As if in answer to her unfinished question, the voice from the other side of the hatch boomed, “We’ve got the airlock set up. In thirty seconds we’ll open the hatch. We can take two people at a time. Get your first two ready.”
Fuchs pawed at his burning eyes and said, “Amarjagal and Nodon.”
The woman slung Nodon’s good arm around her bulky shoulders and struggled up to her feet, with Sanja helping her. Some of the security guards stirred, and Fuchs reached for the laser pistol on the ground next to him.
“We’ll all get through,” he said sternly. “Two at a time.”
The guards stared sullenly back at him.
“Which of you is in charge?” Fuchs asked.
A big-shouldered man with his gray hair cut flat and short rolled over to a sitting position. Fuchs noted that his belly hung over the waistband of his trousers.
“I am,” he said, then coughed.
“You will decide the order in which your people go through the hatch,” said Fuchs, in a tone that brooked no argument. “You and I will be the last two.”
The man nodded once, as the heavy steel hatch clicked and slowly swung open.
Stavenger stood out in the corridor beyond the emergency airlock and watched the survivors of the fire come out, two by two.
Like Noah’s Ark, he thought.
Most of them were Humphries security people, their faces smudged with soot as black as their uniforms. There were three Asians, one of them in the gray coveralls of Selene’s maintenance department.
“The last two coming through,” said one of the emergency team.
An odd couple, Stavenger thought. One tall and broad-shouldered, the other short and thickset. Both in black outfits. Then he recognized the dour face of the shorter man. Lars Fuchs! Stavenger realized. That’s Lars Fuchs!
“Anybody else in there?” the emergency team’s chief asked.
“Nobody alive,” said the Humphries’ security chief.
“Okay,” the chief called to his team. “Seal the hatch and let the fire burn itself out.”
Stavenger was already speaking into his handheld, calling for a security team to arrest Lars Fuchs. There’s only one reason for him to be here in Humphries’s private preserve, Stavenger knew. He’s killed Martin Humphries.
If it weren’t so infuriating it would almost be funny, Humphries thought as he sat huddled in his closet.
The idiotic architect who designed this for me never bothered to install a phone inside the shelter because everybody carries handhelds or even implants. I don’t have an implant and I hate those damned handhelds beeping at me. So now I’m sitting here with no goddamned way to let anybody know I’m alive. And I don’t dare go outside because the fire might still be burning. Even if it isn’t, it’s probably used up all the oxygen out there and I’d suffocate.
Damn! Nothing to do but wait.
Humphries detested waiting. For anything, even his own rescue.
CRASH LANDING
Ground’s coming up awful fast, Pancho said to herself. She had allowed the little hopper to follow its ballistic trajectory, knowing it was going to come down way short of the Astro base in the Malapert Mountains. How short she didn’t really care anymore. Her main concern—her only concern now—was to get this bird down without killing herself.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, she told herself as the bare, rock-strewn ground rushed up at her. Find a flat, open spot. Just like Armstrong in the old Apollo 11 Eagle. Find a flat, open spot.
Easier said than done. The rolling, hilly ground sliding past her was pitted with craters of all sizes and covered so thickly with rocks and boulders that Pancho thought of a teenaged boy she had dated whose face was covered with acne.
Funny what the mind dredges up, she thought.
“Pay attention to the real world,” she muttered.
She fought down a wave of nausea as the ground rushed up at her. It would be sooo good to just lay down and go to sleep. Her legs felt like rubber, her whole body ached. Without thinking of it consciously she ran her tongue across her teeth, testing for a taste of blood. Bad sign if your gums start bleeding, she knew. Symptom of radiation sickness, big time.