cohesive fabric of lies that it would take the Bortellites a few days to check them all out.
By midafternoon he had pretty much decided that Christine Mboya had either misunderstood his hint or—more likely—had totally missed it. If there had been no attack by now, there probably wasn't going to be one, and that meant if he was to escape and get back to the Teddy R he was going to have to do it on his own.
He knew Pinocchio would be home to hundreds, probably thousands, of men and women who would help him if he could make it that far. The trick was getting from here to there; getting all the way back to the ship was something he couldn't even bother considering yet.
All right , he told himself. Think it through. They haven't laid a finger on me. That could mean they're waiting for a master inquisitor; but more likely it means they're afraid of harming the goods before they deliver me to their superiors; after all, I'm a hell of a trophy. Still, I can't just make a break for it; they may want me alive, but they'll shoot me down before they'll let me get away.
He looked around. Okay, then—can I get my hands on a weapon? That means disarming a guard. Which one—the closest, the smallest, or the best-armed? The closest, I suppose. I can do it fastest. But there's a couple of hundred of them. One weapon won't do me much good. All right, so a weapon is out. What about their helmets? Is there a single oxygen source on the ship I can disable? No, I can't see any—but that means they've got a limited supply of breathable air. I don't care how much they compress it, those packs their helmets are tied into can't hold more than a day's worth—and they've been here more than two-thirds of a day already. That means a ship or a shuttle, something with an air supply, is due to land here in the next few hours.
And that gives me a time frame. Whatever I do, I have to do in the next two or three hours, tops—and I probably have to do it without getting my hands on a weapon.
He stood up and stretched. The sun was starting to get lower in the sky. It had to be soon. The mountain terrain was so rocky and uneven that he could break a leg—or his neck—racing across it in the darkness.
And then it dawned on him: as hard a time as he would have racing down the mountain, the Bortellites would be considerably more at risk. If he fell, he'd get a bruise. If he fell the wrong way, he might break something—but if a Bortellite fell, he could crack his helmet, and that would be fatal, for if the Bortellites could breathe Rapunzel's air, they wouldn't be wearing helmets in the first place.
So all he needed was a head start. They didn't dare negotiate the landscape as recklessly as he could. The trick was getting that start.
There had to be a way. If there was a problem that was incapable of solution, he hadn't come across it yet. Sometimes it just required a new perspective, a different way of looking at things.
And suddenly he knew.
It wasn't a matter of looking at things, but rather of things they couldn't look at. The key was the Bortellites' huge eyes. That implied a world with a small or distant sun, a world where they needed those enormous pupils to function. That was why they were working at night. He'd assumed they felt a need for secrecy, but he realized lie was wrong. They'd already infiltrated Rapunzel, and they had the best weapons. There was no need for secrecy. They were working at night because they were more comfortable in the darkness.
So he'd been looking at it all wrong. They could negotiate the mountains in the darkness. But what they couldn't do was fire with any accuracy at a moving target that was running toward the setting sun!
Cole figured that he had about half an hour before the sun was at exactly the right position. He decided to make use of the time, studying each Bortellite as he came or went, trying to see what surfaces and angles they avoided, which ones they were most comfortable on. Steep slopes
By midafternoon he had pretty much decided that Christine Mboya had either misunderstood his hint or—more likely—had totally missed it. If there had been no attack by now, there probably wasn't going to be one, and that meant if he was to escape and get back to the Teddy R he was going to have to do it on his own.
He knew Pinocchio would be home to hundreds, probably thousands, of men and women who would help him if he could make it that far. The trick was getting from here to there; getting all the way back to the ship was something he couldn't even bother considering yet.
All right , he told himself. Think it through. They haven't laid a finger on me. That could mean they're waiting for a master inquisitor; but more likely it means they're afraid of harming the goods before they deliver me to their superiors; after all, I'm a hell of a trophy. Still, I can't just make a break for it; they may want me alive, but they'll shoot me down before they'll let me get away.
He looked around. Okay, then—can I get my hands on a weapon? That means disarming a guard. Which one—the closest, the smallest, or the best-armed? The closest, I suppose. I can do it fastest. But there's a couple of hundred of them. One weapon won't do me much good. All right, so a weapon is out. What about their helmets? Is there a single oxygen source on the ship I can disable? No, I can't see any—but that means they've got a limited supply of breathable air. I don't care how much they compress it, those packs their helmets are tied into can't hold more than a day's worth—and they've been here more than two-thirds of a day already. That means a ship or a shuttle, something with an air supply, is due to land here in the next few hours.
And that gives me a time frame. Whatever I do, I have to do in the next two or three hours, tops—and I probably have to do it without getting my hands on a weapon.
He stood up and stretched. The sun was starting to get lower in the sky. It had to be soon. The mountain terrain was so rocky and uneven that he could break a leg—or his neck—racing across it in the darkness.
And then it dawned on him: as hard a time as he would have racing down the mountain, the Bortellites would be considerably more at risk. If he fell, he'd get a bruise. If he fell the wrong way, he might break something—but if a Bortellite fell, he could crack his helmet, and that would be fatal, for if the Bortellites could breathe Rapunzel's air, they wouldn't be wearing helmets in the first place.
So all he needed was a head start. They didn't dare negotiate the landscape as recklessly as he could. The trick was getting that start.
There had to be a way. If there was a problem that was incapable of solution, he hadn't come across it yet. Sometimes it just required a new perspective, a different way of looking at things.
And suddenly he knew.
It wasn't a matter of looking at things, but rather of things they couldn't look at. The key was the Bortellites' huge eyes. That implied a world with a small or distant sun, a world where they needed those enormous pupils to function. That was why they were working at night. He'd assumed they felt a need for secrecy, but he realized lie was wrong. They'd already infiltrated Rapunzel, and they had the best weapons. There was no need for secrecy. They were working at night because they were more comfortable in the darkness.
So he'd been looking at it all wrong. They could negotiate the mountains in the darkness. But what they couldn't do was fire with any accuracy at a moving target that was running toward the setting sun!
Cole figured that he had about half an hour before the sun was at exactly the right position. He decided to make use of the time, studying each Bortellite as he came or went, trying to see what surfaces and angles they avoided, which ones they were most comfortable on. Steep slopes
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