“He’s on the final approach,” she said at last. “The last piece is no problem, that’s why he stopped to eat here. I don’t think he’ll stay long at the top. He’ll want good light to start the descent, especially that chimney about six hundred meters down. Do you want me to keep the viewer on him?”

There was a pause of several seconds. The voice that finally came from the speaker was rough and gravelly, as though the vocal cords were scarred and roughened.

“Keep it on him. I’ve got Caliban hooked into the circuit. He needs everything, audio and visual. Can you push the gain higher? I want to get a better look at the face.”

The woman nodded. She turned a control and the display zoomed in on Rob Merlin’s head and shoulders. There was a grunt from the wall speaker.

“I see what you mean. He does look smooth. I wish I could see his eyes.”

“Not at this altitude. There’s so much UV around, he’ll keep the goggles on all the time. But I can tell you what his eyes look like. They’re the same as his face — like a blank canvas, waiting for somebody to paint the picture on it.”

“That’s poetic, but it doesn’t carry precision.” The voice chuckled, a rough grating sound. “I suppose I can wait until he gets back below twenty thousand before I try my own description. You can back off from high gain now.”

The woman nodded. She made two economical movements and the image on the screen returned to a more distant view of Rob Merlin. “I’ll keep it like that for Caliban. Any new ideas on how I ought to contact Merlin?”

“No. That’s your department, not mine. Do it as soon as you can, though. I need to get back to base, and I don’t want to hang around here any longer than I have to.”