Part 13 (1/2)

There was no response-unless one counted the sight of a broad back and pistoning legs, moving fast and still picking up speed as they shrank steadily into the distance.

She wasn't sure if the adrenaline flowing through them after their triumph over the guards allowed them to catch up, or if he had subtlety slowed his pace. If the latter, he wouldn't have admitted to it. Irregardless, the escapees, now five, caught up to him atop an east-facing ridge. Between the ash and the creeping dawn that still thankfully lay behind them, the ambient temperature was well up above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone was grateful for the fact that the ashfall had nearly ceased.

Drenched in sweat and wiping volcanic spew from her face, she drew alongside Ridd.i.c.k as they ran together along the ridge top. Having to reserve oxygen for breathing kept any conversation brief.

”Blasted the c.r.a.p out of 'em.” She chortled. ”Been waiting a long time to do something like that.” When he didn't reply, she added, ”You?”

There was a pause as they pounded along side-by-side, the others keeping pace behind them, before he finally responded. ”You even care if you get out of this alive?”

”Not really.” She said it without emotion, as casually and indifferently as if contemplating the scenery. Together, they leaped off the last ledge and landed simultaneously on a lava bridge that spanned a significant cleft in the rocks.

”Well, maybe I do,” he replied unexpectedly.

She eyed him uncertainly for a moment. There was more in that curt affirmation than a mere desire to stay alive. She did not expect it from him, and it kept her wondering and speculating on hidden meanings as she ran on.

Though the sulfur fissure through which they were taking a hoped-for shortcut was lined with a fortune in rare minerals, no one paused to do any informal collecting. There was no time, and money meant nothing now. Not out here, in the open. On the surface. Smooth and supportive underfoot, the fissure Ridd.i.c.k had found ran in exactly the direction they needed to take. With luck, it would dump them out only a short distance from the hangar site.

It dumped them out, all right, and at the expected location. There was only one problem. Their luck had run as dry as the volcanic surface underfoot.

”Oh no,” the Guv was muttering. Stopped, staring, he just kept repeating it, over and over again. ”No, no, no, no . . .”

There was something between them and the hangar site. Something none of them, knowing virtually nothing of the actual surface topography, could have foreseen. It was only a mountain. A small mountain, really. But still a mountain. Composed of melted and reformed sulphurous rock, it completely blocked the way forward. It was steep, and domineering, and immovable, and the Guv would have cried if he could have spared water for the tears.

”s.h.i.+t,” one of the other escapees snapped as he lowered the weapon he was carrying. Not only his voice threatened to snap.

Knowing they were looking to him, Ridd.i.c.k could have consoled them with encouraging words. He might have strived to minimize the trial ahead. Instead, he did what he did best: spoke not a word, and kept moving forward. There was, after all, nothing else to do, and words would not get them over the obstacle a spiteful Nature had placed before them. Racing to the base of the mountain, he started climbing. No one hesitated to follow him. There was no going back now. There hadn't been for some time. Overhead, a brilliant razor's edge of light split the rapidly waning night sky.

The sun was coming up.

They scrambled and sc.r.a.ped their way upward, ignoring b.l.o.o.d.y fingers and frequent cuts, paying no attention to the increasingly lethal drop below them. If not directly helpful, Ridd.i.c.k was at least a target, a goal. Even vertically, he seemed to be making speed. They could not possibly catch up to him. They could not possibly fall too far behind. His receding form was encouragement enough.

With a shorter reach than the others, Kyra was beginning to struggle. Slipping once, she barely caught herself. If she let go, she'd fall all the way to the bottom: far enough now so that she would not have to worry about getting back up and trying again. Complicating matters, the increasing heat was making the rock itself almost too hot to touch.

Seeing her repeatedly flicking her hands to cool them for the next reach and grab, the Guv worked his way up alongside her. ”Like this.” He showed her his hands, both wrapped with belt leather. ”Your belts, use your belts. Gun sling, anything.”

Too tired to fire back one of her usual defiant responses, she just barked tiredly at him. ”Go, go, go- I don't need your help. I'll make it.”

He paused only briefly to favor her with a single lingering stare. Then he was moving again, size notwithstanding, pa.s.sing her on the upward climb. He did not look back to see her cutting up her belt into pieces suitable for hand wrapping.

Above the others, Ridd.i.c.k caught a glimpse of what he had been hoping for. In lieu of the Promised Land, he would settle for the summit. With one powerful heave, he propelled himself to the top.

The view beyond was striking in its desolation. Distant volcanoes smoked on the horizon; rivers of congealed molten rock streaked a surface forever frozen in time; and, virtually at his feet, a rocky plateau sloped away into a great undulating valley of crazed volcanic gla.s.s. Rising from the center of the valley was a single stone steeple, a natural landmark that could not be missed even from atmosphere.

Below it, he knew, lay the hangar complex, and within that complex, the mercenary s.h.i.+p.

Sucking in each superheated breath as if it was his last, one of the convicts emerged on the crest beside him. As the man collapsed and lay fighting for air, Ridd.i.c.k turned to check behind him. The landscape was dominated by a towering volcano, but it wasn't geology that drew the big man's attention. It was the sliver of sunlight growing at its edge, a hidden solar a.s.sa.s.sin that was coming inexorably for them all. Reaching into a pocket, he drew out his black goggles and slipped them on. They might protect his vision, but they would do nothing to save his life.

Peering over, he scanned the cliff face on the backside of the mountain. Figures were evident, climbing toward him. He checked the sequin of sun once more. Not fast enough.

”Kyra!”

Looking up, she saw the familiar figure bent over the edge. ”What?”

He had no time to go into details. Nor did he. The urgency was plain in his voice. ”Get that a.s.s moving! Now Now!”

It was enough. She knew he didn't raise his voice unless it was absolutely, positively, unavoidable. Which meant only one thing. She didn't need to look around to see the sun approaching behind her. She could feel it tickling her neck, feeling its way down her spine, considering how best to finish the puny sack of damp meat that was stuck to the rock wall like a paralyzed fly.

His words were all the jolt she needed. Finding a new gear, she threw everything she had into a last desperate acceleration, choosing speed over caution now. Anything to keep ascending, to keep moving upward. If she fell, she died. If the sun caught her out on the rock face, she died. The only way to survive was to make it to the top and to the other side. The shaded side.

Spidering to the top, the Guv reached the crest and, panting and wheezing, pulled himself up and over. As he rolled and sat up, the sky behind him exploded in whiteness sharp and hard as a diamond as Crematoria's sun finally appeared.

Where she clung to the face of the cliff, sunlight smashed into Kyra with almost physical force, drawing a gasp that mixed fear and desperation. A nearby crevice offered the only hope, the only respite. The only shade. She threw herself into it. Nearby, the only other convict still on the sunward side of the mountain found another cleft and did likewise. Up above, Ridd.i.c.k, the Guv, and the other remaining survivor of the breakout had already ducked down into the still tolerable shade zone provided by the backside of the mountain. Rocky outcroppings provided additional cover. Cover that would last only until the sun rose above the mountaintop.

From below, a still strong but increasingly plaintive voice cried, ”Ridd.i.c.k?” ”Ridd.i.c.k?”

”Yeah,” he responded, not moving from behind his chosen rock.

There was a brief pause, then, ”'Know what I said about not caring if I lived or died?”

”Yeah.” As always, there was no change in the big man's tone, nothing to indicate what he might be thinking.

”'Knew I was kiddin', right?”

By now her voice had faded, not in intensity, but in maturity: a change in age forced by a change in surroundings. She sounded like the kid he had once known, a little girl named Jack. He said nothing- but his attention s.h.i.+fted to a coil of cable that was secured at the Guv's belt.

Noticing the direction of his stare, the Guv felt compelled to remind the big man of his own words. ”One speed. That's what you said. That's what we agreed to.” Ridd.i.c.k didn't reply. His gaze traveled from the cable coil to the crest of the mountain. But he was thinking.

Meanwhile, the third member of the little band who had managed to make it to the top finally gave in to burning curiosity and peered guardedly around the edge of his protective outcropping. He didn't say anything, but his eyes went wide and his jaws parted. It wasn't necessary to give words to what he was seeing. There were no words, anyway.

Generated by the abrupt change and huge rise in temperature as the sun ascended above this part of the world, a visible thermal front had appeared. Caught between the lingering cold of the night side and the soaring temperature of Crematoria's morning, the resultant pressure differential sp.a.w.ned a solid line of superheated wind which, when combined with the thermal front, came thundering across the landscape from north to south, riding the front line of the terminator. The ground quaked as the wind and heat front pa.s.sed over it, shattering loose scree and sending ash and gravel flying. Safe in their subterranean prison tiers, the Guv and the convicts had heard it, could time chronometers by it, every fifty-two hours. But in those depths it was m.u.f.fled by solid rock and hushed by distance. Out here, on the surface, the tsunami of wind and heat had nothing to mute the roar of its relentless advance.

And it was driving pitilessly straight toward the mountain.

Kyra heard it first. Then, peering out from the depths of her protective crevice, she saw it. All thoughts of stoicism fled, all pretext at toughness and indifference falling away like so much desiccated, disintegrating tissue, she screamed.

”RIDd.i.c.k!”

Peering out from his own shelter, the Guv stared at the approaching wave in fascination. Over the years he'd heard it hundreds of times and had tried to visualize it, with little success.

”Jesus Christ,” he murmured to no one in particular. ”So that's that's what it looks like.” Nearby, the other convict who had managed to make it to the top was also staring, mesmerized and mumbling to himself. what it looks like.” Nearby, the other convict who had managed to make it to the top was also staring, mesmerized and mumbling to himself.

”Temperature differential, pressure differential; wind and heat from the north pole to the south. Meeting the advancing terminator every new day. Round and round she goes, and where she hits, everything blows. . . .”

He looked around sharply. Ridd.i.c.k was close by, still hugging the shade. The big man was even more commanding than usual, and there was unusual intensity in his voice.

”Gimme cable, s.h.i.+rt, your water-all of it. Then get the h.e.l.l gone. Go. Move Move.”

They didn't argue with him. First, because it would not have done any good. Second, because they owed him for having brought them this far. And lastly, because they could tell from his tone and see from his expression that if they did not give him what he needed, he would take it anyway. Neither man tried to argue. There was no time here, now, in this place, to p.i.s.s away on internal dissention. They turned over the goods, not knowing what he wanted them for and not asking. Not asking, because he might decide to ask them to join him in whatever crazy move he was contemplating.