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“Can’t,” said another voice. “It’s still using thrusters. Stop moving, dammit, so’s I can focus on you!”

He had no intention of stopping. Behind him an Illensan food tank, touched briefly by the tractor beam, was rushing towards him. He used the thrusters at full power, not caring which direction he took so long as it would avoid a collision with that hurtling chlorine bomb. An instant later he crashed into a 200-unit bale of Hudlar sprayers.

In spite of the gravity-free state of the freight hold, the mass and inertia of a spinning Tralthan body was considerable. So was that of the food sprayers, several of which burst open in a great, soft explosion of nutrient paint that drove the others apart and into the path of the Illensan tank. The jagged edge of a broken sprayer must have ruptured it because there was another and greater pressure explosion and, as the constituents of the Hudlar and Illensan food reacted chemically with each other, a rapidly expanding cloud of yellow-brown, hissing and boiling gas began drifting towards the open cargo lock.

“Cut all tractors to the ship,” said a voice urgently. “We can’t see through this muck …!”

The steady procession of freight items that were still moving past him into the opaque cloud around the cargo lock and continuing through it — but not all of them. Some were striking the rim and bursting open with enough force to knock subsequent items off-course. The sounds of collisions and pressure explosions were continuous and the toxic cloud was growing rapidly, shooting out fat, yellow-brown filaments and threatening to engulf the entire freight hold within minutes.

Hudlars could survive the environments of most of the Federation planets as well as the vacuum of space, but contact with chlorine was instantly lethal to them.

Somewhere a siren came suddenly to life, its short, urgent blasts reinforcing a new voice that was repeating, “Contamination alarm, major oxygen-chlorine incident Loading Bay Twelve. Decontamination squads Two through Five to Bay Twelve at once …”

“Urgent to all Hudlar cargo handlers,” the first, authoritive voice returned. “Evacuate your hold immediately and take cover in—”

“Duty officer, Trivennleth,” a new voice broke in. “We cannot get them all inside in time. Less than a quarter will reach safety. Propose pulling free with airlocks open, changing attitude ninety degrees using maximum lateral thrust port-side bow rather than main drive to minimize structural damage to the hospital—”

“Do it, Trivennleth!” the first voice replied. “All cargo bay personnel, reseal your suits and grab hold of something solid. Massive decompression imminent …”

Above the braying of the siren, Gurronsevas could hear a great metallic creaking and groaning from around the cargo lock as the freighter’s lateral bow thrusters applied lateral pressure to push the interface surfaces apart. Suddenly there was the high-pitched whistle of escaping air that sucked away the obscuring clouds momentarily, revealing a dark, widening crescent where the airlock seals on one side had been pulled apart, then he felt himself being sucked towards the opening with the other loose pieces of cargo.

For an instant it seemed that every tank and sprayer in the vicinity was hitting him and splashing his suit with nutrient, then suddenly he was outside and the objects were drifting away from him.

If he had been wearing a heavy-duty suit, Gurronsevas knew that he would not have survived. But the lightweight protective envelope had been flexible enough to remain undamaged, although the same could not be said for its wearer. His left flank and outer surfaces of his medial and hind limb on that side felt like one great, livid bruise, and he had the feeling that it would feel worse before it felt better.

To take his mind off his discomfort, Gurronsevas moved his eyes to the few remaining areas of his helmet that were not obscured by paint so that he could watch what was happening while he awaited rescue.

The projecting structure of Bay Twelve’s cargo lock had suffered a minor deformation when the freighter had twisted itself free, but the seal was still open and projecting a misty cone of escaping air mixed with pieces of unsecured cargo which were colliding and bursting against each other. Trivennleth had turned through ninety degrees and was lying parallel with the hospital’s outer hull. By comparison the freighter’s hold was only a fraction of the volume of the unloading bay and must have been airless by now, because its lock showed no signs either of mist or escaping cargo.

Its duty officer had acted decisively and well, Gurronsevas thought, and wondered why the Captain had not taken charge during the emergency. He was considering the possibility that the commanding officer had been the person he had left sharing the recreation deck with the Hudlar intern when he became aware that a voice in his headset was talking about him.“… And where is that stupid Tralthan?” it was saying angrily. “Trivennleth’s crew are safe in vacuum, no casualties. The same with our oxy-breathing handlers. Senior Dietitian Gurronsevas, come in please. If you’re still alive, respond dammit …!”

It was then that Gurronsevas discovered that his suit had not escaped entirely without damage. The communicator’s Transmit light would not come on.

Not only was his air running dangerously low, nobody would be able to hear his calls for help.

CHAPTER 11

It was completely incredible, Gurronsevas told himself angrily, that the Federation’s foremost exponent of the art of multi-species cuisine was going to end his life asphyxiating inside a spacesuit smothered in Hudlar nutrient. No matter how subtly worded the manner of his death might be, as the final entry in a professionally distinguished life it was unfair, unsuitable and undignified. He could only guess at the kind of farewell message some of his less serious-minded colleagues would inscribe on his Pillar of Memory. But as yet he felt far too angry and embarrassed to be really fearful. Surely there must be some means of signalling his predicament other than by radio. But the voices in his receiver — which, unlike the stupid transmitter, was working perfectly — were saying otherwise.

“Gurronsevas, come in please,” said one of them. “If you can hear me but cannot respond, release your distress flare …Still no reply, sir.”

“You’re forgetting that it’s a hospital suit,” a second voice said, “for interior use only. It doesn’t carry flares. And Gurronsevas had no reason to draw one because it wasn’t expecting to leave the bloody hospital! But it is wearing a short-duration thruster pack. You know what a Tralthan looks like so look for it. This one has a thruster pack and will be moving independently with respect to the general drift of cargo and trying to return to the cargo lock, if it is conscious and uninjured, that is.”

“Or still alive.”

“Yes.”

Gurronsevas tried to ignore the pessimistic turn the conversation was taking and concentrated instead on the helpful advice it contained. The endless metal landscape of the hospital structure, the blunt, torpedo shape of the Hudlar freighter, and the cloud of dispersing cargo, some of it still steaming and spraying out a thick mist of chlorine or nutrient paint, was wheeling grandly around him. As the first voice had suggested, he should begin by moving independently of the material surrounding him. But first he would have to use the thrusters to kill his spin.

Because of his minimal experience of maneuvering with a thruster pack, it required several minutes as well as a considerable waste of fuel, which the indicators showed to be already dangerously low, before he was able to neutralize his spin. He estimated that at best he had only enough thrust to move himself, slowly, for a few minutes and a distance of a few hundred yards, and that his terminal velocity would fall far short of that needed to break free of the expanding cloud of cargo debris, much less bring him back to the unloading bay before his air ran out.