Tonguing the radio on, she screamed into the helmet. "Here! Over here! I need help!" But batteries that no longer held enough charge to produce a strong beam from the helmet lamp could not drive the radio with sufficient power to raise the floater.
A high frequency beep started in her helmet speaker, and for an instant she thought it was the floater signaling her. Then she realized it was the suit overheat warning, and instantly digits painted on her helmet visor. The temperature was climbing past 66 degrees.
She didn't care. They would see her-they had to see her. Soon she would be safe onboard the floater, headed back to Luna City.
The floater came silently on.
They must have seen her by now, she thought. Someone onboard that floater had to be looking at his viewscreen…
A sudden chill slithered up Susan's spine as she tapped the chronometer switch with her tongue: 0912. She tapped it again to display the date on her helmet visor: Oct. 4, 2187.
Her breath caught in her lungs. The fourth was three days ago. That was the day she had left Fleet Base for Luna City-on a floater!
She remembered a dim light atop a low hill. Of course she was being seen from that floater. At least one person onboard was watching her. And that passenger would do absolutely nothing.
Tears welled up in her eyes, stinging hot as they coursed down her cheeks. The floater would not stop. Three days ago, she hadn't reported the spot of light she had thought she'd seen.
She walked slowly down the hillock. The floater passed its closest point of approach and she turned off her helmet lamp, then followed after it.
She walked for hours, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other. Occasionally, she wondered why she was walking. There was no one out on the lunar surface to find her. No one knew she had gone to the mining camp. She hadn't-not yet. There was another Susan Tanner in Luna City, being briefed by a nervous lieutenant this very minute. A Susan totally unaware of what awaited her.
Or was there? Did Susan's existence out on the surface somehow negate that other's existence in Luna City?
Somehow, she didn't think so. It just didn't feel right. That other Susan belonged in this time. She had a right to exist here-now. She was the one out of place, out of time.
Besides, she had existed then, so that other Susan existed now.
But what would happen if she somehow returned to Luna City and encountered that other? Could it even happen? And if not, might that mean she could not return to Luna City, that she was doomed to a slow death on the lunar surface?
She didn't know. She didn't really want to know.
Again she blanked her mind, and walked on.
Gradually, she realized she was having trouble breathing. Willing her diaphragm to work, she took a deep breath. It did no good. She tried again, attempting to force air into her lungs. Then again. Suddenly, she was hyperventilating.
She toggled the air supply display on with her tongue. The suit's tanks were empty. She was suffocating.
Staggering a few more steps, she fell. In spite of Luna's one-sixth standard gravity, she hit with jarring impact. She bounced once, then lay on her face, struggling to catch her breath.
She was dying, and she could do nothing about it. She wished she hadn't gone out to the mining camp. She wished…
She wished air into her lungs, then mercifully passed out.
Chapter Twenty-three
Susan gasped, a sharp inhalation that burned deep in her lungs. The dizziness was present, and the headache pounded behind her eyes.
But it was the fact that air could hurt in her lungs, and that she was capable of experiencing the headache and dizziness at all, that was so amazing. She was alive! Somehow, she had survived.
The snowflake pattern and the mantra came, but this time a hint of the headache remained.
She opened her eyes. A blurred face swam into her vision, its features coming slowly into focus. After a few seconds she recognized Clayton. He sat in a chair beside her bed.
"Welcome back among the living," he said, smiling down at her.
Susan tried to speak, but produced only a hoarse croak. Her throat burned as if on fire.
"Your doctor said your throat will be sore for several days," Clayton said, "the price paid for fighting suffocation with such fierce determination."
Again Susan tried to speak, but could not.
"I know, you have questions. I'll answer them, but you have to promise you won't try to talk."
She nodded.
"Good. But first things first." He reached to the low, wheeled tray beside the bed and picked up a squeeze bulb of water, brought it to Susan's lips. "You're supposed to have plenty of liquids," he said.
She drank-the water felt good going down. When she'd had enough she nodded, and Clayton put the bulb back on the tray, then leaned back in his chair.
"Now, you want to know why you're still alive, right?"
Again she nodded her response.
He paused for a moment, then began: "I learned your ship had been moved from its hangar, out onto the surface, and figured that meant you would be leaving Luna soon-perhaps sooner than you had led me to believe." He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Susan nodded.
"I thought so. I tried to get in touch with you, and in the process stumbled across information about the technician-the one murdered while working on your LIN/C."
She winced.
"You were observed being escorted through the Survey Service compound," Clayton said, "and a bit of money across the proper palms bought the information that you were taken to Hyatt's office. I even learned about the airlock there. Of course, you were being taken out to the ship."
Again she tried to speak. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she hadn't been going to the ship. She wanted to tell him about what had happened at the strangely deserted mining camp, about Hyatt's body and the man who had tried to kill her, but still she could not talk.
And then she realized that even if she could talk, even if she told him everything that had happened to her since she had left Luna City, he would not believe it. He couldn't. Here, in this world, the mining camp had been deserted for years. Clayton would remember it that way; there was no other way he could remember it.
"I knew you didn't have your LIN/C," he continued, "so I used the Fleet computer's infrared locator to find you on the surface. The first pass, it missed you entirely, so I ran the program again." Susan hadn't yet arrived back in his world-in this time. "The second pass it picked you up, and I got a crawler and went out for you. It's a lucky thing I got to you when I did. A few more minutes and you would have been dead."
Clayton paused for a moment. Finally he said, "But that's enough for now. You need rest. And don't worry, they can't get at you here. I have a guard posted outside your door." He stood, then smiled down at her. After a few seconds he turned and went to the door. It irised open and he stepped into the corridor. The door irised closed.
In less than thirty seconds the room's sensors determined the lights were no longer needed, and they went out. Susan was left in the dark with her thoughts.
Again, as she had so often since that first attack, she felt horribly alone. No one would believe what was happening to her; no one could believe it. She wouldn't believe it herself, if it wasn't happening to her. It all seemed too unnatural, too unreal.
But what did it all mean?
Finally, some of it was beginning to make sense. Somehow those who were after her had the ability to jump through time. It seemed the pendants had something to do with it. Hers had saved her twice by displacing her in time.