“What about you? I’m not just gonna leave you here.”
Eva smiled indulgently. “The important thing is that one of us gets out of here. Percival and some of the others undoubtedly have their own private escape pods and are probably already clear of the Moon Child. Someone has to notify the authorities and have the cult leaders picked up. And you know where to find the evidence that will put them away.”
I must’ve looked confused. Eva’s smile changed from indulgent to sympathetic. “I’ll try to make it back to the freighter, but you can only give me twenty seconds after the door opens. No more.” Her smiled disappeared. “After that, our window of opportunity will disappear. Literally. Once the cargo-bay door is open, fly the ship through it and into the vacuum tunnel. There’s another door at the end of the tunnel that will open as soon as the door behind you seals.”
Eva waited for me to acknowledge that I understood, then headed off toward the searchlights. I watched her for a moment, wondering if I’d ever see her again, and then began to make my way across the bay. The room was not unlike a speeder lot, with hundreds of vehicles and other pieces of machinery neatly arranged. Keeping my head low, I moved from one hiding place to another, careful to freeze whenever the searchlights seemed to be close.
It took about five minutes to reach the freighter. I waited for the searchlights to flash across the ship before opening the hatch on the underbelly. Scrambling inside, I climbed into the cockpit. Then I strapped myself into the driver’s seat and surveyed the instrumentation. It didn’t look too difficult to manage.
The windows in the cockpit wrapped around, and I could see both the escape door and the guard tower. Taking a deep breath, I turned on the pilot console and fired up the engines. Moments later, like a scene from an alien abduction movie, the cockpit was suddenly bathed in bright white light. The security personnel seemed to have noticed me and had focused the searchlights on the freighter. I glanced at the bay door, but it wasn’t opening. Looking toward the tower, I saw several dark shapes running straight for me.
I checked to make sure I was ready to lift off, then looked back toward the hydraulic door. It wasn’t moving. For the first time, it occured to me that Eva might not get to the control booth. Maybe she’d been discovered and killed. What if the door never opened?
I’d locked the hatch behind me, but the security guards would be able to blast their way in eventually. And even if they didn’t, the Moon Child’s life-support system would fail sooner or later, and being in the freighter would only prolong my fate.
Several light bursts flashed in the corner of my eye. Shots were being fired in the guard tower. I strained to see, but could make out nothing. Then everything went dark.
Someone had shut down the searchlights. A starry pattern floated in the darkness as my eyes slowly adjusted.
Beyond the stars, a vertical stripe of faint light appeared, then slowly widened. I squinted my eyes, trying to make out what was happening. After several seconds, I realized the cargo-bay door was opening.
Under the hull of the freighter, someone started banging on the hatch door, sending a metallic clanging through the ship. My eyes were now accustomed to the darkness, and I scanned the area between the freighter and the guard tower for signs of Eva. Then I began to count silently. Thousand-one, thousand two, thousand three… the cargo-bay was opening from right to left. When it was fully open, the doorway would be about thirty feet high and fifty feet wide. Thousand ten, thousand eleven, thousand twelve… the freighter was probably twelve feet high and twenty feet across. Thousand twenty, thousand twenty-one, thousand twenty-two… cursing under my breath, I shoved the freighter into gear and lifted off.
As I raised Voorman’s shuttle-cruiser off the floor, the cargo-bay door was fully open and holding. I accelerated and steered toward the opening. Pinging sounds told me that the guards were firing their guns at the ship, but that wouldn’t do any good. The only thing that could stop me was the door, which gradually started to close.
The freighter was slow to accelerate… and I was about three hundred yards from the door. If I didn’t get there in time, something told me I’d hit the door and crumple like a pop can. The ship was gaining speed, but not quickly enough — it was going to be tight. I angled toward the right side of the opening, my knuckles white on the steering handle.
Fifty yards away, I realized I wasn’t going to make it. At least not horizontally. I raised the elevation, then grabbed the balance-control stick and wrenched it hard to the left.
Immediately, the ship rolled. I heard and felt metal scraping along the floor. I tried to adjust the elevation, but the ship only veered slightly to the left, away from the opening.
I was seconds away from hitting the door. Using both hands, I threw the balance-control stick hard in the opposite direction. The ship rolled wildly to the right and veered in the same direction. The cockpit slammed into the opening. The force of the entry carried the freighter through the door, but the loud sounds of metal being snapped off and crushed told me that the ship had sustained considerable damage.
I looked out the window and saw that both sides of the freighter had been raked. Even worse, the rudder mechanism had been ripped off the back. The cockpit was untouched, but the freighter wasn’t in good shape. It was probably still capable of propulsion, but I wouldn’t be able to steer it.
As I was assessing the situation, I felt a giant shudder as the door behind me closed and sealed. Up ahead, the outer door cracked and began to slide open. I pushed the accelerator and felt the engine rev up, but the freighter didn’t move. I tried again, but it was no use — the ship might as well have been in neutral.
Helplessly, I watched as the gap in the outer door widened, the blackness of space seeping in like an oil spill. I was trapped, a scant few yards from freedom. Desperately, I began manipulating the controls. I tried everything, but could do no more than rock the freighter and raise the back end slightly. The outer door was now completely open. As my eyes searched the instrumentation frantically, I spotted a small panel marked Emergency. I tore it open and found a T-shaped handle. A sticked beneath it read Eject Capsule.
My speeder didn’t have an eject button, and I’d never used one before, but now seemed like a good time for a new experience. It wasn’t like I had anything to lose. I was about to pull the lever when it occurred to me that I might just be making a big mistake. I had to assume that the cockpit capsule would eject straight-off, which would send me into the ceiling of the vacuum tunnel.
But I had to do something. I glanced up and saw that the outer door had begun to close.
One of the things still working on the freighter were the rear elevation thrusters. I cranked them up as far as they would go, until the cockpit was almost face down on the tunnel floor. In front of me, the opening was half the size it had been a moment ago. I pushed the thrusters as far as they would go, then grabbed the T-shaped ejection handle and pulled.
What followed was a sensation I hadn’t felt since the final time I rode the Hammer at the state fair. In a blur, the cockpit jettisoned from the freighter and slammed into the roof chamber, just in front of the closing door. The force of the impact caused the capsule to careen toward and through the opening. The g-force had me pinned painfully against my seat, and the spinning motion blanketed me in a wave of nausea.