She looked around the shelter warily. A pair of double-decker bunks stood at the far end, the hatch of an airlock at the other. Inbetween was a small galley with a freezer, microwave oven, and sink; some other equipment she didn’t recognize; two padded chairs; a desk with a computer atop it and a smaller chair in front of it…
And a big metal cylinder sitting in the middle of the floor, crowding the already-cramped quarters. One end of the cylinder was attached to a large pair of tanks and a miniaturized cryostat.
“Is that a dewar?” Cardenas asked.
George nodded. “Had to hide the woman inside it from Humphries.”
“She’s dead?”
“Preserved cryonically,” George said. “There’s hopes of reviving her.”
“She won’t be much company.”
“’Fraid not. But I’ll pop back here every few days, see that you’re okay.”
Stepping toward the desk, trying to hide her anxiety, Cardenas asked, “How long will I have to stay here?”
“Dunno. I’ll have a chat with Dan, see what we should do.”
“Call Doug Stavenger,” she said. “He’ll protect me.”
“I thought you didn’t want to put him in the middle of this scrape.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling with cold fear. “That’s before I knew you were going to put me out here.”
“Hey, this isn’t so bad,” George said, trying to sound reassuring. “I useta live in tempos like this for months at a time.”
“You did?”
“Yup. Me and my mates. This is like home-sweet-home to me.”
She looked around the place again. It seemed smaller than her first view of it. Closing in on her. Nothing between her and the deadly vacuum outside except the thin metal of the shelter’s cylinder and a heaping of dirt over it. And a corpse in the middle of the floor, taking up most of the room.
“Call Stavenger,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”
“Sure,” said George. “Lemme talk to Dan first.”
“Make it quick.”
“The magnetic shield is going to blow up?” Dan asked, for the thirtieth time.
Pancho sat across the table from him in Starpower 1’s wardroom. Amanda was on the bridge as the ship raced at top acceleration back toward Selene. Fuchs was in the sensor bay, assaying the samples he’d chipped from Bonanza.
“You know how superconductors work,” Pancho said, grimly. “They have to stay cooled down below their critical temperature. If they go above that temperature all the energy in the coil gets dumped into the hot spot.”
“It’ll explode,” Dan muttered.
“Like a bomb. Lots of energy in the superconductor, boss. It’s a dangerous situation.”
“There’s more than one hot spot?”
“Four of ’em so far. Wouldn’t be surprised if more of ’em crop up. Whoever bugged this ship didn’t want us to get back home.”
Dan drummed his fingers on the table top. “I can’t believe Kris Cardenas would do this to me.”
“It’s Humphries, pure and simple,” said Pancho. “He could kill you with a smile, any day.”
“But he’d need Kris to do this.”
“Look,” Pancho said, hunching forward in her chair. “Doesn’t matter who spit in whose eye. We got troubles and we’ve gotta figger out how to save our necks before that magnetic coil goes up like a bomb.”
Dan had never seen her look so earnest. “Okay, right. What do you recommend?”
“We shut down the magnetic field.”
“Shut it down? But then we’d have no radiation shield.”
“Don’t need it unless there’s a flare, and we can prob’ly get back to Selene before the Sun burps another one out.”
“Probably,” Dan growled.
“That’s the chance we take. I like those odds better’n letting the coil’s hot spots build up to an explosion that’d rupture the ship’s skin.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Dan said, reluctantly.
“Okay, then.” Pancho got up from the table. “I’m gonna shut it down now.”
“Wait a minute,” said Dan, reaching for her wrist. “What about the MHD channel?”
Pancho shrugged. “No problems so far. Prob’ly hasn’t been bugged.”
“If it goes, we’re dead, right?”
“Well…” She drew the word out. “We could dump the coil’s energy in a controlled shutdown. That wouldn’t affect the thrusters.”