Sticks and Stones by Robert Jeschonek

Author:Robert Jeschonek [Jeschonek, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pie Press

Chapter Twenty

It was a long way down.

Staring below as the two sleds approached her on the outer skin of the tube, J'Tull estimated that she was ten floors from the ground. If she fell while attempting to descend by jumping from tube to tube, she knew that she would die.

Even if she had been fully rested, such a course of action would have been daunting. Though she was an excellent athlete, she was by no means a trained acrobat.

Nevertheless, she prepared to jump. She simply had no other choice; she would either jump from the tube or be pushed off by the Vox sleds.

Identical sleds cruising over the tubes below would make her descent even more complicated. To ensure that she would have a clear spot on each tube to land on, she would have to time her leaps to coincide with the sleds' movements. Even then, it was possible that she would be forced from one tube before an open space appeared on the next one down.

She knew that the odds of her success were slim. If any other option had presented itself, she would have pounced on it.

Earlier, she had completely locked off the emotional part of her mind, slamming shut steel doors to prevent it from hindering her. As complete as her emotional control was, she still felt a tingle of fear as she considered the task ahead and the consequences of failure.

A single slip, a single miscalculation, a single instant of weakness, and she would fall…bouncing from one tube to the next on the way to an obliterating impact with the ground.

The logical, rational part of her did not shy from death. As an organic lifeform, her eventual death was inevitable; it was not logical to fear such a natural and unavoidable phenomenon. Further, if she fell to her death while trying to rescue her shipmates, she would be fortunate to die quickly and in service to others.

Such considerations meant nothing to her emotional side, however. She was not ready to die; she was not ready to jump.

The sleds were almost upon her, but she hesitated. For an instant, as she stared downward, she felt unsteady; though she did not have an aversion to heights, she experienced a feeling of vertigo…the worst possible condition that could afflict her at that point. A wave of dizziness and disorientation swept through her, leading her to rock backward from the brink.

Then, summoning every last shred of mental discipline she had left, she annihilated the vertigo, expunging every trace of it. Pushing it down and locking it away would not have been enough; to do what she was about to do, she had to erase the disorientation from existence and replace it with unwavering focus and calm.

When she jumped, she was a thing of single-minded purpose and precision, as free of doubt and distraction as a machine.

The drop wasn't far, perhaps six meters…and she landed firmly on the tube's curved surface. She had no time to pause, however, for a sled glided toward her from several meters away.

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