Part 11 (2/2)
There was a strong magnetic field in the sterile, barren compartment that housed the Drive. Ilya took off his cap and mopped his forehead.
”Air temperature in here is up to eighty-five degrees,” someone told him.
”What the h.e.l.l?” Ilya was stumped. He could think of no reason why the Drive chamber was not cooling, and there was certainly no reason why the cooling system was not being effective in the engineering control room.
On a hunch he said, ”Ivan, please give me temperature readings from the fuel-storage areas.”
That took a moment. Ivan, young, handsome, came hurrying back, his face tense. ”With the cooling systems going full blast, it's still over a hundred degrees in the storage areas, Ilya.”
Ilya went to the computer and began to work, his cap tossed aside, his dark hair glistening with perspiration. The temperature in the room continued to climb.
”Ilya,” young Ivan said, ”at the present rate, the temperature will be critical inside the Drive chamber in just over one hour.”
”It is not the Drive chamber that concerns me at the moment,” Ilya replied. ”There should be nothing butspent fuel left, the residue left after the annihilation process. There is nothing there to cause a buildup of temperature.”
”Comrade Ilya,” a young, frightened voice said, ”the temperatures are rising rapidly in the fuel-storage areas.”
A terrifying thought made Ilya squint his eyes. He rose swiftly and ran to a bank of instruments across the room from the main console.
”The radiation sensors are not functioning,” he said, tapping their gla.s.s covers.
”Ilya,” said young Ivan, ”the temperature in the fuel-storage areas is reaching toward dangerous levels.”
Even as he spoke the sprinkler systems responded to the heat and began to release their liquid fire-extinguis.h.i.+ng chemicals. The sharp rise in temperature in the storage areas slowed, but it still rose.
”Ivan,” Ilya said, ”there is a portable radiation detector in the storage area. Get it quickly.”
Ivan was back in less than two minutes.
Ilya took the detector and went through the s.h.i.+elded door into the Drive chamber. A sudden realization caused him to grow cold and s.h.i.+ver-he knew that he was a dead man. In the brief time he kept the door open to the Drive room he took enough hard radiation to a.s.sure him a quick death. He slammed the door behind him and examined the various dials of the counter. There were enough free electrons radiating from the Drive to cause him to raise his eyebrows in surprise. In that moment he accepted his death and wished only for the time to figure out why the Drive had gone wild. He only knew that streams of antimatter particles were coming from the Drive housing and causing the stored rhenium to heat up.
Theresita knew that something was terribly wrong, but she did not feel real danger until she saw Ilya's face as he emerged from behind the s.h.i.+elded door.
”You will all put on radiation suits immediately,” Ilya said. ”And prepare to abandon s.h.i.+p.” No one questioned him.
”It was the surplus fuel,” Ilya went on, as he reached for the back of a chair for support. ”Somehow it extended the reaction inside the Drive chamber. Now the entire area is acting as a Drive chamber.”
Ivan understood. He ran to get two radiation suits and gave one to Theresita, who immediately began to put it on.
”You are all aware of your abandon-s.h.i.+p a.s.signments,” Ilya said. He punched up the communicator.
”Get me Denis Ivanov,” he said.
”What's going on down there?” Denis's petulant voice asked.
”There is a continuing reaction inside the Drive chamber,” Ilya said, having to pause to take a deep breath. He was already teeling very weak. ”Within a very few minutes one of two things will happen: Either there will be a ma.s.sive explosion, or the entire s.h.i.+p will be irradiated. You must abandon s.h.i.+p immediately.”
”What the h.e.l.l do you mean?” Denis was demanding as Ilya turned off the communicator. ”They have been warned, comrades,” Ilya said. ”You and I know that only a small fraction of those on board will find seats on the scout s.h.i.+ps. What you do now is up to vou.
Theresita pushed a radiation suit against Ilya's arm. ”Put it on,” she ordered.
”I will not be going with you,” he said. He fell, slumping almost instantly into limpness, and as she knelt beside him, his breathing stopped.
”Come, comrade,” young Ivan said, pulling her to her feet.
The heavy radiation suit made movement difficult and tiring. She ran as best she could behind Ivan, following him toward the outer rim where the scout s.h.i.+ps waited in their individual pods. They ran directly into bedlam. Panicked colonists were fighting to gain access to the hatches leading into the pod areas.
Ivan took one look and seized Theresita's arm.
”We will never make it through that way,” Ivan panted, his voice metallic as it came through the radiation suit's speaker. ”The captain's s.h.i.+p-”
As they made their way around the congested, screaming, fighting people who clogged each hatch, he halted only once, to grab a cutting torch from a storage area. The access hatch to the captain's private scout was programmed to open only to the handprint of the dead Fedor Novikov, but it opened rapidly to Ivan's cutting torch.
”We can take a few of them with us...” Theresita said.
”Let them know there is a s.h.i.+p here, and we'll have to fight to get on it.”
”We can't just abandon everyone,” she insisted. ”We can quietly find six people.”
”I will board the scout,” Ivan said. ”I will give you ten minutes to find six people. If there are more with you when you return, I will blast off without you or any of them.”
”Ten minutes,” she said. She ran awkwardly back down the corridor. She could hear the panicked screams ahead where pa.s.sengers fought to get inside the hatch leading to the pods. She was close enough to distinquish individual curses, shouts, and screams when the s.h.i.+p shuddered and there was a m.u.f.fled explosion from deep inside, near the hub, where the engineering areas were. Then the entire s.h.i.+p seemed to convulse, throwing Theresita forcefully against a bulkhead. Ahead of her a bulkhead bulged outward, then shattered, blocking the corridor. A howl of wind came from behind her, making her think that the hull was holed between her and the captain's scout until her reason told her that the wind was blowing toward the rupture. Fighting against the howling wind, she fell, crawled, and finally reached the hatch that Ivan had opened with his torch and, once inside that bay with the door closed behind her, was out of the wind. She slipped out of the radiation suit and ran as fast as she could run, being hurled forward once by another explosion. Ivan's head was sticking out of the scout's entry hatch.
”Hurry!” he called.
She leaped to the footholds on the side of the scout and clambered up, diving headfirst into the hatch.
She heard the hatch slam shut behind her, and then Ivan was pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons. ”I'm going to open the outside lock without decompressing the pod,” he said. ”Secure yourself in the couch. When we go, we'll go fast.” It took the operation of three fail-safe devices to set off the charges that blew the outer hatch. It exploded outward, and the decompression sucked at the scout even as Ivan activated the rockets, heedless of the damage done to the pod as the scout leaped into s.p.a.ce.
G-forces pushed Ivan and Theresita down hard against the couches, but Ivan kept the rockets burning.
The rear cameras were activated, and theKarl Marx , Yuri Kolchak's answer to Dexter Hamilton's great dream, grew smaller and smaller, the central area near the hub seeming to flake outward like a fast-blooming flower.
”If it all goes at once,” Ivan said, ”it will take us with it.”
It seemed incredible that theKarl Marx could explode with enough force to reach them, already miles away, but she didn't question Ivan's comment.
The rockets ceased firing, and the sudden weightlessness sent Theresita forward against her harness.
”Which star is the Cygni A star?” Ivan asked.
She didn't answer for a moment. What had the navigator said? ”The one to the right,” she said. But even as Ivan's fingers flew, programming the small rhenium drive aboard the captain's scout, she wasn't sure.
”Here we go,” he said.
As the Americans before them had learned, Theresita and the young engineering officer whose last name she did not know learned that Harry Shaw's theories were wrong in some aspects-the rhenium drive in the captain s private scout s.h.i.+p did not detonate when the scout emerged in the primary gravitational pull of a large celestial object. And it was a very large celestial object, a planet of white clouds and golden land areas and purplish oceans.
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