“Good. I’m on my way in now.”
“Okay.”
She nodded to Alyx, checked to be sure she had her cutter and lamp, hoisted the loop of cable over her shoulder, slipped back outside, and made off aft to the topside hatch.
It was circular, and the manual control was located behind a panel. She opened up, twisted the release, and pulled on the door. It swung outward. But the inner door jammed and she had to remove the locking mechanism to get it open. “I’m inside,” she told the commlink.
The gravity tube, when powered, maintained a zero-gee condition, and was used to move materials, equipment, whatever, between decks. In this case, the power was off, of course, but it didn’t matter because so was the artificial gravity. She had to remove the go-pack, which she pushed down ahead of her, followed by the spare e-suit, the cable and the tanks. Then she climbed in, head down, pushed, and emerged moments later in front of a closed hatch. She rapped on it with the wrench.
“That’s it,” said Tor.
“Okay. I’m about to cut. Head for the washroom.”
“On my way.”
“Close the door as tight as you can.”
Alyx broke in on her private channeclass="underline" “Better hurry, Hutch. The entire forward end of the ship is disintegrating.” She made a little ooooh, a frightened sound that came from the soul.
“What’s wrong, Alyx?” Hutch asked.
“Kurt’s body just—just, just squirted out of one of the clouds.”
Hutch waited to be sure she had control of her voice. “Is he dead? Can you tell?”
“He’s not moving.”
“Is he wearing air tanks?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You can’t see any?”
“No.”
She could sense something, a vibration in the bulkheads. Something bad coming her way. Her skin prickled.
What was holding up Tor?
Then he was speaking to her: “Go ahead, Hutch. I’m inside.”
“Okay, Tor,” she said, “get out of your clothes and button up the room as best you can. You have three drains, three inlets, and a vent.”
“You want me to use my clothes to block the pipes?”
“Yes. Do a good job and make it fast. How’s the door fit?”
“How do you mean?”
“Does it look airtight?”
“There’s a small crack at the bottom.”
“Stuff paper in it. Anything that’ll hold for a minute or two.”
“Okay.”
“Do that first. Tell me when it’s done. When the door’s blocked off.”
She waited, staring at the closed hatch. She checked with Nick, and then with Alyx. She asked George how he was doing. Everything was on schedule.
The vibrations in the bulkhead were becoming more distinct.
“Hurry up, Tor.”
“Doing the best I can.”
She’d wedged one foot into the guide rail to keep herself in position.
“This paper under the door won’t last long.”
“It doesn’t have to. Are we ready yet?”
“Ready now. Go ahead.”
Hutch activated the laser. “Nick?” she said.
“All set, Hutch.”
“Let’s do it.”
She touched the red beam to the hatch, sliced into it, and isolated the locking mechanism.
She cut around it, gave it a few moments to cool, and removed it. Then she turned the handle, and pulled back. The hatch opened, and a blast of air erupted past her.
“I’m through, Tor,” she said, pushing into the interior. The washroom, she knew, was to her right, along the back wall, situated between rows of storage shelves.
Her lamp picked it out and she knocked. “Right place?”
“You got it.”
The deck heaved beneath her feet. The entire ship shuddered. She swung the lamp left and focused it on the forward bulkhead. It was turning gray and beginning to bubble.
She brought out the ram tape and placed a strip over the space between frame and door, and another between the door and the deck. Then she reinforced them. She did a quick inspection to see if she was missing anything that might be leaking air.
THE MEMPHIS’S CARGO bay remained open, maintaining the standard quarter-gee. Bill would take that to zero gee when things started to happen. All the lights were on. The docking mechanism had been withdrawn into deck and overhead, so the space immediately inside the cargo door was clear of obstruction.
George tied the restraining harnesses together to make a single large meshwork. Then he used cable to secure the four ends to the most convenient beams and frames he could find, creating a net in the center of the bay. It wasn’t pretty, but he thought it would do the job.
When he was finished, he measured its length and width, its height off the deck, its position in relation to the cargo door. Satisfied, he told Hutch it was ready, then he laid out oxygen and blankets.
“After he’s in,” he asked Hutch, “how do I close the door?”
Her voice was crisp on the commlink: “Just tell Bill to do it.”
IT HAD BEGUN to get cold, and Tor stood in his shorts and undershirt in the washroom. It was obvious that this was going to be a rescue utterly without dignity.
“How are you managing?” asked Hutch.
He looked down into the toilet. It was of course dry at the moment. “Okay,” he said. He’d unrolled the toilet paper, used the entire supply, scrunched it together, and put the whole gob down there.
He stuffed his slacks into the shower drain, and used a gorgeous Ascot and Meer hand-sewn shirt, filled with what was left of the paper towels, to block the air vent.
“I’ll never be able to wear them again,” he told Hutch, who laughed but didn’t ask for details.
“Tell me when you’re ready.”
Socks clogged the twin faucets on the sink. And he had a problem. The shower nozzle and the drains in the sink and shower. Three sites, but he was down to shorts and undershirt.
Tear the undershirt in half, that’s the ticket. He removed it and tried, but it resisted. He pulled, twisted, summoned his adrenaline and tried again. He braced part of it underfoot and put all his weight into it, but it held. Strong stuff.
He gave up and pushed it whole into the sink drain. His shorts proved just as tough, and he ended by using them to block the shower drain.
All that remained was the nozzle. But he was out of clothes.
“Tor? Time’s getting tight.”
He remembered an old story in which a bunch of guys used their rear ends to block off an air leak in a spaceship, but he suspected the nozzle would get pretty cold pretty fast, and he didn’t want to need surgery to get unstuck from the fixture.
He had a handkerchief!
It was in a shirt pocket, so he dug the Ascot and Meer out of the vent, retrieved the handkerchief, and returned the shirt. He removed the shower nozzle and jammed in the handkerchief. “Okay, Hutch,” he said.
THE FORWARD SECTIONS of the ship throbbed and writhed. In the mist that obscured the hull, Alyx could make out the beginnings of an arc, rather like a large malformed ear, forcing its way up out of the turmoil. Amidships a webwork had begun to form. It looked familiar, something she’d seen before, but she couldn’t pin it down.
The spectacle was obscene. Her stomach churned much as the ship did, and she looked away, back toward Nick, still trying to punch a hole through the hull. Lights from the lander, reflected off the mist, played across him. He seemed to be caught in a spectral rhythm, gaining substance and losing it, all in sync with the lights and the clouds.
“How’s it coming, Nick?” she asked. If he didn’t hurry, the metal would turn to mist in the glare of his lamp.
“I’m almost through.”
She thought about the onboard AI. It was not alive. She knew that. But nonetheless she would have liked to shut it down, turn it off, so she wouldn’t feel as if they were abandoning someone. She had considered mentioning it to Hutch, but Hutch had her hands full, and it was silly anyhow. Still—