“Yes. Go on.”
“He was treated for a few days and then released. I tried to maintain contact with him, to follow up his case.”
“I know. We put him under observation for a month.” And you found nothing, Larry added mentally.
“Yes. Exactly so. But before then—just after he was released from the infirmary for the first time, I asked him several times to check in with me for follow-up tests. He refused.”
“So?”
Dr. Hsai’s voice continued smoothly, with just the barest hint of excitement. “At one point, he warned me that his job was too important to be interfered with.”
“Warned you?”
“I have his exact words here… listen…”
Larry stopped moving and hung frozen on the skin of the tube. The ship’s vast turning motion swung him majestically around, like a lone rider on an ancient merry-go-round. Then he heard Dan’s voice, which startled him for a moment, until he realized it was one of Dr. Hsai’s tapes:
“Our reactors are feeding the ship’s main rocket engines,” Dan was saying hotly, “on a very, very carefully programmed schedule. This ship can’t take more than a tiny thrust loading—we’re simply not built to stand high thrust, it’d tear us apart…”
“Everyone knows this.” Hsai’s voice.
Dan answered, “Uh-huh. This is a very delicate part of the mission. A slight miscalculation or a tiny flaw in the reactors could destroy this ship and kill everyone.”
Click.
“Do you understand what he was trying to tell me?” Dr. Hsai asked.
Larry blinked puzzledly. “Frankly, no. What.he was saying was perfectly true.”
“Of course. But underneath the obvious truth, he was threatening to destroy the ship and everyone in it if he didn’t get his way.”
“What?”
“I believe that is what is in his mind,” Hsai went on “Of course, I am no psychiatrist, but I think such an action of self-destruction would be consistent with Christopher’s behavior pattern.”
Larry instantly blurted, “The reactors!”
Val’s voice came on. “Larry, do you think he’d do if…”
“We can’t run the risk of not thinking it. Val, get the power crew on the phone and have them abandon level seven. Everybody out except a skeleton crew, and I want them in pressure suits. Quick!”
“Right.”
Larry fumbled with the radio switches on his belt.
“Mort, this is Larry.” Do I have the right frequency?
“You find something?”
“No. I just got a call from inside. Hsai thinks Dan might try to blow the reactors.”
“Holy…”
“I’m jetting up there. You keep the search going, just to make sure I’m not on a wild-goose chase.”
“Okay.”
Larry pushed off the tube wall and touched the microjet controls. He felt tiny hands grab him around the waist and push him up toward the ship’s hub. The rings of the ship passed beneath him three, four, five, six…
There was a flash and a puff of what looked like steam, up ahead at level seven. Something cartwheeled up, a jagged shard of metal. Larry steered in that direction.
Level seven’s only viewport had been blown apart. The lights inside were gone. Larry grabbed the jagged rim of the exploded port and hauled himself in through the hole.
If I turn on my helmet lamp I’ll be a certain target.
Something heavy and metallic slammed thunderously in the distance and a gust of wind tore past Larry, cracking like a miniature thunderclap.
Safety hatch! He’s opened the safety hatch between the offices and the reactor area.
Larry reached to his belt with both hands, turned on his helmet lamp, and pulled the laser pistol from its holster.
The office was a shambles. When the viewport blew open, air pressure inside the office gusted violently out into space, bowling over everything in its path. Chairs were overturned, desk fittings broken and scattered over the floor. Any papers that had been around were blown outside.
But no bodies. Valery’s warning must have reached the technicians just in time.
Larry hefted the pistol in his right hand and took a deep breath. The suit air suddenly tasted good. He moved toward the safety hatch that connected the office with the reactor area. In the low gravity of level seven, it was easy to move around, even inside the cumbersome suit. But still Larry moved slowly, cautiously. He was only moments behind Dan. Maybe he could surprise him.
The safety hatch was open, and the reactor area was deep in darkness. For a moment, Larry thought about switching off his helmet lamp. But he couldn’.t Be blind without it.
He edged toward the hatch. It opened, he knew, onto a metal catwalk that hung above the two main working reactors and the main electrical power generator.
He stepped out onto the catwalk, then immediately flicked off his lamp.
Down below, kneeling by the power generator in a pool of light from his own helmet lamp, was Dan. He had a laser pistol in his hand, and he was burning it at full intensity on some of the exposed wiring of the generator. Smoke and sparks were sputtering from the generator’s innards.
With barely a thought about what he was doing, Larry clambered over the catwalk’s flimsy railing and launched himself at Dan. It was like a dream, a nightmare. He floated through the twenty meters separating them like a cloud drifting across the sky. Larry raised his right hand and threw his pistol as hard as he could at Dan. It banged into Dan’s hand, knocking his own laser skittering across the floor.There was no sound.
Dan turned toward him, his lamp suddenly glaring straight into Larry’s eyes. Then they collided, hitting with a bone-jarring impact that carried the two of them up and over the generator and into a confused tangle of arms and legs onto the narrow floor space between the generator and one of the reactors.
It was like two robots grappling. In the low gravity, every strenuous move was overly done, and they fought clumsily, swinging, bouncing, rolling across the floor and flailing at each other. Noiselessly, except for the bone-carried shock of impact and the grunts that each man made inside his suit.
Larry’s head was banged around inside his helmet a dozen times. His ears rang and he tasted blood in his mouth. Sweat was trickling stingingly into his eyes.
Dan was reaching up over Larry’s shoulder, trying to grab his airline. Larry knocked his arm away and pushed Dan back against the smooth metal wall of the reactor. Dan bounced off, doubled over, and sliced Larry’s legs, knocking him sprawling.
Feeling like a turtle on its back, Larry tried to scramble up again, but Dan was on top of him. Through the metal-to-metal contact of the suits, he could hear Dan faintly yelling something; it was unintelligible.
Dan had him by the shoulders now and was banging his head and torso against the metal floor plates. Each slam jarred Larry, blurred his vision. Either his suit was going to crack open or his head would; it didn’t matter which one happened first.
He grappled his arms around Dan’s torso, trying to hold on and prevent Dan from slamming him. But Dan just rode up and down on top of him, adding his own body’s mass to the process of bludgeoning Larry to death.
Larry’s hands grasped frantically and closed on a slim piece of tubing. Airline! His first instinct was to rip it loose, but instead Larry simply squeezed on it, grabbed it hard and hung on.
In a few moments Dan stopped the pounding. He tried to reach Larry’s arm, but Larry was wrapped too closely to him for that. Dan rolled over onto his back, but Larry hung on. Squeezing, squeezing the airline, keeping fresh oxygen from Dan’s lungs, letting him suffocate on his own carbon dioxide.