The Killer Thing by Kate Wilhelm

Author:Kate Wilhelm
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2013-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

Ten

The grade was twenty degrees, and he fell flat out with his face pressed against the hot dry rocky earth. He hadn’t

remembered it as being so far through the passage of the chimney, or so steep and treacherous. The roar of compressed air filled his ears, and he turned off the audio control in his helmet, immediately turning the world into a silent place where even the sound of his heart-beat was missing. It was worse than the wind had been. He turned it on again.

He had to keep going. Minute by minute the wind was increasing its speed, the size of the flying rocks growing. He had to turn around, go down feet first in order to protect his head. The chimney was two and a half feet wide here, narrowing at the top of the cleft to a scant foot; the light coming in through the top was dirty, grey-yellow. He brought his feet up under him, presenting a larger target for the hurled rocks. One caught him on the thigh and he cried out. Hurrying, he turned, getting his feet out before him, keeping his face down against the earth, one hand over his head, the other extending out behind him as he went down the passage, pushing, helping to lift his weight, easing it over the next few inches. Slowly, he approached the end of the chimney; the rocks that were blowing about were larger, not going straight through at this end, but skipping about in a circular motion, banging thunderously against the sides of the cut. At the end he tried to see his dinghy and could not find it in the swirling debris. The valley echoed with the repeated crashes of boulders against valley walls, and the wind’s roar here was deafening.

The dinghy had to be to his left, about twenty-five feet away from the cliff wall; he would be going directly into the wind. Suddenly everything was swept away in a blaze of pain and when it passed he could not move his left arm at all. There was the feel of sticky warmth on his shoulder, but no pain then. He knew the pain would come again. He had to get to the dinghy before one of the rocks caught him in the head, or broke a leg…

He closed his eyes hard, visualising the dinghy and the rounded boulder, fighting back the hysteria that was overcoming him at the thought of leaving the inadequate shelter of the cut into the mountain. The boulder had been trailed by a whole string of lesser rocks… He should have realised what they meant when he first saw them… If he could make it to the rocks and use them for protection…

There was nothing else he could do. His left arm dangled uselessly, numbed, as if it were not even a part of him. He stood for another moment, pressing himself hard against the side of the cleft, and then he ran out, hunched as low as he could get, and he tripped and fell over one of the series of rocks.

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