Rees reached the port. The orderly queue of a few minutes earlier had disintegrated; people were trying to force their way through the doorway, screaming and holding their absurd packages of luggage above their heads. Rees used his fists and elbows to fight his way through to the interior. The Observatory was a cage of noisy chaos, with equipment and people jumbled and crushed together; the single remaining large instrument — the Telescope — loomed over the crowd like some aloof robot.
Rees rammed his way through the crowd until he found Gord and Nead. He pulled them close. 'We launch in five minutes!'
'Rees, that's impossible,' Gord said. 'You can see the state of things. We'd cause injury, death even, to the passengers and those outside—'
Rees pointed to the transparent hull. 'Look out there. See that smoke? Decker has fired the damn scaffolding. So your precious explosive bolts are going to blow in five minutes anyway. Right?'
Gord paled.
Suddenly the noise outside grew to a roar; Rees saw that more sections of the fence were failing. The few guards still fighting were being overwhelmed by a wave of humanity.
'When they reach us we're finished,' Rees said. 'We have to launch. Not in five minutes. Now.'
Nead shook his head. 'Rees, there are still people—'
'Close the damn door!' Rees grabbed the young man's shoulder and shoved him toward a wall-mounted control panel. 'Gord, fire those bolts. Just do it—'
His eyes narrow, his cheeks trembling with fear, the little engineer disappeared into the crush.
Rees forced his way to the Telescope. He clambered up the old instrument's mount until he was looking down over a confused sea of people. 'Listen to me!' he bellowed. 'You can see what's happening outside. We have to launch. Lie down if you can. Help your neighbors; watch the children—'
Now fists were battering against the hull, desperate faces pressing to the clear wall—
— and, with a synchronized crackle, the scaffolding's explosive bolts ignited. The fragile wooden frame disintegrated rapidly; now nothing held the Bridge to the Raft.
The floor dipped. Screams rose like flames; the passengers clung to each other. Beyond the clear hull the Raft deck rose around the Bridge like a liquid, and the Raft's gravitational field hauled the passengers into the air, bumping them almost comically against the roof.
A crescendo of cries came from the doorway. Nead had failed to close the port in time; stragglers were leaping across the widening chasm between Bridge and deck. A last man clattered through the closing door; his ankle was trapped in the jamb and Rees heard the shin snap with sickening suddenness. Now a whole family tumbled off the Raft deck and impacted against the hull, sliding into infinity with looks of surprise…
Rees closed his eyes and clung to the Telescope.
At last it was over. The Raft turned into a ceiling above them, distant and abstract; the thin rain of humans against the hull ceased, and four hundred people had suddenly entered free fall for the first time in their lives.
There was a yell, as if from very far away. Rees looked up. Roch, burning club in hand, had leapt through the hole in the heart of the Raft. He fell through the intervening yards spreadeagled; he stared, eyes bulging, in through the glass at horrified passengers.
The huge miner smashed face-down into the clear roof of the Observatory. He dropped his club and scrabbled for a handhold against the slick wall; but helplessly he slid over the surface, leaving a trail of blood from his crushed nose and mouth. Finally he tumbled over the side — then, at the last second, he grabbed at the rough protrusion of a steam jet.
Rees climbed down from the Telescope and found Gord. 'Damn it, we have to do something. He'll pull that jet free.'
Gord scratched his chin and studied the dangling miner, who glared in at the bemused passengers. 'We could fire the jet. The steam would miss him, of course, since he's hanging beneath the orifice itself — but his hands would burn — yes; that would shake him loose…'
'Or,' Rees said, 'we could save him.'
'What? Rees, that joker tried to kill you.'
'I know.' Rees stared out at Roch's crimson face, his straining muscles. 'Find a length of rope. I'm going to open the door.'
'You're not serious…'
But Rees was already heading for the port.
When at last the huge miner lay exhausted on the deck, Rees bent over him. 'Listen to me,' he said steadily. 'I could have let you die.'
Roch licked blood from his ruined mouth.
'I saved you for one reason,' Rees said. 'You're survivor. That's what drove you to risk your life in that crazy leap. And where we're going we need survivors. Do you understand? But if I ever — even once — think that you're endangering this mission with your damn stupidity I'll open that door and let you finish your fall.'
He held the miner's eyes for long minutes; at last, Roch nodded.
'Good.' Rees stood. 'Now then,' he said to Gord, 'what first?'
There was a stink of vomit in the air.
Gord raised his eyebrows. 'Weightlessness education, I think,' he said. 'And a lot of work with mops and buckets…'
His hands around his assailant's throat and weapon arm, Decker turned to see the Bridge scaffolding collapse into its flimsy components. The great cylinder hung in the air, just for a second; then the steam jets spurted white clouds and the Bridge fell away, leaving a pit in the deck into which people tumbled helplessly.
So it was over; and Decker was stranded. He turned his attention back to his opponent and began to squeeze away the man's life.
On the abandoned Raft the killing went on for many hours.
15
The crowded ship's first few hours after the fall were nearly unbearable. The air stank of vomit and urine, and people of all ages swarmed about the chamber, scrambling, shrieking and fighting.
Rees suspected that the problem was not merely weightlessness, but also the abrupt reality of the fall itself. Suddenly to face the truth that the world wasn't an infinite disc after all — to know that the Raft really had been no more than a mote of patched iron floating in the air — seemed to have driven some of the passengers to the brink of their sanity.
Maybe it would have been an idea to keep the windows opaqued during the launch.
Rees spent long hours supervising the construction of a webbing of ropes and cables crisscrossing the Observatory. 'We'll fill the interior with this isotropic structure,' Hollerbach had advised gravely. 'Make it look the same in every direction. Then it won't be quite so disconcerting when we reach the Core and the whole bloody universe turns upside down…'
Soon the passengers were draping blankets over the ropes, fencing off small volumes for privacy. The high-technology interior of the Bridge began to take on a homely aspect as the makeshift shanty town spread; human smells, of food and children, filled the air.
Taking a break, Rees made his way out of the crushed interior to what had formerly been the roof of the Observatory. The hull was still transparent. Rees pressed his face to the warm material and peered out, irresistibly reminded of how he had once peered out of the belly of a whale.
After the fall from the Raft the Bridge had rapidly picked up speed and reoriented itself so that its stubby nose was pointing at the heart of the Nebula. Now it hurtled down through the air, and the Nebula had turned into a vast, three-dimensional demonstration of perspective motion. Nearby clouds shot past, middle distance stars glided toward space — and even at the limits of vision, many hundreds of miles away, pale stars slowly drifted upwards.
The Raft had long since become a mote lost in the pink infinity above.
