Miles-square purse-seine nets had been devised overnight by the engineers to collect what could be collected of the wreckage. There'd been too many acts of individual valor to count or keep track of. Not the least of them was the work of the disposal teams, whose grim job was to remove the dead from the supercarriers and other areas where they were encountered.
Hold after hold in SDF-1 that had been reserved for future missions and future purposes that would never come to be were now filled with wreckage, and there were material stores that could be used as well. Robotech fabrication machines aboard the SDF-1 were the most advanced devices of their kind ever developed-the equivalent of an industrial city packed into a few compartments, minifactories that could replicate a staggering assortment of manufactured goods and materials.
As for blueprints and plans, they would be child's play for the SDF-1's computers, since all records of the city's construction, from the first permanent building constructed ten years earlier to the last, were in the ship's data banks.
More importantly, Gloval understood before anyone else aboard just what the long trip to Earth would entail. The civilians couldn't be expected to simply sit in packed emergency billets and twiddle their thumbs; that invited complete social breakdown, and disaster for the SDF-1.
The secret was well kept in subsequent mission reports and in announcements to the refugees, but it was Gloval's liaison officers who planted the seed of the idea: Why not rebuild Macross City?
The gouges of Minmei's calendar had multiplied: four verticals with a crosshatch now, and two more besides.
Now Rick dreaded returning to the small light cast by the miniature camp stove, dreaded having Minmei pretend she wasn't disappointed by another day of bad news.
She'd begun explorations too, to double their chances, over his strenuous objection at first-but with his unspoken acceptance as things became more and more desperate.
Now he sank wearily onto his pallet, while she stirred the thin soup that was the very last stretching of their rations. He hadn't been able to find out how the mice were subsisting, but it wouldn't be very long before he and Minmei would be forced to start trying to catch them. He doubted that even she could make mouse stew taste very good.
He sat, trying to figure out how to phase his difficult decision.
"No luck, huh?" Minmei said. "Why don't you rest?"
"Minmei," he began, head lowered on his knees, "I don't know what else to do. This ship is like a big prison maze."
"Yeah," she said without looking up, "a big prison floating somewhere in space."
It was an opening he hadn't expected, a chance to make his plan look hopeful, to make her optimistic. "That's it, of course! We're in space!" He tried to sound as though he'd just realized the implications of that.
She looked startled. "What about it?"
"That's our way out of here! Out that air lock we found and into another, somewhere farther above!"
She didn't understand. "We can't do that; we don't have any spacesuits."
He was already on his feet, the Veritech helmet taken down from its resting place. "My flight helmet will protect me. I'll float out, get help, and come back down here for you. It's simple! It'll work!"
He flipped up his flightsuit collar and ran his fingers along the automatic closure to show her how it formed a pressure seal and a collar ring that could be fitted to the helmet's.
She looked terribly confused. "Yes, but-"
"Now, I'm going to need your help," Rick said as he led the way with the flashlight. "So I'll show you how to use the air lock controls, okay?"
She trailed behind unwillingly, hands clasped behind her, silently accepting his help as they began ascending the mountain of packing crates and boxes again.
They reached the Zentraedi-scaled utility shelf near the power panel; it was the width of a country lane. The control dials were the size of wagon wheels, the buttons as big as her bedroom window. "You sure you understand everything?" he checked again.
"Mm-hmm." Then she said in a rush, "Without oxygen tanks, though, Rick? How're you going to breathe?"
"There's air in the helmet and some in the suit. I won't need much time." But he hurried along before she could pinpoint the problem that he'd already spotted: They'd explored the ship in every direction and found no nearby air locks. From this one, it would strain his scant supply of air to the very limits to reach another, even if one lay just beyond their prison.
He turned and started off before she could say anything more. "Wait!" cried Minmei, running after him. "I'm having second thoughts about all this! Rick?"
She ran after him, back around the turn in the shelf. "Where're we going?"
"I want to show you: You can stand by this big viewport here so we can communicate if we have to." The viewport was bigger than a movie screen.
She gasped and threw both hands up to her mouth, feet going pigeon-toed, eyes enormous.
He prepared his most matter-of-fact voice. "Minmei, what is it now? You've gotta stop this constant worrying-huh?"
She wasn't looking at him. She was gaping over his shoulder at the viewport. He whirled. "Look… at… that!"
"I've never seen anything like it!" Minmei breathed. "What kind is it?"
At first he thought it was some kind of new prototype spacecraft, silvery and sleek, and he was already trying to figure a way to signal it. Then he was afraid it might be an alien ship, although it didn't look anything like a pod. But a second later he calmed down and saw what it really was, which was only slightly more fantastic than possibilities one and two.
"Offhand, I'd say it's a tuna," Rick ventured. "I didn't know they grew that big."
This one was as long as Mockingbird and appeared to be intact and whole. Why the forces of explosive decompression and vacuum hadn't turned it into something more like a radar-waved football, he couldn't imagine; he was unacquainted as yet with the very singular peculiarities of a Protoculture-generated force field.
It floated along like a schooner, as if it was keeping pace with them. "That sure is a big tuna fish," Minmei observed, licking her lips.
"Real big," Rick conceded. He turned to her, and they both yelled "Yay-yyy!" at the same instant, pressing their noses and palms up against the viewport. "I wonder if there's a way I could snag it out there," he said longingly.
They turned to each other, chorusing, "Tuna fish!"
Rick made sure the ring seal was as tight as he could make it. Seals at his wrists and ankles were reinforced with all the tape he'd been able to find and some turns of twine. The collar closure was wound tight with layer upon layer of cloth strips.
He realized he couldn't hear anything and opened the faceplate again. Minmei was yelling down to him, "Be careful out there! Wave when you're ready!"
He gave her the wave and closed the faceplate again, carrying his looped line back into the oversize air lock. Minmei said, "Here we go!" to herself and strained against a wagon wheel dial.
Rick did his best to keep calm as the inner hatch came down with a finality that made the deck jump and the air bled away. Next to him were a pair of heavy tanks of some kind; he clutched them close. He felt the ship's artificial gravity easing off him.
When the air was gone and the outer hatch was open, he took careful bearing and pushed himself off, trailing the long rope behind. His suit was already becoming a steambath.
The tuna was obliging in that it didn't move much, but his aim was off. He threw one of the tanks from him in one direction, Newton's third law driving him off in the other.