Beside him, Orim was trembling with rage.
"First Speaker," Mark said hastily, "Orim has--"
"Orim has nothing]" the Wopind said shrilly, leaping up, stabbing the air savagely with the muzzle of hin's weapon. "The WirElspind will suffer for this, and Alanor will watch the consequences of hin's words! Obviously, the WirElspind doubts hin's resolve, hin's sincerity--well, they will be convinced!
Hin will not wait for the deadline!"
Even though Orim was shouting in Elspindlor, hin's anger and intention to commit further violence was evident to everyone on the bridge. "Orim!" Mark said. "Please--"
The Wopind turned on him, and Mark shrank back in his seat before those mad, burning brass eyes. Quickly the Wopind spoke to the armed female.
"We need more pictures. Bring the journalist, Cara Hendricks, and this time bring two prisoners. Hin will see that they meet Wo before the eyes of this one!" Hin gestured furiously at Alanor, who was silent with shock. "Bring the Apis here, and one other"--hin glared at Mark-- "and make sure that other is human!"
No! Mark's mind screamed. No! God, don't let this happen!
Alanor was silent, perhaps realizing what hin's anger had done. You fool!
Mark thought savagely, then the holo-tank rippled, and the face of the Heeyoon was back. "Asimov" he began, "what's happening? What--"
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"They're going to kill two more hostages!" Mark yelled in Mizari. "Get Alanor back to say hin didn't mean it!"
"But--" the Heeyoon stammered.
And the communications tech cracked.
"You idiots!" he yelled, lunging for the comm board. "Do it, or we'll all--
Ahhhhhh!" His scream was mortal agony as the high-energy beam from Orim's gun drilled a neat hole in his back. He fell against the comm station.
Mark leaped to get out of the way of the deadly beam, and crashed against Rogers, the Communications Chief. The man lurched forward.
Perhaps the han who'd stood so many long hours guarding the bridge thought the Comm Officer was attacking her. She fired wildly, as if she'd never handled a gun before, missing him and destroying the comm station and several panels of instrumentation in the process. And then Rogers was on top of her, and they were rolling on the deck, wrestling for the gun.
"Stop!" Loachin was screaming. "You'll wreck the ship!" Orim was turning to fire on Rogers. The woman launched a desperate high kick at the Wopind's head, stiffening her whole body into a projectile. The impact ruined his aim, sending the deadly beams sweeping over the bridge. Part of the navigation board and most of the engineering board melted into a charred mess.
Warning alarms sounded, and lights flashed red on the still-intact controls.
The third Wopind on the bridge, the other neuter, wavered less than a second between targeting Loachin or Rogers. By the time he chose Loachin, it was too late; Mark was on hin.
The Wopind was wiry-strong and fast, but Mark had been well trained in the martial arts. A calculated pressure grip and a follow-up, strong twist and jerk sent the gun sliding across the bridge. Mark forced the Wopind facedown on the deck and straddled hin.
Only then was he able to look up and realize that Orim lay dead across Loachin's legs, blasted by the gun Rogers had wrested from the han guard.
Loachin pushed the Wopind off and staggered to her feet. One look at the bridge controls was sufficient. "Shit!" she yelled. "We've got no power! We can't maintain orbit without power! We're going down!"
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Rogers was already at the ruined comm board. "No communications, Captain, internal or external!"
Loachin turned to the StarBridge student. "Mark, get back to the passengers, spread the word, tell them to secure for a crash landing. If you see the First Mate, tell him to get up here!" She slid into the pilot's seat and began testing what remained of the controls, rattling off orders to the Communications Chief, who had taken the navigation console.
Mark whirled on the remaining Wospind. "This ship is going to crash on your world in just a few minutes." He mimed an explosion. "You go and tell the rest of your friends that if they want to live, forget guarding the hostages and find a place that will protect them!"
The han and the hin looked at each other, at Orim's body, at the nearly destroyed bridge, then bounded off down the passageway.
Mark raced after them, skidding to a stop just inside the common lounge.
"Listen!" he shouted. Pandemonium, created by the panicked arrival of the two Wospind a second before, was already breaking out. "Listen to me!
Secure for crash landing! Secure for crash landing!"
"Where's the Captain?" a woman yelled. "What's--"
Rogers, the Communications Officer, appeared suddenly at his shoulder. "I'll take over here. You see if you can find the First Mate. All right," he shouted at the screaming crowd, "secure yourselves for emergency landing. Use the hiber units!"
A few people obeyed, but most just milled, all babbling at once. As Mark whirled back toward the door, Cara grabbed him. "Mark, what happened?"
"Orim's dead, and we're going to crash!" He shoved her in the direction of the hibernation chamber. "Get us a unit! Where's Eerin?"
The Elpind materialized next to Cara. "Here!"
"Both of you! Find a unit."
Mark pushed through the crowd. He wasn't the only one who remembered that the central part of the diamond-shaped passenger liners had the greatest number of reinforcing layers. People were jostling and elbowing their way into the hiber room as the cry went up all over the lounge: "We're going down!"
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The Asimov bucked, leveled, bucked again. Fresh screams erupted.
Oh, my God! We're hitting atmosphere already!
Mark was forced to move aside for a big Simiu bent on clearing a path into the hiber room for a wizened little Apis and realized the two had just entered the common lounge with a clot of people from the rear, smaller lounges. He battled his way through them and suddenly spotted the uniform of the First Mate headed straight for him.
He grabbed the man's arm. "Sir! The Captain needs you on the bridge.
Crash landing!"
"I'm on my way." The man hardly paused. "Find a safe place!"
Mark turned, expecting to find the way easier now that he went with the flow of the crowd ... but the tide of people was changing direction. Again he had to push and elbow his way through. As soon as he made it into the
hibernation chamber he knew why. Every unit was full!
The ship heaved again, and Mark joined several others in a tangle of arms and legs that rolled across the slanting floor.
"Mark! Over here! Over here!"
Automatically he tracked the voice and saw Cara waving frantically to him from one of the second-level units.
"Over here, Mark! Get in!"
His body was moving before his mind caught up. It propelled him there, climbed up, hesitated when he saw both Cara and Eerin already there, but slid in anyway.
Lying on their sides with the skinny Elpind in the middle, the three of them were tightly jammed into a hiber unit designed for one person. Mark fumbled over his head to let the top down, checking, at the same time, the location of the manual catch that would open it from the inside. They would need that if they survived.
If-
"Oh, God, Mark ..." Cara whispered. "We'll burn up."
"No," he corrected her. "The special insulation material that protects against the effects of metaspace works against friction, too. We've already entered atmosphere."
The ship pitched violently, and instinctively Mark reached
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out. Two human hands, one dark-skinned, one light, met across the down-covered body of the Elpind. Mark held on tight, closed his eyes, and pressed his face against the back of Eerin's fuzzy, warm neck.
A hard, uneven, side-to-side wobble was suddenly the ship's predominant motion. She's going to pull it off! The Captain's landing us! Mark thought triumphantly. He recognized the motion a
s a sign that they were very low now ... and in the same moment he gauged the sense of forward motion that penetrated even into the hiber unit. Oh, shit! Too fast. We're going too fast!
His heart rattled off a hundred heartbeats in the last, long, too-long second.
The suspense alone was killing him.
Dammit! Crash, if you're going to! Just get it over with! he silently screamed.
The S.V. Asimov obeyed.
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Chapter 10 CHAPTER 10
Death Rites
The first slamming impact would have bounced Cara and the others like a child's ball, spattering them against the lid of the hiber unit, except for the unit's emergency air-cushion that was triggered by impact. Even so, she lurched against the padded side of the unit as more bruising bounces were accompanied by grinding, tearing noises. The unit tilted, then there came a final, massive jolt that abruptly ended all sensation of motion.
A long, breathless minute passed.
"It's over," Mark said in a strangled voice. He stirred, and his face appeared over the Elpind's shoulder, worried hazel eyes studying both of them. "Cara?
You okay? Eerin?"
The Elpind squirmed. "Hin is well."
"I ... I'm fine. Are you?" Her throat was raw, and she could barely whisper.
Mark nodded and took a deep breath. "We've got to get out of here. Hit the manual release on your side, Cara."
We're alive! We made it, all three of us. As her fingers groped at the lever, Cara tried to feel joy, or even relief, but she only felt numb.
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Mark pushed back the top of the unit, then climbed out. Seconds later Eerin followed the human over the side. Cara shifted in the sudden roominess and sat up. The unit was steeply tilted, leaving her feet far lower than her head.
"Cara? Here, let me help." Mark's head reappeared over the side. Cara looked at the hand he held out, the hand she'd gripped like a lifeline during the crash, and realized she didn't remember letting go of it.
"Cara!" He regarded her anxiously. "You okay?"
She nodded, then slowly, conscious of dozens of bruises, she clambered out. As she did so, she spotted the autocam wedged in a corner of the unit, and grabbed it.
Her bare feet encountered a wildly tilted deck as Mark steadied her down.
Cara turned and regarded the hibernation chamber with mingled horror and awe that any of them had survived.
The whole compartment tilted steeply to port. The deck was littered with broken light panels and smashed instrumentation. The few remaining light panels glowed a dim, eerie orange, the result of the emergency power cells.
Behind her, Cara heard grunts and groans as several other survivors sat up in hibernation units that practically hung from the ceiling due to the Asimov's pronounced slant. There were dripping sounds and a soft hissing, and somewhere to her left, someone whimpered mindlessly, like an injured animal. But despite these faint sounds, the most notable thing was the thick stillness, an unnatural quiet, that made her shiver.
The chamber seemed to have shrunk. Cara peered through the red gloom toward the "down" end and realized that part of the compartment had buckled inward; bulkheads and overhead supports met in a crazy tangle.
What had been an orderly curving wall of sleep units was now a crunched and twisted disaster. Here and there through shattered viewpanels Cara could make out a splayed hand, a still, huddled shape, a blood-streaked face.
"Oh, God. I hope none of them are still alive. If they are, we'll never be able to get them out. We'd need equipment ..." Mark trailed off, shuddering all over as he turned away to look back at the units on the wall where they had been. Some of them were damaged, too, but nothing like the ones on the starboard side.
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Cara reached out to him in the same instant as the Elpind. Screaming won't help, she told herself sternly as the three of them briefly clung together.
Screaming won't help at all. Think of something practical to do.
It occurred to her then that the authorities would need a complete record.
Activating the camera steadied her.
"I guess we should search the ship ... try to locate any other survivors ..."
Cara attempted to swallow. Sometime during the crash she must've
screamed--only that would explain how raw her throat felt. She stared at her human companion. Even in this light, he was pale. "Mark, are you okay?"
He nodded, taking a deep breath, and she could sense him doing the same thing she was: trying to push away the emotional reaction to this carnage until there was time to deal with it.
"Hin wil examine these units for survivors," Eerin said.
"I'll check the lounge." Mark's voice was a little steadier. "Everyone watch for first-aid kits. Or any of the crew."
"I'll come with you," Cara told him, reluctant, for the moment, to let Mark out of her sight.
"Wish I could remember that layout ... up near the crew quarters, I think, but maybe near the storage lockers ..." He was mumbling almost to himself, and Cara realized he was still talking about the medical kits. She waited for him to move, but he didn't. Finally she took his arm.
"Mark," she said, "let's go."
"Yeah ..." But still he didn't move. Cara realized that he was afraid to leave the chamber. She thought she could guess why. "Do you think it'll be worse out there than in here?"
He nodded somberly. "This compartment is supposed to be the safest, strongest part of the ship. If the hiber chamber looks like this ..."
"We'd better find out the worst," she said after a moment.
Mark nodded and led the way, stooping low to get through the doorway's distorted frame. Cara followed, and found his fears well-founded. The destruction in the hibernation chamber had been only a preview. What she saw as she emerged into the remains of the Asimov's forward lounge was the real thing.
A blast of hot, dry wind blew into the lounge from a huge rip in the bulkhead.
Outside they could see a patch of naked
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rock and sand, sizzling beneath a pale, greenish blue sky. Cara stepped to the lip of the tear and gazed out. This is Elseemar, she thought dazedly. I'm on an alien planet.
Loosely packed soil, dark brown and sandy-looking, streaked with red, stretched away as far as she could see. Boulders, some of them nearly as large as she was, studded the uneven ground.
It's a desert, she realized. Eerin said Elseemar had them.
Deep gouges scored the desert floor. The Asimov had slid a long way, a careening, crooked slide as first one side of the diamond, then the other, had grated along the ground. Shading her eyes against the harsh daylight glare, Cara let her eyes follow the tortuous path the ship had taken. Scattered everywhere, like confetti along a parade route, were bright colors: cushions from the lounge furniture, bed coverings, luggage and clothes from the wrecked cabins, tapes in their glossy containers, shoes, toys.
Cara squinted, staring harder, then abruptly closed her eyes, swallowing against nausea. Some of those bright bundles were people, flung out on the desert as carelessly as their belongings. Faces of the people she'd met at the Captain's Night party flashed through her memory, and she shuddered.
Which ones would she find out there on the sand?
Mark had taken a quick look over her shoulder out the torn side, then moved away. Cara knew what he was doing behind her--searching for survivors in the destroyed lounge. Steeling herself, she turned to help him.
A ragged line of people, those lucky enough to ride out the crash in the padded, undamaged units, were by now trickling out of the hiber room into the lounge. A brawny male Simiu headed the line.
Cara stepped out of the way as he moved toward the giant fissure in the side of the ship, then gracefully leaped over the ragged plas-steel rip, landing effortlessly on the desert floor. He stood on all fours, looked around, then he turned and waved, beckoning the next being in line, an Apis. Spreading her wings, she flew through the ho
le to land beside him.
Ignoring the humans and other beings from the hiber chamber who now crowded to see out, the big alien and his small companion moved away, out of sight.
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"Cara! Over here!" Mark was across from her on the port side of the lounge, with Eerin beside him. The two were struggling to move aside a metal storage locker that had been full of holo-vid cassettes. The bolts holding it against the bulkhead had ripped loose, and it had fallen over.
From the urgency of their movements, Cara guessed that someone was trapped beneath it, and she dashed across the uneven deck to help.
Grunting with effort, they managed to shift the huge thing to the side slightly.
Their shoving uncovered two beings wedged into the corner made by the fallen cabinet--two male Wospind in red tunics. One heen lay facedown and obviously dead, the back of his head crushed to a bloody ruin. Biting her lip, Cara looked away, watching Eerin as hin crouched down in the newly cleared space by the other one.
The other male Wopind lay on his side, half across the dead one's legs, his own legs and the whole lower half of his body still trapped beneath the heavy metal cabinet. Cara saw his back move as heen breathed.
"It looks like most everyone got out of the lounge before we crashed, or else they were thrown out during it," reported Mark quickly. "I only found four people. Well, five, counting heen." He pointed at the dead Wopind. "This one"--nodding at the second Wopind--"makes six, but he's different--still alive."
"Should we try again to get this cabinet off him?"
"I don't think we can. And even if we could ..." He shrugged and shook his head.
Cara nodded. The Wopind surely had serious internal injuries and bleeding, not to mention the obviously broken bones.
Eerin said something in Elspindlor, and incredibly, the Wopind opened huge sea-green eyes. They were unfocused and cloudy with pain, but after a moment, heen spoke in a weak, raspy croak. "Heen-see ..." he gasped--or that's what the word sounded like to Cara.
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