He set her down there. Chihin had the presence of mind to slam her hand onto the Close plate, and it sealed in a rush. Then she leaned against the wall, and he did, panting from the run, trying to be sure she didn’t fall.
That meant an arm around her, and hers around him, and as she caught her balance, all the way around him. He held on, she did, and since the universe failed to end, it ended up with Chihin patting him on the shoulder, and him feeling—very short of breath, very, very short of breath, and her likewise, and then both of them with their arms about each other.
Then it wasn’t a thought-out thing at all, they were just holding on to each other, and the bomb still hadn’t blown up. Tarras was asking, via com,
“Are you all right? Chihin?Na Hallan?”.
But holding on seemed more important than making sense, and breathing more important than answering, and Chihin was all right, that was what he kept thinking, Chihin was the senior officer, she ought to answer if she wanted to.
“Chihin?Na Hallan?”
He hadn’t any breath at all to answer.
“They look all right, “he heard Tarras say, almost off mike.
And someone else, a younger, outraged voice: “Gods rot her!”
He knew he was in trouble then, he didn’t want to make Fala mad, but he didn’t know how to extricate himself, he didn’t even try—he wasn’t thinking quite clearly, and knew it.
“Is it a bomb?” thecaptain’s voice said, off mike.
“ I think they ‘re calling in the bomb disposal people. The customs agent left. “
“I think we’re going for Kefk.”
“Now?”
“We’re off-loaded all but two cans. We call the dealer, say we ‘re unable to deliver those two, we deduct the price, we get our tails out of this hellhole, right now. Advisegtst excellency and gtst—whatever. —Can you get those two fools out of the airlock?”
The captain was up there. Fala was. Tarras. Everybody. There was a bomb on the dock as large as a country haystack and the ship was going to leave. And all he could think of was the face, the very mature face of someone he couldn’t believe was attracted to him.
“Got to get inside,” Chihin said. And he was scared of the ship going or the can blowing up outside, but more vivid was the thought that Chihin was too different and too common-sense and too steeped in spacer morals to realize he cared for her, he truly, really cared for Chihin—who, with every prejudice she had, honestly made the effort to understand him.
“You gods-rotted idiots, get topside, report in immediately, do you hear me?”
That was the captain. Chihin said a word his sisters never said, then with the rake of a claw through his mane, breathed, “We better do it, kid. Or she’ll make us hike to Kefk.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was one way to get out of station—station traffic control couldn’t rightly refuse an emergency undock, a fire squad had their last two lines shut down, and they were on their way.
With empty holds and running light; with Ha’domaren and the kif still at dock and trying to get clearance, Hilfy was sure: one could imagine the messages flying back and forth. If they hadn’t a stsho aboard, if they weren’t for other reasons reluctant to demonstrate to the universe at large what the Legacy could do unladed, they could kite out of here.
As it was they put as much push on it as they dared use and listened to Kshshti try to solve its problem.
With nervous ships trying to bolt, the doors of that section of dock shut, and the whole population of Kshshti under seal-failure warning … station police were looking for the driver, who had disappeared, the truck was registered to a warehouse two sections away, no one they’d dealt with, it was stolen, so far as the manager claimed, and the can, which could match almost any ship’s ink-written sequence-number for the manifest, didn’t match anyone’s serial numbers in the embedded ID, that a laser reader would pick up: the manufacturer was Ma’naoshi on Ijir. Mahendo’sat. But cans scattered from their point of manufacture, by the very nature of carrying freight. It could be anybody’s; and being a cold-can, and being handled only by robot and by gloved personnel, any exterior biological contact could go all the way back to the day of manufacture, or to some truck driver on Gaohn station three years ago.