Seven o'clock low.
"Constant bearing and closing."
"Drop flares." That wouldn't do any good. Piranha was the hottest thing in the sky right now. But like the lady said, while spooning chicken soup to the dead man, it couldn't hurt. "How are they seeing us?"
"K-band."
"Jam it."
"Am."
He sure enough was. Alex grunted. At least Gordo had read that book. Alex squinted at his radar. There was the bogey, sure enough. Small. Constant bearing and closing. "Hang on." He peeled off to starboard and watched the heat gauge rise. Piranha didn't have wings for a near miss to tear off. Just small, fat fins and a big, broad, flat belly to be melted, evaporated or pierced. Alex bit his lip. Don't think about that. Concentrate on what you can do.
The sharp turn pushed him against the corner of his seat. Alex relaxed to the extra weight and prayed that his Earth-born bones would remember how to take it. Decades of falling had turned him soft. The acceleration felt like a ton of sand covering him. He felt the blood start in his sinuses. But he could take it. He could take it because he had to.
Gordon sat gripping the arms of the copilot's seat. His cheeks sagged. His head bowed. Gordon had been born in free fall and thrust was new to him. He looked frightened. It must feel like he'd taken sick.
The turn seemed to go on forever. Alex watched the bogey on the scope. Each sweep of the arm brought the blip closer to the center. Closer. He pulled harder against the stick. The next blip was left of center. Then it arced away. Alex knew that was an illusion. The missile had gone straight; Piranha had banked.
"You lost it!" Gordon shouted. He turned and looked at Alex with a grin that nearly split his face in two.
Alex smiled back. "Scared?"
"Hell, no."
"Yeah. Me, too. Anyone flying at Mach 26 while a heatseeking cruise missile tries to fly up his ass is entitled to be scared." He toggled the radio. It was Management Decision time. "Big Momma, we have lost the bogey. Do you have instructions?"
There was a pause; short, but significant. "We need that nitrogen," said Mary's voice.
Alex waited for her to finish, then realized that she had. We need that nitrogen. That was all she was going to say, leaving the ball in his octant.
Of course we need the nitrogen, he thought. Recycling wasn't perfect. Gas molecules outgassed right through the walls of the stations. Every now and then someone had to take the bucket to the well and get some more. The question was when. When someone with an itchy finger was sitting in a missile farm somewhere below?
He could pack it home and be the goat; his last trip a failure. Delta vee thrown away for no gain. Or he could fly heroically into the jaws of death and suck air. Either way, it was going to be his decision.
He sensed Lonny Hopkins's spidery hand behind things. If Mary was performing plausible deniability on his bones, it must be because her husband was floating right behind her at the comm console, one hand gentle on her shoulder, while she downlinked to the stud who had…
Jesus, but some people had long memories.
Well, Mary was a free citizen, wasn't she? If the wife of the station commander wants a little extracurricular, it's her choice. She had never pushed him away; not until that last night together. We're hanging on up here by our fingernails, she had said then. We've got to all pull together; stand behind the station commander.
Right.
Nobody could stand behind Lonny Hopkins because he never turned his back on anyone. With good reason. Maybe he's right. He is good at the goddam job, and maybe our position is so precarious that there's no room for democratic debate. That doesn't mean I have to like it.
And it's decision time.
"Understood, Big Momma. We'll get your air." Take that, Commander Lonny Hopkins. He clicked off and turned to Gordon. "Open the scoops, but bleed half of it to the scramjets."
"Alex…" Gordon frowned and bit his lip.
"They say they need the air."
"Yeah-da." Gordon's fingers flipped toggled switches back up.
Alex felt the drag as the big scoop doors opened again. The doors had just completed their cycle when Gordon bean shouting. "Ekho! Ekho priblizhayetsya!"
"English!"
Something exploded aft of the cabin and Alex felt his suit pop out. His ears tried to pop, and Alex MacLeod whined deep in his throat.
He'd forgotten, but his nerves remembered. It wasn't falling he feared, it was air tearing through his throat, daggers in his ears, pressure trying to rip his chest apart. Five times his suit had leaked air while they worked to save Freedom Station. He wore the scars in ruptured veins and arteries, everywhere on his body, as if Lonny Hopkins had given him to a mad tattoo artist. There were more scars in his lungs and in his sinus cavities. A sixth exposure to vacuum would have his brains spewing through his nose. Alex couldn't come out to play; they had to keep him in the day-care center.
His fists clenched on the controls in a rigor mortis grip. He heard his own whine of terror, and Gordon's shout, and felt Piranha falling off hard to port. And his suit was holding, holding.
He fought the stick hard when he tried to steady her. Had he recovered too late? "Hold fast, baby," he said through clenched teeth. "Hold fast." Hold Fast was the ancient motto of the MacLeod. Alex wished fleetingly that he had the Fairy Flag that Clan MacLeod unfurled only in the gravest peril. Piranha vibrated and shuddered. Something snapped with the sound of piano wire. "Come on, baby. Steady down."
Incredibly, she did. "Good girl," he muttered, then tongued the uplink on his suit radio. "Big Momma, Big Momma. We've been hit." There was nothing for it now but use up all the air they'd scooped, and anything else, to light off the jets. Get back in orbit; out of the Well. When you're in orbit you're halfway to anywhere! Get in orbit and pickup would be easy. He toggled the switches.
The rocket wouldn't light. The rocket wouldn't light. Air speed was dropping steadily. The rocket wouldn't light. He suppressed the knot of panic that twisted itself in his gut. Time enough afterward, if there was an afterward. The scramjet alone was not enough to reach orbit again. It wouldn't be long before Piranha would be moving too slowly to keep the jet lit. She would become a glider.
And not a terribly good glider.
Alex swallowed. It looked awfully cold down below. And the rocket wouldn't light.
"Mayday," he said. "Mayday. Piranha has a problem." A part of his mind was detached, admiring the cool way he reacted after that one moment of terror.
"This is Big Momma. What is your status?"
Well, I'm just fine, Mary; and how are you? "We're going in, Mary. Tell my family. It's all in my file directory. Access code word is dunvegan." He glanced over at Gordon, but the teenager just shook his head. His face was white through the plexiglass face shield. "And the Tanner family, too." Gordon didn't have any children yet. He was the child. Damned near unwanted child at that: a stilyagi, a JayDee on parole. Some parole! "Watch where we land and get the message out. Tightbeam."
The phones hissed for long seconds. "Sure, Alex. We have friends on Earth. Maybe not many, but… We'll tell them. They'll take care of you. Can you--can you get her down?"
"I may not be good for anything else, but, by God, you paint stripes on a brick and I can fly her."
"Then that's two things you do well."
He felt warmth spreading outward from his belly. Was Lonny still there? Would he understand that message? Alex almost hoped he could. Mary said something else but he was too busy with the ship to hear her. Airspeed had dropped to near Mach 2, and he tilted her nose down to keep the scramjet lit and tried to turn south. Ice. Ice all around and the cloud deck closing in again. Piranha was shaped like the bastard daughter of an airplane and a cement mixer. The slower she flew, the more she acted like a cement mixer.