Building Harlequin’s Moon by Larry Niven, Brenda Cooper Page A

minutes to get a plan they all understood. Ali and Ursula would stay with the plane, and look for a good place to land it away from the water system. Gabriel and Harry would come on foot, following tracks, roped together to guard against dangerous footing. Rachel and Gloria were to look for a way out.
    Harlequin pulled the sea toward them. Her wrist pad showed less than half an hour until high tide. She sighed and helped Gloria up. Gloria couldn’t put any weight on the bad ankle. Rachel’s own leg, the leg she had landed on, was sore, with dark splotches of bruising already flushingthe back of her thigh. Gloria was only half Rachel’s height, so Rachel knelt down and helped Gloria climb onto her back. The girl winced and cried out; she had to let her ankle flop loosely and hold onto Rachel’s shoulders with both of her small hands.
    For a while Rachel was able to walk up a loose grade at the edge of the stream, and they gained some height. Water stains showed they were still below tide line. Gloria’s weight pushed down on Rachel’s hips. The walls narrowed in on them, and Rachel reached and pulled and scrambled up big boulders, panting and straining. Gloria’s weight slowed her down. Instead of jumping as she would have by herself, she had to climb, pulling them up by grabbing sharp edges of boulders. Rachel’s hands grew tender from the rough rocks, and the heel of her right palm bled. They climbed almost straight up now; pull and step, pull and reach, step. Twice, Gloria’s foot swung against stone and the girl cried out sharply. Otherwise Gloria was silent, but rigid, a difficult burden to balance. Sometimes Rachel felt her shake. “We can’t stop,” she said after a third accidental brush of Gloria’s foot against rock.
    “I know,” Gloria whispered back.
    After ten minutes Rachel stopped. Her arms had no strength left, and she was afraid she’d drop Gloria, who seemed to be getting heavier and sticking out more with every step. The walls were only six feet apart here, and they’d climbed above the stream. Water still made a quiet rushing sound, flowing many feet below their perch on unsteady wedged boulders.
    Rachel leaned forward, weight across a large rounded stone, seeking temporary rest for her back muscles. Gloria managed to stay mounted, taking some of her own weight by resting her hands and one knee against rock. Rachel’s back was starting to feel better when Gloria whispered, “Water.”
    Rachel shot up, grabbing Gloria, and turned to look. It was there, rising below them. It had swallowed the place where they fell, and was eating the tracks Rachel had made in the first easier steps. She started moving again, working her way up. A cliff loomed ahead—a massive rock face, twenty feet high, with no easy steps or handholds. A wide vertical crack bisected the face, smooth and featureless.
    A camera-bot buzzed around them. Gabriel knew where they were. He and Harry were closer now, staying away from the fissure, but climbing up. They’d chosen a place to start angling over.
    “I’m looking down at water and up at a cliff,” she told Gabriel.
    “I know. Hang on, Rachel; we’re nearby. A few minutes.”
    She glanced behind them. It would be close. “I’m putting Gloria down to see if I can use this crack and my weight and get up there. I’m not willing to risk it with her on my back, not until I see what it’s like. After I do it once on my own, I’ll go back for her.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’m going now.” She knelt down and helped Gloria off her back, wincing at the little cry of pain Gloria made as she settled onto the stone. “That’s a brave girl,” Rachel said, turning to wedge hands, arms, and shoulders into the wide crack and inch her body up the rough wall. It was slow going. Her hands shook with pain, and her biceps and calves quivered with the strain of holding her weight up just by pushing. She left skin and blood from her palm on the rocks. She looked back once, and the