“She can't climb down to us.”
Kyle jumped up and started pacing again. “Can I climb to her? Cut her loose?”
“It's a hundred sixty klicks and a bit.” Henry cocked an eyebrow. Both men were quiet for long moments. “We have ten days.”
“Damn. No, it won't work. She'll run out of air on the way down.”
“She can plug into the vines. She just can't do that with the suit she's wearing. We'll have to modify a suit and bring it to her.”
It had stopped sounding impossible. A hundred sixty kilometers straight up, in low and dwindling gravity...
“It will be a hard climb. I'll go.”
“We'll both go,” Henry said.
Climbing with Henry would be slow . “Can you to stay in communications and direct the climb?”
“Jason can direct. I'm going.” Henry stared up at the huge telescope. “I still pass my physical every year. I know more about what might work out there than you do. You need me. So does Lark. And two people have a better chance of getting there than one. What if you get out there alone and you get tired or hurt?”
“I'm in good shape!” Kyle protested. “I work out every day.” He'd be fifty in ten weeks.
“It's going to take more than physical conditioning to save Lark.” Henry didn't have to say she was more likely to listen to him than to Kyle.
“It's going to be one hell of a climb. It will take endurance.”
“And brains.”
Kyle sighed. “Okay. So I have endurance, and you have brains. Is that it?”
“No, I have more experience in the Styx.”
“I'm in better shape.”
Henry didn't even seem to hear him—he was looking up through an observatory window, where the interworld forest floated above them.
Suriyah fought them, convinced both men were crazy. “You will die out there! Find another way. That vine is alive—I tell you it's alive. It suffers us to study it, but it will not let you climb it.” She stood over the little altar she kept in a corner of the galley and recited a prayer to Kali and burned sandalwood incense. Afterwards, she refused to talk to them for hours.
Lark was silent when Kyle said he was coming to get her. “I'm bringing Henry,” he added.
“See you in a few days.” She turned off the video abruptly, freezing her picture with a blank expression on her face. He couldn't tell if she was happy he was coming for her, or what she thought about Henry coming along.
Kyle turned off the frozen picture.
Preparing took two long days, and many conversations back and forth between Little Siberia and Christy Base. Kyle was tired and frustrated. Lark was quiet for hours at a time. Since the video was almost never on, he couldn't really tell how she was doing.
“There's more damn gadgets in this suit than any sane engineer would've designed,” Henry complained.
Kyle stepped back to check the way the suit fit on Henry. It was an Adventurer class suit, left behind after the initial run of programs broadcast from Pluto had lost ratings in favor of faster and more deadly endeavors. Originally made for someone with wider shoulders than Henry's, it fit well otherwise. The ankles were baggy. Considering the work they did, the suits were a miracle. But they were still two inches thick everywhere, full of sensors and smart chips and wires and air tubes. Henry looked bulky and awkward.
“It'll do. You might be grateful for the help.”
“I will not .” Henry hated using the adventure suits. “Damn parasites. People who won't go into the world on their own want to ride our dangers. Let ‘em make their own dangers.”
It had been Paul's idea.
Kyle had been fetching something for Henry when he passed Paul in a hallway. The boy had looked up and said, “You're using the Tourist-class suits, right? Let's broadcast it! It'll be like Real Space Dangers when they saved the crew of the Orpheus . You'll be heroes!”
Kyle remembered the river rafting show where Han Davidson had been sucked into a sinkhole. Endless views of dark, swirling water while Davidson drowned. Kyle mumbled something noncommittal and kept right on going to find the saw blade he was looking for.
Paul interpreted that as assent, and arranged for network coverage before Kyle had a chance to talk to Henry. They would have taken the tourist equipment anyway. The suits had pockets and belts and straps to let the men take their fill of tools, and they had been designed for a thin atmosphere. They were flexible, versatile. The equipment was outdated compared to current adventure suits, and of course there were too many readouts and controls, but far better for this venture than the standard surface suits.
Audience thirst for real adventure shows was high; live rescue of a lost maiden would be popular. Now that the networks knew about the rescue, and the suits, they threatened to refuse access to the communications gear if they didn't get to broadcast. Henry wanted to take the suits anyway, and let the networks sue them. Kyle pointed out that he needed to publish to survive, and he needed the networks for that. Besides, money from the networks beat a lawsuit. Jason had the common sense to improve Paul's original wide-open offer and bargain real money for Henry, Lark, and Kyle, as well as support pay for the other people living in Little Siberia.
“When we get back, Paul gets assigned kitchen duty for three years,” Henry said.
