31
Be not afraid of the universe.
One day on OE Station was much like another, and time passed, sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly. One one of those slow days, Gerbriik's silver-clad image appeared in the canteen, where I was finishing my break meal. 'Tyndel. Meet Fersonne by passenger lock three - gauntlets and breather hoods. Now!'
'Yes, ser.'
The image vanished like brume under a summer sun. I gulped down the last of the nanite-produced, fresh-tasting orange juice. Gerbriik's tone had been more than enough. I hurried along the corridor and down the number three transverse, but both Fersonne and Gerbriik were waiting by the time I glided to a halt outside the number three upper lock.
Fersonne had brought the small sled, and it was loaded with gear. Some of it was initially unfamiliar, and I had to search my nanite information bases. The green-striped drum with the flexible nozzle was a sealant system. It created a nanite barrier against atmospheric loss. The yellow-striped canister was a composite-bonding unit.
I frowned. Shouldn't we have had the equipment by the cargo lock?
'We have a problem,' Gerbriik's long face was drawn - the first time I'd seen any sign of concern. 'You two wait here. The Costigan ran too close to a singularity. Pilot managed to bring it in most of the way ... before they lost power. We're using the bugs to drag it close enough to lock. The ship's overstressed - the bugs have been pumping air into it, and the outside crew is hooking up a direct feed. It's still leaking. So as soon as the crew's out, you two need to start patching. Tyndel, you'll be spraying anything that looks like a stress fracture in the hull.' Gerbriik gave me a grim smile. 'Better call up everything you got briefed on. You won't have much time.' He said nothing to Fersonne. He must have talked to her before I had reached the passenger lock deck, just above the cargo locks.
A dull clunk shivered through the corridor, and Gerbriik twisted away from us, his eyes glazing over as he linked into the commnet on levels not open to either Fersonne or me.
A medtech I didn't know appeared beside Gerbriik. Tvlaalorn will be here in a minute or so, ser.'
Gerbriik offered the smallest of nods, eyes still half glazed. He barely nodded when the second medtech arrived. His eyes did snap open when a blond man in blue appeared. 'Commander Maestros.'
I'd heard the name but had never seen the station commander in person.
Maestros was tall and lanky, almost wispy, but his eyes were as hard as any demon's. 'Officer Gerbriik. Your crews did a good job of wrestling her in.' The station commander's round and unlined face looked more drawn than did Gerbriik's.
'Thank you, ser.'
'I'll go aboard with the medtechs. Your crew ready to seal her?' Maestros's eyes examined me and then Fersonne before glazing over into the haze of someone on a commnet.
'Yes, ser.'
The only sounds were those of breathing and the hissing of the corridor ventilators. Both Gerbriik and Commander Maestros continued to wear the glazed look of men whose thoughts - and concentration - were elsewhere.
Holding our breather hoods, Fersonne and I waited outside the front lock of the needle ship. Gerbriik floated before us, the two medtechs beside him. My thoughts were on the sealer system: nanite-to-nanite shuttle bond... effective for eight standard hours ... maximum coverage per unit... five thousand square meters ... At that thought, my eyes went to the sled. There were four of the green-striped units on the left side.
'There aren't enough for the whole ship,' Fersonne said. 'That's why you spray where you think there are leaks. I'll try to bond the big gaps. Need to work fast. Cold in there.'
Commander Maestros loosely, absently, grasped the holdbar beside the lock as the inner door slowly opened. A blast of chill air burst from the opening, followed by a cascade of ice flakes that billowed out across us as the station's atmosphere boiled across the exposed sections of the Costigan's outer, mostly retracted lock. That breath of winter reminded me of Lyncol, even of Cerrelle, but only for a moment.
The man in blue and the medtech were first through the lock. When they vanished into the darkness of the ship's lock, Gerbriik turned in midair to face us. 'There's more damage than we thought to the ship. You'll have to work fast if we're to save the cargo.'
'What's the cargo?' asked Fersonne.
'Gene templates, nanite modules for planoforming - the usual.' Gerbriik shrugged. 'Could be some datablocs for the station.' His attention went back to the lock, where mist still churned around the edges. The warmer station air blew past us into the ship, and the ice clouds swirled around the inside of the ship's lock.
I shivered and pulled on the gray gauntlets. Fersonne already had hers on, and she was doing something with the composite bonder. I eased myself over to the first green-striped sealing unit.
The medtech or Commander Maestros or both were returning. The voices were loud, but the words were indistinct -and then very clear.
'Music! The music—'
'It's quiet here. Take it easy ...'
Fersonne and I looked at each other, then back to the lock, where the medtech and the commander floated out a figure - a man - strapped to a stretcher of some sort.
'The music! So loud - think! Think!' The man's head jerked from side to side in the restraints despite the calming and quiet words from the medtech. What had been the whites of his eyes showed a yellow-green cast, a color clear enough from the three or four meters between us and the stretcher.
'That has to be the second officer, or the third,' murmured Gerbriik. 'Captain Adara is a woman.'
Behind the commander came the second medtech with another stretcher, one bearing a dark-haired and pale-faced woman.
'That's Adara,' Gerbriik supplied. 'Good jockey.'
Good jockey or not, she was unconscious, and two nanopaks - each barely fist-sized - rested against her neck.
'Music! Too loud ... too loud!' the second officer yelled from behind us as he was floated toward the transverse shaft.
Gerbriik waited, and so did we.
Singularities? Closeness to a singularity had left the second raving and the captain unconscious? My own nanite demons responded. The disruptions caused by a singularity's discontinuity follow the path of least resistance along pre-established transits of the supra-wave-vector space. Pre-established? Event horizons already existing constitute pre-establishment. The overspace trajectory of a supra-wave-vector craft exists simultaneously with entry and also constitutes pre-estabUshment.
Not even all the words made sense. Their meaning was beyond me, except I had this feeling that it meant somehow singularities were drawn to needle ships, or worse, the other way around.
The first medtech returned with an empty stretcher and eased himself back inside the Costigan. Station air kept whistling past us and into the leaking ship. The temperature in the passenger lock area continued to drop.
'Go!' snapped Gerbriik. 'Survivors are clear.'
Before I had my breather hood down and the first sealer to the edge of the ship lock, the medtech shoved out the covered stretcher. Someone hadn't survived.
'Start forward with the cockpit, Tyndel,' Gerbriik ordered. 'Get a fast coat on everything. Then the passenger cabin. Take the rear hatch down and get the cargo holds. I'm putting the other sealer units inside the Costigan, just inside the ship lock. We're sealing the lock again. You'll need to hurry.'