"I've heard of snarled lines giving false readings on sensors, too," Tera putin. "He might wind up fixing a hull plate that didn't need it."
"That won't happen," Chort assured her. "I will know the damage when I reachit."
"I'm sure you will," Everett said, lumbering down the corridor toward the aftladder. "I'll see if Jones can use a hand."
There were indeed three vac suits in the locker, one of which fit Jones justfine, and with Everett's help he was suited up in fifteen minutes. Fiveminutes after that he and Chort were in the wraparound, the airlock doors at both endswere sealed, and I was on the bridge with the hull monitor cameras extended ontheir pylons.
And we were set. "Ready here," I called into the intercom. "Revs, go ahead andshut down the gravity."
"Right," Nicabar acknowledged from the engine room, and I felt the suddenstomach-twisting disorientation as the Icarus's grav generator went off-line.
I double-checked the airlock status and keyed for the suit radios. "It's allyours, Chort. Let him out easy, Jones."
Given that Jones had a Craea at the other end of his line, my automaticwarningwas probably both unnecessary and even a bit ridiculous. Before the outerhatch was even all the way open Chort was out on the hull, pausing briefly to snaphis secondary line into the connector slot and heading nimbly across thewraparound, using his hull-hooks and stickypads as if he'd been born in zero gee.
"Mind if I watch?" a voice asked from the doorway behind me.
I turned my head. Shawn was floating just outside the door, gazing past me atthe monitors, an intense but oddly calm look on his face. "No, come on in," Iinvited.
"Thanks," he said, maneuvering his way into the room and coming to a stophovering beside my chair. "There aren't any monitors in the electronics shop, and I've never seen a Craea spacewalk before."
"It's definitely a sight to behold," I agreed, trying not to frown as Istudied his profile. The twitchy, nervous, sarcastic kid who'd been such a pain in theneck while we were waiting outside the Icarus had apparently been kidnappedsometime in the last six hours and replaced by this near-perfect copy. "Howare you doing?"
He smiled, a little shamefacedly. "You mean how come I'm not acting like ajerk?"
"Not exactly the way I would have put it," I said. "But as long as you bringit up...?"
"Yeah, I know," he said, his lip twisting. "That's another reason I wanted totalk to you, to apologize for all that. I was... well, nervous, I guess. Youhave to admit this is a really strange situation, and I don't do well withstrange situations. Especially early in the morning."
"I have trouble with mornings sometimes myself," I said, turning back to themonitors. "Don't worry about it."
"Thanks. He's really good, isn't he?"
I nodded. Chort was moving slowly along the edge of the cowling that coveredthe intersection of the two spheres, his faceplate bare centimeters above the hullas he glided over the surface. Here and there he would stop for a moment, touching something with his long fingers and occasionally selecting one of thesqueeze tubes from the collection clamped to his forearms. I thought aboutgetting on the radio and asking what he was doing, but decided against it. Heclearly knew his business, and there didn't seem any point in distracting himwith a lot of questions. I made a mental note to pick up a set of zoomablehull cameras at our next stop.
The whistle from the radio speaker was so unexpected that Shawn and I bothjumped, a movement that the zero gee magnified embarrassingly. "There it is,"
Chort said as I grabbed my restraint straps and pulled myself firmly down intothe chair again. "A small pressure ridge only. Easily repaired."
He set to work with his squeeze tubes again. "I'll never understand about thatstuff," Shawn commented. "If it's so good at fixing hull cracks and ridges, whynot coat the whole hull with it?"
"Good question," I agreed, throwing him another surreptitious glance. Calm, friendly, and now even making intelligent conversation. I made another mentalnote, this one to restrict all my future interactions with him until afterhe'd had his morning coffee or whatever.
If Chort was a representative example of Craean spacewalking ability, it wasno wonder they were so much in demand. In less than ten minutes he'd sealed theridge, tracked two jaglines radiating from that spot, and fixed them as well.
"All secure," he announced. "I will check the rest of the sphere, but Ibelieve this is the only problem."
"Sounds good," I said. "Before you go any farther forward, you might as wellgoaft and run a quick check on the cargo and engine sections."
"Acknowledged," Chort said, turning around and heading back over the side of the cargo sphere. He paused once, moved down the side toward the wraparound—
And suddenly, with another stomach-wrenching disorientation, I fell down hardinto my chair.
Shawn yelped in surprise and pain as he dropped like a rock to the deck besideme. But I hardly noticed. Incredibly, impossibly, the Icarus's gravity fieldhad gone back on.
And as I watched in helpless horror, Chort slammed against the side of thecargosphere, caromed off the wraparound, and disappeared off the monitor screen.
"Revs!" I barked toward the intercom, twisting the camera control hard over.
"Turn it off!"
"I didn't turn it on," he protested.
"I don't give a damn who turned it on!" I snarled. I had Chort on the screennow, hanging limply like a puppet on a string at the end of his secondary lineat the bottom of the artificial "down" the Icarus's gravity generator hadimposed on this small bubble of space. "Just shut it down."
"I can't," he bit back. "The control's not responding."
I ground my teeth viciously. "Tera?"
"I'm trying, too," her voice joined in. "The computer's frozen up."
"Then cut all power to that whole section," I snapped. "You can do that, can'tyou? One of you?"
"Working on it," Nicabar grunted.
"Computer's still frozen," Tera added tautly. "I can't see him—is he allright?"
"I don't know," I told her harshly. "And we won't know until we get him back—"
I broke off suddenly, my breath catching horribly in my throat. Concentratingfirst on Chort's fall, and then on getting the gravity shut down, it hadn'teven occurred to me to wonder why Chort had fallen that far in the first place. WhyJones hadn't had the slack in the primary line properly taken up, or for thatmatter why he hadn't already begun reeling the Craea back into the wraparound.
But now, looking at the outside of the entryway for the first time since theaccident, I could see why. Hanging limply over the sill of the hatchway besidethe equally limp primary line was a vacsuited hand. Jones's hand.
Not moving.
"Revs, do you have a suit back there?" I called, cursing under my breath, tryingto key the camera for a better look inside the entryway. No good; Jones hadturned the overhead light off and the shadow was too intense for the camera topenetrate.
"No," he called back. "What's the—oh, damn."
"Yeah," I bit out, my mind racing uselessly. With the entryway open to space, the wraparound was totally isolated from the rest of the ship by the pressuredoors at either end. I could close the hatch from the bridge; but the wayJones was lying, his hand would prevent it from sealing.
The only other way to get to him would be to depressurize one side of the shipso we could open the door. But we couldn't depressurize the sphere—there wereonly two vac suits left for the four of us still in here, and I wasn't aboutto trust the room or cabin doors to hold up against hard vacuum. And without asuit for Nicabar, we couldn't depressurize the engine room, either. My eyes flickeduselessly over the monitors, searching for inspiration—
"He's moving," Nicabar called suddenly. "McKell—Chort's moving."