O’Donnell hooked himself over the edge of the doorway. A hand reached out of the darkness and dragged him through. He landed on his head, stayed upright for a second, then toppled onto his back. Something flashed above him. He tried to roll over, but the edge of the tray caught him in the ribs. The pain stung.
Ramsanjawi bolted for the door. O’Donnell desperately swung out a leg to trip him. The satchel popped out of the kurta and sailed into the upturned equipment. Both men scrambled after it like opposing linemen vying for a loose football on a wet field. Ramsanjawi came up with it and lurched away. O’Donnell hurled himself after him.
It was a crunching tackle.
O’Donnell drove the shoulder of his hardened EMU suit into Ramsanjawi’s ribs, and both men fell into the rowing machine. One of O’Donnell’s legs became wedged in the mechanism. He tried to brace himself, but his weight combined with Ramsanjawi’s was too much. The sound of his shinbone snapping echoed through his EMU. He roared with the sudden unbearable pain.
For a second they hung as if frozen. Then the rowing machine’s mounts gave way. O’Donnell, Ramsanjawi, and the machine toppled over, splintering storage compartments along the far wall.
O’Donnell held onto Ramsanjawi’s upper arm, the force multipliers of one glove digging deeply into the flabby flesh, like motor-driven pincers. The Indian gave a high-pitched scream and tried to wriggle free. O’Donnell tried to reach Ramsanjawi’s air hose with his other gloved hand. He wanted to give Ramsanjawi a taste of the cabin air. But his glove tips fell short by inches and the EMU restricted him from moving any closer. Pain swirled up from his leg, choking him, purpling his vision. Ramsanjawi squirmed like a hooked fish, trying to free himself from the glove’s viselike grip. If O’Donnell let go, the slithering Indian bastard would get away. Into the lifeboat. Into forever.
O’Donnell stretched his arm until he thought his shoulder would dislocate. His free hand inched closer to Ramsanjawi’s shaking air hose. His fingers curled around it. He pulled.
He couldn’t hear the air rush out. But he felt the change come over Ramsanjawi. The Indian stopped squirming. O’Donnell let his hand fall from Ramsanjawi’s arm.
A moment later, there was a knock on his helmet. It sounded polite, almost friendly. Ramsanjawi stared at him with a benign smile on his face. His mouth moved and O’Donnell heard, like a voice in a dream, “Would you like some tea, sir?”
“What the hell,” O’Donnell said, and let the pain and darkness engulf him.
In the weak light of the emergency lamp, Dan pried the transparent cover from the emergency controller receptacle. The ACS malfunction left him with only one option: killing the spin rate by manually firing the thrusters. It wasn’t an easy task; Trikon Station wasn’t designed to be flown like a space shuttle. It was a fragile, delicate bird, no more capable of real maneuvering than the bonsai creatures he cherished. But it was spinning drunkenly, tearing itself apart; Dan had to get it back under control. And fast. Without power from the solar panels he had only minutes.
Outside the command center, Lance slowly regained consciousness. His helmet was gone, he realized. The cabin air had a slight flowery scent that tickled his throat for a moment, then seemed to die away, evaporate. He tried to take a deep breath but the knife-sharp pain in his ribs made him gasp. For long moments he clutched at a handhold, panting painfully as his head slowly cleared. Then he saw Commander Tighe at the controls.
“Finally couldn’t ignore me,” he muttered. He flung himself headlong toward the commander.
Dan was fitting the emergency controller into its receptacle and did not sense Lance’s rush until it was too late. Lance blasted him out of his anchoring loops. The two men crashed against the bulkhead in a flurry of punches and kicks. Lance was frothing, gurgling, biting at Dan’s EMU. Dan fended off the blows as best he could. He no longer felt anger. He could not be incensed with a youngster who had obviously snapped his tether. Dan felt more bemused than anything else, like a fully suited football player being physically attacked by a fan in street clothes.