Clavell paused, looking down at the desert floor below him. Its patches of brown and tan and dull green spun lazily as he pivoted on the line. He sighed. Life was rarely so placid for him, even though he was a peacetime warrior. He longed for the simplicity of action. Long ago, Clavell had accepted the fact that peacetime was a time of boredom. If he did his job well, boredom was all he was going to get.
So peacetime it would be, because Clavell was, above all, a man who appreciated competence.
He would not, therefore, have appreciated the actions of the stock clerk at the Mountain High sporting goods store in Denver where he had purchased Falling Angels monofilament climbing cable.
The Army team was composed of military personnel, but was not directly sponsored by the government. Only in that way could Clavell claim any winnings as his own personal income, to split it with his team instead of with his ubiquitous Uncle Sugar.
The downside was that the Army wouldn't supply him with military equipment. Good civilian substitutes were generally available… but his request for 500 feet of climbing cable had reached Mountain High at a time when their stock was low. They didn't have four 500-foot lengths. What they had was three 500-foot lengths, and two 250- footers.
An enterprising clerk took it upon himself to epoxy together two 250s and repackage them.
And this was, although innocent, a major blunder. Falling Angels monofilament was made from single-crystal iron fibers bonded into an epoxy matrix, creating a thread of fantastic strength. The adhesive chosen by the clerk, while ordinarily enormously strong, simply reacted badly with the matrix, creating a weaker bond than that guaranteed by Altex Chemicals.
Altex had given very specific instructions, albeit in small print, not to use this particular cement on the variety of epoxy used to coat single-crystal cables.
When Clavell's Spider and weight hit the bond, the cable snapped.
He twisted in midair, wrenching his back as he flailed blindly for support. His left side slammed into a balcony railing, and the air woofed out of him. Pain exploded in his ribs as he rebounded, and he tumbled out toward the edge.
A frantically outflung hand found window-gutter: barely an inch and a half of shallow trench. Skin ripped on his fingers; his thumb felt broken; his lips and teeth and nose and toes banged against thick glass.
Hanging by his fingertips, face pressed to the glass, he blinked. The glass was slick and cold with spray from the waterfall. A capricious wind blinded him with freezing water. He blinked it away, unable to spare a hand to wipe with. He clung there, shoulder flaming, sight blurred, trying to remember the appropriate prayer.
He shivered, heart thundering in his chest.
Oh God, oh God would just have to do.
Alarm klaxons split the air. Wonderful. Dream Park to the rescue. With cameras. Decorated war-game hero makes idiot of self and team. Tape at eleven. For about one second he considered the advantages of simply letting go.
A hovercar hummed down from the roof, carrying a three-man emergency rescue team. Clavell, clinging to the gutter, watched its reflection in the glass and tried not to whimper. Desperately, he surveyed his options.
Below him were the immense raised stone letters that spelled out MIMIC. Much farther down, and to his right, cars from their maglev train lay like something assembled from an erector set, then destroyed in a fit of pique.
He gazed longingly at the hovercar. It represented safety, and life and the end of Army's chance in the California Voodoo Game.
All he had to do was nod, and they would take him in. They hovered there, faces masked with concern.
By God, he was going to finish this Game. He was going to win.
From the far side of the crease, Poule yelled, 'Major! Are you all right?'
'Fine,' Clavell lied blatantly. He panted, trying to catch his breath. What to do?
He tested the window. It was secure: no hope of getting in through there. He could just barely see Poule. The general had reached his target: an open bay for a missing modular capsule. The weather shield was down, but that wouldn't stop them.
He shifted his weight, trying to distribute the strain and keep his sore muscles from seizing up on him.
Nothing was broken. The right shoulder throbbed, but what the hell: one of the positive things about stark terror is its tendency to make almost any pain a minor annoyance. Come morning, the hounds of hell would romp in his joints, but tomorrow was another day.
He peered up along MIMIC's face. High above him were the concerned faces of his teammates. He wished he could wave at them. For that matter, he wished he could trade places with them.
A second aircar Cowles Security this time joined the first. They floated just far enough away to be out of camera view. It was still his show.
Thirty feet down and ten feet to his right was Poule, and the open bay.
Clavell began to inch toward his right along the gutter. There was a narrow, decorative ledge between the windows. It was just wide enough to rest his right toes upon, taking some of the weight off his fingers. He sobbed for breath, steadied himself, lifted his left foot. He pulled his belt knife with his left hand, reached down, and gingerly cut the laces. He slipped the shoe off and watched as it fell to the desert sand 130 long, long feet below.
The right foot required considerable contortions, but he finally managed to shed the second shoe. Toes sufficed to remove socks.
And then he was ready.
His every movement was coldly deliberate. There was no room for another error.
He wiggled his toes. They felt strong. Limber. It had been years since he had last free-climbed, but since boyhood, mountaineering had been a favorite hobby. He remembered years in Yellowstone National Park, climbing barefoot, his toes hardened through grueling summers under the tutelage of a favorite uncle.
Now his uncle was with him again.
'Terry, you've got the easy part. Goin' down's a cinch, long as you've got light. Here's what you do. Wall's your friend. Press into it, like a lizard. Every inch of yourself you get against it, that's another inch you don 't have to hold up.
'Reach out. Make sure you've got a good grip. Both hands, see…''
He had a good grip. The rain gutters and the weather etching on MIMIC's surface meant that there were a fair number of grips for hands and feet or, more accurately, fingers and toes.
All right. He reached out and down with his right foot, feeling along the wall for a grip. One thing about man-made buildings: they tended to be too regular, with too few handholds, but those holds were reliable. The letters were raised almost eighteen inches away from the building wall, enough room for a decent grip. His toes found the groove of the M and braced themselves. All right. The diagonal line slid slowly to the right, and he eased himself into it, as carefully as he had ever done anything in his life. He braced a knee to either side of it and slid as if it were a fireman's pole glued to the side of a cliff. He gasped as he touched the bottom of the notch, and braced himself there for a moment.
His knees hugged stone outcropping, his thighs already burning. All right. All right.
Slowly he released his death grip. Hugging the wall, he leaned carefully over to the opposite stroke. The last, vertical stroke had a little horizontal foot. His toes clawed for purchase on the cold stone, and he pushed himself across.
There was a two-foot gap between the M and the I stroke. Clavell braced himself between the letters, muscles cracking with the effort, sweat streaming down his face. Then he was wedged between the letters, heart hammering in his chest. He risked a glance at the desert floor beneath him.
And looked right back up. He felt dizzy and weak. He had to focus. All right. He stretched out with his right hand until he was braced between the bottom of the M and the I. Then he gingerly shifted himself across. Easy. Forget about the fall. There was plenty of room, right? He reached up and around, gripping the I. It was weathered, lots of gripping points for toes and fingers, and the gap between I and the next M was no farther. His wonderful Falling Angels gloves were designed to grip cable. They were absolutely nonslip, and they gave him a grip on the weathered stone that an octopus would envy. He loved those gloves. He planned to marry or, at the very least, have carnal knowledge of them as soon as his toes touched Mother Earth again.
The little crossbar on the bottom of the I gave him a chance to rest. He heaved for breath, feeling pitifully
