“Okay!” I shouted back and hoped he heard. Turning to Angelyn, I said, “Ready?”
We tightened our grips on each other and kept hold of our ropes.
The rope clenched around my rib cage. Somebody—several somebodies—were pulling. This time when I dug my feet into the ground under me, dirt slid out but I didn’t slip. We started inching up the slope.
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Angelyn got her feet under her, so we were both able to help, staggering up the incline while the others pulled. It seemed to take forever. My hands were soaked with sweat and kept slipping. So were Angelyn’s. She finally had to let go of me and hang onto the rope, which she could get a better grip on.
I had blisters on my hands, bruises on my chest, scratches along my arms. Angelyn wasn’t much better. But slowly, we climbed. As Ethan and George and the others hauled, we braced our feet on the disintegrating incline. And then hands were reaching for me, grabbing my shirt, the rope around my chest, Angelyn and her rope, and they pulled us to safety. My legs were boneless; I collapsed, lying flat, gasping for breath, wondering if I’d ever be able to breathe normally again. Angelyn sprawled next to me. Reaching out to touch my hand, she smiled. So did I.
Through the tangle of legs and crouching bodies, I finally spotted Charles. He was sitting far back from the edge. The other end of the rope was wrapped around his chest several times. He was still holding the trailing part of it in hands that were scraped raw, like mine.
An air car arrived shortly after that.
* * *
Tenzig had hit the emergency call on the GPS unit as soon as I went over the edge. When the rescuers found out that nobody was in danger of dying, they landed the car, settling in a clearing a ways back on the trail because there wasn’t room on the ledge above the slope. If we had been seriously hurt, they would have dropped the rescue team straight on top of us. As exciting as that might have been to watch, I was happy we didn’t see it. It would have meant I’d screwed up and needed rescuing myself. That would have been embarrassing. As it was, I was just tired.
Angelyn’s Earth friends quickly surrounded her, murmuring over her, hugging her. One of them put a blanket over her shoulders. Somebody—Ethan—handed me a bottle of water. I smiled in thanks. I was breathing hard. It might have been panic.
Two uniformed rangers, one of them carrying a medical kit, appeared on the trail and settled next to us. We were pretty obviously the victims here.
“Don’t forget to look at Charles.” I pointed to my brother, who’d dropped the rope but still held his hands loose and limp. Clearly, they hurt.
One of the rangers said, “Both of you just relax, you may be experiencing shock, so make sure you keep breathing…”
Angelyn caught my gaze and smiled. “Thanks,” she said.
“No problem. You’d have done the same for me.”
“No, you’d have found a way to climb back up all on your own,” she said.
I laughed it off, because she was looking at me like I was some kind of superstar, and I didn’t like it. Now I wasn’t just the kid from Mars, I was the kid from Mars who did crazy stunts. Somebody else would have helped Angelyn. Anybody would have.
The park instructor, Keller, was there, and for all his suspicious enthusiasm he seemed pretty competent here, effectively gathering the rest of the students together and making sure they were all right. Farther back on the trail, observing, her arms crossed, was Stanton. She didn’t look happy. I suppose not. Imagine having to report to Angelyn’s prestigiously important parents that their daughter had smashed onto the valley floor during a confidence-building exercise.
The medical guy checked us all out, put antibiotic ointment on our cuts and scrapes—George and Tenzig also had burns on their hands from pulling on the rope. But we were all declared healthy and fit to travel. A couple more air cars arrived to carry us back to the bus. So we didn’t have to walk back. But was it weird that I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to finish the trek on my own two feet?
By the time we got back to the base meadow, the other groups had returned already, had their gear collected, and were ready to go. They looked on in awe as we disembarked the emergency air car. We were going to have to explain all this a million times, weren’t we?
I didn’t want to talk to anyone. My arms hurt. Breathing hurt.
Finally, we were on the buses and headed back to the shuttleport, and from there back to Galileo. I expected to sleep the whole time.
I was shocked when Charles sat next to me on the bus. I stared at him, but he just looked straight ahead, not saying anything. Both of us had white gauze on our hands, which made us look kind of alien. More alien, rather.
“Aren’t you going to tell me that was stupid?” I asked him, once we’d started moving and he still showed no sign of interacting with me. “That I should have waited and come up with a better plan?”
“You didn’t know if we had time for a better plan,” he said. “You did what you thought was right.”
“But was I?”
“Obviously. We all survived, didn’t we?”
“But—” I slouched. “Are you sure? There had to be a better way.”
“That’s the shock talking, Polly.”