I glanced at my watch. We’d been falling for three minutes.
The wall didn’t seem any closer.
And we fell more.
My numb, bandaged hand felt even more absent. Were we even moving?
I fumbled for MacConnor’s limp arm, draped it beneath me, and clamped his forearm in my left armpit. By straining my good arm, I could snatch the tether on the binoculars and reel them in. Getting the cool wooden frames to my face was another problem, but once I managed it the eyepieces clipped onto my goggles.
The cliff leaped nearer, the hazy gray resolving into muddy puddles of light and dark that oozed upward. I couldn’t make out any details.
If I’d had modern electronic binocs, I’d be able to read a data feed at this range. On Freefall we only had optics mounted in a bamboo shell—the best optics our cent
