A World of Difference (21 page)

“Bryan Allen flew
Gossamer Albatross
across the English Channel. That’s twice as far and then some, and I’ve got a better plane than the
Albatross
ever dreamed of being,” Sarah said. “I’m going.”

“If the
Gossamer Albatross
came apart, all what’s-his-name would have got was wet,” Irv said. “If something goes wrong
with
Damselfly
, or if you get the winds you know perfectly well you could—”

Sarah did not want to think about that. Jötun Canyon was deep enough that, if the worst did happen, she would have plenty of time to reflect on her folly as she fell. “Irv, if you were hurt on this side of the canyon and the Russians had a plane, I hope they’d try to help.”

Frank Marquard had been quiet till now. “How high are the canyon walls on either side, relative to each other?” he asked abruptly. “If the land west of the canyon is a quarter-mile higher than it is on this side, you won’t be able to climb up to it. If it’s a quarter-mile lower, you’ll never get back.”

Everyone crowded around to peer at the map, either upside down or over Emmett Bragg’s shoulder. “Seems all right,” Sarah said after a long, hard look. “Call Tolmasov, Emmett. Tell him I’m on my way. Find out what first-aid supplies their rover has, too. I’ll save weight with my kit that way, because I won’t carry anything they already have.”

“Right.” Bragg turned to his wife and Irv. “Y’all heard the lady. Break out the pieces of
Damselfly
and get ’em onto the towing carts. Pulling ’em to the edge of the canyon, I expect you’ll be working near as hard as Sarah will going over.” Louise simply nodded and left. Irv followed a moment later, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

There’s nothing I can do about it, Sarah wanted to call after him. But he knew that as well as she did. Knowing and accepting were two different things—all she needed to do was think of Lamra to see the truth there.

“I’ll get my bike, too,” Pat Marquard said.

“What for?” Sarah, Emmett, and Frank all spoke together.

“So you can ride behind me,” Pat said to Sarah, as if the two men were not there. “You should be fresh when you get into
Damselfly
, not worn out from spending half a day pedaling.”

That made such plain good sense that Sarah could only nod her thanks and hug Pat, who returned the embrace. Emmett Bragg lifted the radio microphone. “
Athena
calling Soviet expedition.”

The reply was immediate. “Tolmasov here. Go ahead, old man.”

“Sergei Konstantinovich, our doctor will try, repeat try, to fly
Damselfly
across Jötun Canyon to help your injured crewman.”

“Thank you very much, Brigadier Bragg. We are in your debt.”

“You don’t thank me, you thank the lady, and I just may call in that debt one day, if I see a way to do it.”

“Er, yes.” Tolmasov sounded wary again, Sarah thought, frowning. Emmett never let up; he saw everything as a confrontation.

As if to belie that, the mission commander went on, “For now, though, we only need to know what your rover has in the way of medical gear, so we can avoid duplication.”

With
Athena
’s computers, any of the Americans could have called up the answer to that as fast as he typed in the question. Tolmasov’s promised “One moment, please,” stretched to several minutes. At least he had what Sarah needed when he finally did come back on the air. That, she supposed, counted for something.

Mist and distance shrouded the land on the western side of Jötun Canyon. Sarah did stretching exercises to work out the kinks of a morning and early afternoon spent riding behind Pat Marquard. After a moment, Sarah turned her back on the canyon. She did not want to think about it before she had to.

Instead, she watched her husband and Louise Bragg reassemble
Damselfly
. Irv was whistling something as he made sure every wingnut was tight. Sarah took longer than she should have to recognize “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” She started to let out a snort, then stopped abruptly. If using a silly song helped remind him to be careful, that was all right with her.

“Ready when you are,” Louise said a little later. Pat, who had been reduced to a spectator once they got to the edge of the canyon, made herself useful by carrying the special wide stepladder to
Damselfly
.

“Let’s do it.” Sarah got out of her jacket and insulated pants and immediately started to shiver. Jogging over to
Damselfly
did nothing to warm her up.

Irv waited at the top of the stepladder to help her down into the ultra-ultralight. When she was seated, he handed her the clear plastic bag in which she had put her supplies—it was a pound or more lighter than her regular medical bag. She secured it to a spar behind her with duct tape.

“Be careful,” Irv said. “I love you.”

“I know. I love you, too.” She strapped the biking helmet under her chin. When she was done, she reached up to touch
his cheek. “This is what you get for marrying a doctor. I’ll be all right.”

“You I wouldn’t worry about. But this damn contraption isn’t made for the kind of air you may get over the canyon.”

She shrugged. “People aren’t made for banging their heads, either.” Checking to be sure the prop was not engaged, she started pedaling furiously to charge the battery—and to stop her teeth from chattering. She hardly noticed Irv lowering the canopy over her and dogging it in place.

“Radio check,” Louise said. “Testing, one, two, three.”

“Read you five by five,” Sarah answered. “How do you read me?”

They went through the rest of the preflight checklist, making sure all the controls worked. Sarah watched the charge gauge climb. By the time the battery was all the way up, she was no longer freezing. She glanced to either side. Irv and Louise were standing by at
Damselfly
’s wingtips. She waved to show them she was ready. When they waved back, she flicked the propeller-control switch. The big airfoil, taller than she was, began to spin.

Damselfly
rolled bumpily forward, the two wingpersons—a word Sarah formed and rejected in the same instant—running alongside to hold it level. “Airborne!” Irv yelled as the ultra-ultralight lifted off the ground.

“Roger,” Sarah said, to let him and Louise know she knew. As always,
Damselfly
was painfully slow gaining altitude. Even so, after less than a minute the ground dropped away as if the plane had a rocket in its tail. “Watch that first step,” she murmured to herself as she peered down and down and down into Jötun Canyon. “It’s a mother.”

“Say again,
Damselfly?
” Louise requested.

“Never mind,” Sarah said, embarrassed. Then she gave all her attention back to pedaling and to watching the little compass Irv had glued to the control stick. The far wall of the canyon was too far away to give her any landmarks toward which to steer and the sun was invisible through thick gray clouds. She laughed a little;
Damselfly
had not been designed for instrument flight.

Some of the clouds were underneath her. Jötun Canyon was plenty big enough to have weather of its own. Sarah was just glad the clouds didn’t altogether block the western wall from view. Seeing it loom out of the fog too late to dodge was the stuff of nightmares.

“Everything all right, hon?” Irv sounded as if he expected her to go spiraling down into the canyon any second now.

“No problems,” she answered, taking her left hand off the stick to flick on the radio’s send switch. “I’m even getting warm. Exercise and all that.” Keeping
Damselfly
in the air was hard work, closer to running than to bicycling on the ground. “I should be across in less than half an hour. Off I go, into the wild gray yonder—”

“Oh, shut up,” Irv said. Chuckling, Sarah switched off. Her husband would be too busy fuming to worry about her for a while. She pedaled on. The breeze from the fresh air tube began to feel delicious, not icy.

Looking down between her busy feet, Sarah saw she was above the deepest part of the Jötun Canyon. Something moving down there caught her eye. She could not tell what sort of beast it was, any more than a jetliner passenger can name the makes of cars he sees from 30,000 feet. Just with level flight between the canyon’s walls, she was half that high over the bottom herself.

She wondered what lived down there. Whatever it was, it was not a full-time resident, not unless it nailed itself to the biggest rock it could find when the yearly floods came through. Maybe not then, either.

Then all such mental busywork blew away with the gusting tailwind that swept
Damselfly
along with it and threatened to make the ultra-ultralight stall. Sarah gasped, pedaled harder, and hit the prop control switch to make the propeller grab more air. A moment later, she also turned on the plane’s little electric motor to add its power to hers.

For a few queasy seconds, she thought none of that would do any good. Gusts were the worst problem with human-powered aircraft; one of five miles an hour gave
Damselfly
as much of a jolt as a 30-mph gust did to a Cessna. The flimsy little craft did not want to answer its controls. From the way the spars creaked, Sarah wondered if it was going to break up in midair. “Don’t you dare, you bastard,” she said fiercely, as if that would do any good at all.

Damselfly
held together. Sarah brought the plane’s nose down. Her legs were blurs on the pedals. She never knew whether her efforts saved her or the gust simply subsided. What she did know was that all the sweat on her body had turned cold.

When she was sure the ultra-ultralight—and her voice—were in full control again, she thumbed the radio’s send switch. “Hello
back there,” she said. “Before, I was worrying about whether the Russians would have blankets and such for me. Now all I care about is a change of underwear.” She was surprised at how easily she could joke about what had just happened. No one, she thought, really believes in the possibility of her own death.

While Irv and Louise exclaimed tinnily through
Damselfly
’s speaker, Sarah shook her head, annoyed at herself. Philosophizing after the fact was all very well, but the cold sweat still coated her and her joke had almost been no joke at all, but literally true. She had believed in death, all right.

The western edge of Jötun Canyon grew closer. Sarah resisted the temptation to put on another mad burst of effort so she could reach it fifteen seconds before she would have otherwise. As in distance running, staying within herself counted. She could feel how much the one emergency had taken out of her.

At last she had land under her once more at a distance to be measured in feet rather than miles. She hit the radio switch again. The Russians could not reply on the frequency
Damselfly
used, but they were supposed to be listening. “
Damselfly
calling the Soviet rover,” she said in slow, careful Russian. “I am on your side of the canyon. Please send up a flare to show me your location.” She repeated herself several times.

All the while, she was scanning the horizon. If her navigation had been good, the flare would rise straight ahead of her. No sign of it there. No sign of it anywhere, in fact. What was—Sarah frowned, groping for the name—Rustaveli’s problem?

There! The brilliant crimson spark hung in the air. It was north of where she had expected it; the gust over the canyon must have thrown her off worse than she’d thought. She twisted the control stick, working first ailerons and then rudder to go into the long, slow turn that was the best
Damselfly
could do.

The flare slowly sank while she approached. Now she eyed the ground instead of the sky. Motion drew her gaze. That was no Minervan down there, that was a man! “Soviet rover, I have you visually,” she said triumphantly. “Coming in to land.”

Rustaveli waved her on.

“
—Snap, crackle
, pop—really bad,” came out of the radio.

Irv didn’t think it was haunted by Rice Krispies. What he did think was than no one had planned for
Damselfly
to be on the ground ten miles from the nearest receiver. The transmitter was not made to carry that far. No wonder the signal had static in it.

“Say again, Sarah,” he urged.

More Kellogg’s noises, then, “—not really bad,” she said. “Broken ulna, concussion, nasty cut, maybe”—static again—“cracked ribs. But no sign of internal bleeding. He’ll get—” Sarah’s voice vanished once more.

“Say again,” Irv repeated, and kept on repeating it until the static cleared.

“He’ll get better,” Sarah said, almost as clearly as if she were standing beside him with Louise and Pat. Grinning, Louise clasped her gloved hands over her head, as if to say, “The winnah, and still champion …”

Nodding, Irv asked the question that was even more important to him. “And how are you, hon?”

“Tired. Otherwise okay,” she answered. “I won’t try to come back today. I need the rest, and it’s too close to sunset to make me want to risk any funny winds the change from day to night might bring on over the canyon. Once was too f—” The signal broke up again, but Irv had no trouble filling in the participial phrase he had not actually heard.

“Concur,” Louise said, over and over till Sarah acknowledged. “Wait at least till midmorning; let the air settle as much as it’s going to.”

“Will you be warm enough tonight?” Irv worried. Even when Minervan days got above freezing, nights stayed in the teens or colder.

“Plenty, thank you, Grandmother,” Sarah answered, which made Pat giggle and Irv’s ears turn hot under the flaps of his cap. “You can all be jealous of me, too, because I’m eating something that doesn’t come off our ration list. The Russians have this very nice little smoked lamb sausage called, ah—”

“
Damlama khasip
,” an accented male voice supplied: Shota Rustaveli.

“Nobody wants to hear about it,” Irv said. He
was
jealous, and so were Pat and Louise, if the lean and hungry looks on their faces meant anything. The food they had with them, which they would have eaten without much thinking about it, suddenly seemed too dull for words. Smoked lamb sausage … Irv felt his mouth watering.