She flung herself out of the office, and suddenly the module tilted drunkenly. Lorraine put out her hands to cushion her fall to the floor. Dan’s feet were anchored beneath the computer console, his gloved fingers flicking across the keyboard like a grand maestro, but he too swayed and had to grab at the edge of the console to steady himself.
“Dan,” she said. “Oh, Dan, you’ve come back!”
He paused, the gold visor of his helmet regarding her like the eye of a strange god. The reflection of her own distorted face smiled stupidly in the heavily tinted glass. Then he turned back to the keyboard.
She could not believe her eyes. He was ignoring her, rejecting her, mere minutes after professing his love for her. He couldn’t be Dan. He couldn’t be the man she loved.
She dove at him, pressed her eyes against the helmet. The face that loomed out of the shadows was hard, cruel, set in anger.
Lance ripped her from his shoulders and sent her spinning. She leaped back toward him, but he swatted her backhand across the mouth. Her eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets, and then they slowly closed.
Lance shoved her down the aisle. Then he went back to the command console and continued pecking out a new program for the translation thrusters.
4 SEPTEMBER 1998
TRIKON STATION
SUSPECT KILLED IN ESCAPE ATTEMPT
COALINGA, CA—A murder suspect being transported from San Francisco to Los Angeles by sheriffs deputies was killed early this morning while trying to escape on a lonely stretch of Interstate 5 in Fresno County.
Deputy Luther Green and Deputy Hector Andujar were returning the suspect to Los Angeles to face charges in connection with the murder of a Topanga woman.
The suspect, Harold Meade, reportedly worked free of his handcuffs. He slugged Deputy Andujar, and in the ensuing struggle with Deputy Green the car overturned in a roadside gully.
Police said Meade disarmed Green and was preparing to kill him when Andujar shot him through the neck with his service revolver. The deputies sustained only minor injuries in the struggle.
Meade was arrested in San Francisco yesterday in connection with the sexual assault and murder of Stacey Hollis, a 32-year-old Topanga woman who died from a massive injection of an animal tranquilizer. Meade, a British national, was apprehended at San Francisco International Airport while attempting to board a flight to Melbourne, Australia. In a routine inspection of luggage, airport security officials found a supply of the same type of animal tranquilizer used in the Topanga murder.
— Fresno Bee, 4 September 1998
Dan and Hugh O’Donnell felt as if they were in a runaway elevator. The airlock surged with sudden weight again and they tumbled against its outer hatch in a flurry of flailing arms and legs and curses.
Dan cut his EMU comm link with the station’s alarm system. He didn’t need those damn bells and Klaxons to remind him that all hell had broken loose. The other channels were silent except for an occasional crackle of static.
“What’s that noise?” O’Donnell’s voice muttered in Dan’s helmet earphones.
Dan heard it. A low-frequency hum, like a giant bronze statue of Buddha intoning its mantra. The feeling of weight shifted again and they both slid to what had once been the airlock’s overhead.
“What is it?” O’Donnell repeated.
“The whole damned station is vibrating,” Dan replied grimly. “Like a big tuning fork.”
“Jesus! Will it break up?”
“If we let it.” Dan climbed to his booted feet. “Come on.”
He guesstimated the station’s sudden gravity to be around one-sixth g, like that of the moon. It didn’t sound like a tremendous change-theoretically, he was capable of jumping six times farther or lifting objects six times heavier than on Earth. But after nine months of micro-gee, he felt like the circus fat man.
“We’ve got to get through the hatch,” Dan said. “Give me a lift.”
Grunting, O’Donnell boosted him within reach of the inner hatch. Dan reached for the small wheel that controlled the locking mechanism. The airlock lurched again and his gloved fingers slipped from the wheel. He came banging down hard, O’Donnell sprawling painfully beside him.