wall. “Please, Martin. This one. Please.”
“Plek,” Martin said. “Plek.”
“Plek, Martin.”
Martin took a step forward and hesitated.
“Plek,” Gilly said. “Plek, plek.”
Martin’s head tilted. After a moment, Gilly detected a faint noise. A kind of thrumming, which he could feel as well as hear. Martin turned to face the tunnel entrance. The noise came again. Martin’s head swung back toward Gilly.
“Don’t look at me,” he said.
Martin trotted out of the cave. Gilly hung, listening. The sound continued, stopping occasionally, then resuming, louder and more defined. There was something mechanical about it, something very Service, very human. The wild thought leaped into his brain: rescue. Service had sent a team and they were burning their way down to him. It was ridiculous but too amazing not to imagine and he couldn’t think what else it might be. His active ping was disabled to save power, but now he brought it up and toggled it on.
After a second, his film pinged with a blue dot and the word: ANDERS.
He gasped. His heart began to bang painfully in his chest. The sounds resumed, closer than before. They had a rhythm, a kind of beat like a fast drum, drawing closer, until it became a pounding. There was silence for ten seconds, twenty, thirty, and then rock burst from the wall near where Martin sometimes rested. There was dust and a ragged hole and a suited figure climbing from it.
“Anders,” Gilly said. “Anders. Anders.” The figure came toward him. It had a helmet and a shining light and he couldn’t see who it was.
Comms, he realized. He’d disabled those, too. He toggled the subsystem and there was breathing in his ear, which he recognized at once.
“Don’t get too excited,” Anders said. “There’s no one else.”
“Anders. Anders.”
He came closer until Gilly could see his face. “Can you walk? Why are you standing like that?”
“I’m stuck to the wall.”
Anders began to inspect him. “So you are.” He checked his surroundings and saw the tunnel. “Let me know if salamanders come out of there.”
“Thank you, Anders. Thank you.” He began to cry. “I thought I was going to die.”
Anders tugged at Gilly’s shoulder. “You still might. Am I reading your core power right? You have eighty minutes?”
He nodded.
“I have a converter,” Anders said, and Gilly began to shake, because that was something he hadn’t even dared to imagine. He’d been preparing for death. “There’s a safe place to use it back there. How did you get stuck like that? We need to get you off there.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Anders glanced back at the tunnel, slinging the lightning gun.
“Where are Jackson and Beanfield?”
“Jackson’s dead. Beanfield’s topside but in bad shape. Like I said, this is it.”
He felt stunned. “How did you . . . What about the jetpod?”
“Sunk.”
“The suits are good at depths of up to—”
Anders shook his head. “Jet’s gone, Gilly. It was busted up even before it sank.”
“But . . .” There had to be something. He couldn’t be rescued only to be trapped on the planet. It was a puzzle. He just had to figure out the solution.
Anders shook his head. “I’ll tell you when we get out of here.” He strained and grunted. “You’re really stuck there. I think I have to shoot it.”
“What? No.”
“The wall. Not you.”
“It’s a VX-10. It’s like a firehose. You can’t control where it goes.”
“If I put any more pressure on your suit, it’s going to rip.”
“It won’t.” Anders looked doubtful. “Just try.”
Anders turned the gun around and wedged the butt into Gilly’s back. “Salamanders ever come out of there?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“One of them visits me.”
“How are you not dead?”
“It’s . . . we’ve been trying to understand each other.”
Anders peered at him. “A salamander?”
He nodded.
“What are you talking about?”