Joan Vinge - Heaven Chronicles

Rusty squirmed in his grasp like an impatient child. As he released her his arm scraped the ventilator screen, his hand closed over a flat, palm-sized square trapped by the soft exit of air. He pulled it down, stared at it. A picture—a hologram—of a man and a woman, each holding a child, flooded in blazing light where they stood before an ugly, half-sunken dwelling. The woman was Betha Torgussen, her hair long, coiled on her head in braids. And the man, tall, with dark hair and a lean, sunburned face … Eric? Her voice came to him suddenly, from behind a shielding faceplate, in a train car on Mecca. I—I thought you were someone I knew. Wadie brushed the images with a finger, moving through them. Ghosts …

Betha Torgussen's voice came to him out of a speaker on the wall, telling the crew that Nakamore had acquiesced.

“Okay, Pappy, the cables are secured. We really outdid ourselves when we closed with this load! Start us in.” Betha raised her chin from the speaker button, hooking her arm under the twisted strength of the steel cable, secure in the crevice between cylinders of hydrogen. She felt the abrupt lurch as the winches started the final shipment of fuel moving in toward the looming brilliance of the Ranger .

“This is the lot, Betha.” Clewell's voice filled her helmet, smiling. She imagined his smile, felt it through the ship's mirrored hull.

“This is it. We've done it. Pappy! We're really going to make it.” Through the shielded faceplate of her helmet she saw the molten silver, the ruby scarab of Discus reflecting on the Ranger 's hull, rising above a dull-green horizon of clustered tanks, marred by a tiny spot of blackness. The shadow of Snows-of-Salvation … or a ragged hole torn in the metal. She looked away, dizzy, past the small bright-suited figure of Shadow Jack at one end of the fifty-meter-long bundled cylinders. And out into the void; imagined the merciless drag of the Discan gravity well pulling her loose into the endless night … like five others before her. She shut her eyes, clung to the cable; opened them again to look down at the solid surface of the tanks, along the dull greenness at Abdhiamal, inept and uncommunicative at the shipment's other limit. They were almost flush now with the Ranger's massive protection; it would be over soon. One more, just one more time.… Sweat tickled her face; she shook her head angrily inside her helmet. Damn it! You won't fall—

“Betha!” It was Bird Alyn's voice, rising clearly for once above the crackle of her feeble helmet speaker. Betha saw her, gnatlike beside the immense holding rack clamped to the ship's skin. “The load's not closing even! … Abdhiamal, your end—the end cable's caught between tanks—”

“I'll clear it.”

“Abdhiamal, wait!” Betha saw him go over the end, saw the flash of his guidance rocket as he disappeared. “Pappy! Loosen the aft cable, right now!” She pulled her own guidance unit loose from the catch at her waist, pressed the trigger, sent herself after him to the end of the world. Looking over, she saw him hovering near the hub of the wheel of tanks, the cable trapped between two cylinders. She saw him catch hold of the cable, brace his feet, and pull—“Abdhiamal, stop, stop!”—saw the cable slip free … watched as the bound tanks recoiled below her and the cable wrenched loose from the hull, arcing soundlessly toward her like a striking snake. She backed desperately, knowing, knowing—

“Clewell!” Her face cracked against the helmet glass in starbursts of light as the cable struck her across the chest, throwing her out and away from the ship. She fought for breath, blood in her mouth, her lungs crippled with pain, saw the ship like a fiery pinwheel slip out of her view, blackness, blood and molten silver, blackness.… She fumbled for the trigger of her guidance rocket, but her hands were empty. And she was falling.

No —Betha began to scream.

Wadie felt the cable slip loose as the captain's voice reached him, telling him to stop. He fell back, suddenly unsupported, looking up in surprise—to see what he had done, see the tanks rebound, the cable lash out like a whip and knock her away … saw her guidance rocket fly free, tumbling, a spark of light. “Oh, my God—“ He heard the cries of Bird Alyn and Shadow Jack, echoing his own, no sound from Betha Torgussen. He waved the others back as he went after her into the night.

The immensity of isolation stifled him, filling the black-and-brilliant desolation like sand, dragging at him, holding him back … as the isolation of his own making had cut him off from the truth all his life. He closed with her spiraling form slowly, agonizingly, centimeters every second … seeing in his mind a ruptured suit, a frozen corpse, her pale, staring face cursing him even in death for the hypocrisy of his wasted years. Yet wanting, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, to close that gap between them, and see instead that it was not too late.…

And after a space as long as his life his gloved hand clamped over an ankle. He drew her toward him and used his guidance unit to stop their outward fall. He caught her helmet in his hands, felt her clutch him feebly as he searched behind the silent, red-fogged glass for a glimpse of her face. Repeating, wild with relief, “Betha … Betha … Betha, are you all right?”

Her shadowed face fell forward, peering out; her chin pressed the speaker bouton. “Eric … oh, Eric.” He heard her sob. “Don't let me go … I'll fall … don't let go, don't let go …” Her arms tightened convulsively, silence formed between them again. He stroked the tempered glass. “I won't … it's all right … I won't let you go.” The plane of the Discan rings blinded him with frigid glory, as immutable as death; he turned away from it, started them back toward the diminished ship, across the black sand desert of the night. She kept radio silence; he did not search for her face again behind the blood-reddened glass, granting her the privacy of her grief, feeling the ghosts of five human beings move with them. And at last he heard her voice say his own name, thanking him, and say it again.…

“What happened?”

“Is she all right?”

“Betha, are you all right?”

The voices of Shadow Jack and Bird Alyn clamored in his helmet as they met him, their hidden faces turned toward Betha, gloved hands reaching out.

“She's hurt. Help me get her inside.” She scarcely moved against his hold, silent as they made their way through the airlock.

They entered the control room, her hands still locked rigidly on his suit. He looked across the room at the panel, looking for Welkin; cleared his faceplate, suddenly aware that nothing moved. “Welkin?” He saw a hand, motionless above the chair arm, and his throat closed.

Betha raised her head as if she were listening, but he could not answer. She released her grip, pushing away from him. “Pappy?” Her voice quavered, she folded into a tight crescent in the air, her arms wrapped against her stomach. “Pappy … are you there?” He heard a small gasp as she tried to lift her hands. “Somebody … get this helmet off. I can't see. Pappy?”

“Betha—” Shadow Jack began, broke off.

Bird Alyn moved to release Betha's helmet, lifted it slowly, jerked back at the sight of her face filmed with blood.

But Betha had already turned away, shaking her head to clear her confusion, pulling distractedly at her gloves. She froze as she saw the old man's drifting hand. “Oh, Jesus.” Her own hand flew out, caught at Bird Alyn's suit, groping for purchase. Bird Alyn put an arm around her, helped her cross the room. Wadie followed.