He climbed up the sphere like a monkey, heading for the flattened area. The cutouts were more conveniently spaced than the rungs of some ladders he'd used, and he was in excellent condition. He wasn't even breathing hard-well, not from exertion, anyway-when he reached the top.
He stared at what was undeniably a hatch. There had to be some way to open it, but-aha! His eye lit on the faint gleam of a green light. It illuminated what was obviously a heavy throw switch, and he reached for it before common sense could make him hesitate. It moved easily, and something inside the sphere whined.
Nothing else happened for a moment ... and then he almost fell as the hatch whipped open with viperish suddenness. His hands flashed out, and he barely managed to catch himself on the hatch frame, but his curse of astonishment died half-uttered as he stared down into the sphere's dimly lit interior.
Water sloshed below him, several inches deep and rising as he watched. Clearly the sphere had been damaged, and he snatched a quick, wondering impression of strangely arranged readouts and gleaming surfaces. There were far fewer switches than he would have expected in a ... in a whatever the hell this thing had been part of, but what demanded and caught his attention was its crew.
They were human.
Well, he corrected himself, humanoid. He wondered why he was rejecting the obvious possibility that this was the remnant of some advanced aircraft, but he wasn't even tempted to believe that comforting answer. Which made the humanoid shape of its crew even more confusing.
He jumped despite himself as a more powerful light source switched on soundlessly, as if opening the hatch had caused it. And perhaps it had, he thought. The dim glow he'd first seen was suspiciously like the low-intensity lights he'd seen in many a night-flying cockpit. But the new light showed him something else; the crew hadn't escaped the damage which had smashed their vehicle.
The sight of all that blood banished his hesitation, and he dropped through the hatch. Cold water splashed as he landed, and he swore again as the edge of a submerged console bruised his bare left heel. Obviously he was standing on what had been a bulkhead, and the periphery of his brain noted that the "bulkhead" in what would have been an overhead position for the people strapped into the sphere's heavily padded seats was transparent ... from this side. Interesting. It was as opaque as any other part of the surface from the outside.
He shook the thought aside and bent over the two motionless figures. One of them would never move again, he thought grimly, feeling no desire to remove the shattered, blank-visored helmet which concealed that head. The thick, viscous flow oozing redly out of it made what he would have seen all too gruesomely evident, and the pearl-gray, one piece garment-uniform? flight suit?-was drenched in red from a dozen gaping wounds.
He turned to the other, and his eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise as he noted the unmistakably feminine curves of the body. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that he might find a woman-or a female, anyway-in here. Surprise held him motionless for a moment, but then the breasts under the red-streaked, skintight garment moved, and he realized this one, at least, was still alive!
His fingers slipped uselessly over the smooth, featureless helmet. Damn it! The thing was secured to her uniform somehow, but how? He was afraid to use force, and his fingers quested for some release mechanism. The water was higher on his calves, and he wondered if only his imagination made the sphere seem to be moving more heavily. Damn, damn, damn! How was he supposed-
A searching fingertip touched an unseen stud, and suddenly the helmet was loose. He dragged it away, and a spring-loaded cable snatched it from his abruptly frozen hands.
Chestnut hair spilled free, framing an ashen, high-cheeked, undeniably human face. The hair was stringy and stiff, as if long unwashed, but it was incontrovertibly human hair. He touched it shakenly, then jerked his hand back as the eyelids fluttered. They opened just a crack, revealing deep-blue, almost indigo eyes with pinpoint pupils, and the pale lips whispered something he couldn't quite catch. It sounded almost like "Anwar."
He started to speak, but the eyes closed again and she was gone. He reached out quickly, touching her throat, and exhaled a sigh as he felt the faint, rapid flutter of a pulse. She was still alive.
But it didn't look like she would be for long, he thought grimly. He'd seen many badly injured people in his time, and the bright river of red welling over the chest of her gray garment looked bad-especially in conjunction with that pale face and those contracted pupils and bloodless lips.
There was a button on the buckle joining her web of harness straps, and he punched it. The catch sprang obediently, and he pawed the straps aside. He saw no closures or fastenings on her flight suit, and he had no time to look for any, so he drew a worn, carefully tended Buck knife from his pocket, opened it one-handed, and slipped the keen, five-inch blade into the tight-fitting garment's neck.
His eyebrows rose again at the thin fabric's incredible toughness. He didn't know what it was, but it was tougher than anything he'd ever seen, and he set his teeth, grunting with effort and mentally apologizing to his "patient" as his sawing motion jerked at her. She groaned softly, but he dared not stop.
The fabric yielded stubbornly, but it yielded. He sawed away, and discovered that the garment covered a very human torso. He felt a brief flush of irritation with himself as he noted how attractively this "alien" was built, but it faded abruptly as he finally bared the wound.
His face twisted as he watched blood welling from the ragged puncture under her left breast. He leaned closer, and his face tightened further as he heard a faint, unmistakable whistle each time she breathed. A sucking wound. At least one lung, then. He was surprised the flow was so slow, but he recognized the bright red of arterial blood.
He stared down helplessly. There wasn't a thing in the world he could do for her-not with that. He was bitterly familiar with wounds, but he was no corpsman, and Amanda had no facilities for any serious injury.
He had no idea how long he stood there, enraged and frozen by his utter inability to save her, but a sudden lurch dragged him back to awareness. The water had risen to his knees, lapping about the seated woman's thighs, and the sphere's motion felt emphatically water-logged. He cursed once, viciously, and wedged a handkerchief over the wound, dragging the tightly fitted garment back over it to hold it in place. He'd probably kill her by moving her, but she was dying anyway, and he couldn't just leave her here. He got her up into a fireman's carry, cringing mentally as he considered the additional damage he might be doing, and reached up for the hatch.
It was a hard climb under her slight, limp weight, but he managed somehow. He paused there, gasping for breath, and the edge of Amanda's deck was far higher on the sphere than it had been. The thing was clearly sinking, and he heaved on the mooring line with another mental apology-this one to his ketch-as he scrubbed her fiberglass against the metal and stepped across to his boat with a feeling of boundless relief.
He slid the injured woman to the deck as gently as possible, goaded by ominous gurgles from the sphere behind him. It was going fast now; the flooding must have passed the critical point ... and the damned mooring line was jammed! He worked at in the darkness, his eyes still adjusted to the brilliance inside the sphere, cursing himself for the haste with which he'd made fast. How the hell- There! The jammed strands slid apart, and he fell backward as the line snaked free.
Just in time. The sphere was sinking quickly, the lip of the hatch almost level with the water. Even as he picked himself up, the first wave slopped over the sill and the sphere filled noisily, spinning at last as it slid beneath the waves.
The light within it didn't die, and he leaned over the side for a moment, watching the bright glow sink into the depths and regretting its loss. God, what he wouldn't have given to turn that thing over to-