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Still uessed One, a shorter tohose tip sat well below the tree line, broke through close to where they stood, outside the cleared wall section Karl saw it the same instant Skyler did

"Hell," he said, "too close"

"Get to the ladder!" Skyler bellowed He was closest and went first, taking the rungs two at a ti the last three His boots landed in theto make room for Karl He braced his fall with one hand and whirled in time to see his friend slip on the scaffold top, still two steps from the ladder The man landed hard on the wooden slats, one arm folded aardly underneath his torso His binoculars tu, Karl started to stand again and move for the ladder

Then the renched and broke apart

The scaffold heaved and tilted Skyler had time to see Karl tumble off it and fall to the mud, before he, Skyler, had toand chain-link fence cruh The scaffold ay finally tipped and fell, sla up a wall of milky broater Somewhere, underneath the broken remains of the wall and the ankle deep mud, was Karl

Once the tower passed by, Skyler leapt forward He hoisted a segment of fence away and tossed it aside Someone else appeared next to hi Karl’s narasped Skyler’s and he yanked without a second thought "Help," he grunted The others around hied, and then Karl ca and coughing in agony as his leg and foot came out from under a section of the collapsed ay The foot splayed out at an unnatural angle "Careful of the leg," Skyler said to the three people helping

They moved the injured a few round Karl whiroaned He swiped mud from his face and Skyler could see the intense pain on the ot him," a nearby man said "I’m a otten all about the rest of the towers He glanced toward the center of camp in time to see the first of them reach the line of colonists who’d volunteered to try to stop thereatly ad just witnessed Karl’s fall The first of them, a stocky woman with short curly hair, held out their hands to an approaching tower, dug in her feet, and pushed

The tower slowed, and stopped

Skyler let out a sigh of relief, and turned back to help his fallen friend

"Ar, too"

"Yeah," Skyler replied, kneeling down next to the cot in the infirmary tent "I saw the way it was bent Not pretty Are you all right?"

"High as a kite"

Skyler grinned "Thought we’d lost you when you went under the mud"

"How I had the presence of mind to hold my breath, much less keep it in, I have no idea" His eyes lost their focus for a few seconds, then he seeain "I re up here"

The injured liulfed in thick spray-on casts, both propped to

"How’s it look out there?" Karl asked

"You took the only wounds, you clurunt

"Sorry," Skyler went on "Twenty-ters back, all safely back in the yard And one alien key, or puzzle piece, or whatever, ready toit up?"

"I aain, recalled the way his foot had been pointed the wrong way He shivered despite the huht infection of SUBS weren’t already enough for Karl to deal with …

The ha of rain on the tent suddenly subsided, and then vanished altogether

"You shoulda heard the twang of the cord when you picked that object up," Karl said "Dae things here, until you’re up and about"

"You won’t hearhad slipped off the stack of books that propped it up, landing with a thud on the thick canvas cot Skyler winced, stifled a laugh without et resettled

Chapter Two

Platz Station

22MAR2285

"How do you feel?"

"Like … like voined a nuht have on her first visit to space, her first tihtlessness This hadn’t been his preferred outco handy for her to use He even had a handkerchief ready, and by the time they reached the clirin and her eyes sparkled with an alh the airlock with tooacross the wide space beyond until she finally landed halfway up the far wall He watched her drift in the hed with her

Ana pushed off with better ai a hand on her forearm as she did the same to him She landed and slipped her other ar," she said

"I prefer the water"

She punched him playfully on the shoulder The motion made her body try to drift away, saved only by the fact that her other ar and pulled her back to the floor She lanced down at the hard-shell case they’d brought up

"I should probably--"

Ana spoke over hi him from an aard conversation "I think I’ll stay in here for a while, if they’ll let et ht He didn’t know if that day would ever co he did know is that they would have to talk through the more complicated aspects of their relationship sooner than that Skyler sighed and kissed her on the forehead With that she pushed off the floor again and floated up to the ceiling

He watched her for a few seconds, stalling, ad her lithe forht ponytail Finally he lifted the hard plastic case froer and pushed it ahead of hio bay’s exit--an alcove in the ith a lift that went "down" to the outer portion of the station’s central ring He tucked the case under an elastic blue netting at the back of the lift to free his hands, then hooked his foot under a metal loop on the floor by the activation button He tapped it, and waved to Ana as the cargo lift drifted slowly outward He watched her perfor dive across the room and chuckled to himself A dancer at heart, no different than the first time I saw her

"Excellent work, Skyler," Tim said as Skyler approached the infirmary He must have heard about the cli

"Thanks, Tim," Skyler replied "Aren’t you supposed to be headed below to fill in for Karl?"

"I’ your climber back down" Tim nodded once toward the case "Is that what I think it is?"

"Can I go and visit?"

Tiered on the black container for a moment, then met Skyler’s He held Skyler’s stare for a few seconds, then nodded and stepped aside