Larry Niven - The Trellis

“Jason can direct. I'm going.” Henry stared up at the huge telescope. “I still pass my physical every year. I know more about what might work out there than you do. You need me. So does Lark. And two people have a better chance of getting there than one. What if you get out there alone and you get tired or hurt?”

“I'm in good shape!” Kyle protested. “I work out every day.” He'd be fifty in ten weeks.

“It's going to take more than physical conditioning to save Lark.” Henry didn't have to say she was more likely to listen to him than to Kyle.

“It's going to be one hell of a climb. It will take endurance.”

“And brains.”

Kyle sighed. “Okay. So I have endurance, and you have brains. Is that it?”

“No, I have more experience in the Styx.”

“I'm in better shape.”

Henry didn't even seem to hear him—he was looking up through an observatory window, where the interworld forest floated above them.

Suriyah fought them, convinced both men were crazy. “You will die out there! Find another way. That vine is alive—I tell you it's alive. It suffers us to study it, but it will not let you climb it.” She stood over the little altar she kept in a corner of the galley and recited a prayer to Kali and burned sandalwood incense. Afterwards, she refused to talk to them for hours.

Lark was silent when Kyle said he was coming to get her. “I'm bringing Henry,” he added.

“See you in a few days.” She turned off the video abruptly, freezing her picture with a blank expression on her face. He couldn't tell if she was happy he was coming for her, or what she thought about Henry coming along.

Kyle turned off the frozen picture.

Preparing took two long days, and many conversations back and forth between Little Siberia and Christy Base. Kyle was tired and frustrated. Lark was quiet for hours at a time. Since the video was almost never on, he couldn't really tell how she was doing.

“There's more damn gadgets in this suit than any sane engineer would've designed,” Henry complained.

Kyle stepped back to check the way the suit fit on Henry. It was an Adventurer class suit, left behind after the initial run of programs broadcast from Pluto had lost ratings in favor of faster and more deadly endeavors. Originally made for someone with wider shoulders than Henry's, it fit well otherwise. The ankles were baggy. Considering the work they did, the suits were a miracle. But they were still two inches thick everywhere, full of sensors and smart chips and wires and air tubes. Henry looked bulky and awkward.

“It'll do. You might be grateful for the help.”

“I will not .” Henry hated using the adventure suits. “Damn parasites. People who won't go into the world on their own want to ride our dangers. Let ‘em make their own dangers.”

It had been Paul's idea.

Kyle had been fetching something for Henry when he passed Paul in a hallway. The boy had looked up and said, “You're using the Tourist-class suits, right? Let's broadcast it! It'll be like Real Space Dangers when they saved the crew of the Orpheus . You'll be heroes!”

Kyle remembered the river rafting show where Han Davidson had been sucked into a sinkhole. Endless views of dark, swirling water while Davidson drowned. Kyle mumbled something noncommittal and kept right on going to find the saw blade he was looking for.

Paul interpreted that as assent, and arranged for network coverage before Kyle had a chance to talk to Henry. They would have taken the tourist equipment anyway. The suits had pockets and belts and straps to let the men take their fill of tools, and they had been designed for a thin atmosphere. They were flexible, versatile. The equipment was outdated compared to current adventure suits, and of course there were too many readouts and controls, but far better for this venture than the standard surface suits.

Audience thirst for real adventure shows was high; live rescue of a lost maiden would be popular. Now that the networks knew about the rescue, and the suits, they threatened to refuse access to the communications gear if they didn't get to broadcast. Henry wanted to take the suits anyway, and let the networks sue them. Kyle pointed out that he needed to publish to survive, and he needed the networks for that. Besides, money from the networks beat a lawsuit. Jason had the common sense to improve Paul's original wide-open offer and bargain real money for Henry, Lark, and Kyle, as well as support pay for the other people living in Little Siberia.

“When we get back, Paul gets assigned kitchen duty for three years,” Henry said.

“He won't be here for three years. His family is leaving on the next ship with us. So give up and focus.”

After a final suit-check, Kyle and Henry stepped into the lock, towing nets of gear behind them. They sweated inside the slick suits. The outside temperature was -235C. It took twenty minutes for the base computers to decide the suits had adjusted enough to open the door. They were still sweating when they stepped out onto the sea of ice surrounding Little Siberia. To their right, solid and clear methane crystals the size of houses were half-covered with blown ices and snows. Paths to the left led to Creeper Fields.

Henry followed Kyle a half-klick to where the Styx met Pluto.

Vines overflowed from the sky to add layers of dying material to the methane and nitrogen ices that covered Pluto. Creepers dug in, and ran along the ground like frozen spaghetti. They piled up onto each other, dying together. Methane snow crystals danced in the air around the wide white leaves. Wherever the leaves or flowers made contact with the surface they turned brittle and broke as the men stepped on them. Here and there a vine twisted near the surface, not yet trapped and frozen, as if the Styx harbored snakes.

The base team had guided some of the vines to supply the base. Water and oxygen were needed, and plant broth made good fertilizer for more palatable crops. Years ago they had turned most of the vines back onto the trellis, so that the jungle was growing back into itself, back toward Charon, thicker every year.

Vines and stems fanned out across the trellis as they neared Pluto, and stray vines still piled up on the ice. Kyle wondered if the plants were seeking trace elements. Any such would be buried deep; these surface snows had rained out of the sky, over and over during Pluto's 247.7-year cycles, plating over anything that resembled soil. The plants would have to dig deep.

They walked and tested and checked, looking up to see how the vines tangled amongst each other. They selected a medium-thickness vine, wide as their thighs, and well anchored in the ice. It had no leaves for at least the first few hundred meters.

They tested their siphons. There was pressure in the vines. Kyle and Henry could get liquid oxygen, water and plant broth into the suits using modified siphons Henry had jury-rigged from insulated pipes. It was slow. The siphons used tiny valves and bladders to deal with pressure differences. Liquid slipped through chambers to reach reservoirs in the suits.

The Styx fed on solar wind, on water from Charon, and on itself. Oxygen and carbon dioxide swirled through the leaves. Parasite bacteria covered the leaves, turning oxygen to carbon dioxide. The creepers ate the CO2and replenished the oxygen. Sunlight became sugar for broth.

The suits moved all the time. What was doing that? All those tiny cameras, IR and UV and radar, zoom and fisheye, pressure sensors and medical readouts and who knew what. The sensation was unsettling.

Jason and Paul lumbered across the ice in a small drive-all, and watched Henry and Kyle load supplies into a closed basket that would carry the supplies up, buoyed by a circle of remote-controlled probes. The probes weren't designed to carry any weight at all. Twelve harnessed together could manage thirty kilograms and still maneuver. Every kilo over that was a trade-off in risk vs. material. The basket contained an extra suit with attached color-coded siphons for Lark, a long knife, a single shared habitat to sleep in, extra rope, and a med-kit. There was just enough rope that the basket massed just under thirty kilograms. To save power, the basket would follow them at the end of each day's hike.