The Lost World - Michael Crichton [132]
Thorne was inside the trailer, talking to her. “We’ll never get Malcolm up without a rope,” he said. “Can you climb it?”
Lightning flashed. She stared straight up at the underside of the trailer, glistening wet with rain. She saw the slick gleam of grease. Then blackness again.
“Sarah: can you do it?”
“Yes,” she said. She reached up, and started to climb.
In the high hide, Kelly was saying, “Where is she? What’s happening? Is she all right?”
Levine watched through the glasses. “She’s climbing,” he said.
Arby listened to their voices distantly. He was turned away, staring off at the river in the darkened plain. He waited impatiently for the next lightning flash. Waited to see if it was true, what he had seen earlier.
She did not know how, but slipping and sliding, she somehow got to the top of the cliff, and flung herself over the side. There was no time to waste; she uncoiled the rope, and crawled beneath the second trailer. She looped the rope through a metal bracket, quickly knotted it. Then she went back to the edge of the cliff, and threw the rope down.
“Doc!” she shouted.
Standing at the trailer door, Thorne caught the rope, and tied it around Malcolm. Malcolm groaned. “Let’s go,” Thorne said. He put his arm around Malcolm and swung them both out, until they were standing on the gearbox.
“Christ,” Malcolm said, looking upward. But Sarah was already pulling him, the rope tightening.
“Just use your arms,” Thorne said. Malcolm started to rise; in a few moments, he was ten feet above Thorne. Sarah was up on the cliff, but Thorne couldn’t see her; Ian’s body blocked his view. Thorne began to climb, his legs struggling for purchase. The underside of the trailer was slippery. He thought: I should have made it nonskid. But who would ever make the undercarriage of a vehicle nonskid?
In his mind’s eye, he saw the accordion connector, tearing . . . slowly tearing . . . opening wider. . . .
He climbed upward. Hand over hand. Foot by foot.
Lightning flashed, and he realized that they were close to the top.
Sarah was standing on the edge of the cliff, reaching down for Malcolm. Malcolm was pulling himself up with his arms; his legs swung limp, free. But he was still going. Another few feet . . . Sarah grabbed Malcolm by the shirt collar, and hauled him up the rest of the way. Malcolm flopped over, out of sight.
Thorne continued up. His feet slipped. His arms ached.
He climbed.
Sarah was reaching down to him.
“Come on, Doc,” she said.
Her hand was extended.
Fingers reaching toward him.
With a metallic whang! the mesh ripped on the connector, and the trailer dropped down ten feet, the coils widening.
Thorne climbed faster. Looking up toward Sarah.
Her hand still reached down.
“You can do it, Doc. . . .”
He climbed, closing his eyes, just climbing, holding the rope, gripping it tightly. His arms ached, his shoulders ached, and the rope seemed to become smaller in his hands. He twisted it around his fist, trying to hold on. But at the last moment he began to slip, and then he felt a sudden burning pain in his scalp.
“Sorry about that,” Sarah said, and she pulled him up by his hair. The pain was intense but he didn’t care, he hardly noticed, because now he was alongside the accordion connector, watching the coils pop free like a bursting corset, and the trailer dropped lower but she still pulled him, she was immensely strong, and then his fingers touched wet grass, and he was over the side. Safe.
Beneath them, there was a sharp series of metallic sounds—whang! whang! whang!—as the coiled metal rods snapped one after another, and then, with a final groan, the trailer broke all connection, and fell free down the cliff face, growing smaller and smaller, until it smashed on the rocks far below. In the glare of lightning,