The gang-up at the end of the corridor split in two directions, down the transverses, the mirror-image D blocks, where the suit lockers were—locker doors already powered open, from the bridge, suits open, helmets and harnesses suspended on their racks, a surreal gathering of human shells, crew already backing into them, sealing them in that drill a spacer could do drunk or asleep.
“Michaels!” Saby said, and shoved him at Michael’s locker.
He turned, stepped into the suit backward, got his arms into the sleeves, sealed the front, kicked the release plate to bring the LS backpack and helmet down over his head and shoulders.
Seals clicked. Indicators and faceplate display flared on, confirming lifesupport and seals positive.
Came, instantly, that claustrophobic shortness of breath the suit gave him. It always got to him this way: he’d helped Marie in cargo, yeah, mostly from the ops boards safely upside—he never suited except in drills.
The borrowed rig smelled of disinfectant, of Michaels’ use. The air he depended on came to him rationed by a regulator. The mass of the harness as it came free of the rack was an instant revision of body-space and center of gravity.
Another suited figure leaned into vision, adjusted something on his chest-link. SABRINA PERRAULT, the paint on the helmet said. With a decal rose. She bumped helmets.
“You all right? Com not working?”
“Yeah. It’s working.”
Stupid. He’d not turned his communications on. He’d sworn to her he knew what he was doing, and she knew…
“Channel D for private. “ She punched something on his shoulder. The channel indicator moved, near his chin. “Come on, expert.”
She moved and he followed, at the shuffling, big-footed walk which ring rotation imposed on them, a lock-step sweating haste, back along the D-curve, toward the cargo lift as it opened.
They got in at the rear, jammed in as closely and as tightly as they could, fourteen, maybe fifteen suited bulks, before the doors shut and the lift jolted out of synch with the passenger ring.
Immediately after, one fractional pass of the ring about the core, the car banged into lock with the zero-g frame.
Automatic doors let them out on a dark hold. The cold of space froze their attending puff of humidified air into ice crystals in the spotty glare of the helmet lights. Hold lights flared on around them, illuminating loading machinery, racks, and tiers of cans that jammed their hold right up to the red line. A group of white-suited figures was going forward, down the still-empty cargo chute—he saw officers’ sleeve patches on that lot. All around him, bodies moved, white, bulky, anonymous except for sleeve patches, non-com crew fanning out in silence along hand-railings, taking station out among the tiers of cans, ready to sort those racks out onto the main delivery track and secure the spent carriages when they came down the return track.
Saby grabbed his arm briefly, hit his chest with her hand and got his suit light on, illumination for the shadowed areas.
He wasn’t tracking a hundred percent. The suit read-out wasn’t in the familiar order in the chin-level display—he hadn’t realized his light wasn’t defaulted on; and crew knocked into them in their delay, making a gap in the line, hindering an already dangerous effort. A jump-queasy stomach and the beginnings of a headache argued he could easily become a worse problem, and he was determined not to be.
An enemy in the system?
Colors flashed, in memory. Sound wailed at them.
Got to have that card in the slot and that message input, Tommy. If Patrick comes at us, and he will, got to have that message input. Then that old hulk’s our friend.
Sweat ran, a trickle down his face he couldn’t wipe. He moved where Saby and the rest moved. Words echoed out of the dark in his skull, red and blue flashes smeared and ran while he hauled himself along on the hand-rail.
God, release the line brakes… The 4-meter cannisters, with the mass they carried… could probably survive the offload without bursting, if they were good, double-walled cans, no temperature-constant stuff—but Austin had called for hazard pay volunteers on the release end, and he’d seen first-hand what happened when a can broke under stress. He’d seen it happen to a ship on a station dock, brake lever accidentally jammed open. Can flew off, hit the deck, hit a support girder, killed one dockworker, sent fourteen to hospital—