Kostolitz was finished and waiting impatiently as Miles arrived up front. 'You're slow, Vorkosigian.' Kostolitz jammed his report panel into the read-slot, and slid into the pilot's seat.
Miles eyed an interesting bulge in the instructor's breast pocket. He patted his own pockets, and essayed a helpless smile. 'Oh, sir,' he chirped politely to the instructor, 'I seem to have misplaced my light-pen. May I borrow yours?'
The instructor disgorged it unwillingly. Miles lidded his eyes. In addition to the light-pen, the instructor's pocket contained three emergency breath-masks, folded. An interesting number, three. Anyone on a space station might carry a breath mask in his pocket as a matter of course, but three? Yet they had a dozen breath-masks ready to hand, Kostolitz had just checked them—no. Kostolitz had just counted them.
'Your light pens are standard issue,' said the instructor coldly. 'You're supposed to hang onto them. You careless characters are going to bring the Accounting Office down on us all, one of these days.'
'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.' Miles signed his name with a flourish, made to pocket the pen, came up with two. 'Oh, here's mine. Sorry, sir.'
He entered his report, and strapped himself into the co-pilot's chair. With his seat at the limit of its forward adjustment, he could just reach the foot controls. Imperial equipment was not so flexible as the mercenaries' had been. No matter. He schooled himself to strict attention. He was still awkward in his handling of shuttle controls. But a bit more practice, and he would never be at the mercy of a shuttle pilot for transportation again.
It was Kostolitz's turn now, though. Miles was pressed into his padded seat by the acceleration as the shuttle popped free of its clamps and began to boost toward its assigned station. Breath masks. Check lists. Assumptions. The chip on Kostolitz's shoulder. Assumptions … Miles's nerves extended themselves, spider-patient, questing. Minutes crept by.
A sharp report, and a hissing, came from the rear of the cabin. Miles's heart lurched and began to pound violently, in spite of his anticipation. He swung around and took it in at a glance, as when a strobe-flash of lightning betrays the secrets of the dark. Kostolitz swore violently. Miles breathed, 'Ha!'
A jagged hole in the paneling on the starboard side of the shuttle was pouring out a thick green gas; a coolant line had snapped, as from a meteor hit. The 'meteor' was undoubtedly plastic explosive, since the stuff was streaming into and not out of the cabin. Besides, the instructor was still seated, watching them. Kostolitz leaped for the case of emergency breath masks.
Miles dove instead for the controls. He snapped the atmosphere circuit from recycle to exterior venting, and in one pauseless motion fired the shuttle's attitude verniers at maximum boost. After a groaning moment, the shuttle began to turn, then spin, around an axis through the center of the cabin. Miles, the instructor, and Kostolitz were thrown forward. The coolant gas, heavier than their atmosphere mix, began to pile up against the back wall of the cabin in noxious billows under the influence of this simplest of artificial gravities.
'You crazy bastard!' screamed Kostolitz, scrabbling at a breath mask. 'What are you doing?'
The instructor's expression was first an echo of Kostolitz's, then suddenly enlightened. He eased back into the seat he had begun to shoot out of, hanging on tightly and observing, his eyes crinkling with interest.
Miles was too busy to reply. Kostolitz would figure it out shortly, he was sure. Kostolitz donned a breath mask, attempted to inhale. He snatched it off his face and threw it aside, and grabbed up the second of the three he'd brought forward. Miles climbed up the wall toward the first aid kit.
The second breath mask curved past him. Empty reservoirs, no doubt. Kostolitz had counted the breath masks without checking their working condition. Miles levered the first aid kit open and pulled out IV tubing and two Y-connectors. Kostolitz threw aside the third breath mask and began climbing back up the starboard wall toward the case of breath masks. The coolant gas made an acrid, burning stench in Miles's nostrils, but its harmful concentrations remained in the other end of the cabin, for now.
A cry of rage and fear, interrupted by coughing, came from Kostolitz as he began pawing through breath masks, checking their condition readouts at last. Miles's lips drew back in a wicked grin. He pulled his grandfather's dagger from its sheath, cut the IV tubing into four pieces, inserted the Y-connectors, sealed them with blobs of plastic bandage, jammed the hookah-like apparatus into the single outlet of the emergency medical oxygen canister, and skidded back to the instructor.
'Air, sir?' He offered a hissing end of IV tubing to the officer. 'I suggest you breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose.'
'Thank you, Cadet Vorkosigan,' said the instructor in a fascinated tone, taking it. Kostolitz, coughing, eyes rolling desperately, fell back toward them, barely managing not to put his feet through the control panel. Miles blandly handed him a tube. He sucked on it, eyes wide and watering, not, Miles thought, only from the effects of the coolant gas.
Clenching his air-tube between his teeth, Miles began to climb the starboard wall. Kostolitz started after him, then discovered that both he and the instructor had been issued short tethers. Miles uncoiled tubing behind
him; yes, it would reach, although just barely. Kostolitz and the instructor could only watch, breathing in yogalike cadence.
Miles reversed his hold as he passed the midpoint of the cabin and centrifugal force began to pull him toward the pooling green gas slowly filling the shuttle from the back wall. He counted down wall panels, 4a, 4b, 4c—that should be it. He popped it open, and found the manual shut-off valves. That one? No, that one. He turned it. It slipped in his sweating hand.
The panel door on which he rested his weight gave way with a sudden crack, and he swung out over the evilly heaving green gas. The oxygen tube ripped from his mouth and flapped around wildly. He was saved from yelping only by the fact that he was holding his breath. The instructor, forward, lurched futilely, tied to his air supply. But by the time he'd fumbled his pocket open, Miles had swallowed, achieved a more secure grip on the wall, and recovered his tube in a heart-stopping grab. Try again. He turned the valve, hard, and the hissing from the hole in the wall a meter astern of him faded to an elfin moan, then stopped.
The tide of green gas began to recede and thin at last, as the cabin ventilators labored. Miles, shaking only slightly, climbed back to the front end of the shuttle and strapped himself into his co-pilot's seat without comment. Comment would have been awkward around his oxygen tube anyway.
Cadet Kostolitz, in his role as pilot, returned to his controls. The atmosphere cleared at last. He stopped the spin and aimed the damaged shuttle slowly back toward dock, paying strict and subdued attention to engine temperature readouts. The instructor looked extremely thoughtful, and only little pale.
The chief instructor himself was waiting in the shuttle hatch corridor of the orbital station when they docked, along with a repairs tech. He smiled cheerily, turning two yellow armbands absently in his hands.
Their own instructor sighed, and shook his head dolefully at the armbands. 'No.'
'No?' queried the chief instructor. Miles was not sure if it was with amazement or disappointment.
'No.'
'This I've got to see.' The two instructors ducked into the shuttle, leaving Miles and Kostolitz alone a moment.
Kostolitz cleared his throat. 'That, ah—blade of yours came in pretty handy after all.'
'Yes, there are times when a plasma arc beam isn't nearly as suitable for cutting,' Miles agreed. 'Like when you're in a chamber full of inflammable gas.'
'Oh, hell,' Kostolitz seemed suddenly struck. 'That stuff will go off, mixed with oxygen. I almost .. .' He cut himself off, cleared his throat again. 'You don't miss much, do you?' A sudden suspicion filled his face. 'Did you know about this set up in advance?'
'Not exactly. But I figured something must be up when I counted the three breath masks in the instructor's pocket.'
'You—' Kostolitz paused, turned. 'Did you really lose track of your light-pen?'
'No.'
'Hell,' Kostolitz muttered again. He scuffed around the corridor a moment, hunched, red, dismally recalcitrant.
Now, thought Miles. 'I know a place you can buy good blades, in Vorbarr Sultana,' he said with nicely calculated diffidence. 'Better than standard issue stuff. You can get a real bargain there sometimes, if you know what to look for.'
Kostolitz stopped. 'Oh, yeah?' He began to straighten, as though being relieved of a weight. 'You, ah—I
