Part 28 (1/2)
He flushed some oxy into the ventilators and kicked back to the bridge. Get some clean metabolite or die.
Who would give him air? Even if he could move Ragnarok, the company depots and franchises would be alerted. He might just as well signal Coronis and give himself up. Maybe Quine wouldn't bother to reach him and Topanga in time. Maybe better so. Wards. Wires, Topanga groaned. Gollem felt her temples. Hot as plasma, old ladies with a leg shortened shouldn't play war. He rummaged out biogens, marveling at the vials, ampoules, tabs, hyposprays. Popping who knew what to keep alive. Contraband she and Val had picked up in the old free days, her h.o.a.rd would stock a...
Wait a minute.
Medbase Themis.
He tuned up Ragnarok's board. The Themis woman was still calling, low and hoa.r.s.e. He cranked the antennae for the narrowest beam he could get.
”Medbase Themis, do you read?”
”Who are you? Who's there?” She was startled out of her code book.
”This is a s.p.a.cesweep mission. I have a casualty.”
”Where-” The male voice took over.
”This is Chief Medic Kranz, s.p.a.cer. You can bring in your casualty but we have a rogue headed through our s.p.a.ce with a gravel cloud. If we can't get power to move the station in about thirty hours we'll be holed out. Can you help us?””You can have what I've got. Check coordinates.” The woman choked up on the decimals. No use telling them he couldn't do them any good. The gee-sum unit he had in Ragnarok wouldn't nudge that base in time for Halley's comet. And Ragnarok's drive-if it worked it would be like trying to wipe your eye with a blowtorch. But their air could help him.
The drive. He bounced down the engineway, knowing the spring in his muscles was partly phage.
Only partly. A thousand times he had come this way, a thousand times torn himself away from temptation. Gleefully now he began to check out the circuits he had traced, restored the long-pulled fuses. There was a sealed hypergolic reserve for ignition. A stupefying conversion process, a plumber's nightmare of heat-exchangers and back-cycling. Crazy, wasteful, dangerous. Enough circuitry to wire the Belt. Unbelievable it had carried man to Saturn, more unbelievable it would work today.
He clanked the rod controls. No telling what had crystallized. The converter fuel chutes jarred out thirty years' acc.u.mulated dust. The ignition reserve was probably only designed for one emergency firing.
Would he be able to ignite again to brake? Learn as you go. One thing sure, when that venerable metal volcano burst to life every board from here to Coronis would be lit.
When he got back to the bridge Topanga was whispering.
”We left the haven hanging in the night-O thou steel cognizance whose leap commits-”
”Pray it leaps,” he told her and began setting course, double-checking everything because of the phagemice running in the shadows. He wrapped Topanga's webs.
He started the ignition train.
The subsonic rumble that grew through Ragnarok filled him with terror and delight. He threw himself into the webs, wis.h.i.+ng he had said something, counted down maybe. Blastoff. Go. The rumble bloomed into an oremill roar. Gees smashed down on him. Everything in the cabin started raining on the deck. The web gave sideways and the roar wound up in a scream that parted his brain and then dwindled into silence.
When he struggled back to the board he found the burn had cut right. Ragnarok was barreling toward Themis. He saw Topanga's eyes open.
”Where are we headed?” She sounded sane as soap.
”I'm taking you over to the next sector, Themis. We need metabolite, oxygen. The phagers ruined your regenerators.
”Themis?”
”There's a medbase there. They'll give us some.”
Mistake.
”Oh, no-no!” She struggled up. ”No, Golly! I won't go to a hospital-don't let them take me!”
”You're not going to a hospital, Topanga. You're going to stay right here in the s.h.i.+p while I go in for the cores. They'll never know about you. We'll be out of there in minutes.”
No use.
”G.o.d hate you, Gollem.” She made an effort to spit. ”You're trying to trap me. I know you! Never let me free. You won't bury me here, Gollem. Rot in Moondome with your ugly cub-I'm going to Val!”
”Cool, s.p.a.cer, you're yawing.” He got some tranks into her finally and went back to learning Ragnarok. The phage was getting strong now. When he looked up the holographs were watching him drive their s.h.i.+p. The old star heroes. Val Orlov, Fitz, Hannes, Mura, all the great ones. Sometimes only a grin behind a gold-washed headplate, a name on a suit beside some mad hunk of machine. Behind them, s.p.a.celost wildernesses lit by unknown moons. All alive, all so young. There was Topanga with her arm around that other s.p.a.cegirl, the dark Russian one who was still orbiting Io. They grinned past him, bright and living.
When they start talking, we've had it....He set the gyros to crank Ragnarok into what he hoped was att.i.tude for the retro burn. If he could trust the dials, there was enough ignition for braking and for one last burn to get out of there. But where would he go from Medbase? Into the sky with diamonds...
He heard himself humming and decided to lock the whole thing into autopilot. No matter what shape that computer was in it would be saner than he was.
Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the shadows?...
When he began hearing the Stones he went down and threw out half the trays. The three remaining oxy tanks struck him as hilarious. He cracked one.
The oxy sobered him enough to check the weather signal. The Medbase woman was still trying to raise Themis Main. He resisted the impulse to enlighten her about the Companies and concentrated on the updated orbits of the Trojan rogues. He saw now what had Medbase sweating. The lead rogue would miss them by megamiles but it was ma.s.sive enough to have stirred up a lot of gravel. The small rogue behind was sweeping up a tail. The rock itself would go by far off-but that gravel cloud would rip their bubbles to shreds.
He had to get in there and out again fast.
He sniffed some more oxy and computed the rogue orbits on a worst-contingency basis. It looked O.K.-for him. His stomach flinched; even under phage it had an idea what it was going to be like when those medics found out they were wasted.
He saw Topanga grinning. The phage was doing her more good than the tranks.
”Not to worry, star girl. Golly won't let 'em get you.”
”Air.” She was trying to point to life-support, which had long since gone red.
”I know, s.p.a.cer. We're getting air at Medbase.”
She gave him a strange un-Topanga smile. ”Whatever you say, little Golly.” Whispering hoa.r.s.ely, ”I know-you've been beautiful-”
Her hand reached, burning. This he positively could not take. Too bad his music was gone.
”Give us verses as we go, star girl.”
But she was too weak.
”Read me-”
Her scanner was full of it.
”In oil-rinsed circles of blind ecstasy.” Hard to dig, until the strobing letters suddenly turned to music in his throat. ”Man hears himself an engine in a cloud!” he chanted, convoyed by ghosts.
”-What marathons new-set among the stars!... The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches, already knows the closer clasp of Mars-”
...It was indeed fortunate, he discovered, that he had set the autopilot and stayed suited up.
His first clear impression of Medbase was a chimpanzee's big brown eyes staring into his under a flashprobe. He jerked away, found himself peeled and tied on a table. The funny feeling was the luxury of simulated gravity. The chimpanzee turned out to be a squat little type in medwhites, who presently freed him.