Falling Free Read online

  "Siggy in Airsystems Maintenance asked me if there were any more holovids in the Ninja of the Twin Stars series," Silver said promptly. "He's up to Number 7, but he's missing 4 and 5."

  "Ah," said Ti. "Now, that was decent entertainment. Did you watch them yourself?"

  "Yes." Silver wrinkled her nose "But I'm not sure—the people in them did such horrible things to one another—they are fiction, you say?"

  "Well, yes."

  "That's a relief."

  "Yes, but what would you like for yourself?" he persisted. "I'm not risking reprimand to gratify Siggy, whoever he is. Siggy doesn't have your"—he sighed in remembered pleasure—"dear double-jointed hips."

  Silver fanned out the three new book cards in her lower right hand. "More, please, sir."

  "If it's dreck you want"—he captured each of her hands in turn and kissed their palms—"it's dreck you shall have. Uh, oh, here comes my fearless captain." Ti hastily straightened his shuttle pilot's uniform, turned up the light level, and picked up his report panel as an airseal door at the far end of the loading bay swished open. "He hates being saddled with junior jumpers. Tadpoles, he calls us. I think he's uncomfortable because on my jumpship, I'd outrank him. Still, better not give the old guy something to pick on."

  Silver made the book cards disappear into her work bag and took up the pose of an idle bystander as Captain Durrance, the shuttle commander, floated into the control booth.

  "Snap it up, Ti, we've had a change of itinerary," said Captain Durrance.

  "Yes, sir. What's up?"

  "We're wanted downside."

  "Hell," Ti swore mildly. "What a pain. I had a hot date lined—er"—his eye fell on Silver—"was supposed to meet a friend for dinner tonight at the transfer station."

  "Fine," said Captain Durrance, ironically unsympathetic. "File a complaint with Employee Relations —your work schedule is interfering with your love life. Maybe they can arrange that you not have a work schedule."

  Ti took the hint and moved hastily out to continue his duties, as a Habitat technician arrived to take over the loading bay control booth.

  Silver made herself small in a corner, frozen in horror and confusion. At the transfer station, Tony and Claire had planned to stow away on a jumpship for Orient IV, get beyond the reach of GalacTech, find work when they got there; a horribly risky plan, in Silver's estimation, a measure of their desperation. Claire had been terrified, but at last persuaded by Tony's plan of carefully thought out stages. At least, the first stages had been carefully thought out; they had seemed to get vaguer, farther away from Rodeo and home. They had not planned on a downside detour in any version.

  Tony and Claire had surely hidden themselves by now in the shuttle's cargo bay. There was no way for Silver to warn them—should she betray them to save them? The ensuing uproar was guaranteed to be ghastly—her dismay wrapped like a steel band around her chest, constricting breathing, constricting speech.

  She watched on the control booth's vid display in miserable paralysis as the shuttle kicked away from the Habitat and began to drop toward Rodeo's swirling atmosphere.

  Chapter Four

  The dim cargo bay seemed to groan all around Claire as deceleration strained its structure. Buffeting, accompanied by a hissing whistle, vibrated through the shuttle's metal skin.

  "What's wrong?" gasped Claire. She released an anchoring hand upon the plastic crate behind which they had hidden to double her grasp of Andy and hold him closer. "Are we sideswiping something? What's that funny noise?"

  Tony hurriedly licked a finger and held it out. "No draft to speak of." He swallowed, testing his Eustachian tubes. "We're not depressurizing." Yet the whistle was rising.

  Two mechanical ka-chunks, one after the other, that were nothing at all like the familiar thump and click of a hatch seal seating itself properly, shot terror through Claire. The deceleration went on and on, much too long, confused by a strange new vector of thrust that seemed to emanate from the shuttle's ventral side. The side of the cargo bay to which the crates were anchored seemed to push against her. She nervously put her back to it, cushioning Andy upon her belly.

  The baby's eyes were round, his mouth an echoing 'o' of bewilderment. No, please, don't start crying! She dared not release the cry locked in her own throat; it would set him off like a siren. "Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man," Claire choked. "Microwave a cake as fast as you can . . ." She tickled his cheek, flicking her eyes at Tony in mute appeal.

  Tony's face was white. "Claire—I think this shuttle's going downside! I bet those bangs were the airfoils deploying."

  "Oh, no! Can't be. Silver checked the schedule—"

  "It looks like Silver made a big mistake."

  "I checked it too. This shuttle was supposed to be picking up a load of stuff at the transfer station, then going downside."

  "Then you both made a big mistake." Tony's voice was harsh and shaking, anger masking fear.

  Oh, help, don't yell at me—if I don't stay calm, neither will Andy—this wasn't my idea. . . .

  Tony rolled over on his stomach and levered his body away from the thrusting surface of the—the floor, downsiders called the direction from which the vector of gravitational force came—and crept to the nearest window, pulling himself alongside it. The light that poured through it was taking on a strange diffuse quality, diminishing. "It's all white—Claire, I think we must be entering a cloud!"

  Claire had watched clouds from orbit above for hours, as they slowly billowed in the convection of Rodeo's atmosphere. They had always seemed massive as moons. She longed to go look.

  Andy was clutching her blue T-shirt. She rolled over, as Tony had, palms to the surface, and pushed up. Andy, turning his head toward his father, reached out with his upper hands and tried to shove off from Claire with his lowers. The floor leaped up and smacked him.

  For a moment he was too stunned to howl. Then his little mouth went from round to square and poured out the vibrating scream of true pain. The sound knifed through every nerve in Claire's body.

  Tony too jerked at the noise, and scrambled down from the window and back toward them. "Why did you drop him? What do you think you're doing? Oh, make him be quiet, quick!"

  Claire rolled onto her back again, pulling Andy onto the elastic softness of her abdomen, and patted and kissed him frantically. The timbre of his screams began to change from the frightening high-pitched cry of pain to the less piercing bellows of indignation, but the volume was just as loud.

  "They'll hear him all the way up in the pilot's compartment!" Tony hissed in anguish. "Do something!"

  "I'm trying," Claire hissed back. Her hands shook. She tried to push Andy's head toward her breast, standard comfort, but he turned his head away and screamed louder. Fortunately, the sound of the atmosphere rushing over the shuttle's skin had risen to a deafening thunder. By the time the noise peaked and faded, Andy's cries had become whimpering hiccups. He rubbed his face, slimy with tears and mucous, mournfully against Claire's T-shirt. His weight on Claire's stomach and diaphragm half-stopped her breath, but she dared not lay him down.

  Another set of clunks reverberated through the shuttle. The engines' vibrations changed their pitch, and Claire was plucked this way and that by changing acceleration vectors, none as strong as the one emanating from the floor. She spared two hands from comforting Andy to brace herself against the plastic crates.

  Tony lay beside them, biting his lips in helpless anxiety. "We must be coming down to land on the surface."

  Claire nodded. "At one of the shuttleports. There'll be people there —downsiders—maybe we can tell them we got trapped aboard this shuttle by accident. Maybe," she added hopefully, "they'll send us right back up home."

  Tony's right upper hand clenched. "No! We can't give up now! We'd never get another chance!"

  "But what else can we do?"

  "We'll sneak off this ship and hide, until we can get on another one, one that's going to the transfer station." His voice turned
earnest with urgent pleading as a puff of dismay escaped Claire's parted lips. "We did it once, we can do it again."

  She shook her head in doubt. Further argument was interrupted by a startling series of thumps that shook the whole ship and then blended into a low continuous rumble. The light falling through the window shifted its beam around the cargo bay as the shuttle landed, taxied, and turned. Then it winked out, the cargo bay dimmed, and the engines whined to an equally startling silence.

  Claire cautiously unbraced herself. Of all the acceleration vectors, only one remained. Isolated, it became overwhelming.

  Gravity. Silent, implacable, it pressed against her back—she struggled with a nasty illusion that it might suddenly cease, and the thrust it imparted slam her into the ceiling above, smashing Andy between. In an accompanying optical illusion, the whole cargo bay seemed to be chugging in a slow circle around her. She closed her eyes in self-defense.

  Tony's hand tightened in warning on her left lower wrist. She looked up and froze as the outside cargo bay door at the forward end of the compartment slid open.

  A pair of downsiders wearing company maintenance coveralls entered. The access door in the center of the shuttle's fuselage dilated, and Ti the shuttle copilot stuck his head through.

  "Hi, guys. What's the big rush-rush?"

  "We're supposed to have this bird turned around and reloaded in an hour, that's what," replied the maintenance man. "You have just time to pee and eat lunch."

  "What's the cargo? I haven't seen this much hopping around since the last medical emergency."

  "Equipment and supplies for some sort of show they're supposed to be putting on up at your Habitat for the Vice President of Operations."

  "That's not till next week."

  The maintenance man snickered. "That's what everybody thought. The VP just flew in a week early on her private courier, with a whole commando squad of accountants. Seems she likes surprise inspections. Management, naturally, is overjoyed."

  "Don't laugh too soon," Ti warned. "Management has ways of sharing their joy with the rest of us."

  "Don't I know it," the maintenance man groaned. "C'mon, c'mon, you're blocking the door . . ." The three of them clattered forward.

  "Now," whispered Tony, with a nod at the open cargo bay door.

  Claire rolled to her side and laid Andy gently on the deck. His face crumpled, working up to a cry. Claire quickly rolled onto her palms, tested her balance. Her right lower arm seemed to be the one she could most easily spare. She scooped Andy back up one-handed and held him under her torso.

  Plastered against the planet-ward side of the cargo bay by the dreadful gravity, she began a three-handed crawl toward the door. Andy's weight pulled at her arm as though a strong spring were drawing him to the floor, and his head bobbed backwards at an alarming angle. Claire inched her palm up under his head to support it, painfully awkward for her arm.

  Beside her, Tony too achieved a three-handed stance. With his free hand he jerked the cord to their pack of supplies. The pack, stuck to the downside surface as if by suction, didn't budge.

  "Shit," Tony swore under his breath. He swarmed over the pack, gripped and lifted it, but it was too bulky to carry under his belly. "Double-shit."

  "Can we give up yet?" Claire asked in a tiny voice, knowing the answer.

  "No!" He grabbed the pack backwards over both shoulders with his upper hands and rocked forward violently. It came up and balanced precariously on his back. He kept his left upper hand on it to steady it and hopped forward on his right, his lower palms shuffling along under his hips. "I got it, go, go!"

  The shuttle was parked in a cavernous hangar, a vast dim gulf of space roofed by girders. The girders behind the overhead lights would have been an excellent hiding place, if only one could swoop up there. But everything not rigidly fastened was doomed to fly to the one side of the room only, and stick there until forcibly removed. There was a lopsided fascination to it. . . .

  "Oh . . ." Claire hesitated. Leading from the hatch to the hangar floor was a kind of corrugated ramp. Clearly, it was designed to break down the dangerous fight with the omnipresent gravity into little manageable increments. "Stairs." Claire paused, head down. Her blood seemed to pool dizzyingly in her face. She gulped.

  "Don't stop," Tony gasped pleadingly behind her, then gulped himself.

  "Uh . . . uh . . ." In a moment of inspiration, Claire turned around and began to back down, her free lower palm slapping the metal treads with each hop. It was still uncomfortable, but at least possible. Tony followed.

  "Where now?" Claire panted when they reached the bottom.

  Tony pointed with his chin. "Hide in that jumble of equipment over there, for now. We daren't get too far from the shuttles."

  They scuttled along over the downside surface of the hangar. Claire's hands quickly became smudged with oil and dirt, a psychological irritation as fierce as an unscratchable itch; she felt she might gladly risk death for a chance to wash them. Claire remembered watching beads of condensed humidity creeping by capillarity across surfaces in the Habitat, until she'd smeared them to oblivion with her dry-rag, just as she and Tony crept now.

  As they reached the area where some pieces of heavy equipment were parked, a loader rolled into the hangar and a dozen coveralled men and women jumped off it and began swarming over the shuttle, organized confusion. Claire was glad for their noise, for Andy was still emitting an occasional whimper. Fearfully, she watched the maintenance crew through the metal arms of the machinery. How late was too late to surrender?

  * * *

  Leo, half-suited-up in the equipment locker, glanced up anxiously as Pramod swooped across the room to fetch up gracefully beside him.

  "Did you find Tony?" Leo asked. "As gang foreman, he's supposed to be leading this parade. I'm only supposed to be watching."

  Pramod shook his head. "He's not in any of the usual places, sir."

  Leo hissed under his breath, not quite swearing. "He should've answered his page by now." He drifted to the plexiport.

  Outside in the vacuum, a small pusher was just depositing the last of the sections for the shell of the new hydroponics bay in their carefully arranged constellation. It was to be built before the Operations Vice President's eyes by the quaddies. So much for Leo's faint hope that screw-ups and delays in other departments might cover those in his own. It was time for his welding crew to make its debut.

  "All right, Pramod, get suited up. You'll take over Tony's position, and Bobbi from Gang B will take yours." Leo hurried on before the startled look in Pramod's eyes could turn to stage fright. "It's nothing you haven't practiced a dozen times. And if you have the least doubts about the quality or safety of any procedure, I'll be right there. Reality first—you people are going to be living in the structure you build today long after Vice President Apmad and her traveling circus are gone. I guarantee she'll have more respect for a job done right, however slowly, than for a piece of slap-dash fakery."

  For God's sake make it look smooth, Van Atta had instructed Leo urgently, earlier. Keep to the schedule, no matter what—we'll fix the problems later, after she's gone. We're supposed to be making these chimps seem cost-effective.

  "You don't have to try to seem to be anything but what you are," Leo told Pramod. "You are efficient—and you are good. Instructing you all has been one of the great unexpected pleasures of my career. Be off, now; I'll catch up with you shortly."

  Pramod sped away to find Bobbi. Leo frowned briefly to himself, then floated up the length of the locker room to the comconsole terminal at the end.

  He keyed in his ID. "Page," he instructed it. "Dr. Sondra Yei." At the same moment a message square in the corner of the vid began to blink with his own name, and a number. "Cancel that instruction."

  He punched up the number and raised his brows in surprise as Dr. Yei's face appeared on his vid. "Sondra! I was just about to call you. Do you know where Claire is?"

  "How odd. I was calling to ask you if you
knew where I could reach Tony."

  "Oh?" said Leo, in a voice suddenly drained to neutrality. "Why?"

  "Because I can't find her anywhere, and I thought Tony might know where she is. She's supposed to be giving a demonstration of child care techniques in free fall to Vice President Apmad after lunch."

  "Is, um"—Leo swallowed—"Andy at the crèche, or with Claire, do you know?"

  "With Claire, of course."

  "Ah."

  "Leo . . ." Dr. Yei's attention sharpened, her lips pursed. "Do you know something I don't?"

  "Ah . . ." He eyed her. "I know Tony has been unusually inattentive at work for the last week. I might even say —depressed, except that's supposed to be your department, eh? Not his usual cheerful self, anyway." A knot of unease, tightening in Leo's stomach, gave his tongue an unaccustomed edge. "You, ah, got any concerns that you may have forgotten to share with me, lady?"

  Her lips thinned, but she ignored the bait. "Schedules have been moved up in all departments, you know. Claire received her new reproduction assignment. It didn't include Tony."

  "Reproduction assignment? You mean, having a baby?" Leo could feel his face flushing. Somewhere within him, a long-controlled steam pressure began to build. "Do you hide what you're really doing from yourselves with those weasel-words, too? And here I thought the propaganda was just for us peons." Yei started to speak, but Leo overrode her, bursting out, "Good God! Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees—M.S., M.D., Ph.D. . . ."

  Yei's face darkened; her accent grew clipped. "An engineer with romance in his soul? Now I've seen everything. Don't get carried away with your scenario, Mr. Graf. Tony and Claire were assigned to each other in the first place by the exact same system, and if certain people had been willing to abide by my original timetable, this problem could have been avoided. I fail to see the point of paying for an expert and then blithely ignoring her advice, really I do. Engineers . . . !"