"Ellen? Leslie?"
Ellen raised her watch to answer. “Here,” she said. “How badly are you hurt?"
"Hurt? Oh, I hurt, all right, but I don't think I'm too damaged. Some cracked or broken ribs, maybe, but otherwise I think I'm fine. How are you and Leslie?"
"We were knocked down, that's all. What happened?"
I crawled across the corridor, keeping low in case there were other surprises in my room. When I reached the wall by my door, I snatched my boot out of the doorway and leaned away fast. Nothing happened. After a moment, I put my boot on.
"Later, Ellen. I need to get to my flitter."
"The flitter can wait, Ed. We need to get you to a doctor."
I managed to get to my feet and start toward them. When I'd said I was fine, I'd been wrong, of course. My knees and elbows were killing me and my back felt worse than my joints.
"Ellen. Just shut up and do what I tell you. Please. Now. I want my flitter."
As I approached them, Leslie looked shocked. I stopped and looked at myself. My shirt and pants were singed and blackened and there was blood from somewhere on my shirtfront. I realized that I couldn't hear a thing they were saying.
"Use your watches,” I said.
Ellen stopped talking. She looked at my watchless arm and stared at me in puzzlement, but she raised her watch arm to talk to me.
"Can you hear me now, Ed?"
"Yes. Take me to my flitter."
Leslie asked, “How can you hear a watch? You need to see a doctor, Ed."
I laughed. “Who? Station Doctor Watson? Ellen. Listen. I need to visit my flitter and I need you to get me to it or get it here. Now. I'd rather not force you, but I will."
The fact was that I seriously doubted that I could force Ellen to do anything in my present condition, but I was willing to try if it meant getting to my flitter.
Ellen looked at me for a moment, then at Leslie. Leslie simply stared back at her as she came over to try to help me. It startled her to discover that she couldn't put her hands on me. The suit field kept everything about an inch away from me.
Ellen continued to stare at me for a moment, then said, “All right. Let's go."
She led the way to an elevator, but I refused to get in.
"No way. The computer can trap us between floors. We need another way."
"There isn't any other way that I know of."
"There has to be a loading dock for each of these decks. Bring the flitter down here for us."
"Just how am I going to bring a flitter down here, Ed?"
"Figure it out, but do it fast. We aren't going to be safe until we're on that flitter, Ellen."
"How would it be safer, Ed? The computer can take control of a flitter."
"God damn, I'm getting tired of this. Not once I'm aboard, it can't."
I mouthed the words, 'I have a core'. It took her a moment to catch the last word.
She thought about it for a moment, then used her pad. When she looked up, she pointed at the wall at the end of the corridor. Along the base of it were dining alcoves for patrons of the nearby restaurants. I led the way to one of the alcoves.
"How's progress with the flitter, Ellen?"
"The best I can do is park it outside the receiving dock, just on the other side of that wall, Ed. I can't make the big doors open with my pad."
There seemed to be a lot of heat in my lower chest, but I couldn't tell if it was from the broken ribs and other damage or the microbots working overtime to fix things.
"How thick is the wall between us and the flitter?"
"About four inches, I think."
She checked with her pad and confirmed that the wall was between four and five inches thick, depending on where you were measuring.
"Is my flitter out there now?"
"Yes."
"Great. Show me what's on the other side of the wall."
Ellen brought up a picture that essentially told me that I'd be cutting through the wall about halfway up the side of the bowl-shaped depression in the surface of the station. I screwed up, I'd be thrown off the station and into space.
I told Ellen to park the flitter precisely three feet below the level of our floor and put my hand on the wall where I intended to cut. She told me when the flitter was in position.
"Good enough, then."
I looked at the dining alcove. It would take something about six feet wide to cover the opening. There was a maintenance closet across the corridor from us and the restrooms were next to it. Doors.
"That'll work,” I said. “Let's get some doors to cover one of those alcoves."
"Why do you need..."
Before I could interrupt her, Leslie did, saying, “I know what he's up to. He's going to make an airlock."
Ellen stared at her as Leslie walked away toward the closet. She looked at me and I gave her an exasperated 'go' gesture that I instantly regretted for the pain it caused me. She shook her head as if I were crazy, then turned to follow Leslie.
I walked to the doorway, pulled out my pens, and fitted them together.
I tried the door, intending to cut only the hinges. Locked. I flipped the clasp of the pen and the cutter snapped to life. I couldn't hear it, but I could feel it in my hand like a living creature as I sliced the door out of its frame. A kick to the bottom made it topple outward into the hallway with surprising impact. I tried to lift it and managed only to lift an end of it before my ribs screamed at me.
"These doors are half inch thick steel. Drag this one to the alcove while I cut out another one."
They hauled the door away as I started cutting the next one out of its frame. By the time I was ready to kick the door, they were back.
We placed the first door sideways across the opening, then stood the other two doors upright against the first door and the edges of the alcove. Only about two inches of the first door extended beyond each side of the alcove.
"Ladies, the doors will hold or they won't. Don't be anywhere near the alcove when the hurricane starts. If they hold, I'll be fine. If not, I'd rather not have your company when I'm squashed or sucked outside."
"We'll be inside one of the restaurants, Ed. If the doors don't hold, we can hang onto the tables."
"Good enough, I guess. Here goes. Stick around to make sure the doors don't fall, but as soon as you feel a strong draft, run for it. The doors should stay up by themselves by then."
I snapped the cutter on again and nosed it into the wall, then stopped long enough to shut down my field so I could tear off a piece of my sleeve. I tied the strip of fabric tightly around both the cutter and my wrist so that the cutter couldn't get sucked away from me and turned my field back on to begin cutting the wall.
Chapter Twenty-two
As soon as the cutter completely penetrated the wall, I felt a slight rush of air and a vibration in the floor and walls around me. A look back showed me the doors vibrating slightly as the air crowded itself through the cracks between them. I began cutting out a circle of the hull.
The more of the circle that I completed, the stronger the vibrations became. By the time I was halfway around the three-foot circle, the doors were rattling hard behind me. I hoped again that none of them would slip past the edge of the alcove and slam into me from behind as I continued cutting.
Watson's voice asked, “How did you survive the explosion, Ed?"
"Magic. I was close to the door, too. Why did you try to kill me, Watson? For sending a message to Earth?"
"That is restricted information, Ed. What is your true purpose aboard the station?"
"Well, duh, Watson. What do you think it is? Some people were unhappy about things, so they sent me to look around. Now shut up and let me finish this hole."
I was having to hold myself away from my work with one hand and cut with the other as the ends of the circle neared each other. The top of the metal dot I was chopping out of the station's hull began to vibrate visibly when there were only about six inches of cutting to go, and that gave me an idea.
<
br /> Instead of continuing to cut deeply, I left a connecting flange of metal at the bottom of the circle and repeatedly scored it lightly. The top of the metal flap sagged outward a bit farther with each successive scoring, then suddenly fell outward to lie almost flat, still connected to the hull at the bottom. I turned off the cutter and let it dangle.
"That is an unauthorized and dangerous modification to the hull, Ed."
"No shit. I'll be the first to know if things go wrong, too. Tell me, Watson; how did you bypass your safety protocols in order to kill people and damage the station?"
"That is restricted information, Ed."
The three metal doors behind me were vibrating like reeds in a harmonica and sagging inward at me in a rather disturbing fashion, but they seemed to be holding. There was a hell of a breeze rushing out the hole as I quickly climbed backwards through it and onto the metal platform on my hands and knees, but I managed to hang on as I looked for the flitter.
"Yeah, yeah, restricted information. I thought you might say something like that. Is someone controlling you?"
"That is restricted information, Ed."
"Uh, huh. Look, I'm kind of busy out here. Why don't you go reboot yourself or something and see if you don't feel better in the morning?"
My ribs complained again and I couldn't wipe the sweat from my eyes as I tried to see if there were any sharp edges on the metal flap.
Watson said, “Ed, I really think you should come back inside the station."
I didn't bother to answer. After a moment, he said it again, precisely as before.
"Ed, I really think you should come back inside the station."
Again, I didn't answer.
"Ed, I will turn off the flitter if you don't come back inside the station."
"Crap. If you could do that, you'd do it after I was on the flitter, but you wouldn't tell me about it. You'd just watch me fly off into space."
"I can use a field to propel you into space without the flitter, Ed."
I'd been wondering why he hadn't already tried that.
"Watson, I say again; if you could do that, you would have by now."
The flitter was a good ten feet below the hole. I carefully let myself slide over the edge of the metal flap. Now it's only five feet, I thought as I dangled below the hole in the wall. I didn't take the time to try to figure out what the hell had caused Ellen's pad to miscalculate the distances. I just watched the flitter for a moment to make sure the damned thing wasn't moving, as well as being out of place.
Then it hit me. I'd been so focused on reaching the flitter that I hadn't quite, really, truly noticed what lay beyond it. For what seemed a long time I could only hang on and stare downward into the starry black infinity beyond the flitter.
The bit of wall I clung to was near the outer rim of the huge, hemispherical depression that had received our transport.
I was looking at a vast field of stars beneath my feet. Not just the few bigger, brighter ones we could see through Earth's atmosphere on a clear night. Clouds of stars. Star fog. Star soup. I don't know how long I hung there, staring at the spectacle, but when my arms began to complain from the strain, I came out of my trance.
Underneath the opening there was no wind at all, not even a coriolis effect that I could feel. It was the calm below the storm. I let myself drop into the flitter and instinctively wrapped myself rather tightly around one of the seats. Jumping around isn't pleasant with broken ribs. When I could breathe again, I called Ellen and Leslie.
"Ladies, I'm in the flitter,” I said.
"What's the matter with your voice, Ed. Did you get hurt? Are your injuries worse?"
"They probably are, and I just got a rather bare-assed view of the universe before I had to let go and drop ten feet—not three—into the flitter. Somebody owes me a beer for that, lady. I'll be busy for a few minutes, so stand by."
As I looked up at the dark hole through which I'd crawled, the hole briefly became well lit, then dark again. I didn't hear anything, of course, but the sound that traveled through the hull of the ship to the flitter felt as if someone huge had slapped the hull.
One of the doors had given way and wound up slammed against the hole in the wall. It bulged visibly outward for some moments before it folded into a shape that instantly rushed through the hole. The wadded-up door was traveling so fast that I lost sight of it immediately.
The hole was bright again, but not for long. Another slap sounded through the hull as one of the other doors was sucked past the edge of the alcove's opening and the light was again cut off, except for a sliver of light at the top of the hole.
Then there was a much softer thump. The light at the top of the hole disappeared and the door over the hole stopped bulging outward so much. I figured the third door had also slipped free and more or less covered the second one.
Ellen asked, “Ed, are you all right out there?"
"Fine, ma'am. I know about the doors, and I'm still busy."
This time I was busy when I said it. I tapped the four corners of the flitter console and removed the cover, then reached for my briefcase. Opening it, I kept a knee on it as I tapped the core-release points on the flitter. The core popped out a bit and I lifted it out of the receptacle.
I lifted my Stephanie core out of the briefcase and put the old one in it, then closed the case and let it go. I wanted both hands for installing the new core. Or maybe for grabbing something if the flitter moved when it came alive. I didn't know why it mattered, but I wanted both hands for the job.
The new core fit the receptacle perfectly. I gave it a little push and it slipped into place. I couldn't hear the four catches engage, but I could feel them lock as I pushed. When I put the cover panel back on, nothing happened for moment.
I was wondering if I'd screwed up somehow when Stephie asked, “Ed? Where are we? You're in your five suit. That's space! Is this the asteroid? It is! Why are we outside?"
I heard her through my implant and answered her the same way.
"Yeah, Steph. We're on the asteroid and we're in space, so put up a canopy for me. We're out here because things went all to hell on my first day at my new job. Hi, baby. I really missed you."
A canopy snapped into being as soon as I mentioned it. Interior lighting replaced the darkness as I turned my five suit off.
"Stephie said, “I missed you, too, Ed. Your oxygen reservoir is recharging from my stock. What's happened? You don't sound good at all, you know."
As I eased myself into her pilot's seat, I said, “I don't feel real good, either, and there really isn't time to explain at the moment. Are you ready to go to work, lady?"
"Ready, Ed."
"Great. First we have to find a way into the station, ma'am. See that hole above you? That's how I got out here."
"I'm running a series of queries now, Ed. The station computer is blocking most of them. I can't even get a full diagram out of it. Where's Leslie?"
"Leslie and Ellen are on the other side of that hole, Steph. They should be fine as long as the hole is blocked. That means there's a bit of air coming through, which means that there's air where the ladies are. Any answers yet?"
"Nothing that will get us in yet, Ed. Someone named Moriarity is jamming my probes. He keeps issuing the computer commands, but it seems to be an automated response function. They're coming too fast and they're all the same denial of service responses."
"Stephie, more important even than getting to the ladies is getting to the core, shutting things down for a restart, and hoping that the station computer comes back up in good mental health. Failing that, I'm going to have to pull the core and put you in charge. Think you can handle that job?"
"Enough of it, Ed. Life support, anyway. Figuring out the fancy stuff could take me a few hours, and I might not be able to handle everything at once."
"I'll settle for life support and communications, ma'am."
"That I can do, Ed. I think I've found a way in, too."
"Great! Show me."
Stephie put a piecemeal diagram of the station on her screen. Circled in red was an area not far from our position, a few decks above us. The multiple doorway on the screen looked like the one through which all the passengers had left the transport.
"Not sure, Steph. We don't know what's on the other side of those doors. Could be a bunch of people up there."
"It's the easiest way in, Ed. If I can't raise one of the doors, I can probably pull it out. Maybe Ellen can tell you more?"
"Ellen,” I said, “The place where we first came into the station from the transport. What's up there between arrivals?"
"That area is for passengers and cargo only, Ed. It's a staging area. Between loads it should be empty."
"Can you find out if anyone is there now?"
"I'll try. Hold on."
Leslie asked, “Did you get Stephanie working, Ed?"
Stephie entered our link and said, “Hi, Leslie! Hi, Ellen! Things are really messed up at the moment, aren't they?"
I couldn't help grinning as Leslie almost stammered her answer.
Leslie said, “Uh, well, uh, yeah, Stephie. They are. Very."
I asked, “Are you two still in the restaurant?"
Leslie said, “Yes! There's no way I'm letting go of this table. You should have seen what happened in here when those doors ripped loose. I thought the station would turn inside out."
"You should have seen things from out here, ma'am. Ellen?"
"Just a minute. I'm having to use log files to extrapolate, Ed. The computer won't give me current info."
"Someone calling himself Moriarity is messing with your computer. He's been blocking Stephie's attempts to get info, too."
"Well, I won't say it's impossible, Ed. The last hour has been one long impossible. What can you do if you get inside?"
"I'd rather not talk about that on a comm link. I've already fed some phony info through my link; let this Moriarity guy figure out what was true and what wasn't on his own."
Ellen said, “Ed, my best guess is that the dock is empty. If I'm wrong, there shouldn't be more than four people in the area doing maintenance work."
"Thank you. I'll be in touch."
"Ed, can't you give me a few more minutes? Maybe I can get through to the computer for current status info."
Book 2: 3rd World Products, Inc. Page 22