Saturn Rukh (26 page)

“Sharp enough to do the job,” said Sandra. “Especially when your prey impacts at a hundred klours or more.”

“We’re lucky it wasn’t sharp enough to cut the Hoytether,” added Dan. “But then, of course, even a razor has a hard time cutting a macropolyhextube line.”

They passed through the curtain into the darkness to join the others. The sun had set, so it was extremely dark inside. They had lights in their helmets and image intensifiers in their holo-visors, but it was still hard to make out the far walls of the gigantic windpipe, which were dozens of meters away. The walls were pulsating. The portion near them would first expand away under the force of the air rushing in through the featherblade curtain, then the featherblades would fold shut, like a vertical Venetian blind, the walls would contract, and the trapped air was forced out the rear of the windpipe as a high-speed jet.

“Works just like the old V-1 flying bombs,” said Pete, as they watched the creature go through a few intake-exhaust cycles.

“I notice that the inner wall is covered with feathers, while the outer wall is a thin transparent membrane,” said Chastity. “Why isn’t it all one or the other?”

“Rukhs have feathers for the same reason Earth birds have feathers—to keep them warm. In the case of the rukh, however, not only do the feathers keep the bird at optimum working temperature, the higher temperature causes the hydrogen flotation bladders to produce more lift. The rukh is a flying hot-air balloon. The inside wall has feathers to insulate the main body from the cold air in the windpipe. But feathers produce a drag and mass penalty, so the outer parts of the windpipe evolved to be featherless and optimized to operate adequately while cold. Sort of like the feet on a penguin.”

The humans continued on down the sloping tether, moving quickly when the rukh was drawing its “breath,” and holding on to the lines of the Hoytether with both arms and legs when the jet blast started. The windpipe narrowed and curved as it came to the midsection of the giant bird. The Hoytether, never designed to stay expanded when subjected to side forces, was now again a flat double-layer tape collapsed against the inner feathered wall, still some ten meters off the floor.

“We’ll have to do some hand-by-hand along the outside,” said Rod, squirming out between the lines of the Hoytether. He waited, hanging on tight with both arms and legs, until the fierce jet blast of the exhaust cycle was over. In the comparative calm that came when the rukh was “drawing its breath” he quickly clambered around the bend, trailing a safety line behind them.

“I’m inside the Hoytether again,” he reported a short time later. “Come on around, one at a time. The last one is to leave a safety line connected to the tether.”

Soon they were all safely around and ensconced in the comparative safety of the multiline Hoytether. They turned their helmet lights down the long wind tunnel. The Hoytether stretched away from them and continued on downward toward the living floor, which also had an obvious downward slope. The far end of the wind tunnel was pitch black.

Their helmet lights were seen by other eyes, which turned to look at them from the blackness. The five humans, literally hanging by a few threads high in the air on the inside of the mouth of a gigantic monster, found themselves staring at the reflection of their lights coming from two ten-meter-diameter eyes.

What was most disconcerting to the humans was that the two eyes, which the brain wanted to interpret as staying a fixed distance apart, moved around independently of one another, causing the bewildered human brains to imagine the invisible creature behind those eyes going through bizarre gyrations. Rod and Pete had their meta torches at the ready, but the eyes didn’t attack. Instead, one of the eyes continued to stare at them, while the other turned away.

“Did you feel that?” said Chastity. “The tether just gave a twitch! Everybody hold still and feel one of the primary strands!” They all stopped moving.

“The primary lines seem to be more taut here on the other side of the bend,” said Rod. “But I don’t feel anything else.”

Suddenly, they all felt another twitch.

“That was stronger than the last one!” said Chastity. “Those bug-eyed monsters are fooling around with the tether!”

“That was a pretty strong twang,” said Pete with a concerned voice. “Like one of the lines was cut.”

“It would make sense,” said Dan. “The eyes have probably located the reactor and fan, found they couldn’t drag it back up the windpipe and dump it out the mouth, so now they’re concentrating on cutting the tether so the annoyance can slide out the rear.”

“Those multiline Hoytethers can take a lot of cuts,” said Pete, now alarmed. “But they’re designed to withstand random cuts, not a deliberate attack. I wonder how many lines they cut before we got here?”

“However many it was,” said Rod, “they aren’t going to cut any more!” Unfastening his safety lines to Pete and the tether, and putting the meta torch on low, he starting crawling down the center of the Hoytether as fast as he could go. Pete started to unfasten his safety lines to follow Rod, but Chastity prevented him from disconnecting from her.

“With Rod off, I’m in charge,” she said with a stern voice. “We’ll only take risks when we must. Rod is going to need us all to haul the reactor out, so we are
all
going down to back him up—
together!
Now leave those safety lines connected and get a move on!”

Seichi’s voice came over the radio link. “You are approaching the reactor. Although the reactor is unshielded, it has been off for some hours. It is safe to approach within fifty meters, but any closer and you will start to accumulate a perceptible radiation dose.”

The downward-sloping Hoytether finally reached the floor of the windpipe and they could now crawl faster because their knees and feet were less likely to slip off the lines and down through the large gaps in the Hoytether. When they reached Rod, they found him at a tattered section of tether, holding the two eyes at bay with his meta torch.

Sandra noticed that one eye had raised up its head and pulled back away from Rod, with its four extralarge front foreclaws folded to its body. “That must be the eye we met on topside,” she thought to herself. “We had it trained to keep its claws off humans.” The other eye, however, was still feinting an attack. It tried to reach toward Sandra, at the end of the crawling group of humans, but Pete quickly drove it away with a long flame from his meta torch. After foiling a few more feints at the humans and the tether, the humans soon had both eyes trained to stay off at a distance with their foreclaws folded.

“The first eye desisted from the attack on the tether right away,” said Sandra. “We trained it to keep its claws off humans up there, so it was easy to extend the training to keep it away from the tether. The other eye took longer to train. That probably indicates that each eye has a separate intelligence behind it.”

“A being with two brains,” said Dan, musing.

“I remember being told in grade school that the real big dinosaurs had many brains,” added Pete. “I always wondered which brain ran things.”

“For Christ’s
sake,
Pete,” said Rod, annoyed again. “You’re beginning to talk like a scientist instead of an engineer. We’ve got more important things to do now than discuss the number of brains needed to run this flying monster. Keep those eyes at bay while Seichi and I get the reactor free from the flexfans. Seichi? Is Tabby ready?”

“I have instructed the reactor mechbot to come to your position,” came Seichi’s voice over their radio link. “It should arrive shortly.” The mechbot soon appeared out of the darkness, its six clawed feet crawling nimbly along the primary lines of the Hoytether. Rod handed his meta torch to Tabby, who took it off down the Hoytether in one claw, its five remaining legs working just as effectively as six had done on the way up.

“What is Tabby going to do?” asked Sandra, a little puzzled. Her query was answered by a bright light as Tabby lit the meta torch and started to cut through the mechanical connections linking the flexfan system to the reactor complex.

“Careful!” warned Sandra. “You’re likely to burn the poor creature! All our training could go for naught!”

Her warning was augmented as the two eyes took notice of the distant light and started toward it. A quick blast of flame from Pete’s meta torch drove them back, but instead of staying motionless, the two eyes now wavered back and forth as if uncertain what to do next.

“I have the mechbot positioned so that any molten drops of metal fall on it, rather than the creature’s skin,” Seichi reassured her.

The Hoytether gave a jerk as the load on it lightened. A short time later they felt a shift in the slope of the floor of the windpipe.

“Feels like the rukh got rid of some excess weight,” said Rod in a pleased tone. Tabby soon reappeared and returned the meta torch to Rod.

“Now comes the hard part,” said Rod. “Pulling the reactor back out. Hope you’re all in good shape.”

Chastity and Pete had been active during the interval when Tabby was busy. They had restrung one of the braided climbing lines so that one end was hooked firmly on the upslope portion of the Hoytether, while all along its length were tied stirrup loops.

“Don’t try to lift using your arm muscles,” warned Rod as the five crewmembers spread themselves along the multi-looped line. “Just put your feet firmly into the stirrups, bend your legs, reach down to the nearest tether connection point and pull it up using your leg muscles.” They all reached down and grabbed adjacent connecting points on the Hoytether. “All together now ...pull!”

“It’s moving!” said Sandra excitedly, but her gloved fingers slipped and the shock of losing her support caused the others to also lose control. The reactor slipped back to the end of the tether with a jerk.

“This is going to be harder than I thought,” said Pete with concern. “We’ve got a half kilometer to go. All uphill.”

“We need to have some method of holding the load while we reset ourselves,” said Chastity. Soon the lower Hoytether segment they were pulling on had short segments of safety line attached to it. After each lift, the four larger crewmembers kept their legs stiffened to hold the half-meter gain they had made, while Sandra moved the hooks to consolidate that gain. They would then wait until the jet exhaust phase of the rukh’s breathing pattern had passed, so they didn’t have to fight wind drag as well as gravity, and then lift again for another gain of half a meter. After each ten meters, the multi-loop climbing line was reset higher up the Hoytether, and the crew took a sip of water or a nibble on an energy bar and started again.

“That’s the last of my water,” said Pete at a rest stop after they had progressed about another hundred meters. “I wish it had been filled with laser juice—calories as well as refreshment. As it is, I’m pooped.”

“I hate to admit it, but I am too,” said Dan.

“We can’t give up! Now that we’ve come this far!” said Chastity.

“I agree,” said Rod, emptying his water squeezer and putting his feet into the stirrup loops. “Okay, crew. Tote that barge.”

Groaning, they bent to their task. The first pull was successful, but on the second one, both Sandra and Dan slipped and the reactor fell back.

“I’m afraid it’s no use,” said Dan.

“Damn!” said Rod. “We’ll just have to tie it down here and go back to the ship and come back when we’re rested. Bringing more water and energy bars this time.”

“That isn’t going to work,” said Chastity, pointing to the two eyes still watching them from a distance. “As soon as we’re gone, those eyes are going to complete their tether-cutting job.”

“One of us will have to stay and keep them at bay with a meta torch,” said Rod.

“Perhaps we can have Seichi do the job by giving Tabby the meta torch,” suggested Pete.

“Neither one of those ideas is going to work,” said Chastity. “There are two eyes. They could attack the tether at two widely separated points and there would be no way to stop one or the other of them from sooner or later cutting the tether and dumping the reactor.”

“There’s got to be
some
way out of this mess,” said Rod, going silent as he went into his test-pilot-in-trouble mode. Chastity did the same. The others grew silent to let them think.

~ * ~

“What are the yellow vermin doing now?” asked Petro.

“They’re not moving. Must be resting,” Petra replied. “They have obviously been working very hard at pulling the heavy hot thing up Petru’s airtube.”

“It is amazing to see vermin cooperate like that,” said Petro. “Why don’t they cut the multitendril with their hot light and let the heavy thing slide out Petru’s jet? They got rid of the other heavy thing that way.”

“They must want to keep the heavy thing for some reason,” said Petra.

“Perhaps it is some sort of food,” suggested Petro.

“Your suggestion is probably correct,” said Petra. “But instead of food for them, perhaps it is food for their host. When I left the vermin, they were all inside the mouth of the heavy conical creature that is sitting in the middle of Petru’s back. Perhaps the vermin go out and drag in prey for the cone. The hard mouth of the cone can no doubt crush the hard shell of the heavy thing, and they all share in eating what is inside.”

“Food or not, the vermin are doing what we want them to do,” said Petro. “Getting the heavy hot thing out of Petru’s airtube before it becomes hot again and causes more pain.”