Paul Collins - Earthborn The

Kenny-H and Bilbo keptthe team even tempered. They counteracted the hotheads. Now I've got a few renegades who want to go their own way."

Welkin shrugged helplessly. "Why don't they?"

"Oh, I'd say they're biding their time." She looked up the length of the wall ladder and clambered up

into the sewerage pipe.

Welkin wished he still had his faceplate to filter the dust Sarah disturbed.

She reached down and he gripped her outstretched hand. "One, two, three," she said and heaved.

His feet made paddling motions as they slipped on the rock face, then Sarah gave one mighty heave and he scrabbled up alongside her.

"It's okay to be scared, you know," Sarah said close to his ear.

Welkin said nothing. He was scared, but he wasn't about to admit it to this Earthborn woman, family or no family. Everything that was happening to him was new and shocking. He itched all over and felt dirty, as though every pore in his body was clogged with grime. His scalp crawled. Maybe because of bugs. He'd read about lice. The urge to scratch madly was almost uncontrollable. His armpits and back felt especially uncomfortable, as though tiny life-forms were wriggling all over him.

Sarah began shuffling forward on hands and knees.

Welkin sneezed a couple of times. On Colony a sneeze was considered to be a psychosomatic symptom left over from their ancestors rather than as evidence of infection. Welkin added it to his accumulating list of worries.

Despite his coveralls, he was also beginning to feel the cold. It was something he had never experienced. "I need warmer clothing," he said and was disturbed to hear his teeth chatter. It was a complete abnormality to him.

"You should've landed somewhere near the equator."

"I don't think we chose where to land," he said, disgusted. "We barely had enough thrust to come straight down." He sneezed again.

"Bless you. What happened to your shuttle craft? Skimmers?" She furrowed her brows. "Doesn't make sense you wouldn't reconnoiter before landing."

Welkin had to think about that. "I've never seen a ... skimmer.

I've seen Earth planes, though. Things with big wings!"

"You're about a century out of touch," Sarah said. "Landing craft should've come down with advance parties. Maybe had a powwow with the Earthlings. Just to make sure everything was sweet with you people coming down here. Sort of got in our good books." She sucked her lips loudly. Her head swiveled around and her wide green eyes glinted at him. "But that wasn't part of Colony's plan, was it?

You came back as conquerors, not long-lost expatriots.

"What were you told, I wonder? That maybe you'd been shot down by Earth Defense? Something real wacky, I bet," she mused.

For a moment Welkin relived those horrifying hours in the prison cell as Colony plunged toward Earth from its decaying orbit. Before that, there were repeated fire drills, instructions for landing procedures.

Rumor had spread that the lower deckers were planning a breakout, were cruising the boundary bulkheads looking for ways into the upper decks. Looking for food!

Suddenly she scuttled up into another pipe. Welkin pulled himself up after her. A rush of fresh air indicated they had reached the surface. He gladly heaved himself out of the grate. The cold air seemed to soak into him like water into a sponge. He never thought he'd be glad to suck in a lungful of Earth air, but the fact was he rather liked it. It didn't have that canned sour smell that permeated the air of Colony.

He took in his surroundings. They seemed to be in a street of derelict office blocks. He had seen vids of a street like this—busy with traffic and sunlight glinting on a thousand windows.

"It's our equivalent of a full moon," said Sarah, glancing at the sky. "Good for your people. Not so good for us. We'll have to be careful."

A laser beam arced down, cutting a brilliant swathe through the night. Sarah crouched. It wouldn't be long before the Colony storm troopers discovered the railway passages and sewer tunnels below the city.

But it was still a maze down there. Their maze. Sarah turned to Welkin. "Could they be looking for you?"

"I don't think so," Welkin said hesitantly. It was funny how facing death and having your whole world turned upside down made youlook at your past life differently. He knew with certainty that Harlan Gibbs had intended him for the lower decks, the same lower decks that had been flattened into the ground, crumpled like tinfoil. Pla-netfall may have saved his life. Not for the last time, he wondered what had

happened to Harry.

Sarah spotted troopers patrolling a forty-yard spread about two hundred yards north of their position.

Raised under 1.5 g like Welkin, and probably genetically enhanced, they were built like gorillas—not to be tangled with at close quarters. She beckoned him. Crouching, she sprinted for a doorway.

Welkin silently cursed her courage. She knew he had no option but to follow. And when she made up her mind, she just acted, seemingly without thought. It was unnerving.

"Quiet now," she said when Welkin breathlessly reached her. She pursed her lips and whistled. There was no corresponding whistle and Sarah frowned. "Stay here." Without warning she swung the laserlite before her and hurried across the antechamber and up a flight of spi-raling stairs. When she reached the top she waved for Welkin to follow.

He took the stairs clumsily, falling twice. In the dark Sarah grimaced at the dull, echoing noise. She dragged him up the rest of the way. "Get with the program, kid!"

"We don't climb to different levels on Colony" Welkin said. He massaged his ankle. "I'm not used to all this," he wheezed. "And don't call me kid."

"That's the spirit. You'll need that and much more to survive on Earth." After a moment's reflection she said, "Despite your heavier gravity, they didn't keep you blokes very fit, did they?"

"There was little need," grated Welkin. "And if we're so weak, what are you so worried about?" He held his head up and looked at her defiantly. Inwardly his stomach cramped.

"There is need now, so get used to it. As for me being worried, don't think twice about it. I've lived with death all my life."

Sarah hefted her weapon and turned abruptly. She led the way along a corridor until they came to an open elevator shaft. She nodded to the rungs leading up the shaft. "Do you think you can climb those?"

Despite the shivers, Welkin could feel spasms racking his body. He'd never before experienced such fatigue. His knee joints and neck felt swollen, his eyes "snowblinded" by atmospheric light, his sneezing fit a grim reminder that he might already be diseased. He stiffly shrugged his shoulders, trying to shake out the tightness. "I don't know. I'll try."

"You first, then," she said. "I'll catch you if you fall." At his startled look she winked.

She helped him into the well and held on until he had a firm grip of the rungs. "It doesn't pay to look down. Not that you can see anything."

"Thanks," he said. His voice seemed to reverberate a long way.

It took them five minutes to negotiate the floors. On several occasions Sarah had to urge him on.

"My hands are swollen!"

"Soon it'll be so cold you won't be able to feel them," she grunted. She put her shoulder against his bottom and pushed.

Moments later Welkin collapsed on the floor of the third level. His face and hands were frozen, his breathing heavy.

"No more climbing," she said.

Welkin exhaled noisily. "I was just getting used to it."

"I'll remember that."

Sarah helped him to his feet and guided him across a vast floor strewn with yellowed paper and broken office furniture. She rapped three times on a steel door, then withdrew a heavy key from a pocket and opened the thick reinforced door.