down the ramp on the other side and pressed the button which should attract the
guards on the other side of Q line.
This button worked. The guards opened, accepted his card, and noted his presence
in Pell proper. He passed decontamination, and one of the guards left his post
to walk with him, routine, whenever the councillor from Q was admitted to
station, until he had passed the limits of the border zone; then he was allowed
to walk alone.
He straightened his clothes as he went, trying to shed the smell and the memory
and the thoughts of Q. But there was alarm sounding, red lights blinking in all
the corridors, and security personnel and police were everywhere evident There
was no peace this side either.
v
Pell: station central, com central office; 1300 hrs.
The boards in central com were lit from end to end, jammed with calls from every
region of the station at once. Residential use had shut itself down in crisis;
situation red was flashing in all zones, advising all residents to stay put.
They were not all regarding that instruction. Some halls of the halls on monitor
were vacant; others were full of panicked residents. What showed now on Q
monitor was worse.
“Security call,” Jon Lukas ordered, watching the screens. “Blue three.” The
division chief leaned over the board and gave directions to the dispatcher. Jon
walked over to the main board, behind the harried com chiefs post. The whole of
council had been called to take whatever emergency posts they could reach, to
provide policy, not specifics. He had been closest, had run, reaching this post,
through the chaos outside. Hale… Hale, he fervently hoped, had done what he was
told, was sitting in his apartment, with Jessad. He watched the confusion in the
center, paced from board to board, watched one and another hall in confusion.
The com chief kept trying to call through to the stationmaster’s office, but
even he could not get through; tried to route it through station command com,
and kept getting a channel unavailable blinking on the screen.
The chief swore, accepted the protests of his subordinates, a harried man in the
eye of a crisis.
“What’s happening?” Jon asked. When the man ignored the question for a moment to
handle a subordinate’s query, he waited. “What are you doing?”
“Councillor Lukas,” the chief said in a thin voice, “we have our hands full.
There’s no time.”
“You can’t get through.”
“No, sir, I can’t get through. They’re tied up with command transmission. Excuse
me.”
“Let it foul,” he said, when the supervisor started to turn back to the board,
and when the man looked at him, startled: “Give me general broadcast.”
“I need the authorization,” the com chief said. Behind him, red lights began to
flash and multiply. “It’s the authorization I need, councillor. Stationmaster
has to give it.”
“Do it!”
The man hesitated, looked about him as if there were advice to be had from some
other quarter. Jon seized him by the shoulder and faced him to the board while
more and more lights flashed on the jammed boards.
“Hurry it,” Jon ordered him, and the chief reached for an internal channel and
punched in a mike.
“General override to number one,” he ordered, and had the acknowledgment back in
an instant. “Override on vid and com.” The com center main screen lit, camera
active.
Jon drew a deep breath and leaned into the field. The image was going
everywhere, not least to his own apartment, to the man named Jessad. “This is
Councillor Jon Lukas,” he said to all Pell, breaking into every channel,
operations and residential, from the stations busy directing incoming ships to
the barracks of Q to the least and greatest residence in the station. “I have a
general announcement. The fleet presently in our vicinity is confirmed to be
that of Mazian, proceeding in under normal operations for docking. This station
is secure, but will remain under condition red until the all-clear is given.
Operations in the com center and elsewhere will proceed more smoothly if each
citizen will refrain from the use of communications except in the most extreme