Instead of ricocheting toward the hatchway, Victoria grabbed a handhold and stopped herself, her attention caught by a change in the familiar tones of the conversation between the transport pilot and Starfarer's traffic controller. Chandra reached the hatch, turned to look for Victoria, scowled, and dog-paddled back toward her.
'Starfarer control, no go, repeat, no go. Abort undocking procedure.'
'What's the trouble, transport? Your pattern's normal.' STARFARERS 24 7
'EarthSpace orders. The transport isn't to disengage from the starship.'
Victoria cursed softly. If the pilot followed orders, if the transport remained with Starfarer. the expedition would have the choice of aborting transition, or vanishing with a transport full of people who did not want to go. At worst, hostages, kidnapping victims; at best, a bunch of very hostile individuals.
Chandra reached Victoria, still dog-paddling, slow but steady. She clutched Victoria's arm and pulled. They tumbled until Victoria grabbed the wall and stopped them.
'Come on!' Chandra sounded as desperate as a child who badly needed a bathroom. For all Victoria knew, the sensation of full sensory recorders was the same as full bladder and bowels.
'Just a second, this is serious.'
The discussion between pilot and controller frayed around the edges, the pilot's voice losing some of its good-old-boy, feminine version, self-confidence, while the controller held desperately to the precise, rigorously unaccented EarthSpace communications English.
'Transport, you are cutting your window very thin. Starfarer will not, repeat not, approach another before transition. You will be at risk of needing a tow.''
A transport pilot would never live down making a mistake that required a tow, but this pilot's actions were deliberate.
'Hurry!' Chandra wailed.
'Shut up!' Victoria whispered, out of practice with doing the math in her head, hampered by being cut off from Arachne. Just how long did Starfarer have, to persuade the pilot to change her mind and disobey EarthSpace orders? If Chandra felt uncomfortably full, Victoria felt desperately empty.
J.D. and Zev swam over to her, Zev already smooth and graceful in freefall. He had taken off the suit coat, but still gave the impression of swimming within his clothing.
'Will they be stranded?' J.D. asked. 'If they undock late—will anyone rescue them?'
'They're probably coordinated with the earner, hoping to stop us. The real question is, what if they don't undock? I don't want to go into this as kidnappers.'
248 vonda N. Mclntyre
'That's what they're counting on,' J.D. said. 'It must be.' 'No'' the pilot shouted at the controller. Her angry voice sounded even more startling coming through a speaker which ordinarily transmitted the most civilized of exchanges. 'I've got my orders. We're staying.'
The controller replied. 'I hope you are all prepared for a very long trip.''
Abandoning the sensory artist, Victoria headed for traffic control.
Griffith retraced the route he had followed with Nikolai Cherenkov, to the outer skin of the starship's campus cylinder. He had no need of Arachne's guidance, for he never permitted a computer hookup to substitute for his acute memory. He moved with quick caution. Everyone still on board must have plenty of things to worry about, but he did not trust their preoccupation to protect him from their anger. He doubted he would have time to explain if he were cornered by an infuriated mob; he doubted anyone would believe him anyway.
He wished he had made time to go through spacewalk orientation. A line through to Arachne would have helped make up for that deficiency, but the web was still down. He wondered who had crashed it, and why he had not been told of an ally on board the starship.
The tunnels grew increasingly dim, increasingly rough. He reached the tumoff to the airiock.
A dozen spacesuits hung in the access room. He touched Cherenkov's, but left it in its place. Even if it might have fit him, he lacked the gall to wear it.
I've lost a lot of gall in the last couple of days, he thought. Maybe now is where I get it back.
He picked a suit from its hanger and inspected it carefully, checking how the fittings worked. It was no more complicated than a radiation suit. He climbed into it.
'Strosvuitye.'
Griffith turned, disbelieving. From the doorway, Cheren-kov regarded him with an expression as matter-of- fact as his voice.
'My faith in human nature is obviously at a low ebb,'
STARFARERS 24 9
Cherenkov said. 'Otherwise I might have expected to see you here. You did understand what I said to you, didn't you?'
Griffith could not trust himself to answer the question. 'I didn't expect to see you,' he said. 'This is the last place I expected to see you. What are you doing down here?'
'The same as you. Trying to save the expedition. Acting an old part, the part of an unregenerate hero.' He spoke drily, self-deprecatingly.
'You can go back up, then,' Griffith said. 'There's no need for you to leave the expedition.'
'You said you wanted to be like me, and I said you were a fool for it. You're still a fool.'
'Thanks a lot,' Griffith said. 'What do I have to do, to make you—' He stopped.
'If you jump out into space and call for the carrier to rescue you, it won't turn aside from its prey. Its masters will not permit it.'
'I think I know them better then you do, and you're wrong.'
'I will not let you enter the airiock, Marion,' Cherenkov said.
'How are you going to stop me?'
'I may be out of practice, but one does not forget certain survival techniques.' He smiled. 'Especially when one performs them against an opponent handicapped by spacesuit legs halfway down around his ankles.'
'Don't laugh at me!' Griffith jerked the bottom of the spacesuit straight so he was no longer hobbled by the legs.
The back hung down behind him like an enormous tail. Che-renkov was right about his being handicapped, less by the suit than by his desperate wish not to fight with the cosmonaut.
'You can't seriously think I'd let you jump out instead!'
'That would be the more rational course,' Cherenkov said.
'Because you're sure they will turn around to go get you?
That's fucking egotistical.'
'I'm not sure. But I am sure that I have the better chance of slowing them long enough for Starfarer to reach transition.'
'Maybe we ought to both jump out,' Griffith said sarcastically.
250 vonda N. Mcintyre
'All right,' Cherenkov said. 'That would be an acceptable compromise.'
Griffith hesitated.
'No,' he said. 'I can't allow it.'
Curious, Cherenkov cocked his head. 'But why? I'm sorry if I hurt your pride, believing your superiors will not stop to rescue you. Is that any reason to abandon a version of the plan that would work?'
'It's too risky,' Griffith hesitated. 'If they won't stop for me ... maybe they won't stop for you, either.' 'I see.' Cherenkov let his long legs fold up; he sat on the stone floor and gazed at Griffith.
'You don't want to fight me, either,' Griffith said. 'I'll take that as a compliment.' He managed to smile. 'Checkmate.'
'Not yet,' Cherenkov said. 'Only check.'
J.D. watched Victoria soar away without a backward look.
She hesitated, tempted to follow. But surely Victoria would have asked for her help if she had wanted it. Besides, J.D. did not want to leave Zev.
'Just tell me where there's a link!' Chandra said. 'God forbid I should use any of your precious time.'
'I'm sorry,' J.D. said. 'Things are a little complicated up here right now. Come on, I'll find you a place to transfer your information.'
