Etana’s voice darted at him: “What’s awry?”
Tersely, he explained. “Raise Brandir,” he finished. “We’ll want equipment for snatching him out—a cable and motor to lower a pallet, I’d guess—as well as the full medical panoply.”
“Can’t your Number One robot rescue him?”
Kaino glanced at the machine, which had arrived and stood awaiting his orders. “Nay,” he said, “it’s useless.” That body could not clamber down, and the program could not cope with the unknowns hiding in the dark.
“You may need to haul me up too,” he said. “I’m going after him.”
“No!” she yelled, “Kaino, you—“ He heard the gulp. “At least fetch a line for yourself and have the robot hold it.”
“That may well take too long. Ilitu may be dying.”
“He may be dead. Belike he is. You don’t hear him, do you? Kaino, stay!”
“He is my follower. I am a Beynac. Raise Brandir, I told you.” The pilot switched off his widecaster.
He did take a minute to instruct the robot: Go back to the van, bring that wire rope, lower it to him if he was still down in the hole. Meanwhile he removed the bulky pack that held food, reserve water, and field equipment. Having activated his head and breast lamps, he went on all fours to the edge of the gap and set about entering it.
Stones kept skidding around. Twice he nearly lost his hold and tumbled. That made him laugh, low, to himself. On the third try he succeeded, bootsoles braced against one wall, life support unit against the opposite side. He began to work his way downward.
It was wicked going. He could not properly feel the surfaces through his outfit. The lights were a poor help, sliding off lumps, diving into cracks, mingling with shadows that dashed about like cat’s paws of the gloom. Often he started to slip. Only low gravity and quick reflexes let him recover. As he descended and the crevice contracted, his posture made him ever more awkward. Stressed muscles hurt. Sweat soaked his undergarb and stung his eyes. Breath rasped a throat gone dry. He toiled onward.
Wait. Had it grown a touch easier? More flex in the legs—He realized what he had been unable to see from above, that on the side where his feet were, the rift was widening again. If it broadened too much, he could fare no deeper. Unless—
Somehow he maneuvered about until by twisting his neck he could look the way he was bound. Ught picked out the sprawled form there and sheened off jagged pieces of the broken roof. Ilitu had indeed fallen onto a narrow shelf projecting from the wall atKaino’s back. Its ends vanished in the same darkness that gaped beside it. Pure luck … No, not quite. That being the wall which slanted inward the whole way, and nearer to where the geologist fell through, it must have acted as a chute, its ruggedness catching at spacesuit and pack, slowing and guiding him.
Now that Kaino saw his objective half clearly, he could estimate dimensions and distances. The ledge was about ten meters below him, an easy drop in this weight, but it was less than a meter wide, and next to it yawned a vacantness a full two meters across. Low acceleration would give him a chance to push or kick at the iron, correct his course, but he’d have just three or four seconds, and if he missed his landing, that would doubtless be that.
“Convenient, being 98 percent chimpanzee,” he muttered. After a moment’s study he thrust and let go.
His drop was timeless, utter action. But when impact jarred through his bones and he knew himself safe, he glanced upward, saw the opening high above him full of stars, and laughed till his helmet echoed.
To work. Carefully, lest he go over the rim, he knelt Ilitu lay on his back. A sheetlike piece of metal slanted across the upper body. It had screened off transmission. Kaino plucked it away, tossed it aside, and heard wheezing breath. He leaned forward. Because he had come down at Ilitu’s head, he saw the face inverted, a chiaroscuro behind the hyalon, lights and shadows aflicker as his lamps moved. The lids were slit-open, the eyeballs ghastly slivers of white. Saliva bubbled pink on the parted lips. “Are you awake?” he asked. The breathing replied.