She moved beautifully, I had to agree. Carefully I separated myself from her, then almost simultaneously we grabbed the doorway and pivoted, making our way inside. Our three helpers followed with considerably less grace.
The Dungeon was an absolute mess; I’d left the electric blower motor encased in dust, and my tools were nowhere to be seen. Right in the center of the mess was a big cavity, where the filter itself had once been mounted.
“All right,” I said aloud, as much to steady myself as anything. “What we have to do here is first to clean things up. If all of this dust gets into the air, we’re going to have even more troubles than we’ve already got.” I turned to the Dragon. “I need some kind of bag.”
She cocked her head to the side for a moment, then turned to Gwen, one of our youngest and newest Artists. “You!” she declared, snapping her fingers. “In the green cabinet! Get me one of the black bags there! Now!”
Instantly Gwen leapt to obey, and in seconds I was holding a large body-shaped nylon bag, just about large enough, I judged, to be used to encase a recalcitrant slave. It held dust just fine, however. “Find my tools,” I directed as I began to scoop the soft gray goo up into the sack. “They are the last ones aboard. Most likely they’ve drifted off.”
“You and you!” the Dragon demanded, snapping her fingers once more. “Search the Dungeon immediately! You, go out and look in the corridor!”
It took several long minutes for me to get things cleaned up, and I used the time to try and plan ahead. The blower motor in front of me was the last one of any size aboard the Henhouse, I knew; the rest of the big ones had all been located on the station’s other half. So had the rest of the filters. The filter box itself had been a rather complex bit of plumbing, with a high-pressure inlet and four outlets that led to other levels. The filter box was gone, utterly gone; there was simply no way that I could get into the Control Room anytime soon. Somehow I’d have to improvise both the filter and the plumbing. But how?
I’d almost finished scooping dust when there was a clatter at the door. It was my toolbox, thank heavens, the hard metal objects inside rattling about freely in zero-gee. “It’s only about half-full,” Michelle explained contritely as she held it out to me. “I don’t think we found everything.”
Indeed they had not, but they had done a far better job than I’d hoped for. I had a screwdriver, a large pair of locking pliers, and several wrenches to work with. “Thank you!” I replied sincerely, looking up and smiling. I floated the box conveniently nearby, then turned back to confront the gaping hole in the air system with new confidence.
No ideas on how to actually make a repair, however, presented themselves.
After a long moment, the Dragon spoke up. “You are fixing this, yes?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes. I must fix it. But I’m not quite certain as to how. I’m missing a major part.”
There was a long silence, then the Dragon edged up alongside of me to where she could get a clear view. “You need a part for where the air blows out,” she said, “to get it into those other four pipes?”
“Right,” I agreed. “Plus, we need to improvise some kind of filter media. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated, just enough to get most of the crap out of the air.”
“Hmm.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then went darting away.
The damned pipes were in just about the worst of all possible configurations, I mused to myself while she was gone. They emerged from the filter box at ninety-degree angles. How was I going to handle the junctions? I might be able to rig up a box as a filter, but…”
Just then the Dragon returned, thrusting something soft and pink into my face. “Try this!” she ordered. “Will it work?”
I clicked my beak together angrily, then inhaled and exhaled a couple of times to maintain self control before looking at what the dominatrix had brought me. It was an inflatable toy sex doll. For a moment I wanted to laugh, then realization set in. I had to go from a main trunk to four vents…
My eyes widened; by god, it just might work at that! “Maybe,” I answered cautiously. “There’s going to be a lot of air pressure…”
“Guys bounce up and down on these things all of the time,” Michelle said. “They’re made tough. They have to be!”
“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “We could stuff the torso with pantyhose, and maybe make a filter that way. But how about the seals?” I pointed to the stub-pipe coming off of the main blower. “How am I going to make that work?”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Georgia came through. “Latex!” she declared. “Liquid latex! I have some of the really good stuff for a special client. I’ll go and get it!” And she was off.
Pretty soon most of the girls aboard the Henhouse were off collecting pantyhose, while the Dragon and I cut and pasted and stuffed as appropriate. The stub-pipe indeed proved to be the most difficult connection; we applied latex lavishly and thought nice thoughts about the modern chemical industry. Then finally everything was dry, and it was time to test our repair. I looked over at the Dragon. “Here’s hoping,” I said, my hand on the switch.
“It will hold,” she declared flatly. “It will.”
I nodded; of course, a mere rubber dummy would never defy the express wishes of the mighty Dragon! I turned our improvised system on, and slowly the motor began to turn. “Plastic Patty”, as her packaging declared her to be, began to take shape almost immediately. First the limp head stood erect and looked out over the world with unblinking blue eyes, and then her breasts began to inflate with excitement over the never-ending flood now pouring into her crotch. Almost immediately she began twitching and bouncing up and down, her mouth a little circle of eternal surprise, as air and more air flooded in and was filtered in her ample belly, only to go pouring out of her truncated arms and legs.
I shook my head sadly at the sight; the obscene thing would have gotten expelled from piloting school in a heartbeat, that was certain enough. But it seemed to be working, and for the moment that was plenty good enough.
“All right,” I said, turning away just as soon as I was fairly certain that the repair would hold for a while. “That’s the best we’re going to do here, I think. Now, we’ve got work on problem number two.”
“And that is?” the Dragon asked.
“Getting back into the Control Room, so that we can call for help.”
There wasn’t any elegant, safe method of regaining access to the Control Room, or at least there wasn’t one that any of us could think of. Instead, we had to do things the hard way. “All right, everyone!” I declared. “Are you all tied down?”
Up and down the corridor, attractive feminine heads nodded in the affirmative. Each and every one of my helpers had been issued a pair of fur-lined handcuffs with matching key, and each and every woman was now firmly attached to the handrail. A hurricane was about to blow down the hall, and I didn’t want to lose anyone.
“All right,” I repeated. “Does everyone have their patching materials ready?”
Again the heads bobbed solemnly, some of the ladies holding up various oddments that we thought might suffice to plug a leak. “One last time, then” I continued. “When I give the word, and only when I give the word, you are to do what?”
“Release ourselves,” the Dragon said for the rest. “Then follow you into the Control Room.”