One thing is certain, Nicole said to herself as she stood on the ledge below. That tank is some kind of sentinel. Nicole wondered whether or not it had any sensors—certainly it had given no indication that it had heard her—but decided that she couldn’t afford to find out. It wouldn’t be much of a guard if it couldn’t at least stop an intruder.
Nicole climbed slowly down the ledges to the dining room level. She was sorely disappointed and now angry with herself for having come into the avian lair in the first place. It still did not make sense to her that the avians might be holding her as a captive. After all, hadn’t the creature invited her to visit after Nicole had saved its life?
Nicole was also puzzled by the tank sentinel. Its existence was baffling, and completely inconsistent with the level of technological development of everything else in the lair. What was its purpose? Where did it come from? Things just get curiouser and curiouser, Nicole thought, recalling a phrase from one of her favorite books.
When she was back on the second underground level, Nicole looked around to see if there was any other way she could get out of the lair. There was an identical set of ledges on the opposite side of the vertical corridor. If she could jump across, then maybe . . .
Before considering seriously such a plan, Nicole had to determine whether or not a tank, or equivalent sentinel, was guarding the opposite horizontal tunnel on the first level. She couldn’t tell from where she was standing, so Nicole, muttering to herself about her stupidity, climbed back up the ledges on her side to obtain a good view across the corridor. She was in luck. The ledge in front of the opposite tunnel was empty.
By the time she returned to the second underground level again, Nicole was fatigued from all the climbing. She stared across the corridor and at the lights in the abyss below her. She would almost certainly die if she fell. Nicole was a very good judge of distance and correctly reckoned that it was about four meters from the edge of the ledge extension in front of her tunnel to the edge on the opposite side. Four meters, she mused, four and a half at the most. Allowing for some room at both ends, I need a five-meter jump to clear it In flight suit with backpack.
Nicole remembered a Sunday afternoon at Beauvois four years earlier, when Genevieve was ten and both mother and daughter were watching the 2196 Olympics on television. “Can you still jump a long way, Mama?” the little girl had asked, having a hard time picturing her mother as an Olympic champion.
Pierre had cajoled her into taking Genevieve to the athletics field adjacent to the secondary school at Luynes. Her timing had been way off in the triple jump, but after thirty minutes of warmup and practice Nicole had managed to long jump six and a half meters. Genevieve had not been that impressed. “Shoot, Mama,” her daughter had said while they were bicycling home through the green countryside, “Danielle’s big sister can jump almost that far, and she’s only a university student.”
The memory of Genevieve stirred a profound sadness in Nicole. She longed to hear her daughter’s voice, help her with her hair, or go boating with her on their small private pond beside the Bresme. We never value enough the time we have, she thought, until they’re no longer around.
Nicole started back down the tunnel to where the avians had left her. She wouldn’t try the jump. It was too dangerous. If she slipped . . .
“Nicole des Jardins, where the hell are you?” Nicole froze the moment she heard the call, very faint, off in the distance. Had she imagined it? “Nicole,” she heard again. It was definitely Richard Wakefield’s voice. She ran back to the vertical corridor and started to shout. No, she thought rapidly, that will wake them. It will not take me more than five minutes. I can jump . . .
Nicole’s adrenaline was pumping at an incredible rate. She marked off her steps and soared across the chasm with plenty of room to spare. She climbed up the ledges at breakneck speed. Toward the top she beard Wakefield calling her again.
“I’m here, Richard. Below you,” she shouted. “Underneath the plaza.”
Nicole reached the top ledge and started pushing on the covering. It wouldn’t budge. “Shit,” she shouted as the puzzled Richard paced around in the vicinity. “Richard, come over here. Where you hear my voice. Beat on the ground.”
Richard began to knock hard on the covering. They were shouting at each other. The noise was deafening. From far below Nicole heard the flapping of wings. As the avians rose in the corridor, they began to shriek and jabber.
“Help me,” Nicole hollered at them as they drew close. She pointed up at the cover. “My friend is out there.”
Richard continued to pound. Only the two avians who had originally found Nicole in the pit came up to where she was. They hovered around her, flapping their wings and jabbering back at the five others who were one level below. The creatures were apparently having an argument, for the black velvet avian twice extended its neck down toward its associates and uttered a fearsome screech.
The covering suddenly opened. Richard had to scramble to keep from falling in. When he looked down into the hole he saw Nicole and two gigantic bird creatures, one of which flew right by him as Nicole crawled out of the opening. “Holy shit'” he exclaimed, his eyes following the flight of the avian.
Nicole was overcome with joy. She ran into Wakefield’s arms. “Richard, oh Richard,” she said, “I’m so glad to see you.”
He grinned at her and returned the hug. “If I had known you felt like this,” he said, “I would have come earlier.”
42 TWO EXPLORERS
Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you’re alone? And we have no way to cross the Cylindrical Sea?”
Richard nodded. It was too much for Nicole. Five minutes earlier she had been exultant. Her ordeal had finally been over. She had imagined returning to the Earth and seeing her father and daughter again. Now he was telling her …
She walked away quickly and leaned her head against one of the buildings surrounding the plaza. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gave vent to her disappointment. Richard followed her at a distance.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s not your fault/’ Nicole replied after she had regained her composure. “It just never occurred to me that I might see one of the crew again and still not be rescued—” She stopped herself. It was not fair for her to make Richard suffer. She walked over to him and forced a smile.
“I’m not usually this emotional,” Nicole said. “And I interrupted your story right in the middle.” She paused a second to wipe her eyes. “You were telling me about the shark biots chasing the motorboat. You saw them first when you were about halfway across the sea?”
“More or less,” Richard replied. Her disappointment had subdued him. He tried a nervous laugh. “Do you remember, after one of the simulations, when the review board criticized us for not having sent a pilotless version of our motorboat into the water first, just to make sure that there wasn’t something peculiar to the new design that would disturb the ‘ecological equilibrium’ in some way? Well, I thought their suggestion at the time was ridiculous. Now I’m not so certain. Those shark biots hardly bothered the Newton vessels, but they were definitely angry about my high-speed motorboat.”
Richard and Nicole had sat down together on one of the gray metal boxes that dotted the plaza area. “I managed to dodge them once,” Richard continued, “but I was extremely lucky. When I had no other choice I simply jumped out and swam. Fortunately for me, they were mostly after the boat-1 didn’t see one again while I was swimming until I was only a hundred meters from shore.”
“How long have you been inside Rama altogether now?” Nicole asked.
“About seventeen hours. I left the Newton two hours after dawn. I spent too much damn time trying to repair the communications station at Beta. But it was impossible.”
Nicole felt his flight suit. “Except for your hair, I can’t even tell you’ve been wet.”
Richard laughed. “Ob, the miracles of fabric engineering. Would you believe that this suit was almost dry by the time I changed my thermals? By then I was having a hard time convincing even myself that I had spent that twenty minutes swimming in the cold water.” He looked at his companion. She was loosening up very slowly. “But I’m surprised at you, Cosmonaut des Jardins. You haven’t even asked me the most important question. How did I know where you were?”
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