lifted herself up and over the lip.
Once above it she felt a rush of adrenalin – she had pretty much made it. She was doing well, not a wrong move, and then quite unexpectedly her foot slipped and she was sliding fast, back to the place where the rock cut under and there would be no surface to grab. She dug her fingers in, making claws of her hands and then, at the last moment, just before she went over the edge, she found a hold and for a moment she hung there by her fingers’ very tips just thanking her ‘Redfort Good Luck’.
Phew.
She let out a breath and then almost chuckled to herself. Life and death, so easily exchanged – and currently hanging in the balance, quite literally. She looked around her, calmly gauging her next move, then when she was sure, she swung her body to create momentum and kind of leapt to the right, letting go of her handhold as she did so.
A heartbeat of completely thin air –
– and then the warm dry rock was once again in her grasp.
Ten minutes later she had made it, and standing there drinking in the sun’s rays she felt very alive, the adrenalin coursing through her veins. Perfect, she thought. She was about to fly. Glide down like some kind of eagle bird. She unlatched the safety catch on the Glider Wings and felt for the release button. The one thing she had understood from reading the instructions was that you had to jump before depressing it, that was crucial – a hard thing to do, because it meant totally and utterly trusting that it was going to work.
She stepped back from the edge and walked about twenty paces. Then turned to face the canyon she was about to dive into. She ran as fast as she could until she was running like one of those cartoon characters who realise too late that they are running in midair above a giant gorge.
She punched the button.
A horrible split-second of nothing.
She punched again and felt the tiny wings spread out and she was airborne, gliding like a huge bird of prey. She could control direction with her body, leaning from side to side. This was without doubt the most incredible experience of her life; she was several hundred feet up and utterly alone, held only by the air around her. Silent, and surrounded by empty space.
And then a very unwelcome sound – the sound of tearing fabra-tech.
AS THE AIR PRESSURE RIPPED INTO THE GLIDER WINGS, some of the fabra-tech ‘feathers’ whirled away into the sky and Ruby began to half glide, half fall, Icarus-like towards the rock face. She reached out her hands but could not catch hold of anything that would halt her descent.
A sudden gust of wind grabbed at the glider gear and wrenched it from the backpack, and then she was tumbling and turning as she tried to grab air.
Ruby caught sight of the little wings peacefully gliding away – like the wings of an invisible, and forgetful, guardian angel. She caught sight of the ground rushing to meet her and knew that there was no way she would land without making one big dent in the earth, and no doubt an even bigger one in her skull.
What to do? She was all out of ideas, her mind in freefall – no life memories flashing before her eyes, just simply the ground getting nearer.
And then quite suddenly she wasn’t falling, she was floating. Had the card describing the Glider Wings not been ripped, Ruby would have discovered that embedded in the safety straps was a panel which contained a tiny parachute. A parachute that had deployed automatically when the wings failed, and was now lifting her back towards the sun and the sky.
Am I lucky or am I just a Redfort? Ruby thought this thought a split second before a gust of wind picked her up and slammed her into the rock face.
OW!
She was stuck, the little parachute canopy having hooked itself on a sharp outcrop a hundred or so feet from the canyon valley base.
She hung there, dangling from the parachute suspension lines.
Yikes, thought Ruby, now what? She remembered her survival training. No sudden movements, that would be a good place to start.
She slowly worked on trying to unsnag the lines. But that just wasn’t a realistic possibility, given that she was attached to them.
She tried swinging herself, to see if she could grab the rock face and climb up, then untangle the parachute. This also proved impossible.
Once she had tried every means of getting herself down, other than the easiest – cut the suspension lines and see where you land (even Ruby didn’t believe she would survive that) – she saw that there was only one thing for it. Get help or end your days snagged on a rock face.
Sighing, she pressed the rescue button on her Escape Watch and waited for that help to arrive.
She must have fallen asleep soon after the alarm call went out because the next thing she was aware of was a voice.
‘Do you have some kind of death wish kid?’
At that exact moment Hitch’s voice was the best sound Ruby had ever heard, even though it in fact sounded sort of furious. He wasn’t shouting, which made it worse, his voice heavy with disappointment, his expression telling her that at that very minute he wasn’t exactly pleased to see her breathing but was relieved that he hadn’t had to pick up the Ruby-shaped pieces.
‘I was just free-climbing. Keeping my fitness levels up since Spectrum don’t think I’m worth training,’ explained Ruby. ‘How am I ever gonna make the grade if I don’t keep practising?’
Hitch raised an eyebrow. He saw at a glance what had really happened. ‘Don’t give me that baloney. This wasn’t about practice, this was about you thrill-seeking. You were taking one heck of a risk because you wanted to try out a piece of Spectrum equipment – equipment you haven’t been trained to use, let alone authorised to use, nor, let’s not forget, even permitted to take out of the gadget facility. You have broken so many rules here that I don’t know why I am even wasting my breath, you sure as darn it don’t care.’
Ruby folded her arms. It was hard to look defiant when suspended from a rock by a piece of string but she gave it her best shot.
‘Oh, please,’ said Hitch, ‘don’t give me the petulant school-kid act, it’s just annoying.’
All the time he was talking he was climbing.
‘I ought to haul you down from there and let you walk home, better still, why don’t I just leave you, the eagles might appreciate a little bird food.’
Ruby would very much liked to have replied to these various insults but was kind of keen to make it home before supper so decided it might be wise to keep her mouth shut.
‘Do you value life so little?’ asked Hitch.
‘I totally value life, it’s just I don’t believe I’m going to die. I mean, it’s inconceivable that I would die, will die, I mean like now, I didn’t – did I? The parachute saved me.’
