"How long?" Amos ben Sierra Nueva said desperately
Yüklə 2,81 Mb.
|
|
the hull. It broke free and the shell fell away from the hull slightly, fine wires floating like roots in a glass of water. God, it looks so naked, he thought helplessly.
incised on the shell so he could read it. PMG-266-S, a low number brain of very advanced years. Guiyon. The name floated up out of deep storage where all the names of his kind rested. A managerial sort. Working for the Colonial Department as it was, back then. Paid off his contract and dropped out of touch, presumed rogue. A hermit "He's a two-hundred series," he told her. "Now put the grapple dead center, upper side." Channa used a remote control device to lower one of the smaller grapples from the tug, gingerly placing it as directed. Then she returned to cutting cables. She was working on the next to last one when a pebble-sized piece of ore struck the back of her helmet, hard enough to knock her sideways and to burn straight through her air regulator from left to right. Simeon saw specks of plastic spin off in the wake of the tiny meteor. The exterior view from the tug's pickups showed metal glowing white-hot. "Channa!" Simeon called. The med-readouts flashed unconsciousness. He overrode the suit and ordered it to inject stimulants, a horse-dose, anything to buy her time. THE Crrv WHO FOUGHT 113 "Oww." Channa jerked and then shook herself, hauling back on the safety line until her feet touched the surface of the ship. A red light flashed on the inside of her faceplate and die message: "System failure N atr-meulation. Ten minutes emergency supply (m//appearefi Irwas replaced by 10:00. Then 09:59, and the seconds scrolled down inexorably.
her hands reached for the last one. From another view he watched the ancient colony ship being dragged away at an ever increasing acceleration. "Channa! Get your ass in that tug now!" "ShutNupr she snapped. The final cable parted and the shell swung free. For the first time, Simeon saw that the feeder line was damaged. No, he thought.
It was difficult work in the unwieldy suit gloves, but her long-fingered hands moved with careful delicacy. She dosed the valve on the broken feeder line. "Might not be too bad," she muttered. "There'll be an interior backup. Probably ruptured when they stopped."
the tug at a careful pace, holding on to the exterior lugs and using her feet to fend them off random projec- tions. The shell went ter-wmnggg against the light-load grapnels up near the apex of the stubby wedge; the mechanical daws dosed on the hard alloy with immov- able pressure.
dove feetfirst into the control seat. "Get yo' suit plugged in!" Patsy snapped, beating Simeon by nanoseconds. "Can't This is a standard EVA s^jiit, the input valve's upstream of the break. Get moving, we have to help haul this thing!" :..
station, Patsy." "Negative on that" Channa said. "If we don't get this hulk far enough away, there won't be a station to go back to."
sprang straight up, the derelict shrinking from sky- spanning vastness to child's model size in seconds as the great soft hand of acceleration shoved at them. "Then you plant that grapnel field," she said urgendy. "We can help the boost with our own rise. But when that's done, we're goin' home, girl."
designed for straightforward long slow pulls, not this redline-everything race against disaster. She must balance the uneven pull that might shred the tug's structure and compensate for the hulk's weakness by intuition as much as anything. Who knew what struc- tural members had given way within? It would do very little good to rip a large segment of it loose. ... The giant ship began to grow slightly smaller.
she said fiercely. "They must have been created by a sadist I'mgoingtoAnoa>whenIrunoutofair."
oxygen. When that clock has flipped over another thirty seconds,you return to station!"
"Synchronize release, slave controls to mine as Patsy cuts loose"
tle craft surged^Then it flipped end-for-end and the space behind them paled as the drive worked to shed velocity. They woujd have to kill their delta-V away from thestatioh before they could return.
gitouttamyway.'causelain'tstoppiri!" Deceleration turned to acceleration again. Channa wheezed a protest as her ribs clamped down on her lungs. .
forced his mind not to calculate times, with an effort that almost banished fear.
attempted that sort of linkage. The nutrients might have given out on the trip. It depends on when the feeder line was damaged. / might be responsible for that It could have happened when I hit them with the satellites. What do you think? No, don't answer, save your air. I know we won't be able to tell anyway until we examine him. "What kind of people are these?" he asked for per- haps the twentieth time. "Could they be pirates who stole the brain? Then why didn't they bring it inside? The access-way? Sure, that must be it, they couldn't get it through the hatch. Still, a shellperson is a valuable resource. You'd think they try to protect him more if they had to leave him outside. It could be some kind of punitive measure by an insane religious sect. Nah, Central would never assign a brain to a group like that, it wouldn't make sense." He began to curse again. "Hey, Channa, stop rolling your eyes like that You're making me dizzy." The circling increased in tempo. "Okay, okay, I'll change the subject. Sheesh, take away a woman's ability to talk..." Channa dosed her eyes. "I 116 Anne McCaflny &f 5M. Stating was jotting, Channa." Her eyes remained closed. "You're getting close to the st#tion. You're going to need to see where you're going. Remember what it's like out there." No change. "Okay, I apologize. It was a stupid, ignorant remark and I regret it I didn't even mean it Bad joke, okay?" She opened her eyes. 03:0 2 She was midway between the receding colony-ship and the station. "I estimate that you'll run out of air three minutes before you reach the station," Simeon said. "But, if you take the most direct route, that unfortunately will take you right through the thickest concentration of spilled ore."
safe?"
seconds."
instructions for avoiding the worst of the ore-meteor cloud.
didn't say Ah didn't like it, Ah was just remarkin on it" She opened her eye. "Y'hold on now, we're goin' through like a scalded armadillo." Channa's breathing began to rasp; psychological, but it wasted air. Oh, God, don't let her die, he thought. That shelFs hang- ing out then. Is the mass of the tug enough to shield him from debris?
sacrifice would be for nothing. Simeon knew Channa was about to undergo an experience that would feel
without air N hours, sometimes, in cold water. The length of time to brain death was utterly unpredictable but oxygen deprivation might cause brain damage. Despite a very real and intense anxiety about Channa, his thoughts inexor^blyreturned to the shell... to Guiyon. He's alone m the dark, Simeon said to himself, Channa's got Patsy, and me: Sensory deprivation would make every second feel like a subjective hour, and the backups would keep the shellperson -conscious until the last precious molecules of nutrient were gone. Simeon wished desperately that he could spare him the nightmare. "Headache," Channa gasped. "Hurts." Her head lolled, would have fallen forward if the savage high-G acceleration had allowed it
psychosomatic. It was instinct N the hindbrain telling the lungs that they were suffocating. The readouts showed an adrenaline surge, just the wrong thing. Reflexes older than her remote reptile ancestors were preparing the body to fight free of whatever barred it from air.
Then: "Can't you go any faster'?'' "Not 'lessn you want this here tug smeared all over the loadin bay," Patsy said grimly. "Isn't inertia wonderful?" Gusky muttered to him- self, looking down again at the readings, fourteen kps and building. Not very fast, but the battered remnant of the hulk still massed multiple kilotons. "Bit of a paradox," one of the volunteer miners said. "I want this thing as far from the station as I can get itNbut I want to be as for away from it as possible myself."
little off synch. Don't waste our delta-V." "What's our safety margin, Gus?" 118 Amu McCaffrey fcf SM. Stating "That depends on when Simeon tells us to cut and run." fmivaUy, realty sorry Igotyou mad at me, Simeon! "I'd like to get twenty k&cks from the station before we drop the thing. But, what can I tell ya? If she blows without warning, if the explosives don't dojwhat they're sup- posed to, if we don't get far enough away before she goes... actually, I don't think we haye a safety margin."
minute seven seconds from mark. Mark, Get it tight, Gus." "Yeah," said one of the miners who had rigged the charges, "that thing has to stay in the same attitude. Charges won't be half as effective if it's tumbling."
have to listen, reaSy carefully. "Everyone got that mark?" A chorus of affirmatives. Gusky licked sweat from his upper lip. He'd never told Simeon, exacdy, but his five- year hitch in the Navy had been pretty uneventful: patrols, exercises, showing the flag, mapping expedi- tions. The most nerve-wracking moments had been the fleet handball competitions and surprise inspections. "You pull the trigger, right?" he said. "You got it, buddy," Simeon replied. His voice had less timbre, less humanity to it than usual. "I hate being reassured in a voice that calm." Fve got other things on my mind. "Channa's suit got hit She's running out of air." "Oh." I screwed the pooch again, goddamitt. "Sorry." "Get ready." The tugs were arrayed around the great tattered bulk of the intruder ship like the legs of a starfish, linked by the invisible bonds of the grapnel fields. Gusky kept the rear-field screen on at a steady x25 magnification. When the fields released, the image of the hulk seemed to disappear into a point-source of light in less than a heartbeat Vision went gray at the
bearable. Tugs necessarily had high power-to-weight ratios. Then the shrinking dot of the derelict blinked with colorless fire. Gusky cycled the screen to higher magnification. "Phew," ne said gustily. The charges had cut the remaining forward section loose from the half-melted engine compartment and its core. Joined to the power module, whatever parts of the ship did not vaporize would be hyper-velocity shrapnel in all directions. With a Idick-or so distance and a vector away from the station, much less could go wrong. Blast is less dangerous without an atmosphere to propagate in. There is nothing to carry the shock wave except the actual gases of the explosion and they disperse rapidly. Given minimal luck, the explosion would just kick what was left of the hulk further away.
and the forward ports of the tug's cabin. Beside him the copilot flung his hand up in useless reflex. Even from the rear, the intensity of light was overwhelming. "Did it work?" Gusky called as visibility returned. That was not as reassuring as it could have been. Half the sen- sors and telltales on the board were blinking red.
ship ... the engines were so old, the parameters were different... There's a lot more secondary radiation and subflux than I thought there would be." "Thanks," Gusky said facetiously. "All right, people, report." "I've got a flux in my drive cores I can't damp," one of the volunteers said immediately. "Induction, I guess. Getting worse.
calm. This was much better than waiting; there wasn't time to be worried. "All right, you've got a feedback loop
mum acceleration at ninety degrees to the ecliptic with a one-minute delay, then bail out"
about ten minutes," Gusky said grimly. "Or hot gas that includes you. Take your pick."
ment costs." "Lobachevsy and Wong, you're closest," Gusky said, pick 'em up!" Gusky's pickups showed the luckless volunteers jetting away on backpack and their craft streaking for deep space on autopilot. "The rest of you, dump me some data."
Lobachevsky, Wong, you look functional, sort of. Take the others with overstrained drives in tow, and well go back nice and slow and easy." With several mitticms'worth of tug that just became so much scrap. Suddenly boring routine becomes very attractive as a way of life. War games are excite- ment enough.
fine circuit to the station. "Simeon, what about us?" "Let's put it this way, Gus. None of you are going to die. But some of you aren't going to be very happy for a while, either. Sickbay will be crowded." A long pause. "Congratulations." Gus grinned; half of that was relief from raw fear. Everyone who lives in space is afraid of decompression, which is why many become agoraphobic planetside. Those who do much EVA work or serve on warships develop a similar fear of radiation, which has the added terror of killing insidiously. On the other hand, most dangers in spaceeitherkilldeanly or letlive.
about Channa?" THE CTTY WHO FOUGHT 121 Patsy's voice joined in. "She's gonna be fahn. Hey, Gus," she went on lazily, "you thaink people will respect us for this?"
head from the docking chamber where the tug rested in its cradle and frSm the Chicle itself. Both showed Channa Hap being carried offin a floating stretcher. "Phew. Glad she made it okay." "Yayuh, mah sentiments exactly. Got a good one thar." Gusky nodded. On station, Channa acted like a cryonic bitch, he thought, but she's there when it comes down to cases. This was the worst emergency SSS-900 had faced in the time he'd been here. SSS-900-C, he reminded himself. "I dunno," he said, 7 never respected anyone who led from the rear." She laughed. "Hey! This might get us a nice rest cure somewhar pretty. We could go tagetha." She made the last a question.
this is over, Patsy, you got a date." "Unh-hunh!" she said enthusiastically. Hey, first base! Gusky thought After thirty months of ritualized sparring so routine it had gotten to be as comfortably low-key as playing war games with Simeon. That is, ifTm not sick as a puke once sickbay gets through with me. Doctor Chaundra believed in repairing you rapidly. In some circles he was known as "Kill or Cure Chaundra."
wailing.
to get out of here!
again with a heartfelt groan. This has to be a fatal headache, she thought, nobody could feel lake this and live.
were the privacy screens around her. There was a vase of flowers on the bedside table and a bank of portable equipment on the other side, quiedy talking to itself and occasionally waving a sensor probe over her body. A suit of working clothes, overtights and jacket and belt, were draped on a clothes stand at the foot of the bed. The air had a slight, pleasant scent of cedar. Sickbay, she thought The ambience was unmistakable. The wailing went on and on, sometimes breaking into sharp yelps. / hope I Hve long enough to kill whoever is making that racket.
water.
restful, and her body was beginning to accept that she was alive and in no clanger. Which was a difficult thing, if you'd gone under deeply concerned about your chances of ever waking up again. "Welcome back to the living," said a flatter voice with a tilting singsongaccent There was a sound of movement THE CITY WHO FOUGHT 123 She opened her eyes to see Doctor Chaundra lean- ing over her. He had his professional expression on; a sort of antiseptic smile, nothing like the genuine enthusiasm he showed in a social situation talking about his specialty. C^anna managed the complex pro- cedure of smiling and Minting simultaneously. "My head," she said in a croaking voice, feebly rais- ing a shakingitand to rub her brow. "Got just die thing," he said. He touched the angle of her throat with an injector. It hissed and she felt a touch of cold. . '
brain began to fade. "Oh, Ghu! that's better." She licked dry lips.
pedantically. "The organic damage is minimal but will take several days to heal."
carafe, put in a straw and handed it to her. She sucked greedily on the straw, mindful of her head position, and handed him the empty glass. "More," she demanded. He refilled it, and she drained it again almost as soon as he handed it to her. The wailer took offagain. Channa frowned. "Who's thatbadly hurt?
from the ship; the first one awake. We don't know who she is. She's done nothing but shriek since she woke up. To answer your other question, no, she's not badly hurt She's dehydrated, and probably has a headache like yours from that, and she had a bloody nose from the abrupt deceleration."
of something metal tipping over and of things scatter- ing. Voices murmured soothing words in edged tones.
one I woke up with, she's crazy," Channa said. 124 AtmeMcCaffrey &SM. Stating Chaundra nodded. "That, too, is a possibility, but I feel that she is presently venting hysteria as a by-product of coldsleep." He sighed. "The earliest methods sometimes had the effect of suppressing basic inhibition."
a wall mike. "That sound has just gone from pathetic to seriously annoying."
prefer not to immediately. They drugged themselves rather heavily, indeed, presumably to keep their oxygen consumption down. I've no idea for how long a period of time, but from their physical condition, it must have been too long." He gave another of his sighs. "I'd really rather not put anything else into her system. Especially since many of the substances they used seem to have been past recommended shelf life, or discontinued types, or both." "They say that if someone gets hysterical, a simple slap across N " Simeon began. Chaundra interrupted him. "I am thinking that has more to do with relieving the frustration of the listeners than the distress of the patient," he said with a resigned smile.
she knew that he was a pacifist widower with a passion for surgery, but no matter. "But I'm not So, before I'm compelled to go over there and knock the little git through the wall, I'd like to get out of here." Yüklə 2,81 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|