Offworld (39 page)

Trisha could hear something in his voice. "What's the catch?"

"We're coming at you the wrong way; you'll have to run across
the entire roof to reach the cable. And ... we're pretty sure the
cable won't make it all the way to the roof. Beech says it's not long
enough. So you're going to have to climb yourselves down to ... to
wherever this thing lodges in the side of that building."

Trisha didn't know what to say. She wasn't normally afraid of
anything. She'd traveled to the moon and to Mars! But the world was
deserted, people were trying to kill them, now they were going to
pull some kind of crazy stunt to get out of this alive, and she was
sore and tired. She just couldn't come up with any words.

"How long, Chris?" asked Terry.

"We're less than a minute out. I'll give you a signal about five to
ten seconds before Beech shoots the cable. We'll move the jeep out
to stretch the cable taut enough that you'll have a good sixty-degree
angle or so to slide down."

"Okay," Terry replied. "We'll make this work. You just tell us
when to go."

"Copy that," said Chris. "Stand by."

"Terry," Trisha said, finding her voice, "get in position to lay
down some cover-"

"Chris, look out!" Owen screamed loud enough to be painful in
Trisha's ear. She heard a screeching of tires, but had no time to think
about it, because a small blast went off just a few meters away.

The door to the roof had been blown open, and soldiers were
on the roof.

Chris floundered. He was standing inside a lava tube beneath the
surface of Mars, staring into an enormous, blue-black, spiraling mass
suspended in midair. The void became translucent as he gazed into
it, and he stepped closer. On the other side of the void, a scene came
into view. It was hazy and indistinct, yet he could clearly see two men
standing in the middle of a gargantuan room. He couldn't make out
too many details of the room, except a tangle of wire and walls of
machinery.

As he stared at the emerging scene, he realized for the first time
that he could hear, though their voices were mi fled. Hearing anything
on Mars was nearly impossible; the atmosphere didn't transmit sound
waves. It,fust couldn't happen without the proper equipment.

Yet when Chris heard these men speaking, it wasn't sound piping
through the internal headset in his helmet. It was more like he was
standing over their shoulders, eavesdropping.

The two men weref issing over a computer readout attached to one
wall, when one of them-a tall man with a braided ponytail-spun in place. His eyes nearly leaped from his head, even though remarkably
they seemed to have settled on Chris.

Chris could see them. Could they see him?

"Uh ... "said the ponytail man. "Please tell me I'm not the only
one seeing this."

The second man, a short, egg-shapedguy with prematurely white,
mussed-up hair and a bushy mustache that was the same shade of
white, turned. "What in ... ?Is-is that Burke?!"

"Can he see us?" the ponytail man said. I think he can see us."

"Should we terminate?" replied mustache man, an always-serious
guy inhis.ffties.

The pair stepped closer to Burke, looking at him as Y 'seeing him
from the other side of an aquarium window. Chris wondered if'they
were staring at him through a void very much like the one he was
watching them through.

Maybe even the same one.

They looked closely at him, and the ponytail man was wide-eyed
behind a pair of specs, while the mustache man had his hands on his
considerable hips with his eyebrows bunched up in something between
confusion and irritation.

"This is impossible, " said ponytail, pulling backward at his tieddown hair as if it weren't already contained. He seemed to be on the
verge of a meltdown, his level of hysteria rising by the second. "Its
just impossible.... "

"Yes, he's on Mars," replied mustache. `But he's right in,front
of us."

"Should we do something?" asked ponytail. "Cut the power? "

"You know we can't, " said mustache. His voice was devoid of any
trace of warmth, yet he spoke with intelligence and clarity. As he spoke,
he examined Chris closely through beady eyes. "We've tried that before,
and it doesn't work. And even i 'it did ... it could kill him. Or worse.
So let's keep our wits about us."

"Then what do we do?"ponytail replied. "We can't just leave him
like this."

`Run the math again," said mustache.

"Yes!" enthused ponytail, switching abruptly from frantic
dread to eagerness. "We change the variables and formulate a new
equation!"

As one, they turned back to their respective workstations and began
fidgeting over equipment that Chris couldn't really make out.

"This is incredible, "ponytail man said. Absolutely unbelievable.
Unprecedented."

"We'll need to completely reconfigure all of the parameters.... "
muttered mustache. He swiveled his head and glanced back at Chris
one more time. 'And his memory will need to be addressed."

The void flashed out of existence, just as Chris had seen it do so
many times on Earth, and he blacked out.

Many hours later, Chris opened his eyes to find that he was lying
facedown on red dirt, only a few hundred yards from the Habitat. The
lava tube was gone, and the sun was out. It was midday.

And Owen was running toward him as fast as Martian gravity
would allow.

The blackout had only lasted a moment. Chris opened his eyes
to find himself careening like a maniac down Main Street at high
speed, and trying to avoid gunfire behind the jeep's bulletproof glass
windows. Soldiers on either side of the road knew who they were
now, and were firing all sorts of weapons at them.

"You can aim for the people trying to kill us, you know!" shouted
Owen from the front passenger's seat.

"I'd prefer to avoid killing anyone," Chris said, almost under his
breath.

"Hitting them might not kill them!" Owen replied. "They could
just be ... you know, maimed. Slow down, we're almost there!"

Chris looked ahead. They were coming up on the white
building.

He slammed on the brakes as Owen rolled down his window and
positioned himself so the top half of his body was sticking out of it.
Over his shoulder, he hefted the weapon with its spearlike projectile
that he'd already tethered to the winch at the front of the jeep. He
squinted through the reticle with a single eye, lining up his shot.

Owen pulled the trigger and Chris shouted, "Trisha, go!"

"Terry, now!"

Terry sprang up from behind the air-conditioning unit and sprayed
fire in every direction.

Trisha grabbed Mae by the hand and they ran together, sprinting
for the far edge of the building and barely avoiding bullets from Griffin and his men. They made it to the south corner and climbed over
the edge; a small ledge held them just below the roofline.

Trisha heard a sharp thunk nine feet beneath them and saw
a long, metal rod had pierced the wall and held fast. The rod was
secured to a thin steel cable that hung from it loosely; she followed
the cable to a jeep far below, which had just screeched to a halt and
was now backing up, pulling the cable taut. She saw Owen, small
as a clot, leap from the passenger's seat and quickly take out three
armed soldiers and steal a second jeep.

Shots were still being fired from the rooftop, and she could only
hope that Terry was making his way toward them now.

"Nothin'," Mae commented.

"Huh?" replied Trisha. She followed Mae's gaze down and saw
that there was nothing between them and the cable-no more ledges,
no windowsills, not even brickwork. There was nothing to use to
climb clown.

Thinking fast, Trisha ripped off the sleeves of her shirt and handed
one to Mae. She started letting herself down to the ledge and grabbed the lip of the ledge they were standing on, allowing the rest of her
body to swing free. "Climb down me!" she said.

Mae looked skeptical, but before she could question it, Trisha
added, "I can handle it, just go! Now!"

Mae swallowed hard and began to lower herself clown to the
cable, using Trisha as a rope. She grasped folds of Trisha's clothes
one hand after the other until she was suspended right next to the
cable.

"Grab it!" Trisha cried. "Cover your hands with the shirtsleeves
and go! Hurry!"

"How will you get down?" asked Mae.

"Don't worry about me, just do it!"

Mae clutched the shirtsleeve in one hand and extended that same
hand to grab the cable. With one last look back up at Trisha, she let
go and grabbed the cable with the other hand. The angle was sharp
enough that she plunged down it immediately, zip-lining to the ground
and the waiting jeep.

Terry crept around the corner of the ledge she hung from, crouching low to keep his head beneath the roofline. His eyes went wide
when he saw her.

"Trish!"

`Climb down me now, Terry!" she shouted. "No time for discussion! Just go!"

Terry ignored her, lowering himself to the ledge and then dropping to the wire, which tugged viciously at its hold, but stayed fast. In
a moment he too was down at the jeep. Trisha didn't know whether
to he furious he'd disobeyed her or grateful. Her muscles ached and
trembled even now, and she knew she had only seconds left.

With one last look down at her target, she let go of the ledge and
dropped. She fell some nine feet and tried to straddle the cable as
she came to it, to increase her chances of getting a solid handhold.
But her momentum and exhaustion were too much to balance and
she quickly toppled to one side. Her hands couldn't seem to find purchase on the cable, but the crook of one arm caught the cable
and she began to slide.

Her arm on fire from the friction, she struggled to get a hand
up on the cable, the shirtsleeve held tight in that hand. She was a
third of the way down when she managed to get the padded hand
to safely grab the steel cord, and she interlaced her fingers with those
on her other hand.

It was a long way down, but it took only seconds. Owen and
Chris stood at the bottom, ready to catch her; Terry was already piling
into the second jeep Owen had secured only moments ago. Mae got
in the other. She could hear the voices of dozens of people shouting,
but couldn't see where they were coming from. She chanced a look
back up at the top of the line as she neared the bottom and saw a
few of Griffin's men trying to climb down to the cable.

By the time she reached the bottom, her hands were painfully
hot, even wrapped in the protective cloth, but still not as searing as
her arm. Chris and Owen grabbed her fast when she approached
and helped her down.

Owen, always prepared for every contingency, pulled out a pair of
laser shears and sliced into the bottom end of the cable. It ricocheted
away from the jeep instantly, and the men trying to slide down from
above were suddenly in a vertical drop.

Chris spoke up, eyeing her with concern. "Trish, are you-?"