For an instant, Brent stood fast. He snapped two more shots. Still half blind, he missed. Ruszek bellowed and plunged at him. Zeyd followed. Brent whipped about and ran. Moving downspin, weight lessened, he needed about ten seconds to disappear where to the eye the deck met the overhead.
“Stop!” Nansen shouted. “Stop, Lajos, Selim!” Zeyd heeded. Ruszek pounded on. Nansen sprinted, overtook him, grabbed him by his sleep shirt, and pulled. “You’ll get killed. No sense in that.”
The mate obeyed. “We’ve got to smash him,” he panted. “He has that gun.”
“If necessary, one or two of us can get killed later,” Nansen said. “But we don’t want it to be necessary.”
They returned. Mokoena squatted at Cleland’s sprawled form. She had removed helmet and apron and rucked up his shirt. The blood had spread impossibly far, impossibly bright, before outflow ended. Heedless of it, the others stood close and pale. “How is he?” Nansen asked.
“Gone,” Mokoena said.
“Revival?”
She pointed to a gap in the right temple and the gray material spattered opposite. “No.” She closed the eyes in the wet red mask. “Goodbye, Tim.” She rose.
Nansen signed the cross. Ancient words trembled on his lips. “He was one of us,” the captain finished.
Then, tone gone steely: “Brent’s loose, armed and frenzied. God knows what he’ll attempt. He may even try to destroy the ship.”
“Gotterdammerung,” Dayan whispered.
“We should have a short grace period while he finds a hiding place, recovers full vision, and thinks what to do. After that, we have to capture or kill him. Is everybody in active condition? We can do nothing for Tim till later. But take a moment to wash off his blood, if only because it’d leave tracks, and change clothes if you need to. Then we’ll arm ourselves.”
Hollowness met them at the gun locker.
“I am a fool,” Nansen groaned. “I should have known he’d clean this out before he acted.”
“You couldn’t be sure,” Dayan said. “We had to verify it.”
“Where the fuck did he take the things?” Ruszek snarled.
Nansen grew thoughtful. “I would have hidden them well away. That Tahirian trip over to the hull. . . . Yes-s-s….”
“Do the Tahirians hold the arsenal?” Zeyd asked sharply.
“I doubt that. Not designed for them, not in their psyche, and not something Brent would want them to have on hand. No, almost certainly, they stowed them in the hull for him. We’ll stop at the machine shop and collect whatever can double as a weapon.”
“Pardon me,” said Sundaram, “but could not Brent meanwhile cross over and take possession of the munitions?”
“Jesus Cristo, si!” Nansen exclaimed. “I am a fool.”
“You’re a strategist, darling, and never knew it,” Yu told Sundaram. Laughter crackled half hysterical from a few throats.
Nansen regained decisiveness. “The command center, it is critical. Hanny, Lajos, come with me there. The rest of you to the machine shop. If he gets into it, he can work every kind of mischief. Mam, Selim, proceed from there to the command center with stuff we can use for fighting; knives, crowbars, pipe wrenches, anything. Wenji, Ajit, stay behind, armed likewise. Keep the door closed and barricaded. If he tries to break in, call on the intercom.”
Sundaram hesitated. “What of the exocommunications room?” he asked.
“He could wreck it out of pure malice. That would be a pity, but we can rebuild it once we’re safe. Move!”
Viewscreens showed stars, the minute, hazy blaze of the accretion disk, the frosty galactic river. Instruments and controls filled most other bulkhead space, marshaled like sentinels against the dark. Nansen went immediately to a certain panel.
“The shuttles are still in place, one on either side,” he read from the meters. “Excellent.” His fingers worked. “Now neither of them will go anywhere without new orders from here. We have him in this wheel.”
He took a seat at the observation board. Ruszek joined him on the right, Dayan on the left. They divided the task and began operating interior monitors. Scene after scene flashed before them, passages, rooms, parks and gardens whose flowering was suddenly pathetic.
“Look here!” Dayan cried.
The men leaned over toward her screen. It was as if they saw the Tahirian gymnasium from above. Five figures clustered amidst the exercise equipment. She centered them in the field and magnified.