Greg Egan - The Eternal Flame

Either choice would be a gamble—and when she’d had no alternative she’d talked herself into believing that the vote alone would make all the difference. But did she want to trust Carlo’s life to the skills of her friends and allies, or to some fantasy of generosity-in-victory by the people who’d snatched him in the first place?

“We’re going to need to get the timing absolutely right,” she said. “If one of us hits the tent too soon, we’ll have lost the whole advantage of surprise.”

Ada said, “I have an idea about that.”

Carla felt the guide rail above her shift slightly as it took her weight. She paused and looked up at the supporting post, daring it to slide right out of the rock and be done with it. Though the safety rope bound her to her five companions, the jolt of her fall might tear out enough adjoining posts to spill them all.

Nothing happened. She glanced down into the stars, mystified that the threat of free fall could disturb her so much more than the condition itself. Having to dangle and swing from the rails wasn’t physically arduous, but what was hard to take was the constant feeling that the structures she depended on might give way. Whatever improvements the engineers had made, some of these rails predated the launch itself.

She started moving again. Tamara, ahead of her, was setting the pace and Carla didn’t want to slow her. She thought of Carlo, blind in his prison sack, and wondered if he’d recognize the terror of his own sudden fall as a prelude to freedom.

As they advanced, the silhouette of a small dead tree rose up against the orthogonal stars ahead—proof that some things could cling to the rock through any disturbance. A few strides back, Patrizia was advancing briskly, keeping up with Ada, almost mirroring her movements. Carla felt a pang of guilt; why had she allowed her to come along? Whatever loyalty Patrizia felt toward her, and however much respect she had for Carlo’s cause, she’d had none of the training and experience of the Gnat ’s crew. If she hadn’t been with Carla when Ada came looking for her, there would have been no question of dragging her into this. But it was too late to argue the point and try to send her back.

When Tamara reached the end of the rail, Carla drew her own body to one side to give everyone behind her an unobstructed view of their leader. Tamara waited, looking to the east. She’d chosen the violet end of Sitha’s trail—Sitha being one star that all of them could recognize—to mark the direction through the void in which they would be flung.

The bright borderline, where the old star trails ended in a blaze of shifted ultraviolet, marched up from the horizon. Carla saw Sitha rising, but merely sighting it wasn’t the cue. The star had to lie at right angles to the zenith—and mercifully, that judgment wasn’t hers to make.

Tamara gave the signal, a sweep of her lower right hand, and released her hold on the rail.

Carla did the same, and the six of them fell into the void together. She glanced up to see the mountain receding and felt a rush of pure elation: to do this by choice, not by accident, wasn’t frightening at all. A few pauses later the rope joining her to Ada went taut as some small failure of synchronization caught up with them, but the jolt was mild.

Tamara was joined to Carla, but a second safety rope linked her directly all the way back to Macario, who’d been traveling at the rear of the group. Now the two of them started gathering up their ends of that longer rope, pulling themselves together. When they’d shortened it to a marked portion of equal length to the other five ropes, they hitched it to their harnesses, fixing the geometry.

Tamara gestured again, and Carla joined the others in firing a brief horizontal burst from her air jet. The loose hexagon spread out into a slowly turning, almost planar figure. At first everyone bounced around a little; the hexagon wasn’t perfectly rigid. But as the ropes dissipated the energy of people’s wayward motion, the hexagon’s stately rotation remained. Carla looked across at Macaria; behind her, the gaudy streaks of the old stars were changing places with the short, crisp trails of their orthogonal counterparts.

Tamara made a few small corrections on her own, to align the hexagon’s plane against the mountain. It was not like flying the Gnat or the Mite , but with care she could act as their pilot. So long as they were turning, centrifugal force and the rope’s deadening effect on any small departures would keep them in an orderly configuration.

The next stage was better handled cooperatively: on Tamara’s cue, they began firing their jets in unison toward Sitha, parallel bursts aimed at killing their velocity away from the Peerless . With one hand on the jet strapped to her chest and another on the second unit on her back, Carla could keep targeting the star even as the sky wheeled around and sent Sitha into her rear gaze.

Tamara halted the maneuver; they were approaching the mountain now. Carla glanced up but forced herself not to search for their destination. Tamara had chosen her own landmarks and made her own calculations. Ada had checked everything twice. The only thing to do now was to trust the navigators.

The slope grew closer with alarming speed. They were returning more rapidly than they’d been tossed aside, and the rocks themselves were now swinging around to meet them. Tamara made a series of corrections, tipping their trajectory to the south to take them past the territory they’d been unable to cross by rail. Carla’s body tensed at the threatened collision, and this new fear was far harder to dismiss: to fall into the void could be harmless, but there was no recovering from being dashed against the side of a mountain.

Finally, Tamara gestured for them to brake. Carla fired her jet toward the second target star, a nameless dazzle of violet on the borderline. The task kept her eyes away from the rocks, and when she finally stole a glance upward the jagged terrain had assumed an almost leisurely pace. She could see the tent easily now: the camouflage had lost its power for her. The slope around it was deserted. If there were lookouts they were all inside, peering out across the mountainside, expecting any intruders to come straight from the airlock.

Tamara had them shut off their jets. When the hiss from the nozzle fell silent, for a moment Carla felt as if she were suspended above the rock, but she knew that was impossible. A pause later she could see that they were still approaching, very slowly, not quite on target. Ada and Tamara took turns making adjustments, taking pains to keep the hexagon as level as they could. Carla stared up at the approaching ceiling, a few dozen strides away at most, then looked down just in time to catch Tamara’s last cue.

In almost perfect synchrony, the six of them unhitched their connecting safety ropes, took the hook-ends of their grappling ropes in one hand, then pointed their jets away from the rock and opened the valves wide to drive them home.

Carla hit the edge of the tent with her free upper hand stretched out above her, faster than she’d meant to, but close to the attachment point she’d aimed for. The jet was easily supporting her centrifugal weight, but it was threatening to send her skidding sideways. She reached up and thrust the hook into the fabric of the tent; the material was thickly woven, but the hardstone barb parted it easily and the supporting loop slipped in.

She shut off her jet, leaving her dangling by the grappling rope. She glanced around quickly: everyone was unharmed, in place, more or less at the same stage she was. Patrizia was fine. And Carlo was in here, almost free now. They just had to act quickly before the guards knew what had hit them.