Once all the escape pods were away, the station would dismantle itself, not by the beanstalk method, which required massive, directed energies the station no longer possessed or could harness, but by a simpler, less elegant solution: detonating itself through the use of shaped, high-energy explosives. Nothing larger than thirty cubic centimeters would remain, and what did remain would either burn up in the atmosphere or be tossed into space.
It was a good plan that did not take into account how an actively attacking force might affect an orderly self-destruction.
Because Hart Schmidt was one of the few people in his section of the station not screaming or crying, he was one of the first to hear the automated voice informing the people trapped there that escape pods were now available on the shuttle deck of every gate. He blinked, listened again to confirm he’d heard what he thought he had heard and then gave himself a moment to think, Who the fuck tells people there are escape pods after they’re already trapped and think they’re going to die? Then he picked himself up and headed to the door of gate seven.
Which was stuck, or appeared to be, at any rate; Schmidt’s attempts to pull it open were like those of a child attempting to yank open a door held shut by a professional athlete. Schmidt cursed and kicked the door. After he was done dealing with the pain of kicking a door, a thought registered with him: The door was so cold, Schmidt could feel the heat sucking out of his shoe even with just a kick. He put his hand on the door proper, close to the jamb; it was like ice. It also seemed to suck at his fingertips.
Schmidt put his head close to the door, and over the din of people yelling and screaming, he heard another sound entirely: a high, urgent whisper of a whistle.
“Are you going to open that door?” someone asked Schmidt.
He turned, stepping away from the door, and rubbed his ear. He looked over.
It was Kruger and his three buddies.
“It’s you,” Kruger said. His neck was purple.
“Hi,” Schmidt said.
“Open that door,” Kruger said. By now a small group of people, who had heard the automated message, anxiously stood behind Kruger.
“That’s a really bad idea,” Schmidt said.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Kruger said. “The station is blowing up around us, there are escape pods on the other side of that door and you’re telling me it’s a bad idea to open it?” He grabbed Schmidt before he could respond and tossed him out of the way, hurling him into a bench in the process. Then he grabbed the doorjamb and pulled. “Bastard’s stuck,” he said, after a second, and prepared to give it a mighty yank.
“There’s a vacuum-,” Schmidt began.
Krueger indeed yanked mightily, throwing the door open just enough that he might conceivably slide through, and was sucked through so quickly that when the door slammed shut on his hand, it left the tops of three of his fingers behind.
For the first time since the crisis began, there was dead silence at gate seven.
“What the fuck just happened?” bellowed Mothudi, breaking the silence.
“There’s a vacuum on the other side of that door,” Schmidt said, and then saw the blank expression on Mothudi’s face. “There’s no air. If you try to go in there, you won’t be able to breathe. You’ll die before you get down the ramp to the escape pods.”
“Kruger’s dead?” asked another of the soldiers, the one called Goosen.
Unless he carries his own oxygen supply, you bet, Schmidt thought, but did not say. What he said was, “Yes, Kruger is dead.”
“The hell with this,” said the third soldier, the one named Pandit. “I’m going to gate six.” He bolted toward the gate at the end of the section, where people had queued to make their way to the escape pods. Mothudi and Goosen joined him a second later, followed by a yelling mass of humanity from gate seven who finally got it through their heads that there might not be enough spaces on the escape pods for all of them. A riot had begun.
Schmidt knew that for survival purposes he should be in the fray at gate six, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He decided he’d rather die as a fundamentally decent human being than live as the sort of asshole who’d tear out someone’s liver to get into an escape pod.
The thought brought him inner peace, for about five seconds. Then the fact that he was going to die bubbled up again and scared him shitless. He leaned his head back against the bench Krueger had thrown him into and closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked forward. Into the back of the gate attendant’s lectern. Which among other things had a large first-aid box slotted into it.
Schmidt looked over at Kruger’s fingertips for a second, snerked and reached over to the box. He pulled it out and opened it up.
Inside, among many other things, were a foil blanket and a very small oxygen kit.
Hey, look, your very own oxygen supply, Schmidt’s brain said to him.
“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited,” he said, out loud, to his brain. “You still can’t get that door open without losing your hand.”
Gate six exploded.
In the immediate aftermath, Schmidt wasn’t sure if he’d been deafened by the pressure blast blowing out his eardrums or all the air in the section that contained gate six and gate seven being sucked out into space, along with Goosen, Pandit and Mothudi and everyone else who had been raging at gate six. Then he felt the air in his lungs seeping out through his lips and nose and decided it just didn’t matter. He grabbed at the first-aid box, wrapped the blanket over the top half of his body as tightly as he could with one hand and with the other covered his face and mouth with the mask of the oxygen kit.
The mask immediately fogged. Schmidt gave himself a quick hit of oxygen and tried not to panic.
In another minute, the section was completely silent and Schmidt felt himself start to freeze. He got up from the bench he’d crouched under and went to the gate seven door. It opened with only the slightest resistance.
On the other side of the door was Kruger: cyanotic, fingerless, frozen and looking, in death, extraordinarily pissed. Schmidt sidestepped Kruger’s corpsicle and ran as quickly as he could down the ramp, blue fingers clutching the space blanket and the oxygen.
The shuttle deck of gate seven had sprouted what looked like several doors leading to subterranean alcoves: the escape pods. Schmidt picked the closest one and with shivering hands cycled the portal shut. Sealed, the escape pod sensed the vacuum and freezing cold and blasted both oxygen and warmth into the pod. Schmidt cried and shook.
“Pod launch in fifteen seconds,” a computerized voice said. “Secure yourself, please.”
Schmidt, still shivering violently, reached up and pulled down the padded seat restraint as the escape pod counted off the seconds. He passed out before the voice got to three and missed his launch entirely.
Lowen cried with relief when the automated announcement about the escape pods fired up and then started going for one of them when their egress doors on the deck floor opened. Wilson reached out and held her back.
“What are you doing?” she yelled at him, clawing at his hand.
“We have a way off this station,” Wilson said to her. “Other people don’t.”
Lowen pointed to the escape pods opening up around her. “I’d rather go this way,” she said. “I’d rather have something around me when I launch myself into space.”