the curving inner hall rose up and up into what was going to turn into a blank
wall, the sector division.
Not blank. There was a way. Josh yelled and tried to drag him back when he saw
the cul de sac; “Come on,” he snapped and caught Josh’s sleeve, kept running as
the wall came down off the horizon at them, became level, a blank wall with a
painted mural, and at the right, the heavy door of a Downer hatchway.
He leaned up against the wall, fumbled his card out, jammed it in the slot. The
hatch opened with a gust of tainted air, and he dragged Josh into it, into
virtual dark, numbing cold.
The door sealed. Air exchange started and Josh looked about in panic; Damon
reached for the masks in the recess, thrust one at Josh, got one over his own
face and sucked a restricted breath, trembling so that he could hardly get the
band adjusted.
“Where are we going?” Josh asked, voice changed by the mask. “Now what?”
There was a lamp in the recess. He took it, thumbed the light on. He reached for
the inner-door switch, opened it, a sound that echoed up and up. A slant of the
beam picked out catwalks. They were on a grid, and a ladder went down farther
still, into a round tube. G diminished, dizzyingly. He caught at the rail.
Elene… Elene would be in the worst of it; she would go to cover, get those
office doors locked—had to. He was not able to get through out there; had to get
to help, reach a point where he could get security forces moving in a front that
could stop it. Up. Get up to the high levels; that was white sector on the other
side of that partition. He tried to find an access to it, but the beam showed no
way. There was no direct connection, section to section, except the docks,
except on number one level, he remembered that—complicated lock systems… Downers
knew where—he did not. Get to central, he thought; get to an upper hall and get
to com. Everything was amiss, G out of balance—the Fleet had gone; maybe
merchanters too, throwing them out of stability, and central was not correcting
it. Something was massively wrong up there.
He turned, staggered as G surged sickeningly, grabbed an upslanted rail, and
started climbing.
Josh followed.
vi
Green dock
There was no response from central; the handcom kept giving back the standby,
interspersed with static. Elene thumbed it off and cast a frantic look back at
the lines of troops that held green nine entry. “Runner,” she called. A youth
came up to her on the double. They were reduced to this, with com blacked out.
“Get to all the ships round the rim, one to the next as far as you can run, and
tell them to pass the word on their own com if they can. Hold where you are,
tell them. Tell them… you know what to say. Tell them there’s trouble out there
and they’ll run headon into it if they bolt. Go!”
Scan might be out. She had reckoned the blackout the Fleet’s doing; but India
and Africa had gone, leaving troops to hold the dock, troops they had no room to
take; and the signal was still being interrupted. No knowing what information
the merchanters were getting, or what messages the troops might have gotten over
their own com. No knowing who was in charge of the deserted troops, whether some
high officer or some desperate and confused noncom. There was a wall of them at
the niner entries of blue and green docks—a wall of troops facing up the curving
horizons sealing off those same docks from either side, rifles braced and ready,
the sealing of their square. She feared them no less than the enemy incoming.
They had fired, turned one mob, killed people; there were still sporadic shots.
She had twelve staff members and six of them were missing… cut off by the com
blackout. The others were directing dock crew efforts to check the dumped
umbilicals against a fatal seal breach; the whole section should be under