The Eternal Flame

some things could cling to the rock through any disturbance. A few strides back, Patrizia was advancing briskly, keeping up with Ada, almost mirroring her movements. Carla felt a pang of guilt; why had she allowed her to come along? Whatever loyalty Patrizia felt toward her, and however much respect she had for Carlo’s cause, she’d had none of the training and experience of the Gnat’s crew. If she hadn’t been with Carla when Ada came looking for her, there would have been no question of dragging her into this. But it was too late to argue the point and try to send her back.

When Tamara reached the end of the rail, Carla drew her own body to one side to give everyone behind her an unobstructed view of their leader. Tamara waited, looking to the east. She’d chosen the violet end of Sitha’s trail—Sitha being one star that all of them could recognize—to mark the direction through the void in which they would be flung.

The bright borderline, where the old star trails ended in a blaze of shifted ultraviolet, marched up from the horizon. Carla saw Sitha rising, but merely sighting it wasn’t the cue. The star had to lie at right angles to the zenith—and mercifully, that judgment wasn’t hers to make.

Tamara gave the signal, a sweep of her lower right hand, and released her hold on the rail.

Carla did the same, and the six of them fell into the void together. She glanced up to see the mountain receding and felt a rush of pure elation: to do this by choice, not by accident, wasn’t frightening at all. A few pauses later the rope joining her to Ada went taut as some small failure of synchronization caught up with them, but the jolt was mild.

Tamara was joined to Carla, but a second safety rope linked her directly all the way back to Macario, who’d been traveling at the rear of the group. Now the two of them started gathering up their ends of that longer rope, pulling themselves together. When they’d shortened it to a marked portion of equal length to the other five ropes, they hitched it to their harnesses, fixing the geometry.

Tamara gestured again, and Carla joined the others in firing a brief horizontal burst from her air jet. The loose hexagon spread out into a slowly turning, almost planar figure. At first everyone bounced around a little; the hexagon wasn’t perfectly rigid. But as the ropes dissipated the energy of people’s wayward motion, the hexagon’s stately rotation remained. Carla looked across at Macaria; behind her, the gaudy streaks of the old stars were changing places with the short, crisp trails of their orthogonal counterparts.

Tamara made a few small corrections on her own, to align the hexagon’s plane against the mountain. It was not like flying the Gnat or the Mite, but with care she could act as their pilot. So long as they were turning, centrifugal force and the rope’s deadening effect on any small departures would keep them in an orderly configuration.

The next stage was better handled cooperatively: on Tamara’s cue, they began firing their jets in unison toward Sitha, parallel bursts aimed at killing their velocity away from the Peerless. With one hand on the jet strapped to her chest and another on the second unit on her back, Carla could keep targeting the star even as the sky wheeled around and sent Sitha into her rear gaze.

Tamara halted the maneuver; they were approaching the mountain now. Carla glanced up but forced herself not to search for their destination. Tamara had chosen her own landmarks and made her own calculations. Ada had checked everything twice. The only thing to do now was to trust the navigators.

The slope grew closer with alarming speed. They were returning more rapidly than they’d been tossed aside, and the rocks themselves were now swinging around to meet them. Tamara made a series of corrections, tipping their trajectory to the south to take them past the territory they’d been unable to cross by rail. Carla’s body tensed at the threatened collision, and this new fear was far harder to dismiss: to fall into the void could be harmless, but there was no recovering from being dashed against the side of a mountain.

Finally, Tamara gestured for them to brake. Carla fired her jet toward the second target star, a nameless dazzle of violet on the borderline. The task kept her eyes away from the rocks, and when she finally stole a glance upward the jagged terrain had assumed an almost leisurely pace. She could see the tent easily now: the camouflage had lost its power for her. The slope around it was deserted. If there were lookouts they were all inside, peering out across the mountainside, expecting any intruders to come straight from the airlock.

Tamara had them shut off their jets. When the hiss from the nozzle fell silent, for a moment Carla felt as if she were suspended above the rock, but she knew that was impossible. A pause later she could see that they were still approaching, very slowly, not quite on target. Ada and Tamara took turns making adjustments, taking pains to keep the hexagon as level as they could. Carla stared up at the approaching ceiling, a few dozen strides away at most, then looked down just in time to catch Tamara’s last cue.

In almost perfect synchrony, the six of them unhitched their connecting safety ropes, took the hook-ends of their grappling ropes in one hand, then pointed their jets away from the rock and opened the valves wide to drive them home.

Carla hit the edge of the tent with her free upper hand stretched out above her, faster than she’d meant to, but close to the attachment point she’d aimed for. The jet was easily supporting her centrifugal weight, but it was threatening to send her skidding sideways. She reached up and thrust the hook into the fabric of the tent; the material was thickly woven, but the hardstone barb parted it easily and the supporting loop slipped in.

She shut off her jet, leaving her dangling by the grappling rope. She glanced around quickly: everyone was unharmed, in place, more or less at the same stage she was. Patrizia was fine. And Carlo was in here, almost free now. They just had to act quickly before the guards knew what had hit them.

Carla pulled the knife from her tool belt and plunged it in beside the attachment stake; she felt the tip go right through to the rock. She tried to extend the cut by lateral force alone—to slice around the stake’s retaining head in a neat circle—but she didn’t get far before the fabric resisted the blade. She pulled the knife out and thrust again, making a second cut, trying not to panic at the delay. How much could the guards hear, in airlessness? Rock was a good conductor of sound, but the fabric would carry it much less efficiently.

She made a third cut, a fourth. Together, these arcs still only did half the job. She joined two of them with yet another thrust, then did the same to the opposite pair. Two almost-half-circles enclosed the stake. At the edge of her attention she saw another corner of the tent already falling. If the guards had been oblivious until now, that advantage had just disappeared. Carla stabbed at her unfinished cut, joined the two large arcs on one side, aimed again. But before she could strike, the remnant of fabric tore under the strain and she fell with her corner away from the rock.

It was a short drop; the tent itself was still attached at four points. She looked up, hoping to see inside, but all she could glimpse was some exposed rock: the prison’s ceiling, glowing softly with red moss-light.

She lurched down again, as Tamara’s corner broke loose on her right. Two large air tanks came sliding down the fabric, almost striking her as they tumbled into the void, but she still couldn’t see anyone. She began hoisting herself up the grappling rope, hoping for a better view, but then the tent separated from the mountain completely.

Carla pulled herself over the edge, then unhooked the grappling rope and advanced by grabbing folds of the tent’s rough fabric. She saw a guard fleeing, silhouetted against the stars—a man, by the size of him, his air jet carrying him away across the slope. So where was Carlo? Had he fallen from the other side? She could see a host of small objects floating around her, but the center of the tent was too dark to show anything, still shaded from starlight by the mountain above. She crawled into the blackness.

Carla found the sack by touch alone. It had been secured to the tent with cords. She felt gently for the shape of Carlo’s body within; he started, but then became still. She pressed her helmet against the top of the sack. “It’s me,” she said. “You’re safe.” She heard a faint, unintelligible reply, then realized that her helmet was touching, not its double, but an unprotected skull. Inside the sack, Carlo was naked.

That was their response to Macaria’s escape: they’d stripped their remaining prisoner of any capacity to survive in the void. They must have set up an improvised cooling system to keep him alive, spraying the sack with air—those tanks that had fallen past her. But now he had nothing.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right.” She unstrapped the air jet tank from her chest and cut a long, vertical slit down the center of her cooling bag. Then she put a hand on Carlo’s shoulder, waited until she was sure he would remain still, and slid the knife a short way into the sack. She slipped her hand in beside the blade—so that if he moved, his skin would meet her fingers before it could make contact with the knife—then she made an incision to match her own.

She put away the knife and reached in to lay a palm against his chest; his skin was warm, but he was not in danger yet. He took her hand and squeezed it for a moment, then released it. Carla put one arm around the sack,