erstwhile Chinese guards. The bridge was still in communication with them. Mike Berry had reported that everything forward of them was vacuum, and presumably swarming with Cygnans. They had one spacesuit down there, but no place to go with it.
Grogan’s man, Fiaccone, had managed to bring back a half-dozen spacesuits from spinlock storage before Captain Boyle had vetoed any further forays. He’d reported dead bodies floating around everywhere.
“I don’t know,” Maggie said, brushing back a strand of wilted hair. It was warm and steamy in the bridge. “It’s stalemate, I guess. We’re under house arrest. We can’t get out, and those creatures don’t seem to want to get in. God, look at them! They move like weasels! They’re never still!”
Maybury followed her gaze to the glassy curve of the outside wall. It was covered with sleek six-legged shapes that stared and darted away, to be replaced by others. By this time most of the crew had moved uneasily away from the observation wall, leaving a clear space of about ten feet.
“They’re afraid to come inside,” Maybury said. “After what happened in hydroponics.”
On his last trip for spacesuits Fiaccone had been pursued by Cygnans coming through the breached spinlock. He’d barely made it through the improvised air lock into the farm. One of the Cygnans had gotten through after him before Kiernan managed to slam the lid shut. Other Cygnans were coming through, leaving the outside hatch open, but Kiernan barricaded it before too much air whooshed through. He turned to find Fiaccone hanging on to slippery thing that was twisting and squirming in his embrace. Kiernan stabbed it with a spading fork. It writhed on the three tines, oozing an orange ichor, and expired. Its friends were rattling the inside lid of the lock. Against Dmitri’s anguished protests, Kiernan and Fiaccone opened the lid and, aided by the outward explosion of air, tossed the body outside and slammed the lid shut again, leaving a Cygnan finger inside.
There had been no further attempts by the Cygnans to get through the lock. Dmitri had had to be content with the severed finger. He and Louise Phelps were dissecting it now in the observatory.
“There’s something going on up on the balcony,” Maggie said.
Boyle was conferring with Hsieh. After a moment he came to the rail and rapped for attention. The bridge became silent. Everybody looked up, waiting.
“The Cygnans are through into the farm,” Boyle said without preamble. “The instruments show vacuum there.”
There was a confusion of voices. Kiernan, just behind Maggie in the jostling crowd, said, “The wingbeans! The algae! Everything! If only the captain had let me work down there for another half-hour I, could’ve saved more…”
Boyle rapped for attention again. “You might as well know the worst,” he said. “The air plant’s gone. We’re living on reserves now.”
Maggie looked up at the ventilators. The little ribbons on the grilles had stopped fluttering. Somewhere in the crowd a woman became hysterical.
“Somebody get the people out of the observatory,” Boyle went on. “We’ll have to make a last stand here. Seal off all the exits. Gifford, break out some emergency patches and stickum and get them ready.”
“Captain!” a voice boomed from the floor. One of Grogan’s men. “We’ve got seven suits. Let me and some of the boys get out there now. We can do it without losing too much air. We’ll go through the door fast, and Gifford can slap a patch on after us. We can hold ’em off as long as our air lasts.”
Boyle conferred in whispers with Hsieh. He turned back to the rail, and said: “It’s no good. You wouldn’t have a chance. You saw what happened to Jameson and Chief Grogan and Comrade Yeh. We’ll use the suits in here.”
“Captain,” the man said, standing his ground. “Seven suits aren’t going to go very far with seventy people.”
“Seven people will have a chance to stay alive a little longer,” Boyle said firmly. “We’re going to draw straws. Only crewpersons are eligible.”
Beth Oliver stood up, straight and beautiful. “Captain,” she said in a clear voice. “Once upon a time, ‘crewpersons’ meant people of both sexes. Well, I think I’m speaking for the rest of the ‘crewpersons’ when I say we won’t have anything to do with that sexist nonsense. The men will have an equal chance with us.”
A female murmur of agreement came from the crowd. Sue Jarowski yelled, “Damn right!”
Boyle held up his hands for quiet. “All right,” he said. “I’m proud of you all. The men will be in the drawing. But of course any man who wins a suit will be free to decline it and throw his chance into the pot again.”
There was a groan from the women. Throughout the crowd, men were looking stubborn, nodding agreement with the captain. Klein stepped forward, waxy-faced. “Captain,” he began in a strained voice.
A horrifying whistling sound came from the observation wall. Everybody fell silent and stared at the bubble. A woman screamed.
The Cygnans had cleared a twelve-foot circle at the center of the port. Their packed bodies darkened the rest of the Lexiglass. At the fringes of the circle a dozen of the creatures were busy with glowing cutting tools. Plastic was melting and bubbling along the entire twelve-foot circumference.
There was a sudden rush toward the exits. But before anybody had gone more than a few steps, the heavy circle of plastic tumbled with nightmare slowness to the deck and a ring of long-snouted Cygnan faces was around the edges of the opening, peering in at the humans.
Maggie sucked in a last desperate lungful of air before it was gone, and waited to die.
Chapter 16
There was a grating sound at the door. Jameson scrambled to his feet. He backed off to give clearance, ready for anything.
The door opened in an unexpected fashion. It was a five-foot recessed circle with a knob set low at one side. He had imagined it might swing in or out, or—in view of the recess—slide open. Instead it rolled like a cartwheel on a hidden track, the knob revolving with it until it caught against the frame, leaving an opening the shape of a circle with a bite out of it.
An alien stepped in, standing upright and holding a shotgun-sized tubular object in its middle pair of limbs. It was dressed in a crinkly transparent envelope, evidently to protect it against Earthly microorganisms. The tubular thing was obviously an energy weapon of some sort. It had a trumpet bell at the business end with a stamenlike structure projecting from the focus. Instead of a stock or pistol grip, the weapon was equipped with a bulb adapted to the Cygnan grip.
Jameson raised his hands and took a step backward to reassure the creature. Perhaps the Cygnan didn’t understand the human gesture. It squeezed the bulb, and Jameson was blind.
He was worse than blind. He was deaf, dumb, and paralyzed. He couldn’t tell where his limbs were or what his body was doing. Kaleidoscopic flashes exploded through his visual pathways. There was a red—red?—roaring in his ears. His nerves jangled with an excruciating discomfort that made him want to scream, to be free of his body, as if he were experiencing some hideously magnified episode of drug withdrawal.
Worst of all, he couldn’t
The sensation lasted only a moment. Or an eternity. Then, mercifully, he was himself again. He found himself sprawled on the floor, clammy with sweat in his spacesuit. He was still a little disoriented. He had lost control of his bladder during that brief hell, but the suit’s plumbing had saved him from disgrace.
His cell was full of Cygnans—half a dozen of them, all dressed in the same clear protective suits. Some of them were standing erect on their hind legs, tails hanging straight down. Some were on four legs, their torsos upright so that they were shaped like little low-slung centaurs. They were jabbering at one another in a cacophony of quarter-tone scales and queer atonal chords, sounding like an orchestra of bagpipes warming up. Their actions all seemed pointless to Jameson, but then, he thought, perhaps a laboratory rat thought that the conversation of the lab workers was pointless.
The Cygnan holding the neural weapon was still there. Jameson kept very still. A Cygnan scuttled up to him, fixed him with three quivering eyes, then scuttled back. There was more bagpipe conversation.
