He eased downward into the plenum space above the hood ceiling and kicked through the tiles. When he finally lowered himself into the battery room he was drenched in sweat and his pants were ripped in the thigh. He hadn’t even noticed. He undid his belt and looked at the scrape on his leg. It was mostly superficial. Not much blood.
He leaned in the corner, with the hood’s softwalls pulled back, catching his breath. The cameras were all installed to monitor the reactor, so they faced the center of the room. Most of them close-upped on specific pieces of equipment. He eased out, pushing himself up toward the high ceiling.
He glanced at his chrono. Already seven minutes past his meeting time with Lukinov. He waited two more minutes before the hatch popped open. He had a split second to decide what he would do if it was one of the engineers.
But a familiar balding head poked through the door. Max eased out of the hood area. “Hey, Lukinov.”
“Max?” The other man twisted around to see him. He entered, closing the hatch behind him. “How the hell did you get in here? Chevrier’s guard at the door gave me the runaround, swore he hadn’t seen you. The mate watching the monitors said you never came in here either. What are you, some damn spook?”
Max ignored the questions. “You wanted to talk to me about the radio room. It was me. I stole the memory chips.”
Lukinov came toward him, pale with fury. “You did what? By god, I’ll see you shot.”
“Intelligence won’t touch me,” said Max. “Not for this.”
“I’ll get Political Education to do it, you goddamn weasel,” Lukinov vowed. He launched himself toward Max, keeping a hand against the wall to orient himself. “Your boss, Mallove, is a personal friend of mine. He won’t like-”
Max jumped, tucking his knees and spinning as he sailed in the air. He wrapped his belt around Lukinov’s throat, pivoted, twisting the belt as he pulled himself back to the floor. The motion jerked Lukinov upside down so that he floated in the air like a child’s balloon.
“Y our boss, Drozhin,” whispered Max, “doesn’t like the way you’ve been selling Intelligence’s secrets out to Political Education and War.”
Drozhin was Max’s boss too. He’d moled Max in Political Education as soon as the new Department formed.
Lukinov panicked. He thrashed his arms and legs, disoriented, trying to make contact with any surface, clutching futilely at Max, who was behind his back and below him. Max twisted the belt, pinching the carotid arteries and cutting off blood flow to the brain. Lukinov was unconscious in about seven seconds. His body just went still. He was dead a few seconds later.
Drozhin had ordered Max to watch Lukinov, not kill him, but he couldn’t see any other way around it. He shoved the body toward the corner, under the vent, and put his belt back on.
Still nobody at the hatch. Maybe they hadn’t noticed. Maybe they were summoning Simco. There’d be no denying this one, not if he’d missed the location of any cameras.
But he had no time to think about failure. He didn’t want anyone looking closely at Lukinov’s body and he didn’t want the ship making the jump to Adares. Intelligence was publicly part of the war party, but Drozhin believed that war would destroy Jesusalem and wanted it sabotaged at all costs. Max took the medicine bottle from his pocket and removed the two pills that weren’t pills. He popped them into his mouth to warm them-they tasted awful-while he removed the wire and blasting cap from the bottle’s lid.
He couldn’t blow any main part of the reactor, he understood that much. But the cooling circuit used water pipes, and a radioactive water spill could scuttle the jump. Max darted in, fixed the explosive to a blue-tagged pipe, plugged the wire in it, and hurried back to the hood. He pushed Lukinov’s corpse in the direction of the explosive before he climbed through the hole into the vent.
There was a soft boom behind him.
Max cranked his neck to peer down between his feet and saw the water spray in a fine mist, filling the air like fog. All the radiation alarms blared at once.
They sounded far off at first while he wiggled upward. He thought he was sweating, but realized that the busted air flow was drawing some of the water up through the shaft. Droplets pelleted him with radiation, and that made him crawl faster. He got stuck in the bend for a moment, finally squeezing through, and thrusting the vent cover out of the way without checking first to see if anyone was in the corridor. But it was empty-so far his luck held! He retrieved the grille and screwed it back into place. One of the alarms was located directly beside him. Its wailing made his pulse skip.
He emerged into the shaft of the weapons compartment as men raced both ways, toward the accident and away from it. No one noticed him. He was headed across the void toward his quarters when someone called his name.
“Hey, Nikomedes!”
He saw the medtech, Noyes, down by the corridor that led to Engineering. “What is it, Doc?”
“You don’t have your comet, do you?”
Max touched the empty spot on his breast pocket. “No. Why?”
“Radiation emergency!” he screamed. “You’re drafted as the surgeon’s assistant-come on!”
Max considered ignoring the command, but according to regulations, Doc was right. Anyone who wasn’t Vacuum and Radiation qualified was designated an orderly to help treat those who were. Plus it gave him an alibi. He jumped toward the bottom of the Black Forest and joined Noyes.
“Here, carry this kit,” Noyes said, handing over a box of radiation gear as he went back across the hall to grab another.
“Where is it?” asked Max. He held the gear close, covering the rip in his pants. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know. The com’s down again. But it has to be the reactor.”
Nobody guarded the main hatch to Engineering so the two men went straight in. A crowd gathered in the monitor room, spilling out into the corridor. Noyes pushed straight through, and Max followed along behind him. Chevrier was shaking a crewman by the throat.
“-what the hell did you let him in there for?”
“He ordered me to!” the man complained. It was DePuy.
“There’s water everywhere!” another one of the men yelled, coming back from the direction of the reactor room hatch. “The reactor’s over-heating fast!”
“It’s already past four hundred cees,” said one of the men at the monitors.
Chevrier tried to fling DePuy at the wall, but they just flopped a short distance apart. The chief engineer turned toward the rest of crew in disgust.
Rucker, the first lieutenant, showed up behind Max. “Captain wants a report-the com’s down again!”
“That’s because the reactor’s overheating,” Chevrier said. “The cooling system’s busted.”
“My God,” said Rucker, invoking a deity he probably didn’t believe in, thought Max.
Noyes slapped a yellow patch on the first lieutenant’s shirt. “Radiation detectors, everyone. When they turn orange, you’re in danger, means get out. Red means see me for immediate treatment.” He handed some to Max. “Make sure everyone wears one.”
“We’ve got to go in there, fix the pipe, and cool the reactor,” said Chevrier. Some of the men started to protest. “Shut the fuck up! I’m asking for volunteers. And I’ll be going in with you.”
Rucker wiped the blond cowlick back off his forehead. “I’ll go in,” he said. Six other crewmen volunteered, most of them senior engineers. Max slapped radiation badges on those men first.
“Here’s the plan.” Chevrier pointed to pictures on the monitors. “We’re going to shut off these valves here and here, cut out and replace this section of pipe-”
Noyes, looking over his shoulder, said, “That man in there ought to come out at once. He looks unconscious.”
“That man is dead,” said Chevrier, “and it’s a good thing too, or I’d kill him. Then we’re going to run a pipe through here, from the drinking water supply-”
A moan of dismay.
“-shut up! We’ll take it from the number three reserve tank. That ought to be enough, and it won’t contaminate the rest of the water. Once we get the main engine back up, we can make more water off the fuel cells.”
Everyone had a badge now, and Max hung back with Noyes.
“I’d like someone to go in there and turn off these,” Chevrier tapped spots on one of the monitors, “here, here,
