Skye Object 3270a (15 page)

For several seconds, Skye crouched on the container's rim, gathering her nerve. Devi, Zia, and Buyu had wriggled down into the mass of lydra bodies. They were buried to their chins, and the box appeared nearly full again.
Just room enough for me.

Too bad.

Skye let her feet slide in first. She forced her legs down between the stiff, slippery tentacles. Then she lowered her torso, wriggling hard to slip her pack past the dormant lydras, trying not to think about where she was or what she was doing.

Through the visor of his hood she saw Devi's eyes, watching her. She suspected he was grinning. She wanted to say something nasty but her throat was too dry. So she ignored him, working her way down among the slick tentacles until she'd buried herself to her hooded chin.

Ord had climbed onto the rim of the box. Skye saw its slim, graceful tentacles reach for the switch that would close the cover. Zia's voice arrived over the skin suit's radio system. “Okay ados. This is it. All the way under so Ord can close up.”

Buyu chuckled. “This is the weirdest thing I've ever done.” Then he wriggled back and forth until he disappeared beneath the lydras. Zia and Devi copied him, vanishing in turn. Skye waited until Ord triggered the closing switch. Then she jiggled and thrashed, driving herself under the surface as the cover slid shut, cutting off the faint, false starlight of the ceiling.

For a moment, she could see nothing. Then she noticed a dim, jewel-like glow in many colors, bleeding through the packed lydra bodies. “Buyu, is your flashlight on?”

“Can you see it?”

“I can see lots of colors.”

“Everybody okay?” Zia asked.

“Sooth.”

“Sooth.”

Skye added her own reluctant agreement. “Should have brought a patch to make me sleep.”

They laughed, then Zia said softly, “We should be quiet now. It won't be long before the cargo handlers arrive.”

So Skye tried to relax . . . as if that were possible, packed into a container full of sleeping monsters. In the faint gleam of Buyu's light she thought she saw one of the tentacles twitch. She stared at it a long time, waiting to see if it would move again.

T
he elevator car shot upward along its track at 650 kilometers per hour . . . but the elevator column was more than 38,000 kilometers long. The journey to the top would last two and a half days.

Skye thought about this as lydras pressed against her on every side. She listened for the cargo handlers, hoping the robotic machines would come soon to load the container aboard the elevator car.

The plan was to spend only a few hours boxed in with the lydras. Once the container was loaded and the elevator car underway, Ord would release them. After that it would be a matter of staying out of sight. That shouldn't be too hard. According to Zia's dad, only five to ten human technicians would be aboard the elevator car. And since the car was the size of a small building, there would be plenty of places to hide.

They would have an easy time of it too, because security in Silk was never tight. Usually, it didn't need to be . . . though Skye could see how that might soon change. She felt badly about it.

But this isn't about me!

What they were doing didn't feel truly right. Still, it was the best choice she could see. Skye had to follow her conscience. If there were other children from her great ship—and she could not doubt there were . . . maybe she even had brothers and sisters somewhere?—she owed them her best effort. The laws of Silk did not have the moral authority to make her turn away.

A sudden loud
thunk!
against the side of the container brought her back to the present. She heard a faint mechanical whir, then the box shook.
At last!
The robotic cargo handlers had begun to move the lydra crates.

Inside the box, everyone (and everything) stayed very quiet. Skye strained her ears, trying to guess what was happening outside, but few noises could get past the triple barrier of her hood, the lydra bodies, and the wall of the cargo container. So it surprised her when the box was set down with a clunk. Were they on the elevator car already? It must be, yet the brief journey from the lydra farm had been so smooth she'd hardly been aware of it.

A louder clunk resounded through the container as something pounded down against the top. Skye cringed, listening to the walls creak and groan. She half-expected the box to shatter, but nothing happened.

After that she heard only a few distant thuds, followed by a blind silence. She thought about Ord, melted against the bottom of the container. She hoped it was all right . . . and not just because she was fond of the little robot. There would be no way out of this box if Ord could not trigger the locks.

It should have been impossible to sleep surrounded by lydras, yet sometime later Skye stirred, realizing she'd been dreaming. Now her eyes opened on perfect darkness. She could feel the pressure of lydras all around her and her heart raced. “Time?” she whispered to the DI that controlled her skin suit.

The answer wrote itself across her visor in glowing letters. Four hours had passed since they'd climbed into the lydra box. So the elevator must be underway, rushing along its tracks at 650 kilometers per hour as it left Silk and Deception Well behind.

Was anyone else awake? She activated her suit's radio, engaging a low power, private link to the others. “Hey, ados.” At first she whispered, but then she said it again in a louder voice. “Hey! Ados.”

“Skye?” That was Zia's voice, sounding a little confused.

“Sooth, it's me. Think it's too early to get out of here?”

“Wha' time . . . ? Oh.”

“It's probably okay,” Devi said, sounding fully awake, and annoyingly alert. “Either this storage room is empty, or it's never going to be empty. The only way to know is to look.”

“We could radio Ord,” Buyu said. “Let the little ‘bot take a look for us.”

Skye felt stunned at this excellent suggestion. A moment later she started to giggle. “I . . . I don't think so.”

“Why?” Buyu demanded.

She knew she was being rude. She tried to stop laughing, but the situation was
so
ridiculous. She struggled to choke out an answer anyway. “It's just . . . I just realized . . . Buyu, I've never called Ord before, and I . . . I don't have any idea how to do it.”

“Gutter dogs.”

“Sorry.”

“I've called Ord,” Zia said quietly, “but I always went through city library. We can't do that here.”

“We'll tap on the floor,” Devi said. “That'll wake Ord up. It's smart enough not to show itself if anyone's around. Right, Skye?”

Ord was only a DI. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“Try it,” Zia said. “No choice.”

So Devi knocked at the bottom of the container with his booted heel. They waited. Skye tensed, as she heard a scuttling sound, climbing the outside wall of the container. “Listen! Ord's coming.”

They waited a full minute, but they heard nothing else.

“Maybe it sighted someone,” Zia whispered.

So they sat quietly for most of an hour. In all that time they heard nothing, so finally Devi knocked again on the bottom of the container. They heard the scuttling again, but this time it came from the top of the box, near the locks.

“Ord's out there,” Devi said. “Skye, can you rap the wall on that side?”

She was sitting beneath the locks, on the side of the container that would open first “I'll try.”

Forcing a hand up, she pushed through the slippery lydras, trying to reach the top of the box. Her fingers had just touched the lid when a lydra tentacle snapped past her hand, shooting over her palm like a cool, wet,
living
rope. She yelped. “It moved! One of the lydras is awake.”

“It can't be awake,” Zia said. “It was probably just a reflex.” Yet she sounded unsure.

“
Zeme twice
,” Skye whispered. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might choke on it. She reached again for the top of the box. Making a fist, she pounded on it, lightly at first, then a little harder.

“That's enough,” Devi said. “If Ord's there, it'll know we want out. It'll let us out, if things look safe.”

They were silent for several seconds. Then Buyu said, quite calmly, “I can feel a lydra moving against my chest.”

Skye let out a little scream. She couldn't help herself. Quickly, she closed her eyes and counted to ten, struggling against panic.

Through her skin suit she felt a tentacle wriggle under her armpit. Another coiled around her ankle. The skin suit was very sensitive. It was designed to reproduce sensation. She could feel the tentacle's tiny pincers plucking at her leg. “Something's going very wrong,” she whispered.

“Sooth,” Zia said. “I think it's our body heat. It must be wiping out the effect of the hibernation drug. Let's get out of here now.” She clicked off her radio system, then raised her voice in a shout that Skye could hear easily, even through the hood of her skin suit. “Ord! Key the locks right now, or I am going to melt you when I do get out of here!”

The tantalizing scuttling started up once again. Then to Skye's heartfelt relief, she heard the locks click open overhead.

She waited, but the lid did not slide back. “Ord?” she whispered, forgetting for a moment that Ord could not hear her.

“What's going on out there?” Devi demanded. He grunted, and the container rocked a little.

“Are you trying to push the lid open?” Skye asked.

“Sooth.”

She resolved to help him. Reaching for the lid, she forced both her hands past the lydras—until a flash of searing heat across one palm made her cry out. She yanked both hands back against her sides, breathing hard. Her skin suit felt hot. The seared glove was stiff. She could hardly bend that hand.

“Don't panic,” Zia said.

“I'm not panicking! But something's going on here. My skin suit's heating up. It's not flexing.”

“The lydras are trying to dissolve our suits,” Devi said. “It's what they do—process raw material into something useful.”

“I don't think I like your definition of raw material. Can they get through the suits?”

Devi didn't answer. Skye decided that was as good as a yes. Ignoring the stiffness in her palm (it was spreading to her arms), she reached overhead again and found the lid. It was designed to slide open. She ran her hands across it, feeling for some bump or ridge that she could grip, but the surface was absolutely smooth. Reaching back over her head, she found the seam where the lid met the side of the box, but it was a perfect fit. There was no way to get her fingers around the edge. “Devi—”

“I know, I know. I can't get a grip either.”

“Then what are we—” She caught herself. “We
are
dumb ados,” she growled. “The gloves of our skin suits are hot zones, remember? Zia, they bond to the elevator column when we swing in from our jumps. Why can't they bond to the lid of this cargo box?”

“Skye,” Devi said, “you are a genius.” He whispered to his DI. She whispered to hers, but the news was bad. “My gloves are disabled. The lydras have done something to them—”

“Mine are working,” Zia said.

“Mine too,” Buyu added. “I wish I was at the front of this box though. The lid's going to slide away on this side, and I'll have to readjust my grip. But let's try it. Devi, you ready? On three. One, two, three.”

Skye felt the lid snap back a fraction of a millimeter, but that was all. The radio spat out a chorus of groans and curses.

Why wasn't the lid sliding open? It had opened so easily when they were in the warehouse.

A horrible, scraping noise erupted overhead. A knife of colorful light plunged into her eyes. She ducked her head, blinking hard. Then she looked again.

Between the packed lydra bodies a crack of light streamed into the box. “It's opening!” she shouted. Then she shoved the wriggling lydras aside so she could see better. To her disappointment, the gap was only a centimeter wide. “Well, it's opening a little.”

The outside light was amber. As she reached for the crack, Ord's tentacle—stretched to the thinness of a noodle—wriggled into sight. Skye smiled, imagining the worried mutters of the little robot.
Skye is stuck.
This is not fun
. . .

Time to get un-stuck then. She shoved her fingers into the gap and pushed. The scraping sound grew louder as the lid moved, first two centimeters, then three. Then five. Then ten. But the line of amber light did not widen at all. “Stop!” Skye yelped. “Stop, stop. Something's wrong. Something's out there.”

She could feel a new bloom of heat at her knee. She thrashed, trying to get away from the lydra that wanted to dissolve her. Tentacles were wriggling on all sides now. Her glove had hardened into a cast. The elbow of her skin suit was going stiff too. She jammed her fist through the gap anyway, while Zia demanded, “What? What is it?”

“Something's been stacked on the lid.” She pushed against it, as Ord's tentacle wrapped affectionately around her wrist. “
Gutter
dogs
. It's really heavy.”

Zia groaned. “Another container! Zeme dust! They've stacked the containers, and now we're trapped in here.”

“No,” Devi said. “It's not that bad. Buyu! Get over to this side of the box if you can.”

Skye felt herself bounced around as Buyu and Devi stirred waves in the massed lydras. Buyu bashed into her, driving her up against the container's wall. She grunted and wriggled out of the way, only to run into Devi on her other side.

“Okay, Dev,” Buyu said. “I'm in place, but there's no way we can lift this much weight.”

“It's not that much weight anymore,” Devi said. “Think about it. We're four hours out of Silk. That means we're twenty nine hundred kilometers above the surface of the planet.”

“So?”

“Gravity is caused by the planet's mass, right?”

“Sure.”

“The force of gravity drops rapidly the farther we get from its source. When we were on the planet, didn't you feel a little heavier than in the city?”

“I thought that was just the humidity.”

“It wasn't. And this far from the planet, the pull of gravity might be only half what it is in Silk. We might not be able to move a loaded container in Silk, but I bet we could handle it here, where it weighs only half as much.”

“Do it quick,” Skye pleaded. “My skin suit's freezing up.”

“Okay,” Buyu said. “Ready? On three. One, two, three—!”

Devi roared. Buyu groaned. Skye laid her own stiff hands against the container that imprisoned them and strained, while waking lydras wriggled out from under her feet.

The massive container began to move. Skye felt it rise slowly, slowly up. Five centimeters. Ten. Amber light blazed through the widening gap while sweat popped out all across her skin. She could feel Buyu beside her, his huge muscles trembling. She pushed harder, and suddenly something snapped. She heard it as a metal
twang
.

The reluctant container started to slide. Devi roared again. Buyu howled. His huge arms surged over Skye's head, tipping the imprisoning container up, up out of her reach. Skye wriggled past the partly opened lid of their own box. She had to slip out of her pack to do it, hauling it out behind her by its strap. She emerged in time to see the defeated cargo container begin a graceful plunge. It slid over the side of their container, falling as if in slow motion. It seemed to take a long time to reach the floor, but when it did, it hit with a horrible crash.

Suddenly, lydras were bouncing everywhere. “Oh no!” Skye screamed. “The lid must have broken!”

She shrugged her pack back on, then heaved herself onto the rim of their container. She balanced on top of it, one foot on the rim, one on the lid while she took in their surroundings.

They were in a huge warehouse, fully the size of one floor of the elevator car. Narrow aisles divided stacks upon stacks of containers of all shapes and sizes. Their own cargo container had been placed alongside an aisle. Skye gazed down three meters to the floor. The fallen container blocked the walkway. The concussion had cracked it open, sending hundreds of lydras careening into the air—blue ones, red ones, green and orange—flying wildly in the low gravity, crashing into the ceiling, and into other containers, before finally falling back down. Skye ducked, to avoid being hit by a circle of plummeting tentacles. Below her, the aisle writhed with lydras that had crawled or spilled from the overturned box.

It took only that quick glance to realize just how lucky they were.

Their container was in the middle of what had been a stack of three. If they had been on the bottom of the stack, they never would have been able to push two cargo containers over. If they had been placed anywhere but along an aisle, they never would have gotten the top container to tip. So they would have been stuck with the waking lydras for three days. It made her stomach clench, to think about it.

“Watch it, Skye,” Buyu warned. “I can't fit through this crack.”

He didn't give her any time to respond. He just shoved the lid open.

“Hey!” Skye yelped as she lost her footing. She teetered for a second on the edge of the cargo container. Then she felt herself falling. “Buyuu!” she howled, as she plunged back into the box from which she had just escaped.