Part 46 (2/2)
As they neared the stars.h.i.+p, Dana dug the computer cube out of his pocket and held it up to Lamonica's view. She pointed at the console. ”You do it.” Dana turned the cube (blue, three-by-three-by-three centimeters' dimension) till he found the side with a small visual/tactile symbol. He matched the symbol to one on the console. That second symbol marked a sliding panel. He slid it aside and fit the cube, symbol-side first, into the opening there, and pulled the panel closed. The blue cube contained, as Rhani had promised, blueprints of the Net.
”Let's see it,” said Lamonica. Dana instructed the computer. Diagrams began to march across the compscreen.
Lamonica said, ”That cube is worth a fortune.”
Dana smiled. ”It's not recordable, and it's programmed to self-erase.”
”Too bad.”
Dana leaned back in the chair to study the diagrams. Despite the superstructure of cells, corridors, and storage s.p.a.ces, the great wheel of the Net contained recognizable and familiar elements. The Drive Core and the s.h.i.+p's computer sat in the inner rim of the torus. Entrance locks were set at s.p.a.ced intervals along the outer rim. The Bridge, with its observation windows, was located on what Dana arbitrarily (and temporarily) designated the Chabad-side of the wheel. Fusion thrusters decorated the opposite ”side.” The protruding jets gave the wheel, in diagram at least, a slightly lopsided appearance. He wondered why Isobel Yago had chosen to make her prison s.h.i.+p a torus, when a sphere would have been easier to construct and a more efficient use of s.p.a.ce. Corridors traversed the doughnut. He asked for an enlargement of the section containing the Bridge. The computer obliged. The maps were detailed, labeled, and color- coded. Rhani had given him all the information she had.
He wondered where the emergency was, and what it was, and how much time he had to find it. He said, ”Let's see if we can reach them.”
”Right.” Lamonica keyed a message. If the computer communications were alive on the Net, the message would be picked up and responded to automatically.
There was no response. ”I'll call them,” Lamonica said.
Dana caught her hand as she reached for the radio switch. ”No. Wait.”
”Why?”
”Moon Base has been calling them steadily since they got the distress signal. Call Moon Base.”
Lamonica called. ”LandingPort Station Communications, this is _Lamia_, Starcaptain Tori Lamonica, are you there?”
”_Lamia_, we hear you.”
”Any sound out of the Sardonyx Net?”
”Zilch, Starcaptain. Do you want us to keep trying?”
”Yes,” Dana said, interrupting. ”Don't break.”
”Understood. Will you engage?”
”Yes. I'm going in.”
”Good luck, _Lamia_ and captains.”
The Net was very close. Lamonica said, ”Where do you want to enter, Dana?
We're in matching orbit now.”
Dana grimaced. He stared at the computer's projection. If something were wrong with the Drive Core, it would be a waste of time for him to enter the s.h.i.+p on the lock nearest the computer. ”Someone started to send a distress call.” He tapped the plastic screen. ”Maybe that someone's still trying. Engage at Hole Four. I have to start somewhere. I might as well try the Bridge.” In the vision screen, the big wheel was no longer smooth. k.n.o.bs and strings and struts decorated its silver skin.
Lamonica tipped their seats. ”Decelerating,” she said. Gravity increased.
_Lamia_ sang, tail extending, thrusting, vision screen pointing outward once again to the brown and white and blue world they had just left.
*Chapter Twenty*
Dana suited up to go into the Net.
Most pressure suits were brightly colored, on the same principle that made mountaineers use fluorescent, orange gear. Lamonica's suits -- she carried four of them in storage besides her own -- were maroon-and-silver striped. They were one-piece suits, from crown to crotch to boot-soles; they contained an air supply and a moisture recycler. They were designed to withstand pressure and temperature extremes of both hot and cold, but you could not wear them for very long; once in one, you could neither p.i.s.s, s.h.i.+t, nor eat.
Hole Four would not engage with _Lamia_'s extensible lock. Dana swam through and fastened it by hand. The lock walls stiffened as atmosphere hissed into it and it acquired gravity.
The outer lock door was jammed. Dana went back to _Lamia_. ”I need tools.” Tori pointed him at the tool locker: he took a variety, including a cutting laser, hooking them to the suit's magnetized patches. None of them were especially heavy. The outer air gauge appeared to be functional; at least, it claimed there was air in the inner lock. Dana unjammed the door. Whoever had jammed it had done a hasty job. It slid up. There _was_ air in the inner lock.
The inner lock door, luckily, was harder to damage and the vandal had left it alone. Dana closed it behind him but made sure before he moved that the outer lock door stayed up.
”I'm in,” he said through the suit communicator.
”Clear, Dana. If you need anything, yell.” ”You'll hear it,” he said. He stepped into the Net. Gravity was normal.
He was standing in an unadorned, white-walled corridor. He flipped through the pictures in his mind of the Bridge, fitting labels to s.p.a.ces; this was Transverse Corridor Four: the Bridge was reachable through the corridor which would be coming up to meet this one on the -- left. The Net was very quiet. He remembered his first impression of it as a Moebius strip or a giant treadmill.
Now he felt it to be something alive, sensing him as he moved, an interloper, through its gut; a metal-and-plastic intelligent worm. In the neutral confinement of the pressure suit, the hairs lifted at the back of his neck.
He d.a.m.ned his hyperactive imagination, kicked the wall, and went on.
At the entrance to the Bridge, he stopped, wary. The huge wraparound vision screens were blank. s.h.i.+elds covered them, the cameras were off. The room was just a big control room, filled with com-units, screens, computer panels, b.u.t.tons, dials, gauges, and pilots' and navigators' chairs. It curved. Portions of the room were separated from other parts by waist-high part.i.tions. Dana walked toward the communications units. Three meters from them, he saw what the part.i.tions had hitherto concealed. The body of Jo the Skellian was lying on the floor. She was wearing a silver-and-blue uniform with the Yago ”Y” on the shoulder. He started, with difficulty, to turn her over. She weighed, he guessed, one hundred thirty kilos, and dead weight she seemed to weigh a ton.
She was limp and rubbery; finally he got her on her side and saw what had killed her. There was an odd-shaped hole under her left armpit; about fifteen centimeters long, and about two centimeters wide, it was horizontal, and as precise as if it had been cut with a surgical knife. Dana wondered how far in it went. Far enough to touch something vital, lungs or heart. It had been made with a laser gun; he wondered if he should return to _Lamia_ for a laser or stun pistol. He had been thinking in terms of an engineering emergency, not a human one.
Unsealing the seam of his pressure suit, he peeled it open, and let it fall down his back like a hood. He needed all his senses; and the pressure suit dimmed both taste and smell, though it left sight, hearing, and balance -- the important ones. Now he could smell what his imagination had been trying to explain away: excrement, the death smell. He stood. Adrenalin speeded his heartbeat. He needed to find Zed Yago. He started once again toward the com- units, and again stopped. a.s.suming the s.h.i.+p's intercom was working, and it might not be, he still couldn't use it, not with someone with a laser pistol loose in the s.h.i.+p.
As he walked back to the doorway through the maze of part.i.tions, he tripped over legs.
It was Zed, slumped in a contoured chair, head lolling, eyes closed, his breathing deep and even. He was out, not hurt, but drugged. The slackness of his facial muscles made his face look heavier. His big hands hung limp, nearly to the floor. The someone had a laser gun _and_ a stun gun. Dana knelt and levered Zed's body across his back. As he pulled on the dangling arms, Zed s.h.i.+fted and muttered something. Dana almost dropped him. But the Net commander did not wake.
Dana tried to estimate his weight. Eighty kilos? Eighty-five? He was heavy. The Starcaptain tensed his stomach muscles and straightened his legs, the unwieldy burden hoisted across his shoulder.
A cold voice said, ”Put him down.”
Dana turned his head. Stooped as he was, he could see very little by just turning his head. He saw a woman in a pale green jumpsuit, reddish hair, brown eyes, right hand holding a laser pistol pointing at him.... He let Zed's body slide back into the pilot's chair. Slowly he straightened, palms out and away from his body.
”Move away from him.” The pistol moved a centimeter to the left. Dana stepped in that direction. He was out in the open now, directly in her line of fire, with neither chair nor part.i.tion to hide behind. His back ached and he wanted to p.i.s.s.
”Which did you get first?” he asked.
”Zed,” said Darien. ”The Skellian hit the distress signal key. I couldn't risk the stun pistol on her; it might not have worked. Skellians metabolize drugs differently than other people. I had to kill her.”
”Why?”
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