out of open hatchways to clutter the corridor. He glided around the obstacles or flicked them aside. Water was boiling furiously out of a split pipe, filling a long section of the corridor with thick white mist.
Even if they did recover the ship, he knew Z-B would never spend the money it would require for a complete refit. His Koribu was doomed, one way or another.
The spoke lift shaft that led up to the wheel's hub was almost clear, allowing him to move a lot faster. When he reached the first hub compartment the pressure door hinged shut behind him. The strobes went off, and the normal lighting returned. Several of the panels flickered, betraying just how much damage had been wrought by the decompression; internal systems were designed to operate in a vacuum. Refusing to be intimidated by the subversion software's activity, he moved into the hub's annular corridor and continued toward the transfer toroid.
The pressure door was closed. He pushed against it, knowing how futile that gesture was. Dense white gas suddenly burst out of an environment duct grille with a silent rush.
'Jesus,' he muttered inside the helmet. The software must be preparing the wheel for the invaders. He flipped around quickly and kicked off. There was one hub compartment that was safer for him than the others. He zipped back along the annular corridor. Every grille was blowing out a column of air. The booby-trapped compartment was directly ahead. Pressure was already back up to half a standard atmosphere.
'Careful. It could be dangerous in there.'
Marquis gripped the hatch rim to halt his flight and slowly looked round. The Skin was floating lazily along the annular corridor behind him.
'Somebody wired up the whole place to the backup power supply,' the Skin said; his voice was tinny in the thin air.
Marquis turned his communication circuit back on. 'It was wired up on my orders.'
'A reasonable idea for a noncombatant.'
'What do you want?'
'What I have, Captain: your starship.'
'Why? At least tell me that.'
'We're taking it on a trip.'
'I doubt it. You've succeeded in virtually wrecking it.'
'This is just superficial damage to the life support sections. The drives are intact. That's all we need.'
'Where are you going?'
'To the alien's home star. You're welcome to come with us if you like. You've spent your life in space. I suspect you haven't entirely lost your fascination with the unknown, even if it's been diverted by Zantiu-Braun.'
The offer did cause Marquis Krojen to hesitate, but duty was a lot stronger than old dreams. 'My only concern right now is for the safety of my crew. Did you kill the squad I sent up here?'
'A blunt question, Captain. But, no, they're not dead, although a couple of them are injured. We subverted their spacesuits and turned off the air. They had to take their helmets off. I darted them.'
'I see.'
'Well, there's gratitude. Ah. Here we go.'
The lights dimmed again. Marquis realized something was diverting power from the tokamaks. 'The compression drive,' he said in surprise.
'I did say it was intact. We'll be using it as soon as the alien can raise the tokamaks up to full power and bring the energy inverter online. In the meantime, I want you to help me shove the remaining crewmen into lifeboats. If we don't, then they'll be coming with us, and this ship is not going to come back.'
* * *
Simon had blacked out when the scramjet came on. Acceleration had heightened the pain to an unbelievable agony before his body's beleaguered natural defenses snatched him away. When he recovered he was in freefall, with the intensive-care equipment emitting urgent bleeping sounds. Indigo symbols and script slowly crept into focus. There was no data available from the Koribu. He told his AS to give him the orbital tactical plots, and the sensor readings from the star-ships and satellites. 'Good God.' It was every bit as bad as he expected.
'Please, don't try to move,' the doctor said quickly. 'You're all right.'
'I'd better be,' Simon snapped at him. The crisp circles of the tactical plot showed him forty-eight lifeboats were slowly receding from the Koribu. The Xiantis had rendezvoused with a few, but they didn't have the cabin space to accommodate all the crewmen sheltering inside. Two of the spaceplanes had simply loaded the lifeboats into their cargo bays and de-orbited, carrying them down to Durrell. The remainder of the lifeboats were waiting for instructions: should they remain in orbit for rendezvous and rescue, or should they fire their retro rockets and land on the planet—if so, at what location? Simon couldn't care less. He reduced the tactical display back into the main display grid and expanded the Koribu's sensor scans. Vast and powerful magnetic flux lines were expanding out from the compression drive section as the tokamaks powered up. The starship was preparing to go FTL.
He told his AS to establish a link to Sebastian Manet, the Norvelle's captain.
'Can you disable the Koribu?' Simon asked. According to his tactical plot, the starships were only eight thousand kilometers apart.
'We should be able to saturate its defenses between the six of us,' Sebastian Manet said. 'I would like to wait until it's farther away from the lifeboats and spaceplanes. They could be damaged by the defense missiles, or the Koribu's detonation.'
'I don't want it detonated. I want it disabled.'
'We don't have that kind of capability.'
'Why can't you use the kinetic weapons? Target the compression drive section.'
'The Koribu will simply use its nukes against them: nothing can get through that kind of defensive bombardment.'
'We must have more kinetic missiles than they have nuclear explosives.'
'We do. But Captain Krojen was in the last lifeboat to escape. He's confirmed the goal of the hijackers. They're about five minutes away from going FTL. We'd need to fire at least eighteen salvos to soak up their defensive capability and be certain of achieving a hit; that would take forty-five minutes to an hour. We won't even
