He fended off the hold, but it wasn’t only Christian, it was two, three of them, grabbing hold, starting an inertial tumble. They bumped cans, richocheted off to the wall of the chute, back again. A section of tractor-chain ground against his helmet, bump, bump, bump, until somebody hauled them out of it and anchored their collective mass along the rail.
“Cut his regulator!” somebody shouted, C. BOWE was the name on the helmet closest, the one with his hand on his oxygen supply.
He panicked, swung to free himself, claustrophobic as if the oxygen had already stopped.
“You lied to me,” he panted, and struggled to get a hold on the rail. “You all fucking lied to me, you son of a bitch—what ship, what’s going on out there?”
Someone else was yelling—he couldn’t hear it; then “Hold it!”
Austin’s voice. “Hold it, dammit, that’s high mass—brake on, damn you, cut it—”
Something happened. “Shit!” somebody yelled, but he was still fighting for air, found an arm free and got a hold on the rail, as a jackstraw debris of metal rods flew everywhere.
“Brake! Brake! Can’s ruptured—”
Crewmen were yelling, rods were flying everywhere, into the line, into the moving cans, rebounding. A piece slammed him side-on, knocked him against the wall with no surety his arm wasn’t broken, but he got his glove to his regulator, tried to get the air-flow up.
“Patch!” somebody screamed—suit rupture—and nobody was watching him, they were shutting the cargo doors, far as they could with the racks mated, trying to stop the debris.
He couldn’t breathe. He drifted, trying, with clumsy fingers, to adjust the external regulator. Last impact had thrown him against the cargo-lock console, piece of metal rammed right through the shelter wall and into the console board, more of the jackstraws in slower, entropic motion now, companions in his drift. He fended them, tried to calm his breathing.
“Austin!” he heard Christian calling. “Austin, use your com, dammit!”
“Captain was otherside, “ somebody said, “in the other lock!” and Christian:
“Shit, open the doors, open the damn doors!”
“Austin. “ That was Beatrice, somewhere. “Austin, answer com!”
“Yeah, “ came back, through heavy static. “I got a problem. “ More of it, but it broke up.
Crew were trapped over in the other hold—trapped with a ricocheting mass of steel—and he’d done it. He had. He caught a hand-hold, no one caring, now, no one paying attention to him.
“What’s happened?” somebody asked, not the only voice. You didn’t chat on Universal when an emergency was in progress, you shut up. He thought that last voice might be the bridge asking information, but nobody answered. He tried to, on generaclass="underline" “Can of rods ruptured. “ Air still wouldn’t come fast enough. “Doors are shut, bridge—doors are shut, and that’s my ship out there, dammit!”
“Tommy?” Capella’s voice. “Tommy, it’s closing—it’s Sprite and us both the sumbitch is after,—Tommy, d’ you hear me? That’s the truth. “
Mind went scattershot, a dozen trails of logic—sounds in the dark, colors running—freighter, freighter screaming…
Capella, leaning close, whispering… touch of lips… saying… telling him…
“Tommy, we got to have the card, now, Tommy… Austin’s got to input. Hear?—Do it now, Tommy!”
Limbs jerked, half paralyzed, moving to what he couldn’t but half remember, just Capella’s voice and the gut-hitting feeling that he might have been immensely, irremediably wrong in his instant assumptions, Marie’s assumptions, beaten into him, dinned into him…
Not what he’d seen on this ship.
“Where’s Austin?” the bridge was asking, and he listened sharp, wanting to hear, when somebody, a voice he’d heard before, answered:
“Captain’s caught otherside. The other hold. They’re trying, Bea, they did an emergency close, and they got to jack the damn doors. “
“Shit, “ he heard, Capella’s voice. “Captain? You copy?”
The outer cargo hatch had closed on the mated rails. Crew was jacking it open, using levers at either side of the doors, others trying to scrape past the doors and under the cans blocking them to reach the hulk’s hold.
Tom slung himself that direction along the safety rail, no one stopping him on his careening course—was so shaken he strained his arm catching himself on the landing. But a man squeezed through ahead of him—he re-angled his body and hauled himself through, risking the LS kit on his back… felt it scrape as he entered the hulk.
His first sight in the hulk’s cargo lock was loose cans, debris floating, white powder in clumps and clouds, adhering to surfaces, obscuring vision throughout the cargo chute.
He had no idea now what he was doing, except they were trying to get crew out past him, one man that could move himself, that tried to help his rescuers. White powder, God knew what, clung to his visor no matter how he wiped. Loose rods shot past, still potent with v.
Then a suited body drifted toward him along the stalled row of cans. He grabbed its arm, not able to see who it was, whether the man was alive or dead, or who it was—he wasn’t moving, was all, and he hauled the man back to the cargo lock, through the whiteout of dust, and passed the man through the gap to the men on the other side—one life maybe they could save.
“Captain?” he was hearing on hail. “Captain? Seven minutes. Closing fast. “
And a second voice, Capella’s, he thought, desperate: “We need that key-card. Look in the console key slot, Tom, somebody. Fast. “
He knew what he was looking for. He tried to go in that direction, when a rod bounced past, hit the wall noiselessly, ricocheted and vanished into the powder-storm. And crew hauled suited bodies past him, a man with a piece of iron through the torso, then one with a helmet gouged and splintered across the faceplate.
TRAVIS, the helmet said.
Only name he’d made out, on anybody. Wasn’t Bowe. He found himself shakily relieved it wasn’t Austin, as he grabbed a rail and tried to get along the wall.
A suited figure caught up with him in the obscuring dust. BOWE, the helmet said. c. Smeared with blood. Christian looked straight at him. He started to ask… where Austin was… and his com crackled with,
“Damn you, you Hawkins bastard, get out of there!”
A rod shot between them. Rebounded. Hit a can, richocheted again, came back.
He was drifting, on a rebound. Grabbed something.
“Four minutes, “ he heard, in the ringing of his ears. Motion alert, was flashing in his faceplate. “Get out of there, “ com said, male voice this time, “Get out, now, we’re screwed, leave it, leave it, leave it. “
And Capella’s: “Get the card, damn it!”
His back hit the cans. He bounced off, saw a crewman near him, trying for a hand-hold, and he held out an arm, mindless free-fall reflex. The man grabbed him and he grabbed the rail as they grazed the wall in a conjoint tumble toward the bright light, spotlights all he could see in the white-out, except dark beads like frozen oil spatting against his faceplate.