'I thought you were drinking his blood!'
Zev grimaced. 'Do I look like a lamprey? Why didn't you—oh. This must be a difference between divers and people.'
He pushed bloody, sticky blond hair away from the wound.
The cut had stopped bleeding.
'He is lucky,' Zev said.
'Lucky!'
'This is not a serious wound—not on land. Divers fear head cuts because they bleed so, even a scratch like this one. Sometimes you can't stop them before the sharks smell the blood from far away, and come to eat you. But here there is no ocean and there are no sharks.'
Stephen Thomas groaned. He opened his eyes, then closed them again.
'What-?'
'It's okay,' Satoshi said. 'We'll be out of here in a minute.'
'This place looks so weird . . .' he muttered.
'Yeah, it's failing down around us. Let's go.'
STARFARERS
269
In the uncertain light of Zev's flash, they helped Stephen
Thomas to the entrance, boosted him out of the ruins of Genetics Hill, and climbed after him.
As Victoria emerged from the frigid darkness of the ruined genetics building, the light from the sun tube abruptly faded.
Victoria looked up, as startled as a creature beneath a total solar eclipse.
She let out a cry half triumph, half sob.
Starfarer had reached transition.
Out of reach of its pursuers, the ship progressed toward an alien star system. Victoria had made its escape possible.
And right now, instead of feeling triumph, she asked herself if it was worth it.
Light, strange and watery, rose again as the starship drew energy from the magnetic claws and fed it into the tubes.
People surrounded her, some in protective suits, some carrying tanks of liquid nitrogen, some with isolation canisters-ASes and AIs also congregated around the entrance. Professor Thanthavong stood in the middle of it all, coordinating the beginnings of a salvage operation. As soon as she saw Stephen Thomas, she called a paramedic over to help him.
Stephen Thomas stumbled and opened his eyes. Their blue was startling in the mask of drying blood. He looked around groggily.
'What did you do to the light?' he said. He sank to the ground. 'Why does everything look so weird?'
Victoria looked around. The campus was different, alien and frightening, in the light of transition.
'You've got blood in your eyes,' Thanthavong said.
'Oh, yeah, I'm a real blue-blood . . .'
'Be quiet and sit still for a minute,' the paramedic said.
Victoria knelt beside Stephen Thomas, concerned. At first she had thought she understood what he was talking about, but now she could not make sense of what he was saying.
Beside her, Satoshi rested his head on his knees, breathing deeply.
'You're going to have one hell of a black eye,' the paramedic said to Stephen Thomas.
'A black eye!' Victoria exclaimed. 'He was unconscious!'
'There's no serious trauma.'
270 Vonda N. Mclntyre 'Then why—'
Stephen Thomas laid his hand on her arm.
'I'm okay,*' he said. 'I am. Honest. I fainted.' He looked away, embarrassed. 'I can't stand the sight of blood.'
Relief made Victoria shiver, and then she started to laugh. When Stephen Thomas glared at her, she hugged him.
Thanthavong hurried over, trailed by Fox and a couple of ASes. Machines had begun to work to clear the entryway of the genetics department.
'Did you see anyone else inside?'
'There's no one,' Satoshi said.
'You're sure?' Thanthavong gazed at the ruined hill, her expression unreadable.
'Yes. I passed every lab and every office, from the top down, looking for Fox. There wasn't anybody.'
'Yes. All right. Good . . .' Her voice trailed off.
Dr. Thanthavong, whose surface so seldom even ruffled, suddenly cried out in anger and in pain.
Victoria jumped to her feet, startled and scared. Then she went to Thanthavong and embraced her. 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'All your work—'
'It isn't that,' Thanthavong wailed. 'It's—' She sobbed and struggled for control. 'It is that. But in forty years my labs never had a serious accident. And now, my god, look what they've done!'
J.D. and Kolya strained to move the missile. J.D. could feel the metabolic enhancer pumping inside her, but it was useless. It helped her endurance. What she needed right now was brute strength. Brute strength and the will to keep her attention away from the weird effects of transition.
Suddenly the missile shifted in its crater. The squeal of metal on stone vibrated through the skin of Starfarer, through J.D.'s suit, to her ears. It was the only sound except her breathing, her pulse.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the missile slipped free.
'Hold it!' Kolya shouted. 'Keep hold of it!'
J.D. almost let it go. That was what they had been struggling for—! But the desperation in Kolya's voice stopped her.
She clamped her arms around the missile. It moved like a live thing. It escaped Kolya and wriggled half a meter down-
STARFARERS 271
ward through J.D.'s grasp. Nothing but J.D.'s safety line and her feet hooked around the cables held it.
The spin had brought them into the canyon between the
two cylinders, if J.D. let the missile go, it would ricochet
against the wild cylinder.
Her feet slipped, inexorably. Kolya grabbed her and the missile. She could see the sweat on the cosmonaut's face.
Sweat poured down her own face, down her body. Her arms shook with strain. She feared the warhead might detonate at any second, but she could not let it go. The spin, which had felt so fast a few minutes before, now slowed in her perception to a crawl.
Her feet sprang free of the cables. She gasped as her safety line snapped taut. It vibrated in the bass range like a huge alien instrument. Kolya shouted as the missile slid through his grasp. J.D. held it tighter. Kolya tried to pull her back, but all he could do was keep himself twined in the cables and clutch J.D.'s ankle.
Something changed.
She emerged from the canyon. Space opened out around her.
'Now!' Kolya said.
She released the missile. Starfarer's spin Hung it away, away from the starship, toward the constellations barely skewed by the vast distance the ship had traveled.
'. Kolya dragged J.D. to safety.
J.D. tried to speak. Her mouth was too dry.
'Come on,' Kolya said. 'Hurry.'
s As quickly as J.D. could move, they made their way to the
y hatch and into the airiock. As soon as the inner door opened, I Kolya grabbed her arm and rushed her deeper into the ship,
