* through the suit room and up, without even pausing to open ; his face mask.
* 'What's wrong?' J.D. said. 'We got rid of it!'
Kolya finally slowed and stopped. He took off his helmet.
'We should be safe here. I wanted to be sure—'
He cut himself off. The ship trembled with a faint vibration. J.D. looked down, toward the outer surface, as if she could see the missile through the floor.
Outside, the warhead detonated, sending out a wave of debris and radiation that blasted against the starship's thick skin of lunar rock.
272 vonda N. Mcintyre
Water slicked and darkened the floor of the lowest tunnel. Infinity kept watch for the teak. He could hear no rush of water, so the sealers must be working. He hoped the attack had not breached the main flow systems and let any significant amount of water escape into space.
It hurt him to see so much damage to the structure he had helped to build. Making Starfarer whole again would take more than letting the self-sealers creep into the cracks and cement the broken bits. That would be like letting a smashed bone heal without setting it.
Infinity hurried along the upcurving corridor. It truncated abruptly in a closed baffle.
As a precaution, he fastened the helmet of his pressure suit. Getting outside might be quicker and easier through another hatch, but that would be a ten minute walk, and more than that much again to return along the outside of the ship. He felt a certain urgency. He kept expecting to encounter other members of damage control, but so far he had seen no one.
He read the display on the baffle. It showed normal air pressure on the far side. He cautiously opened the door with the manual controls, stepped through into the next compartment, and closed the baffle behind him.
Soon he faced another airtight baffle. This display showed very low air pressure on the far side, a few millimeters of mercury, nowhere near enough to breathe.
Infinity paused, listening carefully. The rhythmic, muffled pounding was real, not his imagination. It came from beyond the closed door.
The pounding stopped. Infinity hit the baffle with the side of his fist. Nothing happened- Perhaps the pounding was nothing but a mechanical malfunction, or perhaps whoever was on the other side of the baffle could not hear or feel the vibrations of his fist. He stamped his foot.
One loud 'thud!' answered him.
Infinity stamped again. Another 'thud!' replied.
He emptied the air from the compartment he was in. When the pressure equalized, the baffle allowed itself to be unlocked, but Infinity had to force it open.
A burst of ice crystals exploded through the doorway, scattering like tiny needles against Infinity's suit. Ice crystals and
STARFARERS 2 73
snowflakes filled the chamber with sparkling white light, then fell straight to the floor and melted in the thin layer of water. At the same time, the temperature of the room fell abruptly and the floor froze in a slow wave. Infinity moved forward, his boots crackling on the ice.
Snow blanketed the room, covering a large lump in the middle of the floor. The lump lurched as whoever was within it pounded on the floor. The snow sifted off the silver emergency pouch and fell into small drifts.
Infinity turned the pouch to see its transparent panel.
Curled up like the worm in a jumping bean, Griffith glared out. He said something, angrily, but of course Infinity could not hear him. Instead of turning on his suit radio, Infinity grabbed the handles of the pouch and dragged Griffith back into the second chamber.
He left him lying there, helpless—he had no choice about that—while he closed the baffle. He moved some air into the chamber.
He was laughing uncontrollably.
By the time the chamber held enough air to carry sounds, he managed to stop laughing. He took off the suit helmet and wiped his eyes.
The survival pouch writhed against the floor.
'Get me out of here!'
Infinity unsealed the pouch. Griffith scrambled up and kicked away the emergency sphere.
'Damn! What's going on? Where's Cherenkov?'
Infinity did not know the answers, so he did not reply- He settled back on his heels. Griffith strode angrily away, but the closed baffle stopped him-
'How the hell do I get out of here?'
'Open the door.'
Griffith fumbled at the controls. The baffle creaked. Radiating anger and impatience, Griffith waited. But when the door had finally slid aside for him to pass, he swung around and glared at Infinity.
'Don't you ever—ever—tell anyone about this!'
A day ago, an hour ago, Griffith would have terrified Infinity Mendez to silence with such a command. Now, Infinity regarded him quizzically. Griffith no longer held any power to frighten him.
274 vonda N. Mdntyre
'I'll tell anybody I want. anything I want. Don't you even have the guts to say thank you?'
And then—he tried not to, but could not help himself—he started to laugh again.
A microsecond's blast of bright white light spread through the interior of the starship, a flash almost too brief to perceive before the filters damped and darkened it. Stephen Thomas cried out and turned away, flinging his arms across his face. Starfarer plunged into dusk.
'That wasn't what I had in mind,' Stephen Thomas said,
his voice muffled, his eyes still covered, 'when 1 said 1 didn't
like the light.'
The whole cylinder trembled faintly.
The sun tubes slowly brightened, radiating a more normal light. Victoria knew what must have happened. There was only one explanation for that kind of intense actinic blast. Somehow the missile had followed the starship through transition. And it had detonated. But somehow it was free of the starship, distant enough for Starfarer to survive the explosion. She started to shake. Satoshi knelt beside her and held her, and they drew Stephen Thomas into the embrace. Zev
sat on his heels nearby, watching them.
'We made it,' Victoria whispered. 'We're out of transition.' Suddenly she caught her breath. 'If the missile did detonate—Iphigenie is in the sailhouse! Is she—?'
Professor Thanthavong switched frequencies on her AS controller and opened a voice link to the sailhouse.
'Iphigenie, this is Thanthavong. Can you reply?'
'Are you all right?' Victoria said.
'Yes.' Her voice was a whisper. 'It's been . . . quite exciting out here.'
'The shielding—?'
'It held. Victoria, I saw transition . . . And we are in the Tau Ceti system.'
'It's incredible, Victoria!' The second voice from the saii-house belonged to Feral. 'God, I think I'll change myself to be a sensory recorder like Chandra!'
'Don't do that.' Victoria struggled to her feet, pulling Satoshi and Stephen Thomas with her. 'We ought to be in
STARFARERS 2 75
the explorer,' she said. 'We're supposed to be continuing the expedition as if nothing had happened.'
She reached for the web, expecting emptiness. To her surprise she touched a fragile strand, a tangle of thread tossed over the surface of the massed databases. Though Arachne would not reply, Victoria felt it growing and spreading, interconnecting, compelled to regain its multidimensionality.
'Stephen Thomas, do you feel up to going out?'
'I told you I'm all right! But. . .'He stared at the rubble of Genetics Hill.
