The Nano Flower

CHAPTER TWENTY

Charlotte Fielder really was astonishingly pretty. She was the first thing Greg saw when he came into the MHD chamber after Suzi, all dark-gold skin and tight white cotton. Nothing else registered at the same level, it was as though the background had suddenly become monochrome.

She and Fabian Whitehurst were clinging to each other. Greg reckoned a muscle armour suit would be hard pushed to prise them apart. They both stared at Suzi in trepidation.

"Don't piss yourselves," Suzi told them, lowering her Browning. "I'm one of the good guys. Right, Julia?"

"Yes," Julia said, her voice booming out of speaker stacks. "Greg and Suzi won't hurt you, Charlotte, nor you, Fabian, they work for me."

Greg looked down at Nia Korovilla's body. She looked so tranquil in her prim maid's uniform. Hard to imagine her as any kind of hazard. Maybe Suzi had been right, after all. It irked him to think that she knew him better than he knew himself. But she certainly hadn't hesitated to shoot.

Nia Korovilla's presence kicked off a whole cascade of trepidation in his mind. Julia had squirted her data profile into his cybofax; according to that she had served on the Colonel Maitland for eight years. It meant she was a sleeper, a watcher keeping tabs on Jason Whitehurst. Which made no sense to Greg; if she'd been feeding someone with snatched bytes of Jason Whitehurst's trading deals for eight solid years, then the old boy would have known. So if she hadn't been doing that, what was she on board for?

"Leol Reiger has dispatched three more tekmercs up here," Julia said. Her face was replicated in six flatscreens, dominating one wall of the den. "I won't be able to delay them, not now they have been warned about the drones being under my command."

Greg glanced hurriedly round the MHD chamber. It reminded him of home, the kind of grotesque merger of gear and pets that the kids slapped together as various interests went through nova bursts of intense devotion, only to be abandoned a week or month later. It was an archaeological record of a boy's development. So much for his intuition telling him there was something out of phase about Fabian Whitehurst.

He tried to look at the MHD chamber from a tactical point of view. There was only the one door, and the walls behind the panels were solid alolithum. The tekmercs' rip guns could break through that easily enough. Suzi was prowling along the line of gear consoles below the flatscreens.

"Tell you, we can't stay in here," Greg said. "You got us a hidey-hole ready, Julia?"

"Not exactly, but I think I can keep you and the tekmercs apart until my crash team arrives. There's a lot of volume in this airship."

Greg glanced at Suzi, who gave him a shrug.

"Sure thing," she said. "This is all so fluid."

"Come on, Charlotte," Greg said. "We'll get you out of here."

Charlotte and Fabian actually managed to hold each other even tighter.

"No," Charlotte said. She was sweating profusely.

Greg noticed the discoloration on her hand. The skin around two fingers was swelling, puffy with blood.

"Charlotte, please, the tekmercs that are coming for you make Nia here look tame."

She stroked Fabian's hair with her good hand. The boy's eye had swollen shut, blood was drying on his lips and chin. "What's happening?" she asked. "Please, I don't understand any of this."

"Julia," Greg called.

Julia's face vanished from the largest flatscreen, replaced by a view of the Colonel Maitland's landing pad with the gutted wreck of the Pegasus still smoking. Charlotte gasped.

"That's the plane we came in," Greg said. "There were four people on board when it was hit by the tekmercs. That's your alternative. Now will you please come with us."

"I'm not leaving Fabian. Not if tekmercs are on their way here."

Fabian looked up at her with complete adoration. Greg realized they weren't going to be separated. And he had promised Jason Whitehurst exactly that. Bloody wonderful.

"We're not asking you to leave him, Charlotte," Julia said gently. "One moment."

There was a burst of static.

Jason Whitehurst's voice came out of the music deck speakers. "Fabian?"

"Yes, Father?"

Greg's cybofax bleeped. He looked down at it.

"You stay with Charlotte and Mr. Mandel," Jason Whitehurst said. "It'll be a lot safer for you. These damn tekmercs are all over the old Colonel. Bloody trigger happy brutes, they are. I'll catch up with you later, I must see the crew is all right first, noblesse oblige, and all that. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes, Father."

Greg showed the cybofax to Suzi. Her face remained impassive as she read the screen's message.

"Splendid chap; bit of an adventure for you. Charlotte, my dear girl, what can one say? I'm most dreadfully sorry about all this trouble. Julia will explain later. You take care of Fabian in the mean time for me, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jolly good."

Greg pulled a first aid box off the wall, and found a local anaesthetic infuser. Charlotte didn't resist when he took her hand. He pressed the infuser tube to her wrist.

She gave a tremulous little sigh as the anaesthetic took effect.

"Careful you don't knock the hand against anything," he warned her.

She nodded meekly.

Suzi was wiping Fabian's chin with a disinfectant tissue.

"OK," Greg said. "Let's move. Julia, which way?"

"Turn right outside, down to the hull, then head up towards the prow. I've loaded your route."

He glanced at the cybofax, memorizing the Colonel Maitland's blueprint with its superimposed red line.

It was cool outside the MHD chamber. The engineering bay heat exchangers constantly circulated the air in the gap between the hull and the gasbags, preventing the helium from becoming superheated and losing lift capacity. Greg thought it smelt vaguely of chlorine. It left an unpleasant tang at the back of his throat.

He led them along the walkway, the opposite direction to the way he and Suzi had come. Charlotte and Fabian followed him, holding hands; Suzi brought up the rear. The worst of his neurohormone hangover was lifting, but he wouldn't be able to use the gland again today, not after two psi effusions like that.

"Greg, a little faster, please," Julia said out of his cybofax. There was an edge in her voice.

"Right." He began to step out.

A rip gun was fired behind them, the sound of its shot rumbling round the engineering bay. It was the signal for a whole barrage to begin.

"What's that?" Charlotte asked, raising her voice above the clamour.

"Rip guns."

"Crikey," said Fabian, he squinted at Greg with his one good eye. "You mean a neutral-beam weapon?"

"No messing."

They reached the hull. A silent rank of drones was drawn up beside the transverse frame ladder. Greg didn't have time to question their presence. He turned on to the walkway that led towards the prow, sandwiched between the gasbag and the solar cell envelope. It curved away ahead of him, fading to grey.

The rip guns had stopped firing.

"Get going," Julia said. The drones began to move out on to the engineering bay girders.

Fabian watched them go curiously. "Do you have hotrods working for Event Horizon?" he asked.

"One or two," Julia answered.

"Fabian, not now," Charlotte said.

"Sorry."

The walkway made Greg think of the eidolonic loop he'd left Chad in. The engineering bay had disappeared from sight behind, and more walkway kept unfolding in front, seemingly endless. They were moving at a jog now. Charlotte's panting was loud in his ears. His own breathing wasn't too good either.

There were five rip-gun shots fired in rapid succession. The sound barely audible.

"Last of the drones gone," Julia said. The cybofax wafer was in his top pocket again, banging on his chest. "The three tekmercs are covering all the options. One has gone down the transverse frame ladder, another is climbing up."

"And the third's coming after us," Suzi finished.

"Right," said Julia.

"Run faster?" Greg asked.

"He'll still be able to catch you. You're only a hundred and eighty metres ahead of him."

"The next transverse ladder?"

"No, you'd be sitting ducks on that."

"Stand and fight. The Tokarev might penetrate the armour."

"No," Julia said. "I've got your escape route mapped out. Keep going, twenty metres. Stop by the next doughnut gasbag."

The only way Greg found it was because of the deep concave fold in the plastic where the two bags pressed together. He came to a halt, breathing hard. Charlotte stopped behind him, her face drained.

"Are you all right?" she asked Fabian.

The boy flipped some of his ragged hair off his face. "Yes." They still hadn't let go of each other's hands.

"What now?" Greg asked. He kept his nerves alert for the sound of the tekmerc, wondering if he should order another gland secretion after all.

"Start hyperventilating," Julia said.

"What's this bollocks, you hustle us along here for exercise classes?" Suzi snapped. "Have you glitched?" She was the only one who wasn't breathing heavily.

"No, listen," Julia said. "I want Greg to slice open the doughnut gasbag with his Tokarev. Then you hold your breath, and slide down the inside. You will stop right above the keel walkway. Greg cuts the plastic again, and you drop out.,

Suzi gave Greg an imploring look. "If both of us fire at once, we can snuff that tekmerc."

Greg wasn't so sure. Suzi's idea was all down to chance. Julia's had logic behind it. Machine logic, admittedly. And of course, she didn't have to do it herself.

"The tekmerc can just follow us down the doughnut," he said.

"No," Julia said. "It'll tear like paper under the weight of the armour. He'd fall straight out of the airship."

"All right, we'll try it."

"Shit," Suzi said. "Fluid."

Greg looked at Charlotte and Fabian. "Do you two understand?"

They both nodded, both looked scared.

"Whatever you do, don't breathe in while you're inside the doughnut," Julia said. "Helium isn't toxic, but there's no oxygen. You'll asphyxiate."

Greg got his breathing back under control, and drew the Tokarev. "Everybody ready?"

"Do it," Suzi said.

He aimed at a point level with his own head. "Breathe in now, and follow me straight away." He hoped to hell the two kids would do as they were told, Suzi would have trouble bullying both of them. Or maybe not.

The vivid red beam pierced the plastic, and Greg swung it down to the walkway, opening up a two-metre slit. With the Tokarev held in his right hand, he sat on the walkway grid, pushing his feet into the open gash. The blackness inside the doughnut was impenetrable, it almost seemed to slop out on to the walkway. He ducked his head under the hand rail, and pushed off.

The Messerschmitt exploded without warning. Julia had to replay the external camera memories to understand the sequence of events.

Two Typhoon air-superiority fighters arrowed in from the north, silver-grey needles with wings retracted, using the airship as a radar shield. Not that the Messerschmitt would have had many options even if it had detected them, not when they travelled at Mach eleven. One went over the Colonel Maitland, the second went under. Three Kinetic Energy Kill missiles slammed into the Messerschmitt at Mach seventeen. Then the fighters were gone.

A fireball enveloped the Messerschmitt, billowing out. It was slapped by the supersonic backwash from the two fighters; invisible hands compressing it back into a lenticular shape. Chunks of flaming wreckage spewed out from the ragged edges, spinning through the air, arching down towards the distant ocean.

The Colonel Maitland was shaken violently by the Typhoons' passage. Julia monitored the buffeting they inflicted on the already damaged fuselage framework. Stress sensors reported a dangerous amount of weakening in the midsection.

She sounded the evacuation alarm before the bridge crew had a chance to evaluate the situation; klaxons blaring out all through the airship. The hatches on the survival pods popped open.

The Messerschmitt's halo of ionized flame contracted, wrapping itself around the broken fuselage. The plane rolled lazily, then began the long fall towards the water.

External camera, starboard fuselage. Two Event Horizon transports were decelerating fast; big XCV-77 Titan stealth hypersonics with a cranked delta planform. They were virtually standing on their tails to aerobrake, underbellies glowing cerise; airflow vortices created spiral vapour trails that streamed off each wingtip, as if they were stretching out giant white springs behind them.

With the jamming blanket lifted, Julia opened a communication link to the lead Titan. Her living self was plugged into the transport plane's sensors, anxious for information. She compiled a summary of events since the Messerschmitt's attack, and squirted it over.

Get Greg and company back into the gondola, her living self said, I'll brief the crash team to lift them.

OK.

Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

Tekmerc eight, female: "Oh, Jesus wept. The deal's been burnt. Event Horizon planes, big buggers."

Leol Reiger: "Ian, Keith, Danny, get back to the gondola. Move!"

Tekmerc five: "Coming, Leol."

Julia: "Last chance, Leol Reiger. Put down your weapons, deactivate your armour. It's all over."

Leol Reiger: "Screw you. Everybody, Charlotte Fielder is to be snuffed. If you see her, kill her. How do you like that, rich bitch? You tell your people to stand off, I'll let her live."

Julia: "No deal."

External cameras, overview. Both Titans were slowly circling the Colonel Maitland like prowling wolves, disgorging the security crash team from their open loading ramps. The hovering armour-suited figures formed an encircling necklace around the airship, electronic senses sweeping it for signs of tekmerc activity. When their deployment manoeuvre was complete, they began to close on the gondola.

Survival pods were dropping out of the bottom of the gondola, small white spheres with strobes flashing urgently. Two hundred metres below the airship their red and white striped parachutes bloomed, lowering them gently towards the ocean.

A rip-gun bolt, fired from inside the gondola, speared one of the approaching armour suits. The security hardliner disappeared in a plume of blue-white flame. Another bolt stabbed out.

The crash team let off a fusillade of plasma bolts at the gondola window where the rip-gun bolts had come from.

Internal camera, gondola lower-deck cabin. Leol Reiger was running from the bedroom, barging through the open doorway out into the central corridor. Plasma bolts smashed into the cabin behind him, igniting the furniture and fittings. An inferno was raging inside within seconds.

The armour suit's speaker emitted a demented peal of laughter as Reiger ran towards the stern.

Suzi wanted to scream. She was in freefall, hurtling through black eternity. The plastic surface of the doughnut gasbag had disappeared as soon as she jumped, the fissure of weak light from the gash drying up almost at once. There was nothing she could orientate on, no reference point. Time seemed to be expanding. It was like being plunged into sensory deprivation. Leol Reiger would be laughing his flicking head off if he could see her now, all panicky like this.

Standing and fighting would have made a fucking site more sense than this. They could have shot the walkway out from under the tekmerc, no need to penetrate the muscle armour, just flush him out of the airship. Too late now. And what the hell did some warped 'ware package know about tactics anyway?

A thunderclap penetrated the closed universe of the doughnut gasbag. The sound rumbled around her, a drawn out tortured roar. Explosion. Then came the multiple sonic booms, the grating sound of the airship's fuselage bending and flexing. Definitely some snaps of breaking frames. Christ!

Something flicked up her back. She began to spin. Then she was skittering and sliding down the curving plastic wall of the gasbag, totally out of control. Her injured knee twisted viciously as she reeled round, nearly making her cry out loud. It was all she could do to keep her mouth clamped shut.

There was an electric flare of deep vermilion light ahead of her. The scene it uncovered was weird, two-tone, red and black. A huge curved cylindrical cavern, slick walls printed with a black hexagonal web pattern, palpitating softly. Jonah must have seen something like this, she thought. She'd always liked that story back in the Trinities; their preacher, Goldfinch, could make it sound real somehow when he was delivering his sermons.

Fabian Whitehurst was visible ten metres in front of her, sliding down the bottom of the doughnut's curve, jouncing about madly. She stretched her arms out, trying to slow her speed. The light went out.

She could still hear the fuselage protesting loudly.

The angle of the gasbag's slope began to shallow out, reducing her speed. There was a stark slice of hoary light shining out of the floor fifteen metres away. She saw Fabian on all fours, scrabbling towards it. He vanished abruptly, as though he'd been sucked down.

Suzi came to a halt about three metres from the cut, and started crawling towards it. She could hear her heart pumping fast, the need to take a breath rising. Her knee was alive with stabs of pain as it pressed into the plastic.

She reached the cut, and grasped the melted edge with her hands, pulling her body through and down. A half-somersault and she was standing on the walkway.

Fabian was on his knees, coughing roughly. Charlotte Fielder stood behind him, arm around his shoulder, looking anxious. Suzi let some beautifully clean air flood into her lungs.

Five metres down the walkway, three drones were working on the composite panels that made up the roof of the gondola. Greg stood over them, watching keenly.

"Cutting us a way into the cabins," he said when Suzi went over to him.

"My security crash team has arrived," Julia announced from the cybofax peeping out of his jacket pocket. "They'll be inside any minute now."

There was another groan from the fuselage framework. Suzi thought she saw a ripple run along the walkway. The drones lifted up a strut they had disconnected, and began to use their lasers on the composite.

"There are two tekmercs left in the gondola, both on the lower deck searching the cabins, and three more in the fuselage," Julia said. "They're operating on shoot-to-kill instructions now."

"Where's Leol Reiger?" Suzi asked.

"He's in the gondola."

"Forget it," Greg said curtly.

She wanted to tell him where to shove it. But her knee was throbbing alarmingly now, and the fuselage was frightening the shit out of her the way it kept creaking and moving—though she wasn't going to admit that to anybody. Leol Reiger was toting a Lockhead rip gun, and fully armoured. Besides, she'd been running around in this creepy half-gloom with its clammy cold air for what seemed like hours. "Yeah," she said. But it was an expensive concession.

The circle of composite which the drones had been working on fell away with a clatter. A surprisingly bright shaft of light shone up from the cabin below.

Suzi heard a rip gun being fired, answered with the fast zip of a plasma-pulse rifle. A lot of plasma-pulse rifles.

"You go first," Greg told her. "Fabian, you're next."

She slithered through the hole and dropped to the floor. Her leg nearly gave way altogether. This time she couldn't help the yelp as red hot skewers of pain pierced her knee.

It was a bedroom suite; dustsheets over all the furniture. Fabian's jeans and trainers appeared above her. She caught sight of armoured shapes racing through the air outside the window. The silhouette of a Titan transport in the distance.

Fabian dropped into the cabin, landing awkwardly. Suzi limped over to help him up. Someone in the gondola was firing a rip gun almost continuously. It was getting louder.

Charlotte's long shapely legs came through the hole; she landed easily, rolling as she hit. Suzi wondered where she'd learnt that. The girl's white top and shorts were streaked with dirt. Fabian caught her hand as she got up, and she smiled gratefully at him.

Two of Event Horizon's security crash team rose to hover outside the cabin's window; their jetpack efflux a steady thrum. One of them pressed a power blade to the glass. It sliced through cleanly, and the armoured figure tilted his jockey-stick, heading towards the stern, sliding the blade along as he went.

Greg landed in the cabin with a hefty thump, sprawling gracelessly on to his side.

"Ah, the old paratroop training, always useful." Suzi grinned at him. The weary tension in her muscles was slackening off. Her knee was a solid knot of pain.

Greg stood up, shaking his head like a dog coming out of the water. "Bloody hell."

"Yeah," she agreed. She was surprised by how glad she was that he'd come through OK. Every byte out of the combat manual thrown at him, and he was still upright. She should never have doubted, not Greg.

A big rectangle of glass fell outwards, letting in the full howl of the jetpack noise. The crash team began to fly into the cabin.

Suzi started to laugh, lost in a burn of elation as dustsheets took flight and her short hair whipped about, shellsuit trousers flapping wildly round her legs. It was always the same, relief at being alive at the end of the day boosting her higher than syntho ever could. Dangerously addictive.

Fabian and Charlotte were taken out first. She felt armoured arms close around her, and the security hardliner lifted her with a precision she could only envy. Then there were just the blues of water and sky, the giddiness which accompanied height.

Leol Reiger was very good. Julia hadn't expected that. Rip-gun bolts tore into cameras and fibre optic cable channels. Her coverage of the gondola's lower deck was being systematically broken down. Fire was spreading from the cabin her crash team had shot at. Halogen extinguishers in the ceiling came on, squirting out thick columns of white mist into the central corridor, degrading the camera images still further.

She relayed Leol Reiger's exact co-ordinates to the crash team.

Internal camera, gondola lower-deck central corridor. Dark smoke oozed along the ceiling, smothering the biolum strips. Flames fluoresced the halogen a lurid amber. She watched one of the crash team step out of Jason Whitehurst's study into the inflamed miasmatic cyclone, plasma rifle held ready.

Leol Reiger turned with a speed she couldn't believe. The rip-gun bolt was aimed with incredible accuracy, lancing straight into the security hardliner's chest.

If she had a stomach, she would have been sick at that point.

Leol Reiger stood still and amid the churning halogen smog, legs slightly apart, and pointed his rip gun up at the ceiling. He blew a wide hole in the composite, and kept on firing. His suit's jockey-stick deployed, swinging into place below his left arm. The jetpack compressor wound up.

He launched himself like an old-style space rocket, straight up.

Internal camera, gondola upper-deck central corridor. Leol Reiger came through the floor, and vanished through a hole in the ceiling.

Internal camera, fuselage keel. Rip-gun bolts had vaporized a three-metre section of the walkway, leaving the smoking ends drooping on to the gondola roof. There was a gaping rent in the spherical gasbag overhead. Leol Reiger flashed past.

That was where Julia's coverage ended. The only sensors she had inside the gasbag were the ones to detect temperature, contamination, and pressure levels.

The Colonel Maitland's flight control systems reported a heavy helium vent from the gasbag Leol Reiger had taken refuge in. External cameras showed her rip-gun bolts flying out of the upper fuselage, leaving long breaches in the solar cell envelope.

Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.

Leol Reiger: "Scuttle it. Shred this flicker."

Tekmerc five: "You're crazy, Leol."

Leol Reiger: Laughter. "No way. They've blown it. The mayday beacons on board are shrieking so loud every emergency service on the planet will be picking them up. There's no jammer now. Air-sea rescue is going to be here in minutes."

Tekmerc eight, female: "Christ, he's right."

Leol Reiger: "Damn betcha, I'm right. Use your Lockheeds, blow your way into the gasbags, and deflate them. We'll ride it down to the sea."

Tekmerc two: "I'm with you, Leol."

Julia watched the tekmercs in the fuselage burn their way into the gasbags. More rip-gun bolts began to tear through the solar cell envelope. They left behind a growing static charge which snapped and sizzled across the geodetic framework. It jumped the power systems' circuit breakers and fused 'ware processors. Julia began to lose peripheral circuits.

Are you going to order the crash team into the fuselage after them? she asked her living self.

No. Reiger was right about the coast guard, the NN cores say three search and rescue hypersonics are already on their way from Nigeria. He's a dreadful annoyance, and he's certainly going to have to be dealt with at some stage. But our first priority is Charlotte Fielder. I'll let Victor Tyo sort him out later.

Charlotte knew she was dreaming. Her life wasn't like this—pain, horror, darkness, fear. Death. That tough little hardliner woman had killed the maid. Didn't say anything, didn't ask what was going on, just walked in to the den and shot her.

Was that part of the dream? It was all so vivid.

She rested numbly in the hard metal embrace of the machine-man, whizzing through bright blue space. The cold gnawed at her bare skin. There were lightning flashes and thunder grumbles behind her.

She was walking down long, deserted London streets again, cold from the rain, scared of the lightning forks that danced above the grey rooftops. Small, and hungry, and lost. Perhaps all of her life had been a dream? The finery, the wine, the laughter and bright, bright colours. Just figments spinning through her mind.

She wanted it back, that life.

The big plane hissed venomously at her as she swooped into the open end, above the ramp. She was coming to a halt inside a fat metalloceramic tube with yellow nylon webbing seats along the walls. Two biolum strips ran the length of the bare ceiling. Thick wires and composite reinforced tubes snaked over the floor, ending in bulky sockets clipped on to the wall by each seat.

A group of people in white jumpsuits were standing just inside the ramp, their arms waving like traffic policemen. The metal arms let go of her, and she was dumped into waiting hands. These hands were soft, made of skin and bone.

Hot urgent voices raged around her, firing off rapid questions. All she could do was stare back blankly. A silver shawl was wrapped round her shoulders, and she was eased into one of the webbing seats.

Plastic boxes were pressed against her arms and neck and belly, tiny coloured lights winking. A small cube that gave her a bee sting on her neck, swiftly turning to an ice spot, then evaporating altogether. The world really did lose all cohesion then, receding to a distant spot of silent frosty light.

She hung back from it for some time, letting her thoughts slowly come together. Then the light expanded again, bringing with it sounds and feeling, mainly of icy skin. She was light headed, which she knew came from the trank.

Jetpacks whined savagely as the crash team landed on the plane's ramp two at a time. There were liquid rumbles coming from the dark bulk of the Colonel Maitland a kilometre away.

"You OK now?" an earnest young woman in a white jumpsuit shouted over the bedlam. Her face was pressed up close. A red cross on each arm.

Charlotte nodded. "I'm cold," she said.

The woman smiled. "I'll get you a thermal suit. But we'll be closing and pressurizing in a minute. You'll soon feel the difference."

"Thank you."

The man called Greg was sitting in a webbing seat opposite her, doing yoga breathing. He gave her a rueful grin.

Charlotte saw the motion long before the sound arrived. The Colonel Maitland was crumpling, prow and stern rising up, midsection splitting open. Long flames writhed out of the gondola windows.

"Father!" Fabian cried hoarsely. He was sitting next to her, she hadn't even noticed.

The Colonel Maitland began to sink out of sight. Not falling, but a slow idle descent down to the water so far below. People were standing on the plane's ramp, watching it go. She saw the little hardline woman among them, her fist punching the air. Smirking.

"Father!"

She put her arms round him as two of the white-clad medic team closed in. One of them was holding an infuser tube ready.

"Get away from him!" she shouted.

Fabian buried his head in her chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Just get away from him." She rocked him gently, tears filling her own eyes.

The ramp hinged up.