Then Morton and Dunscythe were in, racing past what was left of Krovvy, and Valius was slapping a charge on the forward bulkhead across the room, and suddenly, the cabin seemed to be filled with Fleet marines.
The captain was pulling Corin up by the arm. “Hurt, mister?” the voice demanded in his earphones.
“No, sir,” Corin gasped, giving his head a shake. “I should be, but I’m not.”
Catherine laid down the menu. “You could have let me order first!”
Corin looked up, startled. “I waited. And you didn’t order, so I went ahead.”
“And made it look as though I was just waiting to disagree with you. Honestly, Corin, just because we’re living together, doesn’t mean you get to run my life!”
“I didn’t order for you.”
“You could have offered. It just so happened that I did want the chicken Kiev, but I couldn’t say that after you had ordered it.”
“There’s no crime in our liking the same things,” he protested.
“Look, if you think you’re going to boss me around, you can just forget about this whole relationship!”
“But I wasn’t trying to boss you around.”
“Well, just see to it that you don’t.”
Corin finished reloading just as the deck lurched out from under him, and Dunscythe went cartwheeling across the chamber. All Valius could do was hang on for dear life as the gel he’d been applying flipped away off the bulkhead.
“The Weasel’s taking evasive action!” the captain yelled. “Grab hold!”
Marines grabbed for handholds wherever they could find them, and Corin grabbed an ankle and pulled himself up enough to grab someone else’s arm, which he used to pull himself up some more. Then he got a hand on the fire-control console and pulled himself to his feet. It was like climbing a mountain with a hundred-pound pack, but he made it, pulling himself up and reaching out to grab the lump of quivering gel.
Then, suddenly, the bottom of the hill was its top, then its side; the pilot was tumbling to his left, and Corin slammed into the console. Pain seared through his hip, but he kept his holds on both console and explosive. Then he pushed himself away enough to get a foot against the console’s side, and he flipped around enough to grab the T-handle the Weasels used for dogging hatches. He inhaled sharply, stiffening his muscles against the pain in his side, and hauled himself up to slap the lump of plastic onto the bulkhead.
“That’s it, Private,” the captain’s voice said in his earphones. “Pound it out, now!”
Corin hit the lump twice before “up” suddenly became “sideways” again, and “down” was under his back. He hung on to the T-handle grimly, jackknifing to get a knee over one bar of it, and went back to pounding the gel.
“Shape the sides, now,” the captain told him. “Make it a dome.”
Corin pushed and prodded the material, wondering crazily if he was supposed to be a marine or a sculptor.
“All right, now back off,” the captain snapped.
Corin unhooked his knee and let his body swing out at right angles to the bulkhead, hanging by his hands. He checked below, saw empty wall, and let go.
He dropped like a rock, absorbing the impact with bent knees, and grabbed a stanchion.
Then the captain hit the button, and the hatch blew in.
“Look, I like Jody, and if I want to go out to lunch with her, I will!”
“All right, all right!” Corin turned away, raising his hands. “So we don’t have a lunch date. So I’ll see you this evening.”
“Not ‘this evening.’ I have a sales meeting.”
“All right. I’ll be here when you come home.” Corin wondered if he really should be. He wondered if he should ever have moved in with her,
“Oh, that’s right, just load me with the guilt trip!” Ellen stormed. “Poor little Corin, who just can’t stand to be home alone! Not a friend in the world—”
“That’s enough,” Corin grated.
“Nowhere nearly enough! Be a man, will you?”
Corin turned, frowning. “I thought that’s what I was.”
“You’d never know it at night.” Ellen marched over to the door and yanked it open. “Try to get some rest when you get home, will you? Maybe things will work better.”
“Down” ceased to exist; the explosion had rattled the Weasel pilot enough to make him let upon the acceleration. Either that, or he was bracing for combat ...
“Get in there!” the captain shouted. He slipped a hand under Dunscythe’s boots and threw the marine like a javelin. He flew through the hole, but he hit the trigger button too soon, and the recoil bounced him back out again. Just in time. Weasel slugs were hailing around the hole in the bulkhead, with the odd one careering through to ricochet among the marines. They took cover fast, but one creamed Dunscythe’s knee on the way. He yelped and pulled himself into a ball as he bounced into a corner.
“Just two of them left!” the captain shouted. “They can’t hold off seven of us forever.”
But they could, and he knew it. They had one hell of a defensive position.
Then the pilot went back to playing games—but this time, he outsmarted himself.
Suddenly the new hole was “down.” Corin glanced about him, aimed his feet toward the gap, and let go. As he fell, he swung his rifle down to aim right in front of his toes. The Weasel let up on the acceleration, but Corin had a lot of momentum by the time he shot through the hole and hit the trigger, moving the rifle to make a cone.
Slugs spattered around the pilot’s cabin as the recoil slowed him just enough for a safe landing.
A safe landing on nothing! Nothing under him at all, nothing but blackness filled with stars. There was a huge hole in the hull with a console in front of it, complete with two Weasels in pressure suits, pointing rifles at him. Them or me, he thought crazily, and swept the stream of bullets toward them.
A blur swept past him, and a spiderweb spread across the stars at his feet. Of course! It wasn’t a hole, just a huge view port to give the Weasels 270-degree vision. They were still primitives; they still wanted eye contact, in spite of their screens.
He landed bending his knees to take up the impact against the solidity of the panoramic port that lay between him and the rest of the universe. He looked up to aim, just in time to see the Weasels go cartwheeling away in streamers of red from holes in their suits. He glanced up and saw two marine rifles poking through the hole in the bulkhead with helmeted heads behind them.
Then he realized there was pain in his rib cage, swelling and swelling until it engulfed him, till all the world was a sheet of bright pain that darkened, and was gone ...
“But he’s my father, for crying out loud!”
“But I want to go see Swan Lake.”