Progenitor - Michael Jan Friedman [68]
Just as he had hoped, the vine rope relaxed—probably because he had pulled it right out of Vigo’s unsuspecting hands. Freed of its pull, Simenon would be able to back his foot out of the crevice.
But just in case, Ben Zoma felt his way down the wall of rock and tried to lend a hand. He arrived just in time to realize that the Gnalish wasn’t stuck anymore.
In fact, as the first officer groped for his comrade, he realized that Simenon was gone.
Then he put together what must have happened. Vigo had regained his grip on the rope vine and pulled the Gnalish through.
At least, that’s what Ben Zoma hoped. With his lungs screaming for air, he launched himself forward alongside the wall, intent now on only one thing—saving himself.
For a single, terrifying heartbeat, it seemed to him that he had waited too long and would drown in the darkness. Then he saw a hint of light up ahead and arrowed through the water with the desperation of a man who knew his life depended on it.
Kick, he thought, a different kind of darkness closing around him. Kick, dammit!
He kicked—and broke the surface just in time.
As Ben Zoma dragged in draught after draught of warm, welcome air, he noticed Vigo a couple of meters away on a shelf of flat, dark rock. He was hovering over Simenon, who was gasping even harder than the first officer was, his ruby eyes looking as if they were about to pop out of his head.
“Are you all right, sir?” the Pandrilite asked Ben Zoma.
But the human couldn’t speak yet. All he could do was pull in one shuddering breath after another as he joined his companions at the water’s edge.
Paris brought his shuttle to a stop as close to the unholy glow of the accretion bridge as he dared, then immediately redirected all available power to his forward thrusters.
As he had anticipated, they held the shuttle in equilibrium. However, it was a rather uneasy equilibrium.
The pull exerted by the sinkhole was so powerful here that he could feel it in his bones. Without some timely assistance, the shuttle would either have to abandon its position or be sucked inside the accretion bridge.
Fortunately, that assistance was just a comm message away. Touching the communications pad on his control console, he said, “Paris to Wu. I’ve reached the coordinates we talked about.”
The return signal was a sloppy one as a result of all the graviton activity, but the ensign was still able to make out the second officer’s words. “...establishing tractor lock...stand by.”
“Acknowledged,” said Paris.
He glanced at Jiterica, who was sitting quietly in her seat, staring at the accretion bridge through the shuttle’s forward observation port. He wondered what she was thinking about.
Him, perhaps? How he and his tractor beam would soon be all that stood between her and the sinkhole?
“Tractor lock...established...” Wu told him over the comm link.
Paris could see it reflected in his readouts. “Confirmed.”
Of course, at the distance the Stargazer was compelled to maintain, the beam couldn’t do much. But if it cut the stress on the shuttle’s thrusters by twenty percent and lent them a little stability, it would be all the help they needed.
Providing I do my job, Paris added silently.
Frowning, he put the thought out of his mind. It wasn’t productive for him to try to anticipate how he would perform. He would simply do his best.
Paris turned to Jiterica. “Ready?”
She turned to look at him, the golden glare of the accretion bridge reflected in the face mask of her helmet. He could barely see the spectral features that lurked beneath it.
“Yes, Mr. Paris,” the Nizhrak said calmly, almost mechanically. “I am ready.”
She got up from her seat and moved aft through the shuttle. With the press of a pad set into the bulkhead, she activated a selectively permeable force field like the one in the Stargazer’s shuttlebay—another of the improvements Lt. Chiang had been forced to engineer into the craft on short notice.
Then she opened