No time, he thought, knowing that if they had, they’d be on their way right now. He walked over to the door. It was locked, but there was an override. He flicked open the panel, exposing the touchpad and punched in the first half of the code. 1.4.AJLL. The top line went green. His fingers tapped out the second half of the code. A.L.L.4.1.
Hannah’s idea. And thank the gods for it
The corridor was empty. It curved away out of sight The ship was on emergency lighting, so only one in three of the wall-mounted lamps was lit It gave the corridor a mottled look with patches of brightness and shadow, spokes on a giant wheel.
He stepped out and to the left The drugs he’d injected were doing their job, holding him together, but he felt strange, like a sleepwalker. That wasn’t good. He needed to be sharper than this.
Daniel stopped and reached up to touch the back of his head, his fingers tracing the bandages. They were wet Blood was seeping through and trickling down his back.
Shit! He should have frozen it somehow. But it was too late now. There was a feeder corridor just ahead of him. It led straight down through the crew quarters and into the bridge itself. If they were anywhere, they’d be there, because that was where the shuttle bay was. And if DeVore had any use for them, that’s where he’d want to keep them.
As he came to the branch, Daniel stopped, hearing noises. The heavy clunk of boots against a metal runged ladder. In the strange topography of the ship it was hard to know exactly where the noises were coming from. Up and down were almost arbitrary notions in space. And sound carried in strange ways inside a ship. Especially in these circumstances.
There was the faint murmur of voices, low and deep.
Cautiously he peeped around the corner, looking “down” as if into a well. Two morphs stood at the bottom of that well, their backs to him, the helmets of their suits pressed dose. They were huge, almost twice the height of a normal man, and built accordingly.
It would be easy to shoot the pair of them. Easy, yes, but stupid, because it would lose him the only advantage he had. Surprise. Okay. So flunk. What are you going to do?
He moved back, then studied the walls surrounding the opening. There were various hatches, but he hadn’t a clue where any of them led. There were airducts throughout the ship, but he wasn’t even sure whether any of them were big enough to crawl along.
Nor did he know whether his strength would hold out He was drawing on reserves as it was.
The voices murmured again, then, unexpectedly, he heard the sound of boots on rungs again, only this time he knew exactly where they were. The feeder corridor. One of the morphs was climbing the well, coming directly towards him. He took out the scalpel and unwrapped it, then stood back, waiting. As the morph’s head poked through the entrance, he stepped out and, putting one hand over its mouth, dragged the scalpel across its throat, digging deep. The creature’s eyes widened with shock. It made a muffled noise, one hand whipping out to grip Daniel’s shoulder, but, abandoning the scalpel, Daniel formed his free hand into a fist and jabbed at the morph’s nose, putting every ounce of his strength behind the blow.
The morph’s hand loosened and fell away. As it slumped forward, Daniel twisted to the side, ensuring that it didn’t fall on him and trap him there. Blood gouted from the wound at its throat It gurgled, one hand trembling as it reached out to grasp Daniel’s foot, then it lay still. Daniel stared at it, his back pressed to the wall, the blood pounding at the back of his head once more. It didn’t hurt, but he could feel the wetness dribbling down his nape and knew that he had opened up the wound again. He gave a little shudder, then, stepping carefully over the fallen morph, looked down the well. It was empty. The other morph had gone. He swung out onto the ladder, then climbed down, expecting at any moment to be discovered; for the morph above to start yelling, or for an alarm of some kind to go off. But nothing. Only the pounding in his head and the wetness, the slow draining of his life-force.
At the foot of the tunnel he stopped, getting his breath. He felt exhausted. Only pure will power was keeping him on his feet From here on he would have to trust to luck Yes, and to Emily’s gun, for the scalpel was buried deep in the creature’s neck He closed his eyes a moment, fighting the giddiness that threatened to overwhelm him, then flicked them open again. Directly ahead of him were the crew quarters, six cabins in all, arranged three to each side of the long corridor, and beyond them, through a secondary airlock, the bridge itself. Daniel began to walk, slowly, limping he was so tired, his left hand supporting him against the wall, his right hand holding the gun. He was sweating now. And his eyes kept blurring over. Malfunctioning, he thought, almost amused by the realisation. I’m fucking malfunctioning, like some broken machine.
He stopped, leaning heavily against the wall, then lowered his head. It felt like he was going to be sick. The drugs ...
What if I made a mistake? What if they’re the wrong drugs? Daniel looked up, his eyes slowly coming back into focus. And as they did a morph stepped from the doorway not ten feet in front of him and turned. He shot it through the head - a single neat shot in the centre of the forehead.
It dropped like a cut marionette.
But the noise of the shot reverberated on and on in that narrow space: like an alarm going off throughout the ship.
Trembling now, he staggered over to the open doorway and looked inside. Four figures lay on couches on the far side of the room, bound hand and feet, their mouths firmly gagged; Han Ch’in, Kuei Jen, Hannah and, to the far left, Emily. As he stepped into the room he saw their eyes widen with surprise.
He could hear shouting now and running feet.
The room seemed suddenly massive, more a hallway than a cabin. His head swam briefly, then cleared again.
Another shot. Give yourself another shot.
Throwing the gun down, he pulled out the injector and held it to his arm, giving himself both of the remaining shots.
For a moment he stood there, half doubled-up, then slowly, very slowly, his head cleared again.
Daniel looked across the cabin. Emily was staring at him, his eyes imploring him to do something.
He staggered across, then turned, looking about him for something to cut their bonds.
“Shit!”
They’d be here any moment He heard the ventilation duct that led from the airlock begin to hiss, which meant they were coming through from the bridge area.
He went back and, crouching down, picked up the gun again. There was nothing for it. He would have to shoot the bonds off them.
Returning to Emily’s side, he placed the mouth of the barrel tight against the bonds that secured her wrists. The explosion would burn her, certainly, but that couldn’t be helped.He twisted the gun around, so that it pointed straight out through the open doorway - the last thing he wanted was to have a bullet ricocheting about the cabin - and pulled the trigger. This time the detonation threw him back. He fell, going down awkwardly, the back of his head smacking against the side of one of the couches as he went down. And then blackness.
Joseph sat in Kim’s chair, reading K’s journals and notebooks at a speed that Karr, looking on, found disconcerting.
Jelka had taken the news badly. Kao Chen, concerned for her, had had Wang Ti come to Kalevala to comfort her. The two woman were upstairs even now, locked in a room together, grieving.
The gate between the worlds had been closed temporarily, but only after they had brought the bodies back from the Paradigm World. The two of them now lay in makeshift coffins on the desk in Kim’s study, an honour-guard of Osu minding them. In time they would be buried, but first there was the little matter of DeVore to deal with.