He looked down into the Second Containment, seeking the source of Justin’s condition.
The Core rippled with blackness and seemed to turn in on itself, taking on a new solidity. Rings appeared around the main casing, spinning slowly. The dark energy seemed to bleed away to nowhere.
Cooper shook his head. None of this made any sense. None of it.
Something else caught his attention. Sections of Justin’s safety line, across the Second Containment. They had spread a considerable length of rope around the place after Justin had emerged from the Core, but not all of it had come out.
He tracked the sections.
Both ended at the Core. Both were lying on the gantry, sheared through.
There should have been a couple hundred meters more of the line, Cooper figured, between those shear points.
It was nowhere to be seen, but he knew exactly where it was, and the thought of what might have happened froze him, leeching his strength. He turned, his back against the console, and slid down until he was sitting in the coolant again.
Oh, Baby Bear, he thought, where did you go?
Chapter Nineteen
Miller raced through the Event Horizon, his feet pounding against the deck.
Time was a critical factor now, and he had no time to waste in strolling down to the airlocks. This mission had gone to hell in a handbasket and it was going to take a miracle to pull them back from the edge.
He reached the airlocks just as Weir arrived, the rest of the Lewis and Clark’s crew coming behind him. Miller was mildly surprised. Weir’s body language displayed an almost inhuman eagerness. Starck followed Weir into the ship, DJ arriving right behind her. Smith trailed in reluctantly, hanging back as much as he could. Miller glared at his pilot, but he no longer had any time to waste in cajoling the man along.
“Everybody okay?” Miller said, looking them over.
“We’re all here,” Starck said.
“Okay.” Miller took a deep breath, knowing full well that none of his crew would like his next selected move. “Let’s find out how much time we just bought.”
“I still have to test the air,” DJ said, hurriedly.
Miller shook his head. “No time. This is the only oxygen we’ve got for three billion klicks.”
DJ stepped forward, lifting a hand. Miller did not expect the move to go much further than that. “And if it’s contaminated?”
“I’ll let you know,” Miller said.
He undogged his helmet catches and heard the hiss of the seal opening. He exhaled slowly, then lifted the helmet off, taking a deep breath.
DJ was watching his face, unblinking.
Miller breathed out.
He smiled.
Chapter Twenty
The Event Horizon rippled with light and power, coming alive.
On the bridge, Weir moved easily between the different bridge stations, restoring power, bringing things back to life. Watching him, Miller found it hard to accept that the scientist had spent seven years away from his pet project. Even harder to accept that Weir had spent relatively little time aboard the vessel before its ill-fated maiden voyage. He seemed completely comfortable aboard the ship, oblivious to the signs of carnage around him.
Miller turned back to Starck, who had taken up residence at the communications workstation. She had spent the past ten minutes running one diagnostic routine after another, trying to ascertain the state of the communications equipment.
She looked up now. “The antenna array’s completely fried. We’ve got no radio, no laser, no high-gain.” She looked directly into his eyes, playing the brave soldier to the hilt. “No one’s coming to help us.” She coughed suddenly, covering her mouth. “This air tastes bad.”
Miller had to agree with her on that score. “But you can breathe it.”
“Not for long,” she said.
“Not enough oxygen?”
“Oxygen is not the problem,” Starck said.
“Carbon dioxide.” Miller’s voice was flat.
Starck nodded. “It’s building up with every breath we take.” She sat back, rubbing her face. “The CO2 filters on the Event Horizon are shot.”
Miller considered a couple of possibilities, then said, “We can take the filters from the Clark.”
Starck nodded again. “I thought of that,” she said, tapping her fingers on the communications station. “With the filters from the Clark we’ve got enough breathable air for twenty hours. After that we’d better be on our way home.”
Miller nodded, accepting that judgment. “What about the life readings you picked up?”
Starck grimaced, then shrugged. “The Event Horizon sensors show the same thing—‘bio-readings of indeterminate origin.’ Right before the Clark got hit there was some kind of surge, right off the scale, but now it’s back to its previous levels.”
Miller knew he was trying to get blood from a stone with this line of questioning, but he had to find answers. If he was going to keep everyone alive, he needed all the information that could be gathered. He had not had all the information when the Goliath went out from under him, and it had cost lives.
“What’s causing the readings?”
Starck looked back at the silent comms board, frowning. “Whatever it is, it’s not the crew.”
“So where are they?” He looked around, frustrated, feeling helpless. “We’ve been over every inch of this ship and all we’ve found is blood.”
Weir had paused in his peregrinations around the bridge. At the moment, he was standing silently, looking at a bloody smear high up on one bulkhead.
Miller looked up at it too. There were many more around the ship. The only complete corpse they had discovered so far was now packed piecemeal into a cryogenics unit in the hope that they could get it back to Earth for analysis and disposal. DJ had barely complained about cleaning up the mess.
Weir looked down from the bloody wall, then turned his head to look at Miller. There was something strange in Weir’s eyes, but Miller pushed the thought aside. Right now everyone was a little weird, some worse than others.
“What happened here?” Miller asked.
Weir remained silent.
Chapter Twenty-one
Even with lights cutting into the darkness of it, the Event Horizon was a frightening beast of a ship, a huge construction that was difficult to comprehend. Against it, the Lewis and Clark was a speck, a pilot fish accompanying a whale.
Feeling like a brother to dust, Smith clung to the hull of the Lewis and Clark, bulky in full EVA gear and cautious as he moved forward, one magnetic boot at a time. This was a hell of a way to earn a pension, but af least it got him off the Event Horizon. There was something sick and unholy about that ship; he had been certain of that since Weir had started to explain what all this was about.
Just ahead of him, there was a long rip in the hull plating. The metal had buckled together, tearing like aluminum foil under the pressure of the wave that had struck the two ships. Vapor was still leaking slowly into space.
He knelt down carefully, taking a closer look, then keyed his suit radio.
“Captain Miller, you copy?”
“I’m here, Smith,” Miller said. Jesus, Smith thought, am I sounding insecure or something? Miller’s tone was almost condescending. “How’s the ClarkT”
I’m fine, sir, doing okay out here. He bit his tongue. Miller was doing all he could. “I’ve found a two-meter fracture in the outer hull. We should be able to repair it and repressurize.” He paused for a moment. “It’s going to take some time.”
“We don’t have time, Smith. In twenty hours we run out of air.”
That certainly put things into perspective.
“Understood,” he said.