Part 11 (1/2)

The seams held.

He cursed and s.h.i.+fted his weight.

Instinctively Jael brought her knees up - and exploded with all of the strength in her body, ramming her knees up into his groin. She twisted, as he bellowed with pain and fell back away from her. His hands clawed at her, trying to stop his own motion in the sleep-field; but he was gasping, stunned with pain. As he tottered at the edge of the sleep-field, she brought her feet up and kicked hard to his chest. Mogurn fell backward out of the sleep-field, dropping with his full weight off the end of the bunk.

Jael half leaped, half fell from the side of the bunk. She hit the floor hard, but scrambled frantically and was out the door and into the hallway before Mogurn could get to his feet. He staggered after her, roaring with anger.

His yell terrified her, but she didn't stop. She ran past the bridge. Her ripped tunic flapped wildly, exposing her; her bare feet slapped the deck. She pa.s.sed the commons and hurtled around the bend of the pa.s.sageway, and stopped, panting. There was nowhere to run. But she heard his whistling breath, his footsteps.

She whirled to confront him.

The pa.s.sageway was empty; she'd heard a hissing ventilator. But the footsteps were real, approaching around the corner. Where could she go? The corridor simply went in a circle, and a small one at that.

”Come here, rigger-b.i.t.c.h!”

The only place to flee was downward, to the other decks.

She darted to the access port and hit the OPEN square. ”You!” she heard. The hatch slid aside, lightsblinked on below, and she leaped for the ladder. She caught the rungs with her hands and banged her toes before catching a foothold.”Come back here!” Mogurn appeared, lunging. She hit the CLOSE square from the inside of the shaft and gasped thankfully as it hissed shut, cutting him off. It gave her a few seconds; the compartments were hermetically separated, and the hatch wouldn't reopen until the safeties recycled.

She backed away from the bottom of the ladder and turned warily. She half expected Mogurn to appear from some other direction. Had she escaped, or just trapped herself? There were two power decks; she was on the topmost. There was a soft hum of generators, and a single flickering indicator light. She hunkered down behind the end of the control panel. A ladder to her right would provide a quick drop to the next level, if she needed it - if she were quick enough. She opened the hatch and peered down.

Should she keep going now? She had no idea where the safest place would be.

There is no safe place.

Mogurn was insane with rage, insane enough to destroy himself by attacking his rigger. She might have to knock him out, or even kill him. Was it his life or hers now? Had it come to that? If she hadn't been aware before of how much she wanted to live, she was aware of it now.

Highwing, she thought. You didn't save my life - my sanity - just to let me die like this, did you?Did you?

But there was no answering thought. Highwing was not here. Highwing was in another s.p.a.ce, another reality. Highwing could not help her.

The ceiling hatch hissed open at the other end of the compartment. She peered over the top of the console. One foot appeared on the ladder; then another. Mogurn descended into view. He turned and spied her at once. ”Enough, Jael!” he snapped, from the ladder. ”I command you not to move!”

Her decision was made instantly, without conscious thought. Her feet took her over the hatch to the next deck, and she was dropping, swinging by her hands from the rungs, feet dangling. Mogurn's bellow echoed after her, before the hatch closed.

She was now on the bottom power deck. It was darker here; the center of the deck was an enormous round chamber, surrounded by a s.h.i.+elding wall. That was the flux-pile, where the energies were harnessed that caught at the fabric of s.p.a.ce and drew the s.h.i.+p into the Flux. It seemed to hum, though perhaps that was her imagination.

The absurdity of her situation nearly made her laugh out loud in bitterness. In the emptiness of interstellar s.p.a.ce, she was being forced to defend herself against the only other human in light-years, a madman turned rapist. It made no sense.

But rationality was not a factor here.

She had only seconds to hide, before Mogurn would be through that hatch. She circled around the main body of the flux-pile. There were three hatches: to the outer airlock, to the flux-field chamber, and to the cargo hold. She hit the OPEN switches to the airlock and cargo hold, though neither offered much hope.

She couldn't go unsuited into the flux-pile, but there was a rack of tools near the maintenance hatch, and a control board to one side. She could threaten sabotage.But that won't stop him; he's mad. From the tool selection, she grabbed a large wrench.

Fight, flee, or hide. But decide fast!She heard the hatch open from the deck above. She ducked into the cargo hold, slapped the hatch closed, and dived to her left down a narrow aisle. It was very gloomy here, with only a single dim safety light near the hatch. It was also very cramped, with solid racks of s.h.i.+pping containers on both sides. The aisle dead-ended; there was nowhere to run.

Jael walked silently back and drew herself up to the near side of the hatch. She took several deep breaths and c.o.c.ked the arm holding the wrench. She gripped the wrench so tightly her hand hurt. She waited.

Her hand began to sweat, her arm to tremble.G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Mogurn - come, if you're going to come! She felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes, and she cursed and blinked them away. No time for that. But how much time did she have? She couldn't hear a sound from the other side of the bulkhead. But he was there. He surely would not stop once he knew she was cornered. But suppose he wanted to frighten her, or make her suffer, waiting. Suppose he - The hatch hissed open and Mogurn lunged through, panting, a ma.s.sive form against the portal.Now - hit him! She found her arms resisting, as though frozen. Mogurn turned. For an instant she saw nothing but his mad, gleaming eyes - and his mouth open in maniacal delight. He stepped toward her.

She swung the wrench at his head. He grunted, deflecting the blow with his arm. The wrench glanced off his shoulder, and something metal flew from his hand and clattered to the deck. He staggered forward.

Jael struck him again on the shoulder, and again. He stumbled against a crate and fell to one knee. She gripped the wrench with both hands and with a groan of rage swung it down again, hitting him at the base of the neck. He went down to both knees. She raised the wrench for a final blow.

Mogurn swung around, roaring, and dived for her legs. She jumped back, but he caught her left ankle, and with a snarl tried to pull her back to him. ”G.o.dd.a.m.n ... little b.i.t.c.h!”

Terrified, Jael pulled away and hacked downward at his arm until he let go with a grunt. She leaped through the portal to the power deck. Swinging around, she stabbed desperately at the CLOSE plate.

This time she was too late. Mogurn lunged and blocked the hatch from shutting. Jael fled.

The airlock inner hatch was still open. She banged the CLOSE switch and dived into the chamber as the hatch was sliding shut. ”Oh, G.o.d - please!” she cried, stumbling, almost falling to her knees in the chamber. For a second, she shuddered helplessly, then she looked up, frantic for anything that could save her life. But she had just trapped herself in a place from which there was no escape - except into s.p.a.ce.

Airless s.p.a.ce.

Hanging behind a clear locker door were two s.p.a.cepacks. She yanked open the locker and pulled one out. ”Please work,” she prayed, snapping it around her waist. She reached for the activator, then glanced up, and through the airlock window, saw Mogurn staggering toward her. Grabbing the second s.p.a.cepack, she clutched it to her side and switched on the one she was already wearing. She was instantly surrounded by a gleaming hermetic forcefield. She reached for the control to bleed the airlock - thinking that if she could evacuate it even partially, the safety interlock would prevent Mogurn from opening the hatch. Never mind that she had nowhere to go; at least she'd be safe for the moment.

But Mogurn reached the control panel on the other side first. The hatch slid open, silently it seemed, and he staggered in. She could see him screaming at her, but his voice was a bare mutter through the forcefield. He hit the CLOSE control, then reached for her. His bearded face was purple with rage. She swung again with the wrench, but he stepped past her, evading the blow. She swiveled, her back to the wall near the control panel, and jabbed at him with the wrench. Through the forcefield, she heard the words,”I'll kill you - !”With a grunt, she raised her elbow and hit the EVACUATE switch twice and the OUTER OPEN switch twice, the command for emergency fast exit.

Mogurn saw, and understood, what she had done. He gazed at her in wide-eyed astonishment - then fear - and dived for the s.p.a.cepack locker. It was empty. He stared at her, frozen, his chest heaving as the pressure in the airlock dropped. His eyes narrowed when he saw the bulge of the second s.p.a.cepack under the glimmering forcefield of her suit. And she knew what he had to be thinking: there was no way to get that pack from her except by turning off her suit first. And he had only seconds before the air would be gone.

There was no sound - just a silent outcry in his expression. Mogurn hurled himself at her, hands groping for her waist and for the control on her pack. She struck at him with the wrench, but he ducked under the blow, and she realized that he was groping not just for the control at her waist, but for the airlock control panel, as well. ”Get away!” she screamed, and clung desperately to a handhold on the wall, struggling to keep herself between Mogurn and the controls.

His hands were around her throat now, squeezing, but she couldn't feel any pressure through the suit, she could only see the hands trying to kill her, and the terrible emptiness and horror in his eyes as he fought for his last lungful of air.

The outer hatch slid open, and Jael's breath caught. She'd been expecting, instinctively, to see the cold blackness of s.p.a.ce, and the stars - but of course they were not in normal-s.p.a.ce, they were in the Flux.

And the Flux was not something that the naked eye was meant to behold. There was blackness, yes; but there was also a swirling melange of color, a light thattore at the eye somehow, a dreadful vapor of light that was like nothing she had ever seen, a light that somehow streamed out of and through the blackness and disappeared back into it. And it poured now into the airlock.

Jael nearly succ.u.mbed to vertigo in that instant, but she kept a desperate grip on the handhold. She was hardly aware of it when Mogurn let go of her. His eyes were bulging, still alive, as he floated away from her - his hands still reaching, still clutching, but clutching now toward emptiness. There was no longer any rage or any plea for life in his gaze; there was no expression that she could understand. It seemed to Jael, as she clung to the wall and watched him float out the hatch, that it was taking Mogurn a very long time to die.

She saw him reach out - hopelessly, she thought - toward the emptiness of this strange kind of infinity.

And then he seemed to s.h.i.+mmer and dissolve, stretching out into the distance like a man of multicolored vapor and smoke, hands first, then head and body and feet following.

And then he was gone, and there was only the mad, numbing, eye-rending, stomach-twisting swirl of the Flux.

Several seconds, perhaps several minutes, pa.s.sed before she managed to turn herself around and touch the control to close the airlock hatch.

It was longer still before she turned off her s.p.a.cepack and retreated back into the cold, silent emptiness of the s.h.i.+p.

Fourteen.

Safe Haven.

For the next forty-eight hours, she scarcely left the net. When she did, it was to face nightmares in hersleep and imagined ghosts in the hallways of the s.h.i.+p. She couldn't eat. Twice, she woke sweating to the vision of Mogurn's face leering at her out of the air. She never turned off the light, but that didn't seem to matter; anytime she allowed her mind to rest, her guard to fall, she was jerked back by visions of Mogurn.