by MadMaxAU
She recognized the longing: to be away from here. To breathe salty air, feel gritty sand, smell the lashing wind. And once she had felt it, she knew how to put it away, turn back to the present. If she had not been able to do that, she would never have made crew. But these Ortho fools are risking the mission for their fantasy of escape.
Carl arrived, red brown stubble at his chin but showing no fatigue. He drifted to a webbing that served as furniture in low gravity. “I had a mech retrieve Kearns. He’s a frozen statue.”
Virginia said, “Is there any... ?”
“No chance. His cells are ruptured.” Carl sighed, his hand brushing at his face as if to dispel all this as a bad dream. He visibly took control of himself and said with a deliberately calm flatness, “I clamped down security on the surface locks, in case anybody tries to join them.”
“Ah. good,” Ould Harrad said.
Carl said, “I put Jeffers and some mechs out of sight of the Edmund, armed with lasers.”
“For what purpose?” Ould Harrad asked coolly.
“Insurance. In case they try something else.” Carl studied Ould-Harrad expectantly. “What’re you going to do?”
“I wish a quick check of Virginia’s simulation,” Ould Harrad said.
Carl nodded and swung over to a work console. He tapped into the sequence and time stepped through it, oblivious to their nervous attention. They waited expectantly until he unhooked, replacing the helmet.
“Won’t work,” Carl said.
“Why not?” Virginia demanded. “I spent—“
“Mechs aren’t fast enough in close up work:”
“JonVon got them to do it!”
“JonVon is swell for minimizing moves, sure. But it doesn’t allow for safety factors or slips. There’re always some in close-quarter work.”
“I could correct, introduce stochastic—“
“Not with the clock ticking,” Saul agreed reluctantly. “If a mech finds some leftover box in the way, it’ll consult JonVon and there’ll be a pause. There simply isn’t enough time.”
Virginia blinked, feeling hurt that Saul so quickly took Carl’s side. “I still—”
“That settles matters,” Ould Harrad said. “God and Fate act together. We must let them go.”
“We can’t,” Saul said. “The hydroponics, the Newburn, the—“
“I know. There is much equipment we would miss,” Ould Harrad said. “Perhaps, indeed, the lack will speed our doom. But we have no choice. I will not condone any attack on the Edmund.”
“That’s . . . crazy!” Virginia blurted.
Ould Harrad’s face was impassive, distant. “When one faces death, what matters is honor. I will not harm others.”
Saul and Carl shared a look of disbelief and frustration. Virginia thought Ould Harrad won’t oppose an Ortho rebellion, but if Percells tried it . . .
“How about if we disable her?” Carl asked casually, leaning back with his hands behind his head, stretching.
He’s given up the Newburn. And deliberately showing nothing about how he feels.
“You heard Linbarger,” Ould Harrad explained patiently. “If we show any signs of bringing devices out, anything that can be used as a weapon— “
“Yeah, they’ll use the big lasers on it. Sure. But they can’t shoot you if you’re already inside the ship.”
Ould Harrad said, “As I said, any approach— “
Saul broke in, “I think I see . . . send them a Trojan horse, correct?”
Carl grinned. “Right. Inside the sleep slots they’re demanding.”
Ould Harrad’s eyes widened, showing red veins. “A bomb? It could damage anything, hurt people, there would be no control—“
“No bomb.” Carl grimaced. “A real Trojan horse—put men inside.”
There was a long silence as they studied each other. Virginia could read Ould Harrad’s puzzled reluctance—plainly, the man had decided to accept Linbarger’s demands and simply let the expedition make do for the next seventy years. His pan equatorial stoicism had won out.
Carl, though, was almost jaunty, certain his plan would work. Saul pensively ran over the many possibilities for error and disaster—but he licked his lips in unconscious anticipation, tempted, almost amused at this sudden hope.
And what do I think? Virginia realized that she had bristled at Ould-Harrad’s assumption that Linbarger had to be accommodated. She had studied the charts the mutineers had broadcast. Edmund had just enough fuel to arc outward in something called a Byrnes maneuver: loop through a close gravitational swing by Jupiter, reach Earth in a high velocity pass, and attempt an aerobraking rendezvous. But the window for that trick was closing fast, with only a few days remaining.
Is Ould Harrad play acting? Could he be planning to duck across to the Edmund at the last minute, go back with them?
“I do not know . . .” Ould Harrad began meditatively.
“Think it through,” Saul cut in. “I see one major problem.”
Carl frowned. “That equipment is vital. There’ll be plenty of volunteers.”
“That I do not doubt. But a sleep slot is narrow and shallow. You could not get in with a spacesuit on.”
“So what? I…” Carl’s voice trailed off.
“Yes. The obvious defense for them is to vent the sleep slots in space, to be sure no one is inside.”
Carl bit his lip, thinking. Virginia was acutely conscious of seconds trickling away. She liked Carl’s plan, not least because it would give them something to bargain with. If Linbarger took off, the expedition would have to construct their own biosphere without many vital portions. It was one thing to grow a few seeds under lamps and quite another to start up an entire interconnected ecosystem from scratch. Like starting off juggling with eight balls. Of all the ways there are to die out here, I had not considered simple starvation.
Irritated, Carl spat out a curt, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
A long, agitated silence. Moments falling into an abyss.
Virginia had a technique for dealing with problems under time pressure. When she was first doing detailed simulations Earthside, she had evolved programs so vast that they had to be booked days or weeks ahead of time on huge mainframes. If your program went awry, you could stop it in midcourse. Then there were a few minutes when the system would do housekeeping calculations for distant users. You could hold on to your reserved time, still run your simulation if you figured out the difficulty and managed to fix it in that brief interval.
Under pressure like that, it was easy to clutch up. So she had developed a way of letting her mind back off the problem, float, allowing intuition to poke through the tight anxiety. Focus outside the moment, let the surface mind relax . . .
Idly she noticed that on the walls the storm had built to a sullen, roiling rage. Wind blew streamers of foam from the steep waves, and huge raindrops pelted the slender grasses on the inshore dunes, crushing them. The dog had vanished, the crabs milled aimlessly beneath the hammering, incessant drops. The heavy air churned, looking too thick to even breathe—
“Wait,” she said. “I’ve thought of something.”
CARL
Slots, he realized, were a lot like coffins. That’s what had always bothered him about them.
He had a small flashlight with him, thank God. He could see the grainy sheen three inches from his face, feel the soft padding around him. The trapped tightness, the constriction, the cold . . . In the dark it would have been worse. Much worse. He didn’t mind the empty yawning black of open space, free and infinite. This cramped coffin was different.
Carl had felt the gentle tug of acceleration a minute ago and now counted seconds, ticking off the estimated time it would take the five mechs to maneuver across to the Edmund.
There. A gentle nudge forward, pushing him against the grey covering plate. His nose brushed it and a faint torque spun him clockwise.
That would be the deceleration, then a docking turn. Going into the aft hold, almost ce
rtainly.
A dull clank. Fitting onto the auto conveyor, probably. The mechs would decouple then ....
Five ringing spangs. Good.
Now . . . if Virginia’s idea was right . . .
Scraping, close by. A mech grappler caught—clunk—on the hatch’s manual release handle. He could see the inner knob rotate. He braced himself, took a deep breath ....
The hatch poked free and whoosh—the air inside the slot rushed out, fluttering the straps over his shoulders and his blue coverall.
He sucked in air through his face mask. Virginia’s risky solution—a small sir bottle, no suit.
His ears popped, despite the pressure caps he wore over them. Goggles protected his eyes to stop the fluid from sputtering away, freezing his eyelids shut. The straps were so tight they bit into his flesh painfully. That was all he had between him and hard vacuum.
The slot hatch had stopped at its first secure point, five centimeters clear. Beyond he glimpsed the stark white glare of full sunlight on the rim of the aft port. His sleep slot was pinned to the conveyor, as he had guessed. He saw a few stars, and a shadow moving on the distant smooth curve of the Edmund’s hull. That would be a mech moving on to pop the next slot, to check for gifts bearing Greeks.
He had gambled that Linbarger would think that was enough precaution. If he was wrong . . .
And Linbarger was already hypersuspicious, after they had detected and blocked Virginia’s attempt to take over command of the Edmund’s mechs. Ould-Harrad had insisted on trying that so-called easy solution first, and it had failed quickly. Now for the hard way…
Linbarger would want the mechs well clear of the Edmund before anyone ventured into the hold to secure the slots. That gave Carl two, maybe three minutes.
Carl lifted the cover and floated out, curling into a ball as he went. He wore a coverall, gloves, and boots, nothing more.
How long since the air had vacced? He glanced at his thumbnail. Twenty seconds.
Saul had figured three minutes of exposure before he would begin to feel the effects. Then his internal pressure imbalance would get serious, he would become woozy, and anybody coming into the bay could handle him like he was a drugged housecat.
Not that Linbarger and his crowd would waste any time on him. Probably they’d just push him out the lock and wish him bon voyage, like they’d done to poor Kearns. Have a pleasant walk home. . .
He uncurled, looked around.
The hold bay was empty. They were probably watching the mechs separate and back off.
He repelled off the lock rim and got oriented. The lock’s manual-override seal was a big red handle, deliberately conspicuous, at ten o’clock and across the bay. His ears popped again. His senses were ringing alarms, but he suppressed them all and launched himself across to the red seal and flood lever.
Halfway there, somebody tackled him.
The suited figure slammed him backward into the bay, grappling for his air hose. Carl twisted away, jerked free.
Of course. Obvious. Linbarger had put somebody outside, to inspect the mechs as they came in, be sure nobody clung to an underside. From that position the man could see into the hold, too.
Idiot! Carl chided himself for not predicting this.
Ninety seconds left.
They separated, both drifting down the long axis of the hold. It would be ten seconds before either touched a wall. The spacesuited man fumbled for his jets and changed vectors, deftly moving between Carl and the red seal and flood.
Carl had no doubt that the fellow could stop him from reaching the lever for a minute or so. The Ortho had jets, air, and all the time in the world.
Dame, it’s cold, too. Carl twisted, looking for something, anything.
There. A set of tools. He glided by the berth rack stretched—and snatched up an autowrench Carefully he aimed at the figure ten meters away and threw
It missed by a good meter. Carl could see the man’s face split into a sardonic grin, the lips moving, describing it all with obvious delight for the Edmund’s bridge.
Which was what Carl wanted. Throwing the heavy wrench had given him a new vector. He coasted across the bay, windmilled, carne about to absorb the impact with his legs.
Where was the damned—?
He sprang for it. The fire extinguisher easily jerked free of its clasp. Carl pointed the nozzle at his feet and fired. A pearly white cloud billowed under him and he shot back across the bay, still no closer to the seal and flood.
His ears popped again. Purple flecks brushed at his eyes, making firefly patterns ....
He struck the opposite wall, this time unprepared. A handle jabbed him in the ribs.
Where was... ? He launched himself at the man, riding a foam jet. Halfway there he cat twisted, bringing the fire-extinguisher nozzle to bear ahead of him—and slammed it on full.
Action and reaction. He slowed, stopped—and the frothing white cloud enveloped him. He fired again and rushed backward, out of the thinning smoke.
Darkening purple everywhere. The raw light of the berth lamps couldn’t seem to cut through it ....
Now, before the roiling fog cleared, he flipped again and fired one more time. He flew through blank whiteness—and struck something soft, yielding.
He grabbed at the man with one arm, bringing around the extinguisher. Hands snatched at him, clawed at his face mask.
Vectors, vectors . . .
Which way. . . ?
It didn’t matter. He pressed the nozzle against the man and pulsed it again.
Billowing gray gas.
Cold, so cold . . .
. . . A huge hand pushing him backward . . .
A long second of gliding . . . the extinguisher slipped away . . . numb hands . . . he was tumbling . . . aching cold in his legs . . . impossible to see…the purple getting darker…shot through with bee-swarm white flecks darting in and out…in and out…spinning…
—then a jolting stab of pain in his leg, crack as his skull hit decking.
It jarred him back to alertness. He clawed for a hold. Looked up.
The fog was thinning. Directly out through the lock Carl could see the suited figure wriggling, dwindling, trying to get reoriented to use his jets. An insect, silvery and graceful . . .
The thrust of the last pulse had acted equally efficiently on each of them, driving Carl inward and the other man out.
He sprang for the seal and flood. Grasped it, pulled. The lock slid shut just before his opponent reached it, and the loud roaring hiss of high-pressure air sounded for all the world like a blaring, rude cry of celebration.
“I made it,” Carl said into his comm. “The tubes are blocked.” He panted in the close, oily air of the pressurized cylinder.
“Good!” Ould Harrad answered in his ears. Now there was no indecisiveness, no fatalism in the voice. “Linbarger, hear that?”
“What’s that jackass mouthing about?” carne the chief mutineer’s sneer.
“Carl Osborn has jammed up the fusion feed lines,” Ould Harrad said precisely.
Faintly the voice of Helga Steppins: “Fuck! I told you to cover the fore tubes!”
Even fainter: “He must’ve crawled through them from Three F section. Shit, we can’t cover every little— “
“Shut up.” Linbarger’s voice got louder as he addressed Ould-Harrad. “We’ll sweat him out of there.”
“You try it and I’ll vent the tritium,” Carl said tensely.
“What?” Linbarger could barely contain his anger. He demanded of some unseen lieutenant, “Can he do that?”
Faintly: “I don’t . . . Yeah, if he opened those pressure lines into the core storage. He might’ve had time to do that.”
“Without tritium to burn, your fusion pit won’t reach trigger temperature,” Carl added helpfully, grinning.
“You—!” Linbarger’s line went dead.
Carl twisted and made sure the entrance behind him had a hefty tool cabinet jamming the way. He had long lever wrenches on the tw
o crucial pressure points, ready to crack open the valves. They could come at him from behind, but he could spray a lot of precious fuel out into space before they got the valves closed again. Enough to kill their plans, certainly.
“Are you sure you can do it, Osborn?” Ould-Harrad asked cautiously.
“Yeah.” What do you want me to say? No? With Linbarger listening ?
“Well, this certainly gives us a better bargaining position . . . .
“Bargain, hell! We’ve got ‘em by the balls.”
“If they get to you fast enough, perhaps they can retain enough tritium to make a multiple flyby with Mars. Draw lots to use the nine slots they have now. Then— “
“Cut that crap.” Go ahead, give them ideas.
“I’m simply— “
“I said cut it!”
“I’m trying to prevent— “
“It’s not your ass on the line over here, Ould Harrad.”
He twisted, watching the feeder lines drop away to the left. If somebody wriggled in that way, they might try to shoot at him. But that would be stupid, right in the middle of the fusion core. Damage these fittings and they would take weeks to replace, if ever.
Linbarger’s grim voice said, “You hear me on this hookup, Osborn?”
“I’m right here, just a friendly hundred meters away.”
Silence. Then Linbarger’s reedy, tight voice said slowly, “We’ll fire the start up pinch if you don’t leave.”
Carl caught his breath, let it out slowly. That was the one alternative he hadn’t mentioned to anybody. It wasn’t smart, because start up could do real damage if you handled it wrong—and Linbarger had no experience at that. But he had seen the possibility of frying Carl as the hot fluids squirted through this network of tubes. And Linbarger was just desperate enough to do it.
He said as calmly as he could, “You’ll burn out the throat.”
“Not if we’re careful. It won’t take too much fusion fire to cook you up to a nice, brown glaze.” Linbarger was clearly enjoying himself, thinking he had turned the tables.
“I’ll vent the tritium anyway.” Now let’s see how much he knows.