Wasteland of flint

portal labeled XA LAB ONE. The pressure hatch was closed, and she swore silently to herself. Of course it's closed. Everything is.

Feeling foolish, she found the manual locking bar and – straining to keep her feet wedged against the bulkhead for leverage – managed to crank the hatch open enough to get her suit through. On the other side, she paused, staring at the opening. Her arms were sore, but part of her brain was making a frightened sound. I might have to flee back this way…

'No,' she said aloud, though her throat mike was muted. 'No I won't.'

Dialing her suit lamps to a more diffuse illumination, Gretchen pushed off gently and made her way forward through the ring. After a few minutes, she pulled herself up short, staring through a thick oval window into the next lab. The hatch was closed tight, the chamber dark, but the fragmentary light of her suit lamps picked out the shape of a clean-box with something bulky inside. Some kind of debris was scattered on the deck, and there was a subtle sense of disorder among the white and steel surfaces.

Someone working on something when the disaster overcame them?

'Damn.' The hatch was sealed, the pressure seals closed. The chamber had no manual lock – indeed, a heat- distorted label declared the space beyond a 'secured environment.' Gretchen clicked her mike on. 'Maggie? How long until we have power?'

There was no answer. Gretchen froze, listening to the warble of static and an intermittent, distant pinging sound. Suppressing a cold shiver of fear, she changed channel again. 'Anderssen to the Cornuelle, come in please.'

There was still no answer, but – obscurely – Gretchen was a little relieved. Something's blocking my suit comm, she thought. Of course.

Only slightly less apprehensive, she made her way back to the access shaft, pushing away from the handholds set into the ceiling and floor. Squeezing through the hatchway, she breathed a sigh of relief to hear channel four wake to life with Maggie and Delores chatting amiably while they worked.

'Magdalena? How long until we have power?'

The Hesht made a coughing sound – laughter – then said: 'We haven't opened the door to Engineering yet, but we're close. One of the hatch motors burned out and Isoroku is replacing the mechanism. So I'd say another hour, at least.'

'Thank you.' Gretchen muted the channel, staring around at the cold darkness filling the ship. The main accessway seemed bottomless, even with a receding line of glowbeans shining in the dimness. Somehow the faint little pools of light only made the gloom seem more encompassing and complete. Disheartened, she sat down, swinging her boots over the shaft. 'I guess I'll just wait, then.'

After an endless minute, she pulled a v-pad from the cargo pocket of her suit and thumbed it awake. Might as well get some work done, she thought glumly. So something got loose in the ship, something which must have propagated through the air, a gas or vapor – how else could it move so fast and be unseen? Air is easy to penetrate, permeates most everything. An aerosol of some kind…She called up the ship schematics Magdalena had been using to follow the power and utility conduits. Her pad still held the modeling and time-regression software she'd used on Ugarit, which could understand the volume of the ship, the rooms and chambers, even the lack of organic artifacts.

Just like a site abandoned so long all the organics have decayed away, she thought after thirty minutes. Hmm…that's a good lab exercise for first-years.

Steadily brightening light broke her concentration, and she looked up to see the pilot scooting up the shaft toward her. A little embarrassed, she tucked the v-pad away. 'How goes, Mister Parker?'

'Good,' he answered, cheerful humor returned. 'Engineering is open, and Isoroku's got his battery hooked up. Looks like the ship's fuel cells still have some juice, though Environmental was still working for awhile after the accident. Magdalena's starting up the comp from local power. I'm heading for the bridge to check the relays and get the main comm array running.'

Gretchen smiled. 'Good. What about main power?'

Parker waggled his hand ambivalently, inducing a slow spin. 'No promises there. Isoroku wants to check every centimeter of the reactor to make sure nothing got eaten away by our little friend. Can't say I blame him.'

'No, I suppose not.' Gretchen rose, one hand clinging to a railing surrounding the hatchway. 'If power comes back up, I'll want you to unlock the hatches in the lab habitat for me. Don't open them, though. I'll take care of that.'

Parker nodded, then kicked off, flying up into the darkness, his helmet haloed by the flare of his lamps. Gretchen watched him go, feeling the darkness close around her again. Her suit was starting to smell, even with only a couple hours inside. Just like on Ugarit. Maybe the showers will work, she thought hopefully. Then she realized all the towels on board would have been disintegrated and she was depressed again.

The wall against Gretchen's back trembled and her eyes flew open. For a moment, she was disoriented – she'd fallen asleep listening to the hum of the fans in her suit – and saw only darkness sprinkled with faint lights above her. I'm outside?

Then she looked down the main shaft and saw a ring of lights flare on – a section of overheads a hundred feet away, near the ring hub into Engineering – then another and another. Gretchen stood up, grabbing hold of the nearest handhold, and the wave of lights washed over her. The deck continued to tremble, echoing the sound of a distant power plant turning over.

'Backup power is up in Engineering,' Magdalena growled in her ear. 'Some of the emergency lights are on. I'm starting the heat exchangers and air circulation.'

Gretchen swung into the lab ring and crabbed down to the first tier of labs. Puzzled, she stared around – the lights were still out – then they flickered on, one by one, casting a steady daylight radiance. She blinked and her helmet polarized slightly. In the clear light, the stark emptiness of the work cubicles and rooms was even more striking.

All gone, everyone's work destroyed, she thought sadly, shuffling up the curve of the lab ring. Anything they didn't note down on comp – lost forever. She reached the sealed doorway to the clean room and looked inside. Here, most of the lights were still off, but two spots shone inside the containment chamber. A rust-red and ochre cylinder stood in a stainless steel cradle, anachronous and startling with irregular chips and flakes of stone amid the clean, smooth lines of the laboratory. Gretchen swallowed. The artifact – what else could it be? – was sectioned, cut clean in half as by a surgical beam. A metal-clad emitter ring hung poised above the cylinder, distended from an equipment pod. She guessed the cut was very narrow, perhaps only a millimeter across.

She started to sweat again, and the fans spun up in the suit, trying to keep her temperature constant. Reflexively, she looked down, checking the pressure seal on the door. With power returned, the panel showed three green lights and one red. She blinked.

The door seal failed. Oh god. Gretchen stepped back, and then stopped, gritting her teeth. Too late now, too late weeks ago. Whatever was inside escaped, ate through the containment pod, through the door seals, right out into the ship. She unclenched her hands and stared at the door. Adrenaline hissed in her blood, making her arms tremble.

After a long moment, she clicked her mike open. 'Magdalena, are you busy right now?'

A growl answered, and a string of curses. Gretchen smiled, though the motion felt strange. 'Yes, sister, I can wait. I'm in lab ring one. Take your time.'

Gretchen sucked the last of a threesquare from her food tube and stood up as Magdalena and Bandao drifted down into the lab ring. The Hesht was still surrounded by a cloud of tools and cargo bags, but the gunner seemed to have accumulated some of the bulkier items.

'What's our status?' Gretchen asked, catching Maggie's paw and drawing her to a stop on the deck. Magdalena yawned in response, showing an ebon mouth filled with white teeth. Her fur was rumpled and one ear lay flat back against her head while the other was canted forward.

'All we have is sssrst-ta – tail feathers,' the Hesht snarled. 'Fuel cell power is up, main comp is up, the main reactor is still down, and we're lacking power in most of the ship.' A gloved paw flexed and Gretchen noticed the Hesht's z-suit was fitted with a flexible metal mesh to accommodate extended claws. The fine mail glistened like fish scales. 'Isoroku-san thinks this tangle-tailed weapon chewed