“Not if I disarm it. If I can get the charge out of it, all
firing it will do is open the locking devices; then we can
take the windshield off and get in. I’ll pass the charge out
back to you; handle it gently. Let me have your flashlight,
Marty, mine’s almost dead.”
Silently, Martinson handed him the light. He hesitated a
moment, listening to the water dripping in the background.
Then, with a deep breath, he said, “Well. Here goes nothin’.”
He clambered into the narrow opening.
The jungle of pipes, wires and pumps before him was
utterly unfamiliar in detail, but familiar in principle. Human
beings, given the job of setting up a rocket motor, set it up
in this general way. McDonough probed with the light beam,
looking for a passage large enough for him to wiggle through.
There didn’t seem to be any such passage, but he squirmed
his way forward regardless, forcing himself into any opening
that presented itself, no matter how small and contorted it
seemed. The feeling of entrapment was terrible. If he were
to wind up in a cul-de-sac, he would never be able to worm
himself backwards out of this jungle of piping . . .
He hit his head a sharp crack on a metal roof, and the
metal resounded hollowly. A tank of some kind, empty, or
nearly empty. Oxygen? No, unless the stuff had evaporated
long ago; the skin of the tank was no colder than any of the
other surfaces he had encountered. Propellant, perhaps, or
compressed nitrogensomething like that.
Between the tank and what he took to be the inside of the
hull, there was a low freeway, just high enough for him to