When the rogue was suspended a couple of saunters away, he unstrapped his harness, found the release handle under the dome on his left and pulled open the exit hatch. He slithered around on the couch until he was facing out. Tarquinia handed him the coherer. He held the scope to his eye; there was nothing between him and the rogue but void now. He searched the hull for the two dark circles of the proximity sensors; he knew more or less where they had to be, but it still took three sweeps to find them.
Ramiro reached up and set the coherer to blue – far enough from infrared that it wouldn’t trigger the sensors – and checked that the spot was falling on his first target. Then he slid the tuner further along, to a point he’d marked earlier with a speck of adhesive resin: an ultraviolet frequency that would permanently damage the lattice structure of the photodetector.
The dark circle showed no visible change, but he’d expected none. He’d just have to trust the physics. He shifted his attention to the second sensor.
When he was done, Ramiro righted himself on the couch. The navigation console was predicting an impact with the Station in less than four chimes.
He put on his helmet. ‘We’re too late to use the explosives, aren’t we?’
Tarquinia’s voice came through the link, but he could hear a muffled version through the couch as well. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It took me longer to catch up than I thought it would.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ On balance, Ramiro was relieved; the whole idea had sounded like a dangerous gamble.
The rogue was drawing closer now; Tarquinia was using the manoeuvring engines to ease the gnat sideways. Ramiro waited for the rogue to turn skittish, but their presence had no effect on it at all. Either he really had killed the proximity sensors, or the saboteurs hadn’t even tried to make use of them.
Ramiro slid into a safety harness attached to a short rope. Tarquinia had brought the two gnats to within about three stretches of each other; Ramiro could see right through the rogue’s dome now, into its empty cabin. If he’d been weightless he would happily have attempted to jump straight for the rogue’s hull, but under this much acceleration he doubted that he would have made it a quarter of the way.
He poked his legs out through the hatch and reached around with his right foot for the panel that covered the boarding rope. He slid it aside and groped for the hook on the end of the rope. He’d chosen a cooling bag that left his feet uncovered, allowing him to re-form them easily into hands. He took hold of the hook, released the brake on the reel, then unwound what he judged to be a little more rope than he’d need.
Seated on the rim of the hatch with his legs dangling down into the void, leaning a little so he could watch himself through the dome, Ramiro tossed the hook. When it struck the other gnat’s dome he cringed, expecting the worst; if the rogue’s software was monitoring sound in the cabin, this would be the time for it to scupper the attempted boarding.
The rogue stayed put. Ramiro was puzzled, but he was beginning to suspect that the saboteurs had baulked at the idea of trying to automate a response to every contingency. Their overriding aim would have been to keep the rogue on course and on schedule; with the Station deserted and the Peerless so far away they had hardly been guaranteed visitors, and any extra layers of complexity in the software aimed at dealing with that possibility would have carried some risk of jumping at shadows. It was just bad luck for them that their plan had been detected so early; if he and Tarquinia had left the Peerless half a bell later, this whole encounter would have been impossible.
Ramiro gathered up the rope and tried again. On his fourth attempt, the hook passed through the ring beside the rogue’s hatch. The boarding rope hung down into the void; he didn’t want to tighten it so much that any jitter in the engines would snap it, but as it was the catenary looked dauntingly steep. He wound some rope back onto the reel, until the dip at the centre was no more than a couple of strides.
‘How long have we got?’ he asked Tarquinia.
‘A bit more than three chimes.’
Ramiro removed his safety harness. The rope that tied it to the cabin’s interior was too short for the crossing, but if he’d substituted a longer rope that would have put him in danger of swinging down into the gnat’s ultraviolet exhaust. Having had no training in using a jetpack, he’d decided that the bulky device would just be a dangerous encumbrance. If he lost his grip, or if the boarding rope snapped or came loose, the safest outcome would be for him to plummet straight down away from both vehicles and await rescue.
Tarquinia said, ‘Be careful.’
‘I intend to.’ Ramiro clambered out of the hatch and took hold of the boarding rope, swinging his legs up to share the load. He was more used to dealing with ropes in low gravity – as antidotes to drift rather than weight-bearing structures – but with four limbs in play he had no trouble supporting himself. With his rear eyes he gazed down at the stars beneath him; if he was going to react badly to the infinite drop it would be better to do it now than when he was halfway across. But though the sight was discomfiting, he didn’t panic or seize up. A long fall could only harm him if there was something below on which to dash open his skull. Nothing made for a softer landing than the absence of any land at all.
As he dragged himself out along the rope, Ramiro’s confidence increased. He wasn’t going to lose his grip for no reason, and the two gnats remained in perfect lockstep, their engines running as smoothly as he could have wished. His thoughts turned from the mechanics of the approach to the task ahead. With only three chimes remaining, it had passed the point where all he’d have to do to spare the Station was shut off the rogue’s engines. Its sheer momentum now would be enough to carry it to the impact point with only a few pauses’ delay – not long enough for the Station’s orbit to move it out of harm’s way. But the saboteurs might have made it difficult to change the flight plan quickly, so his best bet would be to plug his corset directly into the engine controller. That was not a smart way to try to fly a gnat to a specific destination, but all he had to do was swerve sharply enough to avoid both the Station and the Object. Once he was clear of both, he could kill the engines and Tarquinia would come and find him.
Ramiro felt the rope tilting disconcertingly as he approached the rogue feet first. He’d been looking up into the star trails, but now he raised his head; the hatch was just a few strides away. Clambering upside down into the cabin was going to be awkward, but he didn’t think it was worth trying to turn his body around. When the hatch came within reach, he took his right foot from the rope and stretched it towards the handle.
His leg jerked back before he was aware of the reason, then the pain arrived, driving everything else from his mind. He was seared flesh and a bellowing tympanum, skewered to an endless, unbearable present, begging for relief that never came.
‘Ramiro?’ Tarquinia repeated his name half a dozen times before he could form a reply.
‘I’m burnt,’ he said.
Tarquinia was silent for a moment. ‘They must have sabotaged the cooling system,’ she concluded. ‘Do you want me to come and get you?’
Ramiro had closed his eyes; he opened them now, and realised that he’d managed to hang onto the rope despite the shock. ‘No.’ His damaged foot was useless, but he still had three good limbs. ‘Can we pump some of our own air through?’
‘There isn’t time,’ Tarquinia said flatly.