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like." Nearby, the other convict who had managed to make it to the top was also staring, mesmerized and mumbling to himself. "Temperature differential, pressure differential; wind and heat from the north pole to the south. Meeting the advancing terminator every new day. Round and round she goes, and where she hits, everything blows& " He looked around sharply. Riddick was close by, still hugging the shade. The big man was even more commanding than usual, and there was unusual in-tensity in his voice. "Gimme cable, shirt, your water all of it. Then get the hell gone. Go. Move ." They didn't argue with him. First, because it would not have done any good. Second, because they owed him for having brought them this far. And lastly, because they could tell from his tone and see from his expression that if they did not give him what he needed, he would take it anyway. Neither man tried to argue. There was no time here, now, in this place, to piss away on internal dissention. They turned over the goods, not knowing what he wanted them for and not asking. Not asking, because he might decide to ask them to join him in whatever crazy move he was contemplating. As soon as the last of the gear had been handed over, both men started down the backside of the mountain. The temperature continued to rise, but they still had plenty of shade. For how much longer, it was impossible to predict. The stone tower, with its promise of man-made shelter and a ship beneath, was all the incentive they needed to send them all but bounding over the treacherous rocks. Behind and above them now, Riddick moved fast but methodically. First he donned the Guv's com-modious overshirt, tugging the ends of the sleeves as far down as he could, covering as much exposed skin as possible. Then he fashioned loops at both ends of the cable. One went around an upthrust rock; a solid stone protrusion, a finger of mountain that would not break off no matter what kind of crazy pressure he chose to apply to it. The other, larger loop went around his waist. In his mind, he'd already run the necessary calcu-lations. As always in such situations, there were fac-tors he could not account for, could not wholly quantify. That was physics for you: always throwing some shit in your face whenever you thought you had everything worked out. He took a long drink of the accumulated water, then dumped the rest of it over him, carefully saturating as much clothing as possi-ble. Moving as fast as he could to minimize evapora-tion time, he gripped the cable not far above where it looped Page 103 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html around his waist, took a running jump, and threw himself toward the sun. Out in front of him, the sound of the approaching thermal wind front had risen to explosive proportions. His kick-off carried him far to one side. Reaching the apex of his leap, Riddick-become-pendulum started dropping and swinging back. As he did so, he turned in mid-air and freed one hand, hanging onto the cable with the other, black goggles flashing, flash-ing, as they fought off the hungry sunlight. Below, the heated wind front had reached the base of the mountain and was screaming upward. Just three people were there to see it, hypnotized and ter-rified at once by the line of implacable force that was rising toward their inadequate hiding places. Mouth agape, Kyra could only stare at the monster that was climbing toward her. Riddick could have studied it, too. But he was busy. Then she was airborne, soaring sideways, having been plucked out of her crevice as neatly as a raptor chick by its mother. Her slim form was locked in Riddick's arm and shielded by his body. As the pen-dulum effect began to slow, the big man made con-tact with the cliff face. His feet slamming against the rock, he began running sideways, perpendicular to the precipice, regaining speed. It was a crazy, impos-sible sprint, racing against gravity and common sense. But Riddick was an impossible man. As to his sanity, there were those who might have debated it. But not to his face. Witnessing the implausible rescue, the unfortunate convict who had trapped himself in another fissure on the rock face moved when he should have waited, hoping the big man would come back for him. He should have summoned what courage remained to him and tried the rock, tried to climb. Instead, the only move he made was to peer tentatively out from his hiding place. Out and down, at the ascending thermal wind. He was able to gape at it for several seconds before it met his face. And took it off. Pounding, digging forcefully against the cliff, Riddick's legs provided just enough additional thrust to carry him and his burden back up to the top of the mountain. Almost before they lost the last of their forward momentum, he had dropped her and was disengaging himself from the cable. All the banshees of hell were howling in his ears when he threw him-self down and forward. Just in time for the leading edge of the thermal front to reach the crest of the mountain and blast over it. Rolling hard, he and Kyra tumbled downslope, farther into the shade and safety of the back of the mountain. When they both finally came to a stop, scratched and dirty, she was the first one to sit up. That in itself being unusual, she quickly saw the rea-son why. Steam was pouring off Riddick as he rose, stag-gering slightly. He had been exposed for less than a minute but it had been a minute in the devil's own sauna. Black ash that had adhered to his skin in places had actually helped to protect him. As for those areas not protected by ash or clothing, boots or goggles, it was fortunate his ancestry was not exclu-sively Caucasoid. There was just enough melanin in his skin to have saved him from a serious, if widely scattered, burn. He gave silent thanks to favorable genetics. Nearby, Kyra was staring at him. A look passed between them. Then she shrugged, Hey, I woulda made it , and without another word, started down. XV It had been a long time since the Guv had done any running, and it was finally starting to take its toll. Not that what he and his companion were doing at the moment could exactly be called running. It was more akin to slipping, sliding, stumbling, and pray-ing you didn't fall flat on your ass and, worse, break something you might need later. Like a femur. The ground underfoot was as broken and nasty as a slam guard's heart. Barefoot, their feet would have been cut to shreds in minutes by the planes and blades of volcanic glass. Here and there the two men encountered shallow Page 104 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html depressions in which falling ash had accumulated and compacted. Grateful for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |