closed cenite door, and Tara was stating the obvious. She sounded nervous, with good reason. The O's were still probing under the Ship with their starmass, and flames were spitting up from the open hatch on the floor. Gildron roared, wild with rage.
'Techprobe, Thinker!' I was hauling it out of the toolpak even as Sweety spoke. If we couldn't get this door open, we were cooked. Literally. I snapped the probe onto what looked like a locking mechanism and waited for it to do its thing.
'We killed one O,' Tara said, 'but there was at least one other O out there.'
'We're in the Ship!' I exclaimed. 'How can we stop it? We'll have to wreck the controls or the drive!'
'We'd be better off outside,' Tara said grimly.
'Take the probe,' I said. 'I can't control my suit any more. Gildron, get me out of this A-suit.'
'No, Wester!' Tara warned. 'You can't survive without the suit!' She was holding the techprobe against the lock.
'I can't survive in it—I can't move!' Gildron wrenched off my helmet and it dropped to the floor. The chestplate went next. My life expectancy was dropping fast.
'Success!' Sweety reported. The floor hatch banged shut abruptly, and the inner airlock door snapped open. Tara gasped, dropping the techprobe and snatching at her E. Gildron raised his E to his shoulder, covering us. I was on the deck, squirming out of my A-suit.
A pale light glowed in the doorway. Gildron stepped out cautiously, a gigantic figure in a black A-suit, wielding his E like an axe. I got up from the floor and picked up my E. I snapped the tacmod out of the A-suit helmet and ripped the u-belt loose with the toolpak, the ratpak, the ampak and the medpak attached. I draped the u-belt around my neck and pulled out a psybloc grenade. I was wearing only the litesuit. It would give me a little protection, but not much. I followed Tara out the door.
Soft silvery light, from above. A perfectly circular corridor with strange black fixtures lining the walls. A shiny, mirrored ceiling. A padded, pale white walkway under our feet. Deserted except for us. But the psybloc units were still flashing atop Tara and Gildron's helmets.
'There's something wrong,' Tara said.
'Of course there is!' I snapped. 'There's something wrong with the Ship, the Mound, the O's—the whole installation. There's only a few O's here, and the Ship doesn't work! Otherwise they'd be gone!' I was almost crying in frustration. It was clear to me by now that we were facing only a small number of O's, and that the O's must be struggling with one big problem—a non-functional starship. It was surely taking all their attention, for they didn't even have time to fight off all the humans that were swarming over their Mound. But I also knew that, for me, it probably didn't even matter. I was out of my armor, helpless and hopeless, and my skin was crawling. One little touch of starmass and I'd vaporize into gas. It was highly unlikely that I was going to live to see if we secured the Ship or not.
That's when the psybloc units went off. But they didn't snap off naturally—they burst, spraying us with shrapnel. I took some of Tara's unit in one cheek, my hand coming away bloody.
'That's it—all we need!' I said. We were trapped like rats.
'Canister, Gildron,' Tara ordered. 'Let's go—we have to find the bridge.'
'Psybloc grenades,' I suggested, raising one.
'Negative, Wester. We're running low—I'll give the word when they probe.'
'I'll be ready!' I had one twitching finger in the ring of a grenade as we set off down the hall. My blood was ice and my heart was thumping. I could taste my death like acid, right on my tongue.
The lights flickered for just an instant and then the deck came up and smacked me right in the face. A universe of flashing stars exploded in my mind. I struggled to remain conscious, trying to lift my head. It felt as if my nose was broken. It was completely silent, but high gravs pulled at my body. Tara and Gildron were also down, struggling to get up off the floor. A psybloc grenade rolled around ahead of us, spitting white-hot tracers. I had accidentally pulled the pin, but that wasn't the cause of our distress. High gravs—I could barely move. The Ship had launched—we were underway. Rising up through Uldo's atmosphere, a rising star. And we were in it! A cold hand clutched at my heart. Suddenly I could see Beta, all of them, in a flash. Snow Leopard, just a voice, snapping off his last command, 'Get that O!' Valkyrie, sacrificing herself for us. 'Goodbye and God bless you,' she had said. And Twister, broken and crawling. 'Leave me!' she had shouted. 'Get the Ship!' Psycho, bloody and crippled, sitting behind an E, surrounded by grenades. 'Don't you worry about your rear.' Merlin, dying, his last words still ringing in my ears: 'Take that Ship, Thinker. Don't let them get it!' Dragon, begging me to kill him. Scrapper, lost in the flames. And Priestess, my holy Priestess, gone to find Scrapper, right into Hell, fate unknown. 'We live together, forever,' she had said, as the main door of the Mound screeched open. They were all lost to me now, I knew.
Tara and Gildron and I were bound for the stars.
PART III
BEYOND DOOM'S DRIFT
Chapter 12
The Ship
'It's Snow Leopard!' Tara announced, almost in shock.
'What?' I was astounded. We faced a large circular hatch, fully sealed, blocking further access along the corridor. I was sweating blood, working on the lock with Gildron's techprobe. Ship's grav was on, but it was weak.
'One! One! It's Cinta, do you read…' Gildron interrupted her, screaming wildly, waving his E around. He was no damned help at all. The hatch snapped open, spiraling outwards from a pinhole in an instant. The light dazzled my eyes and my E was on canister and my finger twitched on the trigger.
Snow Leopard stood right there bathed in sunlight, clad in a litesuit, completely unarmed. He raised one arm slowly, and it was a blessing. His face was serene and his pale pink eyes were calm. There was someone else with him. She stepped out from behind him. It was Priestess, also in a litesuit, glowing like a star, as radiant and lovely as an angel. Her lips moved, and she spoke my name.
'Thinker…Thinker…Thinker…'
Gildron fired auto canister right into them and the doorway erupted. The shock waves blew me to one side. I screamed and raised a bloody arm. Two huge O's staggered before us shrieking, armored and armed, shimmering behind violet mag force fields flickering all around them. One of the creatures fell to its knees abruptly. The other opened an awful mouth and raised a weapon and then my brain turned to mush and I winked out like a candle.
I fought to regain consciousness. I was certain I had been horribly wounded. My head was splitting, my skin burning as if scalded with acid. I gasped for oxygen but could not seem to get any—my lungs were on fire. I struggled to see, but it was all hazy. I tried to scream, but nothing happened. I wanted desperately to thrash around, to raise my arms, but it was beyond me. The pain overwhelmed me, triggering all my circuits into overload. Terror and hatred battled inside me.
Clouds. White, puffy clouds, floating past me in a pale green sky. What the hell? It was so sudden that I
