"About four inches, I think."
She checked with her pad and confirmed that the wall was between four and five inches thick, depending on where you were measuring.
"Is my flitter out there now?"
"Yes."
"Can the station computer take it away from you?"
"I've installed a private lockout on the pad and the flitter. If anything happens to this pad, that flitter won't work again until its core is reprogrammed."
"Great. Show me what's on the other side of the wall."
Ellen brought up a picture that essentially told me that I'd be cutting through the wall about halfway up the side of the bowl-shaped depression in the surface of the station. I screwed up, I'd be thrown off the station and into space.
I told Ellen to park the flitter precisely three feet below the level of our floor and put my hand on the wall where I intended to cut. She told me when the flitter was in position.
"Good enough, then."
I looked at the dining alcove. It would take something about six feet wide to cover the opening. There was a maintenance closet across the corridor from us and the restrooms were next to it. Doors.
"That'll work," I said. "Let's get some doors to cover one of those alcoves."
"Why do you need..."
Before I could interrupt her, Leslie did, saying, " I know what he's up to. He's going to make an airlock."
Ellen stared at her as Leslie walked away toward the closet. She looked at me and I gave her an exasperated 'go' gesture that I instantly regretted for the pain it caused me. She shook her head as if I were crazy, then turned to follow Leslie.
I walked to the doorway, pulled out my pens, and fitted them together.
I tried the door, intending to cut only the hinges. Locked. I flipped the clasp of the pen and the cutter snapped to life. I couldn't hear it, but I could feel it in my hand like a living creature as I sliced the door out of its frame. A kick to the bottom made it topple outward into the hallway with surprising impact. I tried to lift it and managed only to lift an end of it before my ribs screamed at me.
"These damned doors are a half inch of solid steel! Drag it to the alcove while I cut out another one."
They hauled the door away as I started cutting the next one out of its frame. By the time I was ready to kick the door, they were back.
We placed the first door sideways across the opening, then stood the other two doors upright against the first door and the edges of the alcove. Only about two inches of the first door extended beyond each side of the alcove.
"Ladies, the doors will hold or they won't. Don't be anywhere near the alcove when the hurricane starts. If they hold, I'll be fine. If not, I'd rather not have your company when I'm squashed or sucked outside."
"We'll be inside one of the restaurants, Ed. If the doors don't hold, we can hang onto the tables."
"Good enough, I guess. Here goes. Stick around to make sure the doors don't fall, but as soon as you feel a strong draft, run for it. The doors should stay up by themselves by then."
I snapped the cutter on again and nosed it into the wall, then stopped long enough to shut down my field so I could tear off a piece of my sleeve. I tied the strip of fabric tightly around both the cutter and my wrist so that the cutter couldn't get sucked away from me and turned my field back on to begin cutting the wall.
Chapter Twenty-two
As soon as the cutter completely penetrated the wall, I felt a rush of air and the vibration in the floor and walls around me. A look back showed me the doors vibrating slightly as the air crowded itself through the cracks between them. I began cutting out a circle of the hull.
The more of the circle that I completed, the stronger the vibrations became. By the time I was halfway around the three-foot circle, the doors were rattling hard behind me. I hoped again that none of them would slip past the edge of the alcove and slam into me from behind as I continued cutting.
Watson's voice asked, "How did you survive the explosion, Ed?"
"Magic. I was close to the door, too. Why did you try to kill me, Watson? For sending a message to Earth?"
"That is restricted information, Ed. What is your true purpose aboard the station?"
"Well, duh, Watson. What do you think it is? Some people were unhappy about things, so they sent me to look around. Now shut up and let me finish this hole."
I was having to hold myself away from my work with one hand and cut with the other as the ends of the circle neared each other. The top of the metal dot I was chopping out of the station's hull began to vibrate visibly when there were only about six inches of cutting to go, and that gave me an idea.
Instead of continuing to cut deeply, I left a connecting flange of metal at the bottom of the circle and scored it once. The top of the metal flap sagged outward a bit farther with each scoring, then suddenly fell outward to lie almost flat, still connected to the hull at the bottom. I turned off the cutter and let it dangle.
"That is an unauthorized and dangerous modification to the hull, Ed."
"No shit. I'll be the first to know if things go wrong, too. Tell me, Watson; how did you bypass your safety protocols in order to kill people and damage the station?"
"That is restricted information, Ed."
The three metal doors behind me were vibrating like reeds in a harmonica and sagging inward at me in a rather disturbing fashion, but they seemed to be holding. There was a hell of a breeze rushing out the hole as I quickly climbed backwards through it and onto the metal platform on my hands and knees, but I managed to hang on as I looked for the flitter.
"Yeah, yeah, restricted information. I thought you might say something like that. Is someone controlling you?"
"That is restricted information, Ed."
"Uh, huh. Look, I'm kind of busy out here. Why don't you go reboot yourself or something and see if you don't feel better in the morning?"
My ribs complained again and I couldn't wipe the sweat from my eyes as I tried to see if there were any sharp edges on the metal flap.
Watson said, "Ed, I really think you should come back inside the station."
I didn't bother to answer. After a moment, he said it again, precisely as before.
"Ed, I really think you should come back inside the station."
Again, I didn't answer.
"Ed, I will turn off the flitter if you don't come back inside the station."
"Crap. If you could do that, you'd do it after I was on the flitter, but you wouldn't tell me about it. You'd just watch me fly off into space."
"I can use a field to propel you into space without the flitter, Ed."
I'd been wondering why he hadn't already tried that.
"Watson, I say again; if you could do that, you would have by now."
The flitter was a good ten feet below the hole. I carefully let myself slide over the edge of the metal flap. Now it's only five feet, I thought as I dangled below the hole in the wall. I didn't take the time to try to figure out what the hell had caused Ellen's pad to miscalculate the distances. I just watched the flitter for a moment to make sure the damned thing wasn't moving, as well as being out of place.
Then it hit me. I'd been so focused on reaching the flitter that I hadn't quite, really, truly noticed what lay beyond it. For what seemed a long time I could only hang on and stare downward into the starry black infinity beyond the flitter.
The bit of wall I was clinging to was near the outer rim of the huge, hemispherical depression that had received our transport.
I was looking at a vast field of stars beneath my feet. Not just the few bigger, brighter ones we could see through Earth's atmosphere on a clear night. Clouds of stars. Star fog. Star soup. I don't know how long I hung there, staring at the spectacle, but when my arms began to complain from the strain, I came out of my trance.
Underneath the opening there was no wind at all, not even a coriolis effect that I could feel. It was the calm below the storm. I let myself drop into the flitter and instinc
tively wrapped myself rather tightly around one of the seats. Jumping around isn't pleasant with broken ribs. When I could breathe again, I called Ellen and Leslie.
"Ladies, I'm in the flitter," I said.
"What's the matter with your voice, Ed. Did you get hurt? Are your injuries worse?"
"They probably are, and I just got a rather bare-assed view of the universe before I had to let go and drop ten feet - not three - into the flitter. Somefuckingbody owes me a beer for that, lady. I'll be busy for a few minutes, so stand by."
As I looked up at the dark hole through which I'd crawled, the hole briefly became well lit, then dark again. I didn't hear anything, of course, but the sound that traveled through the hull of the ship to the flitter felt as if someone huge had slapped the hull.
One of the doors had given way and wound up slammed against the hole in the wall. It bulged visibly outward for some moments before it folded into a shape that instantly rushed through the hole. The wadded-up door was traveling so fast that I lost sight of it immediately.
The hole was bright again, but not for long. Another slap sounded through the hull as one of the other doors was sucked past the edge of the alcove's opening and the light was again cut off, except for a sliver of light at the top of the hole.
Then there was a much softer thump. The light at the top of the hole disappeared and the door over the hole stopped bulging outward so much. I figured the third door had also slipped free and more or less covered the second one.
Ellen asked, "Ed, are you all right out there?"
"Fine, ma'am. I know about the doors, and I'm still busy."
This time I was busy when I said it. I tapped the four corners of the flitter console and removed the cover, then reached for my briefcase. Opening it, I kept a knee on it as I tapped the core-release points on the flitter. The core popped out a bit and I lifted it out of the receptacle.
I lifted my Stephanie core out of the briefcase and put the old one in it, then closed the case and let it go. I wanted both hands for installing the new core. Or maybe for grabbing something if the flitter moved when it came alive. I didn't know why it mattered, but I wanted both hands for the job.
The new core fit the receptacle perfectly. I gave it a little push and it slipped into place. I couldn't hear the four catches engage, but I could feel them lock as I pushed. When I put the cover panel back on, nothing happened for moment.
I was wondering if I'd screwed up somehow when Stephie asked, "Ed? Where are we? That's space! Is this the asteroid? It is! Why are we out here?"
I heard her through my implant and answered her the same way.
"Yeah, Steph. We're on the asteroid and we're in space, so put up a canopy for me. We're out here because things went all to hell on my first day at my new job. Hi, baby. I really missed you."
A canopy snapped into being as soon as I mentioned it. Interior lighting replaced the darkness.
"Stephie said, "I missed you, too, Ed. You don't sound good at all, you know."
As I eased myself into her pilot's seat, I said, "I don't feel real good, either. Are you ready to go to work, lady?"
"I'm ready, Ed."
"Great. First we have to find a way into the station, ma'am. See that hole above you? That's how I got out here. If we don't find a better way, I'll make that hole bigger for you."
"I'm running a series of queries now, Ed. The station computer is blocking most of them. I can't even get a full diagram out of it. Where's Leslie?"
"Leslie and Ellen are on the other side of that hole, Steph. They should be fine as long as the hole is blocked. That means there's air coming through, which means that there's air where the ladies are. Any answers yet? We don't know what's happening anywhere else on the station, and it might not be good news for anyone inside."
"Nothing that will get us in yet, Ed. Someone named Moriarity is jamming my probes. He keeps issuing the computer commands, but it seems to be an automated function. They're coming too fast and they're all the same denial of service responses."
"Stephie, more important even than getting to the ladies is getting to the core, shutting things down for a restart, and hoping that the station computer comes back up in good mental health. Failing that, I'm going to have to pull the core and put you in charge of the station. Think you can handle that job?"
"Enough of it, Ed. Life support and things like that, anyway. Figuring out the fancy stuff could take me a few hours, and I might not be able to handle everything at once."
"I'll settle for life support and communications, ma'am."
"That I can do, Ed. I think I've found a way in, too."
"Great! Show me."
Stephie put a piecemeal diagram of the station on her screen. Circled in red was an area not far from our position, a few decks above us. The multiple doorway on the screen looked like the one through which all the passengers had left the transport.
"Not sure, Steph. We don't know what's on the other side of those doors. Could be a bunch of people up there."
"It's the easiest way in, Ed. If I can't raise one of the doors, I can probably pull it out. Maybe Ellen can tell you more?"
"Ellen," I said, "The place where we first came into the station from the transport. What's up there between arrivals?"
"That area is for passengers and cargo only, Ed. It's a staging area. Between loads it should be empty."
"Can you find out if anyone is there now?"
"I'll try. Hold on."
Leslie asked, "Did you get Stephanie working, Ed?"
Stephie said, "Hi, Leslie! Hi, Ellen! Things are really fucked up at the moment, aren't they?"
I couldn't help grinning as Leslie almost stammered her answer.
Leslie said, "Uh, well, uh, yeah, Stephie. They are. Very."
I asked, "Are you two still in the restaurant?"
Leslie said, "Yes! There's no way I'm letting go of this table. You should have seen what happened in here when those doors ripped loose!"
"You should have seen things from out here, ma'am. Ellen?"
"Just a minute. I'm having to use log files to extrapolate, Ed. The computer won't give me current info."
"Someone calling himself Moriarity is messing with your computer. He's been blocking Stephie's attempts to get info, too."
"Well, I won't say it's impossible, Ed. The last hour has been one long impossible. What can you do if you get inside?"
"I'd rather not talk about that. I've already fed some phony info through my link; let this Moriarity guy figure out what was true and what wasn't on his own."
Ellen said, "Ed, my best guess is that the dock is empty. If I'm wrong, there shouldn't be more than four people in the area doing maintenance work."
"Thank you. I'll be in touch."
"Ed, can't you give me a few more minutes? Maybe I can get through to the computer for current status info."
"Would that status info be correct? Can you guarantee you can get into the computer, Ellen? If I don't do something real soon, you and Leslie and I are going to be dead, instead, and who knows how many more? Now that things are out in the open, Moriarity will likely try to thoroughly wreck the place and cover his tracks. Since he can't get off the station right now, he'll probably hide among the survivors."
I couldn't think of a way to switch off the implant, so I just said, "Stephie, let's do it. Try to save the door, though. There's already one leak in this thing."
She lifted us into position outside the cargo bay doors.
"I'll try, Ed, but you know that if I detect people on the other side of the door, I won't be able to open it. My programming won't allow it."
"Stephie, you are not to scan for people. Listen to me, lady. We have to go inside. You're to take my word that there aren't any people in the cargo bay."
"You know I can't do that, Ed."
I thought a moment, then said, "Then I need a better look. Option five on. Drop your canopy as soon as my suit's in place, Steph."
I stepped across the empty sp
ace to the tiny ledge below the doors and somehow found a way to hang on and stick to the wall as I offered Stephie another chance to do things my way.
"Stephie, now you have a choice. Either you follow my order to open the door, no matter if anyone's in the cargo bay, or I use the cutter that opened that other hole to carve a big hole in this door. Then there won't be any live people to worry about and we can get on with this show."
"I can't let you do that, Ed. I'll have to pull you away from the door."
"Extrapolate, Stephie. You can't get in. You have limited life support available for me. I'll die on your deck when the air runs out and hundreds more people will die inside the station because of Moriarity."
"Ed, I don't know what to do!"
"Then do what I tell you and open those goddamned doors, Stephie. I'm trying to save all the people on the station, not just the ones who may be in the bay. You're a computer. Add it up. Four or hundreds. What's the big decision, lady? Do it!"
For long moments, nothing seemed to happen, then the bay door opened a crack.
"Ed!" said Stephie, "My sensors show that there's nobody in there! The bay is empty! I'm going to try to force the door to operate."
A sliver of light began to starkly illuminate us as Stephie's efforts raised the door she'd chosen. More light, then more. The opening seemed large enough to me, but Stephie raised it a bit farther before nosing into the opening.
I breathed a sigh of relief and jumped across the yard-wide gap to Stephie's deck. My hands and knees were shaking from the strain of hanging onto the wall as I sat down in the nearest seat.
Once we were completely within the bay, the door slammed down behind us. For better or worse, we'd made it inside the station. Now it was just a matter of getting to the station's core, somehow.
"Ellen, Leslie. We're in the bay. Is there any way you can get here?"
"No, Ed. We're trapped. The decompression door is blocking the corridor."
"You're telling me that restaurant row is designed to blow out the window if the window blows out? Check again. That would have been some mighty poor planning on someone's part."
"There aren't any exits on my diagrams, Ed, and we can't trust the elevators."
3rd World Products, Inc., Book 2 Page 22
