“HUTCH! SOMETHING’S GONE wrong over here. We need help.” Tor tried to sound calm. Professional. Keep a level voice the way they do in the sims. Tell her what he thought, that this is probably what happened to the Condor, it’s probably going to explode, and it would be helpful if you could pop by and pick us up. “Kurt just tried to call me, I heard his voice on the link but now he doesn’t answer.”
He was trying to keep calm, and the only way he could do that was to refuse to think about his situation, forget that he couldn’t get the door open, that the lights were dim and were probably going to get dimmer, that the captain seemed to have gotten lost. Tor was scared, frightened that he might not be able to get out of the room, that something might have happened to Kurt, that maybe something was about to happen to him. He thought maybe something was loose in the ship, something that was smashing things, that had smashed the power circuits and maybe had smashed the captain. And he was also scared because he knew that Hutch would see his fear.
“Tor.” Her voice broke through the red cloud forming around him. Thank God. “Tor, I hear you. Can you tell me any more?”
What the hell more could he say? “No. I’m locked in here, and they’re losing power. Maybe they’ve lost power. Everything’s on emergency, I think.”
“Okay. Hold on. I’m going to try to raise Kurt. Find out what’s happening. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know, then we’ll be on our way.”
Sweet, wonderful woman, he thought. Please hurry it up.
HUTCH HAD BEEN loading the newly arrived food into the autochef when Tor’s panicky call came. She brought up a picture of the Wendy while he talked, zeroing in on the forward section of the ship, upper decks. The metal seemed to be rippling in the glow of Wendy’s running lights, as if a heat wave were rolling over it. Then, one by one, the lights went out, starting near the prow and moving back until the ship was dark save for the after section.
When Tor signed off, she tried to raise Kurt. That produced no result, and she went to Bill.
“I’ve been trying to communicate with Wendy’s AI, Hutch,” he said. “But he’s not responding either.”
“Can you tell me anything about what’s happening?”
“Something’s eating through their hull.”
“For God’s sake, Bill, what is?”
“Don’t know. I have no visuals. But there’s no question the hull is losing integrity.”
“Where?”
“Amidships. Off A Deck, and the problem appears to extend forward to the bridge.”
“Can you connect with Wendy’s systems at all? We need to know what’s going on over there.”
“Negative. The interface is inoperative. Whatever is happening, the ship has sustained major damage.”
“Okay.” She was headed back to cargo. “Is the lander on board yet?”
“Docked and ready to go.”
George broke on-line, out of breath, running while he talked. “Hutch, I just got a call from Tor. What the hell’s going on?”
“Don’t know yet. Some sort of breakdown over there.”
Bill’s image blinked on. He was standing beside the lander, and he looked worried. “Hutch,” he said, “I think we should withdraw from the area.” Well, she couldn’t very well do that when they had two people on the Wendy. “I still can’t get a picture of what’s doing it, but whatever it is, it’s chomping away. Here’s what I can see.”
The wallscreen lit up. The space just over the main airlock was distorted, disturbed. The Memphis’s running lights played across it. It was another stealth. No question about it. But apparently this one was of a kick-ass variety.
“Tor,” she said, “where are you now?”
“In one of the storage lockers. Hutch, is the ship going to explode?”
“No.”
“Then this isn’t what happened to the Condor?”
“It’s similar. But the situation’s different. It looks as if you’ve been attacked by something. It’s eating through the hull, but it’s up near the bridge, not back by the engines.”
“Which means—”
“Punch a hole in the containment system in the engine compartment and it would give way. That’s what happened to the Condor.”
“Okay.”
“But you don’t have to worry. It’s well away from the engines.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“Now: You say you’re locked in. Do you know how to operate the manual release mechanism?”
“Yes. Open the panel, push down. Right? It won’t work.”
“Some of them pull up. Or pull out. Or—”
“Whatever. This thing won’t move. In any direction. Do you know what happened to Kurt?”
“No. Tor, are you near the hatch now?”
“I’m in front of it.”
“Are there lights on the panel?”
“Red ones.”
Hutch smothered an urge to swear. The others were standing around watching her. Expecting her to solve the problem.
“Okay. There’s vacuum on the other side. Is your e-suit activated?”
“I’m not wearing it.”
“Damn it, Tor, where is it?” But she already knew the answer.
“It’s in the shuttle.”
Hutch was staring at the Wendy. The hull looked like a gray garment strung out on a windy day. A white spray erupted out of it. Flakes formed, and silver-white crystals floated away.
“What do you want me to do, Hutch?”
You’re dissolving, dummy. You went off without your suit and you’re sealed in a chamber that I can’t get into without killing you. And the whole place is melting around your ears.
The silent witnesses around her waited for her answer.
THE EMERGENCY LIGHTS died. Tor was in absolute darkness. And absolute silence. He held his hand up to one of the air ducts and detected no flow. Not much of an emergency system.
Hutch’s voice came back. “Tor. In the rear of the storeroom, where you are, there’s a hatch. It leads into a gravity tube.” Her voice sounded preternaturally loud.
“Okay. What’s a gravity tube?”
“When it’s turned on, it maintains zero gee. We don’t care about that now.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to see whether the hatch is open.”
“All right. But it’s pitch-dark in here. I can’t see anything.”
“Wait a minute.” While she went off circuit he struggled to keep his feet pointed down. Then she was back. “Okay. Can you find the hatch out into the corridor again? The one you couldn’t get open earlier?”
He was still floating in front of it. “Yes,” he said. “I can find it.”
“Go to it. Tell me when you get there.”
He reached down, felt for it, found it. “I’ve got it,” he said.
“Good. I’m looking at a schematic for the Wendy. Off to your left, about five steps along the bulkhead, there are two equipment lockers.”
Tor’s heartbeat surged. “There are e-suits in them,” he said.
“Sorry. No. But there should be a couple of utility lamps.”
The walls began to close in. He struggled to keep his frustration from showing. Keep his voice calm. He edged through the dark, trailing his fingers along the bulkhead, along shelves up high and bins near the deck. Pulling himself along. Barking his shins every ten seconds. The bins were all closed. Then he got to the lockers. He fumbled with the doors, opened them, and began feeling across the pieces of equipment secured inside. “You know where?” he asked.
“It doesn’t say, Tor. It just gives us an inventory.”
His fingers touched rods and cylinders and metal boxes and myriad different devices. He gave up in the first locker and went to the second.
“How are you making out?”
“I need a light,” he said.
Hutch ignored the joke. “I don’t want to rush you, but we do have a time problem.”
Yes. I wouldn’t know about that on my own, of course, with the fans not running and no air coming in. He felt across the gear. Lamps came in all sorts of different shapes. He was about to ask what kind of lamps when he picked one up. A wristlamp. “Got it,” he said, switching it on.