A crescendo of cries came from the doorway. Nead had failed to close the port in time; stragglers were leaping across the widening chasm between Bridge and deck. A last man clattered through the closing door; his ankle was trapped in the jamb and Rees heard the shin snap with sickening suddenness. Now a whole family tumbled off the Raft deck and impacted against the hull, sliding into infinity with looks of surprise…
Rees closed his eyes and clung to the Telescope.
At last it was over. The Raft turned into a ceiling above them, distant and abstract; the thin rain of humans against the hull ceased, and four hundred people had suddenly entered free fall for the first time in their lives.
There was a yell, as if from very far away. Rees looked up. Roch, burning club in hand, had leapt through the hole in the heart of the Raft. He fell through the intervening yards spreadeagled; he stared, eyes bulging, in through the glass at horrified passengers.
The huge miner smashed face-down into the clear roof of the Observatory. He dropped his club and scrabbled for a handhold against the slick wall; but helplessly he slid over the surface, leaving a trail of blood from his crushed nose and mouth. Finally he tumbled over the side — then, at the last second, he grabbed at the rough protrusion of a steam jet.
Rees climbed down from the Telescope and found Gord. "Damn it, we have to do something. He'll pull that jet free."
Gord scratched his chin and studied the dangling miner, who glared in at the bemused passengers. "We could fire the jet. The steam would miss him, of course, since he's hanging beneath the orifice itself — but his hands would burn — yes; that would shake him loose…"
"Or," Rees said, "we could save him."
"What? Rees, that joker tried to kill you."
"I know." Rees stared out at Roch's crimson face, his straining muscles. "Find a length of rope. I'm going to open the door."
"You're not serious…"
But Rees was already heading for the port.
When at last the huge miner lay exhausted on the deck, Rees bent over him. "Listen to me," he said steadily. "I could have let you die."
Roch licked blood from his ruined mouth.
"I saved you for one reason," Rees said. "You're survivor. That's what drove you to risk your life in that crazy leap. And where we're going we need survivors. Do you understand? But if I ever — even once — think that you're endangering this mission with your damn stupidity I'll open that door and let you finish your fall."
He held the miner's eyes for long minutes; at last, Roch nodded.
"Good." Rees stood. "Now then," he said to Gord, "what first?"
There was a stink of vomit in the air.
Gord raised his eyebrows. "Weightlessness education, I think," he said. "And a lot of work with mops and buckets…"
His hands around his assailant's throat and weapon arm, Decker turned to see the Bridge scaffolding collapse into its flimsy components. The great cylinder hung in the air, just for a second; then the steam jets spurted white clouds and the Bridge fell away, leaving a pit in the deck into which people tumbled helplessly.
So it was over; and Decker was stranded. He turned his attention back to his opponent and began to squeeze away the man's life.
On the abandoned Raft the killing went on for many hours.
15
The crowded ship's first few hours after the fall were nearly unbearable. The air stank of vomit and urine, and people of all ages swarmed about the chamber, scrambling, shrieking and fighting.
Rees suspected that the problem was not merely weightlessness, but also the abrupt reality of the fall itself. Suddenly to face the truth that the world wasn't an infinite disc after all — to know that the Raft really had been no more than a mote of patched iron floating in the air — seemed to have driven some of the passengers to the brink of their sanity.
Maybe it would have been an idea to keep the windows opaqued during the launch.
Rees spent long hours supervising the construction of a webbing of ropes and cables crisscrossing the Observatory. "We'll fill the interior with this isotropic structure," Hollerbach had advised gravely. "Make it look the same in every direction. Then it won't be quite so disconcerting when we reach the Core and the whole bloody universe turns upside down…"
Soon the passengers were draping blankets over the ropes, fencing off small volumes for privacy. The high-technology interior of the Bridge began to take on a homely aspect as the makeshift shanty town spread; human smells, of food and children, filled the air.
Taking a break, Rees made his way out of the crushed interior to what had formerly been the roof of the Observatory. The hull was still transparent. Rees pressed his face to the warm material and peered out, irresistibly reminded of how he had once peered out of the belly of a whale.
After the fall from the Raft the Bridge had rapidly picked up speed and reoriented itself so that its stubby nose was pointing at the heart of the Nebula. Now it hurtled down through the air, and the Nebula had turned into a vast, three-dimensional demonstration of perspective motion. Nearby clouds shot past, middle distance stars glided toward space — and even at the limits of vision, many hundreds of miles away, pale stars slowly drifted upwards.
The Raft had long since become a mote lost in the pink infinity above.
The hull shuddered briefly. A soundless plume of steam erupted a few yards above Rees's head and was instantly whipped away, a sign that Gord's ramshackle attitude control system was doing its job.
The hull felt warmer than usual against his face. The wind speed out there must be phenomenal, but the virtually frictionless material of the Bridge was allowing the air to slide harmlessly past with barely a rise in temperature. Rees's tired mind ambled down speculative alleyways. If you measured the temperature rise, he reasoned, you could probably get some kind of estimate of the hull's coefficient of friction. But, of course, you would also need some data on the material's heat conduction properties — "It's astonishing, isn't it?"
Nead was at his side. The younger man cradled a sextant in his arms. Rees smiled. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm supposed to be measuring our velocity."
"And?"
"We're at terminal velocity for the strength of gravity out here. I estimate we will reach the Core in about ten shifts…"
Nead delivered his words dreamily, his attention taken up by the view; but they had an electric effect on Rees. Ten shifts… in just ten shifts he would stare at the face -of the Core, and the destiny of the race would be made or lost.
He pulled himself back to the present. "We never did get to finish your training, did we, Nead?"
"Other events were more pressing," Nead said drily.
"Let's find a home where we will always have time to train people properly… time, even, to stare out of the window—"
Jaen started talking even before she reached them. "…And if you don't tell this insufferable old buffoon that he's left his sense of priorities back on the Raft, then I won't be responsible for my actions, Rees!"
Rees groaned inwardly. Evidently his break was over. He turned; Jaen bore down on him with Hol-lerbach following, hauling himself cautiously through the network of ropes. The old Scientist muttered, "I don't believe I've been spoken to like that by a mere Second Class since — since—"
Rees held his hands up. "Slow down, you two. Start from the top, Jaen. What's the problem?"
"The problem," Jaen spat, jerking her thumb, "is this silly old fart, who—"
"Why, you impudent—"
"Shut up!" Rees snapped.