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Until the slowboats themselves were part of the structure of the Hospital, and the interiors of the lifesystems were a maze of ladders and jury-rigs. Until the organ banks were moved entirely out of the ships, and the suspended animation rooms were closed off for good. Until the ships were nothing more than electrical generating plants--if one turned a blind eye to the interrogation room and perhaps to other secrets.
And still the tool closets were undisturbed. And still there were spacesuits in the upended rooms, behind doors which hadn't been opened for centuries.
And still there was water in the landing fuel tanks and uranium in the landing motors. Nobody had bothered to remove them. The water had not evaporated, not from tanks made to hold water for thirty years against interstellar vacuum. The uranium...
Polly valved water into the hot motors, and the ship roared. She yipped in triumph. The ship shuddered and shook along her whole length. From beneath the welded door there were muffled screams.
There was more than one way to tell a joke! The Planck's fusion drive was dead, but the Arthur Clarke's drive must be ru
"Come loose," she whispered.
The Planck pulled loose from the rock around it, rose several feet, and settled, mushily. The huge ship seemed to be bouncing, ponderously, on something soft. Polly twisted the water fuel valve to no effect. Water and pile were ru
Polly snarled low in her throat. The pile must be nearly dead; it couldn't even manage to lift the ship against Mount Lookitthat's point eight gee. If it weren't for the landing skirt guiding the blast for a ground effect, they wouldn't be moving at all!
Polly reached far across to the seat on her right. A bar moved under her hand, and at the aft end of the Planck, two fins moved in response. The ship listed to the side and drifted back to nudge the Hospital, almost gently-once, twice.
Live flame roared through the Hospital. It was water vapor heated beyond incandescence, to the point where oxygen dissociated itself from hydrogen, and it cut where it hit. Like death's hurricane it roared through the corridors, cutting its way through walls where there were no corridors. It killed men before they knew what was killing them, for the first touch of the superheated steam made them blind.
The drive flame spread its fiery death through a third of the ground floor.
To men inside and outside the Hospital, to men who had never met and never would, this was the night everything happened at once. Sane men locked their doors and found something to hide under while they waited for things to stop happening.
"Laney. It must be Laney," said Jay Hood. "She got through."
"Elaine Mattson?"
"Right. And she got to the Planck. Can you imagine?"
"She must have a wonderful sense of timing. Do you know what will happen when she blows the drive?"
"Oh, my God. What'll we do?"
"Keep flying," said Parlette. "We'd never get out of range now. We might just as well bull through with this and hope Miss Mattson realizes the colonists are wi
"More police cars," said Harry Kane. "Left and right, both."
Polly touched the bar again. The ship tilted to the other side and began to drift ponderously away from the Hospital.
She dared tilt the ship no farther. How much clearance did she have under the landing skirt? A foot? A yard? Ten? If the skirt touched the ground, the ship would go over on its side.
That was not part of Polly's plan.
Behind her the door had turned red hot. Polly glanced back with bared teeth. She moved her hands over the board, but in the end left the settings just the way they were. She'd have to circle all the way around the Hospital, but then she'd have a gliding run at the Arthur Clarke.
And she'd hit it again and again until one ship failed.
She never noticed when the red spot on the door turned white and burned through.
The ship jumped three feet upward, and Matt's head snapped down against the closet floor. When he looked up, the outer hull side of the room was tearing away like tissue paper, except for the agonized scream of old metal dying. And Matt was looking straight into Castro's office.
He couldn't think; he couldn't move. The scene had a quality of nightmare; it was beyond the rational. Magic! he thought, and, Not again!
The Hospital was drifting away, dreamlike. His ears had gone dead, so that it all took place in an eerie silence. The ship was taking off...
And there was no air in his helmet. The tank had held only one last wheeze. He was suffocating. He pulled the clamps up with fingers gone limp and tingly, tossed the helmet away, and gulped air. Then he remembered the gas.
But it was clean hot air, air from outside, howling through the gaping hole in the outer hull. He sucked at it, pulling it to him. There were spots before his eyes.
The ship was going up and down in a seasick ma
Polly had reached the controls. Apparently she was taking the ship up. No telling how high they were already; the lights of the Hospital had dwindled to the point where everything outside was uniformly black against the lighted room. They were going up, and the room was wide open to naked space, and Matt had no helmet.
The room seemed steadier. He jumped for the ladder. The suit was awkward, but he caught the ladder and made his way down, fighting the imbalance caused by his backpack. It wasn't until he touched bottom that the backpack caught his conscious attention.
After all, if the Planck's landing motors still worked, why not a spacesuit's backpack?
He peered down at a control panel meant to be read by fingertips. With the helmet on, he couldn't have done it. The backpack was studded with small rocket motors; he wanted the ones on the bottom, of course.
How high was he now?
He tried the two buttons on the bottom, and something exploded on his back. It felt about right, as if it were trying to lift him. There was only one throttle knob. Doubtless it controlled all the jets at once, or all that were turned on at a given time.
Well, what else did he need to know? How high was he?
He took one last deep breath and went out the hole in the wall. He saw blackness around him, and he twisted the throttle hard over. It didn't move. It was already on full. Matt had something like one second to realize that the backpack was for use in space, that it probably wouldn't have lifted its own weight against gravity.
He hit.
Moving carefully, so as not to interfere with the men using welding torches, Major Jansen peered up into the hole in the flight-control-room door.
They had pushed a platform into position under the door, so that two men could work at once. The platform rose and settled, rose and settled, so that the major had to brace himself with his hands flat on the ceiling. He could see raven hair over the top of a control chair, and one slender brown arm hanging down.
Jesus Pietro, standing below, called, "How long?"
"A few seconds," said one of the men with cutting torches. "Unless she welded the hinge side too."
"Do you know where we're going?" called the Head. "I do."
Major Jansen looked down, surprised. The Head sounded so odd! And he looked like an old man in poor health. He seemed unable to concentrate on what was going on. He's ready for retirement, Major Jansen thought with compassion. If we live through this ...