This wasn’t a formal watch change, just a navigation check programmed before the hijacking. The outbound element was of twenty-one men rather than the normal eight of a Cold Crew on the Empress of Earth: the survivors of all three watches, and Ran Colville in the lead. There wasn’t any time to lose if they were all to get onto the hull before the starliner inserted into sponge space again—
And anyway, Cold Crews didn’t waste a lot of time on people who couldn’t do their jobs. If Ran—if anybody—blocked the hatch during a watch change, he went out anyway—and maybe too fast to hook his line at the high end.
The Cold was an inhuman, dehumanizing experience. The men of the Cold Crews not only knew that, they bragged about it
Ran took the ladder in two steps against artificial gravity, felt that fade in a familiar queasiness in the pit of his stomach as his torso lifted above the skin of the ship. He latched his line, one-handed because the adjustment rod was in his left gauntlet, and planted the magnetic sole of his right boot on the hull with a slap he could feel all through the stiff fabric of his suit.
Ran Colville was going home again to Hell.
The tracks to the Empress’s eight engine modules were inlaid into grooves on the hull, rather than being paint which would be worn away by the scrape of men shuffling flat-footed toward their duty stations. Ran followed Track 3, because that had been his first station on the Prester John. Home again—
The Grantholmers had no reason to put a guard at the hull side of the hatch. It was still possible that one of the soldiers-turned-engine tender had found the strain of the Cold too much and was coming in—dispirited but still armed.
Ran stepped forward, pivoting his body to make up for his inability to turn his helmeted head to see sideways. As he moved, his hands worked the adjustment tool, locking both of the tube’s joints into their extended position. There were no Grantholmers in sight.
He’d told his men to stay bunched at the hatch until sponge space hid them from sight. Despite that, he stepped forward himself, just to the next staple—
The Cold was coming. No one who had felt it could remain static and await its return.
The stars of this portion of the sidereal universe formed a hazy blur banding the blackness at an angle skewed to the Empress’s present attitude. The starliner was in the intergalactic vacuum which made up most of the real universe. Only Bridge and the vessel’s data banks could turn this location into a waypost on the journey to Tblisi—or to wherever the hijackers planned to divert her.
The Empress of Earth herself was a gleam little brighter than the distant galaxy, the reflection of light from millions, even billions, of parsecs away. The converted freighter which carried the hijacking party was a darker hint in the black sky. It must be very close, but distances in the void were uncertain without absolute knowledge of the other object’s size.
From the hatch, four of the Empress’s engine modules were bulges above the starliner’s smooth curve. Ran’s objective, Engine 3, was on the “underside” of the hull, not visible from where he stood. The inlaid track, a centimeter higher than the surrounding skin, would take him there.
He reached the next staple, twenty meters closer to his destination. He planted his boots, but he didn’t bother to unreel his second line and set it before he hit the release stud. A command pulsing down the line opened the hook attached to the staple at the hatch opening.
Ran caught the hook as it sailed toward him, a wink in darkness. He set it to the new attachment point and shuffled on. Men had been known to smash their own faceshields when they snatched the safety line toward themselves too quickly and didn’t catch the heavy hook in the end of it.
Two of the engine modules stood out above the hull to which they were joined by basket-woven wire. They were distanced from the skin to protect the vessel in the unlikely event a fusion bottle failed. The elevation also gave the engines wider directability than they would have had if mounted lower. At the moment, the two visible pods pointed thirty degrees to starboard of the starliner’s nominal axial plane.