Rama II

51 ESCAPE HARNESS

Richard was becoming impatient. He and Nicole had been standing on the walls of New York for over an hour, scanning the skies for some sign of a helicopter. “Where the hell are they?” he grumbled. “It only takes fifteen minutes by rover from the bottom of Alpha stairway to the Beta campsite.”

“Maybe they’re looking somewhere else,” Nicole said encouragingly.

“That’s ridiculous!” Richard said. “Surely they would go to Beta first — and even if they couldn’t repair the comm system, at least they’d find my last message. I said I was taking one of the motorboats to New York.”

“They probably know that there’s no place for a helicopter to land in the city. They may be coming across in a boat themselves.”

“Without first seeing if they could spot us from the helicopter? That’s unlikely.” Richard turned his eyes to the sea and searched for a sail. “A boat A boat. My kingdom for a boat.”

Nicole laughed but Richard barely managed a little smile. “Two men could assemble the sailboat in the supply hut at Beta in less than thirty minutes,” he fretted. “Dammit, what’s holding them up?”

In his frustration Richard switched on the transmitter in his communica­tor. “Now hear this, you guys. If you’re anywhere near the Cylindrical Sea, identify yourselves. And then hurry your asses over here. We’re standing on the wall and we’re tired of waiting.”

There was no response– Nicole sat down on the wall. “What are you doing?” Richard asked.

“I think you’re worrying enough for both of us,” she responded. “And I’m tired of standing up and waving my arms.” She stared across the Cylindrical Sea. “It would be so much easier,” Nicole said wistfully, “if we could just fly across ourselves.”

Richard cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “What a great idea,” he said several seconds later. “Why didn’t we think of it before?” He immediately sat down and started doing some calculations on his computer. “Cowards die many times before their deaths,” he mumbled to himself, “the valiant never taste of death but once.”

Nicole watched her friend furiously pounding his keyboard. “What are you doing, dear?” she inquired, glancing over his shoulder at the computer monitor.

“Three!” he shouted, after finishing a computation. “Three should be enough.” Richard looked up at the puzzled Nicole. “Do you want to hear the most outrageous plan in interplanetary history?” he asked her.

“Why not?” she said with a doubtful smile.

“We are going to build ourselves harnesses out of the lattice material and the avians are going to fly us across the Cylindrical Sea.”

Nicole stared at Richard for several seconds. “Assuming we can make the harnesses,” she said skeptically, “how do we talk the avians into doing their part?”

“We convince them it’s in their own best interest,” Richard replied. “Or alternatively we threaten them in some way… I don’t know, you can work on that issue.”

Nicole was incredulous. “Anyway,” Richard continued, grabbing her hand and walking down the wall, “it beats standing around here waiting for the helicopter or the boat.”

Five hours later there was still no sign of the rescue team. When they had finished making the harnesses, Richard had left Nicole at the wall and gone back to the White Room to check through the sensor set again. He returned with the news that he thought he had seen the human figures in the vicinity of the Beta campsite, but that the resolution on that particular frame had been very poor. As they had agreed, Nicole had been calling every half hour on the communicator. There had been no response.

“Richard,” she said, while he was programming some graphics on his computer, “why do you think the rescue team was using the stairway?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe the chairlift malfunctioned and there were no engineers left.”

“It seems strange to me,” Nicole mused. Something about this is bothering me, she thought, but I don’t dare share it with Richard until I can explain it He doesn’t believe in intuition. Nicole glanced at her watch. It’s a good thing we rationed the melon. If the rescue team doesn’t show up and this wild scheme doesn’t work, we won’t be swimming until next daylight,

“Preliminary design complete,” Richard stated emphatically. He waved to Nicole to join him. “If you approve the line drawing,” he said, pointing at the monitor in his hand, “then I will proceed with the detailed graphics.”

In the picture three large avians, each with one line wrapped around its body, were flying in formation across a sea. Dangling underneath them, and attached by three lines, was a stick figure human being sitting in a flimsy barness. “Looks good to me,” said Nicole, never thinking for a minute that such an event would actually happen.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Nicole remarked, pushing the plate to open the avian lair for the second time.

Their first attempt to renew contact had resulted in the expected cold shoulder. This second time it was Richard who shouted into the avian lair. “Listen to me, you avians!” he growled in his fiercest voice, “I need to talk to you. Right now. Get up here on the double.” Nicole had to restrain a laugh.

Richard began dropping black objects into the lair. “See,” he said with a grin, “I knew these damn things would be good for something.” Eventually they could hear some activity at the bottom of the vertical corridor. The same pair of avians they had seen before flew up to the top of the lair and started screeching at Richard and Nicole. They did not even look at the monitor when Richard held it out for them. When they were finished screeching, the pair flew over the top of the tank sentinel and the cover closed again.

“It’s no use, Richard,” Nicole said when he asked her to open the cover a third time. “Even our friends are against us.” She paused before pressing the plate. “What are we going to do if they attack us?”

“They won’t attack,” Richard said, indicating for Nicole to open the cover. “But just in case, I want you to stay over there. I will deal with our feathered friends.”

There was jabbering from the lair as soon as the cover opened the third time. Richard immediately started shouting back and pitching black objects down the corridor. One of them hit the tank sentinel and prompted a small explosion, like a gunshot.

The two familiar avians flew up to the opening and screamed at Richard. Three or four of their comrades were just behind. The noise was unbeliev­able. Richard did not back down. He kept yelling and pointing at the com­puter monitor. Finally he was able to get their attention.

The group of avians watched the graphic depiction of the flight across the sea. Richard then held up one of the harnesses in his left hand and started running the demonstration on his monitor again. Frantic conversation among the avians ensued. At the end, however, Richard sensed that he had lost. As a pair of the other avians flew over the top of the tank sentinel, Richard climbed down into the lair, onto the first ledge. “Hold it,” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

The mate of the black velvet avian lunged forward, its threatening beak no more than a meter from Richard’s face. The noise from all the screeching and jabbering was deafening. Richard was undaunted. Despite the avian protests, he descended to the second ledge. Now he would not be able to escape if the cover started to close.

Again he held up the harness and pointed at the monitor. A chorus of screeches told him the response. Then, above the avian howl, he heard another sound, like a Klaxon alarm announcing a fire drill at a school or hospital. All the avians immediately calmed down. They settled quietly on the ledges and stared down at the tank sentinel.

The lair was strangely silent. After a few seconds Richard heard the beat­ing of wings and moments later a new avian flew into the vertical corridor. It rose slowly up to his level and hovered just opposite him. It had a gray velvet body and sharp gray eyes. Two thick rings of bright cherry red were wrapped around its neck.

The creature studied Richard and landed on the ledge opposite him, across the corridor. The avian that had been in that spot scurried out of the way. When the gray velvet bird spoke, it was soft and very clear. After the speech was finished, the black velvet avian flew up beside the new arrival and apparently explained the furor. Several times the two avians stared across at Richard. The last time, thinking that perhaps their nodding heads were a cue, Richard displayed the graphic flight one more time and held up the harnesses. The bird with the cherry rings flew over beside him for a closer look.

The creature made a sudden movement, frightening Richard, and he nearly fell off the ledge. What may have been avian laughter was silenced by a few words from the gray velvet leader, who then sat quite still, as if it were thinking, for over a minute. At length the avian leader gestured toward Richard with one talon, opened its huge wings, and soared out through the opening into daylight.

For several seconds Richard did not move. The great creature rose up, up into the sky above the lair and was soon followed by the two more familiar avians. Moments later Nicole’s head appeared in the opening. “Are you coming?” she asked. “I don’t know how you did it, but it looks as if our friends are ready.”