Timothy Zahn - The Third Lynx

"I don't think it's the over or around part that's bothering him," Stafford said, an all-too-knowing look on his face. "I think our courageous ex-Intelligence agent is afraid of heights. Didn't Westali train you to rappel down buildings and such?"

"They trained me as best they could," I said stiffly. "And for the record, it's not the heights that bother me. It's the possibility of falling from them."

"You'll be fine," Penny assured me. "This whole region is perfect for climbing, which means there'll be shops all over that'll carry the equipment we'll need. We can stop off somewhere along the way and I'll get us outfitted."

She gave me a pseudo-innocent look. "If you want, I'll even partner with you for the descent."

"You should instead make sure Mr. Stafford is safe," Bayta put in before I could think up a suitable answer. "I can partner with Frank."

Penny's smile went just a bit brittle. Bayta's attitude toward her, I'd noticed, had thawed somewhat since my public revelation earlier that the Modhri had been manipulating my feelings. But their relationship was still nowhere near warm. "Of course," Penny said. "I was just offering."

"You have a choice of which mesa we take?" Stafford asked.

"Let me look over the pictures a little more before I decide," Penny said.

"We'll take the south one," I told them.

"Why, is that the shortest?" Stafford asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "But that's the one we're taking."

"Don't you think—?"

"That's the one we're taking, Mr. Stafford," I said. "If you don't like it, I can drop you off at the next town. Ms. Auslander, get busy and figure out our best route."

I kept my eyes on the view out the canopy, but I could feel the sudden tenseness of the silence. Apparently, Stafford and Penny had started to think of themselves as full partners in this enterprise. The reminder that this was a benign dictatorship must have been a little upsetting. "Okay," Stafford broke the silence after a moment. "You're the boss."

I glanced over my shoulder at Bayta. She was watching me closely, a slightly troubled look on her face. But if she was also wondering what I was up to, she kept it to herself.

Turning back to the canopy, I returned my full attention to my flying. This, I knew, was about to get interesting.

A little before sundown we landed in a town at the foot of some craggy mountains to get some food and fuel, collect the gear Penny wanted, and buy some comms to replace the ones Gargantua and his buddies had taken from us back on Ghonsilya. Before we lifted off again I also gave the sleeping Morse another jolt from the kwi .

I could tell that both Penny and Bayta were a little concerned about the possible effects of such continual zapping on the man, but I brushed such worries aside. My only concern was whether we could land, get to our target mesa, hike across it, and rappel down again before our five-and-a-half-hour clock ran down and the polyp colony inside Morse woke up and alerted the rest of the local Modhri mind segment to our presence.

We flew most of the rest of the night. I dozed in the pilot's seat, awakening every half hour or so to check on our progress and make sure the autopilot was keeping us on track. The others, as far as I could tell, slept a bit restlessly but more or less straight through. Morse, with the usual help from the kwi , didn't wake up at all. During the quiet and privacy of the night I also made a small but significant adjustment to my newly purchased comm.

A couple of hours before sunrise, we arrived.

I set us down three kilometers outside the perimeter fence, landing in a shallow pit where the aircar would be partially concealed from casual observation. The whole region was arid and rocky, dotted with mesas and buttes and tall granite rock spines. Trees and clumps of vegetation were few and far between, concentrated mostly along streambeds and around natural springs, but nearly every minor dip and depression where dew might collect had sprouted stands of feathery, waist-high brown grass. It was easily pulled out of the loose soil, and I set Bayta and Penny to work gathering a few bunches to scatter across the top of the aircar. While they did that, Stafford and I got the unconscious Morse out of his carrying crate and set him up in one of the rear seats, wristcuffing him to the armrest to make sure he stayed put. It seemed unlikely we would make it to the dig and back before he woke up, but with luck by the time he did the local Modhri mind segment wouldn't be in any shape to respond to his warning. I gave him one last jolt from the kwi and we set off.

The air was bitterly cold, typical of arid regions with little ground and atmospheric water to hold heat. The sky was clear and the stars shone brilliantly down on us.

I particularly noticed the stars, as much of my attention was focused on the sky and any telltale occultations that might indicate curious aircraft nosing around. But I didn't spot anything, and in retrospect I decided that was as it should be. The Modhri wouldn't want to attract unwelcome curiosity by putting up nighttime sentry aircraft over a supposedly innocent archaeological dig.

An hour's walk brought us to the Ten Mesas area and the base of the mesa I'd chosen for our climb. Penny had assured us that the upward slope wouldn't be difficult, but looking at it from below in the dark it certainly looked daunting enough. But I needed to get in, and this was probably the simplest way.

Besides that, Penny was already striding briskly up the black rock, Stafford and Bayta right behind her. Taking a deep breath, deciding I hated this, I headed up after them.

The slope was every bit as challenging as I'd guessed it would be, and if I'd had any knee trouble at all I probably wouldn't have made it. As it was, we were all puffing to one degree or another by the time the slope began to level off onto the top of the mesa. Here the required level of physical exertion was much lower, but on the minus side much of the upper mesa surface was covered by the same waist-high grass we'd already encountered below. It was easy enough to push through, but because we couldn't see the ground below us we now had to pick our way carefully lest we twist an ankle on a hidden dip or pit or rock.

Once again, I kept an eye out for sentries. Once again, I didn't spot any.

The sky to the east was starting to show a faint reddish glow when we reached the northern end of the mesa.

"Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about," I commented in a low voice as we stood facing the Spike. It looked just the way the pictures had showed it: a sudden upward sweep of the mesa's surface into a steep-sloped, more or less pointed formation towering ten meters above us. At the same time, the sides of the mesa on either side of us also rose sharply, leaving us in a sort of natural cul-de-sac.

"No problem," Penny assured me, digging a coil of rope from her backpack. "We'll anchor the rope here and toss the coil over the lip around the side of the Spike. Its own weight, plus the friction of the rock up there, ought to give enough counterbalance for me to get to the lip. Once I'm there I'll anchor it, we'll all climb up, then we'll rappel down the other side."

To me it seemed more likely we would simply slice the rope in half on the edge of the lip. But Penny was already tying one end of the rope to a rock outcropping below the Spike. I checked my watch and peered across the wasteland at the easternmost of the mesas perhaps two kilometers away, its own Spike silhouetted against the increasing glow of the approaching sunrise like the prow of an ancient Viking dragon ship. Digging out the thick leather gloves Penny had bought with the rest of our climbing supplies, I pulled them on.

She finished securing the rope and heaved the coil up and over into the darkness. With one hand on the rope and the other searching out crevices and protrusions on the rock face itself, she started up.