Genesis

She'd begun explorations too, to double their chances, over his strenuous objection at first-but with his unspoken acceptance as things became more and more desperate.

Now he sank wearily onto his pallet, while she stirred the thin soup that was the very last stretching of their rations. He hadn't been able to find out how the mice were subsisting, but it wouldn't be very long before he and Minmei would be forced to start trying to catch them. He doubted that even she could make mouse stew taste very good.

He sat, trying to figure out how to phase his difficult decision.

'No luck, huh?' Minmei said. 'Why don't you rest?'

'Minmei,' he began, head lowered on his knees, 'I don't know what else to do. This ship is like a big prison maze.'

'Yeah,' she said without looking up, 'a big prison floating somewhere in space.'

It was an opening he hadn't expected, a chance to make his plan look hopeful, to make her optimistic. 'That's it, of course! We're in space!' He tried to sound as though he'd just realized the implications of that.

She looked startled. 'What about it?'

'That's our way out of here! Out that air lock we found and into another, somewhere farther above!'

She didn't understand. 'We can't do that; we don't have any spacesuits.'

He was already on his feet, the Veritech helmet taken down from its resting place. 'My flight helmet will protect me. I'll float out, get help, and come back down here for you. It's simple! It'll work!'

He flipped up his flightsuit collar and ran his fingers along the automatic closure to show her how it formed a pressure seal and a collar ring that could be fitted to the helmet's.

She looked terribly confused. 'Yes, but-'

'Now, I'm going to need your help,' Rick said as he led the way with the flashlight. 'So I'll show you how to use the air lock controls, okay?'

She trailed behind unwillingly, hands clasped behind her, silently accepting his help as they began ascending the mountain of packing crates and boxes again.

They reached the Zentraedi-scaled utility shelf near the power panel; it was the width of a country lane. The control dials were the size of wagon wheels, the buttons as big as her bedroom window. 'You sure you understand everything?' he checked again.

'Mm-hmm.' Then she said in a rush, 'Without oxygen tanks, though, Rick? How're you going to breathe?'

'There's air in the helmet and some in the suit. I won't need much time.' But he hurried along before she could pinpoint the problem that he'd already spotted: They'd explored the ship in every direction and found no nearby air locks. From this one, it would strain his scant supply of air to the very limits to reach another, even if one lay just beyond their prison.

He turned and started off before she could say anything more. 'Wait!' cried Minmei, running after him. 'I'm having second thoughts about all this! Rick?'

She ran after him, back around the turn in the shelf. 'Where're we going?'

'I want to show you: You can stand by this big viewport here so we can communicate if we have to.' The viewport was bigger than a movie screen.

She gasped and threw both hands up to her mouth, feet going pigeon-toed, eyes enormous.

He prepared his most matter-of-fact voice. 'Minmei, what is it now? You've gotta stop this constant worrying-huh?'

She wasn't looking at him. She was gaping over his shoulder at the viewport. He whirled. 'Look… at… that!'

'I've never seen anything like it!' Minmei breathed. 'What kind is it?'

At first he thought it was some kind of new prototype spacecraft, silvery and sleek, and he was already trying to figure a way to signal it. Then he was afraid it might be an alien ship, although it didn't look anything like a pod. But a second later he calmed down and saw what it really was, which was only slightly more fantastic than possibilities one and two.

'Offhand, I'd say it's a tuna,' Rick ventured. 'I didn't know they grew that big.'

This one was as long as Mockingbird and appeared to be intact and whole. Why the forces of explosive decompression and vacuum hadn't turned it into something more like a radar-waved football, he couldn't imagine; he was unacquainted as yet with the very singular peculiarities of a Protoculture- generated force field.

It floated along like a schooner, as if it was keeping pace with them. 'That sure is a big tuna fish,' Minmei observed, licking her lips.

'Real big,' Rick conceded. He turned to her, and they both yelled 'Yay-yyy!' at the same instant, pressing their noses and palms up against the viewport. 'I wonder if there's a way I could snag it out there,' he said longingly.

They turned to each other, chorusing, 'Tuna fish!'

Rick made sure the ring seal was as tight as he could make it. Seals at his wrists and ankles were reinforced with all the tape he'd been able to find and some turns of twine. The collar closure was wound tight with layer upon layer of cloth strips.

He realized he couldn't hear anything and opened the faceplate again. Minmei was yelling down to him, 'Be careful out there! Wave when you're ready!'

He gave her the wave and closed the faceplate again, carrying his looped line back into the oversize air lock. Minmei said, 'Here we go!' to herself and strained against a wagon wheel dial.

Rick did his best to keep calm as the inner hatch came down with a finality that made the deck jump and the air bled away. Next to him were a pair of heavy tanks of some kind; he clutched them close. He felt the ship's artificial gravity easing off him.

When the air was gone and the outer hatch was open, he took careful bearing and pushed himself off, trailing the long rope behind. His suit was already becoming a steambath.

The tuna was obliging in that it didn't move much, but his aim was off. He threw one of the tanks from him in one direction, Newton's third law driving him off in the other.

There'd be no time for fumbling; if he missed, he'd have to go back in and refill his suit with air, get more ballast, and try again. Exhausted and depleted, he didn't know if he had the strength for that and didn't want to find out. He tucked the second tank into the looser cloth windings.

He pinwheeled, unused to zero gravity, forcing down the appalling thought of how he'd die if he lost control of his stomach now and gave in to zero-g nausea.

Then he was drifting toward a lifeless eye the diameter of a dinner platter. He spread his arms and bulldogged the tuna. The big fish spun slowly as Rick clung to the left side of its head. He belayed a loop around a pectoral fin as insurance.

He tried heaving the second tank to get the tuna moving toward the lock, but without much luck; the thing was weightless, but its mass hadn't changed, and its mass seemed immovable.

The line he'd played out behind him reached its end, stretching just a bit, an expensive composite made for deep-space work, stronger than steel. Rick was jolted, realizing that if he hadn't looped the fin, he'd have been snapped loose from the fish like a paddleball.

The line's elasticity absorbed the fish's movement and contracted, starting the tuna moving back for the lock. Rick felt his air getting short and fought the urge to use the fish as a launching platform-to kick off for the air lock and hope he could recover it later. He and Minmei could survive for a while longer without food, but not forever, and the fish would probably be the difference between life and death for them both.

He held on, straining at the line to speed things up. The air lock seemed a long way away, and his air very, very thin, making him groggy, while the fish moved as slowly as a glacier.

He shook his head to clear it, concentrating. Everything was blurry. Wasn't there some book about an old fisherman who hung on somehow? Rick was pretty sure his father had made him read it, but he couldn't recall it.

The hatch was before him. Had he been napping? He didn't have time to get out of the way, and the tuna