Jarvellis moved away from the portal and looked around. This worn corridor ran round the bay in an arc, and there were doors behind her. She tried one, pressing the correct button this time. The door slid aside with a low grinding to reveal a wedge-shaped room that was utterly empty. The fifth room she tried contained the lockers and soon she was inspecting a spacesuit that made the one she had owned seem state of the art. It had a bowl helmet of scratched plastiglass: a helmet that was actually breakable. The material of the suit itself was layered, and just that: material. There was no armouring, no sealant layer. Air was provided by an external bottle with a vulnerable pipe that plugged into the neck-ring. She wiped dirt from an old digital readout and saw that the bottle did contain air, though how the pressure reading related to time or suit pressure, she could not say. Laboriously she pulled the suit on, and then tucked the helmet under her arm as she headed for the lock. The inner door, a great thick thing that actually operated on hinges, opened with surprising silence. As she stepped inside, a different noise greeted her.
'Is that you in that lock, Captain Jarvellis?' Tull asked over the intercom.
Jarvellis ignored the voice, put her helmet on and twisted it into place. Maybe the seals would not work so well. Maybe they would work for long enough. She opened the valve on the air bottle and got a hiss of air that was breathable, but had a vaguely putrid smell.
'Captain, please come out of that lock. Very little of the equipment there has been serviced. You could kill yourself… oh, I see… I wouldn't advise trying to use that shuttle. It has no AG, you realize? Those ion eng… you… s…'t…'
The inner lock was irised. It made no noise as it opened, but that was because there was now no air to transmit sound. Neat way of shutting Tull up anyway. Jarvellis stepped out of the lock and hurried over to the shutde. The door she saw was not a door with an airlock. She twisted the two handles at the side of it and hinged it open. It was a single-seal door; only with it closed would the shuttle fill with air. Back when this station was constructed, weight had played an all-important role. A full airlock would have been too much extra. Jarvellis stepped inside and closed the door.
White vapour was now leaking from the folds at the elbow of the primitive suit. It was also leaking out round the neck-seal and painting glitters of frost across the plastiglass.
The cabin of the shuttle was simply a plain box, with spring fixings along the floor to take either chairs or cargo straps. Ahead there was another hinged door. She moved quickly to it and tried to turn the handles. Nothing gave. She put her weight on the handles, and they started to move just before her feet left the floor. She pulled herself down and jammed her foot in one of the spring fixings to try again. Vapour bloomed around the door, then dissipated. She got it open and pulled herself in. Even as she closed the door, she found herself panting for air that was getting increasingly thin. A button. Cycle. She hit it and dragged herself to a dusty seat before the console and control column. She searched for a readout and found it above the door. The readout was in bar and she was not sure what was required. She cracked open the helmet when vapour ceased to flow from the seal. No difference now anyway; there was littie left in the suit.
'Captain Jarvellis… Jarvellis… I hope you can hear me. Can you hear me?'
'Yes, I can hear you, Tull,' she said.
'Good,' said the Oudinker. 'Now, just so you don't kill us all by trying to start those ion engines in the station, I'll tell you how to use the magnetic impeller. It'll get you out of that bay and away. Beyond that, you're on your own.'
Jarvellis dropped into the pilot's seat. The padding crunched underneath her and dust circulated in the cockpit. She studied the antique controls and wondered if it might have been better to go meekly to mind-wipe. 'Go on, then, run me through it,' she said.
Aiden and Cento had their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped as if in exhaustion. Cormac saw that their emulations were off as welclass="underline" not a breath moved their torsos, nor the flicker of an eyelid crossed their eyes. like two marionettes with their strings cut, they sat on the lichen-covered plascrete and broken glass. Their weapons were lying on the ground beside them, ignored.
'Aiden? Cento?'
Was there something there? A shiver of movement? Cormac could not believe that they had been completely disabled. He had previously seen nothing short of a proton gun with that capability.
'Aiden?'
Aiden's head lifted slowly and he stared at Cormac as if he did not recognize him. He blinked once, slowly, and it seemed for a moment as if he was going to ask him something. Then Aiden's shoulders straightened, his breathing emulation restarted, and he slowly stood up.
'Just enough to knock out our systems,' he said, and looked down at Cento. Cento was slower to reassume his guise of humanity. First he practised a grin which was a parody, then his breaming emulation restarted and he too got up. Cormac turned away from them and went over to Thorn.
'Thorn?'
Thorn lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky. There were burns on his clothing and there was a strong smell of burnt hair about him. His beard, Cormac noted, was in need of some reshaping. His helmet lay beside him with its glass still polarized. His weapon lay some distance away. A trickle of blood had congealed below his nose.
'About stun three,' he said tighdy, and looked up at Cormac. Cento and Aiden passed Cormac on either side, reached down simultaneously, and pulled Thorn to his feet.
'Gave about as good as it got,' said Thorn from wobbly legs, men, freeing his right arm from Cento, ran his hand over his beard and frowned.
Cormac watched the three contemplatively: the only real injuries seemed to be to their dignity. 'It knocked you all down because you fired on it. Having the ability to knock out Aiden and Cento means it had the ability to kill you, Thorn… Tell me, Aiden, would you say that creature was completely constituted of energy fields?'
'That would not be possible. It must have some matter distribution for the fields to anchor themselves to, even if it is very diffuse. Dragon said it was partially gaseous.'
'Then I know how to kill it. Just as it knew precisely how to kill us. Come on.' As he walked back to the sky-bikes, Cormac pulled out his comunit. 'Sergeant, put the carrier down at our camp. Get your men down, too, and form a perimeter again.' He shut off the unit as the sergeant passed on his orders, then turned to Thorn. 'Thorn, I want you to mink about this. When we went down that shaft a monster attacked us, and we fired on it.'
'Yes,' said Thorn.
'No, you see there's the rub. It may have come charging towards us, and it may have seemed intent on attack, but it did not scrap Cento nor kill Gant until we fired on it.'