As best they could make out it was roughly cone-shaped, with the blunt end facing the wind. Whenever they got close a slimmer projection appeared at the leading end and seemed to lead upwards.
It was Rams who figured it out. “It’s a drogue,” he explained. “One of the sea anchors the station uses to hold itself in place. They’re usually a klick below though.”
“What the hell is it doing at this level?” Louella demanded. “I though those things were hundreds of meters below the stations, not on the level the ships used.”
Pascal thought hard. “Maybe we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. Perhaps we are way down below where our instruments tell us we are.”
Louella stared hard at the display, trying to work out her own conclusions. “You think there’s something wrong with the altimeter? Oh shit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“The altimeter isn’t absolute. It just figures out the altitude by the buoyancy of the ship—it’s an approximation.”
“So we aren’t as high as we should be? That doesn’t make any sense. If the outside pressure was lower then the station would be as affected as us.” Pascal replied, fighting to hold the logic of the problem in his mind.
“Thorn’s dragging us down,” Rams suggested. “Rock and ship are ballast too. Holding us down.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” Louella exclaimed. “Crap, all we have to do is rise to their level to dock with her.”
With that she reached out and flipped the heater switches that would vaporize and vent a portion of the ballast and lighten the ship. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to evacuate some ballast. Hey, that’s strange…” Her forehead crinkled in thought as she stared at one of the displays on the console. Finally, she spoke.
“Pascal, honey, I think we have another little problem.”
After extensive systems checks and repeated attempts to get Primrose’s heaters to work they concluded that the heater circuits within her keel must be faulty.
Louella said it first. “The question isn’t how did it happen; it’s what can we do about it? How can we get the ship up to the station’s altitude?”
“Need to get down there and fix the circuits,” Pascal suggested after a few minutes of intense thought. For some reason he wasn’t thinking too clearly, probably because of the lack of rest and the pressure of their predicament.
“I think the drag of the tow is holding our speed below that of the station at this angle of attack. We’re losing way relative to the station. We need to quarter away to build up enough to catch it again,” Louella said in a tired voice.
So saying, she let the wind take Primrose on a slanting course away from the station, building their speed once more. Back and forth they passed under the station, careful to avoid the lines that held the drogues in place, and trying the radio with each pass, but getting only static for their troubles. There was no way they could tell whether the station was aware of their plight or not.
Meanwhile Pascal had crawled forward to loosen the hatch to the lower deck and the heater connections. He had to check several times, because he kept forgetting what he had done. As far as he could tell, the heaters were working properly. He could even feel the warmth through the housings with his hand.
So that meant the problem wasn’t the heaters, he reasoned slowly. Therefore, it had to be the vents. They must have been damaged whenever Thorn’s rock had smashed against their keel. Maybe one of their collisions had warped them into uselessness. No way of telling from down here. Wearily he climbed back up and made his way to the cockpit to tell Louella the sad news.
“I knew we should have cast Thorn off when we had the chance,” he said once he got his breath back.
“Too late to reconsider that now,” she replied, too tired to even argue the point. Instead she appeared to be deep in thought.
In a few minutes Louella came up with a truly frightening solution: Pascal would simply go over to Thorn and switch on her heaters. That would provide enough lift to bring the both of them to the station’s level.
“Maybe I should raise Thorn’s sails, too,” he suggested dryly. “Or even sail the damned thing up to the station by myself.”
The sarcasm was lost on Louella, who was as tired and worn down as he. “Did you forget that we lost the sails, dear? No, just see if you can lighten the load for us.”
“Maybe if we just cast off the tow,” he began.
“Not after bringing it all this way you won’t!” she shot back. “We’re going to save both of them!”
Pascal wasn’t sure if she meant Primrose and Rams or Thorn and the rock. Not that it mattered—he still had to go out on deck and dare Jupiter’s fatal siren call once more.
He hoped his bowels would hold this time.
Slowly and with great care, he suited up and returned topside, clipping two safety lines in place as Louella flipped on the lights. Very carefully he worked his way to the edge of Primrose’s deck clamping a deathlike grip on a stanchion to anchor himself in place.
After a few moments in which he tried to steel himself for the task ahead, he looked at the gap between the two ships, the chasm that had no bottom, a chasm into which he could easily fall forever…
No. He shook his head to clear out the thought. He couldn’t let the fear control him. He had a job to do. But his guts told him differently, as did his trembling legs.
Thorn was still drifting off to the port side, but she was significantly below Primrose’s level, giving the tow lines a steep downward slope. Why hadn’t they noticed that she was pulling them down? Was that something else they had missed because of their fatigue?
Maybe he could do what he had the last time; tie himself to the tow rope and slide down to Thorn. It would be easier than last time with the slope so steep. Wait, maybe it was too steep; so steep that he would break his legs from the impact of hitting the other deck under two gees!
But what if the tow line parted when he hit? with his legs broken he wouldn’t be able to hold himself in place—he’d slip over the edge and into the dark chasm that…
Damn, why did his thoughts keep returning to that nightmare? Once more he tried to clear his head of the nibbling fear even as he threw another line around the winch for added security. Perhaps he could rig a second line to retard his fall, paying it out as he lowered himself down the line. That would keep him from hitting too hard, but it would also make the time he hung over the deep, black emptiness even longer—increasing the risk of the line breaking and letting him fall, fall… He shook his head, dismissed the thought, and began rigging the lines.
He first put a short loop around the tow rope, then anchored both ends to his suit. He then attached a second loop, and a third, just to make sure. Next, he detached another line, put it around the winch, and secured one end to his belt: That would be his retard line, one he could pay out through his hands and control his slide.
Just as he had before, he said a short prayer before lying down under the tow line and testing the harness he’d created. Satisfied that it would hold him, he released a meter of the security line and felt himself start to slide down Primrose’s curving side.
Through the narrow field of his helmet he could only see the tow rope and the spider’s web of lines that supported him. He concentrated on letting only a small amount of line at a time through his gloves. With each downward lurch the fear started eating at the edges of his mind, fear that he kept trying to suppress, of the depths that could so easily draw him down, down, down. A shudder of stomach-wrenching fear tore at him as he rocked somewhere above the vast chasm, paralyzed by his fear, unable to move. Tears welled up in his eyes and he felt his sphincter spasm. He was shaking so hard that it was difficult to think.
The longer he stayed here, he finally realized, the greater the chance that the line would break and send him to his death. With great effort he forced his hands to relax for an instant and release another meter of security line so that he could continue his slide toward Thorn.
Except he didn’t move. The released line drooped limply on his chest. Panic filled him. The retarding line was jammed. He was stuck here! He would stay here forever, dying suspended above Jupiter’s crushing depths!
With the desperation of the damned, he reached up to pull at the tow line that was supporting him, desperately hoping to get himself in motion, but the tow line was just out of reach; he had made the harness too long!
And the call of the depths was intensifying, increasing his risk, increasing his fear. The sour smell of urine and emptied bowels inside his suit told him that his body had submitted to the fear even more than his mind.
What could he do, he wondered with sudden clarity of mind; just lie here in his own shit and piss and tears until the lines snapped and ended it all? Yes, that could be an appealing option—a few minutes of terror and then the sweet release of death, final and complete! Finally there would be an end to this fear, these nightmares, this cowardice that he had lived with for so long.
But, another part of his mind protested, that would also doom Rams and Louella, two people he had an obligation to save, and one whom he just realized that he loved. He couldn’t kill them just because of his own cowardice.
Then he noticed that two of the safety lines were crossed on the tow line. They had jammed while he lay there letting himself submit to the cowardly voice within. All that he had to do was untangle them and he’d be able to continue.
After struggling to reach the lines he finally concluded that there was no way to reach the knot. The only way to undo the tangle was to untie one end of one of them and pull it through. All he had to do was remove one of the safety lines that kept him from falling into the depths at his back.
Did he have the courage to try, or was he too cowardly to take the risk? That was the question. He tried to move one hand toward the line. It froze into immobility, captive of the fear inside, divorced from the urging of his conscious mind. He tried to force his hand to move, to grasp the line and loosen it, but it remained as it was.
At that point he realized that this was an irrational fear, something born in the primal, reptilian depths of his brain. There was nothing he could do about it; his fear wasn’t a conscious choice so much as the way his brain was wired. At that it was as if some liberating wave passed through him, releasing him from his false perceptions, releasing his hand from the clasp of his deep-rooted fear.
“Either way I die,” he said and quickly, before the fear within could take control, undid one of the ends at his side.