WARREN, said a company nametag.
“Wha-what can I do to help?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
Though hired for gracile weight and people skills, the fellow clearly possessed some courage. By now he knew what filled many of the slim, green-tinted membranes surrounding them both. And it didn’t take a genius to realize the zep company was unlikely to help, during the time they had left.
“Tool kit!” Tor held out her hand.
Warren fumbled at his waist pouch. Precious seconds passed as he unfolded a slim implement case. Tor found one promising item-a vibrocutter.
“Keyed to your biometrics?”
He nodded. Passengers weren’t allowed to bring anything aboard that might become a weapon. This cutter would respond to his personal touch and no other. It required not only a fingerprint, but volition-physiological signs of the owner’s will.
“You must do the cutting, then.”
“C-cutting…?”
Tor explained quickly.
“We’ve got to vent this ship. Empty the gas upward. That’ll happen to a main cell if it is ruptured anywhere along its length, right? Automatically?”
A shaky nod. She could tell Warren was getting online advice, perhaps from the zep company. More likely from the same smart-mob that she had called into being. She felt strong temptation to put her own specs back on-to link-in once more. But she resisted. Kibitzers would only slow her down right now.
“It might work…,” said the attendant in a frightened whisper. “But the reffers will realize, as soon as we start-”
“They realize now!” She tried not to shout. “We may have only moments to act.”
Another nod. This time a bit stronger, though Warren was shaking so badly that Tor had to help him draw the cutter from its sleeve. She steadied his hand.
“We must slice through a helium bag in order to reach the big hydro cell,” he said, pressing the biometric-sensitive stud. Reacting to his individual touch, a knife edge of acoustic waves began to flicker at the cutter tip, sharper than steel. A soft tone filled the air.
Tor swallowed hard. That flicker resembled a hot flame.
“Pick one.”
They had no way to tell which of the greenish helium cells had been refilled, or what would happen when the cutter helped unite gas from neighboring compartments. Perhaps the only thing accomplished would be an early detonation. But even that had advantages, if it messed up the timing of this scheme.
One lesson you learned early nowadays: It simply made no sense, any longer, to rely for perfect safety upon a flawless professional protective caste. The police and military, the bureaucrats, and intelligence services. No matter how skilled and sophisticated they might grow, with infinite tax dollars to spend on advanced instrumentalities, they could still be overwhelmed, or cleverly bypassed. Human beings, they made mistakes. And when that happened, society must count on a second line of defense.
Us.
It meant-Tor knew-that any citizen could wind up being a soldier for civilization, at any time. The way they made the crucial difference on 9-11 and during Awfulday.
In other words, expendable.
“That one.” Warren chose, and moved toward the nearest green-tinted cell.
Though she had doffed her specs, there was still a link. The smart-mob’s voice retained access to the conduction channel in her ear.
“Tor,” said the group mind. “We’re getting feed through Warren’s goggles. Are you listening? There is a third possibility, in addition to helium and hydrogen. Some of the cells may have been packed with-”
She bit down twice on her left canine tooth, cutting off the distraction in order to monitor her omnisniffer. She inhaled deeply, with her eye on the indicator as Warren made a gliding, slicing motion with his cutter.
The greenish envelope opened, as if along a seam. Edges rippled apart as invisible gas-appreciably cooler-swept over them both.
HELIUM said the readout. Tor sighed relief.
“This one’s not poisonous.”
Warren nodded. “But no oxygen. You can smother.” He ducked his head aside, avoiding the cool wind, and took another deep breath of normal air. Still, his next words had a squeaky, high-pitched quality. “Gotta move fast.”
Through the vent he slipped, hurrying quickly to the other side of the green cell, where it touched one of the great chambers of hydrogen.
Warren made a rapid slash.
Klaxons bellowed, responding to the damage automatically. (Or else, had the company chosen that moment, after several criminally-negligent minutes, to finally admit the inevitable?) A voice boomed insistently, ordering passengers to move-calmly and carefully-to their escape stations.
That same instant, the giant hydrogen gas cell convulsed, twitching like a giant bowel caught in a spasm. The entire pinkish tube-bigger than a jumbo jet-contracted, starting at the bottom and squeezing toward a sudden opening at the very top, spewing its contents skyward.
Backwash hurled Warren across the green tube. Tor managed to grab his collar, dragging him out to the walkway. There seemed to be nothing satisfying about the “air” that she sucked into her lungs, and she started seeing spots before her eyes. The little man was in worse shape, gasping wildly in high-pitched squeaks.
Somehow, Tor hauled him a dozen meters along the gangway, barely escaping descending folds of the deflated cell, till they arrived at last where breathing felt better. Did we make any difference? she wondered, wildly.
Instinctively, Tor slipped her specs back on. Immersed again in the info-maelstrom, it took moments to focus.
One image showed gouts of flame pouring from a hole in the roof of a majestic skyship. Another revealed the zeppelin’s nose starting to slant steeply as the tug-locomotive pulled frantically on its tow cable, reeling the behemoth toward the ground. Spirit resisted like a stallion, bucking and clinging to altitude.
Tor briefly quailed. Oh Lord, what have we done?
A thought suddenly occurred to her. She and Warren had done this entirely based on information that came to them from outside. From a group-mind of zeppelin aficionados and amateur scientists who claimed that a lot of extra hydrogen had to be going somewhere, and it must be stored in some of the former helium cells.
But that particular helium cell-the one Warren sliced-had been okay.
And now, amid all the commotion, she wondered. What about the smart-mob? Could that group be a front for clever reffers, who were using her to do their dirty work? Feeding false information, in order to get precisely this effect?
The doubt passed through her mind in seconds. And back out again. This smart-mob was open and public. If something smelled about it, another mob would have formed by now, clamoring like mad and exposing the lies. Anyway, if no helium cells had been tampered with, the worst that she and Warren could do was bring a temporarily disabled Spirit of Chula Vista down to a bumpy but safe landing atop its tug.
Newsworthy. But not very. And that realization firmed her resolve.
Tor yanked the attendant onto his feet and urged him to move uphill, toward the stern, along a narrow path that now inclined the other way. “Come on!” she called to Warren, her voice still squeaky from helium. “We’ve got to do more!”
Warren tried gamely. But she had to steady him as the path gradually steepened. When he prepared to slash at another green cell, farther aft, Tor braced his elbow.
Before he struck, through the omniscient gaze of her specs, Tor abruptly saw three more holes appear in the zep’s broad roof, spewing clouds of gas, transparent but highly refracting, resembling billowy ripples in space.