Ring by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780007336548
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Published: 2009-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

17

A simple metal stepladder rested against the side of the cage; the ladder looked incongruously primitive, amid all this alien high technology.

Spinner looked at the ladder with dread. “Louise,” she said. “I have to climb in. Don’t I?”

Louise, bulky and anonymous in her environment suit, stood close beside her. “Well, that’s the general idea. Look, Spinner-or-Rope, we need a pilot...” Her voice trailed off; she shrugged her shoulders, uncertain.

Spinner closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to still the shuddering, deep in her stomach. “Lethe. So that’s why I’m all wired up.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before bringing you down here, Spinner. We didn’t know what was best. Would telling you have made things any easier?”

“I don’t get a choice, do I?”

Louise’s face, through her plate, was hard. “You’re the best candidate we have, Spinner-of-Rope. We need you.”

Without letting herself think about it, Spinner grabbed the ladder and pulled herself up.

She looked into the pilot’s cage. It was an open sphere made of tubes of construction material. The tubes were arranged in an open lattice which followed a simple longitude-and-latitude pattern. Inside the cage was a horseshoe-shaped console, of the black Xeelee material. Other devices, made of dull metal looking crude by comparison, obviously human—had been fixed to the Xeelee console.

A human couch had been cemented into the cage, before the console. Straps dangled from it. To fit into the cramped cage, the couch had been made small too small for any human from the Decks but a child... or a child-woman from the forest.

“I’m going to climb in, Louise.”

“Good. But for Life’s sake, Spinner-of-Rope, until I tell you, don’t touch anything.”

Spinner swung her legs, easily in the light gravity, through the construction material frame and into the cage.

The couch fitted her body closely—as it should, she thought resentfully, since it had obviously been made for her—but it was too snug. The couch—the straps across her chest and waist, the bulky, crowding console before her— devoured her. The cage was a place of shadows, crisscrossing and mysterious, cast by the Jovian ring and the ice below her. It pressed around her, barely big enough for the couch and console.

She looked out through her murky faceplate, beyond the construction-material cage, to the ice plains of Callisto. She saw the blocky forms of the Northern’s ‘bots, the pod that had brought her here, the shadowy figure of Louise. It all seemed remote, unattainable. The only reality was herself, inside this suit, this alien craft—and the sound of her own breathing loud in her ears.

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