but good old Haven air. The tanks are small - forty, maybe fifty minutes of air. You clip it to your belt like this, see?'
'Yes.'
Bobbi offered him one of the rigs. Gard attached the tank to his belt. He had to raise his T-shirt to do it, and he was very glad he'd decided to leave the .45 under the bed for now.
'Start using the canned air just before I open it up,' Bobbi said. 'Almost forgot. Here. Just in case you forget.' She handed Gardener a pair of noseplugs. Gard stuffed them into a jeans pocket.
'Well!' Bobbi said briskly. 'Are you ready, then?'
'We're really going in there?'
'We really are,' Bobbi said almost tenderly.
Gardener laughed shakily. His hands and feet were cold. 'I'm pretty fucking excited,' he said.
Bobbi smiled. 'I am, too.'
'Also, I'm scared.'
In that same tender voice, Bobbi said, 'No need to be, Gard. Everything will be all right.'
Something in that tone made Gardener feel more scared than ever.
2
They took the Tomcat and cruised silently through the dead woods, the only sound the minute hum of batteries. Neither of them talked.
Bobbi parked the Tomcat by the lean-to and they stood for a moment looking at the silver dish rising out of the trench. The morning sun shone on it in a pure, widening wedge of light.
Inside, Gardener thought again.
'Are you ready?' Bobbie asked again. Come on, Rocky - just one big jolt, you'll never feel a thing.
'Yeah, fine,' Gardener said. His voice was a trifle hoarse.
Bobbi was looking at him inscrutably with her changing eyes - those floating, widening pupils. Gardener seemed to feel mental fingers fluttering over his thoughts, trying to pull them open.
'Going in there could kill you, you know,' Bobbi said at last. 'Not the air - we've got that licked.' She smiled. 'It's funny, you know. Five minutes on one of those mouthpieces would knock someone from the outside unconscious, and half an hour of it would kill him. But it'll keep us alive. Does that tickle you, Gard?'
'Yes,' Gard said, looking at the ship and wondering the things he always wondered: Where did you come from? And how long did you have to cruise the night to get here? 'It tickles me.'
'I think you'll be okay, but you know - ' Bobbi shrugged. 'Your head ... that steel plate interacts somehow with the
'I know the risk.'
'As long as you do.'
Bobbi turned and walked toward the trench. Gardener stood where he was for a moment, watching her go.
I know the risk from the plate. What I'm less clear on is the risk from you, Bobbi. Is it Haven air I'm going to get when I have to use that mask, or something like Raid?
But it didn't matter, did it? He had thrown the dice. And nothing was going to keep him from seeing inside that ship, if he could - not David Brown, not the whole world.
Bobbi reached the trench. She turned and looked back, her made-up face a dull mask in the morning light angling through the old pines and spruces which surrounded this place. 'Coming?'
'Yeah,' Gardener said, and walked over to the ship.
3
Getting down proved to be unexpectedly tricky. Ironically, getting up was the easy part. The button at the bottom was right there, in fact no more than the 0 on a remote telephone handset. At the top, the button was a conventional electrical switch set on one of the posts which supported the lean-to. This was fifty feet from the edge of the trench. For the first time Gardener realized how all those car recalls could happen; until now, neither of them had bothered with the fact that their arms were somewhat less than fifty feet long.
They had been using the sling to go up and down for a long time now, long enough to take it for granted. Standing at the edge of the trench, they realized that they had never both gone down together. What both also realized but neither said was that they could have gone down one at a time; with someone to run the buttons at the bottom, all would have been well. Neither said it because it was understood between them that this time, and only this time, they must go down together, perfectly together, both with one foot in the single stirrup, arms around each other's waists, like lovers in a descending swing. It was stupid; just stupid, just stupid enough to be the only way.