Twinmaker

47

SHE SKIDDED ACROSS the carpet, flailing ineffectually for anything solid to hang on to, but all her clutching hands found were cushions. The floor dropped again, and suddenly there wasn’t even carpet to slow her down. She was tumbling through empty air. Ahead of her was nothing but blue sky and an infinite cloudscape far, far below.

She hit the hardened plastic with a bone-jarring thud. There she stopped dead. An avalanche of cushions pummeled her from behind, followed by Jesse himself. She was glad for the cushions as his extra weight pressed her hard against the transparent boundary that was the only thing separating her from a very long fall straight down.

Light flared again. This time it was the sun sweeping across the sky. The Skylifter was spinning.

“What’s going on?”

Jesse said something but was muffled by the cushions. Q was silent. There was only static through her lenses.

The weight eased. A hand thrust down to her, and she gripped it tightly. She burst out of the cushions and stood next to Jesse with one foot on the window beneath her and the other on a wildly canted floor. She braced herself in case the Skylifter lurched again.

Another white flash. This time there was a bang. The air misted. Her ears popped. Suddenly, it was hard to breathe. She felt light in her stomach, as though they were losing altitude.

Her heart thumped loud and fast in her chest.

“We’re under attack,” Jesse said over a rising whistling noise.

“I thought we were safe here!”

“Apparently not.” He peered out the windows. “But I can’t see anyone out there. They must be firing at us from a distance.”

They tried the doors, climbing awkwardly up the sloping floor. Only the one leading to the bathroom was unlocked, and that Clair already knew was a dead end.

“Q?” Clair called. “I need you!”

No answer penetrated the static.

The floor lurched again. This time the white light didn’t fade. It blazed like a new sun in the sky, flickering occasionally but never entirely going out.

Clair shielded her dazzled eyes. Not being able to see the ground as it approached was a cold comfort. There had to be a way down to the airships docked below that she had seen earlier. Through a ventilation duct, perhaps . . . ?

Barely had she begun looking for air vents when the door to the upper deck suddenly opened, letting in a howling gale.

“Q!” she cried in relief.

But it was Jesse she saw flinching from sparks showering out of an open panel.

“How did you do that?”

“Killer with a screwdriver, remember?” He held up a bent metal knife. The door had only opened an inch, but that was enough for them to get their fingers through and slide it wider. The air was frigid on the other side. Light blazed down the spiral stairwell. There was no sign of anyone.

“The dome must have been breached,” Clair said, imagining people sucked out and falling and . . . She shook her head. Don’t think of that. “We have to go the other way.”

He nodded grimly and hurried to the other side of the room while Clair struggled to slide the door closed behind her. She rapidly lost all feeling in her fingertips to the cold.

“Come on!”

Jesse had the other door open. Together, they made enough space for them to slip through. The air was relatively warm and still on the other side, but the shaft leading to the lowest level of the Skylifter was swaying sickeningly from side to side. She hoped the three smaller airships were still attached.

They hurried down the stairs. Each shudder and lurch made her fear that the Skylifter had reached the end of its plummet, and all their efforts had been for nothing. But it was still falling when they reached the docks, and over the whistling of wind they heard the sound of propellers whirring madly. Through circular ports ringing the base of the stairwell, Clair saw that all three smaller airships were active and ready to fly. The hatches hung open.

“Is there anyone here?” she called.

“Clair! I hear you!” Q’s voice came from all the hatches. “I couldn’t reach you through the ionization, but I did patch into the airships’ control systems—”

“Whatever, I’m glad you’re here! Which ship do we take?”

“Any of them.”

Clair picked the nearest. Through the hatch, she could see the docking tube connecting the base of the Skylifter to the smaller airship flexing and twisting. She took a breath and hurried out onto the plastic floor. The walls were shaking, and her stomach was swirling, and she could only imagine what was happening to the Skylifter as it tumbled faster and faster out of the sky. It was far from aerodynamic.

The tube jerked under her feet. Something tore. The way ahead was suddenly rushing wind and bright-blue light, and the clouds loomed horribly close.

“Clair!”

Jesse wrapped his arms around her and pulled her bodily backward before she could fall. They tumbled in a tangle of arms and legs and somehow managed to crawl their way back to safety. Clair was shaking too much to do more than follow as Jesse dragged them both to their feet and hurried to the next hatch in line. That tube held. Clair had never felt so grateful for anything or anyone in her entire life.

The airship thrashed about on the end of its docking tube like an apple in a storm. Clair fell across the threshold and clung to the pilot’s seat with all her strength. The crew compartment was big enough to hold a dozen people or so, with a low ceiling that didn’t quite allow Clair to stand upright. There were cases of what looked like small arms taking up two seats at the front.

Jesse brushed past her and stared at the complicated controls.

“What do we do?” she gasped. “Do you know how to fly this thing?”

“You don’t have to,” said Q. “I will operate the controls remotely.”

The door slid shut behind them. Locking bolts fastened. The pitch of the engines was already changing.

“We can’t leave yet,” said Clair. “We have to check on the others.”

“The dome blew,” said Jesse. “They must be dead.”

“We don’t know for sure. Q, can you take us to the top of this thing so we can check? Is there time?”

“I will make time.”

“Do it. We have to try.”