The Trellis

by Larry Niven & Brenda Cooper

Kyle refolded the napkins and pulled the tall water drop glasses back towards the plates. Lark wasn't due for two hours, and he'd changed the sign announcing her sixteenth birthday twice, switched placemats once, and dropped a knife on the floor. He paced.

Boot steps. Henry's signature slow shuffle identified him before he rounded the corner into the huge galley. The older man surveyed the perfect table, and his lips curled into a slow smile. “Quit worrying, Kyle,” he said. “She won't say so, but she'll be glad to see you.”

Kyle sighed. “I haven't been here much this year.” Henry watched over Lark when Kyle was visiting Charon. Too often.

Pluto was beautiful as it fell towards the windy dark of aphelion. Crystalline methane and nitrogen clouds sparkled as the light from the base hit them from below, illuminating a gauzy barrier between the frozen surface and the heavens. The clouds drifted across Charon's face. Charon never moved in the sky: directly overhead from where the trellis touched down, a brilliant white sphere where Earth's Moon would have been tiny and flat.

From Charon Kyle could see stars, “A handy thing,” he reminded Lark whenever he left, “for an astronomer.” On Pluto the refreezing atmosphere hid them. Lark fought him, wheedling and demanding, until he let her stay on Pluto after the changing skies made his work impossible here. The base personnel were her family, and Kyle didn't have the will to fight her. He told himself Little Siberia on Pluto was better for her than the larger and more frenetic Christy Base on Charon. He'd have to watch over Lark in Charon. Here, she was safe. It meant they were separated for months at a time.

Lark worked. Everyone over twelve in Little Siberia base worked.

Lark was sixteen. For years she had been obsessed with the genetically engineered creepers that rooted at Charon and carried water to Pluto's icy but almost waterless surface. It was a fitting job for a student. The creepers themselves had been shaped by a Christy Base school project in 2181, two years after settlement of the Pluto/Charon bases, while the twin planets were still falling toward the Sun and Pluto's atmosphere was rebuilding itself. Now, in 2240, a strange white forest spanned the 17,000 klicks between the two white planets. Named after the mythical river guarded by the boatman Charon, the forest Styx was a writhing mass of wide hollow limbs, translucent spiked leaves, and diaphanous flowers clinging to a Hoytether trellis that spanned the gap between the twin planets. Generations of genetic engineers, most of them students, had nurtured and changed the creepers, giving them a high metabolism that manufactured heat and food, turning them into conduits for food, water, and energy. Manipulating the creepers was rich entertainment for bright minds locked in a frozen system.

The creepers mystified Kyle.

Lark was there now, a hundred and sixty klicks above Pluto base, crawling down toward Little Siberia in her tiny exploration module. Henry monitored her progress, keeping her father's presence at Little Siberia a surprise.

Kyle looked over at Henry. “Did you hear from her? Is she on her way?”

Henry grinned, slow and lazy, not answering immediately. Kyle usually felt like water running downhill past molasses when he was around the older man. He made himself stand still and at least look patient. Finally Henry said, “She's on her way. Calm down.”

“I haven't seen her for three months. She listens to you. She might not even notice I'm here.”

“That's the way of all teens,” Henry said. “It's not about me.”

Kyle smiled tiredly. “I brought her a present.” He produced a box from the nearby table, opened it, and held up a yellow dress with orange and black ribbons lining the bodice and strung through the skirt. Little metal balls hung on the ends of the ribbons. “I got her some leggings, too, so it'll work in Pluto gravity.”

Henry shook his head. “Impractical.” He was still smiling. “You paid to freight that over, and you're going to freight it away as well? It must have cost a pretty penny.”

“Henry—sometimes you just gotta let go and do something stupid. Lark's birthday is today—not after we get to Jupiter. We're leaving in two months. Maybe. I'm competing for a grant to work at Jupiter next year. Lark will need something nice to wear at Jupiter Station. Besides, Chuska Smith makes these. Almost all of us parents with teens pitched in to help her pay the material freight last ship. The kids on Christy Base are excited about moving on.”

“Lark isn't.”

“I know.” Lark loved Pluto. “She'll understand when we get to Jupiter. I'm looking forward to showing her Cassini University.”

“You think about every place but here.”

“Yeah, well, this is the end, Henry. The end of the solar system, and they're not even planets. Dead end of an astronomy career, too. All the best scopes are on remotes now. There are jobs in Jupiter System, and I have to pay for Lark's schooling. So it's not like there's a choice. Have you decided where you're going yet?”

“They'll let an old codger stay until the last ship. Maybe I won't leave at all.”

“You could come with us. Surely they need general repair people at Jupiter Station. Pluto won't be safe in a few years.”

“Yeah, I know, maybe I'll be blown off by the cyclonic winds of a dying atmosphere.” It was a joke—Pluto's atmosphere was barely thicker than vacuum—but Henry's voice was flat and noncommittal, his eyes rolled up so the whites showed. “I'm seventy-three, you know. Maybe I'll hang around as far towards aphelion as I can, and send back data.”

“We've got automatic sensors for that. You have to think about what you're going to do.” Kyle folded the dress carefully, and set in the box. “Hey, Mars Adventurer is scheduled for...” he looked at his watch, “...now. Join me?”

“Nah. There's enough excitement in my life. Besides, don't you know those are staged? But you go ahead—keep your mind off waiting. She'll be down soon.” Henry shuffled off.

* * *

In 2240 CE most of humanity had stopped going anywhere. Travel was too uncomfortable. Even if you never left your own planet, there were changing time zones, motion sickness, unpredictable cuisine ... and security. Security wasn't just to stop terrorists and fleeing tax dodgers; there were plague carriers to be stopped too. Viruses changed faster than antibiotics.

Business could be done via virtual reality, worldwide and further. Social relations could be confined to neighborhoods; dating could be done by VR first. The few who still traveled for pleasure now had a higher calling.

They were called “adventurers.” They were loaded with sensors to record everything they experienced. They risked their lives and comfort in ways most folk would never consider, in banned national parks, proscribed religious sites, into volcanoes, undersea...

Justine Jackson was the scheduled pilot aboard Mars Adventurer . Kyle paid his tourist fee and pulled up a chair to watch the feed. Today Justine was flying an ultra-light glider over the Valles Marineris. The screen took the top half of the east wall of the huge galley. The galley was built to serve a full base; Little Siberia was about 10 percent staffed. It was like being alone in a movie theatre designed for two hundred.

Kyle watched steep red and yellow-orange walls fly by under the glider. He kept one eye on read-outs from Justine's body-monitors. You couldn't feel what Justine was going through, but if you could read the telltales, you could imagine. Advanced viewing systems would give motion too.

Suddenly the view spiraled as she did a full 360, a stomach-twisting shift from red canyon to orange sky to red canyon. Justine's heart rate started to rise as she finished the loop and banked into a roll, signaling how hard the trick really was.

One day the suits would record smell and taste.

But real time would never crack lightspeed. Even though the feed was hours old, it was ahead of any news. The familiar tension about whether Justine would fall to sudden death on the floor of Valles Marineris kept Kyle's eyes glued to the screen.

Most top adventurers eventually died.

The screen flickered abruptly to black. Had something happened to Justine?

“Kyle?” Suriyah's voice blasted loudly across the in-base communications.

Kyle blinked, absorbing the abrupt shift.

“Kyle? Can you hear me? There's a problem.”

The screen glowed back to life.

He was looking into the Styx. Vines intertwined, moving, a cross between seaweed and woods, deeply shadowed despite light amplification.

The view was from inside Lark's ship. Stems twisted around one of the motorized arms, a leaf flapped across the field of view, barely lit and almost translucent, visible more by how it changed the look of the stars than by itself. The perspective changed to another camera facing the dense center of the forest. Stems and leaves were close here too. Spectral white shapes so thick he could only see two stars, and a rim of icy white Charon. The view jumped again, looking down: vines converging to a point on Pluto's brighter quake-patterned white.

“She's trapped,” Suriyah said.

“Trapped?” It dawned on him that as the cameras cycled, he was seeing nothing but more forest. She wasn't up against the Styx; she was in it. “She went too far in?”

“She can tell you herself.”

“Lark?” She didn't answer. A shiver ran through him as the images registered. His daughter was stuck a hundred and sixty kilometers above him, caught between worlds in a strange forest.

“Suriyah, I'm coming.” Help would be in the communications room.

* * *

Half the twenty inhabitants of Pluto Base were already in Communications. Henry was there. He was looking at the only other child on base besides Lark, a blond ten-year-old boy named Paul. “No,” Henry was saying, “See, Paul, if we took a regular transport ship, the exhaust would kill the creepers, and we couldn't help Lark anyway. Transport ships can't dock with a research bubble.”

Kyle interrupted, “Can't she get loose herself? Her thruster works, right?”

Paul answered. “She's already tried.”

“All right, then...” Think. A research bubble was tiny. The hull was transparent, but you had to see around eight extension arms of variable size and their thick mooring points, plus a water tank and the magnetic confinement for a fleck of antimatter in a swivel-mounted motor. In the habitat bubble there was only room for Lark in her pressure suit, and the rest of Shooter wasn't much bigger. “She could use the arms to grab onto a transport and let it pull her loose.”

Suriyah noticed Kyle's arrival. “No, Kyle, she's too deep. The vines have been growing around her since she got trapped.” She stood next to him and put an arm on his shoulder. Her dark eyes were smoky with worry. “You'd better talk to Lark.” She pointed at the bank of observation screens.

Kyle stepped closer. There were images he'd seen from the galley. Another was Lark, using the video link. Her face was pinched, angry.

“Lark?”

“Dad? You're on Pluto?

“It's your sixteenth birthday.”

“Well, then, I'd better get down there,” she said dryly. “But first, I seem to have gotten the marble stuck.”

She could have sounded happy to see me here. Kyle had nicknamed the bubbles ‘marbles'—they were clear and round, and the most color was always the observer inside. They had become Shooter and Cleary when Kyle and Lark talked about them. Lark fitted into Shooter like the egg in an eggshell. Her pressure suit was painted as a gaudy Earthly sunrise, primarily bright yellow. It was plugged into Shooter's systems via a thick umbilical. Within the fishbowl helmet her black hair was pulled back so tightly her dark eyes looked asian. She'd painted yellow streaks into her hair.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No. Twitchy. I broke one of the big grabbers trying to get loose. One was busted already, you know. Shooter's older'n I am. Two grabbers are twisted up in creeper. The little grabbers are useless. I'll ruin this damned thing if I keep trying to power out of here.”

How did she get a round ball caught in a forest of long vines? A ball festooned with mechanical arms and sampler tubes... “Can you go a different direction?”

“I tried backwards and forwards. I'll shoot for a roll next, I guess.”

“You can ruin all the grabbers you want, honey. Just don't hurt yourself.”

“Duh.”

Henry contradicted him, “Lark, if you break off an arm, you'll breach the hull. Stop wiggling the ship randomly. And go to voice-only.”

The screen images froze. “Got it,” Lark replied, her image in the screen suddenly frozen with an angry, determined look on her face.

“Don't do anything until we tell you,” Henry said. “Think about conserving power. You can turn the video on again when we have a plan.”

“Stay calm,” Suriyah said, “Breathe deeply, slowly. Relax. Go easy on your water.”

“I was fully stocked when I left. That's power and food enough for days.”

“Ten of them, if you're careful,” Henry said. “We'll have you back in time for your party. But that's no excuse for waste.”

“A-okay. Think I should try for the roll? I can use the little adjustment jets.”

“Hang on and let us analyze for a bit.” Henry clearly had control.

“You'll be fine,” Kyle said. “We'll think of something.” His stomach was a knot and his fingernails bit into his palms. “If nothing else, you can climb down.” No, wait, those ten days worth of air and water were in Shooter! Not the suit!

“Dad, the door's jammed. I've already tried getting it open.”

“I'll be listening, Honey,” Henry said. “Just relax and stay available for questions.” He turned off the feed that sent the general conversation to Lark.

Paul edged towards the monitors and looked at the one with Lark's image still frozen on it. “Will she die?” he asked.

Henry put a hand on the boy's shoulder. “Not if we can help it.” He squatted to Paul's height. “It's a tough situation. She'll have to get herself free somehow. You and I can help Lark figure out what to do.”

“Can't we take the other marble?” Kyle interrupted. “I could use the arms to tear my way in—”

Henry shook his head. “The thruster died last week. It's not repairable. I ordered another one, more advanced. It'll be on the next ship, the one you're supposed to leave on.”

Kyle winced. More things were breaking and less was being done to fix them as the base lurched towards the end of its useful life. He had no idea what to tell Lark to do. “Lark, can you tell me exactly what happened? I'm sure you said, but I wasn't in here to hear it. It's hard to visualize without outside cameras.”

“Suriyah sent a remote cam right after I called her. But it'll be thirty minutes; it had to prep itself before it launched. The left-side grabber broke months ago. Henry and I tied it down. I checked it before I went out. It's even on the ship-check sheet since it's been trash so long.”

Kyle looked at Henry, who sighed.

“Well, it was tied down, I checked! I was going to the midline of the Styx. You got the vines growing in both directions, Dad, and now it's weaving a kind of net. It looks really good. I'm trying to study the autotrophic processes in the healthier plants. Something is ... changing; they're becoming more active as we get further away from the Sun. You'd expect them to be slower since it's colder. I want to understand before we have to leave.”

Suriyah and Paul were drawing in the corner, looking at the stilled video images and working on a slate. Their whispering was distracting. Kyle moved closer to the mike. “Okay, honey, but how'd you get stuck?” He winced. She hated it when he called her “honey.” Sixteen-year-old girls were touchy.

To her credit she ignored the slight. “I ... I don't know. The arm must have broken free. I got too close. Anyway, a pretty thin leaf-vine got stuck in it, and I wasn't going very fast, but it jerked the marble and shifted my course. That's when the real problem came with the arm; anyway, that's when I could tell it was dangling freely, and since I was still moving it caught more stuff, and then slammed me into a big vine. I tried to use the topside arm, and I ... I... just got it tangled, too. So I decided I'd try and thrust out of here, and I put it at full power.”

Lark sounded defensive; she wasn't supposed to use full power in the creepers. “You didn't have a choice, honey.” Damn it—there was that word again. What was wrong with him? “It was a good choice, Lark.”

“It wasn't good. The marble was too stuck, and the topside arm broke, and I didn't get out. That was when I called Suriyah.” Lark was quiet, then she said, “There's a big vine blocking the door, Daddy. It's feeling around the edges, but the heat leakage has it stopped. But I can't even go EVA to cut myself free.” There was a tremor in her voice.

“We'll figure it out. Henry and Suriyah and Paul are working on something right now.”

Kyle paced. Suriyah had shooed the others out, so only the four of them, and Lark's frozen face, remained. Kyle talked to Lark off and on, encouraging. She was getting impatient. Kyle felt lost. This wasn't fair—they were supposed to be having a party. His fists clenched as he kept pacing, nervous. What was taking so long? Why wasn't Lark already on her way home?

The remote camera was in place, its feed playing on one large wall. As the camera flew closer around Shooter , the damage to two of the arms was clear. One was missing half its length. Shooter was so enmeshed in creeper it looked like it was purposely tied down.

After two hours, Henry keyed Lark, and said, “Okay, we're ready to go. Turn on your video.”

Lark's frozen image had looked angry. The animated face that replaced it in the live feed looked calmer, serious. The whites of her dark eyes were red. Lark didn't show any hesitation as she followed Henry's advice, setting the small directional thrusters to given angles and strapping herself in. There was a limited amount of propellant for the little thrusters; the antimatter was confined for use in the main engine.

Kyle's eyes stayed on the camera feed. There was a puff of propellant release, the burn of the thrusters, and the little marble pushed forward, rotating, pulling the sheet of creeper forest slightly; a tug of war. The tangle of ship and creepers moved. Lark yelped.

She'd turned off the thrusters.

Her voice was quivery, scared. “It didn't sound right. The arm ... the bottom-side arm sounded like it might rip off right below my feet!”

“Damn.” Henry swore. “All right. Don't crack the bubble. Damn engineers should've designed the arms to be released from inside.”

Kyle had never heard Henry cuss. He closed his eyes briefly. “They'll all be retired by now. Can we try again?”

“Sure, but something else.” Henry directed the camera feed, again, to almost circle the knot of creeper.

* * *

Three more hours, two more failures.

A blast of the main motor fried a path through the vines, but the arms weren't positioned to push the marble backward. Lark's wriggling had put the marble almost on its side, but how could that change the position of the arms? And the vines were growing back into the charred path.

If an arm tore loose, if the shell was breached, Lark still had a pressure suit. That, they decided, wasn't the problem. The problem was shrapnel, if the base of an arm spanged loose under high tension.

By the last try, the room was full again. Christy Base was in on it, engineers and pilots tossing out and rejecting ideas. Paul had been hauled off to bed by his parents, Kate and Jason, and they had come back to watch. Suriyah was crying. “Quit forcing it. That girl is in an egg—don't break it open. She's got time—no need to kill her now. Go eat,” she said to Kyle and Henry. “Tell Lark to sleep. Food and rest will help you all think.”

Kyle didn't want to go, but Suriyah ignored his protests and Henry showed Kate and Jason the log of everything they'd tried, and asked them to look for other ideas.

Kyle couldn't sleep. He checked on Lark, who was sleeping. He wandered the halls, lost and tired. Finally, he climbed the ladder to the telescope platform on top of the base. The scope was almost useless since the cloud cover had increased over the past five years, but he remembered showing Lark her first view of the Earth from here.

Right now, the sky was unusually clear. Charon was dead overhead, a great black shield still showing details of landscape in the sunlight reflected from Pluto. The Styx rose like Jack's beanstalk...

They still couldn't build a beanstalk, an orbital tower, on Earth. Their materials weren't strong enough. But Charon and Pluto were mutually tidally locked—unique within the known Universe—and light enough that a Hoytether had been strung between them. A Hoytether was an array of strands, some left looser than others to take up the slack if nearby strands broke. It already looked like a trellis. And then the games those students were playing with plant DNA paid off, and Styx was born.

* * *

Kyle found the bubble in the scope. It hung motionless, huge in the viewfinder, like a soap bubble caught in a white rose bush. Unreachable. His daughter.

He must have dozed. Henry's hand poking him startled him. “Jason said you were up. I thought you'd be here.”

“This isn't going to work, is it?”

Henry climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and slowly sat down on the observatory floor next to Kyle. The only light shone up from the door where the ladder came in, and the semi-darkness somehow made Henry look even older than usual.

“Did you find her with the scope?”

Kyle nodded.

“I'm afraid to force her free. It's wasting power, and I don't trust that little marble.”

Kyle pictured Lark dying slowly over days, alone, knowing she was dying. “When this happened, I thought it meant she'd be late for her party. I thought she was irresponsible.” He twisted his hands together, stretching his long fingers, fidgeting. “Can we cut her free from here somehow? Do we have any remotes that could do that? Can we make one?”

Henry pursed his lips. “She's all tangled up. Good chance of cutting her free and having her float off into space, unable to steer.”

“There's no way to repair the other marble? You're sure?” Kyle asked.

“I'm sure.”

“Can we try?”

Henry looked at him gently. “We can try something—I just don't know what yet. Keep thinking.”

“She can't climb down to us.”

Kyle jumped up and started pacing again. “Can I climb to her? Cut her loose?”

“It's a hundred sixty klicks and a bit.” Henry cocked an eyebrow. Both men were quiet for long moments. “We have ten days.”

“Damn. No, it won't work. She'll run out of air on the way down.”

“She can plug into the vines. She just can't do that with the suit she's wearing. We'll have to modify a suit and bring it to her.”

It had stopped sounding impossible. A hundred sixty kilometers straight up, in low and dwindling gravity...

“It will be a hard climb. I'll go.”

“We'll both go,” Henry said.

Climbing with Henry would be slow . “Can you to stay in communications and direct the climb?”

“Jason can direct. I'm going.” Henry stared up at the huge telescope. “I still pass my physical every year. I know more about what might work out there than you do. You need me. So does Lark. And two people have a better chance of getting there than one. What if you get out there alone and you get tired or hurt?”

“I'm in good shape!” Kyle protested. “I work out every day.” He'd be fifty in ten weeks.

“It's going to take more than physical conditioning to save Lark.” Henry didn't have to say she was more likely to listen to him than to Kyle.

“It's going to be one hell of a climb. It will take endurance.”

“And brains.”

Kyle sighed. “Okay. So I have endurance, and you have brains. Is that it?”

“No, I have more experience in the Styx.”

“I'm in better shape.”

Henry didn't even seem to hear him—he was looking up through an observatory window, where the interworld forest floated above them.

* * *

Suriyah fought them, convinced both men were crazy. “You will die out there! Find another way. That vine is alive—I tell you it's alive. It suffers us to study it, but it will not let you climb it.” She stood over the little altar she kept in a corner of the galley and recited a prayer to Kali and burned sandalwood incense. Afterwards, she refused to talk to them for hours.

Lark was silent when Kyle said he was coming to get her. “I'm bringing Henry,” he added.

“See you in a few days.” She turned off the video abruptly, freezing her picture with a blank expression on her face. He couldn't tell if she was happy he was coming for her, or what she thought about Henry coming along.

Kyle turned off the frozen picture.

Preparing took two long days, and many conversations back and forth between Little Siberia and Christy Base. Kyle was tired and frustrated. Lark was quiet for hours at a time. Since the video was almost never on, he couldn't really tell how she was doing.

“There's more damn gadgets in this suit than any sane engineer would've designed,” Henry complained.

Kyle stepped back to check the way the suit fit on Henry. It was an Adventurer class suit, left behind after the initial run of programs broadcast from Pluto had lost ratings in favor of faster and more deadly endeavors. Originally made for someone with wider shoulders than Henry's, it fit well otherwise. The ankles were baggy. Considering the work they did, the suits were a miracle. But they were still two inches thick everywhere, full of sensors and smart chips and wires and air tubes. Henry looked bulky and awkward.

“It'll do. You might be grateful for the help.”

“I will not .” Henry hated using the adventure suits. “Damn parasites. People who won't go into the world on their own want to ride our dangers. Let ‘em make their own dangers.”

It had been Paul's idea.

Kyle had been fetching something for Henry when he passed Paul in a hallway. The boy had looked up and said, “You're using the Tourist-class suits, right? Let's broadcast it! It'll be like Real Space Dangers when they saved the crew of the Orpheus . You'll be heroes!”

Kyle remembered the river rafting show where Han Davidson had been sucked into a sinkhole. Endless views of dark, swirling water while Davidson drowned. Kyle mumbled something noncommittal and kept right on going to find the saw blade he was looking for.

Paul interpreted that as assent, and arranged for network coverage before Kyle had a chance to talk to Henry. They would have taken the tourist equipment anyway. The suits had pockets and belts and straps to let the men take their fill of tools, and they had been designed for a thin atmosphere. They were flexible, versatile. The equipment was outdated compared to current adventure suits, and of course there were too many readouts and controls, but far better for this venture than the standard surface suits.

Audience thirst for real adventure shows was high; live rescue of a lost maiden would be popular. Now that the networks knew about the rescue, and the suits, they threatened to refuse access to the communications gear if they didn't get to broadcast. Henry wanted to take the suits anyway, and let the networks sue them. Kyle pointed out that he needed to publish to survive, and he needed the networks for that. Besides, money from the networks beat a lawsuit. Jason had the common sense to improve Paul's original wide-open offer and bargain real money for Henry, Lark, and Kyle, as well as support pay for the other people living in Little Siberia.

“When we get back, Paul gets assigned kitchen duty for three years,” Henry said.

“He won't be here for three years. His family is leaving on the next ship with us. So give up and focus.”

After a final suit-check, Kyle and Henry stepped into the lock, towing nets of gear behind them. They sweated inside the slick suits. The outside temperature was -235C. It took twenty minutes for the base computers to decide the suits had adjusted enough to open the door. They were still sweating when they stepped out onto the sea of ice surrounding Little Siberia. To their right, solid and clear methane crystals the size of houses were half-covered with blown ices and snows. Paths to the left led to Creeper Fields.

Henry followed Kyle a half-klick to where the Styx met Pluto.

Vines overflowed from the sky to add layers of dying material to the methane and nitrogen ices that covered Pluto. Creepers dug in, and ran along the ground like frozen spaghetti. They piled up onto each other, dying together. Methane snow crystals danced in the air around the wide white leaves. Wherever the leaves or flowers made contact with the surface they turned brittle and broke as the men stepped on them. Here and there a vine twisted near the surface, not yet trapped and frozen, as if the Styx harbored snakes.

The base team had guided some of the vines to supply the base. Water and oxygen were needed, and plant broth made good fertilizer for more palatable crops. Years ago they had turned most of the vines back onto the trellis, so that the jungle was growing back into itself, back toward Charon, thicker every year.

Vines and stems fanned out across the trellis as they neared Pluto, and stray vines still piled up on the ice. Kyle wondered if the plants were seeking trace elements. Any such would be buried deep; these surface snows had rained out of the sky, over and over during Pluto's 247.7-year cycles, plating over anything that resembled soil. The plants would have to dig deep.

They walked and tested and checked, looking up to see how the vines tangled amongst each other. They selected a medium-thickness vine, wide as their thighs, and well anchored in the ice. It had no leaves for at least the first few hundred meters.

They tested their siphons. There was pressure in the vines. Kyle and Henry could get liquid oxygen, water and plant broth into the suits using modified siphons Henry had jury-rigged from insulated pipes. It was slow. The siphons used tiny valves and bladders to deal with pressure differences. Liquid slipped through chambers to reach reservoirs in the suits.

The Styx fed on solar wind, on water from Charon, and on itself. Oxygen and carbon dioxide swirled through the leaves. Parasite bacteria covered the leaves, turning oxygen to carbon dioxide. The creepers ate the CO2and replenished the oxygen. Sunlight became sugar for broth.

The suits moved all the time. What was doing that? All those tiny cameras, IR and UV and radar, zoom and fisheye, pressure sensors and medical readouts and who knew what. The sensation was unsettling.

Jason and Paul lumbered across the ice in a small drive-all, and watched Henry and Kyle load supplies into a closed basket that would carry the supplies up, buoyed by a circle of remote-controlled probes. The probes weren't designed to carry any weight at all. Twelve harnessed together could manage thirty kilograms and still maneuver. Every kilo over that was a trade-off in risk vs. material. The basket contained an extra suit with attached color-coded siphons for Lark, a long knife, a single shared habitat to sleep in, extra rope, and a med-kit. There was just enough rope that the basket massed just under thirty kilograms. To save power, the basket would follow them at the end of each day's hike.

“Suriyah's right,” Jason said. “You're both crazy. I love you for it. Get that girl home so we can celebrate her being sixteen.” He touched them both—the suited version of a hug—and said, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” both men answered in unison. Paul waved and made a ‘camera rolling’ gesture. The adventure suits were broadcasting.

Kyle responded to Paul's cue, saying “Welcome, audience. Jason and Paul just wished us luck. Luck would make a nice change.” He thought he sounded stupid and campy.

Calvin Paulie was taking the first turn monitoring and splicing the feed from Christy Base on Charon. Watchers were tuning in from the near parts of the outer system, and an edited version was scheduled for consumption by sunward planets and moons and bases. “Good luck to our adventurers, Kyle and Henry,” Calvin rumbled, “as they take off to climb the mysterious and dangerous creepers of Pluto and rescue Kyle's daughter, Lark.”

Unexpectedly, it seemed like private pain was being made too public. Kyle winced and stepped back. He gestured to Henry. The slower man would set the pace.

Henry reached for a stem with both hands and tugged on it. As Henry put his weight on the creeper, it demonstrated elasticity, pooling at his boots. “So far, so good,” Henry mumbled, and took another handful of the thick stem. He pulled hand over hand until the creeper took his weight. Now he was actually a half-meter above Pluto's surface. Finally, the creeper seemed willing to let the men climb.

“Henry,” said Kyle, “remember not to grab the trellis itself, ever. It's too strong. It might cut your suit.”

“It's also pretty close to invisible,” Henry puffed.

A fifty-foot insulated Kevlar rope separated the two climbers. Kyle waited. When Henry was near the end of the rope, Kyle grabbed a handful of stem and succeeded in pulling Henry halfway down. Calvin's voiceover played in Kyle's radio. “Looks like a rocky start,” he said, “Or a ropy one. We're wishing you well.” Kyle ignored him, reaching for another boot hold. The vine only compressed a little under his hands; it was hard to grip. It grew as he held it. The wrong direction. Down. The Styx grew almost a kilometer a day. Of course, Lark and Shooter would be moving the same direction. It was like trying to climb a cross between a down escalator and a living boa constrictor.

Henry had modified the toes of their boots; they sprouted tiny steel barbs which helped keep their feet anchored to the stems. Liquids from inside the plant swelled out and froze to the surface whenever Kyle dug his toes in too hard.

There was little gravity to fight, but balance and grip were challenges. It got easier, and in five minutes they'd actually gained thirty meters and found a rhythm.

Lights from their helmets bobbed up and down in Pluto's dusky mid-day.

Half an hour passed. Calvin broke in twice with inane questions, and Kyle hissed at him, “Quit distracting us.”

“I'll need some good footage soon.”

“Take all the footage you want. You can listen to us, and use our lights and cameras and take pictures of us. Just don't talk to us yet. This is harder than it looks.”

Kyle followed Henry's boots. Pluto's surface had just enough pull to establish a definite down, and not enough to make the climb hard . They could almost walk up the vines. Rather than a hand-over-hand pull, it was a scramble.

They passed clumps of long leaves, each leaf longer than the men were tall, similar to plants found in the seas of earth, but bigger. Much bigger. Climbing between them required care with the rope. Even though they were near the edge of the forest, leaves or loose stem-ends from neighboring branches periodically undulated past them. Everything moved and grew.

From time to time Kyle missed a step and had to catch himself. That was when he knew how tired he was.

Just past the third clump of leaves, Henry called back, “Okay, stop a bit.”

Stopping meant sitting on the creeper stem with thighs clamped tight around it. They faced each other. Kyle's view was towards Charon, and the Styx looked like a river from here—a great thin long silver line. It was almost a kilometer wide, but the perspective and length made it look much thinner—like thread going towards a thimble.

Calvin said, “Nice view. How was the climb?”

“A walk in the park.” Kyle didn't want to say how hard it was. He watched Henry's face in the clear helmet. He was frowning. “What's wrong?”

“We're not moving fast enough. We've been going a half-hour, and we're—what—a kilometer up?”

Kyle looked around. The camera probe that had been following them bobbed in space to his left. Pluto was closer than he'd expected. He could see Jason and Paul standing at the foot of the beanstalk, looking up. They were small, but he could make out movement.

“Actually, you've made about eight hundred meters,” Calvin replied before Kyle could respond at all. “With rests, that means you'll take about an hour and a quarter to go a kilometer. Roughly eight days if you don't sleep.”

Henry snorted.

“So we have to go twice as fast?” Kyle asked.

“More. We lost two days getting ready. That means there's eight left. If we calculated everything right. That's not enough. We need time for surprises, for rest, and maybe some time when we get to the marble,” Henry said.

“The forest is thicker down here, near Pluto. It thins out above the atmosphere.”

“It won't make that much difference.”

“So how do we go faster?”

“I'm thinking,” Henry said. “Meantime, let's restock.” The stems were designed as conduits, with at least three veins running through each stem; one for water, one for air mix, and one for a form of liquid energy both humans and plants could consume, dubbed “plant broth.”

Leaves always grew with one anchoring structure in the pure water vein, one in the plant food. The broth fed the stem itself, fueling super-fast growth. This was what they plunged their siphons into first. Kyle's suit filled with a cloyingly sweet smell as the thin gel filled a pouch in his lower back. It took time; fifteen precious minutes. As he pulled out the siphon and stuck it back in, fishing for water, Kyle asked Henry how well he balanced.

“As good as the next guy, I guess.”

“It's a way to get there faster.”

“Huh?”

“Walk. Lean back against a rope and walk vertical. We've both been using hands and feet. I bet there's a walking pace that won't need that for one of us—as long as there's rope between. Let me lead. I'm stronger—I can go faster. I'll hold on. You walk—use the toe stabs. Let go with your hands and walk.”

Henry smiled at him. “Worth a try.”

It worked better; not twice as fast. They kept going for an hour, Kyle leading, using his hands and feet, arms and legs, back and belly ... he was feeling the strain everywhere. Henry walked behind. Once Henry came loose, falling outward and down, and Kyle had to clamp his legs around the thick stem, brace for the jolt, then reel him in. Henry just grunted and suggested Kyle get on with it. It was more bravado than Kyle expected from Henry. How much were the cameras affecting the older man?

They stopped once, refilled their supplies, and kept going, Kyle on point again.

They changed stems at a cross-point. The new one was thicker, easier to balance on. Even with periodic leaves to step over, the pull and step, pull and step, pull and step made a cadence in Kyle's head. His lower back screamed misuse, and he needed distraction. He imagined words to the cadence—"Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.” It was almost a mantra.

A knot of leaves and tangled stems stopped them at the ten-kilometer mark. Long streams of flowers spread out around the knot. If it weren't an obstruction, it would have been beautiful. They'd have to climb over and somehow pick the right stem. Henry sat. “Hey kid, time for a break.”

“We haven't gone far enough,” Kyle said, easing onto a spot where leaf met stem, hooking a leg over a leaf. “Stopping is crazy.” At least Pluto finally looked further away. He stared down on the top of Little Siberia and picked out the observatory. “Let's push until we make at least sixteen klicks. We need twenty-five klicks.”

“Ever run a marathon? If you sprint the first five kilometers, you never make the end. Besides, it's time for a word with our sponsors.”

Henrywanted to talk to Calvin?

“Calvin?”

“Yes?”

The camera probe had stopped too. “Calvin, can you pan the probe cam and give us directions? I want to end up somewhere near Lark.”

Kyle eyed the knotted mess of growth. Styx looked like a close-knit weave of plant life, but there were gaps. The long strings of forest moved and twisted and intertwined, constantly knotting and shifting. Silver threads of carbon fiber trellis flickered in and out of view. Choices had looked simple from a distance. Here, tangles and obstacles were everywhere.

Meanwhile, Calvin described a full incident support team assembled—virtually—at the currently nearest Trans-Neptunian object, Kiley3, mere light-minutes away. He described doctors, climbing experts, psychologists, child psychologists, biologists...

Henry interrupted. “So did you scrape everyone on Kiley3 into your support team?”

“They're getting paid. Thought you'd be grateful. They're not all on Kiley3—”

“I'm grateful,” Kyle said. They might be able to use the help.

“Want to be introduced?” Calvin asked.

Henry shook his head. “I'd rather have visuals of the best path out of here.”

“Dr. Yi is working on it. In the meantime, Dr. Gerry thinks you should have at least a twenty-minute rest. That's time to meet everyone.”

Kyle suddenly understood why Henry was being so irascible. A hot thread of anger mixed with his worry about Lark. He checked: they had enough water and broth to last a few hours. He withdrew his siphon from the stem, making sure Henry saw him. Henry winked, tucked his siphon carefully into a belt pouch.

As a concession to their need for rest, Kyle let Henry lead.

“But ... but you haven't met the team yet!”

Henry spoke for them as he reached up into the knot, grabbing for a writhing stem. “It's not your little girl up there. Do not slow us down to entertain your viewers.”

To his credit, Calvin shut up and produced Dr. Yi, who guided them across the knotted region without a hitch. “So now you understand the relationship?” Henry asked.

“We'll help you any way we can. But you should meet the team.”

A kilometer further on, they did stop for rest. Although he knew Lark was descending at the same rate, the sensation of slow movement as the vines below them grew and wriggled and twined toward Pluto was strange. Starting again, Kyle realized how much his shoulders and arms hurt. Hundreds of the same motions wore on muscles. They got to twenty klicks before exhaustion won. Half a kilometer higher, they found a good place to anchor their habitat. They stopped and called for it, waiting.

Their suit radios could talk to Lark from here. “Lark, how are you doing?”

“Hi Dad, Henry. I can see you on the feed from the probe-cam. Wish I was out there with you.”

“Yeah, like we're here on purpose,” Kyle said.

“You've got a better view of Styx than I ever had, except for a few minutes EVA. I'm looking forward to climbing down.”

“Yeah, I plan on taking Shooter down.”

“We'll climb. Shooter' s dead. Besides, I want to walk the Styx.”

“What's so exciting about the Styx? It's actually pretty boring. Kilometers of stems and leaves, and then more kilometers of stems and leaves. Sometimes there's a flower.”

“Yeah, well, galaxies are clusters of pretty damned boring stars. Sometimes there's a nebula. Styx is cooler than you think, Dad. I was on my way to some flowers that look bigger and seem to direct the stem float in the forest. That's new behavior. I think the vines are responding to the system getting colder.”

Kyle didn't want an argument. He wasn't a total idiot about the Styx. “Well, they use energy—metabolism—lots of it, right? That's how they're supple even out here, and how the water and broth don't freeze.”

“No kidding. But up towards the middle there's more activity. More flowers, and I think even color. Styx is changing. I just know it. Whatever's changing above me will grow down to Pluto. I want to get higher.”

“How about we get lower first? Like back to Pluto?”

“Jeremy says you're being way too cautious.”

“Jeremy?”

“There's a bunch of kids here now. In virt. Tourists. I'm really glad Paul thought of this. The worst thing was being so alone; it's so boring to be still. I'm getting cramps too.”

Oh. “Stay safe.” The round cage of supplies rose over the edge of a leaf, its circle of probes bobbing like fishing net floats. “I better go.”

There were too many camera perspectives, and too many helpers. The basket tangled hopelessly one stem over. Kyle frowned. “Now I see how she got caught. Maybe I should quit being mad at her.”

Henry stared thoughtfully at the supplies dangling just out of their reach. “I'll belay you.”

“Great.”

“You're the young strong buck.”

Kyle grunted, mimicking a baboon.

Henry held the rope as Kyle pushed the basket away from its vine trap and spread the probes out again. It was almost free-fall—he went down at a drifter's pace. “Okay—that's as close as it's coming tonight.” Kyle retrieved the sleeping habitat from the basket, tucking it under one arm. Henry reeled Kyle back slowly.

It took an hour to figure out how to wrestle the habitat into shape and anchor it. Unfolded, it was a long sheet of metallic fabric anchored between two stems. Henry plugged it into a stem, into the blue oxygen tube. The habitat bucked and waved, sucking in the air, expanding as it warmed the gas. Layers of skin filled one by one—living space, stored atmosphere, insulation, a shell thickening into a walnut shape.

The set-up looked fragile. They climbed in, waiting until sensors told them the habitat held pressure enough to unsuit. As he lay down, Kyle imagined the anchoring creepers growing away from each other as they slept. He didn't really care. Being out of the constant breathing motion of the suit was wonderful.

Six hours later, Calvin woke them with lyrics from the ancient The Sound of Music , “Climb Every Mountain.” It was ridiculously inappropriate. Kyle wanted to throttle Calvin.

* * *

Four long climbs and three uneasy sleeps later, they were halfway there. Lark spent part of each day telling jokes. Tourists fed them to her, and she fed them in turn to Kyle and Henry. It kept her engaged.

Kyle hated most of the jokes.

He was surprised that he liked talking to the networks. The attention helped him forget aches in his muscles. The audience was a focus and a safety net. He took small risks, and on breaks he talked astronomy. Lark did voiceovers for the audience, telling them about the creepers. She talked to the team on Kiley3. She talked constantly—to Kyle, to Henry, to the announcers. She even took to calling the Christy and Little Siberia base staff “tourists.”

Kyle worried about Henry. His face was red with exertion and spider veins showed up on his nose and face in thin red lines. Henry refused to talk much to anyone except Lark and Kyle. It bothered Kyle.

There was no night or morning; Pluto's six-and-a-half-hour day barely noticed the Sun. Kyle counted time in sleeps. This was their fifth sleep. “Henry? How come you're so quiet?”

“Seems like no one's business how we're doing.”

“They're helping. I'm grateful Lark's got so many people to talk to. At least we can move. She's shut up in that bubble.”

“She's always done all right by herself.”

“I could have spent more time with her.”

“How's it going to feel if all these people watch us fail?”

Kyle swallowed. “You've always been an optimist. We won't fail. We're halfway there.”

“Half our time's gone. We should stop less.”

“Can you do that?” Kyle was bone tired. Henry looked like he was going to have a heart attack any moment.

“If we don't make it, I don't want to live afterwards. This would be a good last thing to do.”

“We'll make it.”

“If you get there, and I don't, be careful how you get Lark out. You'll need to use a traditional blade—no lasers or anything—near the bubble.”

“You said that when we were loading the basket.”

“We should practice next stop, so I know you know how to do it.”

Kyle stayed awake a long time, thinking about Henry's words. He started tired the next day. They hit a clump of new creeper, thin stems twining around the wide one they followed. Kyle caught his foot and pitched forward, tangling his arm and wrist in rope as he fell. He slid, feet dangling in empty space, pulling Henry backward so Henry needed both hands to hang onto the creeper while the rope pulled tight from his waist-clip.

Kyle floated free, his suit hissing urgently, venting oxygen to match his heart rate. He held the rope with two hands, twisting his feet up in an acrobat's move, straining to get a toehold on the stem. He felt a snap and give in his lower back, an instant tightening of muscle. He grunted with the pain.

“Whoa there,” Calvin said. “You all right?”

“I ... I don't know.”

Henry managed to twist around and grab the rope, holding on to the creeper with his legs. He pulled, hand over hand, slowly reeling Kyle in until their hands touched and he could pull him up onto the stem. Kyle panted, wanted to scream. He couldn't be hurt. There wasn't time. When he tried to step ahead of Henry, he slipped again, catching himself, grimacing. His back was on fire. He didn't dare burn the small store of painkillers in the suit's med supply for a twisted muscle.

It meant Henry had to lead—Kyle walking behind him. The full med-kit was in the basket, inaccessible without a full stop. Kyle chewed his lip and followed Henry, building up a swing that allowed him to move through the pain.

Calvin started talking in worried tones an hour out, telling the men the doctors thought they should stop. Henry ignored him, leaving Kyle no choice but to follow. Henry went on forever. When they stopped, he collapsed across a vine and stared out at the forest.

After a while, Kyle noticed that Henry was sleeping in his suit.

Kyle sat and worried, watching the older man. Lark had a feed from the camera probe that followed them everywhere, and she spoke. “He often takes naps, Dad.” She sounded sad.

“I shouldn't have let him come. I should have brought someone else.”

“Henry wouldn't have stayed. He'd have followed you.”

“Suriyah could have stopped him. She's a force of nature.” He didn't mention that Suriyah had thought this was a crazy journey.

“It's okay, Dad. Just let him sleep for a little while. I think I'll sleep too.”

“We have to move again pretty soon, honey, or we won't get to you in time.”

Her voice was small and cheerless. “How's your back?”

“It hurts. But not as much as losing you would hurt.”

“I hope we all make it.” It was the first time Kyle had heard Lark openly doubt success.

Kyle stared at stars, picking out constellations. Even eight hundred klicks up, the stars were faintly blurred. In Pluto's thin gravity the atmosphere reached way up, thinning very slowly.

There were few other humans this far away from Sol. He knew it was harshly cold, but he was sweating and the suit's movement was a constant irritation. He found the Sun, no brighter than Venus from Earth, and imagined the billions of people that populated the inner planets and ringed the Earth and Mars. He'd always wanted to make his mark, to be remembered. He wanted to do it by finding something unique in the heavens.

Early returns based on ‘local’ watchers indicated their rescue would be heavily touristed. In fact, he thought wryly, ratings would do better if they died. Not how he wanted to be remembered. The thought pushed him into waking Henry.

The next three climbs Kyle led again, painkillers making him woozy. They moved too slowly. Lark had about sixteen hours of air left, and they were twenty kilometers away, making just over a kilometer an hour. Calvin mentioned that their ratings were going up. Kyle cussed at him. “Now, now,” Calvin said, “I'll have to edit that out. It must be the meds talking.”

“It's a nightmare talking. We're never going to make it.” Kyle kept pulling, looking behind him for Henry.

The psychologist, Dr. Gerry, broke in. “Sure you will. We're all pulling for you.”

“Too bad you're not really here.”

“Yes we are. One step at a time. We're there.”

“Talk to Lark. Maybe you can do some good there.” Kyle flicked off the sound and brushed aside a leaf that was blocking his view.

“Don't ... do ... that,” Henry said.

“Do what?”

“Don't turn them off. You need them to get you to Lark. Lark's not on this direct path. You're going to have to cross stems a few times. They can help you with that.”

“Us.”

“You. I'm slowing you down too much.” Henry's breath was labored. “Can't get this close and not make it.”

“No.”

“You'll be faster.”

“And if I fall off again? Scotch my back?”

“I can't go any further. You were right to want to leave me.”

“I wouldn't be this far without you.”

“You won't get there with me. Save Lark. I'll ... I'll just wait here.”

“Can you take stims?”

Henry was quiet for a long time, still climbing. Kyle wished he'd talk. “You're coming. You have to.”

“The last thing I have to do is get you to Lark. Slow down, I'll unhitch. I can call up the habitat.”

“I'm the one that keeps tripping. You saved me last time I fell.”

“Move faster. Maybe I'll keep up.”

“You'll keep up—you're on a rope.”

Henry collapsed when they stopped for a rest. His heart rate showed that he was still alive, but he didn't respond to Kyle's voice. Playing possum? Kyle didn't know.

He demanded the supply basket. He closed his eyes while he waited for it, counting time.

Calvin was screaming his name. He blinked. He floated five meters from anything. Damn.

“Where ... what happened?”

“You passed out. Hang in there. The supply basket is almost there.”

“Like I'm going anywhere.” He checked. The rope was still attached. He tugged. It was tight. The basket was rising up from below him, the probes rising and falling as someone on the ground adjusted course to meet him. When the basket reached him, he struggled to find the medical kit. He pulled it out. As one hand emerged with the med-kit, weight inside the basket shifted. The open door hung down. Whoever was running the remote probes corrected the wrong way, exaggerating the shift. A long knife fell away first, tumbling slowly past, a soft glint along the blade showing as his head turned towards it, touching it with light from his helmet lamp. He tucked the med-kit under his arm and reached for a strap on the habitat as it came towards him. He snagged it, the bulk causing him to turn over, facing away. He twisted, holding the med-kit and the habitat. He needed to close the door. He was floating down, with no ability to move fast. Kyle tried to snag the extra rope with his foot while it went by. The coil fell across his toe, and he pulled his knee in to bring the rope to where he could grab it with a spare finger. It slipped off his boot and floated away. Next, the extra suit passed him two meters away.

Lark's pressure suit.

He tucked the habitat between his knees and reached, tried swimming for it. His rope stopped him.

He stared after the suit for a long time. “Calvin?”

No answer.

Of course not, he'd turned off the audio. “Calvin—track the damned suit.”

“We are tracking it.”

Well, he had the two most immediate things, but now he'd have to carry them. He left the collapsed habitat between his legs, tied the handle of the med-kit to the rope with a butterfly knot, and pulled himself back. The rope was attached to a creeper. Henry was anchored above him with his small belt rope, still out cold.

Kyle tied the med-kit to Henry's rope. He expanded the bulky habitat and plugged it into a vine. For once, there was a good cross-section of vines nearby to hang it on. He pulled Henry inside and collapsed next to the older man, panting. He had ten minutes to do nothing but think while the habitat pressurized. An hour had passed—Lark had fifteen hours left before she'd start running out of air.

He was so tired he could barely get Henry's helmet off.

Henry's vitals looked ragged. He checked with the med-team, and they agreed. Exhaustion. The verdict: no stims. So he'd lost Lark's carefully modified Tourist suit to retrieve stims, and then decided not to use the stims, at least for Henry. He looked up, toward where the bubble had to be.

Henry's face was white, peaceful. Kyle touched him, rolling him gently back and forth. Henry's eyes fluttered open, and a slow smile touched his mouth. “I must have passed out again.”

“Something like that.” Kyle filled Henry in. “I don't think I have time to go after the suit. I'm going after Lark. You'll be safe here. I'll come back with Lark. The suit she has will get her here. The habitat will keep her alive while I go after her suit. If that doesn't work—if it's gone—we'll just have to go down the slow way while we figure something else out.”

“Huh?”

“Creepers are growing down, right? Almost a klick a day. We'll be the first humans to live off broth for two hundred days.”

Henry shook his head. “Never make it. The habitat won't survive that long.”

“We all have suits. Little Siberia can send us supplies. There's no more Adventure suits, but maybe they can modify something else to tap the vines.”

“Go get Lark. Lemme sleep.”

Kyle picked his own helmet back up, jammed the stinking thing back on. “Yeah, okay.” He didn't have any choices. “Sleep well.” He fed the stim-pack into his suit's auto-med reservoir, asked for and received a dose. He watched Henry put his helmet back on, made sure he was secure, and then breached the hab and stepped back into the cold river Styx.

“Calvin—where's Lark's suit?”

“Snagged. Down. Kyle—it went two klicks down.”

Time was against him. He cursed the basket, cursed the damn vines, cursed Henry, cursed his back. “Show me.”

“You can't get there from here by yourself. Not unless you trust the winds to send you after the suit if you dive for it. We don't recommend that.”

What Lark didn't have was the modified siphons. There wouldn't be any way to get broth or water or anything into her. All he had to do was get her to the habitat.

He started out fast. Henry's early words about running a marathon came back to him, and he slowed down. But he needed to make over two klicks an hour to have any time to spare. “Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.” He thought about Henry. “All be safe ... All be safe.

“Play music for me.”

“Huh?” Calvin sounded sleepy.

“Calvin—don't you sleep?”

“Not until you get to Lark.”

“Thanks. Play me some music. I need some rhythm to keep going.”

“What do you want?”

“Hell, I don't care. Something with a beat.” He looked around. “Got some African drums?”

“I'll find some.”

Every two hours he stopped for fifteen minutes rest and more stims, doing the equivalent of vine-sprinting in between. The drumbeats helped. His back still hurt. It became a familiar pain, something that kept him awake and aware, gave him a tie to his aching body. Every step was hard.

Lark wasn't answering. The team said she was asleep, exhausted. So many days of living in one place, in a pressure suit, were taking their toll. Four hours passed.

Calvin started peppering him with questions about Henry. A thought crossed Kyle's mind.

“How is Henry? I haven't seen his med-reads for hours.”

“We cut you off from everything but you and Lark and us. Don't want to distract you.”

“Damn it.” Surely Henry was all right. All he had to do was stay in the habitat. Had he checked Henry's water supply? But he'd plugged the habitat into the vine.

The networks had no control over the suit-to-suit-radio. He called to him. No answer. “Calvin, show me Henry's med readings!”

“You don't need the distraction. Talk. You need to talk so we know you're still with us. Your med feeds could be showing better, buddy.”

Kyle babbled about the time the feeder jammed completely just after the Styx got to Pluto, when a river of vines threatened to overrun Little Siberia. Henry and others had clambered out onto the surface. They'd fed vines back to the Hoytether trellis and set them climbing back toward Charon. Suriyah had stayed out there with him the whole time. Everyone else took turns. The story didn't seem to be coming out quite in order. Thinking about Henry wasn't right; he should be thinking about Lark. Why was she still silent?

“She's not in great shape,” Calvin said. “She's alive. We've been waking her up but she isn't staying awake long. She's been taking pain meds too.”

“Like father, like daughter, huh?”

“You imagine the sores you'd get sitting in the same place in a p-suit for ten days.”

“Yeah, well, I know what mine smells like after ten days.”

Calvin laughed. “I bet you do.”

“You don't have smell sensors built into these yet?”

“On the newer models.”

“It's a bad idea. Calvin?”

“Still here.”

How had he forgotten? “Wake up Lark now . I don't care how. Get her to fire the main motor for a few seconds.”

“Oh, right, we discussed that—”

“Check my position first and see if I'm out of the way. Henry too.”

“You're okay. You're almost underneath Shooter , but Shooter 's tilted. I'll get her to fire the motor, then guide you around to the channel. Hey, Lark!”

He kept climbing. Lark and Calvin negotiated. She spoke too low for his hearing, but she sounded angry.

He didn't see the exhaust itself. He saw a line of pale plants glow brilliantly, dissolve into colors, then explode in flame as heat reached the air veins. It ran for twenty seconds, and when it went off, vines still burned.

“Thanks, Calvin, I can see it myself,” he said, and angled around.

He had to pull himself into the forest to reach the channel. The vines were growing back ... but the going was suddenly much easier.

Kyle pulled up and over a half-charred leaf and stem-knot at an intersection. From here he could see a much bigger knot—and a darkly corroded metal claw, like a skeletal hand straining to break free. Shooter . The little ship was even more overgrown and tangled than when he'd seen it from the observatory. Flowers had sprouted everywhere, decorating it, making it look like a party bauble. He stopped a second and just looked, his heart flooding with the knowledge that he was going to make it. Calvin babbled in his ear—talk for the audience about how emotional the moment was.

“I'm afraid to go and look,” he said. Lark still wasn't responding to him.

He didn't feel his back or his body at all the last kilometer, just the soft give of the creepers in his hands and feet, the balance of his torso as he struggled to keep his center of gravity over the center of the stem. “Lark be safe ... Lark be safe.”

He was within thirty meters of the marble when the vines tangled around it shuddered and jerked up and down. What? Was the knot unraveling?

“Hi, Daddy.” Her voice was weak. She was using one of Shooter' s arms to wave at him. He breathed out, and then screamed triumph.

Calvin and his crew had spent hours trying to figure out what he should do. He had a belt knife—thin and insubstantial. It easily cut the edges of leaves, and wouldn't even dent a stem. He had a few hours, maybe more, maybe less. He was too tired to make sense of time.

Trying to untangle the ship appeared useless. Nevertheless, incident command had commandeered nearby computers and run thousands of simulations. They led him through the vines, one by one. Pull this part out of under—there. Yes. And then go around to the other side. Tug. Sure you can. Good. Now—see the one with the longest bell of flowers? Break that off. Pull here. Tie that down.

In the background, Calvin was talking Lark through a series of checks. He heard her talking back to Calvin, telling him to quit being so pushy, and Kyle laughed.

Kyle had made a new knot of vines, feeding the vines he was liberating from around Shooter into it to keep them from simply re-engulfing the bubble. His back was to Shooter . He heard a ripping sound.

He turned just in time to see Shooter lurch a few meters lower in the thinned-out net of stems that surrounded it. The ends of an arm dangled from above. Kyle had a rope tied to the marble. He pulled himself along it, fast, letting the vine he had been working on swing back towards Lark. It flapped out above the marble, safely out of the way. The door was free. By the time he got there it was swinging open.

His hand took his daughter's hand.

She was almost dead weight. Her boots flopped against the side door as he pulled, but her hands were gripping. He held her under one arm and looked inside. A backpack sat by her chair.

“Bring the backpack?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Weak.”

“It's going to take her a little while to learn how to move normally,” Calvin said.

“How long?”

“We don't know. Some experts say not until she gets out of the suit. Calvin says she's feisty enough to recover faster.”

Kyle talked to Lark. “Can you put your legs around me?”

She used to do that when she was a kid. He tucked his arm under her butt so she was sitting against his waist at the side, and she put her arms around his neck.

Well, he had one hand free. Now what? He shifted Lark to the front of him, sat on the stem he had climbed up, and slid. It was slower than walking—the suit material dragged wrong against the stem. The risk was real—if he wore out the suit material there was no fixing it up here. He stopped them, trying to think of a better way. Henry would think his own way out of a problem.

“Sit on a leaf, Daddy.”

It worked. He cut off a long thin piece of leaf, and tied it between his legs and up around his waist. He felt like he was wearing a diaper. The surface was slicker on the creeper stem. It held up until just before they got down to the first big knot, when the leaf shredded under him and he carried Lark to the knot, walking carefully, afraid that he'd launch them into space. Lark switched around to his back and he climbed carefully over the tangle of stems and vines. Cramps were making her whimper.

On the other side, he cut another leaf. He said, “The leaves are a good idea, honey.”

“I know the Styx.”

It took five hours to get back to the habitat. Lark gained more ability to move, and her hold on him was less tenuous. She still couldn't stand or climb on her own.

When they reached the habitat, it was empty. Kyle had been afraid he'd find Henry dead in the habitat. Or that Henry had left his suit for Lark and jettisoned himself into vacuum and death. The empty habitat was unnerving. He stuffed Lark into the habitat without repressurizing it, leaving her in her suit. He went out and refilled his suit's reservoirs, and sloshing full of sweet broth and water, he ducked back into the tent. Now he pressurized it and peeled Lark's suit off of her. It actually stuck to her calves, ripping layers of skin off so they looked raw. He took his own suit off, and fed Lark on broth and water. She drank more than he expected.

“Where's Henry?” she asked.

“I don't know. Calvin, will you tell me yet?”

“Nope. Sleep.”

Kyle barely got the words “damn you” out before he was, in fact, asleep.

* * *

The next thing he noticed was the habitat shaking. Lark was able to help him get her suited. She only screamed twice, once for each raw leg. They depressurized, and Henry tumbled in the door, carrying the suit he'd modified for Lark.

“You went all the way down there?” Kyle asked.

Henry sounded weak. “Someone had to do each thing. I knew you had the brains to get her safely.”

Kyle grinned. They repressurized and stripped out of their suits. Lark poured herself into Henry's arms, finally looking energetic. Henry looked very proud of himself. His smile was bigger than usual. Kyle stole a peek at Henry's vitals. His blood pressure was way too high, his respiration was shallow and fast. “Sleep, Henry.”

Eight full hours later Kyle opened his eyes. Lark was crying, looking down at Henry.

“He's not moving,” she sobbed.

“Calvin, what have we got for Henry?”

“Sleeping. Maybe in a coma. He might have had a stroke. We can't tell from here. Doesn't matter—the verdict is he can't possibly make it. Down will be at least half as hard as up.”

Lark crawled over to Kyle and cried in his lap. Kyle patted her head and found he was crying too. Ideas and condolences and tributes started coming in. Kyle turned off his radio; Henry would prefer silence. Besides—he wasn't dead. But how were they going to get him down?

“Remember when you sat on the leaves?” Lark said.

“Sure.”

“Do we have rope?”

Kyle winced, thinking of the supply basket. “Calvin, do we have rope?”

Calvin's voice. “They refilled the basket.”

Lark's backpack had a better knife in it. She led Kyle out to cut off whole leaves. “These are bigger than I needed to get down the stem,” Kyle said.

“They're not for you. They're for Henry. They'll cushion him,” Lark explained. “We're going to use the spaces, not the stems.”

“Huh?”

“To climb up, you had to use the stems. To climb down, we can do better. We're almost weightless, right? We tie Henry between us. We wrap him in leaves to cushion him if we screw up.”

“Hell with leaves, let's use the probes. They didn't have the strength to carry us up, but they could carry Henry down. Then we can use your idea, but we won't have to worry about carrying Henry.”

He was rewarded with a rare touch from Lark. “I want to come back,” she said.

“Both marbles are busted.”

“Climb back.”

“You want to do this on purpose ?”

“There's things I need to know about what's happening here. Besides, the real tourists will need guides.”

“What real tourists?”

“There are ten climbers on the next ship. Hundreds wanted to come—they had to do a lottery.”

“We're leaving.”

“Justine Jackson is coming here.”

“I'm content to watch her.”

“They're paying a premium.” She named a figure.

She could pay for her own school! “Do I have to climb these things again?”

“You're being requested.”

Kyle grumbled. Calvin laughed at him. He and Lark rigged Henry carefully in place of the supply basket. They charged his suit with water, oxygen, broth. Kyle tied the med-kit to his back and tied the basket and its other contents to the vine. It would grow home.

Shooterwould grow home too, to be stripped for salvage. It wouldn't do to leave its diminished fleck of antimatter loose in the sky.

* * *

Henry beat them down by two days. He was at the table when Lark came in for her party wearing the yellow dress. Suriyah must have fussed over the table for hours; everything was perfect.

“Henry, couldn't they find you a wheelchair?”

“This place isn't outfitted for cripples, Lark. Suriyah, you know I can move around. You don't have to keep lifting me.”

“I know. Next you'll be climbing the Styx again.”

Henry sighed. “No, not that. But—you're going, Lark. And Kyle?”

“For what they're paying? Sure I'm going. This base'll be open a lot longer now. At least until the Styx dies, if it dies at all. Justine Jackson—nice woman, by the way, but a little freaky—she doesn't want someone beating her record in the Guinness Files. She's talking about climbing the full length.”

“Kyle? Twenty-seven thousand kilometers?”

Lark burst in. “Yeah, but we'll have a lot of support. Like swimming the Amazon, you take a boat alongside. She did that too, remember?”

Suriyah said, “You'd be years doing this!”

“Team of twelve. Big habitat, and a chef. We'll still have a social life. Lark can attend Yale Virtual. Henry, we're still talking, and I'm not even sure she's funded yet, but wow! We'd have a dedicated channel for three years or so, and then chop that back to thirteen hours of just the exciting parts and a voice-over, for reruns.”

“Do you remember,” Suriyah said, “that the atmosphere is changing? You'll be climbing through hurricanes.”

“No, don't sweat the wind. Pluto's atmosphere is thin as a dream and getting thinner.”

“You're all crazy. You started crazy.” She looked from one to the other, and suddenly smiled. “Can I have your autographs? Some day they might be worth a lot. Here, on this.” On Henry's medical readout.

Authors’ Note:“We learned of the Hoytether™ from Robert Forward. He taught Niven about mini black holes and integral trees. We miss him terribly.”

Content

The Trellis