and the cats are going to get out of here—get over to the Patrol side of the station. I’m going to hold them off as long as I can, and play stupid when they do get in, but I need the speed of the AI to help me lay traps. You’ve known me for three years. You trusted me enough to bring me here, didn’t you?”
She swore again, then reached past him to key in her code. He sat down, ignoring them and plunging straight into a trance of concentration.
“Come on!” Erica grabbed Dick’s arm, and put the support-ball on the floor. SKitty and SCat must have been reading
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To get our suits, then to the emergency lock,” she replied crisply. “If we try to go out the main lock into the station, they’ll get us for certain. So we’re going outside for a little walk.”
He could only hope that “they” hadn’t thought of that as well. They reached the suiting-up room in seconds flat.
He averted his eyes and climbed into his own suit as Erica shed her robe and squirmed into hers. “How far is it to the Patrol section?” he asked.
“Not as far as you think,” she told him. “And there’s a maintenance lock just this side of it. What I want to know is how
He turned, and saw that she was suited up, with her faceplate still open, staring at him with a calculating expression.
He swallowed, and sealed his suit up, leaving his own faceplate open. Inside the ball, the cats were watching both of them, heads swiveling to look from one face to the other, as if they were watching a tennis-match.
“SKitty’s telepathic with me,” he admitted. “I think SCat’s telepathic with her. She seems to be able to talk with him, anyway.”
He waited for Erica to react, either with disbelief or with revulsion. Telepaths of any species were not always popular among humankind. . . .
But Erica just pursed her lips and nodded. “Eyeah. I thought she might be. And telepathy’s one of the traits BioTech doesn’t talk about, but security people have know for a while that the MF type cats are bred for it. Maybe SKitty’s momma did a little wandering over on the miltech side of the cattery, hmm?”
SKitty made a “silent” meow, and he just shrugged, relieved that Erica wasn’t phobic about it. And equally relieved to learn that telepathy was already a trait that BioTech had established in their shipscat lines.
But right now, he’d better be worrying about making a successful escape. He pulled his faceplate down and sealed it, fastening the tether-line of the ball to a snaplink on his waistband. He warmed up his suit-radio, and she did the same. “I hope you know what you’re getting us into,” he said, as Erica sealed her own plate shut and led the way to the emergency lock.
She looked back over her shoulder at him.
“So do I,” she replied soberly.
The trip was a nightmare.
Dick had never done a spacewalk on the exterior of a station before. It wasn’t at all like going out on the hull of a ship. There were hundreds of obstacles to avoid—windows, antenna, instrument-packages, maintenance robots. Any time an inspection drone came along, they had to hide to avoid being picked up on camera. It was work, hard work, to inch their way along the station in this way, and Dick was sweating freely before a half an hour was up.
It seemed like longer. Every time he glanced up at the chronometer in his faceplate HUD, he was shocked to see how little time had passed. The suit-fans whined in his ears, as the life-support system alternately fought to warm him up when they hid in the shade, or cool him down when they paused in full sunlight. Stars burned down on them, silent points of light in a depth of darkness that made him dizzy whenever he glanced out at it. The knowledge that he could be lost forever out there if he just made one small mistake chilled his heart.
Finally, Erica pointed, and he saw the outline of a maintenance lock just ahead. The two of them pulled themselves hand-over-hand toward it, reaching it at the same instant. But it was Erica who opened it, while Dick reeled the cats in on their tether.
