Limbo System

by Rick Cook

  Peremptorily, he signaled his fighters to attack and two scouts darted around the corner and charged down the corridor.

  Clancy put his hand on the scuttle. The door was only slightly warm. “Okay, here we go,” Clancy said. Martin nodded and the engineer undogged the scuttle and turned on the fog.

  The high-pressure mist billowed out of the hose and the recoil nearly knocked them off the ladder. Clancy locked an ankle through the rungs and thrust the nozzle through the opening.

  The heat was like a blow to the face. The corridor was so full of choking black smoke it was hard to get a breath. Bracing himself against the hot wall of the service corridor, the engineer opened the nozzle all the way.

  The air in the compartment turned junglelike as the fires flashed the water droplets to steam. Clancy flinched and gasped as the heat and live steam struck his face. But he shifted his stance and took a firmer grip on the hose. Behind him Martin scrambled through the hatch and grabbed the hose behind him.

  Step by step, they fought their way down the corridor, fogging everything as they went. The atmosphere got closer and more stifling as they put more water vapor into it.

  Mercifully, there was no problem with electrical lines. Almost all communications and control signals were carried by fiber-optic cable. There were some electrical cables in this section, but all shipboard equipment was fitted with automatic interrupters which cut off power at the first sign of a short. Thank heaven for small favors, the engineer thought as he shoved the nozzle ahead of him. Now let’s just hope the water pressure holds.

  Behind him Martin gasped and loosened his grip on the hose.

  “Hold the line, goddammit!” Clancy yelled over his shoulder.

  “I’m trying,” the astronomer called back. But he took one stumbling, weaving step forward and collapsed.

  “O’Hara, get up here!” Clancy bellowed. Carmella’s head poked through the scuttle. “Get him out of here,” he yelled.

  Carmella was white and shaking.

  “Goddammit! Move your ass!”

  Still she couldn’t respond. It looked like the fires of Hell in the corridor and it was all she could do to cling to the ladder.

  “Goddammit, you silly bitch! Get him!” Clancy got a lungful of smoke and collapsed back against the wall in a fit of coughing. “Get him!”

  The young woman roused, seemed to shake herself and scampered through the hatch. She grasped the fallen man by the shoulders and pulled him back to the hatch. The astronomer floated behind her like a swimmer being rescued by a lifeguard.

  She’ll know! Carmella thought miserably as she maneuvered the unconscious man down the hatch. He’ll tell Aunt Alice and she’ll know. The knot in her stomach wrenched even tighter. She looked back up the open scuttle and with an effort of sheer will began to climb.

  Carson was poring over the displays when a movement in the corridor caught his eye. Someone dressed in gray was coming toward the control room. He looked up and frowned at what he saw.

  The muffled gray figure was wrong. The proportions were wrong, it moved wrong and the thing in its hand was hideously wrong.

  While Carson gaped, another one came caroming off the corner and arrowing down the corridor at them.

  Three loud explosions rang in his ear. The lead figure seemed to pause in its headlong flight and a cloud of pink bloomed around it. Then the second one crashed into the first and they tumbled bonelessly together into one of the corridor walls.

  Carson gaped and then hit the emergency transmission switch on his suit. “Aliens! We’ve got aliens on the ship.”

  ‘“Get down, you fucking idiot!” his companion yelled. Carson dragged himself behind a pump as a beam of blinding light flashed down the corridor. In the afterimage, Carson could see part of a figure sticking around the corner.

  “What the hell was that?” the young engineer yelled.

  “I don’t know, but it sure as hell ain’t supposed to be here.”

  Another laser beam lanced down the corridor, leaving a stinking scorchmark on the wall.

  “Can they come around us?” Francis yelled over his shoulder.

  “Doors are sealed,” Carson yelled back. “We’d better get this one closed.”

  “So they can sneak right up on us? No way.”

  Voices were chattering at him on the emergency circuits, confused reports of fires and aliens on the ship, people rioting, equipment out and other unspecified kinds of trouble. Without taking his eyes off the corridor, Carson repeated his warning of aliens in the engineering spaces and requested that the word be passed forward to the bridge. Somehow, he didn’t think it would help.

  Carmella came up behind Clancy and took Martin’s place. With the extra support and friction from another body to counterbalance the recoil of the hose they started forward again, one painful step at a time.

  “Are you all right?” Carmella yelled to be heard over the nozzle and the fire. Clancy nodded and they pushed ahead.

  They could see the flames now, licking feebly or burning with eye-searing brightness depending on what they were consuming. Clancy turned the hose on them with a fierce joy. The bright spots burned on undiminished but the fire flickered and died under the fog.

  For the first time, they could also see the effect of the explosions, panels blown off the walls of the ceiling, twisted and crumpled by the force of the blast. The heat and the steam were nearly unbearable and Carmella was already shaky when they heard a new sound.

  At first, Carmella thought it was an echo of the “whoosh” of their own nozzle. Then as it got louder she realized it was another fog nozzle in action. Someone else was fighting the fire as well.

  Suddenly, a scuttle clanged open a few feet behind them and a space-suited head thrust through. The man saw them and reached up and opened his visor. Carmella saw he was grinning broadly.

  “Hell Clancy, I might have known it was you.”

  Mike Clancy grinned back and they took several steps away from the fire to bring them even with the man as he came completely out of the hatch.

  Clancy coughed again. “What the fuck took you so long?”

  “We’ve been working our way back,” the other one told him. “Are you coming forward from engineering?”

  Clancy shook his head. “Scratch party. We got cut off in the Central Corridor.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking Clancy and Carmella over. “Well, I think we’d better take it from here.” Behind him other figures in spacesuits came through the hatch and two of them moved to take the hose.

  “We got one down on the next level. Smoke got to him.”

  “I’ll send someone to have a look.”

  “How we doing?”

  The man in the spacesuit nodded. “We got this one whipped, I think. Anything burning behind you?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Slowly, they made their way back down the corridor they had fought to save. Clancy was smudged, scorched and hacking up mucus black with soot. The girl wasn’t much better. Back in the lower corridor, the astronomer was moaning weakly and trying to rise.

  “I’m sorry I let you down,” Carmella said.

  Mike Clancy grabbed her and hugged her to him with one arm. “Hell lady, you didn’t let me down. If you ever want to shift to engineering, I’ll take you on any day.” He coughed up more mucus. “Now let’s get our friend and get out of here.”

  Again, Barry Kirchoff made his way across the hull. But this time he had company.

  When they reached the rim of the bay, Kirchoff stood aside and watched as the vacuum jack got ready. Kirchoff’s training implied that he should lead the way into a dangerous situation instead of standing aside and watching. Don’t be a bigger ass than you already are, he told himself. This man knows what he’s doing and you don’t.

  The vacuum jack posed on the edge of the bay, tucked in and pushed off gently. He floated down into the hole with his safety line snaking behind. He landed on the surface of the shuttle on all fours, turned and
waved with one hand to show he was all right. Then, slowly, carefully, he inched his way along the shuttle’s side, moving only one arm or leg at a time. The shuttle vibrated and bucked under him from the effects of the fire. Even from the edge of the bay, Kirchoff could hear it as a dull rumble, transmitted through the structure of the ship and up through the soles of his boots.

  At last, the vacuum jack arrived at a point slightly ahead of the shuttle’s greatest width. He paused for a minute and then reached behind him for a small package attached to his belt. Carefully, he placed the bundle against the shuttle’s hull. Then he turned and scuttled back to the bay’s forward bulkhead. He swarmed up the bulkhead and joined Kirchoff on the hull.

  “We better lay down for this next part,” he told him.

  Behind a blinding burst of laser fire, four aliens came flying down the corridor. Unlike the first two they weren’t easy targets. They bounced crazily off the walls and ceiling, using reaction jets on their suits to vary their speed and direction. They came on firing their laser rifles, roaring and shrieking.

  Again, Francis got off the first shots. The lead alien spun out of control almost as soon as he turned the corner. The second one slammed into the floor like a sack of sand and barely rebounded. Carson fired again and again and the third one was rumbling end over end. The fourth one didn’t make it as far as the third one had.

  The entire end of the corridor was hidden in a ghastly cloud of pink and carmine. The positive pressure ventilation in the engine room gently pushed the bobbing, drifting bodies back down the corridor the way they had come.

  Carson smelled the acrid reek of gunpowder, almost like burning insulation, he thought. A shell casing went floating lazily by and instinctively he reached out and grabbed it. A part of his mind kept telling him he should be sick at the sight of the floating abattoir in the corridor, but he was too excited to care. His mouth tasted like metal and his breath came hard and rough.

  He looked over at the man crouched across from him. Francis’ eyes never left the door but he was as calm as if he were dishing out mashed potatoes on the serving line.

  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Carson asked.

  “Chicago.”

  “New Chicago? On the Moon?”

  The older man grinned mirthlessly. “Old Chicago. On the Cicero Crater.”

  “Fire in the hole,” the jack called over the comm channel and hit the button.

  The effect was totally unremarkable. A small hole, perhaps the size of a dinner plate, appeared in the shuttle’s hull where the package had been. The shuttle jerked slightly in its cradle and that was all.

  There was no roar, no cloud, not even a slackening of the flame from the other end of the shuttle. But the jerk told Kirchoff all he needed to know. Hydrogen gas was pouring out the hole, venting the tank and eventually depriving the fire of needed fuel.

  It would have been impossible in an atmosphere. But in the vacuum there was nothing but the shuttle structure to conduct heat back to the new hole and nothing to oxidize even if there was heat to ignite the hydrogen. The curve of the hull meant the jet was angled away from the fire so there wasn’t even the chance that the two would come in contact.

  Kirchoff continued to watch from the lip of the bay. The fire was weakening, he saw, the flame gaining color as it got an excess of oxygen. It was a long ways from being out and there would still be a first-class mess to clean up, but the Maxwell wasn’t going to blow up in the next few minutes.

  “That was damned fine work,” Lieutenant Kirchoff told the man on the radio. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Jewett, sir. William Jewett.”

  It was sheer bad luck that brought Sharon Dolan into the path of the Colonial raiding party.

  When the alarm sounded and the emergency doors slid closed she was coming back to her cabin from a visit to the ship’s library. The doors trapped her in the section of the ship next to the one where her cabin was. A quick check of a wall screen showed her communications were out, she had no assigned emergency station and she didn’t know anyone in this section except Dr. Takiuji and dropping in uninvited on him didn’t seem right.

  So Sharon decided to violate the standing rule on travel between sections when the emergency doors were closed and headed for the section’s main shaft. Although unauthorized personnel couldn’t open the emergency doors, the lower levels of Spin were organized somewhat differently from the higher ones. The compartments on different levels overlapped like bricks in a wall and the elevators in each section’s main shaft continued to function. By going up one level Sharon could cross to her section’s main shaft and take the elevator back down.

  She met no one coming through the corridors, of course. The people with emergency stations had reported to them and everyone else was in their cabins, awaiting orders.

  She was almost to the elevator when she turned the corner and ran smack into three aliens in spacesuits.

  The voices were calling to her again. High and faint, talking too fast to understand. But that didn’t matter. Lulu Pine knew what they wanted and she ignored them. This was the day and time. To hell with the Owlies. She was going to do this her own way.

  She was smiling when she turned to face her captives.

  Major Autro DeLorenzo fitted the last cartridge into the last magazine and put it into the web pouch. Four clips. One in the gun and three extras. A full combat load. Not enough to hold off an invasion singlehanded, but enough for what he had to do. He tapped the bottom of the magazine in the gun, then pointed the weapon at the ceiling and pulled the bolt back. He released the handle and the bolt ran forward with a satisfying clatter. DeLorenzo didn’t bother with the safety.

  But the submachine gun wasn’t his real weapon. The controller was in a pocket of his battle jacket and with that controller he could bring the Maxwell to a complete standstill. Now he was the real master of the ship, although the people on the bridge didn’t know it yet. He could do what he had to do from here, but he could do it more thoroughly from engineering.

  Cautiously, Major DeLorenzo eased the door to his cabin open with the barrel of the gun and scanned the corridor. Nothing moved. He slipped out the door and started for the drive room.

  Karl Ludenemeyer had never thought of himself as a brave man; in fact he was terrified. But as alien hands hustled him out onto the hull of the Maxwell, he knew that his capture represented more than a personal disaster. With the possible exception of Sukihara Takiuji, he knew more about the drive than any other person on the ship. He had never had much feeling one way or the other about the aliens, but he remembered DeLorenzo’s warnings.

  If they’ll do this, they’ll do anything, he thought as three Colonists jetted him across the gap between the ships with their maneuvering packs. And that told Karl Ludenemeyer what he had to do.

  If he wasn’t brave, Ludenemeyer had a simple, direct, uncomplicated approach to problems that grew out of years of dealing with spaceship engines. It wasn’t a question of courage, it was that there was only one logical solution. So Ludenemeyer took it.

  A spacesuit is designed to be as idiot-proof as possible, but men must still work in them. Ludenemeyer had deliberately chosen a model that sacrificed safety for flexibility. The hose to his air pack, for instance, was not completely within the pack shroud. A section of it stuck out at the back of his neck and could be pulled further free if needed. And in the middle of that section was a coupling so that a knowledgeable wearer could change air-packs in vacuum.

  Of course, if the wearer forgot to shut off the air valve on his helmet before he changed air-packs . . .

  Suddenly, Ludenemeyer tucked into a ball. The maneuver, precisely performed, threw him into a cartwheeling spin. His guards grasped for him and they were spinning too, all of them a confused tangle. He reached behind him and manipulated the fitting automatically. The hose whipped loose, spraying fog and ice crystals around him and his captors.

  The Owlies gestured frantically and twisted ab
out him, trying to get the hose back into its unfamiliar fitting to save their prisoner. But the hose fitting was designed to be hard for untrained hands to remove and that made it equally hard for untrained hands to replace.

  Ludenemeyer kept twisting his body to make his captors’ job as hard as possible. He felt his ears pop and then there was a trickle down his upper lip. His vision reddened and his chest felt as if a giant were sitting on it.

  Damn, thought Karl Ludenemeyer abstractedly as the stars whirled about him and consciousness drained away. What a silly, silly way to die.

  The door thrust open and the three aliens with Sharon Dolan in tow burst into Sukihara Takiuji’s room. The Japanese was kneeling on the mat-covered floor, his go board in front of him and his scabbarded sword on the mat at his side.

  “Come,” the Colonist commanded, gesturing with his weapon.

  Suki said nothing, but his breathing slowed. In and out. In and out.

  “Come!” the Colonist barked and gestured to the two behind him. The one holding Sharon shoved her roughly to one side and both moved to pass their leader and grab the kneeling man. Suki breathed in again and rocked back on the balls of his feet as if to rise, his left hand resting on the mat next to the sword.

  Then suddenly he launched himself across the room, his sword a glittering arc in front of him.

  The aliens’ suits were designed to resist accidental tears and provide some protection against laser beams, but Suki’s katana sliced through the fabric effortlessly and bit deep into the flesh underneath. The leading alien was down before his companions could do so much as start, the blood floating in the cabin brighter than a human’s.

  The other two Colonists started to raise their weapons, but Suki slashed left and right in a continuous motion and they too were falling slowly away, blood flowing through great rents in their suits.