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It was Captain Bu who best kept his head, in spite of terrible pain. He cupped
his hands over his blasted eyes and shouted orders, instructions, and demands
to be told what was going on.
There was a well-ordered drill for air-loss incidents. True, the drill assumed
that the full ship s company would be present to slap on the sticky patches
and trigger the airtight door closings. Also true, the drill had been set up
for a wholly different
Ark, one that had not existed for decades, an
Ark with all its pieces still intact. In the shedding of so much of the ship,
to burn in the antimatter reactors or simply to be paradropped to the surface
of Newmanhome, many storage spaces had been lost, or shifted around, and
misplaced, and the unexpected strike from
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Nebo had completed the damage. The compartments where the sticktight patches
were kept no longer existed.
And it no longer mattered, really. Patches wouldn t do the job.
Ark had not merely been holed, it had been gouged through by the laserlike
blasts from the surface of Nebo. The part of the hull where the optics had
been mounted was gone, burned away entirely; the ship was as blind as Captain
Bu himself. Thruster fuel had exploded in another place. The whole center keel
of the ship was bent; airtight doors weren t airtight anymore. The only part
that still maintained integrity almost maintained it was what was left of the
old freezer compartment. Gasping in the rapidly thinning atmosphere, Reesa and
Viktor tugged the blinded, moaning captain through the bulkhead hatch to the
cryonics deck and dogged it shut.
Wait! Viktor cried. What about Rodericks and the others?
Didn t you see? They re dead! Close that hatch! Reesa shouted. And, when
Viktor had it clamped, it was just in time. The air in the cryonics deck was
thin, but at least its pressure remained steady.
If those shots ever hit the antimatter . . . Reesa whispered, and didn t
finish.
She didn t have to. If whatever it was that was firing on them from the
surface fired again, and if that shot were to strike the antimatter
containment then nothing else would count. There wasn t much antimatter left
in
Ark s fuel chamber, but if what was there got loose
Ark would become a mere haze of ions.
She turned to the blinded Bu, while Viktor prowled restlessly around the
freezer compartment, looking for he knew not what. A weapon? But there was no
one nearer than the surface of Nebo to fight. No one had dreamed that
Ark might ever need long-range weapons.
And no one had dreamed, either, that anything on the surface of Nebo might try
to kill them. Viktor wondered if anyone in the lander had survived. More
likely, they were dead already as he and Reesa and Bu were likely to be, at
any moment.
Then a thought struck him.
Ark did have one serious weapon, of course . . .
He bounded back to where Reesa was trying to find something to bind Bu
Wangzha s burned-out eye sockets. We could blow up the antimatter ourselves!
he cried.
Reesa turned and stared at him. The radiation, he explained. If we set the
antimatter off, the radiation would burn half the planet clean!
She was staring at him unbelievingly. But she didn t have to answer. Captain
Bu spoke for her. Let go of me, Reesa, he said, sounding quite normal. He
sat up, his hands over his destroyed eyes. He breathed hard for a moment, and
then said, Viktor, don t be a fool. In the first place, we re cut off from
the controls. There isn t any air there. And we shouldn t blow up the planet
anyway.
Viktor averted his gaze from the horrible eye sockets. At least we d hurt
them! he said savagely.
278
THE WORLD AT THE END OF TIME
Frederik Pohi
279
Bu shook his sightless head. We couldn t destroy the whole planet. The most
we could do is prove that we re dangerous and what if they then decide that
the people on Newmanhome have to pay for our act? What chance would they have
against something like those lasers?
What chance do they have now? Viktor snarled.
Not much, Bu said calmly, but better than we have up here. The air won t
last forever, and there s no way we can get out of here.
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So we re dead! Viktor snapped.
Bu gazed at him with the sightless eyes. Viktor averted his gaze, but the
captain s face was almost smiling. If you re dead, he said, you might as
well be frozen.
What?
The freezers are still working, aren t they? And even blind, I think I can
get the two of you stowed away.
Captain! Reesa gasped. No! What would happen to you?
Exactly what will happen to all of us if we do nothing, Captain Bu said
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