Larry Niven - The Trellis

“Suriyah's right,” Jason said. “You're both crazy. I love you for it. Get that girl home so we can celebrate her being sixteen.” He touched them both—the suited version of a hug—and said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” both men answered in unison. Paul waved and made a ‘camera rolling’ gesture. The adventure suits were broadcasting.

Kyle responded to Paul's cue, saying “Welcome, audience. Jason and Paul just wished us luck. Luck would make a nice change.” He thought he sounded stupid and campy.

Calvin Paulie was taking the first turn monitoring and splicing the feed from Christy Base on Charon. Watchers were tuning in from the near parts of the outer system, and an edited version was scheduled for consumption by sunward planets and moons and bases. “Good luck to our adventurers, Kyle and Henry,” Calvin rumbled, “as they take off to climb the mysterious and dangerous creepers of Pluto and rescue Kyle's daughter, Lark.”

Unexpectedly, it seemed like private pain was being made too public. Kyle winced and stepped back. He gestured to Henry. The slower man would set the pace.

Henry reached for a stem with both hands and tugged on it. As Henry put his weight on the creeper, it demonstrated elasticity, pooling at his boots. “So far, so good,” Henry mumbled, and took another handful of the thick stem. He pulled hand over hand until the creeper took his weight. Now he was actually a half-meter above Pluto's surface. Finally, the creeper seemed willing to let the men climb.

“Henry,” said Kyle, “remember not to grab the trellis itself, ever. It's too strong. It might cut your suit.”

“It's also pretty close to invisible,” Henry puffed.

A fifty-foot insulated Kevlar rope separated the two climbers. Kyle waited. When Henry was near the end of the rope, Kyle grabbed a handful of stem and succeeded in pulling Henry halfway down. Calvin's voiceover played in Kyle's radio. “Looks like a rocky start,” he said, “Or a ropy one. We're wishing you well.” Kyle ignored him, reaching for another boot hold. The vine only compressed a little under his hands; it was hard to grip. It grew as he held it. The wrong direction. Down. The Styx grew almost a kilometer a day. Of course, Lark and Shooter would be moving the same direction. It was like trying to climb a cross between a down escalator and a living boa constrictor.

Henry had modified the toes of their boots; they sprouted tiny steel barbs which helped keep their feet anchored to the stems. Liquids from inside the plant swelled out and froze to the surface whenever Kyle dug his toes in too hard.

There was little gravity to fight, but balance and grip were challenges. It got easier, and in five minutes they'd actually gained thirty meters and found a rhythm.

Lights from their helmets bobbed up and down in Pluto's dusky mid-day.

Half an hour passed. Calvin broke in twice with inane questions, and Kyle hissed at him, “Quit distracting us.”

“I'll need some good footage soon.”

“Take all the footage you want. You can listen to us, and use our lights and cameras and take pictures of us. Just don't talk to us yet. This is harder than it looks.”

Kyle followed Henry's boots. Pluto's surface had just enough pull to establish a definite down, and not enough to make the climb hard . They could almost walk up the vines. Rather than a hand-over-hand pull, it was a scramble.

They passed clumps of long leaves, each leaf longer than the men were tall, similar to plants found in the seas of earth, but bigger. Much bigger. Climbing between them required care with the rope. Even though they were near the edge of the forest, leaves or loose stem-ends from neighboring branches periodically undulated past them. Everything moved and grew.

From time to time Kyle missed a step and had to catch himself. That was when he knew how tired he was.

Just past the third clump of leaves, Henry called back, “Okay, stop a bit.”

Stopping meant sitting on the creeper stem with thighs clamped tight around it. They faced each other. Kyle's view was towards Charon, and the Styx looked like a river from here—a great thin long silver line. It was almost a kilometer wide, but the perspective and length made it look much thinner—like thread going towards a thimble.

Calvin said, “Nice view. How was the climb?”

“A walk in the park.” Kyle didn't want to say how hard it was. He watched Henry's face in the clear helmet. He was frowning. “What's wrong?”

“We're not moving fast enough. We've been going a half-hour, and we're—what—a kilometer up?”

Kyle looked around. The camera probe that had been following them bobbed in space to his left. Pluto was closer than he'd expected. He could see Jason and Paul standing at the foot of the beanstalk, looking up. They were small, but he could make out movement.

“Actually, you've made about eight hundred meters,” Calvin replied before Kyle could respond at all. “With rests, that means you'll take about an hour and a quarter to go a kilometer. Roughly eight days if you don't sleep.”

Henry snorted.

“So we have to go twice as fast?” Kyle asked.

“More. We lost two days getting ready. That means there's eight left. If we calculated everything right. That's not enough. We need time for surprises, for rest, and maybe some time when we get to the marble,” Henry said.

“The forest is thicker down here, near Pluto. It thins out above the atmosphere.”

“It won't make that much difference.”

“So how do we go faster?”

“I'm thinking,” Henry said. “Meantime, let's restock.” The stems were designed as conduits, with at least three veins running through each stem; one for water, one for air mix, and one for a form of liquid energy both humans and plants could consume, dubbed “plant broth.”

Leaves always grew with one anchoring structure in the pure water vein, one in the plant food. The broth fed the stem itself, fueling super-fast growth. This was what they plunged their siphons into first. Kyle's suit filled with a cloyingly sweet smell as the thin gel filled a pouch in his lower back. It took time; fifteen precious minutes. As he pulled out the siphon and stuck it back in, fishing for water, Kyle asked Henry how well he balanced.

“As good as the next guy, I guess.”

“It's a way to get there faster.”

“Huh?”

“Walk. Lean back against a rope and walk vertical. We've both been using hands and feet. I bet there's a walking pace that won't need that for one of us—as long as there's rope between. Let me lead. I'm stronger—I can go faster. I'll hold on. You walk—use the toe stabs. Let go with your hands and walk.”

Henry smiled at him. “Worth a try.”

It worked better; not twice as fast. They kept going for an hour, Kyle leading, using his hands and feet, arms and legs, back and belly ... he was feeling the strain everywhere. Henry walked behind. Once Henry came loose, falling outward and down, and Kyle had to clamp his legs around the thick stem, brace for the jolt, then reel him in. Henry just grunted and suggested Kyle get on with it. It was more bravado than Kyle expected from Henry. How much were the cameras affecting the older man?

They stopped once, refilled their supplies, and kept going, Kyle on point again.

They changed stems at a cross-point. The new one was thicker, easier to balance on. Even with periodic leaves to step over, the pull and step, pull and step, pull and step made a cadence in Kyle's head. His lower back screamed misuse, and he needed distraction. He imagined words to the cadence—"Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.” It was almost a mantra.

A knot of leaves and tangled stems stopped them at the ten-kilometer mark. Long streams of flowers spread out around the knot. If it weren't an obstruction, it would have been beautiful. They'd have to climb over and somehow pick the right stem. Henry sat. “Hey kid, time for a break.”