Falling Free

about a quarter of their former brilliance. They were on the module’s own emergency power. Power from the Habitat had been cut off.

Power wasn’t all that had been cut off. Stunned, Van Atta saw the Habitat begin to turn slowly past his viewport. No, it wasn’t the Habitat—it was the module that was moving. A generalized “Aaah!” went up from the mob within, as they began to drift toward one wall and pile up there against the gentle acceleration being imparted from without. Van Atta clung convulsively to the handholds by the viewport.

Realization washed over him almost physically, radiating hotly from his chest down his arms, his legs, pounding up through the top of his head as if to burst through his skull.

Betrayed! He was betrayed, betrayed completely and on every level. A space-suited figure with legs was waving a cheery farewell at the module from beside a gaping hole burned in the side of the Habitat. Van Atta shook with chagrin. I’ll get you, Graf! I’tt get you, you double-crossing son-of-a-bitch! You and every one of those four-armed little creeps with you—

“Calm down, man!” Dr. Yei was saying, having somehow snagged up by his viewport. “What is it?”

He realized he’d been mumbling aloud. He wiped saliva from the corners of his mouth and glared at Yei. “You—you—you missed it. You were supposed to be keeping track of everything that’s going on with those little monsters, and you totally missed it—” He advanced on her, intending he knew not what, slipped from a handhold, swung and skidded down the wall. His blood beat so hard in his ears he was afraid he was having a coronary. He lay a moment with his eyes closed, gasping, temporarily overwhelmed by his emotions. Control, he told himself in a mortal fear of his imminent self-destruction. Control, stay in control—and get Graf later. Get him, get them all. …

Chapter 12

Leo unsuited to the wails of disturbed quaddies.

“What do you mean, we didn’t get them all?” he asked, his elation draining away. He had so hoped that his troubles—or at least the downsider parts of them—would be over with the ignition of the jet cord cutting off Lecture Module C.

“Four of the area supervisors are locked in the vegetable cooler with breath masks and won’t come out,” reported Sinda from Nutrition.

“And the three crewmen from the shuttle that just docked tried to make it back to their ship,” said a yellow-shirted quaddie from Docks & Locks. “We trapped them between two airseal doors, but they’ve been working on the mechanism and we don’t think we can hold them much longer.”

“Mr. Wyzak and two of the life-support systems supervisors are, um, tied up in Central Systems. To the wall hand grips,” reported another quaddie in yellow, adding nervously, “Mr. Wyzak sure is mad.”

“Three of the creche mothers refused to leave their kids,” said an older quaddie girl in pink. “They’re all still in the gym with the rest of the little ones. They’re pretty upset. Nobody’s told them what’s going on yet, at least not when I’d left.”

“And, um, there’s one other person,” added red-clad Bobbi from Leo’s own welding and joining work gang in a faint tone. “We’re not quite sure what to do about him…”

“Immobilize him, to start,” began Leo wearily. “We’ll just have to arrange a life pod to take the stragglers.”

“That may not be so easy,” said Bobbi. “You outnumber him, take ten—take twenty—you can be as careful as you like—is he armed?”

“Not exactly,” admitted Bobbi, seeming to find her lower fingernails objects of new fascination. The quaddie equivalent of foot-shuffling, Leo realized.

“Graf!” boomed an authoritative voice, as the airseals at the end of the worksuit locker room slid open. Dr. Minchenko launched himself across the module to thump to a halt beside Leo, and gave the locker an extra bang with his fist for emphasis. One could not, after all, stomp in free fall. The unused breath mask trailing from his hand bounced and quivered. “What the hell is going on here? There’s no bleeding pressurization emergency—” He inhaled vigorously, as if to prove his point.

The quaddie girl Kara in the white T-shirt and shorts of Medical trailed him, looking mortified. “Sorry, Leo,” she apologized. “I couldn’t get him to go.”

“Am I to run off to some closet while all my quaddies asphyxiate?” Minchenko demanded indignantly of her. “What do you take me for, girl?”

“Most everybody else did,” she offered hesitantly.

“Cowards—scoundrels—idiots,” he sputtered.

“They followed their computerized emergency instructions,” said Leo. “Why didn’t you?”

Minchenko glared at him. “Because the whole thing stank. A Habitat-wide pressurization loss should be almost impossible. A whole chain of interlocking accidents would have to occur.”

“Such chains do occur, though,” said Leo, speaking from wide experience. “They’re practically my speciality.”

“Just so,” purred Minchenko, lidding his eyes. “And that vermin Van Atta billed you as his pet engineer when he brought you in. Frankly, I thought—ahem!” he looked only mildly embarrassed, “that you might be his triggerman. The accident seemed so suspiciously convenient just now, from his point of view. Knowing Van Atta, that was practically the first thing I thought of.”

“Thanks,” snarled Leo.

“I knew Van Atta—I didn’t know you.” Minchenko paused, and added more mildly, “I still don’t. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not entirely, no. Oh, certainly, you can hold out in the Habitat for a few months, cut off from Rodeo— perhaps years, barring counterattacks, if you were conservative and clever enough—but what then? There is no public opinion to come to your rescue here, no audience to grandstand for. It’s half-baked, Graf. You’ve made no provisions for reaching help—”

“We’re not asking for help. The quaddies are going to rescue themselves.”

“How?” Minchenko’s tone scoffed, though his eyes were alight.

“Jump the Habitat. Then keep going.”

Even Minchenko was silenced momentarily. “Oh…”

Leo finished struggling into his red coveralls, and found the tool he wanted. He pointed the laser-solderer firmly at Minchenko’s midsection. It did not appear to be a task he could safely delegate to the quaddies. “And you,” he said stiffly, “can go to the Transfer Station in the life pod with the rest of the downsiders. Let’s go.”

Minchenko barely glanced at the solderer. His lips curled with contempt for the weapon and, Leo felt, its wielder. “Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help, Graf. I know they foxed that cretin Curry, so there are still at least fifteen pregnant quaddie girls out there. Not counting the results of unauthorized experiments, which judging from the way the level is dropping in that box of condoms in the unlocked drawer in my office, are becoming significant.”

Kara started in guilty dismay, and Minchenko added aside to her, “Why do you think I pointed them out to you, dear? Be that as it may, Graf,” he fixed Leo with a stern eye, “if you throw me off what do you plan to do if one of them presents at labor with placenta praevia? Or a post-partum prolapsed uterus? Or any other medical emergency that requires more than a band-aid?”

“Well.,. but…” Leo was taken aback. He wasn’t quite sure what placenta praevia was, but somehow he didn’t think it was medical gobbledy-gook for a hangnail. Nor that a precise explanation of the term would do anything to ease the ominous anxiety it engendered in him. Was it something likely to occur, given the alterations of quaddie anatomy? “There is no choice. To stay here is death for every quaddie. To go is a chance—not a guarantee—of life.”

“But you need me,” argued Minchenko.

“You have to—what?” Leo’s tongue stumbled.