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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

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As my father used to say, Panicking in a crisis is the worst thing you can do. Doing absolutely nothing is second worst.

I had my phone out again almost before my stunned brain fully grasped the situation I was in. I punched in Selene’s number and held the phone to my ear, mentally crossing every finger I had.

A waste of effort. No signal, no connection, no Selene. The booster had been attached to the rope, and whoever had made off with the rope had obviously taken the booster along with it.

Either the portal metal was completely blocking my attempt, or the metal plus my distance from Bilswift plus Bilswift’s semirural status was doing so.

But right now none of that mattered. What mattered was finding a way out of here, and finding that way fast.

Because the rope hadn’t just pulled itself out of the receiver module. Someone was out there, someone who didn’t want anyone poking around the portal, and I doubted that person would be satisfied with just cutting off my escape. If he wasn’t still up there preparing to shoot at me, it was because he’d headed out to find allies or maybe a couple of sticks of explosives.

Or else he’d simply gone for something to cover the hatchway with so he could shovel on enough dirt to make the portal my tomb.

Selene might be able to rescue me. She certainly knew where I’d been, and when I failed to show up at the shuttle she would know something was wrong and come straight here.

But if my playmate knew about me, he surely also knew about her. I had to get out of here before he turned his attention in that direction.

The full-range Icarus-type portals that could connect to any other similar portal had receiver modules that were forty meters across. The receivers for the smaller, dyad-linked Gemini types like the one I was currently stuck in were only twenty meters across. A small favor, but at this point I would take all of those I could get.

I gazed up at the distant rectangle of muted light, running through the list of my assets. A reasonably well-stocked tool kit, at least for small, close-in work; a length of rope more than long enough to reach up to the hatch; a pair of ascenders if I ever got that rope anchored somewhere; three collapsible grappling hooks of different sizes; a collapsible shovel; a light; an info pad; a set of night-scope goggles; a plasmic; a knife; a currently useless phone; and the clothes on my back. Not exactly a sterling selection.

On the other hand, the portal also had a few resources of its own. There were the equipment bay access covers, which while thin seemed pretty sturdy, plus all of the equipment itself. I hadn’t yet seen anything that might be useful in this situation, but there were still a few bays I hadn’t looked into yet. And, of course, there was the mesh and the cables that the mesh was securing.

I shifted my gaze to the smooth curve of the sphere. There were access hatches like the one at the top of my prison all around the receiver module, each of which could go inward or outward on command. The controls for switching back and forth between inside and outside were probably as dead as everything else, but I’d already seen that I could still pop the releases and let gravity pull the hatches the rest of the way open. Normally, an open hatch would meld itself to the rest of the hull on the side it had been opened to, either inside or outside, flowing into it somehow and leaving no trace of itself until it was keyed to reclose.

But I’d also already seen that that melding wasn’t working. So the question was, how much of a lip would an open but unmelded hatch create between itself and the dirt outside?

Easy enough to find out. I looked around, located one of the hatches a little ways up the module’s curve, and went over and keyed it.

Unfortunately, unlike the hatch high above me, Alainn’s gravity was merely holding this one in place. It took several minutes, some creative use of my Proteus driver between the cracked hatch and the hull, and a good part of my repertoire of curses before I finally got it all the way open.

The dirt behind it had a pungent odor to it, the kind of aroma that tourist brochures called exotic and most visitors probably blocked out of their consciousness after the first half hour. Selene could probably have told me which nutrients were in the soil, their relative proportions, and possibly even which local creatures had died to enrich the dirt for its role in the great circle of life.

I didn’t care about any of that. What I cared about was that the open hatch and hull created a lip nearly twenty centimeters wide.

I had found my stairway.

I looked up again. Or rather, I corrected myself somberly, I’d found a stairway to the sphere’s midpoint. The rest of the trip upward would require me to hang from some kind of rope-and-grappling-hook gizmo that I was going to have to invent on the spot.

But at least now I had a plan. Climbing onto the hatch lip, I reached up to the next hatch in line and keyed it open.

The first few were relatively easy. But as the hull’s curve started to shift more toward vertical I discovered that the hatch lip alone didn’t give me sufficient standing room to let me safely reach the next one up the line. Working my way back down to the bottom of the sphere, I returned to the launch module and picked out half a dozen equipment bay covers. If I could jam one of them into the soil behind each successive lip—and if it was strong enough to carry my weight—it would provide a more secure platform for me to work from.

And as long as I was in there anyway, I cut out a few sections of mesh and folded them into my backpack. If I could jam two of the grappling hooks into the dirt behind a close pair of the soon-to-be overhead hatchways, maybe I could string the mesh between them in a sort of work hammock while I leaned over and did the same with the third grappler or possibly the shovel.

Of course, that would leave me sitting or kneeling on a mesh whose tensile strength I didn’t know, connected to grappling hooks stuck into dirt of questionable density and sturdiness, leaning out over ten or more meters of open space. I could only hope that I would come up with a better plan by the time I needed it.

Forty minutes later, I’d reached the vertical section of the sphere. From this point on I would be working above my head.

And I hadn’t come up with a better plan.

I opened the midpoint hatchway, leaning out of the way as it flopped inward to land with a muffled clang along the inner hull. From this point on, the hatches wouldn’t lie flat, but would instead hang vertically: small angles at first, then increasingly larger ones as I went up the hull. Could I use that fact to help with my climb? Maybe wrap the mesh around it instead of one of the grappling hooks?

Idly, I poked at the dirt behind the opening, trying to envision the engineering that would be required. Maybe I could push the hatch closed again after I’d wrapped the mesh around it, making a much more secure anchor than a grapple in dirt.

It would at least be worth experimenting with. I would work an access panel into the dirt in this hatchway, I decided, then stand on it and see what I could do with the next one up. Bracing myself, I set the edge of the panel against the top of the lip and started wiggling it into the dirt.

I’d gotten the metal maybe eight centimeters in when all resistance suddenly disappeared, sending me slamming chest-first into the side of the sphere, a cascade of dirt exploding through the opening and pouring down my chest and legs. I grabbed at the lip for balance, squeezing my eyes shut against the accompanying cloud of dust, my fingers digging easily into the dirt outside the portal. I waited until the dirt flow had finished and the dust was starting to settle, then carefully opened my eyes.

The dirt wall that had been behind every other hatch I’d opened today was gone. In its place—

In its place was open air. Musty, dusty air, but air.

Still gripping the hatchway lip, I fumbled my light from its belt anchor and held it up to the opening. No mistake; the dirt that had been resting against the hatch was now lying at the bottom of the sphere. In fact, the nearest wall of dirt was now nearly a meter away from me.

I stared into the gap for a few seconds, my brain trying to make sense of it all. It was erosion, clearly, some kind of strange process that had leached the soil away from the portal and left this gap.

Only I couldn’t think of what that process could possibly have been.

Water? But why here and not farther down the portal’s curve? Had there once been a subterranean river through here that had dissolved the dirt but only to this depth? I leaned into the hole and pointed my light upward.

Whatever kind of river had done this, it had clearly been very good at its job. As far as I could tell the empty section ran all the way up to ground level.

I still had no idea what combination of environmental factors could have done this. But right now, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I could climb through the hatchway into the open void and continue my climbing on the outside of the sphere. All the fancy meshwork I’d envisioned, all the anchoring questions, especially all the risk of falling to my death—all of that was gone.

At least until I reached the point where the erosion zone terminated and the ground once again closed over the portal. But I was more than happy to save that bridge until I reached it. Easing myself through the hatchway, making sure my rope coil and backpack didn’t get caught on the edge, I climbed into the musty air and started up.

I’d hoped the gap would run at least halfway up the side of the receiver module. I’d assumed it would end far sooner than that, maybe only after two or three hatchways.

Either Alainn had the Spiral’s strangest erosion patterns, or the universe was just in a playful mood today. I was nearly to the top of the sphere, within a few meters of ground level, when I finally hit the end of the open area.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of opening the highest hatchway I could reach and trying to swing a grappler through my original hatchway and hook it on something solid. But that was an iffy proposition at best, especially with the opening in the middle of a clearing with nothing nearby but a few tall bushes. More important, at this point I was ready to trade in a fast uncertainty for a long, tiring, dirty certainty.

Hooking one leg over the nearest open hatchway, I put on my night-scope goggles to shield my eyes. Then, unfolding my shovel, I started digging.

* * *

My first job was to get through a network of tiny root strands that seemed to underlie the thick layer of dirt, probably the reason that part of the surface had stayed suspended over the emptiness all these centuries instead of simply collapsing into the void beneath me. As I continued upward I found that the same tiny threads permeated the whole mass. There wasn’t any connection I could see with the ground cover roots, and the threads didn’t seem clustered beneath any of the bushes I remembered being near the portal opening. My best guess was that they were some kind of subroot system coming from some or all of the trees grouped around the clearing’s edges.

I’d never dug upward before, and it turned out to be a rather mixed experience. On the plus side, I didn’t have to lift each shovelful a meter or more up a gravity well to wherever was convenient for dumping it. On the minus side, all the dirt I wasn’t having to lift was pouring squarely on top of my head and shoulders, sifting down my collar and occasionally into my nose and mouth. Still, my progress was much faster than it would have been digging down from the other side.

And with my unknown opponent lurking somewhere out there, time was way more important than cleanliness.

I’d estimated the layer of dirt to be about three meters. In the end, it turned out to be only about two.

The worst part of the experience, as it turned out, was having to worm my way out the narrow hole I’d dug. Not only was the dirt smelly and filled with slimy maggot-like creatures, but all my fears about falling to the bottom of the receiver module were now rushing back full force. It was only an assumption that the root network that had held up the soil this long would do the same for me, especially after I’d poked a human-sized hole through it. It wouldn’t be a straight-line fall like an interior one would have been, but I still would hit the outer surface of the sphere pretty hard on my way down.

Unless, of course, my sliding path somehow diverted me through one of the hatchways I’d opened, which would then lead directly to that more bone-crushing fall I’d originally worried about.

But once again, the universe seemed to be on my side. I clawed my way to the surface, pushing through the ground cover—the little vines were actually rather fragrant where my shovel had cut through them—and pulled myself onto open ground.

I’d made it.

My muscles wanted to rest. My lungs wanted to enjoy the feeling of dust-free air. But my brain was in charge, and it knew I needed to get the hell out of here before my rope-stealing opponent came back to wreak whatever mischief he had planned.

My breakthrough into the open air had created a few reasonably sized pieces of sod with the viny ground cover still attached. I took a few minutes to pull the portal mesh pieces I’d cut out of my backpack, weave the ends into the vines at the edges of the hole, and arrange the sod pieces on top as best as possible. If I ever had to get out of the portal a second time, there was no point in showing potential enemies how I’d done it the first time.

The rope and booster were nowhere in sight. I spent a couple of minutes searching through the nearby woods for them without success before deciding I had better things to do right now. Brushing off the worst of the dirt as I went, I headed for the tree and the bridge.

* * *

After the ordeal I’d just been through getting out of the portal, the trip back to the car was almost literally a walk in the park. I climbed up the anchor tree, walked the short distance along the footbridge, then climbed back down to where I’d parked the rental. I paused there to partially undress and shake out the worst of the dirt that had collected in my shirt during the dig. I got my clothes settled again and headed back to Bilswift.

My ordeal in the portal had ended up eating up most of the day, leaving it too late for me to go back to the Ruth and shower before Selene was due to arrive. I drove instead directly to the shuttle area, and was sitting in the car watching as the craft came in for an impressively smooth landing. I waited until she emerged, then got out of the car and waved her over.

She was still too far away for me to read her pupils when the sudden twitch in her step showed that she’d spotted the dirt stains on my face and clothing. “Gregory?” she called.

“I’m okay,” I assured her, opening the door for her. “Come on, let’s get back to the ship. I’m dying to tell you about my day.”

It wasn’t very far back to our usual spaceport parking spot, but with the evening traffic the drive was long enough for me to run through the highlights. “It’s a shame he didn’t just cut the rope,” she commented after I’d finished. “You’d have heard the impact as it fell into the portal, and might have gotten a glimpse of him.”

“Not exactly the top possible silver lining on my list,” I said.

“I also might have been able to get his scent off of it.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t thought about that possibility. “Yes. Though given how often the suspects around here wear gloves that might or might not have done us much good.”

“True.”

She was silent as I eased the car into its space. “Gregory . . . have you noticed how our list of suspects keeps shrinking?”

“Not just shrinking, but dying,” I agreed sourly. “Lukki, Willie, the Javersin brothers, and now Braun. Looks like the only ones left are Galfvi, Kiolven and Venikel, Detective-Sergeant Kreega, and Detective-Lieutenant Sovelli.”

“And Badgeman Zilor.” Selene hesitated. “And Tirano.”

I winced at the sudden sadness in her pupils. “He could still be mostly innocent,” I reminded her. “We know from Zilor what a manipulative SOB Galfvi is. Someone with Tirano’s naïveté could easily have been talked into one of his schemes.”

Selene shook her head. “I know you’re trying to make me feel better,” she said. “And I do appreciate it. But no. I’d hoped we could stand in for his parents, at least a little. Teach him ethics and morals, give him guidance. But that didn’t happen.”

I sighed, the acid taste of guilt in my mouth. “Because we’ve been too busy with the portal.”

“No,” Selene said, the sadness in her pupils deepening. “Because he didn’t want us to. Morals are hard, Gregory. Hard to maintain, hard to follow, sometimes hard even to justify. Without them, life looks so much easier.”

“But is generally a lot more self-destructive.”

“Because it only looks easier,” Selene agreed. “In the long run, it isn’t. But Tirano’s too young to realize that.” She closed her eyes briefly. “And he’s a changeling.”

“Maybe, but I’m not ready to give up on him just yet,” I said firmly as I opened my door. I had no idea what we could do for him, but I wasn’t about to give up on something that was this important to Selene. “Come on. I need a shower, we both need food, and I want to know what else the admiral had to say.”

“It wasn’t good,” she warned as she joined me on the walkway. “We’ll talk about it when we’re inside.”

“I can hardly wait,” I muttered, looking around as we walked. The unmarked badgeman car I’d grown accustomed to wasn’t anywhere in sight. Had Kreega pulled it off duty now that the Vrink trafficking thing had been resolved?

Or was it gone because she’d found Tirano?

I thought about mentioning that possibility to Selene. But it would only distress her, and anyway she’d probably already thought of it. We reached the zigzag and I started up—

“Wait,” Selene said suddenly, leaning down to sniff the handrail. “Gregory, he was here. Tirano was here.”

“When?” I asked, taking a couple more steps up the zigzag to get some extra height and giving the area a quick scan. The spaceport itself was mostly empty, but outside its boundaries Bilswift’s usual mix of cars and pedestrians was going strong. I could see no sign of Tirano.

“Not long ago,” Selene said, her eyelashes going like mad as she moved to one side. “He came from . . . ”

She trailed off. “What is it?” I asked, coming back down.

“He came from over here,” she said slowly, gesturing toward the Ruth’s stern and the river in the near distance beyond. “But then he left in this direction,” she continued, pointing toward the spaceport exit and the city beyond.

“So he was planning to go into the ship, but changed his mind?”

“I don’t think so,” Selene said, her pupils registering confusion. “Venikel was with him.”

“When he left?” I asked. If Venikel had been watching the Ruth and had been able to intercept Tirano—

“No, he was with him both ways,” Selene said. “When he left, and when he arrived.” She looked at me, apprehension now mixing with her puzzlement. “Do you think . . . ?”

I felt my stomach tighten. Venikel walking Tirano to the Ruth, pausing there to make sure he left his scent, then heading the two of them off into the city.

“Yes,” I confirmed, drawing my plasmic and double-checking the charge. “Tirano’s the bait. You and I are the fish.”

I slid the weapon back into its holster. “Come on. Let’s not keep them waiting.”


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