“That’s the horror,” she answered, “that you might have to.” Her neck straightened. “Well, I won’t believe you will until I have to.”
They kissed quickly before they attached helmets. After that their appearance was unhuman, heads horned with sensors and antennae, blank visages, insectlike eyes that were optical amplifiers. They cycled through the personnel lock, planted gripsoled boots on Fleetwing, and moved off cautiously, a boot always emplaced. Drive units rested on their backs, but a return to this whirling surface would be an acrobatic feat. “Yes,” Nansen murmured, “we two definitely had to be the first. Already I’m finding things to warn everybody about.”
Dayan’s breath was harsh in his audio receivers.
Step by step, they advanced. A coaming lay in their way. “That’s a lock,” Dayan said.
“I know,” Nansen answered. They had studied the plans of the ship, taken from the Kith database, with equal intensity.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t try to go inside here and proceed through the hull?”
“Yes, I am sure. Too many unknowns.”
They crept around the portal. “I… I’m sorry,” Dayan said. “That was a stupid question. I’m feeling a bit spinny.”
Medication staved off nausea but couldn’t do everything. They clung to a sharply curving world that wanted to hurl them from it, blood coursed too heavily in their heads, and a night sky whirled beneath them. “Don’t look at the stars,” Nansen advised.
Dayan swallowed. “Ironic,” she said. “The stars are what this is all about, aren’t they?”
They reached the end of the cylinder and crawled over the edge. She lost her footing. He grabbed an ankle barely in time and hauled her back. “Nombre de Dios!” he groaned. “Don’t do that!” Twenty meters from them, the spokes of the wheel scythed across heaven.
“I’m sorry —”
“No, no, I am. I should have been more careful of… of my partner.”
He heard a chuckle. “Enough with this modesty contest. But thank you, b’ahavah.”
Progress became easier, here where the centrifuge effect pulled sideways. It was somewhat like walking in a stiff wind, which lessened as they approached the center. Nevertheless they kept their caution. “I feel well again,” Dayan said after a while.
“Good.” Oh, more than good, beloved.
They came at length to an occupied shuttle bay. Although the little vehicle had been designed centuries after those that Envoy bore to Tahir, it seemed crude compared even to the early field-drive models she now carried. Nansen helped Dayan unlimber the tripod that was part of her burden and snug its feet to the hull. It gave her a framework to which she could fasten her instruments. When he had finished, the single sound he heard was breathing. Somehow the stillness made the wheel that rotated on his right all the more monstrous.
Dayan busied herself for several minutes.
“I was afraid of this,” she sighed. “It confirms the readings I took aft. The launch control is dead. Probably the power supply to the computer was knocked out in the disaster.”
“What about the others?” Besides the lost boats, Fleetwing had carried eight shuttles; her people had more occasion to go to and fro than his ever did, and numbered many more. He glimpsed those that were docked in the wheel, whirling past.
“I can tell from here, the entire lot is stranded, at least on this side.”
“Well, frankly, I’m not very regretful. I didn’t like the idea of trusting an unfamiliar system that might have been damaged in unobvious ways.”
“How will we evacuate survivors?” If any.
“That depends on what the situation is. At the moment, I think the best procedure will be for our engineers to make what modifications are necessary for us to use a shuttle of Envoy’s. We’ll convey it over, steer it to a wheelside bay, and ferry the people across to the hull. First we’ll doubtless have to do some repair work there, too. They can pass through it to an exit port, and our boats will bring them to our ship. That may involve a large number of trips, but it looks to me like the most conservative, fail-safe plan. Meanwhile, let’s repack your gear and execute the maneuver I rather expected we would.”