Markel took a deep breath and lifted the seal that was also the entrance to the room below. The acrid stench of some kind of gas caused his eyes to water and made him feel sleepy. He managed to wrestle the seal closed, and let his drowsiness pass while he thought about what to do next.
He didn’t know what kind of gas it was, though judging from his own reaction, it was supposed to knock people out, if not kill them. There were gas masks in the lockers. If he could hold his breath until he could access one of the masks and put it on, then he could get masks for the others. He could also check out the status of their shipmates and see what damage was done to the ship.
He would have liked to have communicated this plan to Johnny but the distance was great and time was short. Before they’d hidden, they had all agreed they would wait until they heard from him, or at least send someone to check on his position before anyone else acted. He was the acknowledged expert vent rat of the crew. Admiral of the vent rats, even.
The vent rat admiral held his breath and opened the seal again. Quickly, he dropped down, letting the seal close behind him as he slipped out so it would not allow much of the gas into the system ‘where his shipmates hid.
The maneuver was tricky and cost him precious seconds. The greenish gas draped the room heavily but Markel held his breath and lay on his stomach, crawling for one of the lower lockers. The air was always better close to the floor, in case he had to breathe before he got to the lockers. He figured he was going to have to. He couldn’t see the lockers from here. The vent opened into the middle of the room and the lockers were along the sides.
Then his hand, outstretched to help him swim-crawl through the miasma, touched something soft and fleshy-warm. He heaved himself up so his eyes were level with his hand. Annella! Annella Carter lay there, knocked out by the gas but still breathing, though very shallowly. And as he drew closer, wondering how on earth he would manage to hold his breath one more second, he saw that she held a gas mask in her outstretched hand. Her other hand, holding two more masks, lay near an open locker door. He knew at once that she had grabbed the masks to get them to him and the others in the ventilation system, but had already breathed too much gas. It had knocked her out before she could get her own mask on.
He fitted a mask over his face, then put one on her. After he got masks to Johnny and some of the others, they could clear the ship of this gas and work to wake her up, if the mask didn’t do the trick. But right now he had to try to save the others. Carrying as many masks as he could hold, he ducked out into the passage and down the next one which led to the computation/navigation center.
He saw no more bodies, living or dead. The door to the locker area was concealed behind some pipes, so the enemy had missed it-and Annella-when they boarded. He wished he knew what had gone on while they were in hiding. Really, he’d have to talk to Johnny about rigging the vents with visual surveillance equipment in the future. Maybe bunks and hot and cold running water and battery -powered lights, too. He grinned at his own -wild ideas.
Tapping on the vent, he waited until it was pulled open and shoved a mask up at Johnny, who took it, then reached back for the other masks. The vent closed again-Markel assumed everybody was masking up. Johnny and other masked shipmates finally began dropping through the ceiling. Markel directed them to the lockers, to gather more masks for their remaining shipmates in the vents.
All of this was done in eerie green silence. The only sounds on the ship were clanking chain sounds of opening and closing locks, seals, and hatches, and the soft sound of Markel s shipmates’ phantomlike movements-or maybe elflike movements, in the case of some of the smaller kids.