panache."
They traveled well into the afternoon before they were able to get around the crevice. Gradually it closed, and the plain was solid again. They turned southwest.
Aside from bird sightings, all of which Nightingale treated with barely muted alarm, they encountered their first full-size native beast shortly afterward. It was about the size of a moose, shaggy, with white fur and unsettling blue eyes that gazed steadily at them with. Hutch thought, cool intelligence. For all that, it did not look particularly ferocious. Its snout was shoved into an icy stream, and it did not straighten up as they approached.
They drew their weapons nonetheless, switched on the power, and spread out.
It looked at each of them in turn, studying Hutch with special attention as if it recognized that she was directing the small party.
Hutch glanced at the worried faces and unsteady hands of her comrades, concluded she was in as much danger from them as from the creature, and moved out of MacAllister's line of fire.