“Even if it can, how does that do us any good?” Tarbush picked up the halves of the compass. “To cut something apart, you have to place the rings on both sides of it. We’re inside the wall.”
“So we have to be tricky.” Chrissie stood up and went across to the closer of the ventilators. “Before I waste any time, let’s see if there’s any point in even trying.” She reached far inside the duct, her hand still holding its silver ring. She brought the other hand around in a semicircle, so that the monofilament met and cut into the perimeter of the duct. A crescent slice, carved from around the wall, silently slid free and splashed into the dark water at her feet.
“Principle established,” Chrissie said softly. “This will cut anything. Now for the tricky bit. I have to widen the hole more and more, and hope I can get one hand all the way to the outside.”
“Chrissie, let me do it.” Tarbush held out his hand. “My arm’s longer than yours, and stronger. I can reach outside easily.”
“You could — if you could get that great ham fist into the duct at all. Which you can’t. Stand clear, sweetheart. Keep your light focused on where I’m cutting. I don’t want to start slicing pieces off my own arm.”
She was moving one hand in a wider arc, excising from the wall a circular cone half a meter across. As it came free, Tarbush lifted it clear. “Hm. This is
“Deb specializes in tricky weapons. But now for the hardest part.” Chrissie had her arm in the enlarged hole up to the shoulder. “I can reach all the way through, but I have to enlarge the duct at the outside edge because unless I do that we have nothing useful. I’m going to work one hand outside, hold the ring against the outer wall, then slide both hands in unison to slice a cylindrical section. Don’t breathe.”
“I’m not sure it’s necessary to go to all that trouble.” Tarbush had been examining the conical wedge removed from the wall, and now he moved forward.
“We want to get out, don’t we?” Chrissie, her hands encumbered with the rings, could not easily push at him. She said sharply, “Get your hand out of the way. If you stand like that you’ll lose some fingers.”
“No. Back off, Chrissie. I need to try something.”
“Tarb!” But he was dangerously close to the monofilament, and she was forced to pull her hands clear. “What are you playing at?”
“Just watch. We haven’t used my strongman act for years, but let’s see how it plays on Limbo.” He stood in front of the ventilator pipe, took a deep breath, and punched his fist deep into the expanded hole that she had made. Chrissie heard nothing, but she saw a cloud of powder fly out around his arm.
“What did you do?”
Tarbush was pushing his shoulder and then his head into the hole. “Take a look at the piece you cut out.” He was grunting at some great effort, interspersing his words with gasps. “Push your finger in it — you can, it’s soft as cream cheese. This whole building must have an — integrated structure. Very strong when it’s complete, forms a single unit, but if any part is — destroyed — the rest is ready to crumble. We’re lucky that Deb’s — monofilament cutter didn’t bring — the whole place down on top of us. But we have to move fast — it’s self-repairing, and it’s starting to adjust. Going to be touch and go. One more push — hah! — I’m through! My arm’s outside. Now for the big push. Look out back there.”
He emerged from the hole, coated in gray powder and coughing and choking. “Should have closed my suit — up my nose — going to sneeze.”
He did, in a vast explosion of air loud enough to hear above the sounds of the storm. Then: “Follow me! Close your suit. It’s a mess outside.”
A mess inside, too. Chrissie imagined that she could see the room starting to sag and melt around her. She heard sounds — not the storm — from beyond the wall to the inner chamber. She closed her helmet and followed Tarbush. His head and torso had vanished, and his wriggling legs and kicking feet sent back prodigious clouds of disintegrated wall. The hole, barely wide enough for him, should have been easier for her. It wasn’t. Already it was starting to seal. She snaked through, fast as she could, and felt the closing wall begin to squeeze tighter. She gave a desperate kick and plunged headfirst forward. Her helmet cracked against a hard, slick surface.
“No time for acrobatics.” Tarbush was lifting her easily, setting her on her feet, shouting in her ear. “Can you stand up?”
Chrissie was about to shout back “Of course I can!” when the wind caught her. Inside the building she had never dreamed that it would be so strong. She felt herself sliding away sideways, down a wet and slippery incline. Only Tarbush’s invisible grip on her arm saved her from being blown away.
While she stood braced against him, the darkness was suddenly dispelled by strong light. She turned, and saw a green globe of luminescence drifting across the sky. Tarbush shouted, “They’ve got us,” and pulled her close. The globe lengthened to become a tall cylinder, a vortex column that stretched toward earth and sky. When it touched the ground it vanished. Chrissie felt her skin prickle.
“Not the aliens,” she screamed at Tarbush. “Some local sort of electrical activity caused by the storm. But the wind!” She could feel her feet slipping. “I can’t hold — it’s too strong.”
“Let yourself go. We can’t travel upwind, but if we can reach the forest—”
He released his hold. Chrissie went slithering and skating away into the darkness. She could see nothing. She felt nothing, too, until with a teeth-loosing jolt she hit the boundary fence. A moment later, Tarbush crashed into the mesh wall a few feet to her left.
“Damnation!” His howl of rage carried over the wind. “We have to try to drag ourselves around to the gate — but which way? I have no idea.”
“It may be guarded anyway.” Chrissie lay spreadeagled on the fence. “Can you shine your helmet light over here? I ought to have turned mine on before I started.”
“Wait a second.” After a moment’s silence, he shouted back. “The damn thing’s not working. I hit the fence face first. But if—”
Before he could finish, another ball of light began to form behind them. Tarbush turned, and saw every building of the Malacostracan encampment glowing with its own halo of electrical discharge. The area around the buildings was — thank God — deserted. While the globe was extending toward earth and sky, he turned back to Chrissie and realized what she was doing. Pinned in place by the wind, she had taken a short length of the monofilament thread and was stretching out to slice through the fence wires that she could reach. As she cut further, the section she lay against began to sag under her weight. In half a minute the left-hand side gaped open.
“Go on.” She inclined her head. “Through.”
“What about you?”
“Go!”
Tarbush obeyed her cry. As he passed through the hole in the fence he grabbed at the cut edge. It opened farther under his weight.
“You now!” he shouted, but she was already through and sailing past him. The bright circlet of the monofilament ring glittered with green light and spun away from her hand. He made an instinctive grab and missed. Good thing, too. The invisible thread could easily have severed his forearm. Forget it. Deb surely had more, and the little ring would be hard to find even in calm conditions.
As the wind caught him from behind and the green light vanished he ducked his head forward and followed Chrissie. He had little choice. Although it was no longer raining, trying to walk on the slick surface was like skating on ice. He managed to keep his feet, but he went wherever the wind pushed him.
Toward the forest, or away across many bare kilometers of rock? He could not tell where he was going, until something grabbed him at knee-level and tipped him over. He sprawled headlong forward into a tangle of tight-knit bushes. His visor was still open, and thorny twigs scratched his nose and mouth.
“Chrissie?” He shouted as loudly as he could.
“Right here.”
He could see nothing. He closed his helmet and began to crawl blindly in the direction of her voice. The suit protected his body, but the vegetation resisted his progress like something alive. While he was still struggling forward a faint light shone ahead. The lamp in Chrissie’s helmet? She had managed to get it working; but it was moving away from him.
“Stay there! I’m coming.”
