The Devil's Eye

'I don't know. It just keeps going up.' I wanted to sound scared, and I guess the truth is that it didn't take much effort. 'All right.' It was a male voice again. 'Don't be frightened. We'll get you down.' 'This is the first time anything like this has happened to me.'

'It's okay. It happens all the time. Is the taxi responding?'

He was talking about the AI. 'No, sir,' I said. 'She just stopped talking. I don't know what happened.' 'Okay. Help is on the way. Meantime, let's try something.' He gave me instructions on how to maneuver the taxi, how to get it under control. 'No,' I said. 'I've never operated one of these things. I'm afraid I'll kill myself.'

'All right. Just relax, Miss. Everything's going to be all right.'

I could see them coming. Lots of blinking lights a few klicks behind me. The operator kept talking to me, trying to reassure me. I was above the clouds by then, picking up speed as antigrav units tend to do when they get higher and the air gets thinner. It was all I could do not to pour the juice to it, to get out of there before they arrived. But I didn't dare. I couldn't afford to use the extra fuel. I sat tight and eventually the patrol vehicle pulled alongside. There were two officers in it. One waved. Relax. Take it easy. Then her voice came over the radio: 'Miss? Are you okay?' 'So far.'

'All right. Good. Listen, we want to get you out of there before it goes any higher.'

'How do you mean?'

'Let's try the controls first. Have you popped the panel?' She was talking about the controls, which rotate out when you go to manual. 'What do you mean by 'popped'?'

'Let it go. Look, here's what I want you to do.' She gave me the same instructions the earlier guy had. One step at a time. 'Withdraw the yoke.' 'I can't,' I said.

'Just take it easy.'

I was thinking if they told me one more time to relax, I would scream. 'It won't come loose. It's stuck.' We continued like that for another minute or so. Then she sighed. 'Okay. Look, I want to get you out of there before we get any higher.'

'Good. I'm for-'

'- We're going to get above you. I'll come down and help. But I need you to open the door. Hang on to something when you do because the air pressure in your cabin will try to drag you outside.'

'Outside the door?'

'Yes. So hold on.'

'Listen, I'm not going to open anything up here. That's crazy.'

'Miss, we're running out of options fast.'

That was good news. 'I'm not opening up. Please find another way.' 'There is no other way.' 'No. I'm sorry.' I found it easy to show them some hysteria. 'I can't do it.' They tried anyhow. The woman was gutsy. They got above me and matched my rate of ascent. They dropped a cable, and she climbed down on it. Right from the start she was getting blown all over the sky. Then she was outside, pounding on the door. I put on my best look of sheer terror and sat frozen in my seat. Her partner, a guy with a voice like a tractor engine, told me how I should grab hold of the chair arm. Hang on to the chair arm and don't let go, and simultaneously hit the pad and open the door. Jara would take care of the rest. Right. I didn't answer. I sat there and shook my head violently no, not on your life, while the wind bumped her around on the hull of the taxi. She looked through the window at me, and I had to give her credit: She kept the contempt she must have been feeling out of her eyes. She continued to beat on the door, while I felt about as guilty as I ever have in my life. But I stayed put. Pushed back down into my seat, frozen with terror. Finally, she gave up.

'She won't let me in, Kav.' 'Try it one more time.' 'Miss, please. The higher you get, the more difficult this will become. You'll be perfectly safe.' Her eyes were a luminous blue, and they pleaded with me. Open up. Get up off your sorry ass and let me in. If this ended happily, I decided, I would find Jara, apologize to her, and buy her a drink.

Finally, they gave up. We were piling on too much altitude. Kav assured me they'd be back for me, and they pulled away as an airliner passed in the distance. Now all I needed was to get to thirty-one thousand kilometers and get rescued. I was hoping that Sky Traffic Operations was notifying Samuels that a vehicle with a hysterical woman on board was heading up out of control and would need help. I checked the doors and listened for the sound of escaping air. I didn't hear any. The taxi seemed as secure as the AI had promised. I checked the altitude gauge. It was marked up to three klicks, which wasn't much use in determining how high I'd gone. But I could estimate my rate of ascent, so it wasn't hard to calculate. I was maybe halfway to my target altitude when Traffic Control started talking to me again: 'Miss, are you okay?'

'Yes,' I said.

'We've alerted the Patrol and they'll be on the lookout for you.'

'Okay. Thanks.'

'Try to keep calm. Everything's going to be okay.'

So far, so good. I rode patiently up into black skies. The heating system couldn't keep up, so I wrapped myself in one of the blankets. The galactic haze was rising in the east. And we were burning fuel at a steady rate. When I thought I'd reached more or less the space-station altitude, I burned some more to level off. And I began looking for lights. The messages from groundside went on without a break. Lady in the taxi, it's okay. We're watching you. Samuels has been notified. Help is on the way. Please remain calm. Despite all that, the sky remained empty. My air had been leaking out, and I was beginning to feel it. I reached back for the mask and put it on. The flow of oxygen felt good. I don't think I'd been aware how foul the air had gotten. I began breathing regularly and sat back to await rescue. The ride up from the surface had consumed more fuel than I'd hoped, and I had maybe fifty minutes before the spike would shut down. I couldn't come close to accelerating to orbital speed, so once that happened I'd simply fall back to the ground. Well, as close to the ground as I would get before burning up. It was time to take matters into my own hands. I got on the radio. 'Samuels Ops,' I said, 'this is Janey Armitage.' I made up the name. 'I'm in a runaway taxi. Something went wrong with the spike, and it's taken me God knows where. Please help. I'll leave the transmit on so you can track me. Please hurry.' I looked out at the empty skies. 'The fuel gauge is near empty, and I don't know what will happen after that.' They would know, of course. And they answered immediately: 'Ms. Armitage, we heard you were coming. Patrol vehicle is already on its way. Should be there anytime.' Then, a gag: 'What kind of taxi are you riding anyhow?'

'Don't know,' I said. 'But I'll be glad to get out of here.'

'Just sit tight, ma'am. They'll be right there.' Moments later I saw lights. Coming from ahead. And another voice on the radio: 'Ms. Armitage, this is Orbital Delta. We see you, but we may have a problem.'

Chilling words, those. The guy wasn't even close to me yet. 'What's the problem?' I said.

'We're prepping a second vehicle to do the actual rescue. The taxi's too big for our cargo area. We can't fit it on board.'

I'd debated picking up a pressure suit in case we had to do a space walk, but I hadn't been able to see any way to explain its presence to the rescuers. Hiding the oxygen tank would be tough enough. If they figured out that I'd engineered the whole thing, they'd waste no time turning me over to the authorities. So I'd had to take my chances. 'How long before it gets here?'

'It won't be long.' ' How long?' 'Probably within the hour.'

'That's not going to work.'

'What's your situation?'

'Air's okay, but fuel looks like about forty-five minutes.'

'Okay. We'll have to do something else. You don't by any chance have a pressure suit over there, do you?'

'No.' I held back on the wisecrack.

'Okay. Sit tight for a minute while we figure it out.'

While they were figuring, a cluster of lights came out of the night behind me. The lights were higher than I was, and off to port. While I watched they grew brighter and blurred past. 'That Samuels?' I asked.