The power cell detached from his suit. Holding it in his hands, he knew that he had the means of generating a fairly potent detonation. His next challenge was to direct its energy and protect himself at the same time.
You’ve made it this far, Ming. You’re doing great. Reason it out. It’s just physics. Just do the math.
The only thing he could think of was to make a force field. If he could generate a conical subspace field above the power cell before letting it make contact with kelvinium wire, all its explosive force would be directed downward, against the bottom bulk-head—and it would do so without causing an overpressure inside the pod. All I need is a subspace field generator.
The tricorder that the engineers had integrated with the suit contained a fairly powerful subspace transceiver assembly, used for relaying data back to a ship in orbit. Unfortunately, it was nestled in the back of the suit, at a place Xiong couldn’t reach. I wish I had a communicator, he thought—and then he remembered the comm assembly attached to his helmet. Although the speakers and sensing unit were inside, the transceiver components were accessible from the outside. As he reached back and started disconnecting it, he knew he would have to work quickly once it was off. The internal components of the transceiver were fairly delicate, and they wouldn’t last long exposed to the pod’s superheated atmosphere.
All-or-nothing time. Guiding his hands by watching his dim reflection on the obsidian bulkhead, he detached the transceiver assembly from his helmet. He kneeled beside the power cell and set the circuit next to it. He powered down the transceiver and attached two filaments of kelvinium to it. He shaped the wires into a crude circle around the transceiver and the power cell.
The key to his plan would be the timing. He twisted the last piece of wire into a loose ball and made a few test drops away from the power cell, to see how long it would take the wire ball to fall from the top of the pod to the bottom; it took just less than three seconds, and he concluded it was because of the density of the pod’s atmosphere.
Xiong pocketed the wire ball and checked the settings on the transceiver. He needed it to create a field strong enough to contain the blast but small enough that he would be outside its area of effect when he climbed up into the pod’s corner. He made a few adjustments to its subspace field geometry, increased its power output to maximum, and calculated how long it would take the transceiver to power up and generate a subspace field.
The tricky part was that after reactivating the transceiver Xiong needed to be outside its subspace field; he also had to drop the wire ball from the correct height at the proper moment so that it would be inside the subspace field. If he dropped the ball too early, he would have no protection when the sarium krellide detonated; dropped too late, it would bounce off the subspace field—and because he would be unable to pierce the force field himself, he would be unable to shut it off to make a second attempt. If he dropped the ball off-target, he was dead.
He would get only one shot at this. If his math was off, or if his reflexes proved to be either too slow or too jumpy, his day would very soon take a turn for the worst.
Bending forward, he stretched his right arm down and forward toward the transceiver; he held his left arm above the power cell. Clutched in his left hand was the wire ball. Shaking with tension, he aligned his head above the power cell to fix his aim. Anxiety filled his gut with sick sensations.
Here goes.
His finger tapped the transceiver’s power switch.
He pushed off with his left leg, lined up his left hand, and let go of the wire ball. It began to fall in slow motion.
Turning away, he scrambled with his one powered leg and both arms to pull himself up into the corner. Handholds and footholds seemed elusive, his fumbling grasps desperate and clumsy. The top of the pod, which had seemed suffocatingly close this past hour, now seemed far away, unreachable.
A flash of white and a boom like the eruption of a volcano. An impact pinned him to the top of the pod, and a steady roar and a whoosh surrounded him in the darkness. He was moving, the pod was rocketing upward, the explosive exhaust of its searing high-pressure gases enough to push it off the ocean bottom. As quickly as it had started, it slowed and stopped, and the pod pitched to one side.
Water flooded in, boiled into a mad froth, and slammed against Xiong’s pressure suit, setting him afloat. Then he felt the pod pressing on him again, pulling him back down as it sank once more. If it hits bottom and traps me inside, I’ll be stuck for good. He fought his way across the inside of the pod, finding the water as hard to move through as the Tholian atmosphere had been. His gloved hands found the jagged edge of the blasted-open bottom. He pulled himself through the opening and pushed free of the pod. As soon as he was clear it fell away beneath him, swallowed into the night of the ocean bottom.
He was deep enough that he saw no light from the surface, but stray bubbles of gas rising past him showed him, aglow in the light of his helmet, which way to go. Pointing himself upward, he used the forearm controls of his suit to create a slow, steady expulsion of carbon dioxide from his rebreather. Chasing his own escaping waste gas, he ascended swiftly, reassured that the same systems that had protected him aboard the Tholian ship would keep him safe from pressure effects on his journey back to the surface.
Several minutes later he saw the first glimmers of light above, and soon afterward he crested the surface. He checked the passive sensor gauges on the underside of his suit’s forearm. The air tested as breathable and free of toxins; local gravity was just a few tenths of a percent greater than Earth standard. Bobbing along, he powered down the suit’s servos and activated its exchanger to replenish its air tanks from the atmosphere.
The sea was calm beneath a pale sky and sparkling with the peach-colored light of a breaking dawn.
Flotation sequence functioning, he noted with a glance at his gauges. Air supply increasing. So far so good. He lowered the shade on his visor and, confident that he was momentarily out of danger, decided that he’d earned a few hours of rest.
As he drifted off, he murmured to himself with weary sarcasm, “Well…that was fun.”
Theriault shivered awake. Her row of heated rocks had dimmed to a faint reddish hue, and only a faint aura of heat radiated from them. The shafts of amber daylight that had filled the cavern beyond her nook in the wall were gone now. Darkness had fallen.
She was unsure how long she had been asleep, but the fact that the rocks still had some of the heat she had phasered into them told her it could not have been long, perhaps a few hours. Early evening, she figured.
Her teeth chattered, and the flesh on her arms and legs was pimpled from a pervasive chill. She drew her phaser and extended her arm. Steadying her aim was difficult. Holding her breath helped slightly. A few short bursts per stone made them bright orange again, and when she’d finished, their soothing heat enveloped her once more. She tucked the phaser back onto her belt and retreated into the nook, ready to return to sleep.
As she lay basking in the ruddy glow, her thoughts turned to her ship and crewmates, and to her family at home on Mars…then she shuddered awake, fear animating her like an electric current. She was certain that she was not alone.
In the darkness beyond her glowing rocks, she saw only pale ripples of moonlight on the pond, heard only the susurrus of the waterfalls…but there was something else there, something intangible, moving like a breath in the night.
Hyperalert, she scanned the cavern, seeking out something that her fear told her could not be found against its will. Then a voice spoke to her without sound, its authority absolute, its form unseen but its presence undeniable.
Rest, it told her. Your wounds are deeper than you know.
Fear and pain put tremors in her voice. “Who are you?”