Channa paused, caught by the emotion in his voice. "You are the most manipulative creature it has ever been my misfortune to meet," she said coldly, clipping a reel of optical fiber to her suit. Simeon sighed. "Look, I'm not a total idiot. The tug will shield me on one side, and I'm only two strides away from the hatch."
"Me? Manipulative? I'm supposed to keep my brawn from risking its fluffy little tail."
Carefully breaking boot contact, she took the first step to the hatch, and the second. Then clipped both feet free and floated neatly to the opening to examine it more closely. The magnetic grapple built into the left forearm of her suit twitched, with a feeling like a light push. The contact disk flicked out, trailing braided monofilament, and impacted on the door of the bay. She activated the switch that reeled her in. Patsy followed with an expert somersault leap that landed her less than an arm's length from her friend.
"Showoff," Channa said.
"You ain't the only one with walk experience," Patsy said. Her voice was light, but the arc pistol was ready as she peered within the half-open hatch. "Coburn to rescue squad. We're about to enter the Hulk. Stand by."
Channa licked dry lips. It's the suit air, she told herself firmly. Always too dry. She spoke aloud to Simeon. "You're just jealous of me, Bellona Rockjaw, heroine of the space frontier."
"I'm right there with you, Channa," Simeon said with a trace of wistfulness in his voice.
"Hmmph."
She struggled to get through the narrow opening, grunting with effort.
"Do not get stuck," he advised her.
Channa started to giggle. "Do not make me laugh," she admonished. "And stop reading my mind."
With the unpleasant sensation of metal and plastic scraping against each other, she pushed through at last. The chamber had held maintenance equipment of some sort long ago; there were feeds and racks for EVA suits, and empty toolholders. Only a single strip lit the dim interior. On the hullside wall was a massive, clumsy-looking airlock, and a blinking row of readouts beside it.
"Some systems still active," she said. "Patsy, prop yourself against the frame and see if you can't push the hatch door open."
"Nevah get through iffen I doan," the older woman muttered. "Makes me wish I were flat-chested, too."
"She is not," Simeon replied vehemently.
Channa grinned, but Patsy Sue was busy getting herself into position in the hatchway, attaching her filament to the inside of the hatch before she grabbed the top of the frame with both hands and gave a mighty heave. The hatch did not so much as budge a millimeter.
"No, it's jammed tighter'n… nemmind. You got a polarizin' faceplate?" Patsy asked.
"Standard."
"Okay. I'll try somethin' subtle."
Coburn stepped back, raised the arc pistol and fired four times. The bar of actinic blue-white light was soundless in vacuum, but a fog of metal particles exploded outward like glittering donuts centered on the aiming points. Patsy nodded in satisfaction and twisted herself around to brace her feet on the hatch and grip two handhold loops on the hull nearby. Channa could hear her give a grunt of effort, and the hatchway flipped out into space, tumbling end-over-end.
"Nice brand of subtle you wield," Channa said.
"Think nothin' of it," Patsy said, pretending to blow smoke off the arc pistol's barrel. "Any luck?"
Channa bent over the touchpad beside the airlock. "Not much. Ah, that's got it. Simeon, how's the transmission holding up?"
"Loud and clear, since Patsy got the door out of the way. I may lose Patsy's signal further inside. Maybe you should wait? There're four more tugs closing in on your position."
Channa ignored the pleading note, not without a pang of guilt. But what the hell, the situation is irresistible, she admitted. She had been trained as an administrator-partner-troubleshooter, but most of the time, circumstances were fairly conventional. Not boring; she wouldn't have made it through brawn training if she were bored with it. On the other hand, she wouldn't have been picked if there weren't an element of the adventurer in her psychological profile.
"String this, would you, Patsy?" she said, passing over the reel. The optical fiber was encased in woven tungsten-filament, with receptor-booster chips at intervals. Barely thicker than thread, it had a breaking strain of several tons. Tacked to the wall behind them, neither her implants nor Patsy's suit communits could fade out. Patsy welded the outer end to the hull beside the hatch, using the spot heater in her construction suit's gauntlet.
"Ready?" Channa said, taking a deep breath.
"Surely am." Patsy came up behind her, arc pistol ready.
"Standing by," Simeon said.
The keypad lights blinked green and amber. "I think it's saying there's some doubt about the atmosphere," Channa said. "It's definitely pressurized in there." She attached a sensor line to the surface.
"They're in trouble," Simeon said. "Hear that whining?" Channa shook her head, and felt him boost the audio pickups of her helmet. A faint tooth-grating sound came through.
"What is that?"
"That's the main internal drive cores," Simeon replied grimly. "The powerplant's down, but they're still superconducting. The alloys they used back then were tough. They built 'em more redundant then, too."
"Which means?"
"Which means… to stop this thing, the pilot put everything the powerplant had into the drive. The exterior coils blew before it could go all out. Now the internal coil's going to go."
"Bad news," Patsy said.
"It's going to blow?" Channa asked apprehensively. The energies needed to move megatons between stars were immense.
Simeon listened. "Not just yet, but soon. Building, but the noise will be considerably more audible before I'd panic. Get that inner hatch open, woman! I'll send the troops. You've got about thirty minutes before you have to be off."
The interior airlock slid open. The two women kept their helmets firmly on as it slid down again and the air hissed in. Channa looked down at the readouts on her sleeve and punched for analysis.
"Oxygen's down, CO2's way up," she said grimly. "Necrotic ketones, or so it says-decay products. I'd hate to have to breathe this stuff. Could anyone breath it and live?"
"Depends on natural tolerances," Patsy replied. "And it might not be bad further in." Being an environmental maintenance specialist, she knew the parameters. "From the volume of n.k.'s, their scrubbers must have been down for a while."
The inner hatch of the airlock slid open. Now that they were no longer in a soundless vacuum, the exterior pickups of their suits relayed the hiss. Unfortunately, a high-pitched whine was now equally audible: the kind that made the hair on your arms lift up. Channa looked down the long corridor, shabby with age and dim with the emergency glowstrips' ghostly blue light.
Flies buzzed around them. Patsy slapped one against the wall.
"Blowflies," she said after a good look. There was a faint quaver in her voice. "Had 'em on the ranch."
"Sound pickup says there are live ones down there," Channa said. "Let's go."
Doctor Chaundra's hands flew over his keypad as he made notes. He was a smallish brown-skinned man with delicate bones and a precise, scholarly manner.
"Fifty maximum, you say?"
Simeon switched back to the implant data filling another part of his consciousness. Channa's breathing sounded ragged; her heartbeat was elevated, and the stomach-acid level indicated suppressed nausea. Simeon wasn't surprised. The things she was seeing made him feel a little sick in an entirely nonphysical way that was still highly unpleasant.