The need for speed lay on him like the lash of a force whip, with only minutes or maybe mere seconds standing between them all and oblivion, but the course he had to run was neither smooth nor straight. Rubble of every conceivable size and nature lay strewn in his path. Some of it he could sidestep or jump. Some large pieces forced him to detour altogether.
Each time he had to try a new way, his heart beat faster in fear. If he miscalculated, failed to follow the route he had so hastily planned out for himself, and wound up in a morass of big stuff or blocked by a wall of rubbish that would require real climbing, he might as well just sit back and wait for death . . .
The Salty Sue was in front of him. To his relief, he saw that she was as yet untouched. Only the dock beside her was aflame. It was not a massive conflagration, either, praise the Spirit ruling space, but rather several small fires, two of them already perilously near the freighter, burning independently of one another.
Luck was with him. Access to the dock had not been blocked, and the freighter’s deck was reasonably close to its surface. The Free Trader raced for her, dodging the flames and those places where the surface was splintered and either raised or altogether absent.
Only when he reached the Salty Sue did he at last come to a stop. Her rail was near but still far enough to make the gaining of it a challenge in itself.
It was a leap, he thought, even for a fully fresh man, but to judge by those fires, he had no option but to succeed and to do it in his first couple of tries.
Jellico steeled himself, tested his balance, and sprang.
His hands closed over the sturdy curve of the railing even as his feet slammed against the side. With that for a brace, he leapt again, this time vaulting over the rail onto the deck of the imperiled vessel.
Miceal did not pause. He had always liked watercraft and had indulged that liking by learning as much as he could about them, seeking practical experience as well as theoretical knowledge when he got the chance. That should stand by him here. Canuche of Halio was a typical industrial mechanized colony, and her people were not particularly innovative. They had no need to be with respect to the forms of transportation they adopted. The information he had picked up elsewhere should apply well enough here to allow him to accomplish what he had to do.
The freighter’s hatches were open, blown off by the force of the explosion. He ran for the stern-most one and half climbed, half dropped below. To his relief, the seacocks were where he expected to find them, and he threw them open, letting the cold ocean water into as many of the holds as were low enough to receive it.
That done, the spacer returned to the deck and darted once more to the prow.
He had come up none too soon. One of the fires was already licking the Salty Sue’s side.
Jellico’s tongue ran across dry lips. The metal plates would not burn, but her deck would once the flames came so far.
That was irrelevant. As far as he knew, the ammonium nitrate inside did not require the actual touch of fire to go up. A significant rise in temperature would probably accomplish that just as effectively.
The fire guns, too, were stored where reason and his knowledge of similar vessels said they should be. He freed the one closest to the charging fires. Now, if only it still functioned. Equipment like this was built to keep on working under emergency conditions, but an explosion of such magnitude at such proximity . . .
The foam came. Miceal played it on the nearest fire, driving it back, away from the ship, then sprayed a longer stream on the second blaze that was making fast inroads toward her.
For the first time, he felt a touch of relief. As long as the press of battle remained close to this level, he should be able to hold the ship, provided the gun kicked over to seawater when the supply of foam was exhausted. There were others, of course, but none quite so well situated, and there was no guarantee any of them would work if this one did not.
Twenty minutes went by. A third fire was challenging the Sally Sue, bigger and hotter than the others and stronger by a large measure in its advance.
Great black clouds of hot smoke formed its van. The stuff stank, and he wondered precisely what was feeding it. His throat and chest felt as if they were burning in their turn with every breath of it that he was compelled to draw.
The stream of foam sputtered suddenly and was gone.
For an eternal instant, he was left with a limp feeder hose in his left hand, then it stiffened once more, and a strong, cold, silver river shot from the gun.
It looked lovely in that moment, but the man’s eyes followed it somberly. The supply might be unlimited, but water was not as efficient as foam, and all the fires on the dock were rapidly gaining in strength, threatening to merge into one overwhelming conflagration.
They were definitely attacking along a wider front. It was a rare moment now when he was not faced with a serious assault, usually with more than one, and not a moment at all when the ultimate hopelessness of his stand was not starkly apparent to him.
Miceal acknowledged his doom when he finally noticed the barrels. There were about twenty of them lying in a jumble on the farther side of the dock, where the flames and smoke had combined to screen them from his sight and awareness. A sudden, brief clearing of the air revealed them, tall, sturdy metal cylinders with the word benzol emblazoned across them. He did not know how much heat that stuff could take, but he imagined there was a point, probably not terribly high, at which it would go up. When that happened, the Salty Sue would follow, and they would all die, Rael, himself, everyone in Canuche Town and what remained of Canuche Town itself. She was carrying so much more ammonium nitrate than the Man’s that total obliteration was a certainty.
28
Rael Cofort’s head remained bowed. She should be with the Queen’s Captain, fighting this battle beside him, if need be, dying beside him.
Her hands balled. He had been right to order her to stay where she was. She had her own business here, a patient in deep need of help, and she was patently unfit for heavy work. Her efforts to examine Keil’s injuries had so aggravated her own that it was taking all her will not to surrender, not to sit back and give herself over to the pain rending her side.
That could not even be considered. She was a Medic, and she would function as one while the need was there and life remained in her, whatever her own discomfort and whether she was fated to die before her work was completed or not.
Keil Roberts was severely wounded. If he did not get into surgery, he would die of those injuries eventually, but she could patch him up well enough to hold him until he could be flown out.
The missile transfixing him could not be removed. She would have been afraid to try that alone even if she were physically equal to the task. There was too much danger that she would not be able to stanch the ensuing hemorrhage rapidly enough. He had lost too much blood already, and any further significant drain would severely compromise him.
She would need bandages. Rael went to the rear seat of the flier and drew her knife from her belt. Working swiftly, she cut what was left of the tunic off the dead woman and ripped it into large strips, then returned to her patient.
Luckily, the full weight of the huge missile had not come directly down on him. His right leg had been caught and viciously torn, but the massive thing pressed on him in such a way as to greatly retard the flow of blood. He was still alive because of that, but the respite was only temporary. The slow, steady drain had already badly weakened him, and unless it was brought to a stop soon, it would kill him.
The woman crawled and squirmed along the floor of the transport until she was beside Roberts and able to work on his injuries. It was a cramped, punishing position, but she could function. That was all she could allow to matter. She fixed her concentration on what she had to do, ignoring the agony that was her body. Fortunately, Keil could not see her face and was probably too absorbed in his own pain to be aware of any discomfort she was not strong enough to conceal.