“What the hell is this?” he screamed.
“Ice!” yelled Bubba. “It's a crash pad!”
The shrieking of snapping ice crystals pounded in from every surface, transmitted directly through the thick metal of the Tank's skin from the shattering ice itself.
###
The volume on the radio repeaters in the DRC Control Room remained up, since there was still communication, but the scream of tortured ice crystals as the Tank impacted the Perseus made it difficult to think. Subby saw his chance and slipped into the room while everyone else was watching the miracle of Jeff Gaston's brainstorm. He quickly strode around the back aisle, coming up the stairs to Lisa's dais without encountering another person.
Sir Rodney leapt up to block him, but too late, and Subby's shove send him tumbling down the stairs.
Lisa was suddenly aware of an incredible odor, immediately followed by the cold metal of the 3D gun pressed against her head.
I've been stupid, Lisa thought.
She turned to look at her assailant, only to have Subby move the gun along with her head to maintain contact.
“Subraman?” she asked.
“Yes. You're in my chair.”
“I don't think so,” said Lisa. “You have been AWOL, and I was appointed Chief instead.”
Subby rammed the gun into her skull harder, making her gasp with pain. Behind Subby, Sir Rodney was ready to bound up the stairs and tackle Subby.
“Tell them to back away!” Subby shouted, the grinding shriek still sounding from the radio repeaters. “And turn off that noise!”
Lisa signaled Comms, which turned down the sound.
“That's better,” said Subby into the sudden silence. “One controller may remain in contact, but it seems that the flyboys have it under control.”
Gus Blukofski began to get up from his chair. “You slimy ass…” he began.
“Shut up and sit down,” said Subby. “I'm in control. Again.”
Subby considered his options. Everyone focused on him, except for the single controller who was on the circuit with the Perseus. He looked quickly around the room. He grabbed a handful of Lisa's uniform and pulled.
“Get up.” He noticed something, moved his fingers, and rapped on a thicker segment underneath. “Body armor?”
Lisa stood up. In the new position, her head was higher than Subby's shoulder, making him hold his gun hand higher than natural. That should make him tire, in time.
“Come with me,” he said, dragging Lisa by the arm towards the back door where her office and the bathrooms were located. He kept the gun near her head, but far enough away that she couldn't easily swipe it from him.
“You knew I was coming,” he said. Lisa remained silent. “Come on, admit it. You knew I was coming. How?”
Still, she said nothing.
“All right, we'll do it your way,” he said. “Come on.” He dragged her into her office and kicked her door shut and locked it. “Fancy. Should have been mine, of course.”
Lisa looked longingly at her desk, where she kept a small pistol for times such as these. Only five meters away, but it might as well be five hundred.
Subby swept a handful of mementos off the windowsill with a sweep of his arm. It left a smear on the immaculate surface.
Subby snapped open the window with a shove of his arm. He took one look at the bars, then threw Lisa at them. “Unlock these bars within a minute, and I won't shoot you in the back of the head.
Lisa looked at him. “I do believe you would do that. Why?”
“Never mind. Unlock them. Now.”
“Key's in my desk, right hand drawer, right in the front.”
“Huh. Bet you sneak out that way. Doing someone behind that cuck of a husband of yours?”
Lisa suddenly thought of Shep, her husband, coming upon her bullet-riddled corpse. Shep at the funeral; Shep raising their kids. No. She had worked too hard, survived too many dangers, to be shot in the back by this loser.
Subby brought her the key. She took it and unlocked the bars.
“Jump. It's only a meter, meter and a half.”
Lisa wondered if she could get any kind of head start on Subby.
“Don't try to run. I'm right here.”
Don't run. He's on edge right now. Your chance will come.
Subby landed softly in the grass outside her office.
Lisa looked around for lurking Security personnel, but the place seemed empty. Odd.
“They're all around front,” said Subby. “Waiting for me to come out that way. I saw it on your friend's monitor.” Subby snorted. “That's what happens when you have a woman doing a man's job.”
Still an ass. Being a pariah hasn't taught him a thing.
Subby jabbed her just under her body armor with the gun. “Let's go to the Mess Hall.”
###
“Hang on in there, Scott!” were the first words Scott heard once the horrible screeching came to an end. He was suddenly back in his childhood, riding a restored steam locomotive with his grandfather, when they came easing into the station, the whole contraption being slowed by friction brakes with that same shrieking sound.
“What the hell was that?” he called into the radio.
Jeff laughed. “Water.”
“Ice?”
“Foamy ice. The crystals make an interesting noise when they are being stressed, wouldn't you agree?” said Jeff.
“Damn you. I can still hear them. I think my hearing's damaged.”
Jeff turned off the microphone for a minute as he laughed. “The chamber's full of sharp crystals zooming around. McCrary says wait for us to bring out a docking collar before you try to get out. It might be a while—you're still three hundred meters from the back end. We had no idea how much momentum that last nuke was going to leave you with, so we oversprayed a bit.”
“No problem. We could use the rest. How long, do you think?”
“A couple of hours. We have to figure how to stretch it out there.”
“You don't have to,” said Scott, and could have bitten his tongue off. The faster they were off the Tank, the sooner they would be back at work. But the sooner they'd be out of these spacesuits and catheters and be able to shower and have a salad instead of the dreaded chow bars. It balanced.
“How so?” asked Jeff.
“How long is the transfer tube?”
“Fifty meters.”
“OK, bring it up here, let us load into it, then tuck one end into the other. Wait, how about the guys bringing it? Aren't they in just as much danger?”
“Oh. Yeah, they would be,” said Jeff.
“You guys really are exhausted, aren't you?”
“A bit.”
“Same here. Look, tuck the two guys inside the tube, have them use an air gun or something to jet out here. Stay inside, but hook this up. We crawl out and into the tube. Then we all jaunt to the airlock and lock through.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Jeff. “I'll get right on it.”
“Just let us know when you're at the door. We forgot to hook up the doorbell.”
###
Sir Rodney tried his level best, but Subby and Lisa appeared to have vanished. The cover to the manhole was just as they left it. In the rush to chase him down, nobody had monitored the camera over the manhole in the back of the Mess Hall, and the output was not recorded.
“Luckiest bastard in the world,” growled Sir Rodney. Lisa was nowhere to be found, and her commpad and security pass telemetry were also silent. Even if she was dead, her badge and commpad would have noted the fact and reported the same, once they got near a reader. It was as if she’d dropped off the planet.
Sir Rodney was close to the truth. The Nazi assembly area was like another world, frozen in time, and with no relationship at all to the current one. Subby wasn’t stupid—he wanted to get away, and the only way he knew how was via the sewers.
Then he had a brainstorm.
“Breathe,” he said, handing her the regulator. He
forced her into the manhole vault by jabbing her with his weapon. He retrieved all of his gear, including the scuba mask and regulator. There was twenty minutes of air left in the tank, plenty to get them all the way down the sewer line, over the brick wall outside tunnel E5, and into the Nazi assembly hall.
Once there, with breathable air carrying the taint of the sewer, they had a little chat.
“You bitch, you stole my life.”
“Tell me how. All I was trying to do was save the crew,” Lisa said. “You knew that we were going to die. Why did you try to send us back?”
“You really don't know?” he asked. When she shook her head, he marveled. “How have you lasted at your current job for so long? In my day, you would have been eaten up long before.”
“We’ve made some changes since you were in charge, Subby.”
He rammed the gun against her temple hard enough to break the skin and start a trickle of blood. “Never call me that name again! You will address me as Mister Venderchanergee or Director-General, or Sir. Do you understand?”
“I understand, sir,” said Lisa.
“Let me tell you something, you naïve little tart,” he said, leaning close. “I was the best Director-General that UNSOC ever had. We brought in record-breaking income to UNESCO. Every item of the budget improved under my command. More income, less expenses, and even that parasitic Collins lashup finally started pulling its weight. You've crapped all over that legacy with your lies and slander. For that, you're going to die.”
Lisa mentally said goodbye to Shep and the children. “Before you kill me, at least let me make peace with God.”
Subby laughed. “I'm not going to kill you,” he said. “I'm not going to dirty my hands with that kind of work. You will never have the kind of mind to survive in the UN—none of your kind will. I understand that Mrs. vanDeHoog has been dethroned and is on the run. She never came up the ranks, like I did. No, when her miserable husband died, they put her in his place, instead of a hard-working loyal staffer like myself. I’m glad she's out. Maybe a few years on the run will trim some of that lard off of her.”
Subby looked at Lisa. “You still think I'm going to shoot you.” He shook his head. “No, I'm going to do worse than that. I am going to force you to kill yourself. Only, I'm going to give you a gift. You get to choose how you are going to die.”
He walked over to where he had dropped his scuba gear. He looked around the hall, and spied the other cylinder, the one Garth had left him. He lifted it with both hands—heavy, definitely full—and shined his flashlight onto the gauge. It read five atmospheres. Should be plenty of air. Lastly, he cracked the valve, letting out a thin whistle of air. He quickly changed the used filthy tank with the clean fresh one, put on the regulator, and breathed the tank air.
Satisfied that he was ready for the denouement, he left the gear and brought over the used tank to Lisa, set it down, and turned the valve over hard. The tank whistled loudly for two minutes, finally dying with a gasp. Subby kicked it over with his foot.
“You see, I am leaving. It's time for me to head back into exile. But it will be a happier exile knowing you are literally rotting.
“You have two choices. You can either try to run the sewer from here to the manhole cover over at the far end. It's a twenty minute splash, and there's crawling at the end, as you well know. The air's somewhat poisonous, which is why we used the scuba tank to come here. You might make it, but I rather doubt it. Even if you do, you'll die of lung rot eventually.
“Or, you could stumble around here, trying to get out. I hear there are booby traps, and I understand that trained Special Forces types have come into these tunnels and never made it back out. Again, you might make it, but I don't think so. I have a friend who had just finished an extensive study of these structures, and he didn't dare use this way of getting to his target. He never got past this spot in here, either. Plus, I'm taking the only light. I'm sorry, but I need it more.
“So, what will it be, Commander Daniels? Stumble around here until a booby trap goes off, a floor collapses under you, or you die of thirst? Or into the sewer where your type belongs, to see if you can hold your breath for twenty minutes?”
Lisa refused to give the hateful little man the slightest crumb of satisfaction. “Screw you, Subby.”
Subby smacked her across the face with the hand holding the pistol. Lisa dropped like an poled ox. She stayed that way as he poked her, playing dead. Finally, Subby left her. She heard him climbing over the wall, into the sewer, and splashing away.
She sat up. It was pitch black in the assembly hall, and Lisa sat still, keeping her orientation. The sewer was off her left shoulder, and she wanted to wait for someone to flush a toilet or a washing machine to drain so that the splashing would give her a sound to home in on. She didn't know what to do, but she was determined to think her way out of this jam.
###
Scott Acevedo drifted in the microgravity of the central axis. He looked at Jeff and McCrary in amazement. “You really don't know?”
Jeff shrugged his shoulders. “I figured we'd gather the big pieces with a net and stuff them into a tank that way. The smaller pieces, we just use a finer net.”
“How do you let him work for you, McCrary? He's a menace.”
“…and the horse you rode in on, Scott,” said Jeff. He omitted the beginning of the insult out of respect for his boss.
McCrary smiled. “Two ways to do it. Liquid or gas. Depends on the tightness of the end seal.”
Scott looked at Jeff. “See, he gets it.”
“Liquid. Melt the ice? How? Wait. The thorium heat exchangers and the reactor are up here, probably a few hundred meters away. But how does that help? You'll just have a bunch of bubbles of water in the air.”
McCrary stared at Scott. “Let him off the hook. He's had a long day.”
“All right. Yeah, we run some hoses in here, heat the water in the last tank until it's coming out of the hose at three atmospheres, then steam this entire cavern. Yes, it's huge, but steam does a couple of things. First, it changes the vacuum to low pressure water vapor, which will act to make the ice 'sticky' so that the next time it hits something, it sticks. Second, it will reduce the speed of everything zooming around, making it safer to operate in here. Finally, it will raise the temperature of everything in the cavern, melting the ice.”
“And getting those bubbles,” said Jeff. “Wait, are you counting on the water clinging to the walls? What does that get you?”
“Do you know what's right outside that back door, Jeff? The Earth. We arrived in orbit facing forward. Since that time, this asteroid, all on its own, is continually reorienting itself in orbit so that the back door keeps pointing at Earth. Remind you of something?”
Jeff looked at McCrary in amazement. McCrary nodded.
“We're tidally locked?” said Jeff.
“Yup,” said Scott. “Nobody realizes it because the computers point the antennas for us, the solar cells that supplement us are under computer control, and the lasers that blast debris are also servo-controlled. Nobody needs to look out the window anymore, and we don't have windows anyway. If you're in the control room, you just ask the computer to show you the Earth, but you never stop to think where it is in relation to your craft.
“I first noticed it when I was working on the airlock and I realized we didn't need lights on the work and I wondered why. I was shocked when I realized the Earth was looking in our back door all the time. I was doubly shocked to learn that nobody knew this. It had happened on its own and nobody cared.”
“Even I didn’t realize it,” said McCrary. “Now I know that I am no longer safe in space. I just hope I survive long enough up here to get back to the Earth.”
“Wow. I wonder if anyone else has noticed,” said Jeff. At their alarmed looks, he hastily added, “But don't worry. I'm not going to do a survey or mention it to anyone.” He shook his head. “Amazing. So we're tidally locked. And?”
“I really should ma
ke him do it,” said Scott.
“Don't,” said McCrary. “As I said, we've all had a long day. Please make it march.”
“Fun sucker,” said Scott with a chuckle. “Here's what that means. The Perseus is a single solid piece of nickel-iron. When it's orbiting the Earth, one end is four kilometers closer than the other, but they're all forced to move in the same orbit as the center of gravity of this craft, which is about two kilometers from either end. Left to themselves, the two ends would go in completely different orbits just based on physics. But they don't because the iron holds the ends together.”
“Yeah, I remember. So why does that help us?”
“The water doesn't have anything to hold it in place. Floating in the air, it acts like it's in its own independent orbit, which it is until it meets up with a wall of the ship. Then it either bounces off if the wall is going past too quickly or it sticks. Then it's subject to the same tidal gravity forces as the rest of the ship.”
“So, you're saying that most of the water will gather down at the Cup and Plate?” asked Jeff.
“That or up at this end, but the chances favor the far end.”
“You're going to need two kilometers of hose,” said Jeff. “That is, if the seal at the back end is any good.”
“It is,” said McCrary. “I've had a large ring of putty put there while the Plate was open, after Scott told me why it was necessary. Since gauges are registering the slightest bit of air pressure from the steam injection going on right now, I believe we're watertight down there. Figure out how to get the water uphill to the central tanks, and you've saved the day.”
###
Garth slipped from one patch of vegetation to the other, always pausing to listen and look. He was working his way toward the central building in the patch of wilderness. He radiated contempt for John. Buildings were caves. Caves had a single outlet, usually. People with solid walls all around them thought they were safe, but buildings were actually traps for the amateur.
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