he headed out, started running, heard running footfalls behind him and looked
back.
“Get back,” he wished Josh, “get back in there”
He had no time to argue with him. He ran, down the hall… had to be in green
sector; it had to be nine in this direction… all the signs were gone. He saw
riot ahead of him, people running scattered through the halls; and some had
lengths of pipe and there was a body in the hall… he dodged it and kept going.
The rioters he saw did not look like Pell… unshaven, unkempt… he knew suddenly
what they were, and flung everything into his running, pelted down the hall and
up a turn, headed as close to the docks as he could get without going into the
main corridor. He had to break into it finally, dodged a runner among other
runners.
There were more bodies on the floor, and looters ran rampant. He shouldered past
men who clutched pipes and knives and, some of them, guns…
The entry to the dock was closed, sealed. He saw that, staggered aside as a
looter came swinging a pipe at him, for no reason more than that he was in the
way.
The attacker kept going, a half-circle that pulled him about and ended against
the wall, with Josh, who slammed his head into the wall and came up with the
pipe in his hand.
Damon whirled and ran, for the sealed doors… reached for his pocket, for the
card, to override the lock.
“Konstantin!” someone shouted behind him.
He turned, stared at a man, at a gun leveled at him. A length of pipe hurtled
out of nowhere and hit the man, and looters scrabbled for the gun, a surging
mob. In panic he whirled, thrust the card for the slot; the door whipped back,
with the vast dockside beyond, and other looters. He ran, sucking in the cold
air, down the dock toward white sector, where he saw other great seals in place,
the dock seals, two levels tall and airtight. He stumbled from exhaustion and
caught himself, pelted up the curve toward them, hearing someone close behind
him and hoping it was Josh. The stitch that had started in his side unnoticed
grew to a lancing pain… Past looted shops with dark, open doors, he reached the
wall beside the huge seals, fetched up against the closed door of the small
personnel lock, thrust his card into the slot.
It was dead. No response. He pushed it harder, thinking it might have failed
contact, inserted it a second time. It was cut off. It should at least have
lighted the buttons, given him a chance to put through a priority code, or
flashed the hazard signal.
“Damon!” Josh reached the door beside him, caught at his shoulder, pulled him
around. There were people moving behind them, thirty, half a hundred, from all
across the docks… from green nine, in greater and greater number.
“They know you got a door open,” Josh said. “They know you’ve got that kind of
access.”
He stared at them. Snatched his card from the slot. Useless, blanked; control
had blanked his card.
“Damon.”
He grabbed at Josh and ran, and the crowd started forward with a howl. He raced
for the open doors, for the shops… into the dark doorway of the nearest. He
whirled inside, pushed the button to seal the door. That at least worked.
The first of the mob hit the door, hammered at it. Panicked faces pressed close
to the plastic, lengths of pipe hammered at it, scarring it: it was a security
seal, like all the dock-front stores… pressure-tight, windowless, but for that
double-thick circle.
“It’s going to hold,” Josh said.
“I don’t think,” he said, “that we can get out again. I don’t think we can get
out of here until they come to get us.”
Josh looked at him across the space of the window, from the other side of the
door, pale in the light that came through it.
“They blanked my card,” Damon said. “It stopped working. Whoever’s in station
central just cut off my card use.” He looked toward the plastic, on which the