The group suited. Llume’s spacesuit was a special one with a flexible tail assembly and a magnetic wheel; it must have been manufactured in Sphere Polaris. They all trundled out the laser torch. This was a barrel on a tripod, ungainly, evidently intended for interior work. It looked heavy, but the reduced gravity had cut its weight in half.
“How do we know where the anchors are?” Melody asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” March said. “If we can see them, we can cut them, with this. If the corrosion doesn’t get our suits first.”
Corrosion… suits. Ouch! But if they were careful to touch the hull with nothing but their armored feet…
They advanced to the nearest lock. It had to be operated manually, because of the power failure—and it was stuck. “The corrosion,” March said. “It has sealed the outer lock. We’ll have to knock it loose.”
Melody and Llume stood back as far as they could in the compartment while the three human males put their shoulders to the lock door.
The door would not budge. The human form was not well adapted to this sort of action in low gravity, and was as likely to damage itself as to break open the metal.
“Try repressuring,” March said. “Fifteen pounds per square inch should force it open.”
The pressure system could be operated manually. Like most hull equipment, it was fail-safe. Their suits lightened as the air built up, but even at twenty PSI the door did not budge. The corrosion was really effective—as the Knyfh officer probably could have explained, had she given him the chance.
“The magnet,” Yael said.
Yes! “Slammer can do it,” Melody said aloud. “Just give it room.”
They moved aside, and with one joyful bash Slammer hurled open the lock.
The release of pressure was explosive. Melody, Llume, and the men hung on to the rails, and the big and little magnets used their strong attraction to resist the outward thrust.
Suddenly, the bulky laser torch, forgotten, was caught by the wind and thrust out into space. And not one of them had thought to bring along a jet-pack or safety line, for none of them were experienced in this line of work.
17. Service of Termination
*progress report three more segments have fallen: freng, weew, thousandstar*
:: excellent! that leaves three ::
*qaval is near collapse knyfh and etamin are continuing stout resistance*
:: I have knocked into this situation the essence of enemy action lies with knyfh a knyfh contingent in etamin is responsible for the extraordinary opposition there eliminate knyfh, and etamin will fall immediately send the reserve force to knyfh ::
*but if that fails, we shall be without*
:: it shall not fail the bold strike is what prevails that is what dash did not understand ::
*POWER*
:: CIVILIZATION ::
Chagrined, they stared after the laser torch. “We had only two in service,” March said. “The other was lost when the primary repair crew went out.”
There was something a bit noble about his despair, and Melody wished she could kiss him. Or maybe that was Yael’s urge; it was getting harder to tell them apart. There was a lot to recommend these sturdy, thrust-culture Solarians, yet Melody was not moved to any more serious attachment. None of them had that power of aura that Dash had, or the affinity of aura that Llume had. Too bad Dash had been an enemy, and Llume another female incarnation.
“Well, I liked March from the start,” Yael said. “He’s from backwoods Outworld, like me, and he’s the first spaceman we met.”
As though those were sufficient recommendations! Melody gave a mental shrug; to each her own values.
But now they had a problem. They had lost their torch; and apparently there was no other way to remove the monstrous anchors from the hull. Magnetic, so they could not be pried off, the anchors were designed to hold the weight of an entire ship! The huge cables were impervious steel, uncuttable by normal means.
The group stood on the hull, hanging by their foot-magnets from the planetlike mass of the ship. A film of corrosion covered the metal, like mold, weakening the strength of the footholds. The ship was, indeed, a moldering corpse.
Melody looked along the length of the great vessel, down the handle to the flaring blade of the sword. The light-collecting troughs were still in place, but she knew that soon they would collapse as the decreased rotation became insufficient to keep the guy-wires taut. Then there would be no further energy input, even if it were possible to fix the corroded mechanism and wash off the fogged surfaces. One little brush with a Spican cloud… doom. It seemed very final, out here.
She looked into space and saw the lights of the life-craft, already in space, moving across the mighty starry field of the Milky Way galaxy. They were signaling to other ships for a pickup.
Marooned on a derelict. No doubt the battle still raged, but with the naked eye nothing was visible; they might have been alone in the universe. Was this the ultimate reality of the supposedly exciting engagement of fleets, the War of Two Galaxies?
At last her gaze fell on the two magnets. They were touching the surface, despite the corrosion. Of course! Their normal mode of repulsion would send them shooting into space, here; Slammer had surely learned that. Had he rolled across the hull when he was out here before? He must have, and she had not been paying attention. The magnet species was remarkably well adapted to space. She would have to clean off the corrosion once they went back inside, though. No sense having it eating into the magnets.
They walked to the nearest anchor, scarcely a quarter mile around the hull. It was a block of metal, three feet thick and twenty across, with its chain rising at an angle. Its field was so powerful that Slammer and Beanball could not approach it; the current would have overcome them.
Too bad! But for the overwhelming field, Slammer might have attacked the anchor-cable and perhaps frayed and severed it. No chance of that now!
They tramped silently back into the airlock and climbed carefully in. No one except the magnets had touched the corroded surfaces with anything but footwear (or Llume’s wheelwear)—but what did it matter? Death was only a matter of time.
“You and Llume can still transfer out,” Yael said.
“Where would that leave you?” Melody retorted. “And the men?”
“There are worse ways to die than alone with three men,” Yael said. “I guess if I’d been able to choose it, this is the way I’d go.”
Melody considered that, and decided she couldn’t find much fault with it. But she did not feel free to admit that. “The others know we’re here. When they see the ship remains derelict, they’ll send a boat back.”
“First they have to get picked up themselves,” Yael pointed out. “And we might get blasted or holed before they get here.”
All this time, rotation had been slowing. Now gravity was hardly an eighth normal, and fading rapidly. Melody started to strip out of her suit, but hesitated, realizing she would have no footing without the magnetic shoes. The air, under shipwide pressure, seemed good; each level of the ship was sealed to prevent pressure rising inordinately near the hull. But with the access-chutes open and power off, there was a draft as the air settled. And more than air was required for life support! Still, no sense using up the suit prematurely. She doffed it.
“Men,” Melody said aloud as their helmets came off. “It appears we are going to die, perhaps quite soon.” She was not certain in her mind that this was so, but the odds seemed to favor it, so she was playing it safe, ironic as that was. “I am an old Mintakan in transfer to this fine young Solarian host. The host-entity has volunteered to entertain you as you may wish during the final moments. There is a transfer unit in this ship. I shall, if you choose, use it to transfer my identity to some other host in the fleet. Possibly I can arrange for your rescue. But I think you should not gamble on my success to the extent of turning down my host’s offer. Are you amenable?” And privately she thought that if she had had perspective like this in youth, she never would have thrown away her adult life.