“We’re going to make it, Drin. Don’t think anything else.” Mary took a couple of deep breaths, exhaling clouds that would not have been out of place for him. “OK. How far back?”
A sudden roar outside stopped their conversation, and a warm gust blew into the hole. Another avalanche, Drin thought, or a volcano?
Then it stopped and he recognized it. Some kind of flying vehicle.
Friend or foe? There were eight rounds left in his clip. If he had to defend them, there wouldn’t be enough to finish his drilling. If only Mary hadn’t lost her weapon in her fall. But that couldn’t be helped now. He would just have to make every shot count, then hope.
A bass Kleth voice rich with overtones ripped through the wind and snow.
“Over here!”
“Do Tor!” Mary yelled.
Drin let a breath out his blow hole in a great resonant honk, part for communication, part in relief.
Do Tor did not look like any Kleth Drin had ever seen before; he hopped into view in a heavy-looking black cape over a bright orange body suit, and wore a narrow peaked cap covering his crest. “They’re alive,” Do Tor yelled.
“Do Tor—” Mary’s voice was down to a shout as Do Tor closed the distance “—Drin’s left foreleg is broken and his tail is trapped.”
“Damn right it’s trapped,” another voice declared, human this time. “That rock’s got to weigh a hundred ton!”
Drin placed the voice quickly, making up for his lack of recognition of Do Tor. The human with the Kleth was Yohin Bretz a Landend, the erstwhile Thet City harbor pilot cum primitivist cruise ship captain. What was he doing here?
“They’ve got some big pneumatic jacks back at Gonikli’s place,” another human voice shouted. It took Drin a while to place it, and he groaned at the irony when he did. After chasing him a quarter of the way around the planet and getting hopelessly trapped, Richard Moon had come to him. Now, was the human writer back at the scene, or should he scratch another suspect?
“They’re heavy to get down here.” A Do’utian. Gonikli of course.
“Get rocket crane from Pahn No City.” Do Tor suggested.
Gonikli wailed and Drin knew why. It would take a day. They’d been here before. Crazily, it was less worrisome to him being the one trapped than being one of those who might try to rescue him.
“Cut me out,” he said.
“Fish man, you want to come out in two pieces or one?” Yohin yelled. “I can get you out in one.”
“Huh?” just about everyone else said.
“I got me ten four-line tackles back on the ship; each line’ll pull three ton. We anchor them to that crag and blast some anchor bolts in the rock. Ought to do’er. Your heavy weather flyer there can lift the gear if the rest of us stay here. Just tell my crew.”
Silence.
“What is a ‘ton’ in cufs?” Richard Moon finally asked.
A cuf, one Trimus unit of force is one dom-charter-unit-per beat squared (567.45 Kleth go-bo; 37.06 newtons, in human base ten; or 1.85 E-5 Li’in, in Do’utian base 12). In terms of the archaic human unit “ton,” which is still embedded in English literature, it would take about four eight-squared (400 octal, 256 decimal, 194 base 12) cuf to make a “ton.”
“We’re fighting the wind, and the cold’s makin’ the lines hard. Best move when you can, Commander,” Yohin yelled.
Gonikli and Borragil’ib cleared away the rubble in front of Drin with beak shovels, and gave him a clear path out from under the rock. He had no idea of how his hind legs would respond after having been trapped all these hours. Incredibly, it was still light out. He felt like he’d been entombed in ice for much longer.
“All right, me hearties, pull!” Yohin yelled.
Gonikli and Borragil’ib pulled on the archaic tackles. The lines pulled taught. Something shifted.
“More! Dig in, mates, now!”
The pressure on Drin’s tail suddenly lifted and feeling returned there—so painfully he wished it hadn’t. He tried to push himself forward, and collapsed on his broken left foreleg with a groan.
“Come on, Commander,” Yohin shouted through the gale, “Hurry—it’s all we can give you.”
Drin tried to raise his forequarters up on his one good forelimb and slide, or squirm forward. He began to lose it again.
Mary darted under him, and pushed up and right. It was impossible. She couldn’t lift any part of him. He was far too massive. But he shifted as much of his weight to his right foreleg as he could and somehow she kept what was left off the ice. Almost without thinking, Drin pushed himself up, snapped his right foreleg ahead, dug his claw into the rubble before he had time to fall, and pulled. Something broke free, his left rear claw pulled clear and he thrust it forward, scraped a foothold in the ice, and shoved his head out of his prison. Mary tumbled out of the way as he came crashing down on his throat and chest and slid the rest of the way, pushing with his hind legs.
“Loosen up there, maties, he’s out! Easy now, easy,” Yohin shouted.
Clear of the rubble, Drin watched Mary scramble out before the hole they’d been inside collapsed with a thud and a spray of snow and ice shards. She waved at him, then ran for cover.
Cover was a huge tent inflated in front of him, dented only slightly by the wind, set beside a low, rugged-looking ducted fan aircraft, bristling with vector nozzles. Gonikli was beside him instantly, and stuck her beak under his left shoulder. Supported that way, they were able to stagger into a warmth that normally would have been very uncomfortable, but just then was very, very welcome.
No sooner was he on a heated pad, then Go Ton hovered over him like a fury, poking this and that needle into him. All feeling left his left foreleg, except for various tugs and pulls from Mary and Gonikli under Go Ton’s clucking supervision.
Richard Moon managed to bring him a Do’utian field ration cube that must have weighed as much as the human male that carried it. Drin took it and stuffed it down his gullet. Soon its sugars and enzymes found their way into his blood. Gradually, his head began to clear.
Everyone was standing around him, looking concerned, and waiting for him to say something. “OK. Thank you everyone.” His voice sounded weak and raspy, even to him. He coughed. “I think I’ll live. I was trying to reach Mary when something or someone—a human I think—toppled me into the crevasse. You saw the rest. But what happened while we were out? In light of our investigation, this is a rather interesting rescue party!”
Everyone started to speak, but Gonikli said, “Please” a little louder than everyone else.
“This is my fault. At least in part.” She rubbed the tent floor with her beak. “I ended my dear friend Bi Tan’s life because she was dying, and begged me to do it. She called me to her retreat—she was very private, avoiding almost everyone, when she was away from Zo Kim. She was unhappy with him and unhappy without him, and tended to pick fights like the one with Gorman over including his contacts with Lord Thet’s sailors in her manuscript and... I’m wandering.
“Bi Tan told me that Zo Kim was dead, and she wanted me to—help her go. She was shaking, jerking around, but she gave me a few more changes to our last chapter—about crude replicator manufacturing showing up in Thet City. She was sure that would upset people, and make them remember her. Then she begged me to bite her head off—she placed her head in my beak, told me I was the best friend she ever had, and to do it quickly because the pain was terrible.
“It was awful. But in a way I felt honored, that she would ask me to do it instead of another Kleth. But I’ll never forget the bitter taste.