Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

Tarbush insisted on carrying the big supply case by himself, along with every container of water they could find. Even in Limbo’s weak gravity that was a heavy load. As the sun rose, fierce blue light penetrated the canopy of leaves. The air became intolerably hot. As they ascended farther the floor of the gully gradually turned from dry gravel to black, glutinous mud. Tarbush trudged on in silence, back bowed and face dripping sweat.

Twice he refused an offer of help from Chrissie. She was ready to repeat it for a third time when she noticed the way that he responded to every rustle in the bushes around them. His expression was hopeful, not wary. She did not volunteer assistance again. Carrying the awkward load was Tarbush’s chosen penance, an expression of guilt for abandoning Scruffy. Chrissie knew it was no use trying to tell him that they’d had no choice.

She fell back a few steps to the rear, making her own survey of the dense vegetation on either side. She thought she glimpsed the purple-black wings of a Tinker, just one component, but before she could be sure it vanished into the shadows. When she turned her eyes again to the way ahead, Tarbush seemed to have shrunk. She heard him say, “Damn mud.” Then, “Chrissie, stay back!” He suddenly lost another foot of height.

They had been plowing through the black mud for ten minutes, and what Tarbush was standing on now looked no different; but he was sinking into it, slowly and steadily. Already it was above his knees.

Chrissie ignored his cry, jumped forward, and grabbed at the bulky supply case he carried on his back. She shouted, “Tarb, let go the straps — the weight is pushing you down.”

She heaved at the pack, falling over backwards as it came loose. When she was on her feet again, Tarbush had sunk farther. The mud was already to his mid-thighs. He had done the right thing, leaning far backward to spread his weight. Chrissie flattened herself and crawled forward until she felt herself beginning to sink. The mud was more liquid than solid. She reached as far as she could and gripped his outstretched hands.

“I’ve got you, Tarb. Can you ease yourself out?”

“Dunno. Let me give it a try.”

Chrissie braced herself. Tarb gripped her hands and began to pull. He was enormously strong, and he seemed to move a few inches toward her. But then she was slipping forward.

“Not so hard, Tarb, or I’ll be in with you.”

The pressure eased. They lay still, he on his back and she facedown in the mud.

“Seems like we got us a little problem,” he said after a few moments. “If I don’t pull hard on you, I don’t come out. If I do pull hard, you come in. Maybe we’re worrying too much about nothing. Maybe this quicksand stuff isn’t all that deep, and if I let myself go I’ll stop at my waist.”

“And suppose you don’t stop? You’re not going to try anything like that. Are you sinking now?”

“Don’t seem to be. I’d say I’m right about where I started. Question is, where do we go from here?”

“Tarb, can you let go with one hand without sinking?”

“Only one way to find out.” He released his left-hand grip, increasing the force on Chrissie’s other arm until she could feel her shoulder socket creak. “Seems all right. Don’t seem to be moving.”

“Good. Can you work your suit controls one-handed?”

“I can.” He lay in silence for a few seconds, his actions invisible to Chrissie as she sprawled at full length. “There we are. I’ve got the gauntlet pad working. Now what?”

“Use the controls to seal your suit at the waist, so the top and bottom halves can be independently pressurized. Then inflate below the waist — hard.”

“Will do.” After a few seconds of silence he said, “Ouch. That hurts . How hard?”

“As hard as you can stand. We want the lower half to inflate like a balloon. Then its natural buoyancy might help lift you out.”

“I know what you’re trying to do. But I’m inside that balloon, and there’s things down there below my waist that I’m very fond of.”

“I’m fond of them, too. But I value what’s in the upper half of your suit a whole lot more. Increase the pressure, Tarb. The suit can take it, so can you.”

“The suit doesn’t feel it like I do.” He gave a series of grunts, then a final, “I’m going to pull now. If that isn’t enough, I’m stuck here forever.”

Chrissie flattened her face into the mud for extra traction, gritted her teeth, and hung on. Tarbush had her hands in his. He gave a monstrous heave that had her skidding forward, and then suddenly the force on her arms was less.

She raised her head. In front of her she could see Tarbush, flat on his back. Beyond him, rising up beyond his waist, was a great misshapen hemisphere of mud. It was his suit, grossly inflated below the waist.

“I’m half out,” he said. “But what now? I can’t move my legs, and I can’t look any way but up.”

“Hang on.” Chrissie wriggled backwards a few inches. She pulled, as hard as she could. After a moment when nothing happened, Tarbush’s inflated figure slid a few inches toward her. She did the same thing over and over, until she could see from her own boot marks that they were past the danger point.

“You’re all right,” she said. “You can deflate the suit if you want to.”

“If I want to!” There was a huge hiss of escaping air. After a few seconds Tarbush gave a matching sigh and sat up. Chrissie crawled to his side. Together they stared at the innocent-looking stretch of mud in front of them.

“I guess that we won’t be using the gully any more,” Chrissie said. She stood up and stretched high, trying to peer over the edge of the bank. “So what’s our alternative?”

Tarbush remained seated. He stretched over to the pack and pulled out Elke Siry’s map. “We do it the hard way. We go due east. It won’t be fun. The land is all ups and downs, a mixture of steep cliffs and deep valleys, plus some things that Elke couldn’t identify at all from the space images. Hmm.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing we can do anything about. But I notice that according to Elke’s notes on the map, we’re still a kilometer short of the area that she marked as Badlands .”

Chan had been itching to get ashore since the ship’s arrival in the ocean of Limbo. Now, following Friday Indigo across an open wilderness of seared rock, he had too much on his mind to take much notice of his surroundings.

Back on the Hero’s Return he had decided, quite deliberately, that he must act completely alone. If others of the crew knew what he had in mind they might have offered useful ideas; but with the Malacostracans clearly able to turn any human into a robotic slave who would tell everything, more people in the know meant more risk.

Unfortunately, the person most likely to become such a slave was now Chan himself. Chrissie and Tarbush had escaped, so if Friday Indigo collapsed Chan was the logical next in line.

They were passing a line of strangely shaped aircraft, familiar from Bony Rombelle’s description and the images taken from orbit. Chan forced himself to concentrate on them, and even more on the two huge and ungainly oval shapes that floated beyond them. According to Dag Korin those must be the mother ships, the vehicles used to bring everything else through the Link from the Mallies’ home world and home universe.

Chan studied the alien outlines, hovering above the ground with no sign of support. His conviction strengthened that no human or Stellar Group member would be able to fly one of those without either a Malacostracan pilot or a few weeks of trial-and-error experimentation. The ships were simply too different from anything he had ever seen. According to Friday Indigo, the Malacostracans held precisely the same view: a human might direct the Mallies in making a Link transition, but stealing their ship and flying it home to the human universe was out of the question.