trooper a blow in the throat that threw the trooper down and sent a pain through
his hand. He dived for the gun, hit the floor and rolled in a patter of shots
that popped off the decking. The fire hit, an explosion that paralyzed his arm.
He kept rolling, for the cover of the irregular wall, the gun abandoned in
panic. “Move it,” someone yelled. “Get him.”
A second shot exploded into his side, and after that was the cold pressure of
the deck plates against his face and a stunned realization that he had just been
hit. He heard voices shouting, heard someone order a boarding—
“Give up the freighter,” he heard called. “You just shot the bastard and it’s no
good. Come on.”
He was bleeding. He had trouble breathing. He lay still until the sounds were
done, and that was the best that he knew how to do.
Then he lifted his head and saw Curran lying face down on the plates a distance
away.
He got that far, an inching progress across the ice cold plates, terrified of
being spotted moving. The wounds were throbbing, the left arm refused to move,
but he thought that he could have gotten up. And Curran—
Curran was breathing. He put his hand on Curran’s back, snagged his collar and
tried to pull him, but it tore his side. Curran stirred then, a feeble movement.
“Come on,” Sandor said. “Out of the open: come on—let’s try for the ship.”
Curran struggled for his feet, collapsed back to one knee; and blood erupted
from the burn in his shoulder. Sandor made the same try, discovered he could get
his legs under him, offered a hand to Curran and steadied him getting up. “Get
to cover,” he breathed, looking out at all that vacant dock, foreign machinery
more than a century outdated, a dark pit of an access. That was Australia back
there, two berths down, dark and blank to the outside; and Lucy was in the other
direction… Lucy—
They made it twenty meters along the wall; and then the cold and the tremors got
to them both. Sandor hung onto the wall, eased down it finally, supporting
Curran and both of them leaning together. “Rest a minute,” he said.
They’ll blow the station,” Curran predicted, “Hard vacuum.— Come on, man. Come
on.” It was Curran hauling him up this time; and they walked as far as they
could, but it was a long, long distance to Lucy’s berth.
Curran went down finally, out of strength; and he was. He held onto the
blood-soaked Dubliner, both of them tucked up in the cover of a machinery niche,
and stared at what neither one of them could reach.
Seals crashed. Australia was loose, preparing for encounter. Sandor went stiff,
and Curran did, anticipating the rush of decompression that might take them; but
the station stayed whole.
Then a second crash of seals.
“Allison,” Sandor said, and Curran took in his breath.
Lucy had prepared herself to break loose. Someone with the comp keys was at
controls.
They’re wanting an answer,” Neill said from com—turned a sweating face in
Allison’s direction.
“No,” Allison said.
“Allie—those are guns out there!”
“They know comp’s locked and their man might not answer. No, don’t do it.”
They’re moving,” Deirdre said.
Vid came to her screen, a view of a monster warship, the twin of Norway, a
baleful glow of running lights illuminating the angular dark surfaces of the
frame. Cylinder blinkers began their slow movement as the carrier established
rotation.
“They’ve broken communication,” Neill said, and Allison said nothing, waiting,
watching, hoping that the behemoth that passed near them would reckon their
man’s silence a communications lockup. And that they would not, in passing, blow
them and the station at once.
“Movement our starboard,” Deirdre said, and that image came too: another ship
had been around the rim, and it was putting out “Freighter type,” Deirdre said.
“One of theirs,” Allison surmised.
There was a silence for a moment “Get down there,” she said then, “and get those
port seals complete. We’d better be ready to move.”
“Both of us?” Deirdre asked.
“Go.”
All the functions came to her board; her cousins scrambled for the lift back in