“I don’t understand—No, wait. You mean to kill the terasaur?”
“What else? A laser cannon fired from above… Aw, no use daydreaming about military apparatus that doesn’t exist on Rustum. What do you think about dropping a lot of fulgurite sticks? Bill’s dad can supply them from his iron mine.” She grimaced and lifted a hand. “I know. A cruel method of slaughter. Most of the beasts’ll be disabled only. Well, though, suppose as soon as our friends have been taken off, suppose a couple of agile men go afoot and put the creatures out of their misery with some such tool as a shaped-charge drill gun.”
Shocked, he exclaimed: “You’d destroy the entire herd?”
“I’m afraid we must,” she sighed. “After all, it’s gone crazy.”
“Why has it? We’ve got to find that out, Eva. Otherwise somebody else’ll get caught by the same thing, and might not survive.”
She nodded.
“I doubt if we can learn the cause from a lot of mangled dead meat,” he told her.
“We can arrange experiments on other herds, later.”
“To what effect? Look at the damage here. We could wipe out the terasaur in this entire region. They aren’t common; nothing so big can be. But it appears they’re mighty damn important to the ecology. Have you seen Joe de Smet’s paper on how they control firebrush? That’s a single item. It’d be strange if there aren’t more that we haven’t discovered yet.” Dan gulped. “Besides, they’re, oh, wonderful,” he said through the tumult below. “I’ve seen them pass by in dawn mists, more silent than sunrise….”
Eva regarded him unbelievingly, until she whispered: “Are you serious? Would you risk Mary Lochaber’s life, and two more, to save a few animals?”
“Oh, no. Of course not.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We carry field gear, including a winch and plenty of rope. Lower a line, make them fast, and we’ll crank them right up into this car.”
She sat for an instant, examining his idea with a fair-mindedness he well knew, before the red head shook. “No,” she said. “We can’t hover close, or our jet turbulence may knock them right off that precarious perch. Then we’d have to drop the line from our present altitude. This is a windy day; the hill’s causing updrafts. I don’t expect the end of a rope could come anywhere near—unless we weight it. But then we’ve made a pendulum for the wind to toss around, and very possibly to brain someone or knock him loose. See what tiny slanty spaces they’ve got to cling to, and think how weakened they are by now.”
“Right,” he answered, “except for one factor. That weight isn’t going to be any unmanageable lump. It’s going to be me.”
She nearly screamed. One hand flew to her opened mouth. “Dan, no! Please!”
Lowland air need not move fast to have a mighty thrust. And the topography here made for more flaws, gusts, and whirlings than was common. To control the winch, Eva had to leave the car on autopilot, which meant it lurched about worse than when hovering under her skilled hands. Dan swung, spun, was yanked savagely up and let drop again, scythed through dizzy arcs, like the clapper of a bell tolled by a lunatic.
The winds thundered and shrilled. Through his skull beat the brawl of jets aimed to slant past him, groundward. Below him the terasaur bellowed and trampled a drumfire out of the earth. Knotted around his waist, the line wouldn’t let him fall, but with every motion it dug bruisingly into his belly muscles. He grasped it above his head, to exert some control, and the shivers along it tore at his palms and thrummed in his shoulders. An animal rankness boiled up from the herd, into his nostrils and lungs. He didn’t know if that or the gyring made him giddy.
Here came the rock!
Two meters above, he swept through a quarter circle. “Lower away!” he cried futilely. His partner understood, however, and let out some extra rope. His boots reached for solidity. All at once the car stumbled in an air pocket. He fell, snapped to a halt, and saw the cliff face rush toward him. He was about to be dashed against it.
He heaved himself around the cord till he stretched horizontally outward. The curve of his passage whistled him centimeters above bone-shattering impact. He caught a glimpse of Bill Svoboda, wildly staring, and folded his legs in bare time to keep from striking the man.
Then he was past, and swarming up the rope. On the return arc, the soles of his boots made contact with the stone. He let them brake by friction. It rattled his teeth, but it practically stopped his swinging. The next touch, on the next sway of the pendulum bob—which was himself—came slow and easy. He got his footing and stood among his friends.
Immediately, Eva released more rope. Hanging loosely now, it couldn’t haul him back if the car should suddenly rise. He sank to the rock and spent a minute sweating, panting, and shuddering.
He noticed Bill crouched at his side. “Are you all right?” the other man babbled. “Lord, what a thing! You might’ve been killed! Why’d you do it? We could’ve held out till—”
“You’re okay?” Dan croaked.
“Y-yes. That is, the Lochabers are sick, but they ought to recover fast.”
Dan crawled on hands and knees to Mary. “I came for you,” he said, and held her close. Dazed, she responded only with a mumble. He let her go, rose, and conferred with Bill.
Taking in still more line, they secured bights around bodies at five-meter intervals. Bill would go first, he being in condition to help Eva; next came Ralph; then Mary (as he made her fast, Dan thought what an odd and deep intimacy this was); finally Dan himself, who could best endure the maximum oscillation.
The remnant of the task proved simple. Eva raised the car, at the lowest possible rate, until one by one the four on the rope dangled free in the sky. She continued to rise till they were in calm air. Thereafter she left the vehicle again at hover and winched them in.
Though reduction helmets were always on hand, she depressurized the cabin on the way back to Moondance. The Lochabers sat half asleep, half in a faint. Eva called the station medic. He said the highlanders should stay in the guesthouse till they had regained enough strength for a flight home; but on the basis of Bill’s account, he didn’t think that would take long, nor that treatment need consist of more than bed rest and nourishment.
Dan spoke little. He was sunk in thought. Directly after landing, he prepared to take off again.
When he had cycled through the lock, he found Eva on hand. The quarters were a dormitory with kitchenette and mini-bath—cramped, austere, and relieved only by windows that gave on a view of lake and forest, but they could never be opened to the breeze that sang outside. Eva had drawn a chair into the narrow aisle between rows of bunks. Ralph lay at her left, Mary at her right. The siblings were in pajamas, propped up on pillows. Nearby stood a vase of triskele that the visitor must have brought. The room had grown vivid with the goldenness of the blossoms, pungent with their summery odor.
Dan halted. Eva had been crying! She’d washed her face afterward, but even though she seldom wept, he knew the traces of it upon her.
“Why hello, stranger,” Ralph greeted. His tone was a little mechanical. Both the Lochabers already seemed well on their way back to health —and less than happy. “How did your expedition go?”
“Successful, I think.” Dan’s gaze went to Mary and would not let itself be hauled away. Her hair was molten amber across the pillows and her eyes like the heavens about High America. She smiled at him; but the smile was uncertain, even timid.
“How are you doing?” he said, 99 percent to her.