Timothy Zahn: Manta's Gift

And there it was, out in the open for everyone to see. Surreptitiously, Faraday tapped on his wooden ring. "I wonder how we'll go down in their history," he murmured. "The strange beings in the shining sphere who fell from the sky?"

Chippawa snorted. "I'd settle for being the pet frog his mother made him put back in the creek," he said. "Forget the dignity and just cross your fingers."

Ten minutes later, they were still going up. Fifteen minutes after that, Faraday had the oxygen tanks rigged for a slow leak. Or so he hoped, anyway.

And after that, it was just a matter of sitting back and waiting.

"Looks like more of the torpedo-shapes out there," Faraday suggested, peering at the emscan display. "We must be back up to where we ran into Dark Eye."

"You couldn't prove it by these pressure readings," Chippawa said, shaking his head. "You know, it occurs to me that if that skin layer out there is keeping up this kind of pressure, we may be completely enclosed. I mean, completely enclosed."

"Makes sense," Faraday agreed. "That would be why we weren't crushed while he was showing us off to his buddies."

"You miss my point," Chippawa said. "I'm wondering if we're even going to be able to get to the hydrogen outside."

Faraday opened his mouth, closed it again. "Oh, boy," he muttered.

"Maybe we can poke a hole with something," Chippawa went on. "We've got a couple of sampling probes we haven't extended, though they probably aren't strong enough. The pulse transmitter laser might do the job."

"Except that it's nowhere near the oxygen valve," Faraday pointed out. "Unless we can inflate the starboard float enough to push the skin back—"

He broke off as a muffled thud came from somewhere above them. "What was that?" he demanded, trying to penetrate the haze on the emscan display. "Another of those little guys?"

"Looks like it," Chippawa said. "Don't they ever watch where they're going?"

An instant later they were thrown against their restraints as the Skydiver was rocked violently by a quick one-two-three set of jolts. "Incoming!" Chippawa snapped. "Three of the big torpedoes."

The probe was slammed again to the side. "Depth gauge just twitched," Faraday called as the sudden change of reading caught his eye. "Settling down..."

"They've broken through the skin," Chippawa said. "They're tearing through the skin around us."

There was another thud, and this time Faraday could hear a distinct tearing noise along with it.

"Tearing, nothing," he said. "They're eating their way through!"

"So what were you expecting, a can opener?" Chippawa retorted. "This is going to work, Jake."

"Like hell it is," Faraday bit out, grabbing for the lever he'd rigged up for the oxygen release. "Let's give 'em a hotfoot."

"No, wait," Chippawa said. "Don't you understand? They're eating the skin right off us. All we have to do is wait and we'll be free."

"Until they try taking a bite out of the Skydiver," Faraday shot back. "We're open to the hydrogen. I say we go for it."

"And I say we wait," Chippawa said firmly. "Come on—they can't bite through the hull."

"The mantas left tooth marks on it," Faraday countered. "These things are four times bigger. You think they'll have any trouble biting straight through?"

"We have to risk it," Chippawa insisted. "Just calm down—"

"Like hell," Faraday snarled. Setting his teeth together, he pushed the lever.

A wave of blue-green fire rolled across the window. The Skydiver shuddered violently, and a bonechilling roar seemed to fill the cabin. "Jake!" Chippawa shouted. "What the hell—?"

"It worked," Faraday cut him off, jabbing a finger at the window. "Look—it worked!"

Chippawa inhaled sharply as the brown-gray skin seemed to melt away from the window, accompanied by a multiple splash of yellow liquid.

And a second later, accompanied by the sound of hissing helium, the probe jerked free from its prison. "Float deployed," Faraday shouted. "We're heading up."

"I've got the tether ship's carrier signal," Chippawa said. "They're on their way."

Something bumped Faraday's foot. He looked down, to find that his zero-gee coffee mug had come out of hiding and had rolled up against it.

He took a deep breath, let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. For the first time since the tether broke, he realized he was soaked with sweat. "It's over," he said quietly. "It's finally over."

But it wasn't over. In fact, it had just begun.

The doctors had been and gone, the neurologists had been and gone, and the biotron people had been and gone. For the first time in days, it seemed, Matthew Raimey was alone.

All alone.

He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. That was about all he could do, really, lie there and stare at the ceiling. The clean, soothing, pastel blue-colored damned hospital ceiling.

Like the ceilings he would now be staring at for the rest of his life.

It was quiet at this end of the hospital. The kind of quiet that made it easy to think. To think, and to remember.

Mostly, he found himself remembering the accident.

It replayed itself over and over against the pastel blue background, in exquisite and painful detail.

The little squeaks and crunches of his skis as they slid lightly over the packed snow. The icy wind whipping at his ears and forehead and freezing the edges of his nostrils. The sharp aroma of the pine trees, mixed with a hint of drifting smoke from the lodge below. The familiar tension in his bent knees as he rode the crests and smoothed out the bumps of the mountain. Brianna's clear soprano voice behind him as she laughed and chattered and threatened to zoom past him. The tiny mound of snow that had caught the tip of his left ski and spun him a few degrees off course.

The giant Douglas fir that had loomed suddenly in his path.

He'd tried very hard to dodge that tree. Used every bit of his skill and the precious quarter-second of time he had to make sure he didn't slam into it. And to his rather smug satisfaction at the time, he had succeeded.

He shouldn't have tried. He wished desperately now that he hadn't. He should have just hit the tree, accepted whatever broken ribs it would have cost him, and been done with it.

But he had been too clever for that. Too clever and too skillful and too arrogant. Besides, Brianna had been right there behind him, with Alan and Bobbi somewhere behind her. He would have looked like an idiot, running into a tree like an amateur. Especially after having bragged about how close he could ski to the edge of the run without getting into trouble.

He'd avoided the tree just fine. But he hadn't managed to avoid the edge of the small bush beside it.

He could still feel the exhilarating sensation of spinning through the air. It had been like a carnival ride, exciting and mind-spinning, with that faint tinge of fear that gave zest to all the best carnival rides. After all, he was twenty-two years and seven months old, poised to graduate from college with his whole life stretching out like infinity in front of him. He was invincible, and invulnerable, and alive.

He could remember hearing Brianna afterward trying frantically to describe to the paramedics what had happened. She'd done a pretty poor job of it, too. She couldn't even tell them how many times he'd spun around in the air.

He could have told them. He knew. One and a half times.

Exactly.

The ride had come to an end with the suddenness of a coaster braking. Oddly enough, there hadn't been any pain. Just that single muffled crack from somewhere behind his ear.

And then he'd been lying on his back in the snow, cold air on his cheeks and the unpleasant sensation of icy water seeping through his scarf onto his neck. Staring up at the overcast sky, just like he was staring now at the pastel blue ceiling.