Saturn Rukh (38 page)

When Uppereye arrived. Chastity lifted a hand to the creature. Uppereye responded in the usual way by putting the tip of one of her foreclaws in Chastity’s gloved hand. Chastity pulled the creature closer until she could reach the “string tie” still hanging around Uppereye’s neck above the more-gaudy red bow tie. She grasped the loose end of the tie and lifted up the bowline knot there. If Uppereye was able to tie that knot once, she could do it again.

“Uppereye tie knot,” Chastity said, then heard the outside speaker on her backpack repeat her words in an ultrabass growl. Chastity knew that Sandra had taught Uppereye the human word for “tie,” but wasn’t sure the creature knew the word
knot.
In any case, Chastity had an example of the knot in her hand and Uppereye wasn’t dumb.

“Uppereye tie
this
knot,” blurted the neck segments of the giant eye, pointing a foreclaw at the knot in Chastity’s hand. “Uppereye tie this knot
good.‘‘

Chastity proceeded to tie a large bowline knot lasso around her body just under her arms, making sure that Uppereye could see her exact motions as she did so.

“Chastity tie knot to Chastity,” she said as she completed the task. She undid the knot and placed the loose end of the line in one of Uppereye’s foreclaws, then pointed down to Pete hanging below.

“Uppereye tie knot to Peter,” she said, then added, “Please?”

“Okay!” boomed Uppereye. It crawled off down the feather canopy covering the leading edge of the rukh’s wing, the line whipping along behind in the wind. Chastity, now somewhat relieved, controlled the payout of the line while watching in bemusement as the multitude of neck segments marched by her position. The inflated neck was being buffeted about by the incoming air blast, and she noticed that each approaching claw carefully secured its hold before the preceding claw released for the next step.

“Wha’ the hell you doin’? You big bug!” came a yell from Pete over the radio link. “You’re gonna knock me off! Go ‘way!”

“Pete!” shouted Chastity over the radio link. “Uppereye is only trying to help.”

The giant eye soon returned, deflating its neck backward in a reverse procedure that had claws stepping backward by Chastity until Uppereye was once again facing her.

“Uppereye tie knot to Peter,” the eye reported.

“Good!” said Chastity. She reached into a pocket and pulled out one of her bracelets. It made a nice-fitting “ring” for Uppereye’s slightly smaller second left foreclaw.

“Thank you,” said Uppereye, holding the foreclaw up so she could admire her new “thing.” She inflated the canards on her head, and diving into the wind coming over the leading edge of the wing, flew her head back to its perch on the top of the rukh’s keel. As Uppereye left, Chastity could feel deep rumbles coming from the bowels of the great body beneath them. Uppereye was probably calling to her flockmates to come see her new possession.

“Thank
you,“
replied Chastity softly to the receding alien.

“How do things look down there?” asked Rod, his view hidden by the feather canopy between them.

Holding on to her safety line, Chastity leaned forward and peered over the edge again at Pete down below.

“The end of the line is now attached to Pete,” she replied. “So even if he loses his grip on the feather and falls off, he won’t go far.” She paused. “Wait ... there’s something funny—”

“What?” asked Rod, concern once again in his voice.

Chastity switched the image intensifier lens in her helmet to high magnification. “Pete must have given Uppereye a hard time. The loop doesn’t go under both armpits,” she reported. “It goes under his left armpit and then around the right side of his neck.”

“Blasted bug trie’ta choke me,” muttered Pete over the radio link. “Hurry up! Armsh gedding tired.”

“Just hold on with your feet and keep that left arm down as far as you can, so you don’t slip out,” said Chastity. “I’m going to pull in the slack and see if I can take some of the weight off you with the line.” She pulled on the line leading to Pete, taking in meters of it through her belay loop. The line stiffened, then tightened until she could haul in no more. When she looked down, however, she could see that the portion that connected to Pete was still slack.

“Snagged!” she said in disgust.

“What now?” asked Rod.

“I’ll have to think,” said Chastity, then added loudly, “Don’t worry, Pete. We’ll find some way to get you out. Just keep hanging on and don’t let go.” She reached to the control panel on her chest and punched in a code that switched her radio link to a private channel between herself, Rod, and Dan.

“It’s not good,” she reported. “The line has lots of slack still left in it. If he lets go, then there’s a good chance the jerk at the end of the fall will cause him to slip out of the loop. Even if that doesn’t happen, there is also a chance he will either dislocate his left shoulder or break his neck.”

“Serves him right, the
jerk!”
exclaimed Rod.

“What now?” said Dan, repeating what Rod had said previously, trying to defuse the situation by getting Rod to return to his normal logical thinking.

“I’ll have to get down to him as fast as I can and get him into a sit harness,” said Chastity. “I’ll need one of you down here at this position to belay me and work the high end of Pete’s line.”

“I’ve been having Jeeves feed me a mountaineering video while I’ve been waiting here in the dark,” said Dan. “I’ve never done a belay before, but at least I’ve seen the movie.”

“It’s really pretty simple,” said Chastity encouragingly. “Just remember to
never
let go of the slack rope. You’d better climb up the adjacent feather tree. I don’t know if this one can hold both of us. Once you get up here, we can pull them together and lash an anchor ring to both of them. Two quill roots are better than one.”

Soon Chastity was rappelling down through the tops of the feather forest, following the line leading to Pete and releasing it from its snags between feather barbs as she went. By the time she came to the last snag, she was just twenty meters above Pete. The line she had freed was now draped all around Pete’s body. Before she had Dan pull in the slack, she should be down there making sure Dan didn’t pull Pete off his precarious perch. With Dan’s belay giving her extra security, she started to rappel her way down through the gust-filled air to Pete.

“It’s a good thing these saturnsuits have an ultra-tough skin,” she remarked to herself as she saw how deeply the thin macropolyhextube line was pressing into the insulated suit where it passed between her crotch and her thigh. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice fat eleven-millimeter kemmantle right now.” She found that if she wound the upper portion of the line once around her left arm and let it press against the heavy silver bangle on her wrist, she could relieve a little of the pressure on her thigh region.

“You’re shure a schight for sore eysh,” said Pete when she came level with him. “I’d like to give you a great big hug and kish. But I’m too busy hold’n on. Jus’ like you tol’ me.”

“You keep doing that,” said Chastity reassuringly as she quickly tied two Prusik loops to her main line and stood up in them so she could safety herself to her waist ring with a couple of half hitches of her slack line. “We’ll have you out of here in no time.”

Her first task was to replace Uppereye’s almost “hangman’s noose” emergency harness with a decent sit harness that wouldn’t kill Pete if he happened to fall. It wasn’t going to be easy, since he had both arms and legs wrapped tightly around the feather tip.

“Now, don’t think I’m getting fresh,” she said. “I’m just going to put a harness around you. First your waist.” As she cinched the waistband tight she made sure it was above the roll of fat around Pete’s waist.

“There,” she said with a sigh of relief as she dressed the knot so that it lay flat. “Your butt may be too skinny to hold up a belt, but even if you fall upside down, you aren’t going to slip out of that.” She was tempted to give his butt a friendly pat, but considering what she would have to do next, she figured that might send him the wrong signals—especially considering his condition.

“Now come the leg harnesses,” she said. She started one knot wrong and was glad her left glove had its special molded plastic nail extensions on the ends of the fingers. The fine nail ends made it easy to pick apart the knot.

“Next, we readjust Uppereye’s chest loop,” she said, pushing up on her Prusik loops to raise herself to that level. Pete’s arms and head were covered with tangled loops of line that had fallen from above. She was reaching through the tangle to get to Uppereye’s bowline knot when Pete disappeared!

Chastity looked with bewilderment at the coils of line around her, swirling downward like water going down a drain. With a hissing sound, the loosely flowing line wrapped itself three times around her left arm. The moving, sinuous shape and the hissing sound reminded Chastity of a “Cleopatra’s asp” forearm bracelet she had left back on Earth. Slowly becoming aware of the danger, she tried to brush the hissing snake off her arm with her other hand, but the coils piled up against the heavy silver bangle. There was a jerk—

Chastity screamed as her shoulder was nearly pulled from its socket. The last thing she saw, before her eyes filled with tears of pain, was the glitter from the silver bangle as it tumbled off into space, illuminated by the beam from her helmet light.

“Chass! Pete! Are you okay?!” asked Rod over the radio link.

“I think they are, Rod,” interjected Dan, when there wasn’t an instant reply. “I have tension on both of my belay lines, so there is still a body at the bottom of each line.”

“Let’s hope there’s more there than bodies,” said Rod. “Chass! Pete! This is Rod. Report in!”

“Ow! That hur’sh!” came Pete’s voice. “Wha’ happened?”

“That’s one heard from,” said Rod.

“Chass! Are you all right?” yelled Dan, now almost annoyed with Pete for being alive. If Pete survived and Chastity died, Dan would never forgive the drunken bum. He was greatly relieved to hear a shuddering sob as Chastity regained her breath.

“I’m alive. But I’m upside down and my shoulder is hurting” came Chastity’s reply. “I’ll give you a damage report as soon as I get myself upright.” There was a long pause. “There’s something wrong... red splotches on my visor... I can’t seem to get my left hand to grab the rope ... now I see the problem ... I don’t
have
a left hand ... feel faint…”

“Quick!” yelled Dan. “Grab your wrist with your good hand before you bleed to death!”

“Good idea,” replied Chastity in a faint dreamy voice. “Got it,” she reported a short while later. “But now I can’t climb my line.”

“I’ll be right down,” said Dan.

“Wait until Rod is there to belay you,” replied Chastity, becoming more alert as she began to be concerned about Dan’s safety. “Don’t rappel. You’ve never done it before and you can kill yourself. Use Prusik loops instead. Takes longer, but it’s safe and sure.”

“But—” protested Dan.

“Safety first,” replied Chastity. “I’ll hold on. You just make sure you get here. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Shay!” came Pete’s voice over the radio link. “Wha’ about me?”

“You can just
hang
there!” yelled Dan.

While he was waiting for Rod to climb the feather tree to him, Dan had Jeeves show him the section of the mountaineering video that showed him how to tie and use Prusik loops. He sort of wished, however, that Chastity had let him rappel down. From what he had seen in the video, it looked like fun.

When Dan finally arrived at Chastity’s level his first task was to seal the wound. Chastity had already figured out that the stump was less likely to bleed if the end was covered, so while he was coming down she had loosened the grip of her right hand on her left wrist for a moment, pulled up the end of the elastic saturnsuit sleeve, folded it over the stump, and tightened her grip again. Dan approved of the arrangement as it was and replaced her grip with a couple of tight loops of hextube line.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Woozy,” she replied. “Strange thing. My shoulder hurts real bad but I don’t feel any pain in my hand.”

“Shock,” he replied. “We’ll have to get some painkillers into you quick before the pain really kicks in.”

Now that she was safely stabilized, Dan considered his next move. In her present condition, Chastity wouldn’t have the strength to make the climb to the top herself, even if he moved her Prusiks for her. He would have to do the climbing for the two of them.

“Cross your wrists over each other, while I tie them together,” he commanded.

“Sure,” she said agreeably, leaning forward in her harness with her arms outstretched. She was woozy from shock and giggled when a thought struck her— “Strange time for bondage games.”

He ducked his head between her now-bound arms and lifted her off her loops. Her body lay limp along his front between him and his main line.

“Hug me!” he commanded, boosting her higher on him with one hand. “Arms and legs both!”

“Sounds like fun,” she replied as she squeezed him tight and cuddled her helmet into his neck.

“More like work,” said Dan as he shifted their combined weight to his left lark’s-foot loop, moved the right Prusik knot upward twenty centimeters, and then stepped up into that loop for the start of the long upward climb. He noticed, however, that the feeling of her body lying across his brought his manly hormones out in force. He found himself performing much better than he would have expected.