The only point of stability was the end of the exit ladder. She gripped her end of the ladder and lowered herself hesitantly. The starship loomed above her. Space lay below and all around, separated from her by nothing but the fragile web of cables.
The suit's airgun hung against her leg, useless. If she lost her grip, the cylinder's spin would fling her out into space.
No airgun couid power her back.
"Kolya?"
"I am still here. It is still stuck. Hurry, please."
"Where are you?"
"Orient yourself in the same direction as the spin. I am just over your horizon."
She did as he asked, clutching the cables. She knelt there, balancing precariously. It was as if she were being flung headlong into the Milky Way. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.
"J.D. !••
She opened her eyes again. "Yes," she said. "I'm coming."
She had watched recordings of spacewalks; she had even experienced several direct sensory recordings. In every one, the effect had been of floating weightless in silent gentle space, with the stars a motionless background.
This was entirely different. She crawled across the cables with the stars blazing past beneath her. The spin gave her the perception that gravity was pulling her downward into an unending fall.
Her breath sounded harsh and sweat ran down her sides, more from fear than from exertion.
J.D. searched the upward-curving surface of the starship.
The cables shuddered beneath her hands and knees, loosened by the impact of the missile. In places the smooth stone surface had cracked, and broken rock projected toward her from above. One slab shifted and scraped against her back, startling her with its touch and vibration. She shrank down, gripping the cables.
266 Vonda N. McfnCyre
After a moment she pushed herself up again and crawled forward.
And then she saw the missile, a sleek shape designed for space-to-air flight, wedged in the cracked surface of the starship. His legs twined in the cables, Kolya struggled to loosen the missile. His perilous position terrified J.D. She hurried on.
"Kolya! Wail—"
"J.D. ' Bojemoi. I'm glad to see you."
She reached Kolya's side. The cosmonaut touched the flank of the missile and drew his gloved hand along its side. It shifted slightly, vibrating against the cables so they quivered in J.D.'s hands.
"Be careful.*'
"An elegant bit of warfare, this," Kolya said. "Go around to the other side, and brace yourself. Hook up your work line."
"Can it detonate?" J.D. asked.
"That I do not know."
"They couldn't have used an armed missile!"
"J.D., of course they could. Perhaps they thought that the threat alone would stop us. But I am not willing to bet the life of the starship on it."
J.D. saw what Kolya planned. She moved into place and hooked up her work line.
"I'm ready."
Suddenly the starship shuddered. The spinning stars wavered and brightened and disappeared. J.D. was surrounded by a multicolored, speckled, streaming haze. She gasped in wonder.
The starship had entered transition.
J.D. wanted nothing more than to lose herself in the sight of it. It flung itself toward her, upward, in an optical illusion of continuous approach that never came near. She shivered.
The cables flexed beneath her. She forced her attention away from transition, back to the missile and Kolya. But the cosmonaut, too, gazed downward past the cables, past the end of the missile, into transition.
"Kolya," J.D. whispered. "Kolya, we've got to get rid of this thing!"
STARFARERS 267
"So I felt . . ." Kolya did not look up. "But do we have the right to loose it in this unknown place?"
She wanted to follow his gaze. Instead, she reached out and touched his arm.
"Kolya," she said respectfully, without any irony or sarcasm, "Comrade Cherenkov, this missile could destroy Star-farer and all our friends."
Kolya looked at her. The faraway expression slowly faded from his face.
"Yes," he said finally. "You're right. Of course you're right."
Victoria slid between the crushed interior walls of the hill.
It was freezing. The cold fog of evaporating liquid nitrogen flowed past her feet. The smell was intense, of yeast and agar plates and nutrient medium.
"Over here. He's bleeding. I can't get it stopped."
She found Satoshi, awkwardly trying to hold Stephen Thomas above the unbreathable vapor, at the same time trying to staunch a bleeding head cut. There was blood all over, spattering Satoshi's hands and arms, covering Stephen Thomas's face, leaking between Satoshi's fingers.
Victoria pushed away bits of broken equipment, fragmented glass, crumbled rock foam. She reached Satoshi's side.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. He was bleeding, but he said it was just a scrape. We were on our way out, and he keeled over."
Stephen Thomas was heavily unconscious. His hand was cold, his pulse weak and fast. He must be badly wounded, there was so much blood, it covered his face and sprayed the front of his battered t-shirt and pasted his pale hair against his skin.
Rock foam panels grated together, rasping each other to
dust that sifted down in the dim light. The nitrogen fog crept
to Victoria's waist.
Stephen Thomas might have a concussion, or even a fractured skull. Victoria knew they should not move him, but she was afraid not to.
"Let's get him out of here."
They lifted Stephen Thomas and dragged and carried him
268 vonda N. Mclntyre
into the corridor. Satoshi tried to keep pressure on the head wound. A bright light glimmered along the top of the fog. It flashed in Victoria's eyes, dazzling her.
Zev appeared silently before them, carrying a flashlight.
He glanced at Stephen Thomas.
"Let me see." He moved Satoshi's hand. Blood pulsed from Stephen Thomas's forehead.
"Zev, don't, he'll bleed to death!"
Victoria and Satoshi both tried to reappiy pressure to the wound, but Zev pushed between them and leaned over their partner.
Victoria watched, shocked and appalled, as Zev bent down and placed his lips against the cut on Stephen Thomas's forehead. Before she could protest or push him away, he straightened up. Blood covered his mouth and his chin. Satoshi reached out to put pressure on the wound again, but Zev stopped him.
"Leave it be."
"What did you do?"
Victoria's horrified expression amused him. "I stopped the bleeding—what did you think?"
"I thought you were drinking his blood!"
Zev grimaced. "Do I look like a lamprey? Why didn't you—oh. This must be a difference between divers and people."
He pushed bloody, sticky blond hair away from the wound.
The cut had stopped bleeding.
"He is lucky," Zev said.
"Lucky!"
"This is not a serious wound—not on land. Divers fear head cuts because they bleed so, even a scratch like this one. Sometimes you can't stop them before the sharks smell the blood from far away, and come to eat you. But here there is no ocean and there are no sharks."
Stephen Thomas groaned. He opened his eyes, then closed them again.
"What-?"
"It's okay," Satoshi said. "We'll be out of here in a minute."
"This place looks so weird . . ." he muttered.
"Yeah, it's failing down around us. Let's go."
STARFARERS
269
In the uncertain light of Zev's flash, they helped Stephen
Thomas to the entrance, boosted him out of the ruins of Genetics Hill, and climbed after him.
As Victoria emerged from the frigid darkness of the ruined genetics building, the light from the sun tube abruptly faded.
Victoria looked up, as startled as a creature beneath a total solar eclipse.
She let out a cry half triumph, half sob.