"Dyrkin, get up here and help me!"
The floor righted itself, but the lights went out. A half dozen helmet lights came on in the gloom.
"Get that bulkhead open."
"Controls don't respond. It must have shorted out." "Somebody rig a bypass."
Hark's voice came over the communicator. "I got it."
The bulkhead rolled back. There were still lights in the next section of corridor. A public address was trilling urgently in nohan. The ship slammed sideways as if it had received a blow from a giant hammer. The men were thrown up against the left-hand wall. Those who were still struggling into their suits were thrown down on the deck.
"That's got to be a direct hit."
"You wouldn't know about a direct hit."
"The screens got to be buckling, though."
Rance hurried them along. "We've got to get back to the coffins if we don't want to make the jump on bare floor."
The men reached the next safety bulkhead. "This one's fused, too." "Hark…" "I got it."
The bulkhead opened on a sheet of flame that billowed out at them. It engulfed the trooper next to Hark. His suit was only half on, and he staggered back screaming with his underclothes on fire. Benset grabbed him and rolled him on the deck. Rance was yelling.
"Back! Back!"
The fleeing troopers ran headlong into a nohan fire-fighting crew in red ceramic armor. They were whistling in what sounded like the alien equivalent of panic, but at least they were headed for the fire.
"This way!"
They ran in single file down a narrow companionway. All around them, sirens were blaring, signifying widespread damage. There was a confused babble in their helmets. They came up against a third closed safety bulkhead. This time, the manual bypass refused to work, and Hark and Renchett had to crawl into the mechanism before they could get it to open. The others waited tensely.
"We ain't going to make it."
"Come on, you guys!"
"Will you shut the hell up and let us work? We're troopers, not riggers," Renchett called back tensely.
The bulkhead creaked open. It led to a free-fall shaft.
"If I remember right, this is the emergency shaft to one of the dropcraft bays," Dyrkin said.
As he spoke, the sound of the alarms changed.
"That's five minutes to jump."
"What do we do?"
"Into the shaft," Rance ordered.
"That's not the way to the messdecks."
"Don't argue, I got an idea."
The men ran to the end of the companionway and jumped. Even in their armor, they floated lightly down to a kneebend landing on the dropcraft launch deck. There were only two ships in a bay designed for five, but they had been locked down in preparation for the emergency. Rance pointed to the nearest craft.
"Inside, as fast as you can!"
"We can't fly that thing!"
"We're not going to fly it. We going to rack ourselves in and hope we can survive the jump in there. At least we'll be strapped down."
The ship reeled as it was hit repeatedly. Plasma cascaded down the far side of the bay, burning through anything it touched. There were more internal explosions.
"Are we capable of a jump?"
"Everybody inside! Now! There's no way we can make the coffins."
Dyrkin fell into step beside Rance as they ran for the grounded ship. "Is this going to work?"
"Your guess is as good as mine."
Training took over, and the troopers went to their places as if they were going on a mission. The restraint cages were snapped into place, and then the men waited. Renchett tried to strike a positive note in the terrifyi] communicator silence inside the ship.
"This may be almost as good as a coffin. At least we can't thrash around, and the suits should help some.
The calming voice was stretched out into an inhu scream. The damaged ship had gone into the jump.
The hallucinations were jagged and metallic, no doubt a result of the surroundings. Razor-sharp shards slice through tiny vulnerable figures as they scuttled through towering mazes of incredible pain. Steel jaws snapped and snarled and tore at naked flesh. Iron claws gouge^ 1 and ripped, spikes impaled, and needles slid through genitals and eyeballs. All the time they were falling, down toward other waiting rows of knives and teeth. Perhaps it was the noise that was the worst. A screeching, ripping scream, surface against surface, that con stantly rose in pitch and volume assaulted the ears and seared through the mind. Where the surfaces touched, sheets of flame and burning gas spiraled upward, broiling flesh and brain into red, raw, blind horror. The universe was a hollow steel drum being constantly pounded by some hammer of the gods. Metal. Metal. The prisoners of the hallucinations were chained to the interior of that drum. The vibrations rattled loose their teeth and caved in their chest cavities, shaking apart their very molecular structure. Ears and eyes and noses were bleeding. Blood ran down between their legs. It was oozing from their every pore. Hot blood was everywhere. They could taste it, boiling and angry against the background of the ever-present metal. As they drowned in blood, a terrible laughter started, a laughter so angry and mocking that it seemed to be a summation of all previous pain.
"At least it was a short jump."
Hark opened his eyes. He was no longer one with the pain of everyone around him. He was himself again, strapped in, inside the dropcraft. There was acrid smoke in the air from fires that flickered somewhere outside, but everything was real. It was Renchett who had spoken. He had unsnapped his restraint cage and removed his helmet. He was standing in the central aisle with a look of pure madness on his face. Abruptly, his eyes rolled back into his head, his legs gave way, and he crumpled to the deck. The laughter was still going on. That, too, was real and right in the ship with them. Hark unsnapped his own cage and tried to stand. His legs threatened to let him down, but he willed them to work for him. He tongued a whiff of pure oxygen from his helmet, and he felt a little better. He walked unsteadily to where Renchett had fallen. He knelt beside him, feeling his suit for some sign of life.
"Is he breathing?"
Hark looked up. Rance was standing behind him. The topman had also taken off his helmet. He looked green, and there was blood caked around his nose.
Hark shook his head. "I can't tell."
"Take off your helmet; the air's okay."
Hark put his ear to Renchett's mouth.
"Yeah, he's breathing."
"Okay, we'll see about his sanity later. Let's take a look at the others. Who's doing that goddamn laughing?" "It's down that way."
The laugher was clearly beyond help. His eyes had the vacancy of someone who had retreated into his own distant world and was never coming out. Hark wondered if the trooper was doomed to go on living in the hallucination for the rest of his life. Or maybe he had just seen the whole terrible joke. Hark was relieved that the man was a stranger to him. The next man was quite dead. His helmet had filled with blood. Hark started in momentary horror at the dark red faceplate. Had they been sharing a collective hallucination? How was that possible? Some of the others were coming to life. Cages were being unsnapped, and men were trying to stand. Most were going through the angry confusion that followed any jump. Renchett opened his eyes. He looked as sane as he had ever been.
"We made it?"
"We made it so far."
The final total of casualties was two dead, one insane, and one catatonic. Rance ordered them left where they were.
"We've no time to bury the dead. First we have to find out what our own prospects of life are."
Once all the survivors were back to normal, Rance led them out of the dropcraft. As they emerged onto the hangar deck, the Anah 5 let out a rumbling roar that ended in a drawn-out sigh. It was as if a part of the ship had just died.