Spider silk was what they'd been hoping for, actually. Surely, in this whole godforsaken industrial zone, somebody must have left some of the stuff behind. Spider rope had been a dirt-cheap commodity in the biotech age, but it had evidently grown a lot scarcer in the bioapocalyptic one. All they'd found was a coarse coil of antique plastic braid, hanging in an abandoned boathouse at the far end of the strip.

Lubin had sighed and said it would have to do.

Clarke had nearly passed out just watching him climb that leaning, precarious scaffold. The rope uncoiling in his wake, he'd wriggled up the first giraffe's throat and dangled head-down like an ant from its eye socket, his legs wrapped around some spindly brace she was convinced would snap at any moment. She hadn't taken a complete breath until Lubin was safely on the ground again. Then she'd gone through the whole nerve-wracking experience all over again as he climbed the second crane, carrying both ends of the rope this time. He'd stopped well short of the top, thank God, tying off the ends and leaving the rope looped between the structures like a nylon vine.

Now, back on solid ground, he told her that she'd get better traction during her own climb if she wore—

"No fucking way," Clarke said.

"Not to the top. Just to where the line's tied off. Halfway."

"That's more than halfway and you know it. One slip and I'm sockeye."

"Not at all. The crane leans. You'll be dropping into the water."

"Yeah, from fifty meters. You think I—wait a second, I'm supposed to drop into the water?"

"That's the plan."

"Well it's a really bad one."

"They'll be on guard as soon as they realize they've been decoyed. If they notice the rope at that point it could be fatal. You'll untie it and pull it down with you. You'll be safe enough underwater."

"Forget it, Ken. It's just a rope, and your plan's so far into the Oort that it would take another lunatic to figure it out even if he did see—"

She stopped herself. Lunatic might, after all, be a reasonable description of the man they were dealing with. For an instant she was back on that scorched hulk off Sable, lifting her foot from a human ribcage.

And Lubin had said Whoever's behind this is smarter than me...

"I don't want to take any chances," he said now, softly.

She tossed off a few more protests, but they both knew it was only theatre. Eventually she drove Miri to a safe distance and hiked back along the road while Lubin called in his report from the ultralight: a vector holed up in an abandoned warehouse, growing industrial quantities of Seppuku in a basement lab.