Part 13 (1/2)

”I came up to check on things and happened on your patient still strapped to the examination table,” I told him. ”You know what's wrong with him?”

”He told me it was a borandis-dependency problem,” he said. ”Coupled with a chronic case of Cole's disease.”

”You believe him?”

He shrugged. ”The diagnostic confirmed the withdrawal aspects,” he said. ”The medical database isn't complete enough to either confirm or refute the Cole'sdisease.”

”Close enough,” I told him, my last lingering suspicion that Shawn might have been faking the whole thing fading away. Muscle tremors and obnoxiousness were one thing, but a med diagnostic computer wasn't nearly so easily fooled.

”Unfortunately, that leaves us with a problem,” Everett went on. ”According to the database, borandis is a controlled drug. It's going to take more than just a s.h.i.+p's medic's certificate to get some for him on Mintarius.”

”I know,” I said. ”Don't worry, we'll figure something out.”

”I hope so,” he said. ”The prognosis for untreated Cole's disease is apparently not a very positive one.”

”So he told me,” I nodded. ”Small wonder, I suppose, that he was at loose ends on Meima.” I lifted my eyebrows slightly. ”Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask how you wound up in that same position. At loose ends, I mean.”

He made a wry face. ”Caught in the middle of a jurisdictional dispute, I'm afraid. One of the crewers on my previous s.h.i.+p pushed the captain one time too many and wound up rather badly injured. A troublemaker-I'm sure you know the sort. At any rate, I helped him get to the med facility at the Meima s.p.a.ceport for treatment; and while we were out, the captain apparently decided he could do without both of us and took off.”

”Yet another Samaritan winds up with the splintered end of the stick,” I murmured.

He shrugged. ”Perhaps. Frankly, I was just as happy to see their thrusters fading into the sunset. When Borodin came into the restaurant where I was eating looking for someone with a med certificate, I jumped at the chance.”

”Well, we're certainly glad to have you here,” I said, glancing around the bridge. ”Look, we're not more than a few hours from landing, and I can't sleep anyway. Why don't I take over and let you go hit the sack.”

”Oh,” he said, sounding and looking surprised. ”Well... if you're sure.”

”I'm sure,” I told him. ”There's nothing you can do for Shawn at the moment, and you might as well be rested when we hit ground.”

”I suppose,” Everett conceded, heaving himself out of the chair. I stepped forward out of his way as he moved to the doorway. ”Do call me if you change your mind and want to at least catch a catnap.”

”I will,” I promised.

He left the bridge, turning right at the ladder and plodding his way up to the top deck. I waited until his feet were out of sight, gave him another ten count, then closed the bridge door behind me and stepped over to the nav table.

Given the set of parameters I was stuck with on this, I wasn't expecting the task ahead to be an easy one. I needed a world that was large enough and decadent enough to have an illicit drug-distribution network in place, with the kind of laissez-faire att.i.tude toward paperwork that would let us slip in under our false ID, and yet wasn't a haven for the kind of career criminals who would be sporting crisp new hundred-commark bills and keeping their eyes peeled for anyone resembling my Mercantile Authority file photo. And it had to be somewhere within, say, nine hours of our present position.

It took only five minutes to conclude that there was exactly one place on thecharts that even came close to fitting my requirements: the Najiki colony world of Potosi, currently seven hours distant. It had the kind of cosmopolitan populace that promised that vices of all sorts would be in evidence, and it was run by beings with such keen eyesight-and such a stratospheric self-confidence-that they seldom used scanners to check s.h.i.+ps' papers.

There was, in fact, just one small factor that kept Potosi from being absolutely ideal. It was also a major hub for the Patth s.h.i.+pping industry.

I stared at the listing for a while, perhaps hoping that in my tiredness I was imagining things and that if I looked long enough it would go away. But no such luck. Certain parts of Potosi, including the sky above it, were going to be crawling with Patth, and that was just the way it was.

But there was nothing for it. Not unless we wanted to sit around and watch Shawn die.

It was a matter of two minutes to cancel the Mintarius course and recalculate a vector to take us to Potosi instead. Listening carefully, I was just able to hear the subtle s.h.i.+ft in thrust tone from the drive as we swung over the twenty-three degrees necessary to make the course change.

And I'm convinced that it was precisely because I was listening so carefully that even through two closed doors I heard the muted pop and the equally faint and choked-off scream.

I was in the corridor half a second later, heading for the mechanics-room door five meters away. I crossed the distance in two seconds more, hearing a soft but ominous hissing sound that grew steadily louder as I neared it. I slapped the pad, and the door slid open.

And with a roar like a rabid dragon a wall of flame blew out of the doorway toward me.

An instant later I was rolling to my feet from three meters farther down the corridor with no clear memory of how I'd gotten there. I spun back to the open doorway, the terrifying image of Ixil trapped in the midst of that inferno paralyzing my entire thought process. I clawed my way back to the doorway, the smell of burning acetylene filling my nose and mouth, a small and still functional part of my mind noting with some confusion that there was now no trace of the wall of flame that had sent me diving instinctively away. I reached the doorway, bracing myself for the worst, and looked inside.

It was bad enough, but not nearly as bad as I'd feared. Off to the left, the twin tanks of the Icarus's oxyacetylene cutting torch were sitting upright beside the main workbench, the pressure of the compressed gases sending their connected hoses writhing together along the deck like a pair of demented Siamese-twin snakes. From the open ends of the coupled hoses was spewing an awesome spray of yellow flame. Even as I took it all in I was forced to once again duck back as the skittering hoses swung past the doorway and sent another burst my direction-clearly, that was what I'd mistaken earlier for an all-encompa.s.sing wall of flame. The blast swept past and I looked back inside.

And it was only then, in the back of the room beyond the flopping hoses, that I.

spotted Ixil.

He was lying against the line of equipment-storage lockers that made up the backwall, his torso half-propped up against the lockers, his eyes closed. There was no sign of Pix and Pax; odds were they were cowering in a nook or corner somewhere. If they were even alive, Ixil's right pant leg was smoldering above his low boot, but otherwise the fire didn't seem to have marked him.

But that bit of grace wasn't going to last much longer. Even just since I'd started watching I could see that the hoses' gyrations were swinging wider with each oscillation, and within a minute or less they would be twisting around to the point where the fire stream would be was.h.i.+ng directly over my unconscious partner.

”G.o.d and h.e.l.lfire,” a voice breathed in my ear.

I twisted my head around to find Nicabar standing just behind me, staring wide-eyed into the room. ”I heard the commotion and smelled the fire,” he said.

”Where's the d.a.m.n suppression system?”

”There isn't one,” I bit out, jabbing my finger toward the bridge door.

”There's an extinguisher just inside the bridge to the left.”

He was off before I'd even finished the sentence. I turned back to the mechanics room, dodging back just in time as the semirandom fire spray once again did its best to take my eyebrows off. There was another extinguisher, I knew, just inside the door to my right; the question was whether I could slip into the room and get to it without incinerating myself.

Unfortunately, at that point came an even bigger question: What could I do with the thing if and when I got to it? s.h.i.+pboard fire extinguishers used a two- p.r.o.ng approach, the foam smothering the air away from the flames while simultaneously pulling out as much of the heat as possible. But that acetylene fire had a lot of heat built up already, possibly more than a small extinguisher canister could handle; and given that the blaze had its own built-in oxygen supply, the question of smothering was even more problematic.

There was a breath of sudden movement beside me. ”Got it,” Nicabar said, holding the half-meter-long orange canister ready in the doorway. ”Straight in?”

”Straight in,” I told him. He squeezed the handle, and a stream of yellowish fluid sprayed toward the writhing hoses, its loud hissing joining the crackle of the flames. Joining, but not eliminating. For a few seconds the blaze faltered as the droplets sucked heat away from it, but then seemed to gather its strength again in defiance. The hoses twisted around in their unpredictable way, sending the tip skittering off the edge of Nicabar's spray, and with an almost-triumphant roar the fire blazed fully back to life.

But those few seconds were enough. I jumped into the room and ducked to my right, grabbing at the bright orange object at the edge of my peripheral vision as I kept my main attention on the fire and Nicabar's attack on it. The quick-releases holding the extinguisher to the bulkhead worked exactly as they were supposed to, though in the mood I was in I would have had the canisteroff the wall no matter how it was fastened there. I continued to my right, twisting the canister around into position in my hands as I moved. I got it lined up just as the hoses started to s.h.i.+ft toward me, and squeezed the handle.

My spray joined Nicabar's, and the tanks and hoses all but vanished into a roiling cloud of mist. But the fire itself was still clearly visible, diminished but a long way yet from being quenched. And with the gas pressure driving its erratic movements completely unaffected by the foam, it was still just as dangerous as it had been before.

There was only one chance, and I had to take it before the extinguishers ran dry and the flame roared back to full strength again. Squeezing the handle hard, keeping my stream of foam aimed as best I could, I charged straight in toward our adversary. Nicabar shouted something from the doorway, but I couldn't make out what he was saying over the noise. The hoses finished their oscillation the other direction and started swinging back, and in about half a second the flame would get its chance to incinerate me on its way to doing the same to Ixil.

And at the last moment, with my best effort at the long jump since failing to make my college track team, I leaped over the flame and landed squarely on the end of the hoses, pinning them in place on the deck.

I heard Nicabar give an encouraging whoop, and suddenly the billowing mist from his extinguisher was flowing coldly around my legs, a sharp contrast to the backwash of heat that already seemed to be trying to cook my feet inside my boots. But for that final two seconds I didn't care about either the fire or Nicabar's efforts to put it out. Dropping my own canister onto the deck, I grabbed the valve handle on the acetylene tank and twisted for all I was worth.

And with one final indignant gasping wheeze from the hoses, the fire went out.