"I'll be there." Her hands felt like ice as she grabbed a stanch- ion to swing herself up. She glanced at the screen. The object exploded. It looked like a starburst, and it was growing.
"I can see it now," Gaby said. "It's still attached to Themis. It's like a long arm or a boom, and it's opening out. I think-"
"The docking facilities!" Cirocco yelled. "They're gonna grab us! Bill, start the engine sequence, stop the carousel, get ready to move."
"But it'll take us thirty minutes-"
"I know. Move!"
She caromed off the viewport and into her seat, reached for her microphone.
"All hands. Emergency status. Depressurization alert. Evacuate the carousel. Acceleration stations. Strap in." She slammed the alarm button with her left hand and heard the eerie hooting begin in the room behind her. She glanced to her left.
"You too, Bill. Get suited."
"But-"
"Now!"
He was out of his seat and diving through the access hatch. She turned and called over her shoulder.
"Bring my suit back with you!"
The object was visible out the window now, approaching fast. She had never felt so helpless. By overriding the attitude control system's programing she was able to fire all the thrusters on the side of the ship facing Themis, but it was not nearly enough. The great mass of Ringmaster barely moved. Other than that, she could only sit and monitor the automatic engine sequencing and count the seconds as they dragged by. In a short time she knew they could not escape. That thing was big, and moving faster.
Bill appeared, suited, and she scrambled into SCIMOD to don her own suit. Five anonymous figures sat belted to acceleration couches, not moving, staring at the screen. She clamped her helmet, and heard chaos.
"Quiet down." The chatter died away. "I want silence on the suit channel unless 1 ask you to speak."
"But what's happening, Commander?" It was Calvin's voice.
"I said no talking. It looks like an automatic device is going to pick us up. This must he the docking facilities we were looking for."
"It looks more like an attack to me," August muttered. "They must have done this before. They must know how to do it safely." She wished she could convince herself of that. it didn't help her credibility when the whole ship shuddered.
"Contact," Bill said. "It's got us."
Cirocco hurried back to her station, just in time to miss seeing the grapple sweep over them. The ship jumped again, and awful noises came from the rear.
"What did it look like?"
"Great big octopus tentacles without the suckers." He sounded shaken. "Tthere were hundreds of them, waving around all over."
The ship gave an even greater lurch, and more alarms began to sound. A firestorm of red lights spread across her controls.
"We've got a hull rupture," Cirocco said, with a calmness she did not feel. "Losing air from the central stem. Sealing off pres- sure doors 14 and IS." He hands moved over the controls with- out conscious guidance. The lights and buttons were far away, seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The accelerometer dial began to spin as she was thrown violently forward, then to the side. She came to rest on top of Bill, then struggled back to her scat and strapped in.
When the buckle clicked around her waist the ship jerked backwards again, worse than before. Something came through the hatch behind her and hit the viewport, which developed a network of cracks.
She hung from her seat, her body straining forward against the belt. An oxygen cylinder flew through the hatch. The glass shattered and the sound of the impact was sucked away with the burst of cold, hard glass knives that turned and dwindled before her eyes. Everything in the cabin that wasn't tied down leaped up and hurtled through the mouth of jagged teeth that had once been a viewport.
Blood pulsed in her face as she hung above a bottomless black hole. Large objects turned lazily in the sunlight. One of them was the engine module of Ringmaster, out there in front of her where it had no right to be. She could see the broken stump of the connecting stem. Her ship was coming apart.
"Oh, shit," she said, then had a vivid recollection of a tape she had once beard from the flight recorder of an airliner. That had been the last word the pilot had uttered, seconds before impact, when he knew he was going to die. She knew it, too, and the thought filled her with a vast disgust.
She watched in dull horror as the thing that had the engines wrapped more tentacles around it. it reminded her of a Portuguese man o' way with a fish snared in its poisonous grip. A fuel tank ruptured---soundlessly, with a strange beauty. Her world was coming apart with no noise to mark its passing. A cloud of compressed gas quickly dispersed. The thing did not seem to mind.
Other tentacles had other parts of the ship. The high-gain antenna almost seemed to be swimming away, but it moved too slowly as it tumbled down the well below her.
"Alive," she whispered. "It's alive."
"What did you say?" Bill was trying to hold himself secure with both hands m the instrument panel. He was strapped solidly to his chair, but the bolts which held it to the floor had broken.
The ship shuddered again, and Cirocco's chair came free. The
edge of the panel caught her across the thighs and she cried out as she struggled to free herself.
"Rocky, things are falling apart in here." She wasn't sure whose voice it was, but the fear reached her. She pushed, and managed to open her seat belt with one hand while holding her- self away from the panel with the other. She slipped out to the side and saw her chair bounce across the shattered array of dials, stick briefly in the frame of the broken port, and launch into space.
She thought her legs were broken, but found she could move them. The pain lessened as she drew on reserves of strength to help Bill out of his chair. Too late, she saw that his eyes were closed, his forehead and the inside of his helmet smeared with blood. As his body slithered loosely over the control panel she saw the dent his helmet had made in it. She fought for a grip on his thigh, then his calf, his booted foot, and he was falling, falling in the middle of a glittering shower of glass.
She came to her senses crouched in the leg well under the control panel. She shook her head, unable to recall what had put her there. But the force of deceleration was not so great now. Themis had succeeded in bringing Ringmaster---or what was left of it-up to its own rotational speed.
No one was talking. A hurricane of breathing came through the speaker in her helmet, but no words. There was nothing to say; the screams and curses had exhausted themselves. She got to her feet, grabbed the edge of the hatchway above her, and pulled herself through into chaos.
No lights worked, but sunlight spilled harshly across broken equipment from a large rip in the wall. Cirocco moved through the debris and a suited figure got out of her way. Her head throbbed. One of her eyes was swollen shut.
There was a lot of damage. It would take a while to get it cleaned up so they could get under weigh.
"I'll want a complete damage report from all departments," she said, to no one in particular. "This ship was never meant for that kind of treatment."
Only three people were standing. one figure knelt in the corner, holding the hand of another who was buried in wreckage.
"I can't move my legs. 1 can't move them."
"Who said that?" Cirocco shouted, trying to make the dizziness go away by shaking her head, succeeding only in making it worse.
"Calvin, attend to the injuries while 1 see what can be done for the ship."
"Yes, Captain."
No one moved, and Cirocco wondered why. They were all watching her. Why were they doing that?
"I'll be in my cabin if you need me. I'm not ... feeling so good".